For Immediate Release: Friday, July 12, 2024
The Public Safety (PS) Committee will meet on Monday, July 15 at 9:30 a.m. to review recommendations from Maddie’s Million Pet Challenge for the Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center.
The members of the PS Committee include Chair Sidney Katz and Councilmembers Dawn Luedtke and Kristin Mink.
The Transportation and Environment (TE) Committee will meet at 9:30 a.m. to discuss the Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS) regulation.
The members of the TE Committee include Chair Evan Glass and Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe and Vice President Kate Stewart.
The Planning, Housing and Parks (PHP) Committee will meet at 1:30 p.m. to receive briefings on the governor’s housing package and Design for Life incentives.
The members of the PHP Committee include Chair and Council President Andrew Friedson and Councilmembers Natali Fani-González and Will Jawando.
More detail on each agenda item is provided below.
Maddie’s Million Pet Challenge Consult Recommendations
Briefing: The PS Committee will receive a briefing about the recommendations from Maddie’s Million Pet Challenge (MMPC) following a pro bono operational consultation visit to the Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center. MMPC sends experts to communities across the country to offer free consultations to shelters and veterinary clinics and provides recommendation about how to keep pets with their families and out of shelters.
MMPC visited the Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center in Sept. 2023 and reviewed Maryland State Law, County Code, the Office of Animal Service’s internal policies and procedures and Animal Shelter statistics. Their recommendations relate to practices in the spay and neuter program, rabies clinic, triage and safety net programs, fostering, community cat program, field services, population management, intake protocols, animal housing, medicine and surgery, return-to-owners, adoptions and volunteers.
Building Energy Performance Standards
Review: The TE Committee will hold its fourth meeting to review Executive Regulation 17-23, Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS). At this meeting, the committee will hear from developers and representatives of multifamily housing, including both rental properties and condominium housing. Two additional meetings are tentatively scheduled to hear from representatives of the Montgomery County Green Bank and other entities regarding financing opportunities and from faith community representatives. The regulation is required by Bill 16-21, which was enacted by the Council on April 19, 2022.
The bill expanded the number of buildings covered by existing benchmarking requirements, created a Building Performance Improvement Board, and required energy performance standards to be established by regulation for covered buildings with a gross floor area of 25,000 gross square feet or greater. Executive Regulation 17-23 would set numerical site Energy Use Intensity (EUI) performance standards for each building group, define how renewable energy will be incorporated into the performance metric and define the elements required in Building Performance Improvement Plans (BPIPs).
The committee first discussed Executive Regulation 17-23 at a meeting held on Jan. 24 and received an overview of the regulation from representatives of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). At a meeting held on Feb. 26, the committee heard from representatives involved in affordable housing development. At a meeting held on March 18, the committee met with representatives from the life sciences and technology industries.
Briefing: The PHP Committee will receive a briefing about Gov. Wes Moore’s package of state legislation addressing the state’s housing market. The package broadly intends to spur new housing construction in transit-oriented areas, reduce regulatory burdens, create long-term financial investments in low-income areas and assist renters. The housing package consists of three separate legislative proposals, as well as a separate departmental bill, which includes the Housing Expansion and Affordability Act (House Bill 538), Renters’ Rights and Stabilization Act (HB 693), Housing and Community Development Financing Act (HB 599) and Just Communities (SB 308/HB 241). All of these bills were approved by the Maryland General Assembly and took effect on July 1, 2024.
Briefing: The PHP Committee will receive a briefing on Design for Life, which is a tax incentive program to encourage the development of universally accessible features for homes. Through the program, a homeowner can receive a property tax credit of up to 50 percent of the cost to install certain permanent accessibility features, capped at $2,500. In addition, both property owners and developers are eligible to receive tax credits applied to both property and school impact taxes for permanent installations of features necessary to achieve accessibility standards. Eligible properties include single-family homes, townhomes and duplexes.
The purpose of the program is to address housing affordability and the needs of an aging population. Much of the County’s housing stock was built in previous decades without universal accessibility or design features. The Design for Life program was initially established through Bill 5-13, which was approved by the Council in Nov. 2013 and subsequently amended by Bill 24-14, which was approved in July 2014.
Bill 8-24, Human Rights and Civil Liberties - Fair Criminal History and Credit Screenings
Review: The PHP Committee will review Bill 8-24, Human Rights and Civil Liberties - Fair Criminal History and Credit Screenings – Amendments. The bill would require posting a notice regarding the use of criminal arrest and conviction information in rental housing decisions, clarify if a certain addendum or statement is required for rental applications and require annual reporting of certain disaggregated data related to rental applications. Additionally, Bill 8-24 would require a landlord to retain a rental application addendum for a certain period and require that a landlord provide to the County, as part of the annual rental housing survey, a completed criminal and credit screening addendum.
The purpose of the bill is to strengthen compliance with the Fair Criminal Record Screening Standards Law, also known as “ban the box,” and improve renters’ knowledge about the use of criminal background checks or credit screenings during the rental housing application process. The lead sponsor of Bill 8-24 is Councilmember Sayles. Councilmembers Glass and Katz are cosponsors of the legislation.
The Committee meeting schedule may change from time to time. View the current Council and Committee agendas, Council staff reports and additional information on items scheduled for Council review on the Council website.
Council and committee meetings are streamed live on the Council’s web page via YouTube and on Facebook Live and can be watched on County Cable Montgomery on Xfinity/RCN 6 HD 996/1056, Fios 30, and on the CCM live stream.
Release ID: 24-262