(N) = New Practice, needs advocacy. Use Maryland Best Management Practices Model
Phytase is an enzyme breaking down bound phosphorous
SWM = Storm Water Management

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Growth

Maryland's population will increase by an estimated 1.5 million people in the next 20 years according to the Maryland Department of Planning. There is and will be tremendous pressure for development on the Eastern Shore and in Talbot County specifically.

Strip malls and clustered subdivisions are overtaking our landscape; many people with whom I have spoken are deeply concerned our County is losing its quality of life and rural character. New development is devouring our open space and wetlands, creating traffic congestion and increasing pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. Equally, many residents are expressing frustration about the loss of farms and open spaces, further decreasing the quality of Talbot's natural environment. I will, if elected, set goals to reverse this trend by encouraging our municipalities to focus growth within the bounds set forth in Talbot County's Comprehensive Plan. Only through open, public dialog among officials of our County and those of our municipalities and villages, coupled with cooperative planning, can we hope to accomplish these goals.

There are State laws and County plans providing a logical springboard from which to manage our growth. Maryland's existing "growth" legislation targets rural communities and areas such as ours. The Priority Funding Areas Act, Rural Legacy Program and Sensitive Areas Program are crucial to Talbot County. The Priority Funding Areas Act designates development areas. They are areas where "state and local government want to target their efforts to encourage and support economic development and new growth".

The Rural Legacy Act identifies areas "to preserve large contiguous areas of land possessing significant farm, forest, historical and environmental resources". To implement the Rural Legacy Act, Talbot County has a Rural Land Agriculture Conservation section in its Comprehensive Plan. Farmland is a valuable resource in Talbot County and contributes to its rural character. Talbot County can and must preserve our rural land and farms by directing most development into our existing towns and villages.

Sensitive Areas are defined as "streams and their buffers, 100 year floodplains, habitats of threatened/endangered species and steep slopes". The Natural Resource Conservation and Sensitive Areas Protection sections of our County's Comprehensive Plan directs development away from designated sensitive areas and re-focuses development into areas where environmental impacts will not be as severe. As a member of County Council, I will ensure our County protects its water quality and groundwater resources, conserves habitats, forests, and woodlands, and protects our critical areas. We must maintain our quality of life and rural character by adhering to the policies set forth in our Comprehensive Plan, to do so will require strong leadership on our Council to ensure we manage growth for the good of ALL. I have proven management experience and leadership skills, gained through decades of being in senior military and business leadership positions, to carry out the mandates in our Comprehensive Plan.

In addition to preserving our open spaces and supporting the economic viability of farming, I will do all I can to make sure our State government uses all of the State's transfer tax dollars being raised for agriculture preservation for that purpose. It is wrong to divert these funds to the general fund in an effort to balance the budget (which has happened for the past three years). The millions of dollars available through this revenue source should be "locked up" to purchase agricultural easements which will preserve the land for farmers to farm and prevent development of our working landscapes.

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Education

Your County Council, in partnership with the State, is making steady progress towards increasing funding for K-12 education; however, much more needs to be done. A substantial increase in State funding is required. I will work as to ensure our state legislature understands the specific needs of our schools, education professionals, and students. As the nation moves into the 21st Century, it is essential our young people be proficient in the uses of available and emerging technologies. As adults we have an obligation to these young people to ensure they have the tools and skills to compete and succeed in life. Our School Board's "Laptop Initiative" is one such tool. First and foremost, however, we must recognize, through appropriate compensation, the importance and role our education professionals play in helping youth to become well-educated and successful adults. Talbot County is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, we should pay our teachers and administrators well. We should challenge Council budget decisions when these impact education excellence and our children's future. Excellent teachers who understand the diversity of our student population are essential. Paying them appropriately is equally essential. Without the best teachers we can not expect our graduates to excel when coping with entrance into College or the job market. At present, student test scores are improving and families' hopes for continuing their children's education beyond high school are rising - as a member of our Council, I will work to keep this trend moving in this direction and support appropriate funding increases so essential to making our education system the best.

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Agriculture

The President of Talbot's Farm Bureau, and many others may not have gone far enough in their recent expressions of concern about the future availability of producing farm lands. As the nation seeks alternative sources of energy one of the obvious mainstays is the availability of renewable energy sources from bio mass, biodegradable, and agricultural resources. For our Mid-Shore Region and Talbot County in particular, this means lands that are consumed today, for rural subdivision development and the accompanying infrastructure, will not be available to grow crops capable of producing alternative sources of energy. The President's statement about our need to understand "agriculture" as being more than farming is profound. It is highly likely that alternative fuels research and development efforts will indicate that crops such as barley and wheat - supplanting certain types of corn crops but not all - may well prove to be our future source of renewable energy supplies, as well as contributing to protecting and improving our environment.

Ethanol can be produced from farm products, like fast growing trees and certain grain crops, that will yield a higher energy balance than ethanol made from corn. Today, production of ethanol is energy efficient as it yields almost 25 percent more energy than is used in growing corn, harvesting it, and distilling it into ethanol. The most recent findings show that bio mass ethanol fuel is equally energy efficient and yields an energy output:input ratio of 1.6. Today's ethanol is produced using corn and an increased demand for ethanol means an additional market for corn, a more stable and profitable farming industry, and an increased level of energy independence for our nation.

Another concern is the ability of farmers to cluster develop on their farms on smaller parcels than are now permitted under current zoning ordnances. Most farmers with whom I have spoken are eager to have their children return to their farms and live; furthermore, the equity they have in their land must be protected for future generations as well as for their livelihood once farming becomes too difficult as age overtakes ability. Many farmers have expressed concern about loss of equity because their farms are in designated growth areas. Although a large number of farmers do not believe in selling their land, they would like their children and grandchildren to have the equity resulting from trade-offs such as "Transfer Development Rights" (TDR). I believe we can create a viable TDR program in Talbot but it will take far more effort than a simple web site such as that proposed by Caroline County. Such a program will require active leadership and marketing, equity brokering, and managing the balance between municipality "infill" development cluster density and the ability of the existing and programmed infrastructure to support such development. It will take strong leadership at all levels of government in the County to ensure an equitable balance is maintained between the exchange of TDRs, loss of agriculture producing farm land, and municipality cluster density infill development.

Talbot County planners and policy makers should carefully consider the long-term effects of allowing unconstrained development in our rural areas. Protecting our farms is not only protecting a way of life and the rural character of our County, it is also preparing the County for a dramatic shift in our economy and that of the Mid-Shore Region. If elected, I will pay close attention to this issue and provide leadership and advocacy to ensure future development of our farm and rural areas is consistent with our Comprehensive Plan as well as listening to the needs of our electorate.

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Communication

At present, there appears to be wide-spread voter perceptions regarding great difficulties achieving open, public, transparent dialog among our County Council, our residents, municipal officials, and village representatives. This is not a healthy, productive environment. Our Council and officials of our municipalities should build trusted relationships permitting the sort of openness of government so essential to a democratic process. Agreements can be reached through listening and compromise, as well as through such instruments as voter petitions, referendums and such.

Improving communications can come about several ways. The most important is direct, person-to-person discussions. However, such interactive discussion is not always possible due to everyone's varying commitments and schedules. Thus my advocacy for "wiring Talbot for the 21st Century". We must re-energize the process, began more than 8 years ago and subsequently died, to provide broadband Internet access to all residents, businesses, farms, medical facilities, schools, libraries, and not-for-profit organizations. This will be a challenging task; expensive and time consuming.

The Mid Shore Regional Council will establish a "Broadband Coalition", with a full-time General Manager, the role of which is to find various ways to bring broadband technology to all who desire access in Talbot and beyond. We must "wire Talbot" to ensure our competitiveness in the 21st Century. I have more than 20 years experience managing programs and developing networking systems to provide broadband services to communities of users having widely diverse interests. As a member of your Council, I will ensure fellow members understand the intricacies involved in deploying high speed networking and broadband access in Talbot County.

I have a proven track record of building consensus, forming teams, and maintaining constructive dialog in the "heat of battle", I intend, if elected, to bring these skill sets to bear in a concerted effort to re-establish County Council channels of communication among our residents, our municipal officials, and village representatives.

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Conservation vs. Development

The continued development of our community should preserve the character of Talbot County’s historic settlements (towns and villages) and their settings. It is crucial to preserve the vitality of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. New development near the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries must effectively protect, conserve, or mitigate damage to water, land, and air quality.

Projects must be in areas that are designated in accordance with our town’s and County’s comprehensive plan and the principals of Smart Growth. I support development on land in and around existing communities where growth can make efficient use of land, roads, sewers and other costly infrastructure. Our County, towns and villages will have appropriate design criteria for commercial development which encourages building facades which are compatible with the style and vernacular of local architecture. The design criteria will include use of green space buffers around commercial and residential developments and bordering roadways to help preserve the feeling of the natural environment.

Residential development, using Traditional Neighborhood Design Principals, is one means of creating attractive environments in our urban growth area. Higher density of homes per acre with provisions for open space, recreation and pedestrian friendly environments enhance our community. Such neighborhoods provide a strong sense of place. New projects should generate benefits for the county, such as support for our school system, historic preservation, public access to parks or open space, positive economic impacts, or other improvements to our quality of life.

We must be cautious about urban sprawl. Sprawl is "the continual use of more land than is necessary to accomplish a given development goal. Sprawl is the consumption of resources and land in excess of what is needed to create a comfortable, livable, and functional city”. In an attempt to combat sprawl and provide communities with growth options, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other non- profit organizations joined forces to form the Smart Growth Network in 1996. Smart Growth serves the community, economy, and environment, relying largely on public participation. It provides suggestions for growth management and allows communities flexibility about their growth.

Cities and communities recognize that conventional development patterns are no longer in their best interest. Since World War II, growth has been characterized by urban flight from the core into the suburbs, which in turn left behind decaying downtowns and often dying communities while devouring open space.

Strip malls and homogeneous subdivisions began to overtake the landscape and the residents' realized they were losing their sense of place. New development devoured open space and wetlands, created traffic congestion and increased water pollution into Chesapeake Bay. Residents were and are today increasingly concerned with loss of farms and open spaces and decreases in the quality of the natural environment.

Components of Maryland's legislation are targeted for rural areas – read Talbot County. The Priority Funding Areas Act, Rural Legacy Program and Sensitive Areas are crucial to Talbot County and its Comprehensive Plan. The Priority Funding Areas Act designates development areas. They are areas where "state and local government want to target their efforts to encourage and support economic development and new growth".

Rural Legacy Act identifies areas "to preserve large contiguous areas of land possessing significant farm, forest, historical and environmental resources". To implement the Rural Legacy Act, Talbot County has a Rural Land Agriculture Conservation section in its Comprehensive Plan. Farmland is a valuable resource in Talbot County and contributes to its rural character. Talbot County preserves rural land and farms by directing most development into its existing towns and villages. Low-density single-family detached homes are permitted outside Priority Funding Areas, but cluster development is encouraged to preserve large tracts of land. Currently, 11,141 acres in Talbot County are part of agriculture preservation districts.

Sensitive Areas are defined as "streams and their buffers, 100 year floodplains, habitats of threatened/endangered species and steep slopes". Talbot County has taken steps to protect its abundance of natural resources. Through the Natural Resource Conservation and Sensitive Areas Protection section of our Comprehensive Plan, development is directed away from designated sensitive areas and guided into areas where the environmental impacts will not be as severe. The County protects its water quality and groundwater resources, conserves habitats, forests and woodlands. Through state legislation initiatives, Talbot County has been able to protect its rural character and vast farmlands. Our Comprehensive Plan targets development into existing areas without jeopardizing the environment.

I support these efforts to reconcile our need for conservation and protecting our fragile environment with the compelling need for further development to meet our other human needs.

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Affordable Workforce Housing

In the summer of 2000, Welfare Reform was approaching its critical fifth year. Concerned there was little public knowledge of the Act, a group of local organizations: The Talbot County Chamber of Commerce, League of Women Voters, and Department of Social Services formed a coalition to provide information. In March, 200l, the Coalition presented a Forum featuring the University of Maryland’s Dr. Catherine Born, a nationally recognized expert on the effects of Welfare Reform.

The response to the Forum was so positive that it was evident the Coalition should continue its activities. It soon became clear a lack of affordable rental housing in our County and its towns was a sizable impediment to the success of welfare-leavers in their new minimum-wage jobs. The Coalition appointed a steering committee to explore the problem and after considerable research, the committee convened a roundtable discussion to learn more. Thirty invitees involved in the rental process: government officials, landlords, tenants, business people and realtors, gathered in April of 2002 for a three-hour conversation. After that evening, there was no doubt that Talbot County has a severe shortage of rental housing. It was also clear that the housing shortage has a negative impact on businesses, traffic and the general economy in addition to its adverse effect on the lives of low-income workers.

Based on these findings, the Coalition issued a “call to action” to government, private enterprise, renters and private citizens to recognize the urgency of the situation and to search for innovative solutions. Simultaneously, to highlight the issue, the Coalition officially changed its name to “The Affordable Rental Housing Coalition.”

To facilitate action, the Coalition sponsored four additional Roundtables. In October of 2002, they explored a range of solutions and best practices nationally and in early March of 2003, the Roundtable zeroed in on problems and solutions in our neighboring county of Queen Anne’s and the nationally recognized inclusionary zoning program in Montgomery County. In May of that year, more than thirty officials and local activists traveled by bus with an architect and a landscape designer to investigate whether or not affordable housing “has to be ugly.” Five months later, the final Roundtable of the series featured financing: “Bringing the Vision to Reality.”

Most recently, the results of this educational effort were realized in the inclusion of strong affordable housing sections in both the Easton and Talbot County Comprehensive Plans. Likewise, public understanding we require a Talbot County Housing Authority, appropriately staffed, is a major goal of mine.

OK – So What?

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) set what has become a universal guideline that to be affordable, housing should not require more than 30% of a household’s gross income. In the 1950’s, the figure was 20%. It wouldn’t be hard to believe that in this time of spiraling property and housing costs, it will be revised upward once again.

How does this concept of “affordable” work out in Talbot County? The HUD Fair Market Rent for a standard two-bedroom apartment in the County is $662 per month. A family must earn $26,480 a year or $12.73 an hour to afford it. A minimum wage earner, at $5.15 an hour, would have to work 82 hours a week to rent that same apartment.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, 44% of would-be renters working in our County must pay appreciably more than 30% of their income for rent in order to live here. Six out of twelve of the most in-demand jobs in Talbot don’t pay enough to afford the Fair Market Rent; and this is without counting in the cost of utilities.

A homebuyer would need to earn close to $30,000 a year to qualify for a 30 year, $100,000 mortgage at 6%. Then, he/she would have to find a $100,000 house. One-third of Talbot residents would not qualify for that mortgage which is probably why 28% of the housing units in the County are rentals (46% in Easton, as of the 2000 Census).

Of the firemen, policemen, health care workers, local government employees and the minimum-wage workers who take care of us and keep the economy humming in Talbot County, many don’t live here. Neither will graduating high school or college students. In addition to the obvious loss of non-recurring costs , employers suffer and traffic congestion increases.

When I ask people the question, “What is affordable housing?” they often respond with what they think is really on my mind: “what does it look like? Another difficult question because there are so many choices. Affordable housing is no longer “the projects.” Housing that is affordable can be an apartment over a retail business, or a “granny flat” over a garage or in a cottage. Infill replaces deteriorated housing with new code-meeting properties. Affordable housing included in a new development (through inclusionary zoning) will not look any different from the other houses in the complex. In a few words, “It doesn’t have to be ugly.”

Some builders are finding there is a healthy market for housing that low to middle-income families can afford. In other cases, attractive, safe housing can be subsidized in a number of innovative ways. That word “subsidy” is often miscast. The dictionary defines subsidy as: “A grant from a government to a private enterprise that is considered to be beneficial to the public.” That deserves some thought. Subsidies, not always in hard cash, include low-cost loans to landlords and homeowners for repairs, low interest mortgages, help with down payments, zoning exemptions, technical assistance, cutting red tape, tax credits and various types of state assistance to the community itself.

Talbot County is at a critical juncture for defining a vision for its future. As one example, Oxford Commissioners are wrestling with a real and vexing problem. Younger volunteer firefighters are reaching a point whereby they can no longer afford to live in Oxford. Could this situation cut across all our volunteer “emergency services” in Talbot? The simple answer is yes; and, if so, what about needed response times? Shouldn’t our volunteers have access to housing within easy reach of their fire station or other response post? Of course.

How can income-sensitive housing be provided in a climate of ever increasing land values? There are several mechanisms available: the 1986 Tax Reform Act created the “low-income housing tax credit”. This Act encourages private sector investors / developers to invest in construction and rehabilitation of housing in return for credits against their federal income tax. Works pretty good in areas with high population density and reasonable land valuations but requires State allocations as to amounts. Another mechanism is in the form of a program in Queen Anne’s County. The Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) Program provides affordable new housing to people with moderate incomes. When any new residential development with more than 20 units is built at least 10 percent of the units must be at a cost affordable to individuals and families earning 80 percent of the County’s median income. The MPDU program ensures houses remain affordable to future owners. Covenants are placed on the property requiring homes purchased under the program remain as MPDUs for a control period of 15 years. Yet another mechanism working in several states is the Critical Workforce Mortgage Program. Generally, the Critical Work Force program’s maximum local government loan is the lesser of $50,000 or 33% of the purchase price or appraised value of the home. Loans are zero percent interest, deferred payment-of-principle loans.

So, there are ways that are proven to resolve housing access for low to moderate income folks. HUD’s Section 8 program and USDA’s RHS (Section 515) program are other mechanisms useful in Talbot – that is if the Federal budget for these programs were not being cut back every year to a point where existing funds are focused on refurbishing units as opposed to making new units available.

This is where a comprehensive vision would be very helpful. Assuming we want our critical workforce to have reasonable and responsive access to their work centers, our vision should lay this objective out in great detail such that progress toward this objective can be measured and acted upon and valuable resources such as budget dollars can be allocated appropriately. We aren’t at this point now, we need to be and soon.

So the solution is complicated as is the problem we’re facing in Talbot County. An opportunity awaits us however if we acknowledge the problem and have the will to solve it -- the creation of a viable community of strong neighborhoods and a productive citizenry supporting business and civic organizations.