On July 27, 2026, from 1:32 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., the Montgomery County Council's Planning, Housing and Parks (PHP) Committee met in the Council Hearing Room. Chair Andrew Friedson presided with Councilmembers Natali Fani-González and Will Jawando; Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe was also present. The committee considered two state-law compliance zoning text amendments, ZTA 26-06 on accessory dwelling units and ZTA 26-07 on solar collection systems, and deferred action on Bill 9-26 concerning rental housing air-conditioning requirements.
Good afternoon. It is just past one thirty on July twenty-seventh. We're here for a planning housing and parks committee work session. We have a few items on our agenda, starting with a couple zoning tax amendments recommended by the planning board related to compliance with state law to get our zoning code in conformance with the state issues, starting with accessory dwelling units. So why don't we turn it over to Miss Nadu? You can walk us through the issues and we can take it up. Absolutely. Speakers were all in support. Although multiple speakers did ask for amendments to remove owner occupancy requirements, um, as well as the two adult occup to adult occupancy requirement, which I will address later. So turning to page two, the background of this is in April twenty twenty-five, the General Assembly passed House Bill fourteen sixty-six, and it explicitly required uh the county to adopt what all local jurisdictions, not just us, um, to adopt a local law that authorizes ADU development by October first, twenty twenty-six. So the county actually, as you know, already has ADUs allowed in the zoning ordinance, um, but several of the provisions were stricter than the state would like. And so planning um took on drafting and transmitting this CTA for request by the council, or for intro by the council. Um, so going through the various provisions in the DTA. Uh, first, the use table. Uh, previously, both attached and detached ADUs. Um, and to back up slightly, this whole ZTA will cover both types. I know we often think of the detached like converted garage, but basement apartments are also considered ADUs. So this covers both. Um, so the use table was amended to allow ADUs in all zones. Uh, currently, ADUs were only allowed in the agricultural rural residential and residential detached zones. Um, the reason for this change was the definition under state law as well as guidance documents that were provided by the state. And so planning reviewed all of those and interpreted that this should be changed in our zoning ordinance to bring us into compliance. Second, also about the definition. And so what they said was local jurisdictions need to do a parking study if you're going to have parking restrictions on ADUs. And also that if parking is going to be required, there must be a waiver provision. So planning had two choices here. We could have removed all of the parking provisions, or they could do a parking study and see where we can tweak what was already, I'll say hard fought. And so the current zoning ordinance requires one off street parking space, which is not required if you're a mile from Purple Line or MARC, and it also allows a request for a waiver from the hearing examiner. So park uh planning completed the study and had a few recommendations. First was to actually retain that one space per ADU as well as the exemption near transit. But there was a requirement that you have, if you did not have a driveway, you had to do additional parking spaces. So planning recommended removing that, and then also retaining the waiver that you get through the hearing examiner. So if you look at this ETA section about parking, first the language about if a new driveway must be constructed, then two spaces must be provided is changed so that if the principal dwelling has no existing on-site parking, such as a driveway, then the ADU only needs to provide one more parking space. So it's more consistent across all ADUs. And then also letting the hearing examiner do a waiver if the size or shape of the existing lot effectively precludes the ability to provide additional on-site parking. And that change is consistent with language in the state law about a parking waiver for small or irregular lots. We like to go through proofread update where we can. So there's things like making things that were lowercase, be uppercase, some language that was cut off. So that's number four on page three. And so what the ZTA does is apply that across the board in all zones. But we thought of a scenario where there's an ADU on a lot, and then you subdivide the lot. Now the ADU is on its own lot, so in that instance, you would then count that density. As for the use standards, this is a lot of stuff about the setbacks, which is probably the part where we were the least in compliance with the recent state law. So there were standards in the zoning ordinance about size specifications. Because the state definition made it clear that you could go up to 75% of the size of the primary dwelling. Just most of those setback and other size requirements are just taken out and replaced with that language. And so what the ZTA does is rely on those accessory setback provisions. I did receive a question or two about this, like then what would the setbacks be? It would be whatever the accessory structure allowances are in the underlying zone. So that varies across zone, but whatever zone you're in, whatever those accessory structure standards are, that's what the detached ADU standards would be.