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Land trusts and residents call for steady open-space fees and flood monitoring at county town hall
Summary
Representatives of land trusts and local homeowners asked the county to maintain minimum payments from open-space fees, consider flexible payment to match portfolio growth, and to work with USGS on flood-gauge data for a redeveloped mill site in Oella.
Speakers representing local land trusts and neighborhood groups urged the county to maintain or adapt open-space funding mechanisms and to improve flood monitoring in a Catonsville-area redevelopment site.
Riley Layman of the Baltimore County Land Trust Coalition thanked the county for previous contributions and asked for sustained funding to protect open space and maintain equitable access to nature. Clouds Phillips, speaking for NeighborSpace (a land trust with 21 open spaces in the county), described how open-space labor fees developers pay fluctuate with development and said a fixed fee can leave the land trust underfunded as its portfolio grows. Phillips asked the administration to continue the minimum payment the prior administration established and to open a dialogue about making payments flex with the portfolio.
Winnie Carpenter, representing the Oella HOA and Oella Catonsville Flood Solutions, asked the county to review a redevelopment plan for a large mill in Oella that sits in a floodplain. She described repeated flooding despite previous flood mitigation work, cited three deaths in storms in 2016 and 2018 near the site and asked the county to work with the U.S. Geological Survey to install a gauge to collect high-water data so the community can prepare for future events.
County staff said these priorities would be collected as part of public input for the FY26 budget; no immediate funding commitments were made at the meeting.
