The Carroll County Board of Commissioners held an open session on Thursday, December 4, 2025, beginning at 9:00 a.m. in Room 311 of the County Office Building. The meeting covered a range of topics including election of board officers, a contract award for landfill work, the FY2025 audit, appointment of the tax collector, an update on federal policy changes affecting the Continuum of Care homeless services grant, continued discussion of the Community Reinvestment and Repair Fund (CRRF), agricultural land preservation, and approval of two stormwater grant applications. The board also heard public comments on the CRRF and other matters, and recognized a retiring employee.
Good morning allcome to the uh Thursday, December fourth. Pledge allegiance to the United States of America. And which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Customized. Aren't we lucky? Yeah. Oh my god. Priority Carol, does anybody remember where we started? I think last week we're on this side. I think it's your turn or two weeks. Her turn? I believe it's Commissioner Crows. I think it's Commissioner Crows. Ready to roll. Seems like a long time since we've been here. Good morning. And the reason it's been a long time is because it has been two weeks because last week was Thanksgiving. And I just wanted to start off by recognizing that it seems like a long time ago, but um Thanksgiving is absolutely my favorite holiday just because of what it's all about. But on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I was able to um help our Leo clubs, which are our mini lions at our high schools, and every year we do a big Thanksgiving, we do Thanksgiving dinners for folks in need, and we deliver them. And it's a very humbling experience, and our kids, the adults drive the kids around, the kids walk up and we you know offer a dinner that people have uh ask us to provide, and I thought I forget how many dinners we did this year, but it's it's dozens of dinners, and we have many, many volunteers, and it's always the time to appreciate what you have and then see the appreciation of people that are sometimes in need to get their um dinners delivered to them. And the best part about it is watching our young people learn how to serve and they love it. And when it was all over, um the person that we drove around was uh just said this was really cool. So I just think putting it in the hearts of these young kids and really doing it, not just talking about it, is is a a wonderful thing. We do it every year, and actually on Saturday we're doing the same thing with our Leo our Leos. We have I think there's 90 at one school and 80 at the other school at Century and Liberty High Schools, and we're doing the um gifted with shopping for kids, underprivileged kids, and we wrap them and the families pick up the gifts, so we're doing that on Saturday. And again, we have great turnout, and it's just humbling. Love watching kids learn to serve when they're um before you'd ever think about it. Uh we also had the Good Scout Award uh yesterday. Um Lynn Wheeler, our former executive director of our libraries was the good scout and phenomenal woman in just the service, not just running our libraries, but all the service she does around our community, well deserved. Our scouts put it on every year, and there's lots of people in our community that have been deserving over the years. And um at a uh breakfast at Pleasant Valley to honor her and pass past Good Scout leaders were there and a young leader from uh Eagle Scout, a lot of Eagle Scouts were there, so again, an organization of of service. And then one other thing yesterday I uh was um I'm part of the opioid prevention task force, had been for years, and now I'm uh the official ex officio, I guess, or whatever you call it for the commissioners. And um Governor Hogan, I guess, when he first got in office, wanted every county to have a a leadership group about opioid situation that was occurring. So we had a uh a group that was put together orchestrated by the health department, and I think it's one of the most effective groups of collaboration that I've ever worked with for all these years. It's been what eight, ten years now. It's been a long time. But a couple of things that came up that were not so great. We've done a lot of of work in this uh prevention and and recovery. Um but overdoses have gone up tremendous a lot, the fatal overdoses. Our number our overdose rate is actually steadied. Uh we also have the MAT program in our detention center, which is a medically assisted treatment program to make sure while you're in um in the detention center, we're hoping to get people into recovery when they get out of the detention center. Otherwise it's a big circle just coming back in. And so far it's been we have 234 uh folks in the program in the detention center within the detention center, and there is a cost involved, but we're following up when they get out to make sure that they stay out, and that's the whole purpose of this is to get people back into the um into the real world into the workforce. And w we have about 50 percent of our detention center in treatment um today, which is huge, but the follow-up is actually uh much more important to make sure we continue that when they get out. So we're well above the state average. Um very and 175 of them have gone into residential care after release, which is good, and there's usually uh the benefits actually outweigh the costs of this program. So um we're hoping to continue that. Prevention is the biggest uh thing we're trying to do, but we obviously have some work to do. So um it was it was good good news, but there's a new drug out called uh carfentanol, and it that's what we've been seeing in the last few months, and we've got to really be careful and make sure people there there's no safe drug, period.