County Plans Work Session On Proposed Rental Licensing Program

SNOW HILL –  The Worcester County Commissioners have scheduled a special work session in July to discuss a countywide rental license program.

On Tuesday, county staff presented the commissioners with four potential legislative bills related to rental licensing. Rather than discuss them this week, the commissioners opted to schedule a work session for July 9 to review those bills.

“I just want to make sure we go through and we get this right the first time,” Commissioner Joe Mitrecic said.

Ed Tudor, the county’s director of development review and permitting, told the commissioners that he and other staff members had been working since January, at the request of the commissioners, to explore a rental licensing program.

“You have before you today four separate legislative bills that I believe address the issues we talked about back in January with respect to a comprehensive rental license program for the county,” he said, thanking his fellow staff members for their efforts. “It was a big undertaking in trying to get all of these pieces and parts to fit together.”

Before he went into more detail, Mitrecic suggested postponing the discussion for a work session.

“In the interest of all of us understanding it, I would like to see us set this in for a work session before we would take this to the public so all of us understand all of the intricacies and if there’s anything that we would like to see cleaned up before the public hearing, that could be done,” he said.

The other commissioners agreed and thanked Tudor and staff for their efforts.

“I think this is great,” Commissioner Bud Church said. “There’s huge potential here for the county.”

Tudor said he understood the interest in a work session because, “this is not simple legislation.”

He added that he believed that if the county moved forward with a rental licensing program, there would be an influx of calls, similar to those the county received when it implemented a building code.

“This is going to be a major undertaking,” he said.

The commissioners agreed to schedule a special meeting for July 9 to discuss Tudor’s proposed bills as well as a separate issue — a resolution establishing standard sewer flow calculations. According to Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Shannahan, the Worcester County Sewer Committee drafted a resolution to set standard flow calculations.

“This will assist the county in definitively determining the number of equivalent dwelling units required to serve proposed development …,” he said. “This will take a lot of the guesswork out of determining what the flow is for various land uses.”

About The Author: Charlene Sharpe

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Charlene Sharpe has been with The Dispatch since 2014. A graduate of Stephen Decatur High School and the University of Richmond, she spent seven years with the Delmarva Media Group before joining the team at The Dispatch.