The Planning, Housing and Parks (PHP) Committee met on March 9, 2026, from 1:46 p.m. to approximately 3:30 p.m. to discuss four agenda items: the FY27-32 Capital Improvements Program (CIP) for Montgomery Parks, Zoning Text Amendment (ZTA) 26-02 regarding regional shopping center overlay zones, ZTA 26-03 on biohealth priority campus eligibility, and ZTA 26-04 on mixed-income housing community eligibility. The committee took votes on all items and set next steps for the parks CIP.
Good afternoon. We are here for Planning Housing and Parks Committee. It's March 9th at 145. We have a few items on the agenda, starting with our parks capital improvements program. Before we turn it over to Ms. Don and Council staff, I'll just turn it over to the planning board chair and to the director to see if you want to walk through and give some overview of your budget request and your budget that's before us, and then we can walk through with Pam and the packet. Yeah, thank you. Already here is chair of the Montgomery County Planning Board, and I'll let uh our directive Mitty Figuero uh start lead us out this morning. Thank you. Thank you so much, Middy Figaro for the record. Um when we were preparing our CIP request this cycle, we were trying to do what we hope we have a reputation for doing, which is bring to the planning board and then to the council a request that reflects really what our fundamental needs are in order to keep a well-maintained park system and move forward with projects for which there is broad support from the council and frankly the community. So to simplify matters and give you a very sort of high-level view of what our request ultimately is and what we would be asking to have restored to us, is we requested an increase in general obligation bonds for Wheaton Regional Park. We requested an additional $4 million a year to sub out for program open space funding that we are no longer getting, and an additional million dollars to add a bathroom to the Wheaton Action Sports Park. We requested $2.4 million in geo bonds for our solar initiative. Again, um that is an initiative that seeks to double the amount of solar we produce on parkland over the next five years, and that's $400,000 a year that we were asking for. I do want to note that for those first two years in the CIP, 400,000 each of those years. Um that's really important funding for us because it leverages some federal tax credits that are sunsetting. In addition, we had an ask of $4.8 million in additional current revenue. $3 million of that current revenue request is for PLAR. And as you all know, PLR is the PDF that fixes all of the broken things in parks that need to be fixed. It's fundamental to the maintenance of our infrastructure. Um and then the additional 1.8 million in current revenue was to go to natural surface trails, which is our most popular amenity in parks. And this 1.8 million dollars would allow us to fix something or at least start making progress on fixing something like 60 bridges along our natural surface trails that need to be replaced and make some important connections between Little Bennett and Black Hill Regional Park. So at a very high level, that was what we asked for, and that was what was cut from our request, and we would be asking for it to be restored. So thank you. Great. Um you want to talk a little bit about what the impact would be of the cuts and kind of you know, are there kind of different points at which you know restoration would have different impacts. If you want to talk a little bit about that, if you can. So I'll start with our request for the additional geobonds for Wheaton Regional Park. Um, if you all recall, um we succeeded kind of beyond our wildest hopes over the last couple of years in securing $5.5 million in state capital grants for wheat and regional park. Um if we were not to receive the geobond funding that we asked for during this cycle for Wheaton, we cannot move forward with the Wheat in Action Sports Park, and we put that $5.5 million at risk. That's the impact to Wheaton. Um the solar initiative, again, um without the $2.4 million in geobonds. Um, I will say we would have to probably delay some of these solar projects that we had hoped would get us to this goal of doubling solar. We can with some money move forward, but probably won't hit that five-year goal. The impact of not getting the current revenue on PLAR, you know, we pulled together, just to give you a picture, some of the projects that we expect to fund out of PLAR over this cycle, and they include things like improvements, really mold remediation to our Brookside Nature Center, the rehabilitation of the amphitheater at Cabin John Regional Park, renovation of the picnic area at Valley Mill, Candy Kane uh City replacement of the bridge, which is really important, and a bunch of other of these kinds of, I would describe them as unsexy but very necessary repairs. And then, of course, you know, our natural surface trails. Um, that's really scalable. That's the beauty part of you know, natural surface trails is that we can build with what we have. But again, it's our most popular amenity and the one that's most cost effective for us to um to quickly implement for park users. I hope that's helpful. It is. It is. Thank you. Okay. Umber Gerwondo. I was going to turn it over to staff and then open up to questions and comments if that's okay. Uh all right. Uh happy to go through the packet, Ms. Dunn.