I would like to invite you to our first virtual Ward 7 Town Hall event, coming up on Tuesday, March 9th, from 6-7:30pm. We will be having two special guests: the Mayor Gavin Buckley and Eileen Fogarty, with the Maritime Advisory Task Force.

6pm - I will kick off the evening along with The Mayor providing you with updates on some City and Ward issues, and then launch into a general Q&A session. 

6:30 - We will then hear from Eileen Fogarty, chair of the Maritime Advisory Task Force. This task force was put together to update our maritime zones. As you may know, we have specific zoning districts along our waterfront that are intended to preserve our maritime character. They were created to ensure we don't just get upscale residential housing along the waterfront. Instead, they ensure a majority of a property in these districts is dedicated to a maritime use, such as a marina, maritime clients at a commercial center, or in our case in Ward 7, dedicated entirely to a maritime industry. We have the only Waterfront Maritime Industrial (WMI) district in the City, which takes up a large portion of the zoning along Edgewood Rd. It has been many decades since we've updated this zoning, and this task force set out to make such recommendations to the Council. The importance is that there are property owners who want to weaken these standards; they want to be allowed to have more non-maritime uses on their properties, such as restaurants or non-maritime tenants. In some cases this may make sense (to allow Marinas to be more competitive, for example), in others it may not. Since this impacts such a large portion of our Ward I thought it would be important to inform everyone about this and to help Eileen get your thoughts. 

7:15 pm - If time allows we can have another open Q&A just for me at the end, if needed.

7:30pm - we'll call it a night.

I hope to have a second town hall in April or May and have Planning & Zoning staff come out and talk about the Annapolis Comprehensive Plan, which may be proposing some changes to the zoning in various parts of our Ward, which I think will be important for us to discuss. 

Here is the login information for March 9th: 

When: Mar 9, 2021 06:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Town Hall with Alderman Savidge March 9 2021

Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84033174020
Passcode: TOWN09

If you would like to join by phone, please email me with your phone number and I will send you the call-in number.