We have quorum, so thank you, Council members, for joining me.

We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

And we owe thanks to Walter Olson for joining us today to give us a briefing and general discussion on voting methods.

So yes, please go ahead and take a seat.

Just by way of background, the government operations committee has been talking about different aspects of voting, rank choice voting, approval voting.

If we haven't had the open primaries discussion, we will.

But Walter is an expert on many of these topics, and so we've asked him to come and share his thoughts on all of this.

So Mr.

Olson, if you could take it away.

Thank you.

Is the microphone?

Sounds like it.

Good.

One has to pull the microphone super close in order for it to be heard.

Oh okay, that's better.

Well, uh thank you, uh, Councilman Brahm and uh to all of you for coming out.

Uh I've been asked to talk first about approval voting, which I believe you have heard about already from a strong advocate, and uh I'm going to give a different view.

And also to uh uh begin at least a discussion on uh open primaries versus closed and other primaries.

So I'll try to give about 10 minutes to each.

Approval voting for those of you who may not have been at the earlier meeting, is a system uh in which uh voters are presented with a list of candidates just as now, uh, but are given an instruction like vote for all that you approve of, so they can vote for one, two, three, or however many uh that they say they approve of.

And it has uh been used in Fargo, North Dakota, at least until the State government uh banned it in the last uh uh round, which I think is very uh uh unfortunate, and it has uh been adopted recently in the City of St.

Louis, where it was used for the most recent mayoral race.

Uh and the arguments for approval voting, which you probably heard from my API colleague who visited you last time, are uh it is uh a system that makes it simple to vote, about as simple as currently, simple to tabulate.

Uh those are important advantages.

And it might also do some important things, such as fit the results of an election more closely to voters' actual sentiments.

Uh we can talk about that in a moment.

It might uh encourage more candidates to run for reasons that we'll also get to.

So those are serious advantages, and I'm uh going to uh venture that possibly it is a better system than the one that we have now, so-called first past the post, in which you vote for one candidate only, and whoever gets the most votes uh wins the primary or the general, as the case may be.

At the same time, uh I did not come here as a second advocate for approval voting, but rather to share criticisms that uh weigh on the minds of a lot of people and which may help explain why it is not a widely adopted system, uh, compared with ranked choice voting, which has been adopted in two states and dozens and dozens and dozens of cities, and and for quite a while.

Uh ranked choice voting or the approval voting doesn't have too much beyond uh the two cities that I mentioned.

And uh why would this be?

Well, one of the things that you look for uh in evaluating a voting system is to what extent it encourages strategic voting, sometimes called tactical voting, as opposed to what I call my own terminology, sincere voting.

Now, in sincere voting, you are voting uh exactly as your heart tells you about which candidates uh you approve of in this case, or which candidates you prefer to others in the case of rank choice voting uh, or which is your favorite candidate in the case of vote for only one systems.

And unfortunately, uh just as it's a problem with the current system, that people don't vote for their favorite candidate if they think the candidates not got a chance to win.

They will cross over and vote for which of the people at the very top uh uh that they prefer.

So with approval voting, uh there is plenty of evidence, including polls taken of Far Fargo North Dakota voters, that uh strategic voting runs rampant, something like nearly a third of voters in Fargo said that they had not, in fact, listed all of the candidates that they uh approved of.

And uh I'm getting it secondhand from people like the mayor of Fargo, but uh it's very one reason is very clear, which is that the candidates themselves urge you not to use approval voting.

Uh that the mayor said everyone it starts off their campaign by saying vote for one only.

You know, do not use this approval voting feature because you are undercutting your chance for me, the obvious best candidate to win uh by putting in others.

So in uh St.

Louis, uh there was some multiple voting.

I think it was like 1.4 votes per person in the mayoral race, which was not close, and which I suspect everyone knew was not going to be close.

And people used uh those extra votes to signal that they liked one of the other candidates, but not uh it wasn't very effective in deciding the race, where one mayor, one uh person was running away with it.

Uh likewise in Fargo, uh, most people don't use that approval method once they get the word from anyone's campaign that uh it is preferred for you to bullet vote.

So accordingly, the question is what do we evaluate?

The ideal in which there are lots and lots of votes cast in or under approval voting, or the actuality in which it may come out an awful lot like exactly what we've got now, except that we had to invest in a change.

And I I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that the problem was not the actual thing, but the ideal one.

It was the ideal to which he objected.

And I think there's a good reason to object to the ideal uh approval voting in that it rewards what you might call the tall glass of water, the thing that is unobjectionable to absolutely anyone, however uh good their uh uh coalition building skills, however good their managerial skills may be.

Uh you know, maybe it rewards uh uh name recognition.

Maybe the local newscaster who has been smiling at the people of the city uh for the last 10 years is the one who can get the most approval.

Is that a good way?

Uh I call it the triumph of the tepid.

But I'm not very confident in that opinion because again, there's been so little experience with approval voting that we just don't know that much about how it works.

Um a couple more items.

Um you might hope in theory that approval voting leads to uh more civility in campaigning and more reaching out.

That has certainly been an argument for ranked choice voting, and I think a correct argument for ranked choice voting, that it uh changes the nature of campaigning in a way that builds bridges.

It causes uh candidates to go out to constituencies where they know they're not the favorite, and nonetheless try to become better known and liked uh in order to pick up some of those second place and third place votes.

Uh well, approval voting uh might do that too, is just I don't see any evidence from the accounts of uh Fargo and St.

Louis that it's worked very much.

Maybe you have to adjust the whole thing for Midwest Nice, uh, but uh it sounds as if they're actually spending quite a bit of time being implicitly critical of the other candidates in order to prevent the uh the approval voting from doing its thing and from the voter as they see it, wasting their vote by voting for for four different people.

Uh again, it uh it doesn't because of the way it works, uh and because it isn't apparently very good at uh encouraging what it wants to encourage, which is people casting three, four, or five votes, um, it winds up not dealing with one of the central things that election reform tries to deal with, which is the uh what I call the 29 percent problem.

And if you look at either a nonpartisan race or a primary race uh where the primary decides the general election, and here you can uh do no worse than looking south to Montgomery County, which keeps on getting uh county executives elected by I don't I don't remember the exact numbers, but you know, well below 35 percent, simply because they have strong fields which divide the voters.

And so someone gets in who uh is uh not necessarily popular and uh not to deal in personalities, but we have some evidence that people who were not all that popular were the ones who didn't vote for them.

But they've got a committed faction behind them, uh, and it carries them to victory with 30, 33 percent of the vote.

Now approval voting should be well calculated to improve on that if people can be persuaded to vote sincerely.

Uh it's probably not going to if people vote tactically or strategically.

Ranked choice voting, again, to me, one of the great things about ranked choice voting is that if you find your county or your city in a situation with this crowded field in the decisive stage of an election, ranked choice voting is really good at determining whether that 31 percent candidate actually does have very serious support among the people who supported the others.

Where it's one of the things that ranked choice voting is best at.

And approval voting, no indication that it's actually very good at that.

And we'll get to that also in the issue of open primaries, because some of these issues do transfer over to uh pop up in the question of whether you have open and closed primaries.

So with that uh with that uh segue, let me turn to open primaries, which is uh much more thoroughly debated.

You can get uh with a little bit of Google research, you can uh get good arguments from both sides.

The country, in fact, is wisely split on it.

Uh more places than not use some version of open primaries.

But I'll use that uh to uh say that uh you guessed it.

There's more than one version of open primaries, and the differences make some uh uh real difference.

The uh for example, uh a two open primary is one in which a Republican can walk in and ask for a democratic ballot and cast it, or vice versa.

Um a semi-open or hybrid one uh says, well, independents or unaffiliated can vote for whatever party they want.

But if you've actually gone so far as to affiliate with uh someone else's party, then you can't vote in our party uh primary.

Um there is yet another variation used in four Midwestern states, which is an auto-re-registered primary in which you can go in, uh get a ballot from a party that you're not uh registered with, but doing so automatically makes you a new registrant in that party, uh which you may or may not like.

So it's um uh uh states do it very differently, and then there's lots and lots of uh uh you know, the variations beyond that, like California uh jungle primaries with the top two and so forth.

So hard to generalize, hard to call one system the winner.

Uh states cycle around and try different things after being discontented with uh the one that they've been using.

Uh to the extent that closed primaries have held on, uh it is particularly in the Northeast, uh, but also Florida, uh uh Nevada, a couple of other states.

Uh and maybe you can generalize that where political machines are strong, closed primaries are more popular.

But uh I caution caution people on closed primaries versus open primaries not to assume what you will hear as an argument, which is uh open primaries have to give you more moderate and more generally acceptable candidates.

And that's a pretty powerful argument because we know that, for example, John McCain kept winning Republican primaries in open primary states because he was so appealing to independents and some Democrats.

Um John McCain was a different and generally more moderate kind of Republican than the ones that he was running against.

So yes, it was probably making some difference.

But if you look at the states that have uh open primaries, uh they include places like the State of Texas, the State of South Carolina, uh states that are not known for kumbaya, you know, let's all uh you know gather around the most uh broadly acceptable centrist candidate.

So open primaries do not guarantee centrism, and uh uh should not, I think, be sold on that basis.

They what they do probably help with is degrees of participation.

And on that issue, because I think it's central to the case for uh open primaries, uh let me read out some numbers from the City of Frederick, Maryland.

Uh in 2025, taking this from the Frederick website, there were just short of 60,000 registered voters in the City of Frederick.

And of those, uh the uh less important statistic is that about 10,000 came out for the general election.

That's 15, what, 17 percent turnout?

Not good.

Better than some places, worse than Minnesota or Vermont.

Uh but yeah, 15 percent uh would be enough uh cause for worry by itself, but uh the real races were decided at the primary level.

And uh the I realize that not going to add the uh one situation where it was different, but the in the primaries uh you could win a citywide primary uh with about 2500 votes.

Uh 3,000 votes uh uh or 3300 you might need uh to uh to win for mayor.

But uh so that's out of six sixty thousand, um 3,000 votes were deciding uh the fate of citywide races.

Now that is disturbing.

That means that 95 percent of the um uh registered voters in the city were not participating in the outcome.

Uh it is uh a kind of turnout, a turnout that represents those who came out at the primary stage, which really decided uh the outcome.

And uh and it's hard for me to think that anyone can be satisfied with the idea of five percent of voters deciding who wins.

And yet that's what we got now.

Much harder is the question of what do you do about it.

All of you probably are familiar with the debate among and Maryland municipalities can go either way about whether to run non nonpartisan elections, which is, I believe, the usual choice for cities, generally in order to avoid the problem of uh the uh control being decided in a primary, which is uh uh what I've just been describing.

So nonprofit primaries are uh or not nonprofit elections are common among larger municipalities.

But uh if you don't do that, uh how much do you actually gain with open primaries?

And uh it's hard to know exactly because uh it depends on what uh version you adopt.

It depends on how many people uh came out to the polls because they wanted to vote in, let's say a school district race uh and would gladly cast a vote for city office now that one now that there's an opportunity to get one.

And it you also don't know exactly how many people who stayed home would come out because they considered it boring to vote in school board races, but would be motivated to come out if they could cast uh a ballot in an open primary.

Uh you know, again, I I wasn't able to find figures on how many uh City of Frederick registered voters are something other than Democratic Party registrants.

Statewide, it's something like 24 percent who are unaffiliated.

Uh I assume Republican registration isn't all that healthy uh in Frederick.

But you've got a you know pretty serious lump of voters uh who and again, one of the things about the unaffiliated in particular is they tend to be an upward curve.

Uh more people year after year tend to register as unaffiliated.

And just to get back for one last minute, because I I have more critical things to say.

But but the um in uh in looking at it from the standpoint of those unaffiliated, uh, they think I'm being cut out of the most important decision on how my city is governed because I decline to uh re-register in a party that I don't feel comfortable registering in, or alternatively, in what you might call the Maryland shuffle.

I mean, everyone must know a lot of people who have done this, uh, you can insincerely register in a uh party that you don't intend to remain a long-term registrant of just in order to vote in its primary.

Uh as with most insincere behavior in this area, you know, I am troubled.

Uh, I don't think it's a very good solution.

You know, it doesn't work well for people who are strongly conscience driven and all that sort of thing.

So I don't like the Maryland shuffle uh very much.

But it um uh sorry, I've got more.

Um we haven't gotten to some of the arguments against open primaries, and I want to share those uh with my three minutes left, which is uh the uh the use of a party ballot other than the one that you're registered in uh can be done for again sincere or insincere reasons.

The sincere reason is you like a candidate from a party that you're not registered with, you're hoping they win, and you intend to vote for them in the general election.

And that happens a lot.

I mentioned uh the John McCain vote, and I think those people probably did intend to vote for him in the general election.

But you've got people who we know it happens in these states, and we've uh uh people in the other party who are uh uh trying to sabotage, trying to torpedo a potentially strong candidate from the other party by uh sending people over to cast a ballot for the weaker candidate.

We know they do it in spending advertising money.

Uh we know that they do it sometimes in organizing to uh get people to cast ballots, especially if their own party's uh primary is boring.

Uh and that's a genuine concern.

It can make uh either the minority party or the majority party feel as if they've suffered an unwelcome takeover, in which their primary has stopped being the real uh uh profile of people who uh want a candidate to win.

And um and that gets to arguments that I hear all the time, and and legally they're not arguments that have necessarily been accepted by uh the courts, but they are arguments I still take seriously, which is uh uh don't we have uh right, a sort of freedom of association to decide what our party will endorse.

You know, we are the ones who make the party go, we are the ones who uh staff the tables and knock the doors and so forth.

Uh you know, uh shouldn't it be our party?

The it's it's my party, and I'll whatever if I want to.

Um the counter-argument from open primaries advocates is look, you're using all of our money uh to uh run the primary, which costs a very substantial amount of money.

If you are all doing it in some rented hotel uh ballroom, then you know, do whatever you want with your party endorsement.

But in a primary where we are all uh paying the personnel and uh suspending the operations of the schools or whatever in order to do it, uh there needs to be a broader public voice.

Those are the arguments on that.

And as with approval voting, I think to some extent it comes down to uh philosophical choices that uh uh no I can't make for you uh and that will differ also from one community to another.

Uh I think that in a place where uh the uh parties are no longer in that much competition, there's all that much extra argument for uh open primaries.

Um I would add, by the way, that about a half dozen states do it in yet another way, which is they leave it up to the parties whether to have open or closed primaries, and then that they institute whatever each party wants.

Another way to think about doing it.

Anyway, thank you for your time, and my 20 minutes is up.

Can you repeat the last thing you said about the alternatives that that states pursue as it relates to open primaries?

Um I think I heard your question.

Can I tell you a little about the last alternative that I mentioned, the very last one?

The very last comment you made about how the very last one is uh there are maybe six states.

I think the State of Oregon is one, which uh enable open primaries, but they also make it a choice for the parties.

They say we're not gonna force open primaries on a party that doesn't want it, but parties that do want it, uh we will support it in our uh ballot design and all the rest of it.

Got it.

And and then also given that there are lots of flavors of quote open primaries, is there one in particular that you think is a good way of pursuing an open primary?

Uh that's a hard question for me to answer.

And uh part of it is that I look at the literature about what effects does it have.

And it's hard for me to be all that sure uh of what kind of candidates are being rewarded, for example.

Um I um I think that the experience in states that have fully open primaries uh is uh pleasing enough that on the whole I probably would say, yeah, I like that on the whole.

But um uh but I don't feel confident, if you know what I mean, in saying that.

Okay.

And and to your point, uh I don't know the sph the specific numbers, but my understanding is that in the City of Frederick there are the the largest number of voters are Democrats, the second largest are unaffiliated, and the third are Republican.

And that was one of the the mo motivations for people to come, at least in District 3 and say to me, hey, we ought to consider open primaries because I'm being excluded from the primary voting.

And you can see we're independents in particular, unaffiliated, uh feel a sense of being cut out of the game in a way that Republican registrants would not.

And that's a choice.

You do get some choices, you get to uh choose some, you know, some good uh uh good choices there.

But you uh but it's the unaffiliated who genuinely uh aren't present.

They aren't part of the process during the most important stage in a city like Frederick.

Great.

I I've been hogging the microphone.

Uh Councilmembers art, do you all have questions?

I'll just say uh I did watch your presentation from the beginning to the end.

I'm sorry, I apologize for being a little late.

We have some development going on in the city, which apparently is a good thing, but it does sometimes cause me to have road closures and things like that.

So I apologize.

But the point here, I think if I could respectfully ask you to take away, is that we are very open.

Uh I won't speak for my colleagues, but I'll speak for myself.

I am very open to um ranked choice voting.

I was open to approval voting.

I have historically been very pro-open primaries.

Um so what we're doing is we're sort of gathering, we're in the information gathering phase, and I want you to know that it's very important what you bring forward in terms of what you present to us, because we're in budget right now, so we're a little distracted.

But one of the things that the Charter Review Committee had requested was that we continue this conversation about ranked choice voting and we be deliberate in that process.

It's early in our term, but we learned from our last the last term that it took three years to have that conversation.

So Walter, you have been a tremendous resource for the city.

I am so appreciative of your time and the energy that you put into this advocacy because it's it's clear that there's energy around making a change, and I can't tell you what that change is going to be.

We're so early at the process, but I just wanted to say thank you for sticking with us and being willing to continue to come and bring your smarts to us.

Thank you, Katie, for those kind words.

And I will say uh I am keenly aware that I came along with someone from Fair Vote and gave presentations uh at uh in this room in which we uh went much more deeply into the arguments for ranked choice voting, which I do support and and I think is a good system, and that uh of the uh council members present then you uh Councilmember Nash are the only one.

Any of you who would like individual briefings, which I know probably sounds kind of snoozy, but uh you know I am delighted by Zoom, by telephone, or uh by going to Frederick Coffee Company to spend as much time on the what what I think are the good arguments, and also the the you know, I try to be fair, the the the negative or or difficult points uh of rank choice voting.

It is uh that's the uh of these three different areas, that's the one that I spend most of my time uh trying to make work and trying to explain to the public.

Fair enough.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Walter.

Any other questions?

Go ahead.

It's really more of a question for us up here.

Um when we talk open primaries, are we talking open primaries where everyone, the Democrats, Republicans, independents run together, and you take the top two, or are we talking open primaries where you have Republicans and Democrats in separate races, and you know, you can vote however you want in those, you know, those three majority of the parties or whatnot.

So I think that's a big question because I mean California right now is suffering backlash.

I mean, something that they thought would never have.

California has this distinct and I think ill-considered system that has not worked at well well in practice, and I hope that California considers moving to some other system at some point, because that uh no party uh top two finisher thing, uh it was put in with the best of intentions.

Well, of course, almost everything that doesn't work in government was put in in the best of intentions.

But but no, all the different open primary systems that I've been talking about today are different from the California system.

And uh the key differences are uh uh some of them uh let's say you want to vote in the Democratic primary, uh, some open primary systems will let you do that if you're an unaffiliated, but not if you are a Republican.

If you are Republican, they say, no, you've got to use your own party's ballot.

Others will say, look, you may be registered Republican, but if you want to take a Democratic ballot this year, uh go ahead.

What almost none of them do uh unless you want to move to something like the Alaska system, which is different in itself, is if you go in there saying, hey, there's a Democrat who's running for mayor and a Republican who's running for uh county council uh in my district, who are really my favorites.

Can I go in and promote them both in their respective party primaries?

That's what you can't do under the design of open primaries, even though there are these variations.

None of the variations seem to let you bop back and forth between parties.

Lots to think about.

Thank you, Walter.

Um colleagues, we're gonna switch the agenda out of respect for the council president who is here.

We are going to uh take the E item next, which is the consideration and feedback of draft resolution establishing a housing production target.

Um Clara, if you wouldn't mind uh turning on the screen so that we can see on the big screen.

And we'll hear from Council President, yes.

I've never sat at this table before, so yay.

Thank you.

Um Vice President Nash and uh committee members.

Um I'm here today to figure out how to log into my computer.

Um to uh start presenting, start conversations around a resolution that I wanted to bring to the full council, which um calling the housing production target resolution, um lack of a more original name.

Um what this does is it officially recognizes the numbers that were released as part of the housing study um that Frederick City in and Frederick County uh commissioned.

That study officially told us something that I think all of us do, which is that Frederick has a severe housing shortage.

Um but it put some specific data around that concept that I said that that everybody pretty much knew with specific targets in order to meet the needs of the uh of the county, but the section that was pulled out for us for the city.

Um one piece of feedback that I know I got a lot during during the campaign, and even in the couple of months that we've been in office has been that the city commissions a lot of studies.

Um I watched this committee's last meeting when you were all reviewing the different studies that that uh had been commissioned.

So there's a lot of them.

And one comment that I got, and I pretty sure uh some of you also got is that there's all these studies, and studies are where issues kind of go to die, right?

You have study and then nothing happens, or it takes a long time for people to know what the city is doing with the information from that.

So what this uh ordinance does is officially recognizes those numbers and says, here's the problem that we identified through this study.

It has specific numbers of housing units that the um consultants determined that Frederick City needs.

It's about um 13,774 uh new housing units by 2035.

Um and I forget the exact number.

Um I rounded that number up to uh 1400 uh a year.

Um it says this is the number, this is what we need to do.

This is what we're what we're being told.

We're going to make sure that we, as we make decisions around um housing, you know, uh I know this committee is gonna be looking at the land management code um and housing is something that comes before us almost every meeting.

We're gonna have this information in mind or this targets in mind.

And it also addresses the affordability issues that were brought up in the um study by specifying um targets that we want to hit at afford different affordability affordability levels.

This is a resolution, it's not an ordinance, it's not forcing anybody to do anything.

It is just a official statement of this is what we're going to do with the information that we got to solve the problem that the city is facing.

It's um it's not forcing any developers to do anything different um specifically, it's not rezoning anything.

Um and it also commits to having yearly reporting and so we can have some oversight on how we're doing in that process.

That's summary.

Uh welcome any questions or discussion.

So, committee members, the goal here is to provide any feedback and then make the recommendation to send this to full council.

So you'll get another bite at the apple of something if you think of something or you would like to add something at that point.

But uh we did want to just committee is looking at similar issues, so we wanted to just put it up for uh conversation starter, but certainly wanted to let you know that it will come before full council.

Uh this is great because it sets a benchmark of we're gonna do what we say we're gonna do through the study.

Uh what one anxiety, and that is the verbs in uh the section one, two, three, and four are uh emphatic.

So, for example, they're they're not aspirational.

They they say uh the city is step number section two.

The city establishes an affordable framework requiring that at least 15 percent.

Uh what's the downside if we don't hit that 15 percent understanding that we'll get a report saying we we got 10 percent or five percent, and here are the reasons why, which is great.

I love the follow-up, the annual follow-up.

But uh, is there any punishment?

That's the wrong verb, but or wrong not noun if if we don't hit that 15 percent.

Yeah, um one of the if you look at the annual reporting section five, it um one of those sections there says that we're gonna have recommended policy adjustments if we don't hit those targets.

So it's more about accountability, what is working, what isn't.

Um, so that then we can adjust whatever policies we have put in place, and as we review this every year, like, okay, well, that strategy isn't working, or it it might be let's give it some more time, and that gives us a specific cadence on reviewing what we're doing.

Okay.

Yeah, and uh I did not go back and look at our climate uh plan to see if the verbs there are the city will require, for example, that 15 percent of all buildings have solar panels on them, just as an example.

So I I uh that's the only part of the those verbs are the ones that are giving me pause.

And it's a small pause, but just a pause.

So that's definitely something we can look at.

I tend to speak more emphatically.

So by the way, they may be fine.

I'm just worried about the secondary implications of what if any action could be caused because we say we're gonna require at least just in that section, we're gonna require 15 percent.

If we don't hit that, is there any outcome that we need to be aware of?

That that's all.

It's definitely a a point for for this question, but um the the consequence or the the result of what we're doing or not is to adjust strategies um part of that yearly uh reporting.

Um that reporting would come to the to the council, and then the council can then take that information and decide okay, how are we going to adjust or or not adjust?

Yeah.

And again, that it's a little deal.

This is a great document.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sure.

Um so when we had the workshop for the housing data report back in February, I had a little bit of heartburn with the target goals of 13, whatever it is, uh 77 units.

And in section one, you use that 1400 or 1377 units.

Um why my heartburn, I why I have heartburn with that.

And I again I expressed it at the February workshop.

You know, so the city is supposed to take on 43 percent of the county's total new housing units.

And that was on page one, and I pulled out both sections from the city and the county report.

And then if you go to page two, you know, again to spreadsheets, and I realize not everyone likes spreadsheets, but um what I did, I went back historically and showed with the city population that we were always just under 30 percent.

And that 30 percent is going to be carrying through for a lot of numbers.

And then at the bottom of page two, I did the same thing with dwelling units, and that number was 30 percent as well.

So we historically, I mean, going back to 1970 and probably earlier than that, we can show that we are about a third of the county, you know, whether it's residential units or population.

Then if you go into page three, and this comes from the Frederick County Planning Department, so it's not numbers from the city, it's county numbers, which are page page three of the report or the mail.

Okay, I have that up, okay.

Of my email, sorry.

Um, what I did was I pulled the city-county building permits issued, and on the left-hand column is the county, the right hand column is the city.

And if you go down from 2016 to 2025, which is 10 years, the city was at 39.3 percent of the county's uh total new building permits.

And I really thought that was odd, and I couldn't figure out why that was odd to me, because it seemed really high.

And then if you look at the county numbers for the last three years, 23, 24, and 25, they were pooling less than 500 building permits a year, which is at least half, if not a third, of what they normally pull.

So if you take those three years, and again, this is spreadsheet geekdolman, and I apologize.

If you take those last three years and go on to page four of my uh document, I substituted in 1598, which is a seven-year average of the previous seven years.

And if you do that, then the city's percent of building permits is thirty-three percent, which gets back down to that 33 again, or 30 or 33, which is to me what I think is historically and is normal, and I know the comprehensive plan uses the third uh ratio as well.

And then the last part, which I really find fascinating, um, and this is from the Frederick County residential pipeline report, is that um the available units for both the municipalities and the county total 14,000 and change 200 and some, whatever that is.

The City of Frederick available units for the same in from the same uh pipeline is 7,000.

That's 50 percent of the available units in the county.

So uh and again, I again uh let me just the the problem with this is is that I think the county is placing more units in the city than what we can handle.

And if you go to that pipeline report, um the county only has about 4,000 units in the pipeline, 4,000 units for the entire county, not including municipalities.

The city of Frederick has again 7,000, and if you look deeper into it, Frederick County only has 203 multifamily units available in the pipeline, where the city of Frederick has 4,000 and change.

Um the the part of the problem with that is is that in the report, in the city's report, I believe, it states that the city will take on 57 percent of all rental housing, and you can almost equivalent rental housing to apartments.

Um not all, but it it's a good representation.

I think what's happened is is that the easiest answer is usually the best answer typically.

And I think what happened is is the consultant looked at the 10-year average, the one where the county was producing less than 500 units a year, and again, the city's percentage in that was 39 percent.

I think they took that massaged it a little bit, came up with the number of 43, but I think they didn't consider why the county was only producing 500 units a year.

So I think using the number 1377 is really um disingenuous.

How about that?

Um the county, I mean the city's right now for the 10-year average, I think it's like 800 units a year.

So if we use the 33 percent, you know, that's a difference of 200 units.

We'd have to make up 200 units a year.

If we use the 1377, which is 43 percent of the total units for the county, that's almost 600 units a year.

And I can guarantee you that all of us during the campaign heard we're building too fast, and what we're building is not right.

And if we go with this goal of 1377, that means in theory, and again, it you know, it's all speculative, but we have to produce an extra 600 units a year.

We currently have 10 years, 10 years of units in the pipeline, and we'll get more with new annexations and uh as new approvals come through.

But that's 10 years.

The county, if you use their available lots, and this is again just the county and not municipalities, they have about three or four years.

So personally, I think the City of Frederick has done its job well throughout history by making up a third, give or take a little bit more, a little bit less of the residential units in the county.

For some reason, the 4,000 units in the county, not including the municipalities, they haven't been adding new residential developments.

And you know, part of it will be smart growth, and you know, you want to cluster things around municipalities, but at the same time, I I just don't have I would like answers to these numbers, and I did ask that back in February, and I didn't get a response.

But I would I would be hesitant to use that number 1377.

It doesn't seem appropriate for the city.

And I would ask the council, uh president and vice president, how is best to pursue getting an answer on how they came up with the 43 percent, the 57 percent, and ultimately the 1377 units per year for the City of Frederick.

So I think those are legitimate legitimate questions.

I do remember you bringing that up when the county was here to to present.

Um I understand that a lot better now when you sent us that information this morning.

So two things.

One we can always ask the county since the city did help pay for part of the report, if we can speak directly to um to the people who put it together, and so we can go over those numbers.

Um the the proposed ordinance mentions those numbers as coming from the report, which is where they came from.

The targets that we want to that I'm proposing we include in the resolution are for affordability.

So we're we say that we we accept the numbers from the report, which say these numbers that maybe are are not uh you know completely accurate.

Um but we what we do say that we're going to do is target our housing policy to the um the affordability uh levels, which might not necessarily the 1377 number, even if it doesn't hit, even if we can't hit that number, it is a pretty substantial number.

Um we can at least look at the affordability levels of the housing housing units that we do build.

Well, and I can I I don't I mean I I don't have a problem with the data about affordability and that's generally I I can wrap my head around it.

Um but in this section, you know, section one, you say the mayor and city council of Frederick hereby establishes or establish an annual housing production target of 1,400 units.

And again, you know, we're at 800 units now, and the report says we need to increase by 500 units a year.

And again, I I I think talking with the consultants to figure out how they came up with those numbers would put me at ease.

And I uh so I have a question about your comparison to the county.

Um because I I could not agree more that the sort of large question of development has was largely passed to the city, creating this incredible backlog in the county historically.

So to me, that's a different policy discussion than what are we projected to need.

Does that make sense?

So like both to me, both things can be true.

Like the the so this ratio that you're providing, this sort of like comparison contrast between the county and the city I think that could be true while also needing the units that the consultant says that we need.

Does that am I?

Well I agree.

I think you know the total of uh what is it true?

The 31,000 almost 32,000 units you know the county needs.

I agree that probably that number is correct.

But it seems like they're dumping more units in the city than what is reasonable and what has Okay.

So it's this question of what is what is the reasonable threshold and your because I well, okay.

And I and I think it's helpful to give the work that you did to put it in on paper.

I understand more now where you're coming from.

And I and I totally wholeheartedly agree that what if if there's a question for the consultant from the county, you should have had that.

So I apologize that that wasn't done.

But I think for me it we may come to a point where it is a policy debate, and I want to make sure that I'm dissecting like where are the but where like where are the policy debates versus the inquiries for information, because I want to make sure that if a council member wants information, they're getting it.

But I also want to make sure we could just disagree.

Um I'm gonna pick on your the comment about apartments.

Is it is it easier to add I would argue that in my district, like we probably need more garden style partners.

Like and where do they go?

That's a great question.

But uh that's that's a hard one for me to say to take a pass on because uh in my view, I'm like, well, I wanna I want to argue.

I'm also very aware that over the weekend uh we were passing by the Coca-Cola plant, the banner school area, and I was here when people were in this boardroom seeing and the emails that we got in a newsletter or whatever that the world was going to come to an end because that north market area was being activated and it was too much and we couldn't handle it.

And I I could not disagree more in that that area being activated has been just nothing but wonderful.

I mean, people were out, it was very so I I guess I'm just I want to be careful that we're we're making sure that I think the goal of the resolution was to identify and support a study that's been done and not just put it on the shelf.

And so that's I don't want the policy debate of this no and it's not what you're saying, Councilmember, but this sort of I don't want to get caught up in that.

I want to make sure that we're being factual.

So and I appreciate the work that you did because you you stuck to the facts and you prevented the you provided the math.

So you give us something to start from.

Yeah, and and I think again, since we're not looking at specific uh policy in this resolution, just a guideline um for targets.

Once we started going down the path and say, okay, we've uh we've accepted these numbers that were issued in the report, again, so that we can have a study that actually results in some sort of action.

We have the affordability targets.

At that point, we can start looking at, okay, are these numbers actually correct?

That's a step that would in in my mind fit the spirit of this resolution, because we're like saying this study sets this data and we want to act on it.

Well, I think it's reasonable to say the first thing that we're going to do in acting on it is to verify it, right?

So then we bring folks in and we say, okay, is this correct?

Is this the actual target that we need, while we are also looking at affordability in the units that do get um approved as part of the the regular development uh process.

So I I appreciate you doing the the calculations.

Again, I I do remember you bringing it up, but it just didn't click uh when you brought it up the last meeting until I saw this email this morning.

Um Councilmember Atkins and I are on the same like email timing uh frequency.

We're emailing really early in the morning.

Um so I appreciate that, but I do think we can we can solve that problem by asking those um by being one of the steps that we take as a step that follows this resolution.

Uh as a suggestion it to move this forward in parallel with doing the analysis that Councilmember Atkins has suggested.

Maybe Section 1 is the mayor and city council of the City of Frederick hereby will establish an annual housing production target through 2035 consistent with TPA report projections.

So we we will establish it based upon our deliberation and the TPA knowledge, but it won't be written into stone as far as this ordinance.

That just an idea for consideration.

I think that's reasonable.

Yeah, I think that's reasonable.

Because that also ties back to the annual reporting and then coming back right every year to come back.

So but that also helps us move this document forward in parallel with getting the data.

Yeah, I think that's a good idea.

The only thing that I would have to add, I really, really like the annual reporting.

Um I always want us to look at what are the barriers, but it that's it looks like that's in here.

So include recommendations to facilitate creation of housing units and support housing production, affordability goals.

So it seems like a lot of what will be in the report is about building houses.

But one thing that will also be reported on is eviction rates.

So I wonder if we should include those kind of efforts too.

Outside of producing housing, how are we supporting people to stay in their house?

So you would want that included in the in the reporting or in the target.

No, I think that's a good idea.

Uh that's all I have.

Is there no other questions?

Um I could take some of this feedback and then after the budget cycle presented to the full council.

Yeah, I think that's a great idea.

All right.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Council President.

We are back at our agenda.

Uh we are on so very quickly, uh this is just for the record, the list of charter proposed charter amendments.

We have talked about this before.

Um we are going to, council members, if you could take a look at this list and prioritize where we are right now in this process as we're ready to start scheduling what we want to talk about essentially.

And this is, of course, running concurrent with the budget process, so be aware that we're running a little bit slower than we might like to.

But the I think what we decided to do was take them one by one.

And so we're creating a list that lives as a living document as things come up.

We're gonna keep adding to the list.

Um we had I had personally said that we would look at redistricting uh as a and with with respect to redistricting, I think we need to have external presentations so that um I'm very nerve I'm always nervous about election stuff because I think it's challenging that we're sitting in these seats and we're making decisions for the future.

So I just want to always make sure that we're inviting external folks to come and present to us and try to keep that process as unbiased and as open as we can.

Um but other than that, we don't need to we're we won't decide this today, but I wanted to just for the record put this out in public so that we continue this list and it's it's public.

We will probably uh continue to keep this on an agenda so that the public has awareness that we're talking, like we're adding things to this list.

So if you just take a look at it and let me know what you know you think, oh, this is really important that we take this up sooner rather than later.

Otherwise, we'll just take them in the order that they're received.

But um that's that's where we are with the charter discussions.

Um I had two other um suggestions or recommendations that I I think that I emailed.

Um, okay.

So two of them, okay.

One we might already have, and it's about non-interference and it's in the county's charter.

Um, and that is that the the county or sorry, the council or none of the members shall appoint or dismiss or give direction to any individual employee of the executive branch of government.

Um so we can't tell them what to do.

But then also it should be the duty of the executive to provide any information that's requested by the council in writing for the purposes of um legislation.

So just to I want to know if we currently have that.

And something else um I want us to think about is we have an article 2.1 under qualifications.

It says starting in 2029, candidates um district candidates have been living the district for at least one year immediately preceding the general.

And this I think is problematic because what if someone is a renter and has to move, like I had to right before the primary, or what if somebody has um something going on with their family where they need to move.

So I think we should look at do we want to keep that one year prior?

And that's all I have.

Uh and then I send a note asking about the I think terrific recommendations from the uh Board of Elections and whether or not we want to consider those as well.

Okay, those will be added to our list.

And then if council members want to just weigh in on what you would like to see come up first.

Um we're gonna schedule, I'm gonna look to schedule some I will I will freely admit the redistricting staff will probably the experts on that will probably need to wait until after June, uh, because apparently something's happening in June around here uh with respect to elections, but uh we will put that request in for folks to come and talk to us uh about that process.

And my thought is someone that can speak to us about the federal the just starting from like the very the very highest, broadest level and then working our way down and how we're gonna fit into that process if everybody agrees with that.

Just uh not really charter related, but it's more rules and procedures.

Um next time we look at the I would like to make the backup required the same time the agenda is posted.

Um I had a couple of people ask me about making sure the backup was there so that they could and for me personally too, because time's limited, you know, having it up at the same time agenda would be great.

Okay, we'll probably keep this like this list just on an ongoing basis.

Um the next item on the agenda is the review of the land management code discussion.

Oh no, I'm sorry, performance budget, priority-based budget.

I skipped.

Ms.

Clara, would you mind bringing that up?

Uh she's working on it.

And then do you have the presentation too, darling?

Oh, yeah.

So in the backup, the essentially what we what I did here, and this is just the start of a conversation.

We will this process is going to be ongoing, uh, and I'm gonna share the timeline here in a minute.

But the document that was attached to the backup is where I took all of the text slash definitions.

Um we are a member of the association, the government officers financial association.

I think I have that right.

Um, so that's why I chose this specific, we've won award, you know, Katie Barkdow, our director, that we we've won awards for our work in that area.

So um that's why I chose this one, but certainly there are many other resources.

Uh the words priority and performance are often interchanged in a lot of the resources.

So I stuck with priority because that's what this resource said.

I am agnostic about how we I like I personally like priority, but um I'm fine, you know, with whatever we decide.

But next slide, please, my dear.

Okay, so essentially the I'm gonna skip over to the timeline real quick just so we level set about what we're doing now.

So we are right now talking about what is performance-based, what is priority-based budgeting.

Um the reason we started this conversation is so that when we go into the budget process as we are currently in uh this month and next month, uh council members can kind of be thinking critically about what what do they think is working, what isn't working, what can be what can be changed, what do you think would be better, those sort of um analytical questions, acknowledging that we're not making any changes for this budget, this budget year, this FY27 year, and that any sort of ideas about changes or requests for changes would happen uh for the FY28 year.

Um acknowledging, of course, that we do not uh manage the uh the writers of the budget, the the the budget is an executive fund uh function, and then we have approval authority.

Uh and so just being aware that it's a collaborative process, uh, and you'll find that in that in the document that I shared, uh it it speaks a lot about the collaboration between the executive branch, which has the uh the departmental heads and the staff uh and the elected leaders.

So I want to just be very clear about that.

Uh we have here what are essentially the goals and why it is a possible preferred process.

Um one of the things that I am struck by, and as I get into the definition and everything, but um be thinking about how the current system versus um, you know, we we kind of have this sort of hybrid, I would I would argue we have a hybrid approach.

Um, Councilmember Agins, I know you of course have a lot of knowledge about this too, where we do have a discussion about priorities.

So we're gonna have a briefing.

Uh we've we've of course identified our priorities up here.

We'll have multiple briefings starting the this week from departments about their priorities and and sort of so there's sort of this like hybrid approach, but I would still argue that we are um the budget from FY2026 was largely based on the FY, excuse me, was largely based on the FY25 budget and the FY25 budget is largely based on the FY24 budget and so on.

So essentially the goals for making changes would be to basically reanalyze our priorities in the context of the budget and think about how we use all of our resources as well as examine existing and this I think this is very important existing programs or programs that have been existing and how do they get edited or quite frankly maybe they go away maybe they're not working and that's always a tough thing to say out loud but it it is a possibility when we talk about priority budgeting.

So next slide please okay so um the steps for a sort of how this would work and this is again outlined in the document that was provided are provided here but it's a little bit different in that you talk about the resources that we have which includes the bonding authority um our revenues and any kind of funds as a first step.

So that's kind of a little bit different in how I think we do it now but certainly something to clarify with Director Barkdahl if you have questions about that.

But you can see from this process map that's included in that document that it is these steps are a little bit different than how we currently do it.

And I'm gonna go to the next slide and sort of talk about how we currently do things which is historically and this we're not alone I think I think most budgets are probably similar to this and even organizational budgets that you might have seen in your private sector or nonprofit world is you look at what did we spend last year and how are we going to edit it for the um next year you know do we have more money do we have the same same money what you know what's working what's not essentially this is looking at things in a little bit of a different way in the sense of identifying your priorities and your revenues in a more upfront way I would argue rather than sort of saying this is the way that we did last year.

I would also argue that the way that we have sort of conducted studies and strategic plans et cetera we sort of kind of again this is my editorializing we go back and we say okay how does this item fit within the strategic plan how does it fit within the comprehensive plan how does it fit within what we've said rather than having those studies and strategic plans um dictate how we move forward from a budget perspective.

Again that's my editorializing but I wanted to just be upfront about that as well.

So that's and then of course the big conversation we've been having here is what ongoing accountability measures exist.

How are we looking uh historically into the future with respect to those priorities and what we've achieved versus you know how long how far do we have to go and then I'm not we're not gonna answer these but I wanted to I want it to be very upfront there's a lot of work that goes into having this conversation there's a lot of steps that need to be taken and I lifted this specifically from the document it talks about how to sort of set the stage and and kind of go through and move forward in an analytical way and they provide this list of questions about like how do you start basically what's your next step so I wanted to I wanted to include this because I wanted sort of the council and you know the many people watching to know that there's a lot of work that will need to go into collaborating with staff before this moves forward.

I will say that um as we've talked about performance based budgeting Director Barkdahl has volunteered that the structure of our budget the move to open gov, the transition to open gov really supports this level of analysis so I think I think a lot of work has already been done by our budget team so it's just meshing essentially what we want to do in terms of a monitoring program and the work that's already been done and how do we how do we put it all together in one place.

And I think that's it yeah.

So again beginning of a conversation but just wanted to pick a source essentially and start from a source so that we could kind of agree on terms and start to move forward in the conversation.

I think this is great.

Quick question do we city council have the bandwidth to do this if we decided to implement it so this is if you recall our performance our our budget monitoring program or our work plan however the the different phrases that we want to use we we sort of set out from the beginning to think about how does the council do budgeting we are we are in this hybrid approach right now which is we have our legacy our legacy pre city council board of alderman approach and it wasn't and we've been sort of slowly but surely changing things with full support with staff by the way I don't want to make it seem like that that it's been it's been phenomenal the the support we've received but I think what we didn't do in the last term is really sit down and think about how how does the city council budget process change should it change we didn't we know that's a policy discussion too and so this committee is charged with that and I think deciding we we sort of had said okay let's go through this budget let's keep our eyes open learn you know because

I don't want to make it seem like that that it's been it's been phenomenal the the support we've received.

Um but I think what we didn't do in the last term is really sit down and think about how does the city council budget process change?

Should it change?

We didn't, you know, that's a policy discussion too.

Um and so this committee is charged with that, and I think deciding we we sort of had said, okay, let's go through this budget, let's keep our eyes open, learn, you know, because most of us here are new and figure out what what does accountability look like?

What what information do we want?

Um I know one of the values that was initially talked about was not having staff have to duplicate a lot of work in the context of this.

So that's that's where we and the memos that were created from the last budget cycle were the start of something different in a way that wasn't too intrusive.

Um so that's kind of we're kind of at the next phase now of what does this look like.

So yeah.

Thoughts, council member?

Yeah, the timeline puts my mind at ease, so that that helped a lot.

Thank you.

All right.

Next is our land management code update.

Thank you, Clara, for the click, the quick clicking.

So do you want to bring up your job description?

That's probably the most important.

So as a review, we no, you're fine.

Yep.

We had where we are in this process is we had initially had a draft that came before us.

We had weighed in uh council members had sent some corrections and changes and ideas for changes.

We incorporated them into a document that those changes into the document.

We did let the full council know that we were working on this and that our timeline was to hopefully get this be started immediately after budget.

We are proceeding through budget with this in mind.

So many of us had priorities related to where we talked about this happening, and so uh this is meant to just provide an update regarding where we are.

Um Clara did a fantastic job of drafting a uh and Clara, it's okay.

I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I just wanted to make sure that we had a job description uh for the members.

Um that was something that council member Taylor had requested that we we proceed with ensuring that uh folks knew what they were getting into, uh right, uh that they knew that it was gonna be a lengthy discussion.

Um we had also talked about just you know the criteria, we talked about the membership.

Um, Councilmember Atkins, I know you had some thoughts about you had some historical knowledge about the number of people because we were sort of we landed, we kind of picked a number and we landed on that.

Um so I'm filibustering until no, you're fine, Claire.

You're fine.

Okay, can I ask?

Yeah, absolutely.

Go ahead.

So the job description that Claire is looking for is to be on the commission.

Yes.

Okay.

And then um I did have a proposal for what we want a suggestion of how we want to to proceed.

And it would still include the the commission, but their capacity wouldn't be taking it all on and doing all the work.

And I don't know if you want me to get into that or we can wait for and just as a reminder, we have not when we go to present our final version to the full council, we will of course include all of this again.

So multiple multiple steps.

We know there's gonna be a lot of interest, so much interest in serving on this commission, I'm sure.

Uh, but that was set to be a joke, but I thought it was funny.

So this is um just for the record, this is a possible job description that has been created to begin to think about how this will, and I think the goal is that this goes out shortly after our budget is complete, so we can begin this work, if not before.

Um that's a council president question and answer.

But so just if you have additional um edits to this, you can certainly send those in.

This is just letting you know this is in development, and we didn't want to do this in a vacuum.

So council member Taylor, did you want to talk about your yes?

Your proposal.

I think everybody has well.

Joe, do you want her to share it?

It's in the backup.

Oh, yeah, it's right there.

Okay.

So like what I was just saying, they think we were talking about this earlier, thinking about this is a lot to put on volunteers that may not have expertise in zoning and particularly our land management code.

Ideally it'd be great if we had staff, like us one dedicated staff person from the planning department to lead this, but I know bandwidth is is not on our side there.

So what I'm proposing is that we would hire um for a limited term a legislative project manager to lead these efforts.

Um in addition, at the at the same time, we would still um put together a land use commission that we talked about before.

Um of the first items that the legislative project manager would do is look at the low-hanging fruit of what our current land management code is and what we have in the comprehensive plan and suggest five to ten immediate tax amendments to propose to us that we could resolve.

And this is something we've talked about too.

Like what are those quick fixes while this larger project is going on.

Um we would ask the the commission and the project manager to put together a list of pros and cons about different types of zoning.

So the current zoning that we have now or form-based code incentive zoning, and they would give that to the city council, and we would we would determine which type of zoning we'd like to move forward on.

And with from there, the legislative project manager would put together an RFP to then hire a professional consulting team to help us with these efforts.

The land use commission would still be relevant, so they would kind of be like the planning commission is now, but only focused on this.

So they would be working with the consultants and the project manager and us.

So they would be um really advising the consultants what to do and then bringing the recommendations to us.

Um I think that that covers most of what what I'm thinking.

Um so they would put together a staff draft, and then that would come to us.

Once it comes to us, we would have a very short um moratorium and only for the bigger things.

So I'm thinking new annexations, new master plans, private tax amendments, but things that are in the pipeline, those would still move forward.

Um it that moratorium would just be while we are looking it over, and this would be give the proposal be given to us by the commission.

And once we adopt and pass what we'd like, then the moratorium would end, or it would expire in 270 days, whichever is sooner.

Um in here I do have cost estimates of how much estimating things would cost, and then also this type of um strategy would move us from doing the comprehensive plan every 10 years to um one where we're not reactive, but we are continually um evolving and looking at we what we want to do with small area plans.

So we would move us away from doing that comprehensive plan um because we would continue to those small area plans throughout the city.

So I know that's a lot, um, but welcome your feedback or or if you have something that you want to share with me later, let me know.

So I asked Councilmember Taylor to present this in public so that we we could get it out into the public sphere.

And respectfully, council member, I think it's good to let uh especially Councilmember Atkins have a chance to digest this a little bit because we just and that's no fault of your own, you did a lot of work here.

Um I think we'll also need to just, you know, I know the count the comprehensive plan is is state driven, and I know there's been some changes, Councilmember I can see would know that more than me, but there have been some tweaks to that.

So um anyway, fantastic work.

You put a lot of time in.

And I think it's I think it's good for folks to know where we're like what we're thinking and how we're how this is getting um ultimately fleshed out.

So um I'm gonna take public comment if you all are okay with that.

I imagine public comment.

Okay.

Um is there anything up here about any of this before we thank you, Councilmember T Taylor, for putting this together.

When did we get that the your stuff?

Put it up on Friday.

No, it wasn't till Monday.

Oh, okay.

Was it an email or no?

No, I said to uh to Claire to put it in a backup.

Wait, today's Monday.

I don't know.

Yeah, no, no.

I think it wasn't Friday.

Yeah.

Yes.

I I took I did not work on Friday or over the weekend, so if you're getting things late, I apologize, but it was um kind of a super bowl religious holiday for us.

Um so I am a little bit more behind than usual, but uh we just to the extent that we can put things out, we're gonna do that and then um but we're not gonna rush any conversation, so just but we wanted to make sure that just given how much public interest there's gonna be on this topic that we continued.

Um anything else up here before we adjourn for the night.

So all the public.

Okay, Kevin Salner's history.

Uh just a few things going through what you've discussed today as far as the housing resolution.

Let's remember Kevin, can you go a little closer?

Sorry.

The housing resolution to Joe's Mr.

Atkins uh points is for affordability, uh affordable housing.

So to me, yes, we'll get the number correct, whether it be 1377 or 1200 or 1500, whatever.

The point is is to build affordable housing.

So let's keep that in mind and we can get the numbers correct.

Um I I hate dealing in the percentages.

I think we just have to build the number of housing units that we need.

So that's the first thing.

Um second thing is the priority budging budgeting.

That's a great idea.

Considering the housing resolution.

Um the commitments all of you made for the campaign on affordable housing.

Um priority budging may be something where the council can decide to put forward an element uh in the budget that would be some percentage of the general revenues that goes to actual construction of housing.

Um if you recall uh during the inauguration, um many of you talked about affordable housing, but um the mayor talked about uh four properties that are gonna be donated.

There's probably six that could be donated for public housing.

Um that it would be a priority in terms of his budget when and I haven't seen the official his official budget yet, but the Frederick News Post summary from uh what he has presented, uh affordable housing wasn't in it.

So that was very disappointing considering the strong commitment he made in the inaugural address.

So I hope the council will move forward with some aggressive progressive uh funding suggestions for the budget uh in terms of meeting the housing resolution.

Um the last thing about the LMC update, so this is to you, uh Ms.

Taylor.

The land use council or whatever you called it, does that reduce citizen input because we have all the consultants?

Or how does can you explain how that would work?

Because I think the strength of what was initially written was very strong resident input, and I would hate to see that kind of diluted by uh lots of outside consultants.

Do you want to wrap up your comments before she finishes?

It's not really time for the that's my last comment.

Thank you.

Councilmember Taylor, comments.

Yes.

Um yeah, that's a really good point to bring up, and I I breezed through what the proposal that I put together.

Um, but they would absolutely be working with the community.

So the commission would be um that would be people in the community that we talked about, and I think something great about having that um legislative program manager that has that expertise and the consulting is we can get more people that are that don't have that expertise in land management.

Um and then they will be tasked with going out in the community to a lot of stakeholder engagement, and then um in the budget proposal I have there's dollars behind that about getting people together and how much that would cost to do that kind of stuff.

And then also a small stipend for people who are on the commission because it is, you know, a pretty big commitment.

Can I ask a question?

It's not back and forth, but we prompt this is I promise this was like the introduction, there's lots to come.

That's fine.

It's just how tight will the residents be able to in interact with the consultants.

And one of the issues that I'm worried about is setting up a land use commission, land management commission, whatever we call it.

Trying to get you talked about in the original document the number of residents and professionals, etc.

etc.

If you equalize those, you may not get consent.

You may not get unan unanimity.

So it might be pros and cons.

You know, so that's something we have to kind of put forward as will the consultant sort that out, or will how will that work out?

You know, if the development community is saying this, residents are saying this.

How do we move that forward?

Sorry.

Okay, thanks for raising that.

Uh additional council member comments.

All right, that's it for today.

Thank you very much.

We are adjourned.