This month the Montgomery County Council will vote to take away gas cooking and heating from your home while imposing some of the most stringent energy use standards in the nation known as Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS) (https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/exec/Resources/Files/17-23.pdf ).
Their quest for energy nirvana will result in extreme hardships for owners of condominiums who will get a $50,000 to $100,000 per unit special assessments to attempt to comply. Condominium owners have testified to this in front of the County Council, but as usual that County Council and especially the Council President Kate Stewart were tone deaf.
Despite the obvious, the County Council continues this folly of greening Montgomery County regardless of the effect that it has on the citizens. Please reach out and tell the council not to pass the BEPS legislation and remind them that you can vote them out. Their contact information is: https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/council/members/index.html.
owners of condominium units are being
required to meet an extremely stringent
eui standard this target for multif
Family Properties represents an over 40%
reduction to achieve the County's goal
we would have to make a nearly 70% 70%
reduction in HVAC and water heating
consumption a feet which is not possible
given today's
Technologies with many owners living on
fixed incomes covering their share of
the financial cost of the required
improvements would present an unbearable
burden it will also make the building
unaffordable for firsttime home buyers
their report found that we have no
realistic options for meeting the County
requirements we would essentially be
gutting the building at unfathomable
expense and displacing residents for an
unknown number of months the ultimate
cost would likely exceed the value of
the building in short since we cannot
Electrify our Heating Hot Water Systems
we have no means of meeting the County's
requirements with current technology the
regulation would add a very in a short
period of time another burden on owners
and renters as higher fees or special
assessment costs would need to be passed
along we will never get to the median
aspirational standard for an average
Maryland building can cost $16 per
square foot which for us would be $22
million we would also be required to
substantially upgrade our electrical
system at Cost greater than $10 million
and and Montgomery County is the only
county in the state that has created
beps regulations you've heard all the
reasons why all electrification just
won't work for buildings that were built
with G the the meth isn't there and I
think if I heard correctly someone said
that it's it's not really um improving
their quality of life and I'm just I'm
just going to push back and say that in
when we're having these conversations as
well and looking at some of these
changes um that this does improve the
quality of life
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