Good evening and welcome to the mayor and board of Alderman Workshop for the 15th of May.

We begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag by the United States of America.

And to public stands.

One nation under God.

We have minutes to approve May 1st, 2024.

Move for approval.

Second.

Motion by Alderm Exempt Act, seconded by Alderman Russell.

All those in favor.

One, two, three, four, three.

Four.

With one abstention.

One item on the workshop agenda this evening, and that is the presentation of the West Side Branch Library feasibility study.

Item will be introduced by Mark Diacampo, and then he will turn it over to the County.

Thank you, Mayor, and uh good evening, uh, members of the board.

Uh for the record, Mark DuCampo, Director of Strategic Planning and Executive Projects for the Office of the Mayor.

Um, just a quick introduction.

This is the feasibility study for the West Frederick uh library uh proposed by the county.

Uh the city uh did uh uh provide uh possible uh areas for a potential uh library site out there on the west side, and we're uh we're happy to work with our partners here on this.

And uh the uh there were four different sites that were um that were contemplated, and the um uh county had chosen uh one particular site to delve in um in detail uh for this feasibility study.

Uh and with that I will turn this over to um members of the county executive, county DPW, county um uh the um uh Frederick uh County Public Libraries and the uh consultants from Dewbury and Associates to provide the presentation.

Thank you.

Before you do, before you go, I have a question for you.

So you just noted that um the city provided four different spots.

What does that mean?

Where where did we provide spots?

So we had uh we as in the uh uh the city was approached by the county to consider the possibility of sites for a west side library, and uh city staff uh looked at areas that were out there within city holdings uh to see what may work.

And uh uh city the city staff had suggested four potential sites of which uh we'd done we did no feasibility studies or anything, but we said hey, these are possibilities, and it was up to the county to uh study which ones they would like to consider.

Would it not have made more sense for the city to ensure that the city was willing to give up the site first?

The the county would have to go and uh say whether or not these sites were even possible.

So of which the county understood whenever it took a feasibility study that didn't mean they automatically got the land.

No, it it's just they they were looking for sites that they could potentially uh put some money towards to do a detailed feasibility study, and this was the site that they selected.

Good evening, everybody.

Um thank you for the opportunity to speak today uh about the feasibility study for uh the Frederick County West Side uh Library and the current status of the project.

Um for the record, my name is Victoria Venable.

I am the government relations director for the county executive's office, and I'm very excited today to be here before you with Director James Kelly from the Frederick County Public Libraries, um Becky Virgil and Douglas Pfeiffer from Dewbury, uh, which is the consulting group that helped us with this uh feasibility study, and Amanda Radcliffe, as well as some of her uh her colleagues from the division of public works.

So today we will be sharing the results of the analysis for the feasibility of the site that Victoria, we're gonna need to interrupt you just for a minute.

Okay.

Question I guess I was just thinking, Mark, this may be for you or Victoria.

So to Mark Ottawman Kozemchak's question, there were four sites that were looked at.

And in those four sites that were looked at.

The county decided on this one to do the feasibility study.

Correct.

Okay.

So the county made the decision that we've got to do.

County made the decision to go and uh study this particular site.

So to provide some.

Mark, I think you should sit back down.

So I think you just need to go ahead and provide a lot more background and information about that because now every you know a bunch of people up here and a lot of people in the room are reaching all kinds of bad conclusions because you're being a little bit vague.

So let's talk about what the other sites were, how come those didn't move forward?

These are the questions everybody has, and we might as well just get to it, or we're just gonna drag this out and have to talk about it all night.

Sure.

Uh thank you very much, Alderman McShane.

Uh actually uh from the last workshop they were without uh that we were at, uh, where we discussed the uh National Park Service Historic Preservation Training Center, I had placed a graphic up on the screen that uh that day if you recall.

And uh one of them uh uh one of the graphics actually showed one of the other alternative sites, one of the other four alternative sites.

And uh the uh graphic also depicted that the alternative site uh also had the uh uh program open space easement, this uh the state's program open space easement on it, which uh would not allow uh neither in the park service or um FCPL to construct those types of structures on that type of land.

Um again, we when when the city was approached by the county, we just looked at it from a very high level, very cursory level to figure out what might be available.

We looked at the uh master plan for the park to see what areas uh would be minimal impact to what we want to do uh from the uh uh the the HE Fielder study.

And so that's why we had chosen those particular sites for both the library and uh the uh National Park Service, unfortunately.