Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Charles County Board of Commissioners held a regular session on September 22, 2026. Commissioners present were Bowling, Coates, Patterson, and Collins; Commissioner Stewart was absent during roll call but later joined to announce the evening town hall. The meeting covered traffic safety at the intersection of St. Charles Parkway and St. David Drive, direction on the Affordable Housing Pilot Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for FY2027, and a work session on Proposed Bill 2026-08 establishing a rental licensing program.
Staff from the Department of Planning and Growth Management and the Traffic Safety Committee presented an update on the intersection near Thornton Elementary School. The traffic signal is expected to be installed and operational in early October 2026. Interim measures included digital signage, a speed trailer, and communication efforts recommending right turns out of a neighborhood. Staff proposed designating a school zone on St. Charles Parkway with a speed reduction from 50 mph to 40 mph during school hours. Commissioner Coates expressed concern that the speed reduction should be constant rather than time-limited, citing after-school activities, and recommended adding a 'school turn' sign. The board voted unanimously to approve the school zone designation as presented.
Staff requested direction on whether to pursue another pilot round of funding, what housing types to target, and the length of the pilot term. Staff recommended not narrowing the scope but using a scoring tool to prioritize projects. Commissioner Coates expressed support for another round, targeting multifamily housing, and a 20-year term. Discussion focused on the 'missing middle' income gap, with Commissioner Coates emphasizing the need to ensure teachers, police, and firefighters can qualify under the program’s Area Median Income (AMI) thresholds. Staff noted that coordinating with the state Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LITEC) program is essential and that projects typically include a range of affordability. The board reached consensus to move forward with another NOFA round, keep eligibility broad, and set a 20-year term. Next steps include finalizing the NOFA and issuing a press release.
Staff presented revisions to the proposed legislation based on prior board feedback. Key changes include: exempting incorporated municipalities (La Plata and Indian Head), including two inspections per unit in the license fee, honoring prior code modifications, adopting state air conditioning language, removing ambient radon testing, and striking the requirement to publish license numbers in rental listings. Commissioner Coates raised concerns about unintended consequences, such as conflicts with community services outreach and potential displacement of tenants in substandard units. Commissioner Bowling expressed major concerns about the public disclosure of rental registry data under the Maryland Public Information Act, calling it a potential 'fishing expedition.' The board voted 4-1 (Commissioner Bowling opposed) to introduce the bill as presented. A subsequent motion to schedule a public hearing for October 20, 2026, at 6 p.m. in hybrid format passed 4-1, with Commissioner Bowling again opposed.
Commissioner Stewart announced that the quarterly town hall meeting would be held that evening (September 22, 2026) at 6 p.m. at Waldorf West Library, in-person only.
Good afternoon, Commissioners. We're going to begin this portion of session with the roll call. Commissioner Bowling. Present. Commissioner Coates. Commissioner Stewart is absent. Commissioner Patterson. Present. And Commissioner Collins. Here. Thank you. Commissioners, the next item. We do not have any additional approval items. So we'll move to your afternoon briefings. And the first briefing is an update and request for approval on the current status traffic safety at intersection St. Charles Parkway and St. David Drive. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Can you hear me? Yep. Yep. Excellent. I apologize. I had some delays getting uh back to the building this afternoon. So I'm doing this uh in a form of improvisation. Um our crew is there and ready to uh give a full report on the traffic signal and the intersection issues that uh we've covered uh with many of you over the last several months, but we wanted to give you and the public an update on the Thornton Elementary School uh traffic pattern and uh what's to come. Uh as you may know, uh the school's been open for about a year now. And through the course of that year, we had been working with uh the developer in the area to build the traffic signal at that location. Several challenges we've run into by essentially nobody's fault, uh some complications and so on. Uh, but as you've probably seen, if you've driven through the area recently, uh there's been significant progress. But in the meantime, until that happens, uh our folks are gonna go through uh a lot of the efforts that uh they've done with the traffic safety committee uh and other partners uh to make some interim uh awareness and uh make sure that we keep everybody safe. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to uh Marcus and have the team introduce themselves. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Uh Marcus Tariemmo, uh planner two with the Charles County Department of Planning and Growth Management. And I'm Kathy Thompson, Deputy Director for the Department of Planning and Growth Management. And um I'm gonna turn it over to Mark Marcus in just a moment, but I did want to recognize both his work on this issue as well as the traffic safety committee. Uh and just call out that we do have, as you know, commissioners, a traffic safety committee that gets together to deliberate on various uh traffic issues throughout the county, and it's a really diverse group that provide different areas of technical expertise to really tackle some um interesting and sometimes intricate challenges. So uh Marcus is the chairman of that work group, but we also rely on a lot of critical feedback from the Department of Public Roads, um, Department of Public Works Roads, as well as in this case, the Charles County Um School Board, Charles County Sheriff's Office. So this is just an example of some of the work that the Traffic Safety Committee does and the results of some of that. And and I too, before you begin, if you don't mind, Commissioners, I just want to say thank you to Kathy and Marcus who had it. I think you've had like two emergency traffic safety committee meetings, if I'm not um mistaken at you know my direction and pushing. So I just want to say thank you for that.