Good afternoon. We are here for a planning housing and parks committee work session. This is the first work session on the 2024 to 2028 growth and infrastructure policy. The work session will cover the planning boards recommendations for school adequacy and testing. We'll also cover the first seven recommendations related to transportation adequacy. We are required by law to take this up. We have now received feedback from the County Executive and we are going to hear from council staff, their recommendations based on the planning boards recommendation and we have with us representatives of the planning staff, the planning board chair, as well as the executive branch. With that, let me, unless there is any introductory comments from colleagues, let me turn it over to Council staff to walk us through the packet and let's turn it over to our guests as needed to respond to questions or concerns from colleagues. With that, Miss Dunn. Great, good afternoon and thank you. We are here at the first work session for the 2024 Growth and Infrastructure Policy. You'll also hear us refer to it as the GIP. Today's work session will cover the recommendations from the planning board regarding school adequacy. This chapter two in their document. It will also cover the first seven recommendations related to transportation adequacy. Those are covered in chapter three of the document. We will not be talking about impact taxes today. That will be at a future work session. And that will also be the subject that will go to the government operations committee or GO committee. As noted in the packet, we did receive the recommendations and comments from the county executive. Those came in yesterday. They were included as an addendum to today's staff report, actually addendum number two. There is an Dendum number one that came out also that came out Friday. Included some testimony that were had inadvertently been left out of the packet as we prepared that for posting earlier last week. And so my apologies for that, but there are two Dendum. And we'll refer you to those as we go through the planning board's recommendations and our comments on those recommendations for the committee. With that, we're gonna start with the school's element. As I mentioned, that's chapter two. It's on pages 11 through 20 in the planning boards report. And the school section provides guidance to the planning board for administering the adequate public facility ordinance also referred to as the APFO. And it requires an adequacy test of public school capacity. The GIP also is known as establishing these ground rules for what we can talk to and refer to regularly as our annual school test. This annual school test determines the adequacy status of each school service area for a fiscal year. Each development application or amendment is evaluated against the results of the annual school test to determine whether the school serving the project has sufficient capacity to accommodate the proposed development. When a school service area is deemed to have insufficient capacity or is overutilized, the GIP establishes the mitigation required for development to proceed. As noted in the staff report, there is a long history of efforts to continually improve how school adequacy is measured. The council has approved moving from what they used to term growth policy capacity to program capacity at MCPS to evaluating capacity at each school service area rather than at cluster level. And calculating student generation rates with the most up-to-date enrollment and property data. The 2020-2024 Growth Policy instituted several fundamental changes to the administration of the annual school test. School impact areas were introduced, moratorium, unresidential construction was eliminated, the cluster level test was also eliminated, and a new tiered utilization premium payment system was developed. The planning board draft for 2024- 2028 includes five recommendations for schools. The first one involves school impact areas. And according to the draft due to the breadth of changes in 2020, the short time period since those changes have occurred, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on school enrollment, this growth in infrastructure policies described as more of an update. And primarily that is true. The recommendation one for schools in 2020, a 19 pandemic on school enrollment, this growth in infrastructure policies described as more of an update. And primarily that is true. The recommendation, one, for schools is as follows, it is to modify the school impact area boundaries so that they align with the proposed transportation policy area boundaries and classify each area into infill turnover or greenfield based upon an updated analysis of their latest growth context and potential. This is on the second page of the staff report, and we can look at this recommendation into parts. The first is relatively straightforward. It's a modification to the geographic areas used to assign the school and pegged area classifications, and it recommends aligning these with the transportation policy area boundaries. For context, in 2020, the GIP used census track data or aggregations of census tracks and combined those with planning area boundaries to come up with the current designations. This time, aligning school impact areas with transportation policy area boundaries would simplify the number of geographic areas and applicant must consider in evaluating the adequacy status of a site. And there is precedent for using transportation policy areas for more than just transportation purposes. As the staff report note, transportation policy areas are typically an aggregation of transportation analysis zones. And these are also used in our COG forecasting for employment population and households. We have, the council has received a testimony in support of this change in boundaries from the Maryland Building Industry Association and NAEP. The council also received in the comments from the county executive who was not in support of this, suggesting that by making this change, fewer areas would be then classified as turnover, which could have a fiscal impact on the county's collection of impact taxes and UPP payments. I do have a map if the committee's interested. With that, I will just also say though, before we want to discuss the boundary part of it, there's the second half of this has to do with updating the analysis of the growth context and potential. And staff's going to come back to you without we're working with planning staff on some data to do some analysis for that. I think you could take them up separately. One is the base data, the boundaries on which those characteristics are measured. The second half are how are the characteristics measured. So I think you could talk about boundaries before you talk about how the characteristics are measured. And I'll see if the committee has any questions on that. Let's pull up the map if we can. And let's talk about the boundaries and how the characteristics are measured. So this is what's being recommended. If you go to the next slide, I have them side by side. I had tried to layer one on top of, oh, they can see. It's being pulled up. OK. So whatever delay. There are two side by side. You'll see one is the current 2020 school impact areas. The second is the 2024. One layered. some of the shading becomes difficult to read I had tried it it was hard so I ended up decided to put them side by side so that you could see that particularly in the middle of the county in 2020 the blue area for infill is a lot smaller than what you're seeing in 2024. And some of the other areas in 24 actually along what's probably the 355 corridor and I-270 change in size as well, although other smaller areas get added. I think it is inconclusive how, you know, completely this will change what gets collected because we see that some areas that are currently in fill are going to become turnover. Yes, those are associated with higher impact tax rates and higher UPP surcharges, but some areas that are currently in fill will go to turnover and again those are associated with higher rates. So it's really about the philosophical decision and policy to align the boundaries together. So an applicant coming in would look at one geography to say what type of transportation policy area, MIM, what color is it, what's associated with what is required for adequacy for that, and what is my school adequacy based on the school test for this same place? There have been a lot of ways in which the changes that were made four years ago have been described. But one of the main purposes and focuses was to accurately reflect what the data was actually saying in terms of the type of redevelopment and what student generation was occurring and then having more detail into the level of student generation by that type of development, right? The idea of being that Greenfield development, the type of development that we overwhelmingly saw in the 1970s and 80s and into, you know, part of the 1990s and so much as we were actually building things in the 90s, looked a certain way. And today we have some of that still in places like Clarksburg, but generally we have a lot more infill development where we're seeing previously developed areas be redeveloped into new housing, additional housing, denser, you know, and sometimes mixed use purposes. So can we talk in the context of that in the sense of what does this mean in terms of the changes reflecting the realities and the data in terms of these communities and the justification for the boundary changes. Let's turn to planning first. Just to quickly summarize, right, there are three categories in fill. High housing growth predominantly in the form of multi-family units that generate relatively few students on a per unit basis. Turnover is low housing growth where enrollment trends are largely dependent on the turnover of existing single-family units and then greenfield which we're not using but of course is high housing growth predominantly in the form of single-family units. Consequently experiencing high enrollment growth. I would turn it over to my colleague, Hesu, to explain exactly how we just made sure that we're introducing ourselves for the record. I think it just outfell. Sorry, David on Spocker, thank you. For the record, Hesu Beck, the adequate public facilities planner in the planning department. Is this question going into the metrics of how? Oh, just the boundaries. The boundaries basically were to make the overall policy more simplified, instead of a property owner coming in and looking at several different boundaries for transportation policy. The boundary is cut this way. in the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of And for transportation policy areas, I believe there, I guess, could you clarify how the, I'm not an expert on how the transportation policy areas are. Designated, but for school impact areas, we developed an index approach last time around, so we can input several types of metrics and do an overall calculation based on the relative, I guess, growth factor or housing type factor compared to the county-wide average. So based on that, knowing that we can carve boundaries in many different ways for the school-impact areas and run the index again, we decided we will let the transportation policy area side determine the boundaries and we will use those same boundaries, put the data and carve it out based on those geographic units and then calculate which area comes out as higher than the countywide average lower than the countywide average and combine that information together to determine which would come out as an infill impact area which shows higher housing growth but more multifamily housing oriented which would come out as lower housing growth and more single family oriented and there are a few more variations of what the index would tell us, but we would classify our impact areas based on what the index says. So philosophically, the goal was to align the two areas together to simplify this for everybody involved. Practically the decision was to use transportation as the primary vehicle as opposed to schools as a primary vehicle. Correct, because we could adjust, we could, you could do, you could, you could have accomplished the philosophical by doing the opposite. You could have said we're going to start with inf fill turnover or green fill based on student generation and then see how the transportation does it by you reviewing transportation to be a more geographically sensitive circumstance and say you started with that it seems. I just want to make sure we're understanding because that's essentially what I'm hearing from you. Sure. For the record, Jason Sartor, your planning director, I think what you see is that the transportation policy areas have been longer established. They're also tied to those transportation analysis zones, which we can get the necessary school data at those transportation analysis zones. But going the other way, we may not have been able to get the necessary school data at those transportation analysis zones, but going the other way, we may not have been able to get the appropriate transportation data and to perform an updated analysis on the transportation side using the school impact areas that we identified previously. So this was just a way to have consistency across the policy to simplify it. Okay, let me see if colleagues have questions. Let me turn over to Councilmember Drowand. Yep, thank you for the work and thanks for the explanations thus far. I just want to, if we could, I know we have the administration here in OMB or whoever just you processing, I know we got it last night or yesterday, not you're not required, you weren't required, you were working on different timelines, I said at the public hearing, I'm a little uncomfortable with how this is going because of the public hearing and the impact taxes happening on October 1st and some preliminary decisions, I know we're not going to do that here and Geo's going to do that later, but I just want to make sure I understand your position on how this would be a negative loss in revenue and in the analysis that you use to get there. And this is going to be a theme for me of understanding, you know, just for example, the calculation even of 4.6 million negative over six years on education side and I think it's 14.6 on the transportation side being the county executives fiscal impact right. How did you get to that? Is that planning is planning agree with those numbers? I just want to make sure we're both using the same numbers and just at least even if we disagree on how we got why we got there, that those are the same numbers. So in this instance, I'd like a little more explanation from OMB or the administration. Thank you so much, Councilmember Joanneau and members of the committee. I'm gonna turn it over to OMB, they're gonna come up and we keep the seat warm today. But just to start, you're going to see a comment through all the executive comments about reducing the revenue we've received through impact taxes. And you know the county executive's position that we need a better mechanism to collect the necessary funding we need off the new development. And as you know, he's not a fan of the impact tax either. He just feels that before we make decisions that reduce revenue, we need to be moving down that road to a better mechanism, whatever it might be. But I'm gonna turn it over to OMB to come on up and explain that. Thank you. For the record Veronica Howell from OMB, the Department of Finance, the Fiscal Impact, prepare the model for the fiscal impact for these recommendations. And the $4.6 million loss, revenue loss for this recommendation, was the result of looking to past 10 years of development. When they studied those developments, they realized that aligning a school impact areas with transportation and policy areas, more turn over geographic areas will become infield. And turn over has the higher impact tax versus the infield. For that reason, if we would have, if we would have go with that, that's where the revenue loss comes. Because more turnover is becoming infield. Right. And you mentioned that Council's misdone that the map does. There is that happening. We're not knowing it's denying that happening. We're not known denying that happening is just So would planning agree that that's the that is a a results potential result of this So I would just make sure we are clear that whether and you see it on this map as blue or tan so blue being the infill impact areas and tan being the turnover impact areas, is based on what we're seeing in that the geography that we're doing the analysis at. If we're seeing a lot of development, if we're seeing a lot of enrollment, if we're seeing certain types of units, and so the color that gets associated, whether it's an infill or turnover in bacteria, is based on the data for that specific geography. The question I think that we're having today is what level of geographic analysis should we be using? And whether we should use the old school impact areas, or we should use the transportation ones, and it's difficult to say until you get into the model and the data whether it's going to be blue or tan and then what impact it might have fiscally. I mean just I'll note that you know impact taxes generally are going to be volatile because they're based on the amount of development that we're experiencing where we're experiencing and what types of units we're getting. And so it's difficult to take a look at the last 10 years and make some assumption about what's going to happen in the next 10 years. And that is, I think, what the fiscal impact that's been done is, you know, if this existed 10 years ago and over the last 10 years, what impact would that have had? And I think that's difficult to say, you know, going forward. Right. Right. Different than if you have a comment, please, I know you have one seat there. Go ahead and switch. No, you want me to. But the, let's talk about it. Okay. But yeah, right. Because we're not deciding what rates go up. Whereas in a later conversation, it'll be clearer because if you eliminate something that no one will deny that there's a fiscal impact, this could be you're saying it's a little more up in the air because it depends on what happens. Right, if an area turns out to be in the infill impact area, that's because that's what the data suggests is happening there. And so the resulting student generation rates and the impact taxes are appropriate for that area because that's what we're seeing there. Right. Did you have a comment? Rachel, so room with the Office of Management and Budget. And I just wanted to say that I'm certainly looking forward as difficult and that is why finance has looked at the past 10 years of history for all of these projections because as you can tell with the permitting pipeline and everything else, it is just very difficult to determine what is going to be in, you know, in the next 10 years. And so the best proxy that we have is really only that we can rely on is history. And so that is what the fiscal impact is based on. I appreciate that. And just if planning could state one more time, why there was a talk about, you could have gone either way. Why this way? What is the benefit of aligning it this way, as opposed to aligning it the other way? As director Sartori said, the transportation policy areas have been around a lot longer, they're more established. What does that mean? Longer doesn't necessarily mean better. I'm just not to cut you off, but you're saying that we would assume that that means it's better. There's some senses where things have been around longer and they're not better. What does that mean? When you say that, what do you mean? Why is that the factor. I think the point I'm trying to make is that schools are a lot easier to school boundaries are a lot easier to change. Again as director Sartori said, the data is what the data is in each geographic area. Regardless of whether the boundary is this size or this size it's very easy to rerun the numbers to develop and to assign the infill and the other impact area. And just to clarify, when we say school boundaries, we're not talking school boundaries. Yes, so we're in that area. We'll be discussing that here. Those we know are not easy to change. So the other thing to point out again is that the transportation impact areas were tied to that transportation analysis zone, which we do a lot of things based on those, including COG does their forecasts based on those geographies. And so tying it to that just allowed us to be consistent with other things that we're ready doing and using at that level of geographic analysis. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I think there's a, the question before us on this particular issue because it's not a conversation about impacts. I still will come at a later point, which I appreciate, is does it make sense to align the boundaries? Number one, because there are certain impacts of that. I think most of those impacts, many of those impacts over the next four years are inconclusive. We don't know exactly how those dynamics are going to be and the numbers for student generation, for instance, are going to be recalculated. And, you know, those numbers are what they are and the costs are going to be what they're going to be. And the revenue impacts is going to be what it's going to be. But the question is, does aligning these things for the purpose of streamlining and simplicity make sense? And essentially is the juice worth the squeeze. Like there is a benefit to doing that but there also are consequences to doing that. They may be positive, they may be negative, they may be more or less neutral with their consequences and is the juice worth the squeeze. Staff's recommendation is to dig into this a little bit further. So staff's recommendation is, supportive of the boundary change recommendation part of this that due to the long precedent of using these for more than just transportation policy, as we mentioned the COG housing and population forecasts. Having a smaller geography, that's a much smaller geographies. It makes it a more fine-tuned tool than we had last time. They had started a census tracts, which are really quite large, and then fit those into planning areas, again larger than a transportation policy area. So to me, it's a fine-tuning and it's a simplification, and it makes for applicants coming in understanding what they need to do also a more simplified and efficient system. The second half of this does have to do with what's used to characterize something as either turnover and fill. And that we're not getting to today because we do have more data for that that we're going to look at and we're going to work with planning staff. So the second half of this we're going to talk to you about on October 7th, which is our follow up day. So even if we just could get the direction from the committee, your preference for the boundary because we will still be looking at using that as we evaluate what it means to characterize things as either in fill or turnover. So just on the characteristics of them and turn to customer who are drawing it as a fall-up as well. Are we recalculating the student generation calculation based on where the boundary is? Right, so to me it would be a problem if we set the student generation rate and then move the boundary. It's less of a problem to me if we set the boundary and then calculate the student generation because the student generation is what it is. Regardless of, you know, if we did a county-wide student generation, which is historically how it was done, the numbers are what they are, as long as the numbers are accurate, which is an important issue that we need to make sure. Fine tuning them to smaller areas, we did that last time because it was stark, the planning department's data to show that the student generation was quite different depending on the type of development that was occurring in fill development student generation is quite different from Greenfield student generation. Actually, if you look at the impact tax calculations and costs around the region, it's reflective in that too. Loudoun County student generation rates for schools are much, much higher than the rest of the region, even if you take us out and you look at other jurisdictions. Some of that perhaps has to do with the fact that that has been mostly greenfield development patterns and so that's, you know, would make more sense. So can you just speak to that point because that would reflect the revenue piece to a certain extent that the numbers, you know, in my view, should be what they are as long as we're recalculating based on the boundaries. Sure. So I would kind of look at this as three steps. The first step is what geographic geographic level of analysis do you want? So what geographies are we going to use? The old school-impact area, geographies, or the transportation area geographies. Once you've made that decision, then you run it through a model that determines based on the amount of development, the type of development that we're seeing, should it be infill or should it be turnover or greenfield if we're seeing areas of greenfield? And that is then determines whether you see tan or blue. And the third step is what are the student generation? What are the impacts in those areas? So collectively all of the blues will have a certain amount of student generation and all of the tan will have another student generation. What we'll see is that we see more student generation per unit typically in the tan, where we see more turnover of single-family homes versus in the blue, we see lower student generation rates, because that tends to be where we see the multi-family, which doesn't generate as many students. So just to be clear we see the multifamily, which doesn't generate as many students. So just to be clear, theoretically, if we're seeing most of the growth in infield, just theoretically, if you're seeing most of the development growth in infill, and you expand that out to include less dense development areas. When you recalculate the student generation, it would increase the calculation. And so a multi-family would be in a, you know, in a, in an infill area, would be paying a higher rate across the board because you're using a larger area that at least according to what you're sharing with us would would marginally increase the student generation rate. But it would be lower comparatively than another area. So the question is what is the calculation? How does it impact the calculation and where is most of the development? Because we don't see in most years where all the development is happening in one versus another. And we don't see it happening equally, necessarily, where it's, you know, overwhelmingly green field or overwhelmingly infield or spread across evenly. So, you know, I think that's where the fiscal analysis is tricky and it's not clear to me how that is netted out in the fiscal analysis. It's easy to do a fiscal analysis to look at it last 10 years, see what would theoretically change and come recalculation of student generation based on that so that you can actually understand what the full impact of the policy change would be. Could you, could you, did you net out that piece of it in your fiscal analysis to look at how the student generation rate would change in the changed areas which would have an impact on revenue? Thanks. The fiscal impact statement hasn't been finished, finalized yet. But impact access in turnover are higher, the rates are higher, and the student generation rates are larger. Therefore, if you're changing, if those areas are changing to infield, then there is a revenue loss. There could be, I mean, respectfully, that's not accurate. Okay. It's, it is true, but it's incomplete. The reality is, if you're changing the boundary and then recalculating the student generation rate, you would be changing the calculation of the cost. And so yes, comparatively, between turnover and infill, the numbers would be different. But the infill number, by definition, would be higher than but the infill number by definition would be higher than it otherwise would have been if you're changing the boundary and the student-generation rate accordingly. That is correct. From the top of my mind, I'm not looking at the numbers right now, but from the top of my mind, when we recalculated multifamily units, especially, I can't remember if it's low rise or high rise, but the infill impact area multifamily student generation rates went up than what it would have been before. So yeah, we're not decidedly saying turnover impact area rates are always higher. Infill impact area rates will always be lower, depending on which project, which development project gets classified as which, it will have an impact on either one, whichever way it switches. So if there's a high, if there's a high rise with a high student generation rate that used to be turnover, that got switched over to infill impact area, it will impact the infill impact there. And to be clear, just to, because maybe I wasn't clear when I was saying earlier, going from turnover to infill will change and have a net negative revenue impact. But going from infill to infill, if you are already infill and you are still infill, you would likely be paying a higher rate. And if there is a large amount of the development applications that come in in infill, which I would suspect is fairly likely, then the revenue impact of that is net positive based on this because you're calculating a higher student generation rate for the infill area. So, you know, the gap between turnover and infill should be narrowed by expanding that out, which means you'd be generating more money from more projects, but the minimum amount of impact taxes for every project would increase marginally. While the cost of one project that would be going from a previously turnover area to an infill area would decrease. And the question, which is an open question, of what would the net impact of that be from a fiscal perspective, which is a lot more complicated than the fiscal analysis that has been presented up to this point, which I understand because you're limited in what you can do. My suggestion would be for planning to take a look based on the student generation calculations over the last 10 years, the same 10 year period, and look at the revenue impact if this were to have moved forward from the last 10 years. So take the similar look and do a net net and say, OK, what would infill impact tax rates have been? How many applications did you get over the last 10 years on infill, et cetera, and then share with us what that would be? Because it would give us a better and cleaner picture to understand what the actual impact of this would be because it would give us a better and cleaner picture to understand what the actual impact of this would be understanding that the last 10 years Do not dictate what the next 10 years will look like that's true of student generation that's true of Development applications and impact tax collections true of everything is that a reasonable thing? It doesn't seem like it would be That difficult to calculate that correct me if I'm wrong. I'll have to check how far back we have student generation rate, a student enrollment data to calculate student generation rates based on. It might not be quite ten years, but we could do it as far back as we have data for. I'm sure MCPS who has a very significant stake in this conversation would be willing to offer any and all support that they can, but let us know. Certainly, if you need help, with that, speaking of it, let me turn it over to Councilmember Dr. Wanda. I'm sure it's happy to help as Chair of the Education and Culture Committee as well. Thank you, and I saw our friend from MCPS here, who nodding his head, so I'm sure that message will be taken back. Yeah, that would, I appreciate the request. I was gonna ask that we hold on the making decision until we get the, I'd like to see what it would look under your model, under this model, under the old model, what would it look like? I think having a similar period of time and factoring in student generation realizing that I could understand why you would look at this at first place and say, there's less brown so it would be less money. I mean I get that as was acknowledged less turnover because it's a higher rate less money but I think we I would like to see it and decide to get for that because that would be an impact for me whether the juice is worth the squeeze for me is going to be in part determined on what the fiscal impact would be. So again, because it's not we're not talking about wide variation here either way, but considering what we did with the CIP and and the projects that I know are waiting and the the system makes that I know are waiting a few million dollars could matter. So, so I yeah I would agree with that and it's just the only thing I would add is that I assume this is when and what you said Chair Freedzen was that we would wait on deciding until we got that analysis. If that's the will of colleagues I am comfortable with that I know that is not preferred by staff but I do think it's prudent. I'll just know we've been, we were, it was noted by, you know, here at the day, it was mentioned during the public hearing by the representative of the county executive, you know, being criticized for the timing here. We wouldn't be able to do what we're doing now and get the follow-up that we're getting have we not starting today. So I just want to be very clear that the reason why we have started today and have the ability to have these conversations and to be thoughtful in our recommendations is specifically because we are starting this conversation today and have enough time to have follow-up conversations and discussions at this committee before we have a conversation that we're going to be talking about. specifically because we are starting this conversation today and have enough time to have follow up conversations and discussions at this committee before we move forward and make recommendations to the full council and given the statutory deadlines that are determined not by us but by state law We have an obligation to meet those timelines and those deadlines So I appreciate the fact that we have this time, that we have moved forward on the timeline that we have notwithstanding the criticism that we have received for that by those participating in this conversation. And let's hold off on those items, apologies to staff who would like some clarity, but I do think we have given ourselves time to be thoughtful and we should take advantage of that. So let's continue. Great sounds good. Thank you. We'll move on to the next recommendation that's in the planning board draft and this is in reference titled annual school test. The 2020 growth and infrastructure policies you were called eliminated the moratorium on residential construction, which was a huge step in supporting the housing supply needs of our county. And in its place, it recommends a utilization premium payment, which is a tiered system that sets multiple thresholds for adequacy in terms of school utilization, which is projected enrollment over projected capacity, and student seat deficit. It also establishes a corresponding mitigation payment tier. The planning board's recommendation is to adjust the seat deficit threshold of each UPP tier to align with MCPS's CIP guidelines for classroom additions and maintaining existing utilization rate thresholds. If you look at page four of the staff report, you'll see a table that shows the current and proposed utilization rate and seat deficit thresholds per UPP tier. The 2024 GIP proposes a seat deficit threshold that is more closely aligned with MCPS. It also establishes a consistent percentage of the MCPS threshold across all school levels within a given tier. So 80% at tier 1, 100% at tier 2, and 120% at tier 3. The current GIPC deficit thresholds, they range from 84 to 125% of the MCPS threshold, and they vary across all school levels and the all three utilization rate thresholds. The current deficit threshold for the FY25 annual school test placed to two high school service areas, one middle school into tier one, six elementary school service areas into tier two, and one high school service area into a tier three UPP. The recommended adjustment from the planning board would add two additional elementary school service areas, the paired New Hampshire Estates, Oakview Elementary School, and the Starrgent Shriver Elementary School into a tier one utilization premium payment. We received testimony from the Maryland Building Industry Association, NAEP, and the County Executive in support of this recommendation and council staff also suggest support for this. Let me turn it to Councilmember Droner. Thank you. I'm also in support of this, but there was a point that I wanted to bring up that I hadn't. I think that came in the executive's response about since you're aligning the seat threshold since planning is lining the threshold of proposing to with MCPS's guidelines to consider capacity projects in this CIP, they talked about considering increasing the payment factor of tier two to 100% of the school impact tax rate since this is the again not a decision we're going to make today, but I just would love to hear your feedback since that's the tier in which planning is matching MCPS guidelines. And if that's just want to be clear on that. We wanted to clarify that utilization premium payment is not intended to pay the cost of a seat impact tax. We had that discussion four years ago. Yeah, it's only a small part. Yes, the impact tax is already paying for the full cost of a seat. I mean, it's assessing developers for the full cost of the seat that they will have in stock. I wish it was fine for a full cost see. The calculation is, the reason the impact tax is usually short of the MCPSCIP budget is because a lot of the enrollment growth is not coming from development itself. Most of the schools that do have classroom addition scheduled do not have students coming from any development. A lot of the elementary schools, especially middle school, even high schools that are in the FY25 annual school test, are not high development areas. schools especially middle school even high schools that are in the FY 25 annual school test are not high development areas. So that's where there's a little bit of disconnect. So the, I guess the logical connection between the utilization premium payment, kicking it and kicking it at 100% of the MCPSCIP guidelines leading to therefore we should charge developers a hundred percent of the seat does not seem to Really jive together Could could we just if it's not available today if you come back to us But the three areas New Hampshire States elementary school Oakview elementary school in southern striver elementary school How many new development applications have been in those school areas? zero the campus of the campus. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. one. That's a Randolph Road project. I was going to say I thought one, two. Okay. All right. That's what I thought. I wanted to make sure because not my district, but I was fairly certain. I understood I figured and that the district council member who is sitting next to me would know that. But I think it's instructive of the point that you were trying to make here, that at least two of the three that are changing to tier one actually have no development applications that have come forward and yet have significant school capacity challenges for different reasons, neighborhood turnover being the primary one. So I just think it's important to note that it's a constant refrain that we have heard, I understand why, but I think that that point is important to at least note and be part of the conversation. There's support. It seems for this item across the board, and so with that we'll accept we've now officially made our first decision on the growth and infrastructure policy. And let's continue. Thank you. We'll move on to the next one. We're on page four of the staff report. The title of the section is the utilization premium payments. And as we've already noted, these are payments assessed as a condition of approval when the developer proposes to construct new residential units in the school service area and if they're found to be inadequate then they must make a surcharge on top of that impact tax you'll see what those factors are that are applied to the surcharge on the very bottom of four and at the beginning top of page five and as these utilization premium payments are a fee the funds collected are limited to the public school improvements that add capacity. They must add capacity. It's designed to alleviate over the utilization and currently it must be used in the school service area from which they are collected. The planning board is making a recommendation that would allow the funds, this is recommendation 2.3, allow funds collected as UPPs to be used for capital projects, adding capacity at schools adjacent to the school for which the funds were collected as outlined in the school utilization report. You received testimony on this from Glenn Orland. It is in the first addendum and the suggestion there is actually related to the factors for the payment. He suggests that these should be raised actually doubled, primarily doubled, for the current UPP factors and also recommends that we go back to having more auditorium for anything that's over 135% utilization. What staff would note for the committee is that last time that Council itself made very big changes to how the UPP was implemented from what the plan about recommended. It added the level tier one at 105% of utilization at 100 and it increased the amount that would be the surcharge for tier two and then it added a tier three for projects over 135%. The other testimony received related to this is the timing of when a utilization premium payment is actually assessed, and the testimony requested that that be done much later in the process to capture anything that was possibly approved at a point in time when there wasn't an overly utilization issue to closer to when somebody occupies the unit when there then might be a utilization issue. And I'll just remind the committee then again that the projections made for utilization are made for the future. There are four years into the future for the idea that on average a development application can go from application to students in a school in about four years into the future for the idea that on average a development application can go from application to students in a school in about four years. Some do take a little longer, but we're already looking into the future. They aren't done at point in time. They're not saying that today we're looking at you know today's utilization. Today's seat deficit. It's what is the projected utilization in four years? What is the projected seat deficit in four years? So Council staff doesn't suggest that the committee make either one of these changes, given the changes made last time and where the committee is at and given the planning board's recommendation. As for whether these UPPs should be used for an adjacent school service area, staff also suggests that that's a good and efficient system, given that we are seeing more and more capital projects come in that are larger than is necessary for the individual site with the idea that they are going to service students that live in surrounding areas. And then the boundaries do get redrawn to draw some of those students into that capital project in that new school. That'll give the committee as questions. All right. A few decision points here that are all kind of packed into one. The main one really is the significant change here is whether or not the UPP payment can be used for an adjacent project that adds capacity in order to alleviate school overcrowding issues. I support that. I think that makes sense. It gives flexibility and is more reflective of the actual decision making process that the board has in order to address school capacity issues. And I will just note, as was noted by staff, the practice now of building schools with additional areas that are not fully completed to allow for schools to expand that later dates. So there could be, you know, four-eight classrooms in elementary school, for instance, that are, you know, part of the foundation of the building but are not heated and cooled and insulated and are not operational but can be brought into service in a summer between June and August. And that flexibility, which I think is a good practice that MCPS has adopted over the last decade, that allows for significant flexibility so that we can leverage our resources more reasonably. And so having the UPP payment reflect that reality, I think makes a lot of sense. Any comments from colleagues? I agree. And I think it was noted that there are some schools that would benefit right now if you made this change in a significant way, so that's a good thing. Yeah, the collection of the UPP payments, the goal is not to collect revenue. The goal is to provide capacity. So giving some flexibility that reflects the realities makes sense for everybody, most importantly, families and students and educators who want their projects to move forward. So we will accept this. We have made multiple decisions. Let's continue. All right. We're on page five of the staff report. This is the fourth topic we're covering under schools today in the fourth recommendation. And the title is Student Generation Rates. A Student Generation Rates is an area represented by the average number of students coming from a housing unit in that area. Each school impact area has a calculated student generation rate by housing type and school level. Rates are used to determine the enrollment impacts of a project during the development review process. Montgomery County officials, official SDRs are updated every other year using the latest enrollment data from MCPS and the housing data from Maryland Data Department of Assessments and Taxation. Currently all units in the county are categorized into four housing types. We have a single family detached house, single family attached, multi-family low rise and multi-family high rise where structures four stories high are considered low rise and those that are five stories are higher considered high rise. All right, there are two issues that in the last growth in infrastructure policy, the Council directed planning to continue to look at, decisions were made but they wanted to continue to monitor these two situations. And one was that the multi-family structures that were built from 1990 and later generate significantly fewer students per unit than those built earlier. And those more recent ones are the ones that are being used to calculate student generation rates. They are more predictive of the type of multifamily unit we will see in the next four to six years as is the purpose of the policy. But people argue that there's potential that as even those units age, they may act more like the older units and therefore may generate more students. And so we should evaluate this and continue looking at it. And planning a green to conduct a follow-up analysis of multi-family student generation rates. And you'll see that on page six. And what it ultimately found was that while the student generation rates of multi-family units high rise ones went up, the low rise ones went up as well, and there is still a distinction between the high and the low rise. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm using two things. I've already jumped ahead to the next one. Pre-1990. Sorry, sorry. Pre-1990. Same concept. Different ratio. The pre-1990 versus post-1990. They both went up, but they are still a very distinct difference between the way that two are generating students. So they will continue to monitor this, but have requested that there's no change being made to this at this time, and they will continue to use multi-family units constructed from 1990 to current in their calculation. There's no indication of the next four years that the data is going to show a significant difference from pre-1990 versus post-1990 that a new date would make sense, like 1994 or 1995 or something like that. So for now, the recommendation is keep it the same. We made a significant change, monitored over the next four years. And if we do see a demarcation of a new date where a pre-2000 or something at that point acts much differently than a post date then we should update this number accordingly but for now there's no recommendation to do so and there's no data that suggests that we should. No objection from committee, let's move on to that. I will move on to the one that I've discussed. Yeah, previewed for us. Previewed, which is that in looking also at the difference between the multi-family high rise versus low rise rates, they would monitor whether that distinction remains because it currently existed when the 2020 growth and infrastructure policy was approved. They have continued monitoring and then as I already let the cat out of the bag, yes, there is still a discernible difference and they would like to keep those distinctions as they currently are in the policy. Same concept, no objections from the committee. Let's accept that and let's move on. Great. We are now going to address the reason for recommendation four, which is keeping stacked flats in the multifamily realized low rise category for the purposes of student generation rates and impact taxes. They'll all back up. A stacked flat, or sometimes called a two over two, generally consists of two story units stacked vertically to create a four-story building, in a row of attached structures. These units are currently characterized as multifamily low-rise by zoning standards, and categorized as such for student generation purposes. However, in planning staff's presentation to the board, they noted that the Department of Permitting Services stated that their current practice is to recognize to stacked flats as single family attached structures and charge rates accordingly. So that's a disconnect and we are hoping that and the reason the board has put this recommendation forward in this growth policy is to make it clear what the direction is and gave the board has put this recommendation forward in this growth policy is to make it clear what the direction is. And gave the board three options. Reclassify the staff flat says the single-family attached units maintain the current classification as low-rise multifamily or create an additional category. And ultimately, what the board decided was a recommendation I just read, which was to leave them as multifamily low-rise. And primarily is because they feel at this time they just don't have enough current records to make a significant finding that they are one way or the other. And so in zoning, they're literally characterized as multifamily low rise. Continue to characterize them as that, but also follow it. And the next growth and infrastructure might recognize that they need a separate category or that they truly are acting as a single family attached. So we have a communication dynamic here between Department of Permitting Services and the Planning Department. We talked about that in our previous session. We'd reiterated here. We need to make sure that the definitions and the work is consistent across county agencies and departments. So we look forward to that occurring here and in all other cases as well. Just to clarify, there are very few two over two stack flats that happen. There is a significant conversation happening right now, whether or not more of those may exist in the future. And as of right now, the approach that is being recommended and taken from an impact tax standpoint is to treat those in the more expensive category here, as opposed to doing another classification. So we were always classifying them as multifamily low rise. So yes, that's more expensive if you will compared to high rise, but what we are understanding is that they were being assessed at the single family attached, which is our townhouses, which are actually quite higher. Much more, much higher. Yeah, that was my point. Yeah, so we're recommending that, and the board has recommended that they be treated, continue to treat them as single, as multifamily low rise, and that that's how they get charged their impact taxes as well. Okay, got it. But as opposed to changing it to a single family attach, or some other classification, the idea is to charge them at the higher impact tax rate But make sure that they are The lower lower lower impact tax rate. It's the multi-family low rises how they'd be charged Right which is lower than the townhouse that they that the DPS had currently had been charging them as townhouses Which is much higher right DPS had currently had been charging them as townhouses, which is much higher. DPS was charging them higher. Yeah, okay. And we were calculating them as part of low rise. And so they were just asking for the consistency that you're asking, right, yes, sure. Okay. Make sure we're all speaking the same definitions. I'll go with it. Councilmember Drauner. You have successfully generated a question. So the, so much to say, Torey, they were being charged. They are currently being charged. Is that what I'm hearing? The townhouse rate? OK. Yes? So I thought I heard you say. I'm hearing that it's been inconsistent. Okay, so it depends. It depends. And what we're trying to make it clear is this is exactly how they should be charged. They should be charged the way that we've been counting them. We've been counting them. Counting them is multifamily low rise. Right. And the way the zoning code actually defines. And that's the, yeah, which is the right way, but they've been being inconsistently charged. So we don't necessarily know, it'd be hard, I'm assuming that it would be hard to assess a fiscal impact, but you'd have to go and, and there are. And there's not a ton of them, but this is something we should get right. What is the difference between those two rates? You don't know that. Actually, hey, Sue, you know that the difference between a school and single family. Townhouse, yeah, or townhouse and multi-family, where are I? Multi-family, where are I? It depends on and fill and turnover, but it could range from what I believe, maybe two to four times, like two to three times. So significant difference. Okay. I see you all be very, are you trying to get in? I, thank you so much, Councillor Neill. So I, I will follow up with Director Sabakon on this point to make sure we're being consistent. The county executive has no position on this particular item. But I will, for the committee's information, I can get back to you on this point whether it's higher or lower whatever we would like or all for consistency I think we can agree we agree to that it's not a philosophical issue that's a practical one all right thank you so I'm fine with if that's how they're classified going with that all right we're gonna make sure that if this is consistently handled and applied across the board that's a follow-up more of an implementation question than a policy question and the committee agrees with the recommendation. Great, thank you. And the last one on schools today is related to early childhood program enrollment. As you all are aware, the blueprint for Maryland's future, which is legislation passed in 2021 will transform public education in the state, particularly with the expansion of pre-K across most of the county. NCFPS is ultimately aiming to provide universal access to full day kindergarten or pre-kindergarten, sorry. But it is unclear how long this will take and unclear that it will be completely absorbed by MCPS as the blueprint relies on a mixed delivery system where both public schools and private providers are expected to serve the needs of pre-K. Given this, the board recommends the following. Monitor the countywide early childhood program projections through the school utilization report and when the enrollment is projected to be more universal, include the projections in the elementary school student generation recalculations. Council staff suggest the committee obviously support monitoring the countywide early childhood program projections through the school utilization report. Whoever would make just a minor modification, which would be to the second part of this, which would be to request an update and analysis of the potential impact of these programs. Once they are more universal before they are added to the student generation rates, just to understand how they work prior to having them. Yeah, I appreciate the staff recommendation. We would, I would certainly like and we'll yield to colleagues to see if we agree, but I imagine we do since there's such an overwhelming interest and commitment in addressing our childcare needs and the facilities that would be required in order not only to meet the blueprint goals, but our child care necessities and our early childhood education needs. Obviously four years is not that long of a time frame here. And so, you know, having a detailed analysis to understand what this is going to mean, what facilities are going to be required, how we calculate and collect the data for these types of matters, how the enrollment is categorized. It's much more complicated when we're talking about private and public as opposed to public. Student generation in public schools is more clear. We know the number of students that are enrolled in MCPS. We have childcare and early childcare goals that are about a public-private partnership in many ways of the private system and the public system working together and the facilities to accommodate that. So this seems to be a much more complicated question and one that could take some more time to figure out, but we need to figure it out. We need to figure it out yesterday. Councilmember, funding is also very quickly and I agree with our commendation. Just to flag, there is going to be a joint committee work session between the economic development committee, which I share with education and culture committee with my friend, Councilmember Diwondo chairs and the edge chess committee on early childhood education. It's going to be on November 7, at 1.30 pm and you should at least pay attention to that session because it's about everything that we just talked about. Thank you. Okay. I think we agreed to agree and let's continue. Great thank you. Moving on to the transportation element recommendations, these are on page 21 to 34 of the planning board draft of the growth and infrastructure policy. Starting with recommendation 3.1A, this is on page 22 of the GIP, the recommended GIP. This recommendation is textually brief, but has a lot of underlying complications that I will go over here so bear with me. So the recommendation on its face is, quote, to update policy areas to support the county's goals. So a brief overview of transportation policy areas. We talked about these boundaries briefly before when it as it applies to school impact areas. But as a general note, transportation policy areas are most relevant for the impact tax rates with red impact, red areas having the lowest impact taxes and then proceeding up from there to R and G. L. O. and Green. Motor vehicle adequacy standards for which there are as of 2020, none in the red policy areas and then lower standards for motor vehicle adequacy in orange areas than in yellow and green areas and transportation demand management requirements. These are used for that. Those requirements are not in the GIP, but worth noting. So this recommendation would upgrade essentially of several areas that were previously one area to be another type of area. So I will go over the areas that have changed and then go over the definitions of the area types that underlie those changes. So these changes are all summarized in Figure 1 in the packet. This is a map that is also reflected in page 23 of the plan of the GIP. So this recommendation establishes three new red policy areas from areas that were formerly orange. These are the Great Seneca Life Sciences Center, White Oak Downtown and Rock Spring. It would also establish five or six new orange policy areas from areas that were formerly yellow. These are Aspen Hill, Clarksburg East with Clarksburg West remaining yellow, Farrell and Emberg's Cheney, Clarksburg are rather German town Eastown East and West, and Olni Town Center. And additionally, the GIP, the recommended GIP would change Damascus from a green policy area to yellow, noting that it is an established community where limited growth is possible. So that is the substance of the recommendation, but underlying those redesignations are, is a significant policy change in terms of how the GIP defines red, orange, yellow, and green policy areas, basically what it means to be one of those types of areas. In page 8 of the staff report, Council staff has redlined what those changes in definitions are, and I will highlight what those changes are because it's a little confusing from the text. So for red policy areas, this GIP changes the designation of red policy areas from being in downtown central business districts and Metro station policy areas to rather being downtowns and town centers. Changes the qualification of having high density existing high density development to having current or master planned high density development. And changes the qualification of premium transit service from being Metro and Purple Line station areas to being anywhere served by current or master planned premium transit service, which can include Metro Rail and Purple Line, which is included currently, and then adding BRT to those qualifications. The definition of orange policy areas is primarily changing to reflect a change in how the county refers to certain areas that were formerly called transit-oriented development areas in corridor cities and now refers to as corridor-focused growth areas. Town centers being included in the definition has not changed from the existing. Nor has the availability of planned premium transit being a definition of orange areas that has also remained unchanged, as has the definition for yellow and green areas that is all remain the same. There has been some confusion over these new definitions expressed. I'm sure even reading it off now, there's some confusion, so I know that I'll be a point of conversation. But I wanted first to read off some of the public testimony that the council received on recommendation 3.1A. The Council received written testimony from Miles and Stockbridge on behalf of Johns Hopkins University, owner of the Bellward campus in the Life Sciences Center. This testimony was to request that the Council expand the Great Centica Life Sciences Center policy area to be coterminous with the Life Sciences Center as defined in the Great Centica Plan and the pending Great Centica Life Sciences overlay zone, essentially including the Bellword campus as within that new red policy area. The current recommendation is for the red policy area to just be the downtown area type within the Great Seneca plan, which does not include the Bellword campus. We also receive testimony from the executive, which I will read. Recommendation 3.1A will reduce impact tax revenue and reduce infrastructure built by developers in areas where we do not yet have robust transit service or other options for travelers to avoid that congestion. We believe changes to policy areas should be linked to the implementation of transportation alternatives, especially increased transit service so that we can realistically achieve the mode shift we want to see. That is from the Department of Transportation and accompanying that from the executive, again, as we referenced before. We have received testimony from the executive taking the position to remove recommendation 3.1A, essentially keeping all policy areas as they are currently, noting a fiscal impact that contributes to what the executive projects to be a reduction in total from all of the transportation recommendations of $14.6 million, a reduction of $14.6 million in impact tax revenue for the transportation over the six-year CIP, that is about 12.4% of the six-year transportation CIP. We also received additional testimony that is contained in appendix one. Glenn Orland requests that the committee delete recommendation 3.1A, reversing the planning boards changes to transportation policy area boundaries. Christopher M. Rulan on behalf of, with Lurch early in Brewer, on behalf of their client, Ralph J. Duffy incorporated, request that the count that the committee amend recommendation 3.1A to expand the proposed red policy area for downtown White Oak to apply to all of the properties within the current White Oak policy area, i.e. the White Oak late-tip area. If this request is not possible, they recommend at least including the three White Oak activity centers described in the master plan in the downtown White Oak policy area, the Red Policy area, and they provide a map of that request in their testimony. And finally, we received public testimony from Dan Wilhelm on behalf of the Greater Colesville Citizens Association requesting that committee amend recommendation 3.1A to combine the two White Oak policy areas and designate the larger White Oak policy area as red, essentially the same as the previous request. If the council retains the two policy areas, Mr. Wilhelm requests that the small area along Cherry Hill Road between Viva White Oak, Federal Research Center, and Prince George's County be in the downtown White Oak, the red policy area within White Oak. The Council staff comment trying to determine the appropriateness of the three new red policy areas within the, albeit at times, unclear definition, that planning, that the planning board provided for Red Policy areas pulls out rock spring asway, which does not have its own CIP project and is still in the system development phase well behind where the planned premium transit for the other two recommended red policy areas being downtown White Oak with the US 29, which of which phase one is already in service and phase two is in the preliminary design phase and the Great Seneca Life Sciences Center for which half of the Great Seneca Transit Network is already in service and the other half is funded for construction. So, now that's a lot. Happy to answer questions and of course, defer to planning on more technical questions. Yeah, appreciate it. Detailed and in-depth analysis. The definition I've got to say is pretty confusing. So we need to talk through the definition. To start, I think we need to talk about the rationale behind the changes and then the impact of the changes. We made a significant change in the last growth in infrastructure policy to change red policy areas to look at purple line stations, not just metro areas or formerly transportation oriented development areas. I will note I don't totally agree with staff in the sense that it's easier for me to see a lot of similarities between Great Seneca and White Oak and Rock Spring. I mean those three areas seem to be pretty similar in terms of where they are and where they're going. I think you're going to have to explain a little bit more of how they're similar to Wheaton and Bethesda and Silver Spring because I think those are differences and I think we should talk through that. But I think to start the definition, I couldn't explain this definition to anyone, much less barely can understand it myself. And I work with Council Member Joando and Council Member Remer and my colleagues also on the government operation fiscal policy committee to write some of the language in some of the definitions before, and even I don't really understand how you could fully understand. It looks like it gives quite a bit of discretion and doesn't clearly put into a bucket. Here's how this is defined and here's why. So let's hear from planning to start to understand the definition and to explain the rationale and then turn to colleagues. We can have a discussion and see if we're in a position to confidently handle this today or whether we have additional feedback that we'd like to hear. Yeah, thank you. Again, David Onspacher for the record. We are trying to come up with a definition that is based more on the master plan vision, the vision and thrive for these areas as opposed to the existing conditions. It can be, in our opinion, very counterproductive to our visions to develop walkable, bikeable places. If we are requiring motor vehicle tests, for example, in areas like Rock Spring, Great Seneca, that could require widening roads, that could require adding turn lanes. If ultimately what we're trying to get at is an area that is a walkable, bikeable, downtown place. I'm going to turn it over to Darcy. She's the transportation lead and she can get into this in a little bit more detail. So specifically, oh, sorry, Darcy Buckley for the record. So specifically, the definition that we used before referred to metro station policy areas and central business districts, which are terms that we use less frequently now. So when we were rethinking it this time, we brought in it to include downtowns. And these are areas that were, these designations were given based on the master, based on master plan visions and they were specifically designated through the pedestrian master plan, but are part of the highways and transitways functional master plan. So that was going to first starting place. And next we look for places where are either zoned for the highest density or master plan for the highest density. So the places where we really want to see growth. And then the third one was either having a existing kind of high capacity transit or planned for the future. For Roxfring for example, it doesn't have BRT right now but that is but it's planned to and that project has been in the development but in order to make it worth the investment in order to make it worthwhile to invest in BRT in that area, it has to have the population to support that service. So, where you're hoping to use the Red Policy Area designation to signal the places where we wanna see the most growth and through development will build the population that will support and use those transit services. And just to build on that a little bit more. Again, in the pedestrian master plan, the council has designated downtowns, town centers, as well as industrial areas, country areas, and suburban areas. So downtowns and downtown centers are clearly defined geographies in the pedestrian master plan. You have now amended those designations in two master plans. You most recently did that in the Great Seneca plan where you reduced the size of the downtown and you defined in the Farrell and Briggs Cheney plan one area that was a downtown and I believe two areas that are town centers. Again, those are clearly defined geographies. So that's the first part of these designations. The second part is the high density development and premium transit service. So premium transit service is defined as Metro Rail, Purple Line, or BRT. And so the combination of those two things, the designations in our master plans for the area type, plus whether there's Metro Rail, Purple Line, or BRT, together help us to identify whether an area should be red, orange, yellow, or green. But there are town centers in both and to me there is, if this is a Venn diagram, there is a center of the Venn diagram where areas of the county would clearly be in either and the question is how are we making the determination for which one it's included? Because that's, to me, the heart of the question here. And again, I don't know if we would staff necessarily to say that those three areas are dramatically different. And I think there's a reasonable question of whether or not they're close to a metro area or a purple line station area versus another area, but I think that they're fairly similar, but your definition seems to give a lot of discretion and doesn't have a ton of clarity. So I want to hear on that and then we turn to Councillor Wanda and Councillor Funning and Zalzif she has comments here as well. So you're of course correct. The town center is included in both the red and orange area, but it's qualified based on the planned high density development. And frankly, we've done an assessment. Some areas such as Oli, we believe, have much lower planned density looking at the zones that are planned for all need those are generally CRT zones so lower density whereas if you look at a place like rock spring one it's much larger than the only town center but it's also zoned there's much more CR zone in that area so So the planned density is a lot higher, but at the end of the day, there is some assessment in this. We agree. I also just want to add that for the downtowns, we only have nine in the entire county, and those are, and three of those nine are Great Seneca, Rock Spring and White Oak. So it's not as though we have a ton. So those are specifically called out. Councillor Droning. Thank you. Thank you for that line of questioning. I have a few questions. I'll start where you just said because of the downtown definition. So how we define downtown and yes, we have done that in previous plans. I appreciate you bringing out that there, that is a defined area. So that's, you know, that's good. We wouldn't want to just say something that wasn't defined. So I know you all are very good in that regard. We made big changes last time around this. So let's just be, let's just back up a second. I think the context is important in this whole GIP conversation that if you're orange, like because currently these, these would be considered orange, right? Correct. The three that would move to red. That's my understanding. You look like maybe not, but they're designated as orange today, but I think I think you can make a good argument that they're appropriately they could be red policies. Oh, well, you're making that wrong. Yeah, I get that. I get that. But I'm just saying what's actually they are designated as orange. My good friend Dan Wilhelm and I was I'm a former member of the Colesville Citizens Association. I agreed and we pushed for and I supported last time the transition in designation of White Oak for example to an orange, you know, because it wasn't before that. So I think we need to recognize what we did four years ago too. We moved this whole thing to a lower rate. And the orange though, not as low as red, is still lower than yellow and green. And we didn't have those, we created those, right? But we reduced, we did this already. And now we have the white development there. It's all coming up. Stuff is happening. It's good. I fought for undering in the recent domestic plan, right? So people can walk more safely over there. We've had a lot of discussion just to take one of these, for example, that I'm very familiar with. But those areas and even though that you have the 29 bus BRT, we also were careful to balance that we weren't putting the cart too far ahead of the horse in that we wanted to incentivize and recognize that we wanted development here and we wanted to make it better and make transit better. But we also didn't wanna say that White Oak was downtown Silver Stream because it's not, right? And it's just not. And it's not Wheaton, it's not. And the people that go there, the vast, vast, vast majority of them drive today, again, we want to change that. Or they come from apartments and other buildings that are like kind of right there, and cross major thoroughfares to do so on foot. And we want to make that area safer to walk and traverse on foot and in bike. But I just think it's hard for me to swallow that we're gonna reduce the revenue because we're in put in the same category at place like White Oak or Rock Spring as some of these other red areas. That's, or assume that it's going to be that at some point, you know, in the near future. We do the GIP every four years. We've already reduced it to incentivize growth and development there, which is already happening in some of these areas. So I guess I just don't understand the rationale for wanting to do it more. When we have severe needs on the transportation side, as far as building out the rest of the infrastructure that is not there, right? Like we've been hobbling along on BRT, Purple Line God knows, not our fault, but so I just can someone, and then I wanna just hear briefly from if the administration has anything, but can you just respond to why are we doing it again? I supported it last time. Yeah, one of the Excuse me the the components of the the red policy area is that we don't do a motor vehicle Analysis what we're trying to achieve again in a lot of the red policy areas is a highly walkable bikeable community And so the idea is that if we are exempting these areas from the motor vehicle test, then we don't have to look at things like adding turn lanes, adding lanes to roads which can have safety implications and which can make walking and bicycling a lot more challenging. So if, and therefore it, in our opinion, does it continue to designate these areas that we do envision as downtowns, as orange policy areas can again be counterproductive because they would require the motor vehicle mitigation that can make walking and bicycling less safe and less desirable. Where does most of the revenue come from that's being lost here? Is it from the, you bring up a point that I don't necessarily disagree with on the motor vehicle test? Of what's being, what else in that red policy area remind me leads to the loss in revenue? Just the impact taxes. Right, the impact act, but okay, so for so for thank you. That's what I thought. So what you just said you could have proposed. Let's not have the adequacy test. That's part of being a red policy area. Well, I'm just saying but you could could have changed orange. Like, well, couldn't you, when there another way to do what to achieve that without tying it to the revenue? I see. I guess you could say in orange policy areas that are in town centers or downtowns, you don't have to do the motor vehicle test. Yeah, I want to clarify, I think that what your point is is that going from an orange to red does have an impact, physically from an impact tax collection perspective. The red policy areas have lower impact taxes. Where you don't, won't see a difference in terms of the expectation of how much off site improvements they need to make through LATR. The LATR, what you'll end up getting by being in a red policy area is we won't be confusing the potential pedestrian bicycle and transit improvements mixed in with a bunch of motor vehicle improvements. When you're in a red policy area, we don't consider those as part of our LHDR mitigation that a developer is going to have so they still have to mitigate however much they need to mitigate but now in a red policy area that's all going to pedestrian bicycle and transit improvements But even if it's a less amount It would be the same amount of mitigation but to be a lower amount of impact tax collect right to that could go for two infrastructure projects that need to be built like some of impact tax collect. Right, that could go for two infrastructure projects that need to be built like some of the things that we're counting, we're also making the transition of whether the availability is, we're changing, taking, striking availability of and changing it to its plan for some time in the future, right, which is always another issue. Right, if I could just hear briefly from the administration, then Ms. Don, if you have something to say or I'd like to do that. Thank you, Councillor O'Brien. And the County Executive Supports Development in all of these areas. We have been in communication and have been working closely with developers in these areas about their cost of infrastructure. How did they finance the infrastructure? They have to build in the public realm. But we too as the County government have those costs too. I think our total fiscal impact for Great Sen. Echo was a billion dollars of infrastructure that needs to be built. So this adds to the county executive's argument that while this impact tax has enormous impacts on developers who are trying to finance a project. We need to come up with a way to fund the infrastructure. We need to make these transit served pedestrian friendly, a walkable, a bikeable urban centers. And until we do that, it's kind of premature to call it something that it's not until we were committed the funding and the infrastructure and the financing to make this environment a thing. That happens. Deputy Director Haley would like to say something too. Thank you. Haley Peckett for the record. Council Member Joando, I just want to pick up on something that you were talking about just related to the definition here. And because we do the GIP every four years, this may be my first GIP with the county, but I understand there's been a long history of making some of these changes several of these areas. So Roxbury and Mary talked about North Bethesda, BRT, is doesn't have a CIP, but even for US 29 phase two, we currently don't have anything funded past preliminary design. So to actually see service in the next four years at a level that could support a red policy area. It's not realistic. In the Great Seneca Transit Network, President Friedson, thank you for being there for our launch last week. I think we're all supportive. That's a great new service. But even the service as it runs right now is only running until about 7 pm at night. And so I've already talked to folks that say I can't get out to crown, to go to dinner. I can't stay late for work meeting and all these things cost money. So all those fiscal impacts we're talking about are true. But we would argue that to really support the death of the development and all these goals that I think we all share, we need to make sure that the card isn't before the horse and that we are able to see the transit service and see some of those improvements that are at the level that would support the mode shift that we'd like to see. I appreciate that. That makes it would be different. I feel a little differently about this if it was a master, like a 30 year document we were saying this is what we want to see. Well, because we've done that, we've said this is what we want to see in a lot of these places. Like Great Seneca, for example, as was mentioned with all that infrastructure that needs to happen. But this is something that we consider every couple of years and on the impact taxes, as you know it's a bill, and we could consider that at any time, like if there was, if something changed in between the four years. So I just, it's hard for me to, to conceptually agree with reducing what the revenue we are getting absent a new system that's better, that we all agree we want, that is a core recommendation of the planning department too, and I know we'll talk about that later. Miss Dunn, did you have anything to say? No, I'm just conferring with Director Sartorio over here to explain how we got where we are in the staff report. It sounds to me like what you are the most concerned with is this planned transit component of this, but maybe I'm misreading what you're saying. No, that's correct. Yeah, I mean, I also'm concerned with the definition, but as we talked about, but all right, so I've had the mic for a little while here. I'll defer to colleagues first. Councilor, we're fine. It's all so. while here I'll defer to colleagues first. Councilor, we're finding ourselves. I see these red policy areas as places where we want to see growth, where we want to see investment. Just this Friday, I took my committee, my economic development committee, to a tour of innovation in Baltimore and Frederick. And it was all about life sciences and the fact that we need to do everything that we have in our power to incentivize growth and investment in areas like the Great Seneca Life Science Center. So, Robespray, I worked on that master plan when I was in the planning board. You know, you have a mayor job center there with them all that has actually invested on transit actually. Let me just say that here. And those are places where we do want to see growth. And I think if we are walking the talking, we say that we want to see more neighborhoods that are walkable and bikeable. Then these are the neighborhoods that we need to focus on to have red line centers to have less impact taxes in a track that investment to me. I am 100% clear. I agree with the county, with the planning board recommendation. I do think, which means I disagree with the council's staff on rock spring. I do think it's a place that needs to have more investment and we should not jeopardize, you know, because when I was in a planning board, I did worry about a couple of site plans there and I know there's more coming in and I don't think we should put that in jeopardy at all. Again, this policy we review every fourth year. This is my third time. My third time working on the growth policy twice on the planning board and my third time here on the county council. So, Ananya, at this at all, and this is the type of thing that you are projecting, right? None of this is going to happen as a fact. We're just making estimates. And with that, I'm just going to agree with that planning board accommodation. Let's move forward. Okay. And with that, I'm just going to agree with a planning board recommendation. Let's move forward. Okay. Oh, in the definition, I'm sorry, you brought it up the red line versus orange center definition. I do agree that we need to really, probably massage that a little bit more. And because I can see how it can be confusing when you're reading down centers in both areas red and orange. Maybe you should come back. Think about that a little more to be more precise. That's what we'll say. Appreciate it. To me, there should not be discretion in the definitions or there shouldn't be definitions. So you got to choose. Either it's by definition and it's clear or by definition we don't have a definition and you just look at a map and say you know put the circle around the places you want the circle around it. We decide on it that's the policy and then we revisit it every four years. But this feels like we're you know trying to have it both ways a little bit too and we're giving a lot of discretion that adds more confusion. I think creates more problems on a solve. So if you could take a look at that, decide if you have a better definition, great. If you don't, then we should decide on just having a map and we can debate and discuss as a committee and then as a council, what should be included in the map and what makes sense. I think that that works. To me, I think at the heart of this is really the question of, is the growth in infrastructure or policy an aspirational document or not? And I really do think that is a big question that we have to grapple with as we make these decisions. Is this supposed to be something that looks at where we want growth undeniably? These are areas that we desperately want growth and would like to see it faster than it's happening. And should be doing everything that we possibly can in order to achieve that. Or is this a document that reflects the current realities on the ground and, you know, leaves that as a point in time over the next four years? Master plans are aspirational. There's no doubt about that. I think for this, there's a question of whether it should be aspirational or not. I really do think that that is at the heart of this conversation. Again, I don't agree with staff that the three additional items should be differentiated to me. They seem pretty similar in the sense that these are areas where we want to see much denser growth. And when we would like to see more walkability, even as we speak in rock spring the projects are being required to put in pedestrian and bike infrastructure. So those things are happening and they're happening in more of a downtown area. That's the argument on that side. On the other side as I mentioned earlier, it's a tougher argument to suggest that these three areas, all three of them are similar to a downtown Bethesda or a downtown Silver Spring or even a downtown Wheaton to a certain extent. So I think there needs to be more work, would be my suggestion on honing in on the definition to make sure that it is defensible. I would not be supportive of differentiating out those three items and it didn't seem like there was a lot of interest in that on the committee. I think we either do it or we don't it's either you know reflected in a definition that has an aspirational you know emphasis on what we'd like to see as opposed to what is or we don't and you know, I think we make our decision we own our decision and we clearly have a definition or a map that can be pointed to defend the position, but I think there's an opportunity now for council staff and planning and DOT perhaps as well to confer and to come back to us with some constructive suggestions on a decision point of if you go in this direction here's the option here's what the definition will look like or here's what the map looks like if you go in that direction here's what it would be. Yeah, let me turn it back to Councilmember John. Yeah, already here's a planning board chair. As the board was going through this, it was really where we wanted to see growth and where we saw the direction of growth going and we wanted to make sure we incentivize that. But we will go back, step back. I get it. And I'm speaking to that. I think there's agreement on I also want to see growth there. I think we broadly want to see growth there. I think we broadly want to see growth there. I think the question is, is this a tool for what we want, or is this a tool for what we have, or is this something in the middle? I think we need to decide exactly where we land on that question, and then we need to stick to it. And again, I don't see a benefit from a public policy standpoint or rationale to separate these three areas. I think we keep these three areas together and we either, you know, that's the philosophical direction that we're going in with this policy change or it's not and we decide on that. Councilor Modrano. Yeah, I appreciate the bringing that together. I agree. I don't think we should separate the three in that regard. I think there is some disagreement on whether it should be aspirational or and that's kind of what was getting at it. Like Mass Plan no problem. I think we're all all three of us have been there and I think the council has been there. I would also ask just as a person, so for staff, I do think, you know, Council President Freightson and I have done two GIPs or former SSPs or, you know, now GIPs. Council everyone in the Fannie Gonzales has mentioned she's on her third. Yeah. And the other colleagues have are in different places on this. and I think we made such significant changes last time I just think it would be helpful to remind just a little bit of that context right creating this whole red orange green Thing that we did and what and what that means like just like a cheat sheet of what's in each of those? just I think for when we You know reminding us but also just when we get to full council and I think it will help us inform the answers to that core question which I agree is should this be should the growth and infrastructure policy one of the reasons we changed the name was because we wanted to be clear that this is the how we are setting out what the adequacy is for growth and infrastructure and the tests and all that stuff. So I do think it's somewhere in the middle. I think it is in the middle of aspirational and practical and we need to land in on that but it also needs to be we all like also acknowledge the elephant in the room that we need a better way of getting infrastructure dollars, right? So so I so yeah I just my request, my request would be that we have some of that context as we move forward. And I don't think it's that hard to do. Thank you. All right, homework assignment on that. We're gonna put a pin in it and ask for you to come back to us with a clear definition and some additional conference on these issues. We can continue the conversation here. Great, thank you. And we're happy to work with planning staff at DOT to follow up on your requests. Moving on to recommendation 3.1B. This is on page 22 of the GIP. This recommendation is to define the geographic extensive the White Oak local area transportation improvement program or laytip area. Therefore, differentiating it from the White Oak policy area and policy areas rather just resolving a technical issue by clarifying the late tip boundaries. The boundaries of the late tip were previously defined or are currently rather defined in code as being co-terminus with the White Oak policy area which formerly was not a problem because it was the whole basically all of White Oak was called the White Oak policy area, which formerly was not a problem because it was the whole, basically, all of white oak was called the white oak policy area, but because this recommended GIP is splitting the white oak policy area into two to make the downtown area or downtown portion of it red, that created an issue in the definition of the white oak lay tip. So this recommendation is to separately from the White Oak Policy Area define the geographic boundaries of the White Oak Lake tip to maintain its current boundaries and operation. Council staff recommends concurring with the planning board with one note that is not directly relevant to this discussion, but provide some background on recent transmitters from the from MCDOT relevant to the fees for the White Oak Lay Tip that are part of an evolving discussion around transportation and for structure financing in White Oak. Okay, no objections from the committee. Let's continue. Great. Recommendation 3.2 is on this page 24 of the GIP. Requires, require LATR studies, this is local area transportation, review studies for a proposed development project generating 50 or more peak hour vehicle trips. This is what we call the LATR study threshold. So if you're a developer going through the LATR process to determine whether you need to do LATR adequacy studies, you first will determine whether you are exceeding this threshold of net new peak hour trips. The current threshold is 50% percent trips. This recommendation would change that threshold from 50 to 50 vehicle trips to sort of have a common denominator here and have an apples to apples comparison. 50 vehicle trips is about equivalent to 77 person trips. So keeping this all in the person trip domain, this is essentially raising the threshold for LATR from 50 vehicle trip from trips currently to 77-percent trips. This calculation is so easy because person trips are calculated anyway by calculating vehicle trips and then doing a multiplier to get to person trips. percentrips. The Council received testimony from the Maryland Building Industry Association and NAOPS in support of this recommendation and received testimony from Michael Larkin, from Montgomery for all, and Dan Wilhelm from the Greater Colesville Citizens Association. Also in support of this recommendation, the executive's fiscal impact is determined to be minimal and they recommend keeping this recommendation and that is their position. Council staff recommends reducing the recommended trip threshold to 30 vehicle trips in this recommendation essentially keeping the threshold the same. For context there has only been one project since 2021 that was found to generate between 30 and vehicle trips, 30 and 50 vehicle trips, daycare and heavy chase that is that had to conduct, that then was conducted in LATR study, but due to proportionality requirements was not required to make any improvements based on that study There have been eight projects since that since 2021 Between 50 and 100 net new vehicle trips five between a hundred and 200 and three between 200 and and 268 Agree with the council staff on that it seems that colleagues are comfortable with council staff's recommendation. All right, let's continue. All right. Moving on to recommendation 3.3. This is to update the LATR intersection delay standards to reflect changes to policy area boundaries and designations. This is, this recommendation is an effect, just an effect of a result of the first recommendation we considered. So if we are still sort of tinkering with that, if we've yet to reach recommendation on the first to re-designate policy areas, perhaps it makes sense to also defer a decision on this recommendation. Essentially, it is changing the intersection delay standards to reflect some areas going from yellow to orange policy areas. Yeah. So it goes hand in hand with the reclassifying of policy areas. If the sake of consistency no argument there, let's continue. Great. Recommendation 3.4 on page 25 of the GIP is to simplify the non-motor vehicle adequacy test. The test will have five components, pedestrian level of comfort, illuminance, American with disability act compliance, bicycle system, and bus transit system. This test will replace the individual pedestrian, bicycle, and bus transit system tests. Current LATR guidelines require three tests in addition to motor vehicle adequacy. Bus transit pedestrian and bicycle, as noted in the recommendation. However, the current pedestrian system adequacy test has three components, pedestrian level of comfort, illuminance, and ADA compliance. This simplification of the non-motor vehicle adequacy test therefore does not impact the requirements of this test. The council received written testimony from the MBIA and NAEP, as well as from Dan Wilhelm and the Greater Coastville Citizens Association, Michael Larkin from Montgomery for all, and Susan Albertine from the League of Women Voters, all in support of this recommendation. Council staff recommends concurring with the planning board. No, no argument. Correct. This is 3.4. No argument there let's continue. Recommendation 3.5 is to modify the non-motor vehicle adequacy test requirements to maintain the county's high standards while minimizing unnecessary data collection and analysis. I will, so the planning text of exactly what all of these changes are within the text of the GIP is contained within the packet. But to summarize, these changes are to simplify the bus transit adequacy standards by referring applicants to published DOT guidelines, removing bus transit adequacy exemptions for green policy areas, and then in terms of limiting the number of bus stops and numerical limits on mitigation required. This plan would change that to instead refer to the LATR proportionality guide, which we will address during the second part of the transportation review next week, next Monday. Figures three and four in the packet highlight the additional changes in terms of radii I will pull up a if I can if the screen won't freeze on me hope this I will try and pull this up but in in the meantime, the, the, these, these radii are also included on the table in the packet where, in effect, you're seeing, reduced, the, the effect of this is to keep the distances, the scope of improvements around the development offsite, the same no matter what type of policy area you were in, previously or the current, GIP has different scopes for different policy areas. This makes them all uniform. In effect, this reduces the distances for ADA compliance, pedestrian level of comfort, and illuminance, reducing the burden on these are reduced in red and yellow, red and orange policy areas, rather reducing the burden on developers in those areas. Figure four depicts the changes in green and yellow policy areas in which the scopes for bicycle and bus improvements are increased to meet county standards in terms of bus shelters and a bicycle system adequacy. Council staff recommends concurring with the planning board on this recommendation. Councillor Drawdo. Thank you. I appreciate that. Any comments on this one? You're going to submit a comment to just maybe explain them from DOT. I'm sure, Hayley Peck at DOT. I think that in general, we recognize that there could be a fiscal impact by reducing the amount of offsite pedestrian mitigation, lighting ADA. Likely, the proportionality would end up mitigating any losses to revenue, like if it was a pretty extensive pedestrian extension that has now been cut back, the proportionality would likely make a difference in terms of that. So we're relatively neutral, but do recognize there could be some fiscal impact. Fine, thank you. Relatively neutral, that's about as good as we're gonna get. So we'll take consensus on that without objection. Let's continue. Great. Recommendation 3.6 is to refine the Vision Zero statement to focus on managing speed for safety. This is a follow-up on a request for further action in the 2020 to 2024 GIP. The current LATR vision zero statement mentions the need to manage vehicle speeds but does not explicitly tie speed management to safety outcomes. The exact text of the new vision zero statement is included in the packet and achieves that goal of explicitly tying speed management to safety outcomes. We received public testimony from the MBIA and NAEP in support of this recommendation. In addition to testimony from Dan Wilhelm on behalf of the Greater Colesville Citizens Association on behalf, rather from Michael Larkin, from Montgomery for all, in support of this recommendation. Council staff recommends concurring with the planning board. With that objection, the committee appears to agree. And the final transportation recommendation we are scheduled to talk about today is recommendation 3.7 from page 27 of the GIP, which is to remove the reference to the Safe Systems Adequacy Test from the GIP. This was a placeholder, placed in the previous GIP, but this was prior to the completion of the Complete Streets, Design Guide, and Related Code Updates, which provide direction for development review and largely make the, make, make the safe systems adequacy test obsolete. With that objection, committee agrees with that as well. Thank you for a productive and constructive session. I think we have a few items of significance to come back to as well as all the rest of the growth and infrastructure policy as Plan to appreciate that we have the time to do that appreciate the Collaboration of the planning department and planning board and the executive branch. Thank you all for Joining us today. Thank you for the hard work of council staff to put this all together As well as colleagues for the thoughtful discussion will be Back at it next week and look forward to seeing everybody there. We are now officially adjourned