LA PLATA — A St. Charles homeowner who wants to build a deck in April may no longer end up building it in September.
The Charles County Planning Commission voted Oct. 19 to shift architectural approvals for a narrow set of routine projects in the St. Charles planned unit development from the community’s Planned Design Review Boards to county staff. The change covers additions, decks, fences, sheds and other projects on homes that already have a use and occupancy certificate; commercial changes in ownership or tenant when the use stays the same; and temporary signs for businesses.
The vote, taken by voice with no opposition heard, clears the way for a memorandum of understanding between the county and St. Charles Communities LLC that spells out who approves what. County officials said the president of the Board of County Commissioners would sign it along with St. Charles. The agreement has no end date, but either side can terminate it.
Four months for a deck
Under Docket 90, the long-standing approval framework for St. Charles, the county will not process a building permit in the community until the design review board signs off. Kathy Reisinger, deputy director of Planning and Growth Management, told the commission that some boards were not meeting every month and sometimes lacked a quorum, so a simple architectural approval could take four months before a homeowner could even apply for a permit.
Businesses feel it too, Reisinger said. A small business typically signs a lease before applying for permits, and while it waits on design board approval to move into an existing storefront, it pays rent with no revenue coming in.
Outside St. Charles, residents generally need only their homeowners association’s approval and a county permit. Planning and Growth Management Director Jason Groff said the change would put St. Charles residents on a level playing field with the rest of the county for these minor items. He said the county had heard complaints for years and stressed that staff did not believe the design boards were doing a poor job.
What does not change
Staff spent much of the presentation on what the agreement will not do, after questions about St. Charles and data centers surfaced at the earlier public meeting on the proposal. The design review boards will keep approving all new residential and commercial construction, any change in use of an existing building, exterior renovations and permanent signs. Growth rates and village master plans are unaffected, and homeowners associations keep full power to enforce their covenants.
Groff said the item has nothing to do with data centers and transfers no new authority to the design boards. Any data center would face costly power studies, with Groff estimating about $100,000 for a SMECO review and $500,000 for a regional grid analysis, and the commissioners have directed staff to develop a data center task force proposal, he said. He called the county’s data center zoning text amendment, for all intents and purposes, dead.
Not every commissioner was fully comfortable with the broader Docket 90 framework. One member said the Planning Commission should be involved earlier in new commercial and industrial projects in St. Charles, rather than first seeing them at the site development plan stage after developers have invested heavily. Groff said all site development plans in the PUD still come before the commission.
Homeowners will still need their association’s architectural approval for projects like fences and sheds. The county has added a statement to its permit applications reminding applicants they may need separate approvals, and disputes can go to the county’s Homeowners Association Dispute Review Board. Steve Scott of the Scott Law Group, representing St. Charles Communities, said the biggest beneficiaries will be homeowners and small businesses, not large developers with their own design professionals.
