March Meeting will be held ONLINE on Monday, March 16
WORA will not meet at Federal House as previously announced. The March meeting will be held online.
Due to the rapid spread of Covid-19, the WORA Board decided to maintain social distancing and hold our March 16 meeting online at 7pm. Our meeting will focus on your input to Annapolis’ 2020 Comprehensive Plan and will be led by Mark Mhley.
You are invited to join via video-teleconference on Monday, March 16 at 7pm to discuss Annapolis’ 2020 Comprehensive Plan, and collect your big picture goals in a number of key areas.
Instructions for joining this Zoom video conference are below. If you are unable to join the video conference, and you would like your goals to be considered at our next membership meeting in April, please send them to MarkMhley@gmail.com. At April’s membership meeting, we’ll prioritize those goals and set out actionable strategies to achieve the highest priorities,
What is the Comprehensive Plan? It’s a broad statement about the community’s vision for the future, looking approximately 20 years ahead. The plan includes goals and strategies to achieve the goals, with specific performance measures and targets that will help determine if these goals are being met. The 2020 Comprehensive Plan development process will be looking at how we can ensure a healthy community, economy, and environment.
The plan guides decision-making and directs implementation actions. Implementation of the plan’s goals are a shared responsibility of individuals, communities, civic groups, and the City government, and the City’s two main implementation tools are regulating development and funding capital improvements such as roads and parks.
During Monday’s 40-minute video-teleconference, we’d like to collect your overall goals. The goals we collect should be broad and diverse and should fit the below major areas, such as “we want to maintain our historic and vibrant residential neighborhoods” or “we want to make downtown more pedestrian friendly.” We want to capture what big things, in the below areas, are important to you.
Resiliency and Infrastructure
- Adaptation to climate change
- Community/social
- Quality of life
Housing
- Affordablity
- Choice—housing for all ages and all incomes
- Impact of STRs and Auxiliary Dwelling Units
Healthy Communities
- Economic development
- Thriving downtown businesses
- Public safety
- Active living for all ages
Land Use
- Community design
- Form based code
- Neighborhoods
- Protecting historic and cultural resources
Environment and Resource Conservation
- Land and water resources
- How to become the best stewards of our portal to the Bay?
Transportation
- Pedestrian and bicycle mobility
- Public transit
- Traffic congestion
- Market transition to electric vehicles
At April’s WORA membership meeting, we’ll vote to prioritize WORA’s goals, and then collect your more detailed ideas on:- Strategies to achieve those goals…performance measures to be able to quantify implementation.- Performance targets (where applicable)…the number we want to get to at the end of implementation
Monday’s video-teleconference will use Zoom. If you don’t already have Zoom downloaded on your computer, you’ll want to click the meeting link well ahead of the 7pm meeting so that you can configure it. It’s relatively easy, and as you can imagine, will become a very popular way of remote-meeting during the Covid-19 crisis.
Join WORA’s Zoom meeting with this link: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/317634934
If you need it (which you shouldn’t), our meeting ID is 317 634 934.
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Federal House 2nd Floor
6-7PM Social Hour
7PM Discussion Starts
Ward One Residents Association is pleased to present Annapolis’ Historian and Author Jane McWilliams discussion: “What’s an Old House Worth?” at our February Member Meeting.
When and Where: Tuesday, February 18 Federal House, 2nd floor
6-7pm Social Hour (Half price happy hour downstairs at the bar!)
7pm Discussion starts
Cash bar and light fare offered by Federal House.
Learn how a small group of Annapolis Residents made a difference and preserved Annapolis for future generations – You and Me!
| Winner of the Phebe R. Jacobsen Award for Excellence in Literary Arts, Jane McWilliams’ capstone literary project: “Annapolis, City on the Severn: a History” is the first definitive history of Annapolis. “The story of Annapolis resonates in every century of American history. Annapolis has been home to tobacco plantations, political intrigue, international commerce, the U.S. Naval Academy, ballooning population growth, and colonial, state, and national government. Jane Wilson McWilliams’s captivating history explores Annapolis from its settlement in 1650 to its historic preservation campaign of the late twentieth century. McWilliams brings alive the people of Annapolis as she recounts their fortunes and foibles. Be they black or white, slave or master, woman or man, each has a place in this book. With unsurpassed detail and graceful prose, she describes the innermost workings of Maryland’s capital city―its social, civic, and religious institutions; its powerful political leaders; and its art, architecture, and neighborhoods.Beautifully illustrated throughout, this book chronicles more than three hundred years of Annapolis history. As unique as the city it describes, Annapolis, City on the Severn builds on the most recent scholarship and offers readers a fascinating portrait into the past of this great city.”- from Amazon |
| Jane Wilson McWilliams Jane Wilson McWilliams is a native of Annapolis and a graduate of Washington College in Chestertown. She was a member of the research staff of the Maryland State Archives for seventeen years, working primarily on the two volumes of A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635–1789 (published in 1979 and 1984) and on Maryland’s commemoration of the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. For more than thirty years, she has done independent research for public and private clients, concentrating on land use and biographical queries. Editor of several publications on historical topics, Jane is herself author of chapters in larger works on county and city history and of books specifically on Annapolis history, including a history of the Anne Arundel Medical Center (1992, reprinted 2002) and Bay Ridge on the Chesapeake, An Illustrated History (1986), co-authored with her childhood friend Carol Cushard Patterson. Jane’s comprehensive history of the city, Annapolis, City on the Severn: A History, was published by The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Maryland Historical Trust Press in May 2011.Jane is a founding member of the Annapolis History Consortium, serves on the board of the Friends of the Maryland State Archives, and is active in the environmental concerns of her community. February 2020 |
Tuesday, January 21st
6pm Social Hour
7pm Membership Meeting
Upstairs at Metropolitan on West Street
Guest Speaker: Dr. Sally Nash, Annapolis’ Planning Director.
2020 Comprehensive Plan:
State law requires the city to every 10 years review, and if necessary, update the comprehensive plan, a roadmap for land use and zoning over the next 20 years. The city’s last comprehensive plan took effect in 2009.
The plan must include sections on land use; environment, water resources and sea level rise; historic and neighborhood conservation; transportation; parks and community facilities; sensitive areas; and municipal growth.