CivicCon Frederick

Past Presentations Blog

Since September 2025, Frederick’s CivicCon has seen growing community interest. The programming expanded to include focused discussions such as “How Maryland Creates Lovable Places in Frederick and Beyond,” bringing together planners, leaders, and residents for meaningful collaboration.

  • Edward Erfurt​ – How the Strong Towns Approach Can Energize Frederick’s Citizen Engagement and Actions

    Edward Erfurt​ – How the Strong Towns Approach Can Energize Frederick’s Citizen Engagement and Actions

    The Strong Towns movement is a nonpartisan, cross-political coalition focused on bottom-up municipal financial solvency, walkable design, and local action rather than top-down mandates. It shares goals with the YIMBY movement but emphasizes community-led zoning and street design changes over state-level preemption. He talks about the tactical urbanism experiment in Portland where residents used cones and paint to transform an unsafe street crossing, demonstrating how low-cost, immediate interventions can radically shift driver behavior, spark community engagement, and bypass years of bureaucratic delay.

    For a taste of the presentation view 1:07 – 1:11 minutes. Video link: https://youtu.be/knZfESnb-rg?si=UThm2S_Ls8RDjdfJ

  • Klaus Philipsen, Ren Southard, and Tim Keane – What Can We Learn from Our Historically Linked City

    Klaus Philipsen, Ren Southard, and Tim Keane – What Can We Learn from Our Historically Linked City

    Klaus Philipsen

    Klaus offers a sharp look at how Baltimore’s historical constraints forced creative urbanism compared to Frederick’s rapid geographic expansion. He zooms out to examine how cities grow:

    • The Sprawl Contrast: He critiques how Frederick’s annexations and suburban growth patterns jump around with disconnected street networks concentric corridors that could be anywhere in America.
    • The Value of Limits: He contrasts this with Boulder, Colorado’s deliberate green belt strategy and Baltimore’s forced density, arguing that design must be authentically human-scale, walkable, and deeply tied to natural amenities rather than cheap expansion.​

    For a taste of the presentation view 20:07 – 22:07 minutes.

    Ren Southard

    ​Ren Southard’s presentation is about how design review and the public realm contributes to the city.

    • The Equity Focus: How public and private developments signal a city’s values and priorities, ensuring that growth respects neighborhood scale rather than drowning out community character.
    • Objective Human Scale: Moving away from subjective arguments over personal taste and grounding design review in the objective, measurable ways people experience space—such as comfortable walking distances and how the human eye recognizes figures in the built environment.

    For a taste of the presentation view 2:26:07–2:22:07 minutes.

    Tim Keane

    This is about his philosophy of urban form, land use, and the necessity of designing cities around human scale and traditional patterns rather than auto-centric suburban models. Keane zeroes in on why municipal planning must actively prioritize great public spaces and walkable neighborhoods over conventional, car-dominated zoning.

    For a taste of the presentation view 45:23 – 48:55 minutes. Full video link: https://youtu.be/pUO2RvjEHkk?si=3X-1uhBM9M6ThIyt

  • Jake Day – How Maryland Creates Loveable Places in Frederick and Beyond

    Jake Day – How Maryland Creates Loveable Places in Frederick and Beyond

    Jake addresses housing affordability and community development in the state. He argues that creating “lovable places” is key to economic success and that Maryland must act decisively to retain its workforce.

    Key Takeaways:

    • The Crisis: Maryland is experiencing a housing shortage of approximately 100,000 units (31:49), leading to significant rent burdens and the loss of 40,000 people to neighboring states (7:26, 32:08).
    • Local Lessons: Secretary Day shares his experience as the former mayor of Salisbury, where the city successfully increased housing production by streamlining permitting, waiving certain fees, and focusing on compact, walkable development (27:14-30:02).
    • Statewide Strategy: The administration is focused on:
      • Starter and Silver Homes Act: Aims to reduce minimum lot sizes and allow for more diverse, smaller housing options (44:22).
      • Housing Certainty Act: Proposes to make Maryland an “early vesting” state to reduce permitting delays and uncertainty (46:59).
      • Executive Action: The “Housing Starts Here” executive order accelerates development on state-owned land and established local housing production targets (36:36).
    • The Goal: The ultimate mission is to shift the “handshake” between government and residents to ensure that everyone who wants to call Maryland home has a place to do so (48:09).

    Jake contrasts traditional incremental development with suburban sprawl—the section on the “Growth Ponzi Scheme.” This clip breaks down why cities struggle with infrastructure debt despite growing populations and introduces the financial trap of suburban expansion.

    For a taste of the presentation view 33:14 – 35:14 minutes. Video link: https://youtu.be/7ltjA6IyQ7U?si=Mt5qDet7V3txANwJ

  • Josie Faass and Greg Miller – Reimagining Property Taxes to Capture Community-Created Value

    Josie Faass and Greg Miller – Reimagining Property Taxes to Capture Community-Created Value

    Josie Faass

    Faass breaks down how standard property taxes penalize owners for improving their properties while rewarding land speculators who leave parcels vacant. She introduces how shifting the tax burden to the underlying land value fundamentally aligns economic incentives toward productive development and community benefit.

    For a taste of the presentation view 0:33 – 1:59 minutes. Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbHo3KbFlI8

    Greg Miller

    This segment zeroes in on the core economic mechanics of how shifting property tax burdens away from building improvements and onto underlying land values incentivizes productive community development, discourages speculative land hoarding, and provides sustainable funding for local public infrastructure.

    For a taste of the presentation view 29:00 – 31:00 minutes. Video link: https://youtu.be/2u8Mg2IKqxs

  • Rich Harwood – The New Civic Path: Restoring Our Belief in One Another and Our Nation

    Rich Harwood – The New Civic Path: Restoring Our Belief in One Another and Our Nation

    Harwood discusses turning outward and engaging residents where they are rather than relying on top-down assumptions.

    The high-impact themes to focus on:

    • Getting Real with People: Moving away from insular civic conversations and meeting residents in their everyday spaces.
    • Shared Aspirations: How identifying common shared hopes builds the foundation for community problem-solving.

    For a taste of the presentation view 15:05–15:54 minutes. Full video link: https://hood.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?

  • Ed McMahon – Frederick’s Future: Growth by Default or Design?

    Ed McMahon – Frederick’s Future: Growth by Default or Design?

    Based on his core “Secrets of Successful Communities” and “Growth by Default vs. Design” presentation framework delivered for CivicCon, the most impactful 2-minute section generally spans the transition into Character, Community Identity, and Choice:

    • Default vs. Design: McMahon contrasts communities that simply accept whatever development happens to show up (“growth by default”) with places that actively articulate a clear vision (“growth by design”).
    • The “Sense of Place” Principle: He emphasizes that every community has character, but only those that actively protect their distinct architecture, local assets, historic fabric, and natural entrance corridors remain memorable and economically resilient.
    • The Cost of Sameness: He breaks down how failing to establish design standards leads to strip commercial corridors that could be anywhere in America, destroying local distinctiveness and long-term civic value.

    For a taste of the presentation view 8:26–9:25 minutes. Full video link: https://hood.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=12ff9fe8-d8fc-4ac6-91a1-b35b016e9f92