2026 at 6 34 p.m.

All right, let's do a roll call.

Is Alderman Frank Thorpe present?

Present.

Okay.

Alderman Smith Brown from Brooke Shandemeyer.

Um let's do the approval of the agenda.

Is there a motion to approve of the agenda?

So moved.

Thank you.

I second that.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

Business and miscellaneous items.

I have the honor to have this piece here, election of chairman pursuant to city code section 2.16.120.

Is there a motion to elect a chair for this committee?

Yes, I would like to nominate Alderman Smith Brown to be the chairman of the rules committee.

Okay, thank you.

There's a second.

I'm all in favor of the election of Alderman Smith Brown for chair of this committee.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Aye.

Moving on to the legislation piece here.

We have 04125.

This is the changes in exempt service job classification we have with us today.

Thank you very much, Neely for being present.

The chief of staff for the mayor's office in the city of Annapolis.

If you don't mind starting wherever you believe is best.

All right.

Thank you guys for having me.

I have my little elevator pitch here.

So I just wanted to start off.

You know, Jared's campaign promised a responsive city government.

Adding a deputy chief of staff will help ensure the mayor's priorities turn into real results.

We need to build strong, well-coordinated mayor's office that improves the flow of information and collaboration across departments to set the city staff up for success.

When systems work and teams are aligned, projects move faster and residents see a government that responds to their needs.

Adding another senior staff to the mayor's office is a step in the right direction to achieve Annapolis works.

So I'm sure you guys already know all this, but I just wanted to lay out kind of the reality of the current Annapolis government structure.

He's highly active politically and regionally.

And then I will even add internationally.

So that's another kind of touching point that he has.

Additional staff to help review kind of all of the press releases and information that come through her door will also be helpful.

And we also want to prevent people like Mitchell from uh working too hard and um leaving.

All right, so why now?

Um we have an increasing intergovernmental business and resident demand.

Um there's a need for faster response, um, execute exec you execution and clearer accountability.

Um we've talked a lot about in the mayor's office just implementing new systems and software to help us all across the city um do our jobs better more efficiently.

Um there's a lot of growth and redevelopment currently, like uh the choice neighborhood initiative, which I'm sure you guys have heard about, as well as complex projects like City Doc, which put more stress and demand um in the mayor's office.

Um so just want to quickly kind of go over what the chief of staff, the current responsibilities are.

Um, mainly I'm a strategic advisor and trusted confidant for the mayor.

Um we do a lot of strategic coordination, you know, setting the priorities and long-term goals.

Um executive support, obviously managing um the mayor's schedule, making decisions about kind of like the gatekeeper, what comes in, um, what priorities, when and where he should be.

Um, and then there's a lot of stakeholder and intergovernmental relations.

Um, just as an example, we're right now in the state um 90-day session.

Um, so us and the city manager are actively working with our state lobbyists, reviewing bills, making sure that we coordinate with the um different departments in the government to either have them write written testimony or um actually go in person to um testify for supporting or opposing those bills.

So that's just one example of some of the intergovernmental relations stuff.

And then there's also our federal representatives that reach out and are expecting communication from the mayor's office.

And then also help the mayor lead crisis and issue management.

Obviously, during the storm, I was a point person for a lot of information coming in and out and coordinating through all the departments.

And then I also have a team that I manage.

I have to manage the mayor's office, the budget, and supervise all the staff.

So we have kind of a couple buckets of people that work in the mayor's office.

We have our outreach team, which does a ton of events.

That's where our Hispanic and African American liaisons are throughout the year and just coordinating, and they're really on the ground, the one point touch points to the residents.

And then there's the communications, the PIO, and then constituent services, which is taking all of the resident requests and demands and helping them navigate our system, and then the community engagement piece of it as well.

So the next slide kind of just quickly goes over what a deputy chief of staff would do in the mayor's office.

They would be a senior advisor and oversee key policy portfolios.

An example is housing.

Right now there's no one really in a director of housing, for example.

So it's an it's an item that needs focused, and we would like to have particular policy portfolios where we can be strategic and have somebody focused on moving those things forward.

Also, just operational support for the chief of staff.

You could spend all day just with the mayor in meetings and scheduling and taking phone calls to coordinate his efforts.

So having operational staff for the full team to support myself would be uh go a long way.

Also, just supporting issues and responses.

Um I think it would help with troubleshooting things that get stalled, um, different initiatives that we're doing, managing cross-departmental issues, um, as well as ensuring follow-through on decisions that the mayor made and making sure that we follow up with those that are requesting things from the mayor's office.

And also it's just someone who can act on behalf of the chief of staff if I'm out with the mayor at other meetings or initiatives.

And then the other piece of it that we think would be really helpful is for the city council and stakeholder coordination, which I have more detail on the next slide about that role.

Um, so our thought is that the deputy chief of staff would be a point person for the city council, so a single source for all support from the mayor's office.

This would help streamline communications and reduce delays and duplications of text messages or emails that we're sending to the council, and then also help really drive policy and follow through on legislation.

And then there's also supporting the agenda development for all the city council meetings as well as setting the work sessions and coordinating who's um presenting at the work sessions and um getting those materials and making sure the people are attending them.

Um and then the other thing where we could use support is uh manages the relationships with the community and the business leaders.

Um this is just one example of programs that are run from the mayor's office.

Um they did it in combination with the human resources is the city internship program, which is I think is a great program.

It's actually planned to be marched, uh launched in March.

Um so running that program and making sure that all the departments have the opportunity to get interns and also give people in our city the opportunity to grow and learn what it is like to work in city government.

Um so that's one big program that our office coordinates and runs, and then also the sister cities just coordinating intergovernmental things, whether it's with the state or federal government.

Um we also another example is we have monthly meetings with uh the US Naval Academy, um, the black or the caucus of African Americans, we meet with them on a quarterly basis.

So just really helping kind of coordinate and make sure that we are touching all of these community organizations because there are a lot, and we're getting a lot of requests to meet with the mayor.

Um so that is pretty much it.

Um I have one more slide.

Um, just the bottom line.

Um, the deputy staff adds capacity um, which will help us just with the speed and coordination reliability and response time from the mayor's office, since that is a huge priority for the mayor.

Um, also improving the outcomes for all the departments and residents.

Um, if we're more effective and more responsive, um, I think everybody, you know, it's a coordinated effort, and it starts with the mayor's office.

Um, it also will free up the mayor and the chief of staff to focus on top level priorities and strategies.

Um, there's a lot of things that come up that we deal with on a daily basis that takes you away from that strategic thinking, which I think is something that the city really needs to start focusing on.

You know, we talk about strategic planning, it's really important to spend time up here and not be always in the weeds um to move our city and our staff and everybody forward.

Um, so I just think that's a practical next step to achieve Annapolis works, which I know you all have heard the mayor talk about.

So I welcome any questions.

Thank you for the presentation.

Um I will start off with a question.

What exactly do you envision for our financing of this position?

What do you how do you how do you feel that we'll be able to fund this position?

That's the first question, I think, from the public and just in general.

Yeah, so in order to put this legislation out there, we had to have a fiscal impact note.

So the finance department has already said that there is funding to fund this position.

And then, of course, we're going through the fiscal year 27 budget cycle.

So I have put in for this position to be funded in the fiscal year 27 budget.

All right, thank you.

Um I'll have more questions, but I'll offer um for anyone else who may have questions, Alderman Frank Thorpe.

Thank you, Ms.

Garrety.

I appreciate the uh the presentation.

Um I've had the opportunity now for 67 days um to watch the mayor's office um and the demand signal um even before the storm.

Um and what I've come to appreciate in the city of Annapolis is that no one department does anything alone.

Um it's gay it's giving me a uh better appreciation for the role of city manager um in the day-to-day operations to coordinate across the organization.

Um of the frustrations that I have have had as we've gone as we've gotten as I've learned the job is to find that one person that I can call that says, let me take care of it.

Um quite frankly, you have been that person.

Um, you know, the day-to-day operations I get is the role of the city manager.

Um, but I want to draw the attention to your slide that talks about supporting the city council uh efforts because most of the short-term requests I get, and when I say short term, people expect an answer in 24 hours or less are addressed to Mayor Littman and Alderman Thorpe.

Um if we mire the mayor down or the chief of staff down in that um to your point, we'll never get anything done.

So I think my point here is that I adamantly agree with your brief.

Um I just want to reiterate the importance of the deputy chief of staff being able to be in a position to uh what I would say take care of the urgent while you take care of the important.

Does that make sense to you?

Absolutely.

Okay.

The the second question I would ask is as you build up the infrastructure in the mayor's office, and again, I've had the opportunity to work with you and Laura and Mitchell and and and see the operations.

I've had a chance to work with the city manager.

How would you differentiate your and the deputy chief of staff's and uh the strategic outreach person's job?

How do you differentiate that with the role of the city manager?

That's a good question.

Um, I mean, we definitely all kind of interact together on the regular about a lot of stuff, and I think you know, a lot of the things that come to our office are coming from the departments too.

So it always involves the city manager.

So I I think the way I would look at it would be that the chief of staff um would be kind of like a liaison to the city manager.

So anything that comes from the departments or the city manager that you know the mayor needs they need the mayor's input on would come to the chief of staff, right?

And anything that the council would need input on would go to the deputy chief of staff as like your liaison.

So I think of it as two liaisons, and so it's like you would have that one point person in the mayor's office to get your answers, and the city manager and all the department heads would have you know the chief of staff to have all the answers.

Does that help answer your question?

Yeah, I think that what that explains to me is a very clear structure of how to make things work.

Annapolis works.

And also I I guess I would summarize what you just said.

If you and the deputy chief of staff are not doing that, then the mayor's doing it himself.

Right?

You're absolutely right.

Right.

Yeah, and I think right now he's he's the contact for the council more than I am.

You know, so he's taking on the role of what I would envision a deputy chief of staff would do.

So then he can focus on the the higher strategic issues.

Thank you.

Uh so one final question.

And I'm gonna make a statement and basically ask if you agree with it.

I I believe that one difference that we've seen in the first 67 days of this administration is more uh management um and and uh guidance and direction uh from the chief executive officer.

Um and and I think I'll speak for Ward A constituents that they have been looking for that in a big way.

Um I believe that if we don't have the infrastructure to do what you just explained doing, then we're going to almost default back to um trusting everybody's doing the best job they can in their stovepipe with some significant lack of coordination across the organization.

So that's my opinion.

So rather than asking you that to explain that yourself, would you agree with that?

And do you have anything else to add to that?

Yeah, I definitely agree with that.

Um and I think you know the responsiveness uh to the residents, like that's what it all comes back to.

And if we want to be responsive and all be responsive in the same messaging, we need to make sure that our communication internally is better, and I think right now it's really hard for us to communicate with everybody we need to communicate with in a consistent way.

Whereas if you're adding somebody who's good at communication and has their you know, their the city council communication, I'm communicating with the city manager, um, and you know, the state delegates or whatever it is, dividing up who is in charge and responsible for communicating to all the different stakeholders, I would say, um, that come to the mayor's office.

Um that yeah, for sure.

And I and I also want to go back to one of your questions that you brought up.

Um, one of the things we're bringing into the mayor's office just to make sure that we are spending our budget wisely, um, and we're not just adding more to the budget, is we've implemented um status reports for our staff.

We also have events that are now on the website, and you can track who it the number of attendants.

So making sure that we're spending money wisely and getting the you know, if we plan an event that costs X amount of money, how many people are coming?

How much did that cost per head?

So making sure that we have that data to justify how we spend our money in the mayor's office.

So tracking data and metrics are really important to us to help us kind of manage how we'll spend our money.

Great.

Uh so thank you.

Um I look forward to working with the deputy chief of staff.

Mr.

Chairman, that concludes my question.

Uh, thank you very much.

Are there any other questions before I ask mine?

Okay, Alderman Shenmor, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um so this is less questioning and more just my thoughts on the issue.

A problem that many local governments have is each department gets siloed in its decision making process.

And that's just how it happens to be structured.

The organization of Annapolis, the organization of Manorado County, the organization of pretty much every local government in Maryland that I have seen.

It sort of just naturally creates this issue.

So the chief of staff and the city manager, part of their job has always been to try to bridge those silos, but it is a lot of work because it's not one of their key sole focuses.

It just sort of becomes an unofficial duty.

What I really appreciate that you've put down in the job description specifically is manage cross-department issues.

Because what impacts planning and zoning often impacts transportation, often impacts public works, often impacts parks and rec.

And a lot of times I have seen not just in Annapolis, departments have gone, well, we're going to do this, and then the other hand finds out about it a little bit too late to be able to manage an effective and timely coordination.

And so we see a seam in that decision.

It eventually works out, but I like to have a seamless of a transition and decision making process as possible, as do I think most of the folks in this room.

So I'm very optimistic about this position.

I'm looking forward to seeing what they'll be able to accomplish.

And it has my full support.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Alderman Shanemeyer.

Anything you want to share in response before I ask these questions?

No.

Okay.

So some of the concerns I know that have been brought up is this may be an additional layer of bureaucracy.

And so how can you alleviate some of that concern to us as committee members, just all the council who will have to work directly with this member and even to the public who may ask that question?

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of what I spend my time doing and what the deputy chief of staff will be doing is communicating and coordinating with people.

And there's only so much time in the day and so much you can do with coordination.

So I think it's uh, you know, it's a capacity thing.

So the more an extra person will help with that capacity issue and be able to communicate better across all, you know, whether it's the city council or if they're working on interdepartmental issues, um, I think just communication and coordination are key.

Um, and unfortunately, like, you know, Vicky and I meet all the time, but there's only, you know, there's meetings and other things you have to do, and staff you have to manage.

Um, so that communication piece sometimes gets lost and balls get dropped, and that's what we're trying to avoid by adding this position.

Okay, thank you for that.

Um another question that would be is when we think of up to a hundred thousand dollars for a position, I know people may be fright from that.

Um so the question of are there any other positions that are not being fully staffed, or maybe you can speak on that budgeting aspect um where this would make sense to shift that um over to maybe a deputy chief of staff in this case, um, as well as uh why can't we just put these responsibilities on someone else?

If that if that's the question that I'm sure people would ask.

I'm not asking that personally, but just why can't we uh do that?

It would be a Yeah, I mean, I think right now that it's a great question, but in the mayor's office, everybody is already at their capacity um for the work that they're doing.

So that's why we're doing the data and metric tracking to figure out if what they are doing is successful.

So if that is true, there will be room to either move them, you know, to help with scheduling or do other things or help with strategic planning with town halls.

So we are already doing that, adjusting to seeing what's available and moving it around based off of what we're trying to achieve in the mayor's office.

Marvelist, thank you.

Um, so if this position is denied for some reason, how how are we gonna move forward?

Like what is are we gonna just bear the vert?

Like, what are we gonna do?

Mr.

Chairman, I'm not sure we want to hear that.

Yeah, no.

Um, I mean it would it would be unfortunate because I do think the mayor's office is such an important critical piece and the front face of the city government that we need to be responsive and we need to be communicating.

And we've already heard it from what Alderin Thorpe explained, his residents are saying, you know, we're already taking communication into a next level, and even if we get we we can still do better than what we're doing right now, and I think that's just gonna improve the lives of all the city staff, and it's also gonna improve the lives of our residents, and we're looking into um you know, systems.

I I put in my fiscal year budget to add systems to help communicate and coordinate things, um, which I think will help everybody that touches the mayor's office, um, just to make sure we're organized and planning.

Um, I like to take action items and notes, as Vicky knows, and and do spreadsheets, but yeah.

All right, thanks.

Last question here.

Um, so seeing that this is a person that worked directly with the city council, what will our role be in making sure this is someone that we would want to have at in this role?

Yeah, so um I actually just went through the umbudsman constituent services, um, and what we really focus on in the mayor's office, and I and I think across the city, um, we set up a committee um of people from different departments.

So the example for the constituent services, I had Marcus um who was on the panel with me reviewing resumes, Rosilla from the mayor's office.

Um, and I picked Marcus because transportation is a huge, you know, parking is always a constituent service resident issue, um, myself and Laura.

So we always try to diversify the committee that's looking at the resumes, helping us select and making sure that they're qualified people, and then also when you're doing the reviews, um, we had a rating system and we all rated everybody we interviewed um and had a number, and that was how we ended up selecting.

I mean, of course, there was discussion about the people, but um we try to be as fair as possible.

So we are very diligent, we don't just hand pick people.

Okay, so what that sounds like to me is we still will have some type of say, although we are not gonna prove it in employments or anything, but we'll still be able to give you some input or thoughts, or just needs to be a part of that process as you all um narrow down your candidates.

Yeah, and once we post the job, everybody, you know, you can share it and people can apply.

Um and they'll be considered based off of the questions that are asked in the HR system.

So well, thank you very much, Chief of Staff.

Uh there's not any final words.

That's where is that say we move forward with the a motion to um I won't say what that motion to be, I'll give that to you all, but I say is there a motion to move this to the council positive.

I would like to offer a favorable recommendation.

All right, is there a second for that favorable?

Second, awesome.

I'm all in favor.

Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, have a blessed one, Nealy.

Um, I will move forward here uh with the agenda.

We have 0126 property tax child care centers, family child care homes, and large family child care homes.

Um this is sponsored uh by Aldman Shannemeyer and Alderwoman O'Neill.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh so one twenty-six, the goal of it is uh or the intention of 0126 is to provide a up to $10,000 real property tax credit to child care licensed child care facilities in the city of Annapolis.

Um it was enabled by the state during the last session, and one of the intentions of the enabling legislation was to help encourage more child care facilities to open to help bring costs down overall and shrink wait times.

It's also something that could potentially help encourage child care facilities to hire more staff so they can take on more children, and it could also be the difference between a facility opening or keeping its doors open versus shutting down.

Uh the child care industry is an incredibly expensive one for people to run.

They often have less than one percent profit margins, so many close.

We have been the state of Maryland has lost about 15% of its child care providers since 2020.

And so bold action like this is needed to try and one stop the bleeding and two potentially turn it around and bring costs down for working families.

All right, thank you for that.

Um are there any questions from uh anyone, Alderman Thorp?

Did you have any questions?

Um I do have questions and and maybe a couple comments.

Um we we discussed this at the finance committee yesterday and uh Alderman Shandelmeyer uh provided a lot of good information and uh as did the city manager.

I would again like to applaud uh Alderman Shannonmeyer for introducing this legislation.

Um we first started talking about it, we we thought the cost was 85,000.

It it could be up to 850,000.

Alderman Shannon, as you pointed out yesterday, it probably would not get to that amount, um, but we don't know what the amount is.

Um the the bigger issue that I I believe um that this committee uh the rules and city government should take on is an expenditure of more than a half a million dollars should be managed by the city staff.

Um and as we've talked about uh coming into the election, uh, that we should make sure we have an input output model so that every dollar we spend we should have an expected outcome.

And from a from a city government perspective I'm even more concerned after the discussion yesterday and after talking to uh um Alder Woman O'Neill today that that we really don't we really are not organized currently to manage improvements in child care across the city.

There's no doubt we need to invest this kind of money in it.

There's no doubt that the young families in Annapolis need support for child care.

I mean, it it's just unequivocal.

My concern is how do we look at the city manager and say, how did this grant do?

Did it achieve what we wanted it to achieve?

Was this a better expenditure than any number of other options, including direct grants or expenditures to families who to help with child care.

I don't know that answer.

And my concern right now and the discussion I'd like to have and with uh the sponsor as well as the city manager, is if we believe that the city should invest, it would at this point it could be up to a million dollars with other programs.

Should we have somebody in our community services department managing a program like this and reporting through the city manager as to the effectiveness and our and we're achieving our goals?

And I guess I'd like to ask the city manager first to comment on what her thoughts are on that uh and then open it up for discussion.

So I I think based on the way that this is written, I'm not sure that there's necessarily a lot of day-to-day management to do.

Um the you know, it it's a tax credit, um, and so there's some work um that's periodic in terms of of establishing eligibility and then re-evaluating eligibility.

But once eligibility has been determined, then it's really just it's really just through the taxing taxation process.

Um as far as as far as looking at outcomes for that, there are probably a couple of sources, again, depending upon what the goal of the council is, that are not terrible to track.

So child care is licensed through the state.

You can go on the Maryland Excel's website, find a program.

You know, if you go on there today and you look for child care in zip code 21401, right?

There are 80 programs that pop up, right?

And it includes information like what's their license capacity and and some things like that.

So you know, through even that kind of publicly available information, you can get some information about how many how many um establishments do we have in the city, what is the license capacity within the city, and some things like that.

Um I think that is relatively easy to track in terms of what has been the trend over time.

Tying those changes specifically to this, I think is um, you know, you you would there are probably some ways of getting at that, but just in terms of you know what is the overall health of the child care availability in the city, I think that is something we can get our hands around and look at over time.

I'm not sure if that fully answered the question you asked.

Um I think it it starts to go there.

I I'm not concerned about the management of the program, to your point.

I think it's it's minimal.

Um we don't license child care centers, we don't evaluate the state's licensing, et cetera.

Exactly.

What I'm what I'm more concerned about is how I look at the residents, the taxpayers, and say, well, I spoke to the city manager, and she reported that we are meeting our goals for child care for the city.

And and I and you alluded to that, right?

We've got to figure out what the goals of the city council are for child care.

So I'm almost wondering if from a process standpoint, do we have a solution in front of a problem?

I mean, we know that we have a problem with not enough child care.

We know we have limited funds to help uh, I don't want to use the word solve, to help uh alleviate that problem for our our young parents.

Is but how do I look at you in the eye, or how do you look at the city council in the eye and go, this was the right way to spend 700?

I I say spend.

This was the right way to give up $740,000 in revenue that costs us, I mean, clearly we're gonna have to adjust the budget, the 27 budget by some amount that we anticipate this being a decrease in revenue.

So I guess that's but but go back to my big question is are are you as the city manager in a position to say we achieved our goals in child care with the expenditure or the lack of revenue of 740 or whatever the number is, and the expenditure of 50,000 and and whatever else.

And I think you've answered the question is you don't know what the goals are.

We don't know what the goals are.

I mean, I um I think that part of what I've I've heard has alluded to quantity um is is sheer availability.

Um partially through, you know, of child care um businesses um and sites within the city.

Um part of um the way that this is constructed is also supporting capital improvements, so that also potentially affects um changes in licensure, what what the capacity of each individual site is.

Um that seems like um i in terms of of we have a goal of increasing license slots by 100.

I don't think the council has honed in on that.

A desire for additional, it that sounds pretty consistent across everything I've heard everyone talk about.

Um I think to get to your point, the question of was that juice worth that squeeze is um I do think you need both somewhat of both sides of what am I aiming for in order to figure out whether we ended up thinking that was worthwhile.

Um the idea that it wasn't worthwhile implies that you had some metric in your head of what was worthwhile.

Thank you.

And I guess that's as that's as strong, that's as concise an answer as we're gonna get.

The the and I don't know Shannemar, I turn to you, I guess, to say is if we don't bring somebody on the city staff, which I'm not looking to build the city staff, but is there a county or state child care person, community service person available that we could bring in and ask if you had a million dollars in a city of Annapolis, um, and by the way, that's you know, $25 per resident.

If you had a million dollars, how would you spend it on child care in Annapolis?

And and is there somebody that or or uh somebody said to me uh today, one of the young families said, has this gone to the education uh commission um to review and talk about is there somewhere uh where we could get the expertise that allows that gives that empowers us to be able to make that kind of decision.

So look part of the push for this legislation came out of a task force chaired up by county executive Pittman, Comptroller Learman, and the Maryland women's caucus.

Um I don't know a specific department in the county or the state, but I do know that this was came out of an initiative from a task force last year and the year before that had legislators, local elected officials, and people in the industry itself, and this was seen as a thing that could improve the overall child care environment.

Uh it was based off of legislation that was passed in Montgomery County.

Previously, their legislation allowed up to $3,000 property tax credit that became insufficient.

And so they upped it to 10,000 at the same time that the Annorundal County in Annapolis enabling legislation was passed.

And is there a way to truly measure everything 100 percent?

I don't know.

But the thing is is we know that we have a crisis now.

We know that a panel of experts from this task force came through, and this was one of their recommendations.

And to not try it seems like we are backing away from attempting to solve a very real problem impacting our working families.

The average wait time in this area is over a year just to get someone in child care.

So the exact metrics you're looking for, I don't know if we can even get them, but the organization and the task force that came up with this idea.

I trust the people that were on it.

Thank you.

I was gonna yeah, if you don't mind, I think though, to that point, because that's exactly what I was gonna ask.

We should invite someone here to talk about this matter if before we move uh on this.

Um at least that's what I would envision, but please, yes, feel free uh to ask me to be able to do that.

I just wanted to respond to the there's no doubt that we're have a crisis.

Matter of fact, to build on your point about uh the the weight, I actually talked to a young couple who actually told me part of their plan fan their family planning process is getting on a waiting list before they get pregnant.

I mean, so it's it's that bad.

So so Brooks, I I don't doubt the crisis at all.

And I'd also don't doubt the uh legitimate benefit of this program.

Um to your point, the the experts that went into doing it.

I just know that we we do have a crisis on our hands.

We do have a limited amount of money.

Um we're early in a term here, and we're we're finding numerous expenses that are coming down the road.

Um that we you know are are one step short of of an economic crisis if we're not there as a city.

And so I'm just looking to spend the money in the best place possible.

And to Alderman Smith Brown's point, um to hear an expert say of the five ways you could spend money, this is this is how I would rank them, or what however you want however they want to do it.

That's that's what I'm looking for.

So maybe we're on to something here that you've said is identifying somebody who's a recognized county state uh expert that the education commission.

I don't I don't know the answer to that.

I just know that I would like to hear somebody who lives in this world um who could who could give us that kind of information?

Yes, do you mind please sitting?

Yeah, just if you're looking for for someone, probably one of the places we could turn is to the state.

Um the uh Maryland Department of Education's division of early childhood does have different regions.

Region one is is Anna Rundel County.

Um they might be interesting to talk to.

Yes, um, so there were some questions that I had, but I think it'd be best to maybe um offer that invite to someone, if not more than one, who could come and share that from different perspectives at all levels.

Um, so um, one of them I know that I had here was excuse me, um, one of them that I know that I had here is saying that it could be up to 850,000, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars that could go to centers that may not uh directly impact the grassroots level of family care and more so these you're talking about 25 or so employees.

Um so how do we delineate between supporting the families uh that definitely need this support and not just giving more profit to these corporate-owned uh businesses, if you will.

What that's that's kind of talked through that narrative.

The 25 or more is related to an entity that wishes to open a child care facility as part of its, I guess, for lack of a better word, benefits.

Uh so let's say you had a company day of sales, and they wanted to as a way to entice their employees or offer a benefit to their employees, have a child care facility to provide their employees with that resource, they would need to have 25 employees in order to qualify for this.

In regards to larger child care companies, they still fall under the same pressures as smaller ones where it's a lot of rules and regulations and qualifications that makes profit margins low.

Often one percent or less.

And when they do not have the ability to hit those margins, the alternative is they close.

And every kid who does was in those programs now does not get child care.

And that just spills over and increases wait times or raises costs everywhere else because we have less providers in the system.

Okay.

Um yeah, I think just seeing to the diversity of these up to 85 um centers would be really important for us to see, because we want to make sure that these, whether you know it's in board one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

We want to see where they are.

Um we want to know, uh, want to make sure that these um businesses are um reflective and won't be biased towards certain families, which I know that that can happen at times.

Um when we talk about wait times, I mean, you know, I think um sometimes we can open up our doors, but we choose not to.

Uh and so I want to make sure that that's talked through as well as let's say um I get this grant and it doesn't really define or detail um what happens if I shut down the next day.

You know, how do we get that money back?

Or how do we make sure that they're accountable uh for it?

We don't really talk a little uh much about that in the legislation, at least from what I read.

So I think there's a misunderstanding.

This is not a grant, it's a property.

It's a tax credit credit.

Exactly.

So how do we get that money back though, if it's a tax credit?

So they would need to have an active license in order to get the credit.

Okay, so if I shut my doors when I get this credit, I said, okay, I'm tired of this, I don't want to do this anymore.

My license is still active, is what you're saying.

So I will continue to I can hold on to this money because of my license is active.

You shut your door, but the point is made.

If the license is gone, then where do we get do we get this money back?

We don't.

And so the unless we list it here that we are going to get it back, or there's going to be some type of accountability there.

So we do have to tie that into the legislation as well.

I think you are coming up with a situation that is not going to occur.

Um if a center shuts down, it does not have its license and they cannot get the tax credit.

You need to have your active license going in order to get the credit.

The tax credit is in one lump sum, or is it spread out over the year?

It's buckling.

I mean, it's it's the it's the amount that's it's just the the amount that's due that's typically paid um in a lump sum.

Okay, so if I get the tax credit and I shut down my doors after I get the tax credit, how do we get that money back?

So I just want to make sure I understand.

So if they shut down, then what you would be looking to do is to essentially um bill them for the difference and have that tax now become due instead of being credited, right?

Is that the result?

That's what I'm asking.

That would have to that would have to be the mechanism.

Um I would have to to research how that would work.

Um I'm not saying that wouldn't work.

I just want to I want when I understand the details.

Um, yes, madam lawyers.

Um Ashley Leonard, assistant city attorney.

Um we might have to figure out the mechanism, but if I'm looking at the legislation, right, it already has a provision for it in there.

I mean, I just pulled it off Legistar.

Um, but it looks like there is a section C2 that deals with automatic termination.

Yes.

That the that a real property tax credit for a child care facility granted under the section shall automatically terminate if the child care facility no longer meets the eligibility requirements.

Now we we would have to think about that from an operational standpoint, but it's so that's actually a good question.

My assumption was that that essentially was prospective, right?

If they've already paid their tax for this year and they've shut down, then yeah.

I mean, we we could share they're not yeah, we could look at it and and and tweak that section, but there is was already some thought.

Yeah, there was that's why I was um about that.

So um it's not it's not an issue that was not thought about to some extent it was thought about.

Maybe you would would like it phrased a little differently, but it there is something in there to at least start with.

Absolutely.

And keep in mind the tax credit is only for one year at a time.

So it's not like this would be going on forever.

Every year, the way this is set up, they would have to reapply.

So at most, we're talking about them being closed for part of a year and losing that part.

Um it wouldn't be beyond 12 months at most.

Every dollar matters, thank you, Alderman Dor.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, so I don't know what how the calendar would work, but in Alderman Shannon probably knows is more uh better than I do, but you know, you you apply for the tax credit in the year, you're asking for it, you're operating a child care center, you've got a license, you get the application the the it gets approved in March, April, May, June, you get the tax credit.

So I think to that point, the risk that the city would have in that child care center closing down, the few that that might happen to for some reason, it would be a a small number of months to the Office of Law's representative uh point, they'd have to apply the next year, and if they didn't have a license anymore, we could be out 900 bucks a month for two or three months.

That I think that's I would almost worry about the burden uh that we would put on the city staff of monitoring that more so than the loss of the revenue.

Yeah, I mean I I I think it's someone who has actively used a lot of child care in the last decade.

Um I I don't I I understand where you're coming from, but I I do from a legal and a personal perspective.

I think it's a minimal risk.

Um most people who go into this business, it's not a fly by nate trying to get the licenses, trying to do all the inspections.

It is a lengthy process, so you're not just gonna do it to try and get a tax credit, to be honest.

It's a whole process to set these places up and to continually maintain them and maintain your licensure.

So um I well, I understand perspective, and maybe we can look at the section about terminating.

I think it's legally sort of a minimal risk for at most maybe part of a year.

Um I I don't think it's I don't think it's a high likelihood.

Um I also wanted to mention that um Anna Ronald County actually did have a child care, child care task force.

They have a website on the county's um website, they have a web page on there.

Um so perhaps someone from there.

Um they do have a lot of resources right on their webpage that you could probably look at, including annual reports and things.

So I can send that out if you would like to take a look at that.

Yeah, if you don't mind, um Vicky, I might city manager, if you don't mind, maybe give us a giving us a list of some names or some organizations in the like I said, at least the webpage does have a bunch of reports and recommendations and um data so that you could at least start from that perspective.

Yeah, I I just want to point out I I don't think it's a role of city council to do that research, though.

That's that's my point is I think I think if I think to your point, if the county has that level of expertise, what I would rather do is bring somebody in with that level of expertise um and sit in a chair and say, I've been asked to br to tell you how I would spend a million dollars of city tax money, and based on my expertise, and as you see programs listed on our website, this is the order I would do it.

Um and then I would quite frankly look over at the city manager and say, so you've got to execute this.

Does this make sense?

That that's where I would come down on it.

Yeah, so and we do want to, you know, yes, well-intentioned, we're human beings, we you know how flawed.

Um, but the fact that there could be even just a hint of us having to figure out a way to get that money back, we should try to iron that out.

Um, it's definitely not saying it clearly, you know, I read the termination piece and I understood it to be, but it's barely anything that details the termination.

Um and so I think that for for us, legally that's generally not how tax credits work.

And we do a lot of tax credits.

Generally, tax cred tax credits you apply for them, you get them for that year, it's not a grant.

You're not going after the monies because that's not legally how t tax credits tend to operate.

Um we offer other tax credits, and we don't have language to that effect, I don't believe in our city code that says if someone applies for that tax credit and something changes that we're gonna go after them to get the money back.

We won't renew it the next year, but the legal procedure for tax credits is not the same as like grant money.

It's a it's a different process, it's a different legal setup.

Thank you.

Um then for um looking at this to uh if a question came to be then why can't we?

Because we are gonna be, depending on how much money we're we would put towards this, how much can't that money be directly given or provided to nonprofits or organizations that do run after school programs, or you know, why couldn't we go down that route to the other?

We do do that, Rob.

That would be our community grants.

No, yeah, we do do that route.

And but we're talking about an additional up to maybe $850,000.

That could be.

So I'm just wondering, you know, for those that may wonder, why can't that money or why can't we figure out a way to give that money to those versus doing something like this?

Because not all of those are licensed to handle early child care, and they just do not have the capacity.

Those tend to be more after care type programs and other type of programming to it to be able to do child care, especially early child care, is not something most nonprofits do because the licensing process is extremely intense.

Yes, it's very important to ask questions um for all types of mindsets, perspectives, and thoughts, whether it's in support or not in support, uh, we have to make sure that we're asking questions.

And so this conversation must continue.

And maybe at our uh next meeting, if we can have some people to come and present some more detail, and maybe we can even come up with some more questions to ask um for that.

And I mean, come on, let's talk about it.

We want to support our families.

We want to make sure that they have a place for their child to go so that they can go and do whatever is necessary to put food on the table in a household head.

So, yes, we appreciate uh you, especially Oldman Shademeyer for even coming forth which uh with such a solution, um tapping into state resources and county um resources in their direction for this.

So you know, I think we're the sentiment is there and we want to move forward and diving a little further.

So um, I take it we'll move move with the any other questions at all or thoughts or concerns, questions, anything like that.

Okay.

Oh, thank you.

Um Ashley.

Okay.

So, Mr.

Chair, is your move forward is your desire to have this continued at the next meeting, or if there's a motion for that, is your desire to move forward and make a vote on this.

I say we move forward for the next meeting.

If there's a motion for that, um I don't think that it would make sense to make a decision based off of everything we heard and you know, still having guests come forth if that's possible.

Okay.

Uh so I would like to make a motion to postpone this to our March meeting.

Thank you.

Is there a second for that?

Uh there's a second, and if we could get some discussion before I think I think I would ask how how do we in the March meeting, uh, how do we move forward to ensure that we have the expertise at the table to answer these questions?

Because Nirvana perfection is when the county rep or the state rep comes and says, Boy, if you guys are willing to do this, this is the best thing you could do for child care.

That's about a two-minute brief, and we're done, and we recommend to move this forward.

Um, but it it's gonna take getting the right person.

So again, I'm looking at the city manager, I'm looking at Alderman Chandelmeyer.

Um, how do we get to a point in for the March meeting where we get an answer?

So I think that um uh I can certainly work with with Alderman Chandelmeyer.

Um, you know both Ashley and I, you know, obviously know of a couple of different uh places we could turn.

Um, and I can check in with Alderman Chandelmeyer about um other ones and um frankly simply reach out and see um check on availability, you know, have a conversation.

Um let you know great, thank you.

And I I the only other thing I would say, and this goes more to the finance committee.

The other variable to this is the ten thousand dollars is the state went from three thousand to ten thousand, with the obvious, in my opinion.

I'm just assuming that they wanted to increase the amount in order to make it more substantial and all that, but but that's also the variable in this that it could be five thousand and use the other half of the money for something else.

So it's so just to say that now so that I don't pop, I don't want to pop open a well, I thought of another question syndrome.

All right, um thank you both for that.

Uh well, there is a motion on the table, so we do have to um answer to that.

Um, all those in favor of um having this brought back up at our next meeting.

Um, please say I if you can.

Aye.

Thank you.

Um let's move forward.

This is very important as well.

Uh land value and infrastructure study presentation ID 1926.

Our chief of comprehensive planning, Leshinski is coming to present to us.

Thank you for the Urban 3 presentation, which Alderman Schaundemeyer um helped to lead and bring forth to fruition, if you will.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to give the background on this.

Uh I consider this.

Oh my uh so we conducted the land value and infrastructure survey uh during towards the end of the previous term, and essentially this helps us understand where in the city we are revenue positive and where in the city we are revenue negative.

And I am very excited to hear the great concerns for how we can stay revenue positive, because I now assume we'll be boldly and without question going forward with every single recommendation that this study presented with zero questions asked.

Because if that is the case, I will be questioning some of these things.

Anyway, uh this was led by a uh internationally renowned company known as Urban Three.

I found out about them through the strong towns movement, and Urban Three has conducted surveys from Auckland, New Zealand to Canada to right here in Annapolis, Maryland, and what they showed us in Annapolis is truly absolutely mind-blowing.

And uh, I will let our birthday boy, Mr.

Leshinsky, take it away.

Bless the birthday, you're nearly I take it's nearby.

Thank you, Alderman Chandelmeyer.

Um, Eric Klashinski, chief of comprehensive planning.

Um that the Alderman just said is accurate.

It is um this was a profound uh study that we did in conjunction with our comprehensive plan.

Um I want to couch it in that way, you know.

This vision of our comprehensive plan, this more equitable, healthy, resilient city.

Um, with the urban three study, we got the data to really support that, and and that's why it's so valuable.

So when you do comprehensive plan, you typically do a number of focused studies on more specific topics, and this was one of those studies, and this was by far the most impactful focused study we did.

So I do want to commend Alderman Chandelmeier for um advocating for this, and it took on um a life of a it got some national attention.

The the strong towns organization um uh leveraged the the report and promoted it, and you know, I just want to share a video if I um this work yes, you can map with Annapolis Maryland.

This all right, hold on.

Let me turn the volume down.

Love this video.

We do not support that social media is on Instagram as well.

Check out this map of Annapolis, Maryland.

The zones with the highest extrusions have the most valuable land areas in this state capital.

This is called a land value per acre map done by urban three.

And if you compare that with the city's annexation history, the highest value land was acquired before 1951.

Along with the drastic change in how much land our cities acquired, the 1950s was also a time that shifted how we developed our cities too.

Creating compact incremental development for the suburban experiment.

But this data shows that the spread out development is not generating any income for the city.

So maybe they should consider developing in the style that they had prior to 1951.

Because the value in the city didn't come from just owning more land.

It came from how that land was built upon, used, and connected.

So there you have it.

That's the presentation.

I mean, that's she summed it up in uh two minutes.

Um what I'm gonna could take an hour to do.

But um check up.

I'll skip over.

I mean in our comprehensive plan, we lay out a vision for a city that's more walkable and privileges, other ways of getting around other than the personal automobile.

Uh, oh, maybe not.

Um we talk about a city that is more efficient in the way it uses its land base.

You know, we have very limited land base in the city, and a lot of our land is tax exempt.

So we need to leverage what we have.

Um we have a number of plan priorities that talk about that.

When we talk about growth in the plan, we talk about projects like this on Annapple Street in West Annapolis, where you have retail at the ground floor, apartments above, it blends with the neighborhood in a really seamless way.

Um, and then in our mapping in the comprehensive plan, our future land use map, we talk about where that type of mixed use development makes the most sense.

And you can see all the red parcels are along primarily along our major corridors, our community's main streets throughout the city.

Um, Urban Three is a unique economic uh consultant that really tries to promote this sort of more sensible, efficient use of land base for fiscal responsible places, really.

It's it's helping cities and counties and just incorporated places leverage their assets.

And so they they use this example from Asheville, North Carolina, where um a building that was you know vacant, uh valued in 1991 at 300,000, is today valued at 11 million dollars.

It's it's a large building, but um, this is the kind of value that was captured in that building as a mixed-use property that had retail and um offices and residential, all combined compatible uses.

Um they also use this comparison between that building and a typical Walmart in Asheville, um, where maybe the tax value from that Walmart is more than the tax value of that downtown building, but the land consumed by that Walmart is far greater than that small downtown building.

Um, and yet look at the tax assessment per acre of that downtown building versus the Walmart.

So it while it may not be yielding the total tax uh of Walmart, it's a much more efficient in the economic performance.

Um, and then on top of that, it's generating more sales tax per acre, more residents per acre, more jobs per acre.

Um we look at our city finances, you know, we're talking about revenues and expenditures and um the large portion of our revenue come from property tax.

We all know that.

Um3's analysis was all about helping us understand how to leverage property taxes to their fullest.

This is another way of looking at it.

When we bring in these revenues, where they go in our city's budget, we're mapping property taxes.

And so first thing Urban 3 does is they show us based on just purely tax-assessed value, how does the city's properties uh uh compare?

And everything in green is sort of lowest um value, but still, you know, relatively high value.

It's uh 100,000 to uh a million.

So it's still high value in green, but purple is over 15 million in tax assessed value.

Now, that's just based on what the sit the state's um tax assessment says.

If you actually look at it based on the acreage, you can see that we have far greater tax assessed value in the downtown area and the Eastport area.

We have denser sites occupying less land, they happen to be by the water that can't be discounted.

They happen to be by the water that can't be discounted.

But that's that's a different story here.

Taxable value per acre.

And if you look at this kind of pattern nationwide, Urban 3 works all over the country.

You can see that there are trends to the value that's captured with different types of development, as I've been saying.

So when they do their economic model and they try to visualize it, they do these everywhere they work, every place they work.

We're not looking at the scale of a building.

We're looking at the value of a property extruded.

So these purple mountains are the most valuable properties in the city in terms of value per acre.

You can see park place, uh, the park place condos at Westgate Circle are kind of going off the chart here, and then downtown uh represents the highest otherwise.

Yes.

Should note that parklaus condos is the number one revenue generator in all of Annerondal County.

Not surprised.

Um and then you can see Annapolis in the context of the county.

Uh you can see, you know, this um you're not seeing my cursor, but there's a the purple uh extrusions outside of the city or parole, and uh you know, they they compare Annapolis to the county using something called a um a um uh um productivity ratio, and based on the land that we occupy, we generate 4.5 times more than the county's productivity ratio.

So that's really important.

Um, and when you look at downtown in comparison to the county, that's 22 times more productive than other places in the county.

Um when Urban 3 did their final works uh presentation City Council back in June of 2024, it was probably the most engrossing presentation I've seen because they were kind of giving us the data to say, hey, um Annapolis generates a tremendous amount of value for the county and for the state.

Um we have a lot of tax exempt properties in the city.

We get you know, we get payments in Liu uh from the state, I think from the county.

This gives us something to sort of ground that to.

Are we getting uh an equitable amount for the value that we provide?

Um when you look at the actual properties here, um, it's striking.

Uh you know, small properties near the city dock, like the Dock Street Bar and Grill, 63 million dollars per acre.

Uh, the Dean Street condos in Murray Hill, $54 million per acre, and the waterfront hotel 25 million per acre.

Um, and then you kind of expand the the view and you can kind of get another set of just examples of both uh properties that generate a lot of tax revenue and ones that don't per acre.

Um, and we're gonna get into that pattern here.

So they look at land use types again, you know, starting with your Walmart type.

We don't have a Walmart in Annapolis, we have things that are close to that, but this is sort of their baseline.

1.1 million per acre for the Walmart closest to here, which I think is uh Crofton Severn and Bowie.

Seven buoy, okay.

Um so think about that 1.1 million per acre, and then we're gonna go into residential land use types, starting with single family detached houses, um variety of those in the city, they average out at about 1.8 million per acre.

So um just a little bit more than a Walmart.

Um starting to go up in scale and density a little bit, these um multifamily residential variety of them, triplex, um uh small town uh um duplexes uh and some multi-story multi uh multifamily, just a range, but 2.5 million per acre for generally multi-family apartment or condo buildings across uh variety of types, and then you look at townhouses, and this is on average 4.2 million per acre.

Um so you can see the kind of efficiencies that you gain, and then you're just parkplace uh 127 million per acre.

Um but this is just in summary, the townhomes are a efficient and valuable type of development for the type of land pattern that we have here.

And there are quite a few of those going back a few centuries.

Um, if you look at neighborhood scale uh analysis, heritage neighborhood here compared to Hunt Meadow, compared to the Clay Street old fourth ward community.

Um this really surprised people to see that the value per acre of the Clay Street community was um greater than uh Hunt Meadow or Heritage, and it just goes to the sort of development pattern, it's denser.

Um it is closer to downtown, but um they there are uh takeaways from this in the type of development and the the um as you'll see later, Eric Eric?

Yeah.

Can I ask you to back on the three picture slide?

The the value per acre.

Um can you dive into what that means a little bit more?

Yeah, it's basically it's basically you um creating a metric that is um is placing value on the size of a property uh on on its um percent of acreage.

So think about it this way.

Um a property that is you have two properties, they're each one acre.

One is valued at a lot more than the other, um, as a higher value per acre.

It's trying to come up with a um it's trying to come up with a baseline to compare properties across the city, they're all varying amounts of acreage.

So if you if you they this is the actually the best example.

Yeah, it is trying to normalize it.

Um they use their the firm is based in Asheville, so they use the Biltmore estate, which is the most expensive residence in the country.

It's valued at like 180 million dollars.

It's on an enormous piece of land.

When you actually look at the value per acre, um it's significantly less valuable than other properties because it's just spread out over a really large site.

That that 180 million dollars is spread out over, I mean, hundreds of acres, right?

So um it gets kind of diluted across, whereas with smaller sites, you sort of this concentrated value on a smaller piece of property, and so it gives you a kind of um productivity of that property that you could compare.

Um is that making it Paul and Shannon?

Do you want to you can kind of think of it where even if you have one larger property that is hypothetically as an individual unit generating more property tax, these smaller, denser units are generating more as a collective, and because they are closer together in a standardized measurement format, the acre, we can get more revenue for the city through that standardized measurement format?

In a way, it's also like thinking like the unit, if you don't mind when you go grocery shopping.

Because with what we're talking about here, one we gotta make sure it's in order, but also a heritage neighborhood, of course, it's in Ward 3.

Um, how do we on top of the question that was just asked ensure that there's neighborhood integrity or we're just keep it to the characteristics and the the families or my neighbors here who concern that hey, you know, we paid for this family home and we want to keep our property.

How do we balance that as well as meeting the needs of our aging infrastructure and needing more money uh to be able to put toward that?

Um so where where can we get the balance from if that because what it sounds like is we're gonna ask our families in their perspective to sacrifice what they put their money into.

Um so how do we balance that need alongside what I just mentioned?

Well, in theory, you know, property taxes are based on the assessed value of a property, right?

And that is supposed to pay for the services that you know are rendered to that property, the the utilities, the um school, the police, you know, all of the all the things that um come with uh living in a certain place, but as the analysis proved later, those taxes can't keep up with the types of services.

The reason why we're doing this is to understand like are there development types or patterns that um have a greater return, you know, can allow the city to provide better service because we have higher revenue.

Can I can I jump in on that point?

I think the other thing to keep in mind is that part of the question that's in front of us as a result of this is what are the next things that the city should prioritize doing.

And I think it's um in some ways, I think part of the concern that gets raised is you're gonna change my home.

I'm being asked to change my home.

And I'm not sure that's really necessarily the thing that's on the table in front of us right now.

I think the you know, part of what the comprehensive plan does is it identifies some opportunity zones within the city of places that could be redeveloped and and things like that.

And as we're looking at that effort, what are the things that we might want to try to incentivize there?

Not necessarily on every single property in the city, but in these opportunity areas.

What should we be?

That's right.

What should we be looking at?

That's right.

That's a thanks for clarifying that.

That's that's and I that may have been what you were getting at.

This is not about saying we're gonna completely reimagine these established neighborhoods, it's about saying when we do have the opportunities to develop in other parts of the city, we have a lot of aging shopping centers, for example, that might get redeveloped at some point.

Well, what gets built there in the future?

There are lessons to be learned from this analysis that can help us say, hey, uh maybe we shouldn't build you know, this um very suburban neighborhood here that has super wide streets, and you know, maybe we should be, yeah, maybe we should be more strategic about how we use that land and what type of housing is not being built today in Annapolis.

Should we be encouraging that type of development, or you know, what types of households can't afford to live here?

Because so that's that's kind of more it's about you know forward thinking.

Absolutely.

And but when we look at that map, a lot of the of the impact will happen in ward three.

And so when I think of the families that I've spoken with, particularly not just in the heritage community, but the surrounding areas, and they question, okay, well, can the priority be in my industrial part of the ward versus uh these family residential uh homes?

Um, and they concern or worry that um across the street, someone will buy that property and be able to develop in this mixed-use um you know change or alteration that we're going into, uh which I'm definitely not opposed to.

I mean, that's not what I've speaking about, and more so speaking about the protections of those families who concern about that in their neighborhood.

Um, because yes, the understanding is it's going to be prioritized in specific parts of the city.

And so when you see that a majority will not no longer doesn't have to be here downtown because we we see it all around us, but um in those um areas like ward three and maybe a little bit of of um ward four, I saw a little bit there, um, even maybe ward six um and definitely uh ward eight a little and even ward five.

I mean we talk about the outside the outskirts of the areas.

Um there are families that they want to protect that area um from developers who may come in, and so how do we do that?

Yeah, that's that's um specifically a zoning discussion, and I'll put a plug-in for this work session that we're gonna have on February 19th with the full council, um, where we're gonna show you how we are starting to look at improving our zoning across the city, and because that is um exactly what dictates what gets built, what can get built, how you know, and um there are things many things we can do to improve that and um provide some confidence to folks that you know that their neighborhood uh they like is going to stay that way.

And so um I have some slides towards the end that get it like how we're looking at that.

But ultimately, please.

Yeah, I'm so stuck on my question.

Um so back on that three slide before that, I and I'm not debating it, yeah.

I'm just trying to understand it.

The average or the average value per acre is so I get that we're trying to come value compare.

But I I'm trying to get my arms around 1.2 in heritage and two on clay street.

I'm I just trying to get my so is it because it's more dense on Clay Street?

Yeah, that's exactly that's exactly it.

There's a lot more space around the houses in Heritage or in Hunt Meadow, which dilutes their value, you know, in terms of taxable.

It may seem like they're assessed high amounts.

When you look at it for the size, like uh half acre property in Hunt Meadow is assessed at a certain value in comparison to a property on Clay Street that's you know less than a quarter of an acre or you know, an eighth of an acre or something, you know, it's when you actually look at it the amount of space that that property takes out, or the the um building more than anything, really.

So this goes to Alderman Shannemeyer's point from an average value per acre, what this is pointing out is that park place when you have mixed use commercial there, uh as well as I don't know, six stories high residential, it's a lot more like Clay Street than it is heritage or hunt meadow.

Yes, exactly.

That's that's the really the point.

It's the density, and you know, I think this is about finding what is appropriate for now.

There's like some incredibly um uh there's some great examples of historic types of structures in the city that have like what I call the gentle density, you know, like in East in your ward, um, or in Ward 3, you know, I mean every ward has some examples of this built at different periods, but they don't all have they don't all have to be park place, you know.

Right.

Um but just um something other than a single family detached house.

But right, yeah, and I think one of the things that was interesting about the results of this study the sort of the next uh logical thought is that density always pays, but that is not in fact what this study necessarily found was that there was sort of a sweet spot.

Yeah, like that this um oops.

This is sort of like I mean, not you know, not every apartment building like that in the middle, that multifamily is going to have the same sort of return as just a townhouse development.

And that's partly because these townhouses, many of these townhouses are getting much bigger in scale, right?

They're not just little row houses anymore, but um, but they take up less, they don't take up a lot of space.

So it there's a there is a sweet spot there.

Um let me keep moving here.

Please when you look at commercial properties, you know, you start with the big box stores averaging uh you know that 1.1 million um these are all examples in Annapolis, giant food, safe way, coals.

Um, and then you start to look at the sort of more neighborhood scale um commercial.

This is all Westernapolis, but you know, we're in the between 2.2 million and 17 million for the newest property.

That bean rush is 6.5 million per acre.

Um and then downtown, it just gets astronomical.

Um, you know, for lots of other reasons.

I mean, it's a historic district, it's close to the water, it's um gets a lot of tourism, but the the numbers are 28 million per acre, 47 million per acre, 63 million dollars per acre.

Um and what this analysis also looked at was just the fact that our oldest buildings retain that value.

Now, again, these are all in downtown, which has these um added values, but building like this on Maryland Avenue from 1800, 28 million per acre, right next to City Hall here, set from 1704, 26 million dollars per acre of bed and breakfast, um not far from here from 1680, um 5.6 million per acre.

And so when you look at these very early buildings in the city, the amount of land that they consume and the value they generate in comparison to a Walmart, there's some real um impressive takeaways in terms of just being more efficient, and the way we built the city in our earliest days, um, there are some great lessons to be learned from that.

Um you could also see um taxes, you know, so it's not just the acreage consumed, but yeah, it's the value per acre in the city taxes per acre.

Um so this is another way of looking at it.

The three, you know, there's residential, commercial, and mixed use on the left side there, and then the density types for each type of land use from low density to high density.

You can kind of see it high density doesn't necessarily mean super high density.

It can be kind of a medium density, something that's appropriate for Annapolis.

Um another way of looking at it, where you know, you just location matters in many cases, but there's just the the type of density, the type of uh the way the land is utilized for these developments matters even more.

Um the study also looked at parking because parking takes up a lot of space in the city.

Um you can see here what they're calling other land is essentially green space, uh space around buildings, forested areas, so that's five square miles of the city is that other land.

Buildings take up almost one square mile when you add them all up, parking is 0.7 square miles when you add that all up in red, and then roadways 0.7 square miles.

There appears to be a lot more red in Eastport than is reality.

You know, it's funny, uh it's all of the that stuff on Spa Creek there, yeah.

Um, but then when you look at the value, the value that's generated by that park is not so much in comparison to the space that it takes up.

Uh, whereas buildings take up a pretty small portion of the city in total, and they generate 4.2 billion dollars.

Um roads are uh uh negative, we we maintain those, and that's a theme in in the study as well.

All of the infrastructure that we maintain, it doesn't generate value per se.

Um and so when you look at that um average uh average amount of space per person based on our population of around 40,000 people, it's about 29% of the city for each person uh based on the parking, and then the value uh is just another way of looking at um how out of sort of out of whack the the parking versus building and uh the amount of space it takes up.

Um this is really um this is where it kind of makes for the most compelling um argument for kind of how we've evolved as a city and and why this matters more than ever right now.

When you look at how the city started with our original the original core of the city was where we are today, 1700, you know, from before 1700 to 1800, we expanded out between 1800 and 1920.

On the bottom, you can see how our population density is is going um going up.

And then it kind of flatlines a bit as we expand a bit more between 1920 and 1950.

And then clarity is this annexation for people to know.

Yes, okay.

Yeah, this was through annexation, and so you know, this is the big one in 1951, where we uh Annapolis annexed uh Eastport, Westernnapolis, parole portions along Forest Drive.

You could see how the population dipped in that bottom chart because we this was farmland, you know, there wasn't any development in a lot of these areas.

Um then as we've picked up additional parcels and we've developed some of this annexed land, the population density is starting to go up again until today where it really the the funny thing is we were at the same population density we were in 1855, but we're like 10 times more space.

So we lived in a much denser way in 1855.

Um, and as we've spread out, we've um we've just you know kind of taken on a very low density development pattern.

And so you can see the roadway network over those annexation periods, um, and and how we kind of got away from the pattern of streets that are in downtown to this more suburban pattern in a lot of places during the 1951 to today period.

Um so they share this slide because um we've built roads.

This is a you know commercial for um diamonds uh that they've um turned into this ad for roads, but the basic meaning is we've built a lot of roadways over the city's history, and we have to take care of those roads.

You know, we we rarely take out roadways, and so it adds to the city's uh responsibilities.

Um today, when you count up lane miles in the city of our small eight square mile city, we have enough lane miles to get to Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Um maybe we have fewer road lane miles than other places, but it's a lot to maintain.

Um I s I'm skipping over quite a bit of analysis.

They they then went into analysis to show how we could get some sense of what we pay to service each property in the city based on where they're located, the development pattern.

They have a model that they use to basically say, well, how much does it cost to service each property in the city?

And they end up with this graphic which shows everything in black is an extrusion of its value in in a positive, whereas everything in red is negative, meaning it's not generating enough value to pay for the cost of servicing that property.

Um so you can see the theme here is that essentially everything built before 1951 is very much net positive, whereas the majority of what was built after 1951 is net negative.

Um the theme, when you look at those pre-1951 places, they had a greater range of housing types.

This is a graphic we use over and over again.

It's become popular to explain the the range of housing that sustainable cities have, and Annapolis has, but we're just not building that range of housing anymore.

Um but the places in 1951 did have that full range, that full spectrum.

In the comp plan, we showed a whole range of examples of these types of missing middle housing types that already exist here from all different periods, some almost current that were built.

But most of this housing is not legal today.

It's not allowed by our zoning code.

And it's the kind of housing that's given the city definition and character.

So we ultimately want to make Annapolis more Annapolis.

We want to understand the types of buildings and structures that define the city over time and make sure a zoning code can support those.

Today, everything in yellow on this map, this was another graphic from the comprehensive plan.

Everything in yellow is a is an area that's zoned for residential use only, but does not allow for just a basic duplex, uh which is either apartments, one apartment on top of another, or one apartment, one house next to one another.

There's lots of those in the city today, lots and lots that were built in prior decades.

Um and then everything in red is uh everything zoned for commercial use that does also not also does not allow for a basic duplex.

So can't help but think that we're shooting ourselves in the foot by not allowing for some of these types of housing that um could add value to the city, address our housing needs, and are completely consistent with development patterns of the city uh historically.

And then we look at equity issues.

We map social vulnerability in the comprehensive plan using uh metrics from the centers for disease control, everything in darker blue represent higher social vulnerability.

A lot of that is socioeconomic factors.

You can see that kind of arc along the forest drive corridor, and then the area closer to uh downtown is the Clay Street community.

Um you look nationally, a lot of these more socially vulnerable communities predominate in the south.

Um there's a there's a strong correlation between social vulnerability and and race in the city.

Um you can see in the map on the left, the multicolored dots represent different um racial households, uh black, Hispanic, Asian, whereas everything in light blue represents a white, predominantly white household.

Um, you can see the direct correlation there between social vulnerability and race.

Um then transportation has an impact on development pattern to be sure, and it has an opportunity to help us address a variety of problems beyond just getting around.

Um this was a quote from the comprehensive plan that we used, um, talking about transportation as something that can help us address public health and economic development and environmental goals.

Um, and you look at our roadway network and where the crashes are most prominent, you can see along our major corridors, Forest Drive, West Street, and then um some hotspot intersections like at Rao Boulevard and Taylor.

Um, you correlate all of those things, you see a strong correlation between social vulnerability, race, and um vehicle crashes in the city.

I'm showing you this just because when we talk about development patterns, these are also the places where we've had this kind of suburban expansion of the city, which um you know it in some ways has um affected quality of life and and public health when you look at these kinds of statistics.

So I'm just gonna close by saying this is something I'm gonna share in much greater depth on February 19th, but to try to address some of these patterns and see how our zoning regulations can help us to develop more efficiently and strategically.

We came up with this initiative called zoning unlocked, clear code for a thriving in Neapolis.

We recognize that over time the zoning map and the zoning regulations have gotten to a point where they're almost too complex for most people to understand as opportunities to make them more intuitive, address city goals, and provide greater consistency with the future land use map that's in the comprehensive plan.

And so that's what's on the left here, which really just breaks down the city into where makes where does it make most sense to have residential use, green space, mixed use development, institutional uses, maritime uses.

We have about six or six to eight categories of land use.

On the right is our zoning map.

There's very little correlation between these two things.

Over time, the zoning map has just gotten to a point where it doesn't really represent any sort of vision anymore.

Um today it's 32 different zoning districts.

It also includes an open space zone that's not even on the map, but we realized recently, and that's part of our work, um, putting that to use.

Um I show this example from Charlottesville, which did a rezoning in the last couple years, right after they finished their comprehensive plan, and they were able to redesign their zoning map so it actually reflects their future land use map um in a pretty clear way.

That's ultimately we want to get to.

Um we have four phases of our zoning unlocked project.

We're in phase two right now.

That's what we're gonna focus on in our work session.

We completed phase one, which led to this Tyler Avenue complete community overlay district, and this was essentially putting into practice what this Urban Three study talks about.

We met with community members on Tyler Avenue multiple times and really found like a sweet spot that the type of housing that would not take away from the character of what's there today, but could better utilize the sizable amount of land that's there that's not developed yet.

We wanted to make sure that as that land gets developed, we're more strategic about it.

And so, just this is one image that from actually a different project, but we found that it resonated for the kind of character that we're trying to create uh along Tyler Avenue.

And um, you know, just uh one basic example is we found a lot of people wanted to see more small single family homes.

And there's some good examples there today on Tyler Avenue, but you can't build those anymore.

Um, they don't make any economic sense.

And so there's a you need a very large lot to build any new house based on our zoning code.

So we change with this Tyler Avenue overlay zone.

We said if you have a lot that's half the size of what you need today, then you can build this smaller single family house, and that hopefully will open up some new opportunities.

Um, we're trying to eliminate some of the zones on this map that are either out of date, inconsistent with a comprehensive plan, redundant, or community supported opportunities, so that we can have a map that doesn't include so many zones.

And we have a website for this project, zoning unlocked, that's um we keep up to date.

I know I went well over um, but thanks for your patience and stick around if you know we're supposed to we don't really have an end per say eight o'clock.

Um you want to go first, uh ultimate channel.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh Mr.

Thank you again for presenting this.

I always love this presentation.

Um I do encourage my colleagues to go onto the city website and watch the video if you have a fun two and a half hours to kill.

Uh it's fun to have on in the background, but one thing that was not covered tonight that I do think is very much worth stressing is the city does have what I'll call for lack of a better term, an infrastructure funding deficit.

The study broke down what we currently spend on infrastructure maintenance and what we need to be spending in order to actually have our roads, our sidewalks, our water, our sewer systems at what people would call an adequate level.

And the current deficit is 23.4 million dollars a year.

And why that does not show up in our budget is we defer maintenance.

The other very relevant thing in the larger presentation, and why I really do think that you should watch the entire video, is it shows the infrastructure built around that growth pattern.

Um a lot of that land that was annexed in the 1950s, infrastructure was built for it, waterway, water, sewer, massive roads, sidewalks was built for it in the 70s.

And the useful lifespan for those roadways, those water systems, those sewer systems, and those sidewalks is hitting around 2030.

Meaning around 2030, which is when a lot of us will still be on this council, maybe all of us.

We're going to either have to defer maintenance and see sidewalks crumble even further, sewer lines and water lines break even more than we are currently seeing in the Forest Drive area.

Well either or raise taxes a significant amount, or follow along with some of the land use decisions that the study recommends for us.

These are our three options.

Watch our infrastructure fail, raise taxes to an incredibly high amount.

I believe in the original study he told us a number that I cannot remember off the top of my head, but uh let's just say it will dash your chances of re-election, or follow the land use decisions recommendations.

Yeah, it I should have mentioned early on, but you know, I mean think you all know that there's this typical binary um uh decision that you make as elected officials in terms of how to fund things, you know, it's you raise taxes, which nobody wants to do, or you take money from other things to pay for something that's more important.

I think what this is trying to say is there are ways to generate additional money.

Um now it's not gonna happen overnight, but we're it's about trying to put in place the mechanism that would allow us to generate more revenue.

But um, yes, Otterman Thorpe, please.

This question, this might not be the right venue for this question, but um when on zoning consolidation, can you tell me where your head is on changing the maritime zones?

We're not touching the maritime zones.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah.

It's really uh that focus, and I'll again I'll go into it in February 19th.

The the priority the the low-hanging fruit are there's a range of zones that were created over the last um 30 years that were very specific nuances of other zones that seem to have outlived their original intent to the point where um they're not achieving anything else at this point.

So I presume you're also not talking about messing with R2NC.

No, no.

That's that's not a priority either.

Thank you.

Sure.

But you said you're gonna come back for a work session, so I don't let's not ask.

I have so many questions we should wait till that work session.

So we can't do that.

That work session is gonna focus focus exclusively on this zoning unlocked initiative.

So will you have the ability or are you able to, because of course you have the ability to send us um that map online?

Is there a detail of what each residential district means because this map isn't extremely helpful for the average person, you know, for accessibility of that detail.

So is there a way you can maybe combine them or you know provide it try to provide us links to which two to use at the same time or what have you?

Yeah, um that's a good point.

You know, we well the city does have a interactive zoning map where you can click on a property and it tells, but it doesn't necessarily tell you like and it's because it's not an easy answer.

What what you could do on that property in an R1 zone or an R2 zone.

Um but I think what our office could probably do uh would be kind of uh related to what we're already doing is come up with some just simple definition.

Every zone does have a purpose statement.

I should say that.

And that's the best place to understand what is the intent of that zoning district.

Th the purpose statement is usually just one sentence.

Um that actually we could talk with our GIS folks and see if they could just add that purpose statement, maybe so that when you're browsing through the the map, you know.

Purpose statement and whatever else you can provide, whatever's not too taxing on you all.

Of course, we need that tax money though.

I um I believe that's the wrap up here.

I know we're kind of almost eight thirty.

If there's no more um questions or thoughts or concerns, we just really appreciate the time and the information.

I also love hearing about this.

That's about the future um of our people.

And so okay, well, you have a great rest of your night.

If you don't mind, just thank you.

You know, send that over to us.

We appreciate everything.

Um as we look at this agenda, we have reached the end.

The end.

Uh is there any other um questions or comments though for the as we say good of the order?

Okay, well, I will say um for one of our future meetings.

Um it'll be great if we can invite the Maryland State Board of Education, Mayland State Board of Elections and or the Anorona County Board of Elections as we begin to talk about some of the shifts that we're gonna make, not only for our board, that's you know, a conversation we already had, but more so um shifting the way that our elections will be run in the city.

So I want to make sure that that's on uh record.

We want to invite those uh persons, if not both one or the other.

Okay.

So is there a motion to adjourn this meeting?

So moved.

All right, thank you.

Uh we have adjourned this meeting.

All in favor, we know what it is.

826 P.M.

Thank you.