The Baltimore County Council is scheduled to vote on nearly 400 zoning requests Tuesday, the culmination of a lengthy Comprehensive Zoning Map Process that occurs every four years.
The CZMP, which began in August 2023, allows residents, business owners, developers and lobbyists to request to rezone a property anywhere in Baltimore County. Planning staff made recommendations, and public hearings were held for each council district in June. But council members have the final say on the rezoning requests, which can remove obstacles to development for their districts.
County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. and the county council have had a long-simmering debate over who should have final authority over land use in the county, which faces a declining population and is running up against a federal deadline to produce 1,000 affordable housing units by 2027.
In February, Olszewski withdrew a bill he’d introduced that would have allowed approval of certain projects to bypass the county council.
Council members are barred from taking campaign donations during the process. Anyone can submit a request to rezone a property via an online portal, which is then reviewed by county staff. Council members submitted their own rezoning requests in November.
While most rezoning requests are routine, a few invoke passionate protests. In 2020, business owners Santo and Debra Mirabile wanted to rezone a former fire station in the northern Baltimore County community of Boring to allow them to relocate their construction company there. Neighbors said allowing the business to relocate to the property on Old Hanover Road would subject the idyllic rural community to increased industrial traffic and noise. Councilman Wade Kach, a Timonium Republican, encouraged the two sides to reach a consensus, and approved the Mirabiles’ request to rezone four acres and allow a local business there.
The Mirabiles have asked to rezone 9.8 acres for light manufacturing in this CZMP cycle. Planning staff recommended that half the property be preserved for local agriculture, and the other half be preserved for its current zoning, according to the log of requests. In April, the planning board approved the Mirabiles’ request, and recommended that they “negotiate an owners/neighbors private covenant, to be recorded in land records.”
The request is now in the hands of Councilman Julian Jones, a Woodstock Democrat, after the council redrew district boundaries in 2022. Jones declined to comment, saying he had yet to make up his mind.
“I’ve gotten more lobbying and community participation on this issue than any, by far,” he said.
Over two dozen people spoke out against the rezoning at a public hearing in June, wearing stickers and blue t-shirts that said “Keep Boring boring,” and “No ML,” referring to the requested rezoning demarcation.
Santo and Debra Mirabile said that they intended to host a quiet office on the property, and were willing to negotiate with the immediate surrounding community of single-family homes and farmland.
“There’s a sense that this was a community building, and we’re taking it away,” Debra Mirabile said. “Our feeling is that a small construction building fits in with the existing landscape. We have no tractor trailers. We believe (our business) will be quieter than what people are afraid of.”
