By Morgan Pilz, Staff Writer

(March 12, 2020) When the Town of Berlin files its updated comprehensive plan with the state at the end of the year, it could contain a new element that explains how it would respond to circumstances so severe that they could permanently alter the town’s way of life.

Planning Director Dave Engelhart

The short term for these circumstances and the means to overcome them is “resilience” in the parlance of community planning, and that’s what the town’s planning commission and mayor and council have been considering as they conduct their comprehensive plan review.

Planning Director Dave Engelhart introduced the possibility of the addition to the Town Council on Monday.

Comprehensive plans, which must be reviewed and adjusted every 10 years, are used by local governments to set a course for future land use and development. They also establish goals and priorities for specific elements associated with the growth and evolution of a community, helping to provide a coordinating platform for projects and fiscal resources.

Engelhart, in collaboration with Deputy Town Administrator Mary Bohlen, produced a draft to include a resilience element to the plan.

“The idea behind the resilience element is … every 10 years the state of Maryland requires that municipalities have to at least review our comprehensive plans,” Engelhart said. “This resilience element … we saw an opportunity to get a grant last year in 2019, and Mary and I secured a grant that was administered by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, some federal funds from NOAA and the U.S. Department of Commerce provided us with some funding as well.

“This resilience element was drafted through them … they helped us quite a bit,” he continued.

According to the draft presented by Bohlen and Engelhart, resilience is the ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to changes and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper.

The resilience element in this plan focuses on climate change and how the town of Berlin can mitigate, adapt and manage potential climate impacts.

“We don’t have coastal flooding, but we do have nuisance flooding,” Engelhart said. “When we have rain events, it adversely affects everything; buildings, electric and wastewater management.”

The addition to the plan is intended to define what resiliency is, present a general description of what climate change impacts could affect the region, list particular areas of interest where existing communities’ plans overlap with resiliency, establish resilience strategies and actions and identify resources that could aid in strengthening community resiliency.

“The idea is to have a plan in place to make sure that we budget and maintain correctly moving forward and not just from year to year, but maybe 50 to 100 years from now,” Engelhart said.

The draft of the plan will be available for residents to review online on the town’s website later this week so they can submit comments. Officials will review those comments and, if they coincide with the town’s goals and programs, place them in the plan.

The town is required to have at least reviewed the plan by the end of the year, though Bohlen encourages anyone who wants to leave a comment about the plan to do so no later than Tuesday, March 31.