Oh, and uh, as we tend to do with our own concessions, uh, we'd like to start with a pledge of allegiance on a moment of signs.

Yeah.

You want to start?

Sure.

Daphne Daly, I'm the deputy director for the Department of Planning and Land Management and leading the master plan update process with the Planning and Zoning Commission.

I'm Chris Hein, Director of Planning and Land Management for the County.

Deb Effingham, Deputy County Administrator.

Jovigliani, one of the county commissioners.

Kenny Kyler, County Commissioner.

Tom Gordon County Commissioner.

Mike Garrin County Commissioner.

Roberta Wyndham, County Administrator.

Mattho, Planning Board.

Ralph Robertson Planning Coming.

And we have the chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission, Janice Kirchner will be joining us shortly.

All right.

So we have the joint work session here with the Board of County Commissioners and the Planning and Zoning Commission on the Master Plan update to kind of just check in on where we are with things.

We've spent just over a year, almost a year and a half, laying the groundwork for the update for our county master plan, which was last adopted in 2014.

And we're required to update that every 10 years.

So we began that process at the beginning of 2024.

And we've been doing a lot of good work.

Hopefully you all have been getting a lot of the materials that we've shared.

I know I've been in front of the Board of County Commissioners several times with some updates.

And of course, the Planning and Zoning Commission has been doing the lion's share of digging into all the information to kind of say where do we need to uh go with this master plan update so that the next 10 years in Carroll County can uh can be what we want them to be.

So I'm going to um give you just a little bit of um some highlights on uh mostly some of the conversations that have occurred and observations that we've made.

I know I've shared a lot of updates on feedback from public outreach and that sort of thing in the interest of time.

I'm not gonna rehash that, but I do want to take just a few minutes to kind of remind everybody of uh what we've accomplished um over the last um year, year and a half, and um some of the things that have come out of that.

So accomplishments to date.

Um we had several sessions, work sessions with the Board of County Commissioners Planning and Zoning Commission to identify the big ideas that needed to be incorporated and reflected in the master plan.

We refined those into our driving ideas, and we tested those in an open community survey just to see if everybody uh was thinking the same things.

Um we also gathered and presented a whole lot of data on who we are as a county, where we've been and where we might be heading.

Um we shared this in a series of open houses back in February and early March and got uh the public's reactions and feedback in person and online to some of that information.

We've also been uh connecting with youth on um what their perspectives of uh the county and and where it should be headed are, and I'll share some of those um some of that feedback as well.

We've examined trends that could affect who we want to be, and then most recently dug into specific topics of agriculture, economy, and housing with three separate work groups.

Um as a reminder, these driving ideas, the big concepts that uh that came out of those initial work sessions included um housing options for households of all kinds, an economy that supports the community, a commitment to rural Carroll County, infrastructure that meets the needs of tomorrow, and working together to plan the future.

And there are some there's a lot within each of those.

Um but those are the main driving ideas.

I'm not gonna go through all of these, but just so that you uh get a sense of how many work sessions and some of the topics that the planning and zoning commission um has been covering.

It's a lot.

We've covered everything from um demographics and land use to uh a presentation on growth tiers or moderately priced dwelling units.

One thing I want to highlight is that the municipal planning presentations have been rolling through for I don't know, the last eight or nine months.

We've had all but one of our municipalities present to the Planning and Zoning Commission so that we can get a sense of what their plans are because collaboration with our municipalities has been a really big point of discussion during our during our work sessions and with the public in the open houses.

Speaking of the public, you all should have a copy of our assessment phase feedback summary.

I presented this over the summer.

So I'm not going to go into detail on all of the feedback that we've gotten from the public at this point, but I just again wanted to show how much work has been done in this area.

We've had surveys, we've we've been at public events over the summer.

We went to several farmers markets to kind of connect with the community, share information about the master plan.

We launched a dedicated website last fall.

We've made regular social media pushes and communicated with folks via email who signed up to get updates on the master plan.

As I mentioned, we had five open houses over the late winter, early spring that were attended by over 200 people.

And then we've been doing some additional outreach with youth, and we had our first Citizens Planning Academy as a way to help educate folks about planning in the county.

The youth input has been something that we have not reported on yet.

So I just wanted to share a little snippet of it.

It's been really exciting to get the perspective of teenagers on what they want to see in their communities.

We have talked in a number of meetings about the fact that we want to make sure Kierrell County is a place where our young people feel comfortable and want to stay and return to if they if they move away for a time.

So we're trying to get some of that feedback.

We do this, we set up an exercise where we've got a survey that we ask the kids to take part in, and then we also have them redesign the town mall property as a way of getting some sense of what they'd be looking for, what kinds of spaces and activities are exciting to them.

We did this with the Westminster Boys and Girls Club in April and with the Student Government Association in May.

Spaces where they can gather that are safe, inclusive, and promote social interaction, modern amenities and diverse retail green spaces and sustainable environments, as well as opportunities for learning, creativity, and connection.

So we'll provide a little bit more on that feedback and some more visuals, but that's been a real highlight of some of our work so far, and I hope that we can incorporate these into our recommendations ultimately.