Carroll County, MD Carroll 101, 16 Jul 2021

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From YouTube: Carroll 101 - Land and Resource Management with Director Chris Heyn

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Carroll County Government
https://carrollcountymd.gov/carroll101

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Hello, my name is chris heyn and I am the director of the carroll county department of land and.

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Resource management, what I'd like to do is take the next couple minutes and talk to you about what.

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Our department does the important work that we do and how it affects the citizens and the natural.

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Resources of the county, so, as our the name of our department implies, we have a couple of different.

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Aspects to what it is that we do related to land and the natural resources of the county.

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So the picture on the left, the map on the left, represents the.

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75 000 parcels that make up the county and the use of those parcels what people are allowed to.

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To do on those parcels is in some ways dictated by the county codes that regulate those activities.

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On the right side of the map or the screen is a map of the over 1300 miles of stream.

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That make up the county and we're responsible for monitoring the quality of the water in the stream.

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And how that affects the overall environment of the county and how that affects the.

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Water downstream of where we are in other municipalities and eventually the chesapeake bay.

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So our department is made up of 44 individuals that are organized into eight different.

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Operating groups and I'll be going through those different groups and explaining what each one does.

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So first the land and the land management side of the department, so that side is made up of.

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18 individuals, with an operating budget of 1.4 million dollars per year and a capital budget of.

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About 4.4 million dollars, so the capital budget of 4.4 million dollars per year is used primarily in.

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The ag preservation program so ag preservation is the uh is the purchase of development rights.

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On active farms, the purpose of that is to meet the goals of the county's master plan would inc, which.

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Encourages development around municipalities and and preserves the agricultural nature of the rural.

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Parts of the county, so the ag preservation program purchases, those development rights from farmers.

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And what that provides is economic stimulus to the important agricultural economy of the county.

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And also reduces long-term costs for the county's cost of services. The way that works is that taxes.

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On residential development do not necessarily cover the cost of services that we provide.

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So services such as the roads, schools and other infrastructure, so preserving agricultural land.

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Helps reduce the long-term costs for the county, so on the one hand we have agricultural preservation.

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Which is the preservation of the property of farm land in the county? On the other hand,.

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If you are interested in developing your property, then we have the bureau of development review.

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Development review helps developers through the lengthy process required to.

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Meet all of the local and state regulations associated with development in that process.

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So next on the list we have geographic information systems or gis, so, as you saw in the previous slide,.

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With the various mapping of all of the parcels and all the resources that we're responsible for.

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There's a lot of data and information that we're responsible for managing, so that data.

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Can be the individual parcels where we have a map that shows what the parcel.

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Looks like, but then we also have data associated with that which could be the property owner. It.

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Could be the address, it could be the size of the parcel, etc. We also have information such as the.

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Natural resource natural uh features that we're responsible for such as storm water management.

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Facilities that can con are constructed to improve water quality. We're responsible for.

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uh Inspecting all of those features every three years- and there are over 2000 of them around the.

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County, so we have staff dedicated specifically for managing of that information. So the last.

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Part of the department is zoning administration and that's the enforcement side of what we do.

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So zoning administration looks at the local codes and ensures that, on a day-to-day basis that.

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uh That land is being used appropriately to the zoning codes, so, for example, if you.

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Have live in a residential subdivision and your neighbor starts operating a commercial sawmill.

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That's not necessarily something that fits in with that neighborhood.

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And so, if we receive a complaint about that, our zoning administrator would send out an inspector.

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Check the property ensure that and verify whether what's happening there, what operations.

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Conform with the local codes, if it does not conform with the codes, then we have the legal.

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Right to make those to stop the operations and to bring the property into compliance.

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So those are the land management side of that's land management side of the department on the.

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Resource management side we have the bureau of resource management, which is made up of.

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Four divisions: we have approximately 23 people in that bureau and our operating budget is for about.

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Four million dollars per year, but half of that is paying off the debt service for bonds that we take.

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For the capital projects that we perform and then we have a capital budget of 3.6 million per year,.

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So the four divisions that we have the first is the environmental review division. These are the.

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Environmental specialists, who perform the reviews of development projects to ensure that there's.

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Compliance with the environmental codes that we enforce, so these are the floodplain managers.

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The forest conservation, specialist, stormwater management, specialist and water resources.

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Specialists to ensure that development is done in accordance with all the appropriate codes. We then.

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Have the environmental compliance division? These are. This: is the enforcement side of the resource.

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Management side of the department, so these are the inspectors that go out to construction sites.

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And to respond to complaints and ensure that we're complying with all environmental.

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Rules and regulations our environmental inspectors perform about 10 000 inspections per year. We then.

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Have our water resources division? These are the environmental scientists who go out and.

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Monitor and analyze the water quality in the county and ensure that that the activities that we.

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Perform both on the development side and also that we perform in-house, improve the quality of.

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The water and finally, we have watershed management. So one of the primary things that the bureau is.

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Responsible for is compliance with the national pollutant discharge, elimination system permit or.

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Npds permit this is a permit, that's issued to us by the maryland department, the environment.

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Would come? Which comes out of the clean water act? And it requires that there are a lot of.

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Activities that the county perform, including improving the water quality in the streams.

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Of the county, this is because it it affects the overall quality of the environment in our county.

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And also affects everybody downstream of us all the way down to the chesapeake bay.

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So the watershed management division is responsible for administering.

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That permit and performing all design, construction and maintenance of the stormwater facilities that.

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Are in the county that was a summary in general of what the various operating divisions in the.

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Department perform in general, though, to summarize what we do is we implement and enforce the.

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10 chapters of county code related to natural resources and land development, as I mentioned.

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A big part of what we do is the implementation of our npds permit and in general we are the.

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Subject matter and local experts related to natural resources and managing those resources.

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So why why do we do what we do so, specifically, it's all based on the laws that have been.

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Legislated and were required to follow and that we enforce so from a land management perspective.

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These are all local laws, so these relate to the development and subdivision of land and.

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For things like adequate public facilities, so what that means is there are certain public services.

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That the county provides those relate to the roads that you drive on the schools that your kids go to.

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The fire and ems response, and in some cases, water and sewer service, we have to ensure that we don't.

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Compromise those services and ensure that they continue to be provided to all the local citizens.

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From a resource management perspective, most of the laws that we have to address come down from the.

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Federal and state level, it's not unusual for these for the laws that are written at those levels to.

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Basically indicate what needs to be performed and then require that we at the local level create our.

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Own laws and enforce those those laws that we create, and they need to be, at least as strict.

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As the state and federal laws and then what the state and federal folks do, is they over oversee.

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Our programs and make sure that we comply, so this is the case with most of the programs that you see.

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On the list related to forest conservation, storm water management, sediment erosion, control, etc,.

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So the local codes and federal and state laws that we follow are why we do the work that we do.

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And gives us the authority to do that work, but why we really do it is to follow the goals of.

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The county master plan, which, generally speaking, is to encourage development in the municipalities.

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And preserve the urban or preserve the rural and agricultural lands that make up a large portion.

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Of the county- and this leads to the orderly development in the county- and we also focus.

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On things related to public safety, so, for instance, you don't want to have a highway running through.

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The middle of residential neighborhood: if we build a storm water pond, we want to make sure that if.

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The pond were to fail that it doesn't adversely affect the people that live downstream of it.

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So why does this matter to to you the citizens of carroll county, so we are essentially protecting.

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The natural resource resources of the county, uh everybody has the general right and responsibility.

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To have a clean environment that they live in and we're the local entity feet on the ground.

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Preserving those natural resources, so the other thing that we do is we protect the use of your.

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Property and the character of your community, going back to the example of the sawmill in.

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A residential neighborhood that is not really indicative of that neighborhood and so to preserve.

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The character of your neighborhood from uses that are not appropriate.

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And also to protect the rights of what you're able to do on your property.

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And finally, if you're a developer to you, have an expectation of a.

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Predictable and consistent development process and that's what we strive with the.

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Bureau of development review is to assist those developers through that process for consistency.

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All right now to go through a couple examples of what it is that we do.

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So, as I indicated, the development review bureau of development review any sort of development.

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Comes through our department, whether it's a 14 lot subdivision in the mineral hill.

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Area or a almost 200 000 square foot addition to random house all of these projects go.

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Through development review and we assist the developer with meeting all of the state and local.

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Regulations associated with that development from an ag preservation perspective, we have multiple.

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Programs, state local programs that preserve land the map on the right side of the screen indicates.

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All of the preserved property in the county, it's over 76, 000 acres of property that we've.

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Of ag land that we've preserved, we have the second largest program in the nation.

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And so these are some examples of recent projects that have come through our office.

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From a resource management perspective, the metric that we use to determine if we are improving water.

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Quality is treatment of impervious area, so these are four examples of projects that have been.

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Recently completed robert's mill in tawny, town, langdon and westminster shiloh middle school.

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Out in hampstead and the elder wood project down in eldersburg and some indications there.

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Are of all the impervious area that is now being treated through the wet ponds that.

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We've constructed or the dry filters that we've constructed also in resource management. We strive.

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To do tree plantings because of the improvement to the environment that the tree plantings provide.

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Whenever we get grant money from quite often from the department of natural resources to do these,.

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Plantings we try and reach out to the various schools that are in the area or to the carroll.

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County outdoor school to engage the students in public in education as well as service hours over.

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The past 10 years we've planted over 200 acres of trees, and so with that our department is happy to.

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Answer any questions that you have and my contact information is on the last screen. Thank you.