We’ve got some stuff to celebrate, and some stuff to fear. My obligation is to share both.
Last Wednesday evening, I moderated an online panel discussion about the county’s Plan2040 Annual Implementation Report that covered progress during 2024.
Sounds dull, I know. But to me, it’s something to celebrate. Our county’s general development plans used to be viewed as nothing more than a big thorn in the side of land speculators and developers. They were ok with plans that promoted smart growth, environmental protection, and equity, as long as they didn't interfere with what they saw as their right to develop land to its “highest and best” or “most profitable” use.
Now we publish annual reports, convene stakeholder groups, introduce legislation that the plans call for, and follow the plans when we allocate funds for transportation, parks, libraries, schools, land conservation, and public safety. We also enforce the adequate public facilities and environmental protections in our code, rather than passing out modifications like candy to campaign donors.
When we actually implement the plans that our residents and our planning professionals invest their time into, we help to clean up our politics and restore much-needed trust in local government. That’s why implementation is worth celebrating.
If you’d like to nerd out on how we’re implementing our greener, smarter, more equitable Plan2040, click here to listen to me, CECS Director Vincent Moulden, Long-Range Planner Michael Stringer, Office of Planning and Zoning Deputy Director Lynn Miller, Recreation and Parks Deputy Director Erica Matthews, Arundel Community Development Services Director Erin Karpewicz, and Office of Transportation Director Sam Snead. It will inspire you about the future.
Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is one kind of development that almost everyone supports. It’s where people can live, work, and play without owning a car, and when it’s done with urban density, it houses a lot of people in a sustainable way.
We are working with the state to create TOD in Odenton Town Center, where we have our busiest MARC station for commuters to D.C. and Baltimore. For years, we tried to get the state to partner on TOD at Cromwell Station - the end of the light rail from Baltimore at the northern end of Glen Burnie - but they failed to act, until the Moore administration took office. They share our smart growth vision, and are enthusiastically pursuing redevelopment of an underutilized state-owned parking lot next to the station. That’s why the County Council unanimously voted last week to rezone the parcel from industrial to Mixed Use Urban, the designation most compatible with TOD.
There is a lot of community engagement and planning still to do, but I believe that what we’ve launched is the revitalization of the Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard from the Glen Burnie Town Center to the train station. And if you check back in a decade, you’ll find a thriving economy that works for all our people. And the folks who live there will ride the train into the city and their bikes and scooters down the trail to Annapolis!
If you zoom out and look at the whole state, the real question is, can Maryland pull off the vision that Governor Moore has put before us? Can we grow our economy and leave no one behind? Can we align business interests with government interests with community interests?
I think we can. We have lots of jobs. We have lots of people. And there is lots of wealth to invest in improving the quality of life.
Being on the verge of such progress makes us reluctant to consider the very real prospect of failure, a prospect that is staring us in the face. We must confront it.
The federal budget proposal that President Trump shared with Congress last week proposes huge cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). We knew it was being considered, so our housing agencies pulled together the facts about who is served by those programs in our county.
It’s a total of over $52 million in direct assistance, with most of it going to pay rent for people who otherwise would be evicted. Over 3,000 county residents receive housing vouchers, and 345 have received emergency housing services at shelters. Just in FY24, 1,500 residents received services from HUD’s CDBG program, and 82 homeowners received funds to repair their homes so that they could continue living in them.
And $6.5 million of HUD HOME money has recently leveraged $269 million in other funds to build seven new developments for low and moderate income renters, creating an estimated 3,310 jobs.
Today, we have a homeless count of approximately 300. Without HUD programs, that number could easily surpass our voucher number of 3,000. To address that crisis, we would be forced to make difficult decisions. We could backfill the money by drastically increasing both property and income taxes, or stop building schools and parks to instead build emergency housing for our residents. We’d have options, but none of them would be good.
The proposed HUD cuts are only one of the threats we must confront on the path to the implementation of Plan2040. What matters most, is that we maintain our vision of the success we have planned for, to inspire ourselves for the battles we face.