All right, welcome. We're going to go ahead and get started. Tonight we're here to listen to public testimony only will not be taking questions. However, Linda Eisenberg director of DPC will be making a presentation. And if you do want to follow up with anything that she provides, she comments on, feel free to send her a follow up email tonight tomorrow whenever you're ready. And she will respond to them but that's not the purpose of tonight's meeting. So this evening we have a number of people that have already signed up to testify each each questioner will be given three minutes in to present to present your thoughts. So Miss Eisenberg we do have a a quorum, I believe, so we can just get going, I think, right? Right, all right. Well, good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I will go ahead and share my screen and start the presentation. Let me know if you have any trouble hearing me. I know that this is a lot of information and can be a very challenging subject and topic and it's very detailed so I will go through it very slowly and deliberatively. And as Mr. Arterburn shared, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email the department. We have an app for email so please submit all of your questions into that email address and we'll be sure to respond to you via that email. So with that I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and begin our presentation for the evening. There we go. All right well good evening everyone.. Thank you for attending our second public hearing on the adequate public facilities ordinance task force. Tonight's meeting is based on the recommendations that have been presented by the public facilities at public facility ordinance task force. And so just some background information as to how we got these rec have the task force got to these recommendations. I'm going to start off by just kind of telling you a little bit about the committee and how we got here. So the first public hearing was held on November 6, 2024. I'm at that first public hearing. We had 26 attendees and received 96 comments. The main topics at that time were to lower the school adequacy percentages, meaning to get the schools closer to 100% adequacy threshold, to adjust at photo allow for more affordable housing and to look to add for testing requirements for a fire and emergency services for adequacies. Since the committee started in August of 2024, there have been 17 meetings over the past nine months covering 21 different topic areas affecting APFO. Everything from what past APFO committees have done, Hoka by Design, which is the Guiding General Development Plan, Schools, Police, Roads, Multimodal, housing, and what other jurisdictions have done in Maryland. And from that, this committee in this task force has developed two new APHO recommendations, which I'll be sharing with you this evening. Okay. So currently at vote, um, Howard County's at the has three tests that we look for when we do our adequate public facilities ordinance when new development comes in. And those three tests are our allocations test, our schools test, and our roads test. And I have the roads test grade out because we'll talk about that later on in the presentation. The first two I'm going to focus on is our allocations test, and our roads test. We also look for adequacies for water, sewer, stormwater, and solid waste. But those aren't really tests, rather we review them to make sure that there is system capacity when projects come in for development. Okay, sorry, this mess is a little jumpy. Oh my goodness, sorry. Okay. Okay, so the first test is the allocations test. And that's the number of allocations that are based on the general plan. And there's the number of housing units that can be given out essentially for development. So one allocation equals one dwelling unit, no matter what type of dwelling unit that is, that could be single family detached, single family attached like your town homes or an apartment. And this is to paste development so that county government can plan and provide for capital facilities. And that's to paste development also by geography and by typology. So each year the county council adopts a new 10-year allocation chart based on the general growth plan chart. And I'll show you that later in future slides, the map and the chart itself. And the allocations, as I said, are given up by geography and other specialty pools. So then after the allocation test is taken, there are four other tests that housing development must pass. There's an elementary school district test, then an elementary school regional test, a middle school district test, and a high school test. So in order for a development for residential development to move forward, it has to pass all four tests at the same time or go into what we call a waiting bin. And that development can be held in the waiting bin for up to four years next, some on the according to Howard County code. So then each year the County Council adopts a new capacity chart that's provided to them by the Board of Education. They provide those numbers to us and then projects that are failed, meaning they're not able to move forward because they can't pass the four tests that are stated above, then they are retested with each new chart until they do pass or they time out of the way pin. So with all tests, there are some exemptions that are given and this list here is the various exemptions that are determined at each time. So for instance, if you have a single lot subdivision in the rural area, and I'll going to show you what we mean by the rural west on the future map that'll be shown in the presentation, a single lot for a family member, a single lot because there's been some financial hardship demonstrated for that particular house that needs to be built, a replacement of a mobile home unit. A redevelopment site for replacing existing units. You're not adding any additional capacity. You're tearing down and rebuilding equivalent units. We don't do school capacity tests for age restricted units for 55 and older because the assumption is those units are not adding new school children because they're for age restricted obviously as it says. Modern income housing units do not need allocations so they don't have to pass that test however they still must pass the schools test and then finally special affordable housing opportunities can be exempt from the at-foe test by county resolution. But these projects must meet special affordable housing criteria. For instance, they must be in a partnership with a local nonprofit or other Howard County Housing Commission type of project and meet other affordable housing criteria and go through a public participation and public, very public process and then be adopted by council resolution. So again, as I was saying earlier that there are various allocations that are given out by geography and by typology. So these are the various geographies starting with the left column. So we give them by districts such as downtown Columbia, our activity centers, what we're calling other character areas and our rural west. And then we have a total column. And so that's about 1,500 units roughly per year that can be given out. And then are affordable housing for purchase or rental and that's a typology. So if for instance all of the geographies have been distributed but you have a special project that means are affordable housing criteria, it doesn't matter where you're located in the county. If you meet the affordable housing criteria, you can still pull from this particular column up to 340 units annually for these allocations. And so these are the geographies. As you can see, you have the later green color, which is the role west, and there's about 100 units that are allocated to that area in the darker blue color which is the other character areas. There's 365 units that are allocated to that. 154 units are allocated to the downtown Columbia area and 600 to activity centers. and activity centers are areas that we're looking to redevelop and transform. And this came out of how Hocobytocinar misresting general plan. These are the school charts adopted as of last year. So I know there are more recent school charts that have been adopted over the last few weeks. As you can see, I know this is very blurry and it's not meant to be clear to read. It's more illustrative of what we're trying to demonstrate here. But these are the elementary school and as you can see, these are the regions. Each elementary school is set into a particular elementary region and then you can see from the chart the red and then the sea means those are constrained districts for future residential development based on their utilization of local rated capacity. So elementary schools are typically closed at a are not not typically, are closed at 105 percent while middle schools are closed at 110 and high schools are closed at 115 percent. So going back to the second test that we were saying that you had to pass all four so it has to be open via the region. So these are your regions, the larger blocks, and then the individual school district. So as you can see here in this first line, that cradle rock is a closed school district in the 2728 school year at 109%. So any project moving into the future that would be in that district that would need to pass the test in those years, would not be able to move forward because the school is closed. The table starts as you can see. pass the test in those years would not be able to move forward because the school is closed. The table starts as you can see too. In the third year, so I'll move to the middle school and high school chart. Currently, I have no high schools closed as of the last school years capacity chart. We do have several middle schools that were closed as of last year. But as you can see for the 24 to 20, I think it was just starting with the June 24 school year, these start at 25. I mean at 27, so three years out is where the counting starts for the capacity of each of the schools and what their utilization rate is. So I'm going to walk you through the scenarios here, but the first recommendation to share with everyone here is regarding the APVS schools test. So the recommendation is to replace the APVS schools test with the utilization premium payment as being referred to as the UPPP fee, so that instead of a required wait time, developers of residential units are charged an additional fee calculated by applying a UPP factor to Howard County's existing school surcharge fee when the development's impact on the projected school utilization of the assigned schools exceeds the adequacy thresholds. So that's a lot of words. I'm going to go step by step how this will be applied. But what this would do, this would eliminate the wait times and the fee would be required. So no project would have any exemptions. You would just pay the fee but you would not have to wait. Then recommendation two is that this UPP model would use tier one would be at 105%, tier two would be at 110% and tier three would be 115% for school assessments and these tiers would apply to all levels of schooling, elementary, middle, and high school. And then recommendation three. And the UPP model is to use 40% premium payment for Tier 1, 80% for Tier 2, and 120% for tier three, using a 634 distribution for K through 5, 6 through 8, and 9 through 12. This represents a distribution for elementary middle and high, and this distribution of funding over the basic school surcharge. Okay. So what this would do, this would still utilize the current test. So going back, you would still be, and I'm going to scroll back up really quickly, you would still have these allocations. So this would still pace growth. You would not be exempt from any of this. We would still have the geographic limitations of these units being distributed and bi-geography for the 335 to downtown Columbia, 600 to activities, centers, etc., and the total and also the affordable housing column by typology. So that would still be in play, that we would be eliminating utilizing these particular charts for open and closed districts. Instead, you would be utilizing them for these tiers looking at what schools would be in tier one, tier two, tier two, or tier three. So again, it would eliminate the current test, and instead replace that with the UPP or the BIOT methodology. So again, replacing that with recommendations 1 through 3. So now I'm going to do an example walk through. So under current, oops, sorry. So current at for the School Capacity Utilization Test, once a plan has its allocations, because that's given out first. You make sure you have your allocations. If there are no allocations, say, you have a really busy year, everyone's passing through, there are no allocations, you can't pass the first test. But let's just say they're allocations, which we have not utilized all of our applications in many, many years. A new subdivision comes in with a plan for six lots, keeping it very simple. This is just a small major subdivision. And we'll just say they're in the Clarksville district as an example. And under this scenario, Clarksville is closed at 113.8%. So no development can move forward because it must pass all four tests as described in test two. Then the project moves into the wait then where it must be held for a maximum of four years. So that's currently how our current at-fold chart works. So now under the new recommendation, the example would be, you would have your tier criteria. So you have tiers one, two, and three. So the utilization, so again, going back to the school charts that I showed you, and I'm just going to start to make everyone dizzy. You would go back to this chart here and looking at these utilization. A particular school would fall into either 100 greater than 105, or greater than 110, or greater than 115. Then you would look at the payment factor. So if it is in a tier 5 greater than 105%, and it's in a middle school, they would pay 9.23% over the base search archery. So in this example here the UPP example a new subdivision comes in with the same type of six lots and now the chart is open. They are in Clarksville middle school district with a tier one middle School with a premium payment factor of 9.23%. Because under the new school adequacy charts, Clarksville is now at 107% whereas under the last chart it was at 113%, which was a closed school. So our current school, with our current base school charge rate is $8.15. With the UPP, there's a 75 percent increase over that base rate. So your paying 9.23 percent over the base. So now your square footage value is $8.90 additional. So for that six-lots subdivision, you would pay $308,300, $108 or an additional $25,290. So the developer would not have to wait in the bin. There would just be, so there would be no time just the payment would have to be paid. Currently, the developer wouldn't, they would just pay the school surcharge fee or the community member that would be moving into that home would be paying that fee. So this fee would be the additional surcharge that would be paid at that time. So currently, under this, since the school is now open, the school's search per square if it would just be $8.15, so that would equate to $274,818. So for non-UPP-qualified projects, they just paid the current rate. So again, this is just an example that could happen in the real world. This isn't happening. No, but our subdivision has come in just completely for illustrative purposes to walk you through how this particular fee would work. And then this would be applied the same way for any of the other fee. So if someone was in, if a community was in, tier one, two or three, if you're in multiple districts, so if a community was coming in, and their elementary, middle and high school were all in tier one, then they would pay 40% over the base surcharge. If it was tier two, they would pay 80% over the base surcharge. And if it was in tier three, they would pay 120% over the base surcharge, which is right now set at that $8.15 per square foot of value. Okay. So that was recommendations 1 through 3. So again, the percentages for the tier system are based on the capacity numbers. Using the small on no one weights instead of the developer pays per unit. The intent of the two systems are completely different. The old system is for the schools to catch up to growth, and the new proposal is for the revenue to go towards schools that need the relief for the additional capacity. So totally two different systems that the old system versus the new system that's being proposed. So now moving on to recommendation number four. And that is the same as what we have currently is to continue to use that local rated capacity number. So there's two types of capacity numbers where school adequacies are determined. That's local rated capacity and state rated capacity. So the recommendation is to continue to use the local rated capacity as the at-fo school capacity, where the third year of enrollment projection over the school capacity at local rated capacity, which is what I just showed you, is that we're always looking three years out from where we are today. And then recommendation five from the UPP model is to apply the model to the affordable housing and the affordable housing column on the base surcharge rate. So rather than excluding them is to apply this to the $2, the $2, which is the current rate. So rather than excluding them is to apply this to the $2, which is the current rate, $2.72, apply that same multiplier to that rate so that would they would be equally charged the same premium payment as market rate housing and then, whoops, excuse me. And then apply that same model to senior housing. We're senior housing as $1.32, $1.32 per square foot. Again, apply that UPP multiplier to the senior housing based on that same senior housing surcharge rate as the market rate housing. And again, these fees will adjust annually based on inflation, according to our county code. Okay, so that is it for the schools and allocations tests. Now the third test that we have, but we test for, when it comes to development, are our roads tests. Now the third test that we have that we test for when it comes to development are our roads tests. So recommendation number seven from the committee was to rename the adequate public facility ordinance roads test to the adequate public facility ordinance, transportation, multi-modal transportation test. And this is for all instances in the Howard County subdivision regulations and the Howard County Design Manual. So the purpose of this was to make sure that we have more than just one modality, which is car considered as we move forward when development comes in to look at other types of transportation such as walking, biking, and mass transit, as part of that consideration. Recommendation number eight was to adopt a pedestrian crossing at APPO Intersections Test to the APPO Multimodal Transportation Test. And so this one requires a little bit of deeper explanation. So developers review and study the same intersections as defined in the existing app for a road's test and provide pedestrian crossing improvements for inadequacies. So basically right now when a development comes in depending on the size and scope of the project, how many trips they'll be generating, they need to look at so far beyond their particular community to see how many roads, see what's going, what the general impact is going to be. So again, looking at those same parameters moving forward, they need to do that for pedestrian crossings. So at those crossings, the idea is to look and see if there are adequacies for accessible pedestrian signals, crosswalk markings, and ADA curb compliant ramps at each leg of the intersection, to add a dollar cap for the cost of the improvements based on how large of the development is going and that will be impacting this intersection. And obviously the developer providing the improvements are preferred, but when feasible, provide a fee and lieu if they cannot develop it, and then look to exclude developments that are generating five or less peak hour trips. So for instance, in this example here, a particular development would have to look at this particular intersection where there are three of the four crossing areas that do not have pedestrian markings and do not have accessible pedestrian signals or 88 curb ramps. So here the APFO requirements would be to within the adequacy standards to provide offsets to help develop these or provide a fee and lieu to have the county be able to build those in the future after the development is complete. So that way there would be out of pussies that these begin to meet standards. And maybe if it's a smaller development, not every single part of this is built, but we begin to then create a complete network of having more complete streets with this concept of building the more accessible signalization, curb ramps, and crosswalk markings. And again, it would be capped at a certain dollar amount per project to pay in on the size and scope of the various developments that are happening. Next recommendation is to adopt ADA access to existing nearby bus stops to the transportation test. Currently, we don't have any tests for transit stops at all. So this would be adding a new test with regard to that. And so this test would be similar to what we just discussed. So developers review their surrounding development and look to provide ADA improvements to any RTA bus stops that exist within a quarter-mile radius of the development's frontage. So again, ADA compliance includes looking at having five foot by eight foot wide and deep concrete pad adjacent to the road, five foot minimum wide sidewalk with curb and gutter from the bus stop to the nearest intersection and at ADA ramp at the nearest intersection. And again, looking to exclude development generate five or less peak hours. And then also looking to cap it out a certain dollar amount, again, based on the size and scope of this, the development that would be generating the necessity for this particular requirement. So again, here's another example. Access to an existing, oops, excuse me, an existing bus step test near Martin Road in Seneca Drive. As you can see, this is a little perilous curve and there is an RTA stop kind of tucked away here, definitely not even accessible to people that do not need ADA accessibility, but to make sure that there's adequate visibility, putting an intersection ramp, curbing, God are making sure that there's accessible sidewalk to the bus stop that is tucked away from the intersection and making it much more accessible for everyone to get to that stop as part of any development that would be happening nearby to this particular bus stop. And adding that as an additional test to the APHEL requirements. And then finally, the last recommendation from the APHEL committee, this came in consultation from the Affordable Housing Work Group that was established as part of Hoco by Design. So this came from their guidance to adopt an affordable housing definition. And that definition was to have 60 to 120% of the Howard County meeting income for resale housing in zero to 60% of the Howard County meeting income for rental housing as the affordable housing definition and that this definition should be applied to the local affordable housing programs, including the affordable housing column in the application chart. So if we remember the chart we talked about earlier, that chart, that would be the definition that would be used for how to apply those 340 units throughout the county. The reason that this recommendation was put at the end and at the beginning, because this is one of the last recommendations we made prior to making the final motion to adopt all the recommendations to forward for the public hearing this evening. So in being true to that, that's what this was here. So I didn't want you to think we were kind of going on in a weird order and it wasn't put with everything as well as just keeping it true to the motions as they were made by the committee. So the county uses the MIHU program definitions to determine housing affordability and income eligibility. And the reason that this is used as opposed to the regional definition is that because of the higher income and higher county these limits allow more residents including lower income residents to qualify for affordable housing programs and resources. So, this is actually more beneficial for Howard Kennans to have this established as the affordable housing definition. So, those are all 10 recommendations that we have. So, here are some key takeaways that the recommendations, one through three, very for the utilization premium payment model and really replace the current adequacy test for using this premium payment model instead. Local rate of capacity is still the standard used to determine the UPP model. The UPP model would apply to both Mark to all market rate affordable and senior housing, moving to the Rhodes test that we'd be renaming the Rhodes test to the Multimodal test and creating two additional Multimodal tests for pedestrian and ADA accessibility and then recommending the definition for affordable housing for by the affordable housing work group. And then last but not least, just the status of the committee that they still have a little bit more work to do. After the public hearings tonight, the committee will meet to review the comments that you all have given in testimony this evening and provided to us written as well. And we will be bringing them back and discussing that they're June 4th in meeting. There are some additional back lot items that are still under consideration. So they'll be talking about those at future meetings as well. But this committee must be done and have recommendations forward to the county executive to the county council in August per the county code. So though there's still work to be done, there's not a lot of time left to complete this work. So they have to get a lot done in a short amount of time left and they've been working really hard over these last nine months to get to this point. So with that, that is all I have for my presentation. Whoops. And so just a couple public hearing reminders. Those testifying will be called in order of the list I have in front of me. I'll try to call you all through you to time, and if you could just come to the microphone here, we have a timer there. If you can just state your name and address for the record, and then we'll set the time, and then when your time is up, if you can just step away from the mic, try to finish your thought would be really helpful. We'll be accepting all comments until May 23rd, So if you just get them in, writing tests then, too, by Friday, that would be really helpful. We'll be accepting all comments until May 23rd, so if you just get them in writing tests then, too, by Friday, that would be really helpful. And if you can just be respectful of those that are speaking, just try to rethink for many uppers clapping or other distractions, that would be really great. So thank you so much for your patience, and we're gonna go ahead and start taking public comment now. That's it. All right. I think that's going to go now. No, okay. Yeah. I thought you didn't anyway. All right. Raise it. Okay. Okay. Okay. So. Okay. Alright, so... Okay, so with that I'm going to call Curin Huffle. Okay. Alright, then next I'm going to call Megan Bronner. And then if Stortcon and Dana Sore can also be prepared. Good evening everybody. Hello, I'm Megan Brawner. I've spent most of my life as a Howard County resident. Right now I live on Yorkshire Drive in Ellicott City. My daughter is a first grader at Bellows, so I represent the PTA there, and I'm also a PTA delegate to the Howard County PTA. on Yorkshire Drive in Ellicott City. And my daughter's a first grader at Bello's, so I represent the PTA there, and I'm also a PTA delegate to the Howard County PTA. But tonight I stand on my own. I speak for myself, though I'd like to think I also speak for all the parents that have not had time to go through these agonizing notes that you all have created, which I'm so grateful for. but we've sent a lot of time trying to figure it out. And so I'm here, I'm here for them as well, but again officially speak only for myself. At the November hearing, we heard mostly from education advocates and affordable housing. It was almost as if the two were pitted against themselves, And I absolutely reject that notion, and I don't like that it's happening. There must be a third way. Usually affordable housing and education were both the David's and Glyath's world. We're usually on the same side. So I insist that there must be a third way that won't crowd the schools and yet allows for more affordable housing. And when considering then who is the galaïth in this situation, it would have to be someone that makes profit and the profit would be for developers. Now, I'm not against development either. Construction is really even important to my extended family as is development. So I understand the needs of the industry. I want to bring new people to Howard County. I support growth. It has to be sustainable, and it absolutely has to be funded. And that UPP model is not doing it for me. Even in the walkthrough, if we looked at that 25K additional, that's not even covering one student for one year in Howard County, where like 19,000 or something that we spend for each student. So I'm not sure what's going to happen when that child enters first grade after kindergarten. I know it's not a one to one, but that example stands. And I'm looking at the way that the boats have been made or these past times. It's kind of funny. Bless your heart, Brad. I see that you were voted down almost every time. That concerns me because I know Brent is an education advocate. and seeing those votes so skewed gives me pause. It's a red flag for me. And also, basing our model on Montgomery County also gives me pause. I didn't get a chance to look at the news this morning, but as of last night, I think they were about to approve taking $50 million out of the retirement trust fund in order to fund schools because otherwise they would have had to increase the income tax but no one wanted that. The fact that they're in a position where they're either raising an income tax or borrowing from trust funds doesn't make me keen on following this model but if it is to be this model where we stop waiting, which gives me pause in another regard, because even if we have funding and we don't have time to build, what are we going to do there? Regardless, but that gives me pause that we're using a model that isn't sufficient. So if we do do UPP, it has to be a higher amount. Goliath is going to take a little bit more of a hit so that the that the David's can stay in the game. Thank you so much. I know you've had a lot of meetings and I bet they're super tedious, but I- fly at this going to take a little bit more of a hit so that the David's can stay in the game. Thank you so much. I know you've had a lot of meetings and I bet they're super tedious, but I recognize the importance of this work and please speaking for them. We give the APO committee credit for the time and effort spent to make recommendations for attempting to improve life in our county. However, we are concerned if this committee really cares about communication and interacting with the public. We ask because it seems that silence from you not allowing any questions or comments at these hearings is the norm pertaining to the public meeting as was the last. I'm sorry to say this, folks. Of the 96 comments received that the first public hearing how many will be incorporated in your current or future recommendations. We don't know. I was a member of the previous APFO committee. After eight years the acronym of the APFO should change to ALPO. A LOWSI public ordinance. It will continue to remain LOWSI the measurements, protection of schools, roads, quality of life issues have not worked and requires it to be much stricter. How will the current 10 recommendations better the situation? Will you have the courtesy to respond? With your proposed school recommendations, will we see complete redistricting elimination or additional trailers. We believe no school capacity should exceed 100% for any tier. No additional trailers should exist for overflow and should be counted as overcapacity. The level of service of roads should only pass at a service level higher than a D because of the value of continued congested traffic and the proliferation of development. Will there be any recommendations by this committee to the council to include fire, emergency medical services, the police, the Johns Hopkins Howard County medical system, utilities and storm water, etc. Will this committee make any recommendations to the county council regarding any of these quality of life issues? If so, when will the public be informed so we may provide any comments? When we see road signs stating quote, stay alert, traffic congestion next three miles, unquote. And schools with nearly 250 trailers, we ask you should you have major concerns? The answer is yes. Developers should not be permitted to get a free get out of jail card after four years, ignoring schools declared over capacity. We need to avoid the heartburn of redistricting. Furthermore, there should be no housing exemptions for afflom. We do not support eliminating the weight and having fees paid instead. Having higher fees closer to the actual cost of the impacts on development should happen without eliminating the weight of credit school requirements to assist in their budget planning. We hope you will take the necessary action for Afro to once and for all really stand for an awesome Public facilities ordinance which we will which we can all be proud Thank you for at least listening as your silence to the public is not golden But your actions will be pivotal in the future of our county. Thank you Any comments no terrible Danisore Terry Marcus and then Liz Krause. Good evening. I'm Dana Sore from Columbia. I moved to Howard County in 1984 and raised my family here. Today I work with Bridges to Housing Stability, so have a direct understanding of how our county's housing policies are failing many vulnerable residents and for that reason I'm also a member of the Housing Affordability Coalition. Our community is long overdue in taking meaningful steps to address our housing crisis. In 2010 we first recognized the issue publicly during the formulation of plan Howard. We acknowledge the problem again. In 2019 as we begin development of the Housing Opportunities Master Plan. And Hoco by design, our current general plan was in many ways centered around the imperative to add more missing middle and other affordable housing so that we can meet the needs of our workforce, young adults, seniors and and neighbors with disabilities. Unfortunately, since 2018, APHO has constrained the expansion of our housing supply to levels far below our needs. Since then, we've added fewer than 1,000 homes a year, a growth rate well under 1%. The result, a worsening housing shortage that drives home prices and rents ever upward. Thanks to our housing shortage, many seniors are stuck in place with nowhere in the community they can downsize. Thanks to our housing shortage, many essential members of our workforce now pay more than 50% of gross income to their landlords. And thanks to our housing shortage, so many young adults are forced to leave Howard County once they're out of school. Our community has made a big collective investment in their education, and yet they're unable to afford a home here. So they take that education and their talents and they move elsewhere, and they become the backbone of other communities, not ours. What a loss for Howard County. We should be getting a better return on our huge investments in education by making space housing space for more ever young adults. Meanwhile, in the years that housing development has been throttled, student enrollment in our schools has declined and is projected to remain flat for the next decade. Overall, the school system is under capacity today. For these reasons, I support this committee's recommendation to end the waiting period for new housing and replace it with higher fees on new housing developments and areas where schools are over capacity. In this way, housing development can proceed and the school system can receive additional revenues to expand capacity if and when it's needed. As a member of the Housing Affordability Coalition, I'd also like to see the recommendation amended to exempt affordable housing from those additional fees so that housing doesn't get any more expensive than it already is. Thanks for your time and a shout out to all of you for doing all this hard work that you're putting in to develop sensible recommendations around that, though. Good night. Terry Marcus. Good evening. I'm Terry Marcus, the president of the PTA Council of Howard County. I'm here as a representative for the more than 10,000 PTA members in this county. Let me start by saying that there are a lot of things about AtFo that I don't know. But here's what I do know. First, the purpose of AtFo is to ensure that there are sufficient public facilities as our population grows. They are designed to slow the pace of development or even delay it until adequate service levels are in place. If there is a desire to remove those constraints, then there must be a funding source to remedy whatever the constraint on growth is. Second, the purpose of this APFO review committee should have been on finding ways to increase and enhance our public infrastructure in all ways not to diminish it, which looks to be the case based on this committee's voting record. Third, if your recommendations are not going to be strengthened at vote in any way, then at a minimum you should refrain from weakening the laws we already have. The school's test needs to stay in place, overcrowding is real, new developments and resails bring in new students. We are a suburbia. People come here for the schools and are willing to pay top dollar for homes because of the schools. Shuffling students around every year by a redistricting to maximize existing capacity to allow for new development is a short-term solution that only drives higher earning families out of our school system and out of our county. Goodbye tax base. We are not Montgomery County. We do not have the tax base of Montgomery County and we should not be basing our app for laws on what Montgomery County does. MoCo's UPP solution has not solved their financial woes. Wycopia school system, plagued by overcrowding, frequent redistricting, and more than 550 classroom trailers. Especially when their solution this year is to raid an employee retirement benefit fund of up to $50 million just to cover costs. Lastly, let me tell you what I do know about. I know about those funding sources that should be in place. Since last September, I've been on a task force with local and state elected officials assigned the job of finding ways to increase the pool of money available to our school system to fund capital projects. Do you know what we've come up with? Basically nothing. Other than requiring that a certain percentage of pay-go funds be spent on the school system every year, we haven't come up with ways of increasing school funding. After the latest round of taxes coming out of Annapolis this year and sustained increases in different county taxes and fees over the past six years, no one has the appetite to raise money to dedicate to our schools. So state and local funding for schools is looking flat despite drastic increases in costs. Until everyone comes up with ways to maintain the so-called high standards of our school system, hands off eliminating the meager protections our current at-fo laws provide. Thank you, and I hope to see some good work coming out of you still. Council, Councilwoman Yang. Good evening. Good to have to stare at this. My eyes aren't that good anymore. My name is Deb Young. and afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoonFO school test as a vital tool in balancing growth from new development within the constraining factors of escalating school construction costs and limited construction dollars. The state approved specifications for educational facilities results in a cost of $495 per square foot to build. This cost will likely increase to $500 per square foot in the near term. The last elementary school that we built was Talbot Springs. It is a $90,000 square foot building and it costs $65 million. Middle schools are about 140,000 square feet and cost $101 million to build. Gilleford Park, our newest high school is 289,000 square feet and costs $209 million. Plus site acquisition costs. Building new schools is not cheap. And we lack county specific autonomy to negotiate lower square footage costs. We are also constrained by the state's funding schedule for new school construction. Every year, HCPSS determines how to maximize available state dollars with available matching funds from the county in an effort to make a dent in the backlog of aging over-crowded schools, especially in the southeast and the Northern school districts. If the state provided more upfront funding to match our needs, then the county could leverage more funds. And we would be able to build schools at a much faster pace. If more funds were available from the state, then the open closed school chart would show much less red and new developments would be able to proceed without as much impediment from the APFO school tests. This is not what happens because state and county funding is limited each year and for this reason, APFO, as a growth control, is working. It allows for growth to be phased with limited annual funding. The proposal to allow developers to use a pay-to-play option will not counterbalance the funding constraints. The capacity contributions of a new development would need to be translated into a square footage cost and the remaining state and county funds would need to be readily available to appropriately time the opening of a new school with the resulting students coming from a new neighborhood. Without these cost calculations and timing considerations, the current pay to play proposal is merely an opt-out token that provides preferential treatment to certain developers over those who patiently waited for their turn for decades. Thank you. Lisa Krause and then after that Kevin Rooney and Benjamin Schmidt. Good evening Chair and Committee members. I am Lisa Krause, a board member with the River Hill Community Association, a Columbia Village, and I'm here tonight with Kevin Rooney, the Chair of our committee. Tonight I'm speaking on behalf of our board. The adequate public facilities ordinance in Howard County was created to require that real estate development progresses at a pace that ensures top quality schools and public services. The River Hill Community Association Board here after the board would like to offer its recommendations to the committee. As a community of over 8,000 people, we want to see the continuation of great schools and well-thought-out development that does not create strain on limited resources. In fact, APFO and its growth management process should go farther than its current mandate. APFO should promote smart growth in Howard County, regarding housing development, public education, water management, and broader public services. We recommend the committee take the following steps to ensure that Howard County retains its high quality of life for residents, families, and businesses. Number one, review the APFO regulations more frequently in order to accurately base county development projections on true needs. Number two, maintain that all important school capacity test as is. This common sense policy has been the core of at-fo, and it is effective in avoiding overcrowding. It's needed in order to maintain the high quality of our public schools, the jewel of Howard County. UPP should not be a replacement for this test. Number three, demand that developers pay their fair share to prevent overdevelopment and provide the best for our schools and public services. A county like ours deserves that 100% of the school search, charge fee, cover all needed Howard County school system infrastructure costs with these costs borne by added development. This at a minimum will maintain the current standard of use in the schools. That's our current level of educational investment and protect our AAA bond rating. As such this will sufficiently reduce demands on our school systems operating budget and make for better schools. Number four, extend APFO regulations and tests to limited public resources, specifically public safety like hospitals, police, fire, and rescue services, additionally to items in the capital budget like libraries, county roads, bridges, parkland, and recreational facilities, and our fifth recommendation, limit, restrict, or eliminate exemptions for developers. In closing closing Howard County has one of the highest standards of living in the country that standard of living is not inexpensive as citizens we do demand the best schools high teacher pay and ease of movement across the county and functional available water resources. There's no reason to scrap the school test in lieu of an underfunded UPP. So we thank you for your time tonight. Thank you for listening to our recommendations. I think I reached my time, right? Oh, I'm sorry, my turn. Thank you. Very job. Kevin Bruning. Good evening, I'm Kevin Brunin. And I'm the Chair of the River Hill Community Association. But tonight I'm speaking on behalf of myself. And my comments will be relatively brief. I think we should do a great job explaining, I think, how a lot of our community feels about the current app vote and maintaining how it currently is structured. Much of the county has been developed over the last 20 years and such, this commission should look to add components to app vote versus taking them away. As of the last read, there are five schools with an FCI score over 60 indicating that they're in severe need of renovation. Inflation now is a renovations at over $500 per square foot, at least getting in or close to it. The school system has had at least as of last read 262 trailers. Howard County Public School System is constantly struggling to find support for the public service. We have to be able to provide the support for the public service. We have to be able to provide the support for the public service. We have to be able to provide the support for the public service. We have to be amount, probably two and a half times what it is today. That's for you to determine. HCPSS has continually placed top in the state for reading and math. The APFO school tests for overcrowding are my opinion the main reason why. lead to HCCPSS schools having come more overcrowded and standard test scores in the county unlike Carol and other counties around the state where we've seen those increase compared to Howard County. So I think this is an issue of just how competitive the school systems are. And we have to keep in mind that people can choose where they want to live. There is a recent article from the Baltimore banner stating that there were over 200,000 people that left Maryland with a net influx of 170,000 from people that were undocumented or people that were residents of different countries to this area. So a net 30,000 is what we saw as a loss. But we continue to see Howard County property values increase and why is that? And the reason is because people want to live here mainly for the schools. There are a lot of other reasons such as the parkland, open space. And so we should continue to embrace those and we should maintain that for the way it is. Thank you. Next is Benjamin Schmidt, then Jackie and Keck Carter. Good evening I'm Benjamin Schmidt residing your bell is spring elementary school inicott City, and currently the President of the Howard County Education Association. I'm testifying about APFO and the changes we believe are needed in Howard County. The school system is the economic driver of the county. ACPSS is the largest employer and provides many wraparound services to both students and parents. However, we have seen that the pace of development is not generating enough revenue to keep up with both accounting infrastructure and the needs of the school system. Educators are the first to notice the impact of new development as many of their classrooms are already bursting at the seams. Just the number of elementary students on the playground at recesses recess causes significant safety concerns. More kids, less money and resources, higher class sizes all add to an overflowing plate of responsibilities for our educators that is never attainable. There's nothing wrong with individual landowners wanting to sell their land to developers or developers making profits. However, we can allow exorbitant profits to be made on the back of our school system while HCPSS struggles with $800 million in deferred maintenance. Portables to accommodate capacity and again large class sizes. There isn't a current plan to deal with the maintenance backlog and no clear path for erecting new schools that are necessary, or addition to existing ones. Instead, members of the county government, the school system and the Board of Education argue over who's at fault and what needs to be done to fix it. Pay-to-play is not the way. Although every fix requires money, the fees developers paid for years was far below surrounding jurisdictions, while the average house price and howard was skyrocketed. Both land and building material prices are comparable to other counties, but the same house here can demand more than triple the asking price than other places. All while developers are paying the county less. Fix this. We agree changes needed immediately, but we cannot have paid a play in order to build outside the capacity test. And we cannot continue discussing schools being over 100% capacity, as that is simply antithetical to what our students learn in math class every day. Revenue must cover infrastructure needs, building schools along with better and safer access to them, and the employees of the school system that continue to make Howard County the attraction to this for families. Thank you. Jackie Eing. Jackie Eng. Good evening. Jackie Eng, living cook's fill. I'm testifying this evening on behalf of the Housing Affordable and Coalition, which is composed of 40 member organizations over and over a,000 members and allies. At the November APFO public hearing, the coalition offered two recommendations for your consideration. The first was to incentivize development of affordable housing. The second was to identify new revenue sources to stimulate development and to pay for school system maintenance and expansion. The coalition appreciates and supports the committee taking an important step toward both reducing barriers to development and increasing revenues for schools by recommending replacement of the APO schools tests with the utilization premium payment for UPP. The UPP proposal would allow housing to proceed without delay, which the coalition wholeheartedly endorses, we're struggling with supporting a fee increase knowing that this added expense could be a development disincentive, and will most certainly increase the cost of new housing, driving up prices for buyers of new and existing homes, and raising rents. Higher rents will have an outsized negative impact on the people in our community who most need affordable housing. The coalition therefore strongly urges the committee to make the following additional recommendation in its final report to help ensure that affordable housing rental housing is significantly incentivized. Exempt affordable housing from the surcharge and apply the UPP surcharge only to new market rate housing. In addition to the above request, the coalition conveys its support for the adoption of the affordable housing definition as proposed in recommendation 10 620% of Howard County median income for for sale housing and 0 to 60% of Howard County median income for rental housing In closing, we commend each and every one of you for your service on the committee and your commitment to help you ensure that Howard County's adequate public facilities ordinance reflects and will help respond to current day infrastructure realities. Thank you. Cat Carter and then after that will be Ryan Powers. I'm members of the app file review committee. My name is Kat Carter, high service of the VP of advocacy for the PTA Council of Howard County PTA. A member of the Howard County Public School System Security Task Force, strategic planning committee, and the operating budget review committee. I'm also a parent consumer advocate and active at community members speaking tonight in my personal capacity. I'm here to urge you to preserve and strengthen the app foe. It is a vital safeguard and will ensure growth doesn't outpace the capacity of our schools, roads, and emergency services, or can ensure. But it must evolve to reflect the growing stain on our infrastructure. Some argue that higher development, developer contributions essentially paid play can solve our school capital funding needs. But funding school construction is not a simple transaction. The process is long and political and layered as talked to by our council member. And also it even requires the land acquisitions and data driven planning by the board of education and redistricting, both which are difficult and slow. While all these processes play out, our students sit in crowded classrooms and community deals with with congested roads which have increased because more people are going back to work in person and long wait times for emergency services. I want to share a lesson I learned the hard way. A few years ago I tried to grow a garden and raised chickens, free range, no fencing, no pesticides, no protection. I believe they could coexist peacefully in the surrounding forest. But predators took the chickens, steers, bugs, and rabbits decimated my garden. It wasn't out of malice. It was just their nature. So I adopted, I built fences, netting, and a secure coop. Now everything thrives in balance, but it still requires careful monitoring and adaptation. Our county is no different. Development can add value to our communities ecosystem, but only if we create boundaries and protections. Otherwise, we open ourselves to an imbalance that harms families, students, and community. Advocates across this county share bold visions of education, housing, transportation, healthcare, but no matter how well-intentioned we are, we cannot expect market forces or deer or developers to go against their nature. We have seen examples of this throughout our county. Thoughtful, enforceable policy is what turns vision into sustainable reality. Please reject efforts to weaken AFO, improve AFO to be more efficient and adaptable. Enforce existing developmental pacing, expand AFO to include broader public infrastructure and services, which are significantly being impacted right now. Please put our community's safety, education, and long-term well-being first by reinforcing, not relax, relaxing the essential protections that keep Howard County's ecosystem in balance. Responsible development is a vital part of that ecosystem, just as predators and deer are part of the forest. But without fencing, netting, and safeguards, my chickens and garden didn't stand a chance. The same is true for our schools and public services. Growth must be managed with care, or it will overwhelm the various systems that make Howard County thrive. Thank you. Next up is Ryan Powers. and we will be back to the next week. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having. The Howard County Flag Committee did that. Other committees do that. I think the Flag Committee got about 1200 responses, I'm not sure. That's a lot more people than are here tonight. You need to have a survey so you can actually hear from the community. Instead you only have the input from a small selection of us. We all could have used everyone's thoughts and ideas because now you got mine and I think you've made a poor decision regarding APFO. Mostly I'm concerned that you've made an intentional decision to allow overcrowding of the schools. Many of you may say and do say, school enrollment is flat, but you ignore pre-K mandates from the blueprint. And we know that while private pre-K is supposed to provide 50% of the spots, our county is not even close, I think 10% not even close. But if you truly thought that the HCPSS is in stasis and enrollment doesn't matter, why does it matter then if we have a school waiting to be in? If development isn't affected by additional students, why not keep the current system in charge for building areas with overcapacity schools? Instead you're choosing to intentionally overcrowd schools with unmitigated development. And is that really smart growth that our county likes to say with its buzzword? Second, I hear all this talk about revenue generation from the new model. Have you done the calculations on seat cost per student? I'm sure you have. I haven't seen it. I've tried to do it myself. A new elementary school in the southeast will cost $64.5 million and have 490 seats for a total per student cost of 131,000 per student. So in your example below where you get 25,000 additional revenue from six of these houses, that's going to generate three students. You'll get about $8,000 extra dollars. You're nowhere close. Using the highest tiers that you have in assuming apartments, which are the lowest student generation, the additional charges you're proposing come again, no more close to paying for the infrastructure cost of this rampant development. These additional funds are also not a dedicated revenue stream for HCPSS, okay? They go into the general fund, just like the current school impact fees. So they're not necessarily being spent on schools and you have no guarantee that they will be. This approach of choosing money of our students is a penny-wise and pound foolish. If Helsing development was actually masked out to the current levels, allowed in the Helsing allocation chart, and there's no reason to assume with new town development or gateway and all the other stuff that it actually that it won't be. An average of 1,400 homes can be built every year. Using the low estimate of multi-family apartments found in the pupil yield report, this generates 224 students every year. And sure at Howard County, we need to build the equivalent of a Jefferson Hill Elementary School every two years in order to keep our students out of PAC schools. I will send you the rest. Thank you for your time. I do appreciate your commitment. Laura Weisley and then Jade Chang. Good evening. Thank you for being here and allowing me to speak. My name is Laura Weisley. I live in Elkridge and I have three students at Gover Park High School. And I am actually representing Elkridge Community Alliance tonight. Building houses boomed in the 80s in Howard County. It peaked at almost more than 5,000 building permits were issued in 1989. A few years later in 1992, APFA was established. A third of Howard County schools were then built. We built 26 new schools over the past 30 years. The amount of density, AKA apartments, was dramatically increased since 2001, particularly in the Route 1 corridor. And we saw Duckett's lane, Hannover Hills, Thomas Viaduct and Guildford Park built along Route 1. Student EOd prior to COVID was 0.5 per housing unit. District 1, Ellicott City and Elkridge have the highest student yields per dwelling amongst all of the planning areas. HCPSS student attendance had steadily increased yearly until 2020. COVID, in 2021 we began to see the private school shift. Elkridge and Hanover felt this shift. We saw this in our affluent areas. This shift contributed to the tipping of the scales to more schools becoming eligible for Title I funding. Guilford Park redistricting then happened in 2022, which also created a private school shift. COVID wasn't an unprecedented phenomena never experienced. Isn't it premature to base 10 years of APFO protections on flattened enrollment during the COVID bubble? I see enrollment inching back up. In fact, didn't we have around 450 new students just this year? That's the size of Jefferson Hill Elementary or Bryant Woods Elementary. What if it continues to inch up farther? We are away from the COVID bubble and we get a building boom from open-app foe rules. ECA is nervous and we feel this committee was not thorough enough in deliberations or options brought to the table. Disproportionate amount of hours were spent educating the members and not enough time solution finding. Education should have been self-study and meetings should have been work meetings. Decisions and deliberations were crammed into the last few meetings and most discussion was cut off due to so many preconceived biases amongst the group. If we remove the pause on development, how many schools will that yield? Our land only allows us to build dense, but our society is also living more dense. Those with more needs tend to live dense. How will we adapt to a denser population? This pay-to-play proposal does not guarantee that the money generated will go to the school system for capital construction by the county government. And even if it does, it does not guarantee that HCPSS will designate the funds to the community directly impacted. A prime example. There is no high school in all of District 1. District 1. All yet, Elicot City and Elkridge generate the highest pupil yield of students in all of Howard 1. All yet, Ellicott City and Elkridge generate the highest pupil yield of students in all of Howard County. If the app vote bell is loosened, the increased fees does not guarantee a seat in a school building. Present us the math that this proposal will pay for students to be placed back into the school buildings and out of the 200 plus trailers. ECA does not agree with the AFMI AFO committee proposals regarding schools. Thank you. J. Chang. Dear Apple members, my name is J. Chan. I'm a parent of three Howard County students, and I am a resident resident of Alacaciti. I work for Centennial High School as a volunteer for the PTSA, and also Centennial High School's PTAP Data Gate. So the recent motion to remove the Apple School Test and replace it with a UPP model which refers to utilization premium payment model greatly concerned me and our community. According to this model, the HCPSS school utilization criteria will be completely removed the four-year waiting period for the unapproved housing development projects will be eliminated. And the developers of residential units can buy their rights with money, bypass the four-year waiting, and start to build houses without delays, without any considerations about our schools, and to potentially or even intentionally, overcrowd the schools and cause more frequent redistricting. The most recent redistricting or a prettier term boundary review process and implementation is happening right now. It is affecting the 11 schools, including six elementary schools, three middle schools, and two high schools. Each redistricting, greatly and adversely affects students, parents, families, and communities. Kids are forced to leave the school within walking distance, to leave their friends, and their beloved teachers, and to be bused to another school that is further away from their home. In overcrowded schools, students use portables as classroom instead of the regular classroom and the portables are outside the school buildings which creates security risks in convenience to bathrooms, water fountains, school office, and everything else inside the buildings that they should have immediate access. In Centennial High School, even after it's been redistricted years ago, Centennial High School still has nine portables. And Centennial Lane Elementary School, it's crowded with 44 pre-K kids, according to the blueprint, amended. And the entire fifth graders of Centennial Lane Elementary School are using portables without exception, the whole fifth grader. I urge the committee to prioritize the residents' education needs to care about our students and communities while beings, and do not use money to deprive the community from their rightful choice of staying at their beloved local school comfortably or by forcing redistricting. Thank you. Next up is Joe Horowitz, then John Lamb and Joe Phillips. Beving, Joe Horowitz, I live in Columbia. You're earlier were asked if you were going to stepped all the recommendations of everything you heard. I hope not because they're contradictory. It's a hard problem because as you heard, if you raised the price of housing, then the affordable housing is more expensive. If we had enough housing, soon we lived in that world, then the price of housing would go down, but we'd be full of students. We just heard about people who want redistricting, but, and Jen Mallow could tell me from right, is now required by the state delegation that we do more redistricting, so we're gonna get the state money. Can't have empty schools in wrong places, not have redistricting. Assumed that the waiting period works, but my understanding is a lot of the developers weighed out the period and then build anyway. So the bin doesn't really do anything and we don't get the schools built anyway. The four years based on what I've always thought was the misinterpretation, the takings clause because if you could build anything like age restricted housing, there's no takings. And I had researched every years ago having a biode option which some other jurisdictions had. So the UPP in principle does that, but I'm not sure about your math and the unintended consequences and whether it will just encourage more age restricted housing, which then has a density increase, which I've never understood for or having a community center. So how about a fee and louve for the 50 plus centers? We've heard how we just build the schools and not have redistricting. But let's assume we built other schools as we've seen in the last month of the budget discussions. We don't have the operating money to fund them. So how do we have an adequate public facility if we have an empty high school with no staff? Similarly, case we made for the hospitals, do we really need more hospital capacity or do we need more staffing for the hospital? The MIHU debate over the years has been that we should get rid of the fee and lieu of. Rather, it seems we should have one that's higher up to pay for it. For multi-modal, you should deal with the traffic lights, the same reasons. I like the school test for buses. Do we need more bus stops? You need more buses and drivers. and for the... Also support the fire NMS, similar reasons for the schools. Thank you. All right. Next John Lamb. Hello, my name is John Lamb and I live in King's Contrivance with my wife and two school-age children and I'm not fully gotten my head around how this process works and I'm neither an expert in running a school system nor an expert in running a local government. will be general. I'm assuming positive intent among the board, the developers, the school system, and the general public. I wish to remind the committee that while we are using math to calculate the various factors involved here, that children are not numbers. While I have nothing against redistricting, busing, and other attempts to balance the students and facilities. Children are not fungible across space and grade level as merely fillers of seats. Therefore it is not unreasonable to wish for a sufficient number of schools in proximity to the students they serve, with small enough class sizes for teachers to address the needs of all learners. I briefly taught in the South Bronx in the early 2000s. My experience in that situation is that people in affordable housing might have the most need and benefit the most from smaller class sizes and appropriate facilities. These concerns should not be set in opposition to each other. I was a student in Savel Long Island in the 1980s and 90s and I benefited from an abundantly funded school system appropriately sized to the school population. The head start that provided me there helped me thrive in college and in my current IT career and I hope for the same for all children in Howard County. I acknowledge my presence in Howard County hasn't part contributed to the need for more housing. While children are not numbers, in fact in economic terms they might be considered an externality. If we invest in them sufficiently the return on investment can far exceed the costs. It should be possible to balance the schooling and housing needs of the community with the opportunities for reasonable profit on the part of developers. I ask all present to make recommendations, keep in mind we are all neighbors, and we owe each other the consideration that entails. Thank you very much. John Lamb. That was me. I'm sorry. My, my, my, Joe Phillips. Hello and thank you for giving us all a chance to speak and as well as your service on the app for task force. My name is Joe Phillips. I'm a realtor with Howard County Association of Relators where we serve over 2,000 real estate professionals in Howard County. And we're here tonight to advocate for home ownership, in particular home ownership for what we all know as the missing middle. We've been and continue to be appreciative of Howard County's dedication to managing growth in a way that protects public infrastructure and quality of life. But we also applaud any assistance that the task force could provide to make it easier for working families to achieve home ownership and for our housing supply to keep up with rising demand. The reality on the ground is homes are becoming increasingly out of reach for too many residents. We're talking about teachers, first responders, health care workers, and even recent college graduates are struggling to find attainable housing in the county that they work in and love so much. According to the data that we've pulled from the MLS, the annual household income needed to purchase a home in Howard County is 161,000, which is the second highest in the state right behind Montgomery County, as we all know. The median sold price for a home in Howard County is 630,000, but for many residents, these numbers are unattainable. According to the US Census Bureau, the median household income in Howard County is around 147,000. The major missing piece is the missing middle housing. These are duplexes, triplexes, town homes, small scale multifamily options that bridge the gap between single family homes and high density apartments. These housing types are critical to creating a diverse and resilient housing ecosystem yet. Current app-fo structure and zoning limitations often make them nearly impossible to build. When app-fo freezes developments due to school or road capacity at horse and not just growth, but opportunity of restricts moderate income families from home ownership, pushes young families further away from jobs and transit and accelerates racial and economic segregation. A few things that our association feels would be more balanced and forward thinking approach would be number one, explicitly supporting missing middle housing, prioritizing and and streamlining approvals for development proposals that include townh homes, cottage courts, duplexes, and other moderate density options, particularly those within existing communities or near transit. Number two, tie at-foe relief to affordability and housing diversity allowing projects that include a significant share of affordable missile-mitting housing and Proceeds with mitigation plans rather than being shut down entirely by capacity triggers three consider housing Access as essential infrastructure at foe must account not only for school seats and road widths But also for the urgent need for infrastructure housing choices and for structure challenges must be solved in parallel not opposition to housing growth. Home ownership is one of the most powerful tools we as Americans have to build wealth, strengthen neighborhoods and close equity gaps. Let's ensure Howard County remains a place where people of all incomes, backgrounds can put down routes not just for those that can afford today's soaring prices. Thank you for your time and your leadership on this critical issue. All right, next up is Janssen Evelyn. I live in Columbia and I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the Howard Progressive Project, a grassroots organization committed to building a more equitable, sustainable Howard County. I am also a parent with two children in the Howard County Public School system, where I am in the PTA on the Booster Club, and I have been fortunate to have coached my daughter's girls in the run in the past. Professionalized serve as a deputy chief administrative officer in the Anorondle County County, where I oversee and implement land use housing and economic development policy. So I approach this work through a community lens from a regional planning and policy making perspective, but I'm also showing up tonight as a neighbor, as a father, who cares deeply about how this how our community has to grow. Let me start with recommendations seven and eight. Renaming the road's APF test to the transportation APF test. This is more than semantics. It reflects where we need to go as a county. In the Anorondale County, we're moving in the same direction. We've introduced legislation, we're introducing legislation to summer to modernize how we plan for transit, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure. This renaming helps shift the conversation from a car's only mentality to a more complete, equitable transportation network. Next, I want to speak in support of recommendations 1-6, which replaced school moratorium with a utilization premium payment structure up. Right now we're relying on a freeze-thaw cycle that doesn't actually solve our school overcrowding issues. It just delays housing and cuts off funding we could use to expand school capacity. As a policymaker, I've seen the limits of moratorium and as a parent, I've seen the real consequences overcrowded classrooms have on our learning, on our children's learning, on student mental health, and on our already burdened, overburdened educators. Paws and development doesn't build classrooms. It delays progress and blocks housing that work in families need. We also know based on the data that most enrollment growth isn't coming from new development. It's coming from turnover and existing homes. So when we freeze development, we're not solving the core issue. And we're missing out on impact fees and other tools that can help us adequately and actually respond. The Tared Paird model is a better, more responsive tool. It lets us manage growth while generating a revenue we need to support our schools and infrastructure. It's not perfect, but it's better than what we currently have. These recommendations strike the right balance. Lastly, while we support recommendations 10, we suggest more declily defined in 60 to 20% AMI as workforce, housing or attain housing, and we urge you to consider exempting affordable and senior housing from APF restrictions. These are urgent needs. I strongly encourage to commit to include these recommendations, your final report, to the county executive and to the county council. I want to say thank you for your work in this volunteer role that is so clearly often thankless and for the opportunity to speak tonight. Thank you. All right, and I'll find out person for the past 25 years. and I'm also currently volunteer in the school at PTSA. Over those years I live in Howard County, the school has always been overcrowded. All my children attended the school with portable classrooms. And I hear people are saying that when we build the house, the fees and taxes will take care of the school capacity issue. But this never happens for those years at leaving Howard County. I think for elementary school students who can do the math, they will clearly know this done to work out. So, we know that each new family will have about half a student to go into the school. Then we know that also that each student just every year will cost $18,000. So half a student is $8,000. How many of those house that you built were paid the real estate tax of $9,000? And this is only for school. How about the first respondents and other county services? So just to make this work, each of the houses need to pay over $10,000 property tax every year. And how many of the houses you build where we make this math work. And then this is a situation getting even worse and worse. And then now we have hundreds of millions of dollars of deferred maintenance for our schools. And we also know that our school budget should force we see year after year. So this again, contradictory for all those arguments. So I encourage you to tighten the school capacity requirement not to loosen it. And I also want to mention that many people like me working in Washington DC commuter every day for more than three hours. Why do we live in Howard County? Because we want to get a good education for our children here. If you get the public school system, getting worse and worse, people like me were not leaving Harvard County and you were losing tax space. I also want to say, emphasize that the so-called affordable housing is not truly affordable without providing adequate school capacity. This is just like you built a house without running water. How can you say this is affordable? You just put people and family in those houses with no adequate education. And if the children don't get good education, there will always be a living in a situation that there will not earn enough money to pay the housing in the future for the children. So this please be aware of this. Thank you very much, byebye. With that, that'll close tonight's meeting. Thank you all for coming out. One note, the record is open until Friday the 23rd. So if you do want to follow up or present written testimony, you may do so. That's at the app foe atountymd.gov website that's the the committee's website or I'm sorry email address so feel free to do that if you'd like to. How do we get feedback from what you heard tonight? We'll be following up in our next meeting. So you're welcome to watch that meeting as we review tonight's testimony. Thank you.