Issues Regarding the Council Decision to Approve Bill 36-11 (PUD Revocation)

On July 5, the Baltimore County Council voted 6 to 1 to approve Bill 36-11 which restricts the ability of a new council person to revoke a PUD to the first 60 days of their new term if the PUD was approved within 60 days of the new council member qualifying to represent their district.

A PUD stands for a Planned Unit Development which is supposed to be a mixed use development that utilizes the existing density allowed by the zoning of the property that condenses the footprint of the buildings to a portion of the site to create a walkable high quality community.

This process which avoids the standard setbacks of buildings within the PUD to facilitate the compression of development in order to create open space in and around the PUD.

Originally PUDs were for the development of self contained communities and were designed to minimize sprawl, and also had a 200-acre minimum requirement. Eventually the minimum size got reduced until all minimum size requirements were eliminated in 2005 with the intention of using PUDs for redevelopment of rundown or blighted areas.

Also in 2005 the Council, at that time, gave themselves the authority to increase the density of any site when they submit the resolution that introduces the PUD. These changes have resulted in an abuse of the PUD laws by several developers which seems to allow any exceptions necessary in order to approve a PUD once its resolution is approved by the Council. This seems to have become a process to get additional number of residences without going through the open rezoning process.

The Thistle Road PUD is an example of the misuse of the PUD laws proposing ten townhouses at a site where only one or even no homes would be allowed by zoning and the County Code. It might meet just one of the nine principles for all PUDs so in reality the proposal is not really a PUD.

Sam Moxley, the prior councilman, submitted the PUD resolution for the previous Council during the end of his term. Current Councilman Tom Quirk reviewed the project proposal and listened to the community input before submitting the revocation to the Council for their vote. The Council unanimously voted to approve the revocation a few months ago based upon a process that we refer to as Councilmanic Courtesy. (This will be the topic in a separate article.)

It seemed that the two senior councilmen developed a concern regarding their agreement with the revocation and other council persons expressed concern with the process. A valid concern is that based upon a resolution for a PUD, the builder then begins the expense of preparing a formalized concept plan to submit to Baltimore County for review.

Bill 36-11 would reduce the time frame that a PUD could be revoked and therefore limits the costs that the builder could incur before the revocation. However it also limits the time for community feedback and thoughtful deliberation of a new council person at the same time they are setting up their new office and getting acclimated to the new responsibilities. It should be noted that this has been the only revoked PUD in decades and that the council representatives are not rushing to revoke additional PUDs.

Even without this Bill, the Council still had the option to vote against any resolution to revoke a PUD. This makes Bill 36-11 a solution in search of a problem unless it is specifically targeted to reverse the revocation of the Thistle Road PUD.

Several people representing community groups provided comments opposing this legislation at the work session on June 28. The legislation has a retroactive feature in it that reverses the prior decision to revoke the Thistle Road PUD. It was suggested that the time period of revocation be increased to 180 days or to eliminate the retroactive feature to avoid the revocation of the revocation while still fixing the process. These amendment options were not pursued.

The approval of the amendment to hold a community input meeting prior to the resolution is a positive step which will provide both the community and the council with information to make more informed decisions earlier in the process. There are still a lot of problems with the PUD laws which are not being addressed but they are being analyzed by the Baltimore County Community Political Action Committee.

Feel free to include your suggestions for changes to the PUD laws in the comments section below this article. We are targeting the recommendations of changes to be presented to the Council during the fall of 2011. 

The ultimate result of the vote in favor of Bill 36-11 is that the developer will spend more money on a project in which the community will have to spend money to oppose, while taking up the time of County Employees on a project that by definition is not even a PUD. Incidentally a process that protects the developer’s initial expenses has gotten fixe.