Before I get to details about our Monday Council meeting, I wanted to let you know about a special event happening this Sunday at City Hall:

Cycle to then Movie at City Hall

This Sunday at 3pm we are showing a short 5-minute video highlighting our recent delegation trip to the Netherlands (where we learned about cycling and climate resilience), followed by a longer ~90-minute Dutch documentary called “Together we Cycle” that highlights how they made the transition back to a cycling-based transportation system. We will conclude the event with a panel, including yours truly, to talk about how we can do that locally. If you want to bike over to the event together, please join us at the corner of Georgetown Rd and Windwhisper Ln at 2:30pm. We will also swing by Georgetown East Elementary and SPCA (right on Bay Ridge) if you would like to meet us there. (details below)

Monday Council meeting

I have three big items regarding Monday’s meeting:

1. The Mayor is giving his State of the City address; and
2. He will also be delivering his FY25 City Budget to the Council for review; and
3. The short term rental legislation I’ve been working on for well over 12-months is coming up for a final vote. And the good news is I expect it will pass. (details below)

State Housing bill update

I wanted to provide some updates on the governor’s "Housing expansion and affordability act of 2024" HB0538 & SB0484, which I have been emailing you about the past few weeks.

Based on my initial analysis, it would appear that our advocacy has paid off! If I’m not mistaken the Governor’s housing bill passed both chambers, but more importantly it was significantly amended in our favor. Here are some of the changes:

1. Strikes the language regarding Adequate Public Facilities that would have tied our (i.e. local jurisdictions) hands as far as ensuring new development meets our infrastructure standards (i.e. sewer, stormwater, education, etc); and
2. It improves the language to allow us to impose limitations and restrictions, as long as they don’t amount to a de facto denial, or in the case of lot restrictions (i.e. setbacks, height, parking, etc) as long as they aren’t deemed “unreasonable”; and
3. Includes language to ensure that when adding housing to non-residential areas there must be a health study done to address environmental justice issues.

It still allows for a modest increase in density by adding “missing middle” to be added, and slight density increases, but it at least allows us to impose guard rails on such development.

I would like to express my gratitude to our local District 30 delegation: Senator Elfreth, Delegate Henson, and Delegate Jones, as well as to the Maryland Municipal League for fighting for us. If you agree, please let them know.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

Our next Council meeting will be on Tuesday rather than Monday, due to Maryland Day. I will be joining the meeting virtually. Fortunately, this is a very light meeting. I’ll post details below. But first, here are a few general updates.

Capital Improvement Projects

Last week we received a presentation from the Department of Public Works on all of our Capital Improvement Projects. I created a post on my website if you want to read through the entire list. Otherwise, as an abridged update on Ward 7 projects, we have two remaining: the sidewalk expansion/improvement at the Annapolis Maritime Museum’s Moyer Park campus, and the Bay Ridge Ave sidewalk expansion. The former is set to start in 2025, the latter in 2026. I’m putting my list together for FY25 budget requests, so if you have any ideas please send them to me.

Annapolis Ahead 2040 Comprehensive Plan Update

Now that staff and the Planning Commission have submitted the Comprehensive Plan to the Council for review, we have been busy submitting comments and holding some committee meetings discussing it. Based on that feedback, staff is revising the report. We’ll be discussing this at our work session this Thursday at 2pm. I’ve shared Alderman Arnett’s update on my website if you want details on the changes staff has made thus far.

State Housing bill update

I wanted to provide some updates on the governor’s "Housing expansion and affordability act of 2024" HB0538 & SB0484, which I emailed you about last time. As a reminder, I don’t currently like those Bills because they would take away some of our local zoning powers when it comes to requiring adequate public facilities (sewer, water, stormwater, traffic, etc) for certain affordable housing projects. I’ve reached out to the Housing Secretary’s staff about this and made my thoughts known. It’s unfortunate that the Governor’s and Secretary’s first attempt at addressing lack of affordable housing was to utilize a strong-armed approach of limiting and pre-empting our local authority and autonomy. What I suggested instead, was that they should have taken an incentive-based approach. For example, if jurisdictions commit to addressing the affordable housing issue and commit to increasing housing by a certain percentage in their Comprehensive Plans, then perhaps that would then qualify them for adding a percentage or so to the State sales tax locally so that we could have that money go towards an Affordable Housing Infrastructure Fund. That would help address my issue where the State is forcing us to add housing but not helping with the costs of infrastructure.

 Regardless, I have also been in touch with Maryland Municipal League about this legislation (big thank you to State Senator Sarah Elfreth for getting us in touch), as they were only supporting it if it was amended. I’ve reviewed their latest amendments as tentatively approved by the House of Delegates, and I am very pleased with them. They remove entirely the provisions preventing municipalities from applying Adequate Public Facilities requirements to these developments. However, there’s still an issue regarding height that I’m trying to get MML to work on. As written, we couldn’t restrict height at all if it’s determined to be an “unreasonable limitation”. As an example of how height is important, look at the Tecumseh building on Chesapeake Ave. That was built so high that it completely altered the viewscape of the water for all surrounding properties. Clearly that was out of scale, which is why it lead to the creation of the City’s Maritime Districts.  

Bottom line is, I think all of our comments have paid off. So thank you for sending them. Now we just need to keep our fingers crossed that the MML amendments will be passed and hopefully added to. If you are so inclined, I’m sure an email to our delegation asking them to support the MML amendments would be helpful. 

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob