BERLIN, Md. - Leaders in Berlin are looking for community input to tackle some of the town's biggest challenges.
Berlin was awarded a grant that allows what's called a resilience element to be included in the town's comprehensive plan, a long-range, 10-year planning document.
Town Administrator Laura Allen said the point of the resilience element is to tackle any challenges related to the environment, growth, and financial sustainability.
"For resiliency in Berlin, I think we're really going to be focusing on flooding," said Allen.
Flooding has been an issue in Berlin for years.
"We had an Army Corps of Engineers study completed several years ago, and it identified $10 million worth of capital improvements we would need to do to significantly reduce flooding in our community," said Allen.
Allen said the mayor and town council created a stormwater utility that has provided some funding to be able to go to the state to apply for grants.
"We've successfully obtained three million dollars. Now, we've concluded all of that grant funding, so we're looking at a way of supporting the next step and this resilience element can help us do that."
The agencies Berlin received the $20,000 grant from are Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The grant allows the town to partner with the University of Maryland Environmental Finance Center to help facilitate three community meetings and to draft the Resilience Element.
"We get to define it in terms of what works best for us. This is the [community's] long-range plan," said Allen.
The meeting dates, times and locations are:
March 14th from 6 - 9 p.m. at Buckingham Elementary School
March 16th from 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. at Worcester County Library
March 18th from 6 - 9 p.m. at Berlin Town Hall
The Town is also partnering with Worcester Youth and Family to provide free child care at their offices located at 124 N. Main St., Berlin to enable parents to more easily attend. Parents can drop their children off 30 minutes before the meeting and pick them up after the meeting.