The 125-acre farm-tract in question is owned by the Sewell family, and is located north of the city limits.

While the purpose of the annexation would be to allow the development to access Taneytown water and sewer services, the Sewell family is also seeking to increase the number of residential units than that which would otherwise be allowed.

Acting City Manager James Wieprecht told the council, at their July work session, that town staff met with the Sewell family to discuss the city's ability to provide water and sewer capacity.

He said was the possibility of a zoning waiver being required from the county was also discussed because they are looking to have a more denser degree of residential units than that which is represented on the current Carroll County-approved town comprehensive plan.

As per the comprehensive plan, the property would be annexed into a residential R-20 zone. However, the property owners would like to increase the number of housing units which would exceed that allowed within the R-20 zone.

Re-zoning the property from an R-20 designation (20,000 square-foot lot sizes) to an R-10 (10,000 square-foot lot sizes) would obviously necessitate a zoning change.

To do that would require a waiver from Carroll County, because the zone that an annexed property falls under when it is annexed cannot be re-zoned for five years after the annexation has taken place if the change would be considered "substantially different (such as a dramatic increase in the number of proposed housing units)."

If the property owners cannot acquire a waiver to allow for a zoning change following annexation, they would be locked into the 20,000 square-foot lot size restrictions.

As to the meaning of "age-targeted," Wieprecht said, "We haven't explored the potential capacity impacts by comparing the restricted-versus-targeted demands."