First of all, Happy New Year! I hope everyone stayed safe during the previous snowstorm and found some time to enjoy the beauty and peace provided by a nice snowfall. I did, as I took it as an opportunity to travel this weekend on a father-son ski trip; hence my delay in getting this out. I apologize for the delay but I do need to prioritize family and didn’t want to miss this opportunity.

Snow response

This was the City’s largest snowstorm in eight years. Dedicated Public Works crews were operating on twelve-hours shifts throughout the week to clear our 275 miles of streets and spread over 600,000 pounds of salt. In addition, Public Works staff had to quickly and efficiently address a few water main breaks that popped up due to sustained temperatures below freezing. I understand that some of your streets remain icy. The challenge the City had was that with the cold temperatures continuing after the snowfall, the salt was not able to accelerate the ice’s melting, and plows are not easily able to remove ice. It’s best to apply salt prior to the snowfall, but in this case they did that but the snow quickly overwhelmed our initial efforts. All that said, no snow response is perfect. If you have any issues in the future, the best way to report issues is at https://www.annapolis.gov/2025/Report-an-Issue

If you see any sidewalks that are not cleared of snow, please report them via that link as well. Sidewalks in both the City and County are the responsibility of the adjacent property owner to clear. If you report them to the City or County they should then be sending enforcement notices to the property owners.

Previous Ward 7 Town Hall on YouTube

If you were unable to attend our last Ward 7 town Hall this past December, you can view it here. The Mayor and I presented on our local takeaways from our work study visits to Europe. I enjoyed chatting with everyone and am looking forward to applying these lessons to improve your lives and our City.

Other items

I discuss other items below, including a public hearing on our seasonal outdoor dining Ordinance, support our City Dock resilience efforts with R-3-25, and a Resolution that would establish a task force to look at our houseboat code.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

Next Council meeting – 1/13/24 (agenda)

This meeting starts at 7pm and will be televised on local cable, YouTube, Facebook, and the City website.  You can submit public testimony at http://www.annapolis.gov/testimony. This will be an in-person meeting.

Public Hearings

• O-10-24 – Seasonal outdoor dining – Ever since the COVID pandemic, we have been authorizing outdoor dining via Resolution, which is a temporary solution since we do not have City Code governing outdoor dining in parking lots, and in fact have code that prevents parking spaces from being utilized for any other purpose. As opposed to passing a blanket waiver via Resolution on an annual basis, the proper way forward has always been to establish actual regulation in our Code that governs and allows such use. This legislation would establish such regulation for seasonal sidewalk cafés, street dining, rooftop dining, and outside dining on private property including parking lots. This legislation is only meant to enable these seasonal (6-month) uses. I have separate legislation, which I hope to introduce on January 27^th, to provide a path for enabling permanent outdoor dining in former parking spaces. But in order to enable such a transition from parking space to whatever permanent use they desire, we need to reduce or eliminate the parking requirements. This would allow for permanent expansions to dining to be applied for following the normal permit process, or for some other repurposing of those former parking spaces, be it for planting trees, stormwater management, or adding housing stock. I thought it best to handle the parking requirements as a separate piece of legislation instead of having that threaten the passage of O-10-24’s seasonal allowance. I’ll provide more detail on my legislation once it’s in final form and ready for introduction.

Legislation being introduced on first reader

• O-1-25 - Expansion of Child Care Options in Annapolis – If I am understanding this legislation correctly, it simply adjusts our code governing Child Care to keep it in line with the State, while at the same time removing a few barriers to hopefully allow for growth in this sector since affordable child care is sorely needed. I plan to introduce a few amendments, one of which may be removing the parking requirements. My rationale is that child care centers have very low parking needs. They may have a few staff persons but they are only parked there during the day, which is typically a time of non-peak parking demand for many areas. I continue to find it absurd that the new child care at Tyler & Spa has a huge parking lot that is empty most of the day, considering that it’s a bunch of kids and a handful of staff only. This exemplifies how our parking code is antiquated. That space could have been trees, for example, but instead we have a requirement to provide parking for children?
• O-2-25 - WRNR Radio Tower Lease With the City - For the purpose of entering a ground lease of the City-owned radio tower located at 25 Silopanna Road with Cortona Media LLC dba WRNR Radio, a Maryland limited liability company; and all matters relating to said lease. I’m looking into this a little bit before our final vote, to find out more about the new owners of WRNR, but this is only First Reader anyway.
• R-1-25 - Thompson Street Park - For the purpose of designating specific City of Annapolis-owned property as a street-end park; naming the street-end park at the southeast end of Thompson Street the “Thompson Street Park”; and generally relating to park amenities.
• R-3-25 - City Dock Resiliency Project - For the purpose of demonstrating Annapolis City Council support for the City Dock Resiliency Project and the urgency of protecting Historic Downtown Annapolis along with the public safety of its residents and businesses from the constant and the growing threat of higher rising tides, as well as increasing frequent and more intense storms that cause extreme flooding and severe impacts to residents, businesses, public safety and the historic fabric of the City itself. This Resolution simply states that we support the City Dock project because the need for us to adapt to sea level rise and climate change is an imperative. I understand that there was an op-ed written that criticizes our inclusion of the Maritime Welcome Center in the City dock project, as well as our inclusion of a spray fountain, stage and other such public amenities. I don’t quite understand why the opponents are so upset about those components, other than being concerned about the finances, but our plan is to seek funding from other sources to help with the cost of this project, and we have always been very disciplined with keeping our spending within our spending policies and below our self-imposed debt ceiling. This Resolution is focused on the Resilience part, but does express support for the “amenities and services identified by the Annapolis community and stakeholders”, which included adding greenspace for all instead of pavement for individual cars. Those components are not essential to the Resilience part of this project, but are a part of ensuring economic resilience and relevance; so that City Dock becomes an even more central part of our town by attracting residents and visitors to that part of downtown. I fully support their inclusion in the City Dock project and think that this is an appropriate time to include them in this project since we will be re-constructing the entirety of this area anyway. The City is currently being sued by an anonymous plaintiff in an effort to stop this project. My feelings are we can’t let that happen and need to take every opportunity we have to express unity around this idea that we are preparing City Dock for the future; both of our new climate realities and for increased public utilization. At the moment I fully support suspending the rules to pass this at this meeting, since a hearing on the lawsuit is coming up very soon. If you have thought on this, feel free to send them to me.

Legislation on second reader (i.e. final vote)

• O-11-24 - Tenant Displacement Fund - For the purpose of establishing a fund for providing assistance to tenants who are displaced when rental units are deemed unfit for human habitation by the City; basing funding for tenants on specific criteria; and generally related to emergency housing needs in the City of Annapolis. I believe the sponsor intend to withdraw this legislation.
• R-38-24 - Condemnation and Possession of Real Property at 245 West Street - For the purpose of authorizing the condemnation and possession of real property at 245 West Street in the City of Annapolis; removing a severe public health and safety hazard related to a blighted and vacant lot; and working toward construction of affordable housing on the same blighted and vacant lot. I am inclined to support this, pending any input from you. This gas station site has become derelict, and I would prefer for another use besides a gas station. Ideally a mix of housing and open space, or just a park. I think this will likely get either withdrawn or postponed, given that the property is supposedly under contract for redevelopment.
• R-46-24 - Task Force to Study Residential Marine Vessels - For the purpose of creating a task force to research and make recommendations for the City of Annapolis' policy, law, and regulations on residential marine vessels. We have received some requests to adjust our code governing houseboats, because there are a few marina owners interested in allowing more house barges than are currently allowed. The catch is that they want these houseboats to be utilized as short term rentals on the water. The particular investors pushing for this currently install them in Baltimore, where they are classified as hotels. They spoke on a podcast where they went further to state that they want to create waterfront hotels and a new waterfront resort. The issue is this type of use is non-maritime, given that it does not support the maritime industry. Such non-maritime uses are restricted in our maritime districts because we realize that in order to have a functioning maritime industry, we have to have the supporting commercial businesses, marinas, fuel pumps, etc that support that industry. If we didn’t have those districts our waterfront would become housing for the wealthy and block everyone’s view of the water. That’s why our Maritime Districts were created in the 80’s and why we updated such regulations about two years ago. Given the great number of questions about whether or not we should allow short term rentals on our waterfront, and what impact they may have on our maritime industry, we are convening a task force to dig into this topic. I am strongly inclined to support his Resolution, pending any comments from you.
• R-57-24 - Annual Meeting and Tourism Industry Reception Fee Wavier - For the purpose of identifying the Annual Meeting and Tourism Industry Reception that will be held on January 28, 2025, as a Special Event and waiving certain City of Annapolis fees for services related to that event. I believe we have passed something similar for the previous two years. This would waive fees up to $3,253. I am inclined to support this, pending any comments from you.

Community & Political updates

City of Annapolis ‘Plastic Bag Reduction Act’ Goes Into Effect January 22, 2025

Cycle advocacy in AA County and Annapolis

If you care about cycle or pedestrian safety and infrastructure, I encourage you to check out Bike Anne Arundel & Annapolis’ (BikeAAA) latest newsletter indicating how you can participate during the County’s budget hearings.