Baltimore County planning staff brief board on Council amendments to Master Plan 2030

Baltimore County planning staff on June 5 gave the Planning Board a summary of amendments that County Council adopted to the Baltimore County Master Plan 2030, which the council adopted on Jan. 16, 2024.

Amy Mantay, deputy director of the Department of Planning, told the board the council moved many online plan amendments into a printed PDF that the council required as the official adoption format and that several councilmembers added, removed or reordered language and actions across the document.

Mantay identified a range of changes by councilmember name, including reordering the plan’s priority elements, adding language that the plan may be viewed as Esri ArcGIS story maps but that the printed format is official, and placing limits on how the vision framework should be used in site-level land use decisions. Council members also added and removed place‑type descriptions and actions across the growth and livable built environment chapters.

Significant edits summarized by planning staff included the addition of a new “institutional node” around the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC); removal of several references and a caption related to the Lafarge quarry; councilmember-directed additions to actions on roads, sewer upgrades, and stormwater concerns; and new actions that address electric-vehicle accommodations, historic preservation, tree canopy increases, and targeted studies for specific neighborhoods such as White Marsh and Jacksonville.

Mantay said the county council required a printed version of the plan to be the official format and that the department compiled the adopted changes from the council’s adoption materials into the PDF that staff reviewed with the board.

Board members asked for clarifications about the substance and the rationale behind many edits; planning staff said the council did not always provide reasoning with each amendment and that staff may be able to explain impacts of specific edits but cannot always state why a councilmember proposed a change. A board member asked whether some council members had removed all nodes in their districts; staff confirmed nodes were removed or altered in some districts while others had nodes added or expanded.

Mantay pointed out specific council-driven actions added to the plan, for example: reordering goals to place “vibrant communities” before equity and sustainability; adding actions to amend the automotive services overlay to accommodate electric vehicles; suggesting review of zoning to prevent business oversaturation in short corridors; and adding district‑specific road and sewer priorities suggested by individual councilmembers.

Planning staff also flagged that council resolutions adopted after the plan’s original adoption amended parts of the plan; staff cited Resolution 8-25, adopted Jan. 21, 2025, as an example of a later amendment to goal 3 action 12, and Resolution 19-25 in April 2025 as the adoption and incorporation of the Jacksonville community plan into Master Plan 2030.

The presentation ended with staff offering to provide the Planning Board with the presentation and the adopted PDF version of Master Plan 2030 for board members to review changes in more detail.

The Planning Board did not take any formal action on the master plan amendments at the June 5 meeting. Staff said they will try to respond to follow-up questions from board members and provide additional context where possible.