On May 21, 2026, the Carroll County Board of Commissioners met in open session at the Carroll County Office Building, Room 311. The morning session began at 9:00 a.m. and the afternoon work session at 1:00 p.m. The agenda covered the FY27 budget adoption, a self-service storage deferral discussion, a Board of Health briefing, the Water Resources Element, spending/contract approvals, and an afternoon work session on road design and traffic impact studies. No minutes were provided; morning items are summarized from the agenda and staff briefing papers, while the available transcript covers the afternoon work session.
No public comment testimony was included in the transcript. The agenda indicated public comment was permitted for Items 2–8; Item 1 had no public comment.
Bryan Bokey (Public Works), Doug Brown, Christopher Heyn (Planning and Land Management), and Fire Chief Michael Robinson presented an overview of road design, development review, fire/EMS access, and traffic impact studies.
No formal votes on the morning agenda items were recorded in the provided materials. In the transcribed portion, staff indicated they are continuing revisions to the design manual and developing recommended text amendments on site-plan road design, verges, and related standards for Board consideration. The only formal action captured in the transcript was a motion to adjourn, which was seconded and passed unanimously.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the afternoon work session on road design and traffic impact studies for the Board of Carroll County Commissioners. It is the afternoon of May twenty first, two thousand twenty-six. And so what I'd like to suggest is to kick things over to Chris and everybody to run us through this presentation, and after that, we'll ask questions and get into the uh the discussion. Chris or Brian or whoever is going to lead us off. We'll do good afternoon, Commissioners. Uh, Brian Boki, Director of Public Works. I'm joined here today with uh deputy director, Doug Brown, uh, director of planning land management, Chris Hein, and Fire Chief Michael Robinson. So we're gonna sort of step you through an average road design, what goes into it, what factors we look at, how does Fire EMS touch it, how does planning touch it, um, how does engineering and you know, we we review these these things. Um, and then at the very end, we'll just touch on traffic impact studies. Um, I as I mentioned, I'm going to be touching on a couple key topics here. Um, I I want you to think of these as more of an umbrella as opposed to this step and this step and this step and this step. So all these things need to get considered as as you're walking through the design of a roadway. Um I think it's important to know a lot of our roadways come from subdivisions. So, you know, as as a project goes through development review process with Christian shop, we will be looking at the road the entire time to make sure it's built to our standards to build it to our specifications and the way we want to see it based on our design manual. Um, and then those roads eventually get handed over to us. So you know, we're not in the business of building new roads typically. Um, so we do work closely with the development community and the engineers to determine the road width. Um, so you know, we're gonna we're gonna talk about roadwidth. I think that's kind of where this all started. Um, but I we're we're also going to take a deep dive into fire EMS and what some of their needs are. As I mentioned, Chris Hines uh shop, uh planning land management, how they roll up into this, and then traffic impact studies that you know have a large impact every time we put a new road and introduce new vehicles to the system here. So just kind of setting the stage a little more. Um, you know, this is a very high level on the different types of roads. Um so there's arterial roads. Um I like to think of these as the ones that move traffic from from A to B. Uh collectors, they're the ones that connect neighborhoods, and this is where we start getting into some of the county roads. Um, but I would say I don't know the percentage, but probably 99, 99% of our roads that we maintain are local roads. Um, these are the ones that serve the homes, um, serve the community, get folks to school, get folks to church. Um so kind of keep that in mind as I throw out some of these terms because each each one of these road types has different standards based around it, and how wide should it be and what's the right of way, and um is it marked or not? So um I you I frequently hear um everything here is a balancing act, um, and and road design isn't any different. Um we're we're constantly trying to manage um safety, access for neighborhoods, uh, costs of the road, and how it fits in with the community. Um, you know, there you drive around the county, there's you know, all different road types, all different subdivision, all different neighborhoods, build at different times, and everyone has its own little flavor, um, which is why I like Carroll County, you know, uh, not to go too far off topic to Columbia, you know, it's some of those cookie cutter neighborhoods, it's it it gets a little mundane for me. So being here is challenging. It's it's good to see how things develop. It's good to learn some of the history on why this road is 20 feet and this road is 40, 50 feet. So definitely a balancing act between public safety, emergency response, um, right sizing the road for the neighborhood, that that that look and feel that that folks like um walking their kids down the street, riding bikes, pushing strollers. Um how parking comes into play. You know, we won't touch on um parking requirements. Are are people parking in their driveway? Are they parking in the street? Are they taking up too much room for for a fire engine to get by? Um and also kind of just going through the review process and and how we look at this. So you know, I've I've heard a couple comments made that you know all roads should be 20 feet, 30 feet, 35 feet. There's really no standard. It's all case-dependent, it's all how many cars are traveling, um, it's all how many trips, it's all who's who's using what type of vehicles. So again, I'll just kind of end this slide with it. It is a balancing act, and and we do do a very good job as these projects come down the pipeline between Chris's group and my engineering group. So, some of the biggest drivers for road width. Number one is always safety. Um, whether it's fire EMS access, um, site distance, turning movements, pedestrian crossing, we're always concerned with safety number one.