A report released by Howard County’s Spending Affordability Advisory Committee outlined the county’s four year plan and proposed recommendations for new economic development outreach, checks on  local government spending and new sources of revenue. As  reported in the Baltimore Business Journal:

On the economic development front, the committee recommended reviewing ways to draw in new businesses in the technology and commercial fields — bringing in high-wage employees as well. Such a move would insulate the county from the large economic impacts it felt from federal spending cuts in recent years.

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“A lot of times it will still have some sort of federal government connection,” said Kittleman, who has previously gone on the record supporting high-tech business development. “You look at cyber. We talk about doing more with cyber. Manufacturing, we’ve been working pretty hard here for 3-D printing in Howard County over the last some years, and we’re going to continue to do that.”

Dropping amounts of open land ready for development will be another challenge to the county’s growth, committee chair Steve W. Sachs said. The county currently only has about 1,100 acres of open land that can be developed, and less than half of it is in parcels over five acres, he said. The report said it’s time to analyze the county’s land so new redevelopment requirements or zoning can be looked at in the future.

“We’re almost built out,” Sachs said. “We’re going to need to look at places where we can go vertical where we haven’t been, where we can redevelop land.”

For more information read the full article in the Baltimore Business Journal.