I want to mention that Todd could not make it this morning.

He fell ill last night due to food poisoning.

But we do have four members of the PAB presence, so we do have a quorum.

Maybe in the future I'll just say video is available on the website.

And it also avoids some dates that the Sykesville training folks are making available to the PAB and the ACC of the week before.

So we we was able to squeeze that in and hopefully everybody can make it on the 14th.

If you can't, please let us know.

All right.

The PAB met in closed session on uh November the 25th.

We had a few issues that sort of uh were nagging us and you know getting worse, so we decided we needed to get together and talk about some things.

And I went ahead and made a summary, which I sent out and I think Bethany has provided of some of the things that we talked about and some of the decisions that we made.

And I just want to kind of go over some of the uh underlying items and make sure that I you know give the uh give you all a full accounting of what we kind of decided.

Um one of the things, the first thing I think we talked about is we want to try to do some outreach.

Uh we found that a lot of people in the in the county just don't seem to know about the PAB and what our mission is and what we're supposed to be doing and how we're supposed to be doing it.

So we want to try to inform folks, uh not necessarily trying to get more complaints against you guys, but we're trying to just inform folks what the PAB is and and what it does and how it can help them out, how it can help everybody out.

So uh we're trying to do outreach.

One of the things we did, I think we talked about it last time, um, but we hadn't done it yet, was we uh rented a booth at the uh at the Fall Fest here in Westminster.

And uh we had a good uh uh good time at the at the Fall Fest with everybody else.

We handed out a lot of our brochures, which we have provided to you guys uh prior to this meeting, and uh we talked to a lot of folks and we we feel it was a successful successful effort.

Uh one of the other things we want to try to do is we want to try to get out and we want to try to talk to local groups.

Um we hadn't really decided on how we were going to do that or when we were gonna do that, or the way forward for doing that.

Uh and then we got this request that came in from the uh American Legion to make a presentation about the PAB, and that sort of got us thinking, well, you know, we need to uh start being more uh concerned about this part of our outreach.

And so uh we decided at the last meeting that we were gonna uh reach out to the uh to the civic groups, the V FW and the American Legion and the Lions Club and the Rotary, you know, all those civic organizations and make them aware that uh that we exist and that we're available for uh presentations if they would like us to come and speak.

Um this particular task uh we unfortunately at the meeting we did not assign it to anyone, no one volunteered to do it.

Uh so we're still looking for somebody on the PAB to uh work with Bethany to uh to get get the letter out and to and to get this this uh this work going.

Um of the things that we'd like to do is um and and one of the things Lisa volunteered to do was to create a um an outline of talking points.

So we deliver the same message to to everyone we speak to, and we don't forget to say uh uh what we need to say.

So um and although uh we didn't discuss it at the meeting, Todd uh who is not here today, volunteered to speak to the American Legion.

Uh they're gonna let us know in February uh the Hampstead uh American Legion actually.

They're gonna let us know in February uh when when they want us up there.

Did I cover that pretty good?

Yeah, and I think just uh to the point of this is you know the way we're going at this is working with local law enforcement to improve community policing and really trying to educate the public more about what constitutes a valid complaint so that we try to get to a place where it avoids some of these complaints that really aren't valid complaints, you know.

So I think just for you from your perspective, where our goal was not to get the message out to get more complaints.

Our goal was really to get the message out to inform the public properly so that we can hopefully eliminate a lot of the additional complaints that really don't fall under the purview of this process.

So it's it's kind of like how the laws originally set up the primary data point for us to use as complaints, but we're trying to get away from that and say any type of comments, any type of commendations.

And if you have uh you want to file a formal complaint, please be aware that this is what actually constitutes a formal complaint.

You know, and this is what will you know if if m you know so many complaints get dismissed because of this, this, this, this you know, don't file on frivolous complaints.

You know, and here's a list of what will make it frivolous.

You know, it's it's trying to just get generic feedback and and other forms of data other than just complaints, because that doesn't we know when you get all these complaints it gets dismissed, it doesn't help anybody.

Thank you, Joe.

All right.

Um next topic was the PAB wanted to put a commendation button on the website.

We have a button that says complaints, but we don't have a button that says you know what went well.

And so we proposed to put a commendation button to give good comments, and the county shot us down.

They said that we don't allow buttons that say good things.

And so um we were trying to figure out a way to uh get around that.

And we really haven't found a good way to get around it.

And so uh what we decided to do was Lisa uh was going to prepare a short paragraph or insertion into the end of the year report, which is due very fair fairly soon.

And uh we're gonna let the county know, or let the commissioners know that we have a concern.

I I don't think that's gonna do any good, but uh uh because the apparently the the lady who uh is the executive of the of the county is pretty close to the commissioner.

She knows what they like and what they don't like.

And so she was the one that made a decision, and uh but we're still gonna put it in there and let them know that we would we still want a uh a commendation button.

So I um drafted a paragraph and I sent it to you this morning for review.

Um and in it basically it's not so much getting we I think there's some perhaps we're getting caught up in the technicality of commendation versus the how how the county white handles that.

What we'll probably uh be requesting is that we well, we have the complaint button, which was already there, but there's just an other feedback section where we can take in various forms of feedback.

That could be ideas, it can be general any any general concerns, or it could just be um or it could be um positive feedback from an encounter.

So I we're uh uh prepared something, and I did send it to you, but we're we may have to get a bit more generic with just other feedback, and uh hopefully maybe we'll get a bit more success with that.

Right.

So what we did uh additionally was we asked Bethany if we could get approval to create a different button on the website that would maybe just be for comments uh if you wanted to reach the PAB with a comment.

And so uh Bethany's working on that.