The Board of Carroll County Commissioners met on Thursday, February 19, 2026, for their regular open session. The meeting included commissioner comments, a legislative update, a presentation from the Police Accountability Board (PAB) and Administrative Charging Committee (ACC), a public hearing on a proposed temporary deferral of data processing centers, and several contract awards and approvals. The board also received briefings on the second-quarter FY26 budget, the FY25 Concurrency Management Report, and the FY27 Consolidated Transportation Plan (CTP) priority letter.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Thursday, February nineteenth, two thousand twenty-six open session for the Carroll County Commissioners. As we always do, we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silent reflection. It's been there for two years. And it's it actually in the Eldersburg Business Center, where Merritt Properties is. That school um for whatever reason went away a few years ago and a business moved in there, and it was a shame because it was perfectly built for a special school. So Glenwood Academy out of Howard County uh saw the opportunity and came up and brought their school with them. They were meeting in an office building. And it's this very, very special school for students. It's a it's a nonprofit school serving students in Maryland through age one to two with learning differences, including dyslexia, ADHD, and autism, and their customized instruction is is excellent. The school was it was so much fun with seeing the students and just in all of their different personalities, and they're studying World War I. They have big displays of World War I everywhere, and they are just um it's just a phenomenal place. So I was pleased to get to visit the Glenwood School. Then in the same park there is uh is H N S Bakery, uh, which used to be Ottenberg Bakery, now it's HS Bakery. And they have a hundred employees there, they have a excuse me, a 24-7 operation, and they serve, they make sub rolls and breads, and they ship them all over the East Coast. And I will never eat another piece of bread again that I do not appreciate what goes on in that building, and just seeing what goes into a loaf of bread. So I brought a gift home for all of you. That is a sub roll from the bakery. Oh, it's smelling. Now I smell this bakery from my house, and now I can see what they do in there. Okay. There you go. It's fresh. Well, it's two days old now, but that's still fresher. And just how to take mine. Don't yeah, tell me twice. How they get the uh the ingredients and the the the um it's been there for a number of years, and H and S Bakery obviously is a huge bakery. They have locations all over um all over Maryland, and but this one is the sub rolls and the different types of bread, and I learned about wheat, I learned about white and all the different things that go in it. So pretty much any bread you buy on the shelf, any store brand around here, is made there. And they're pretty much all the same. Well, thank you very much for thinking of us. Always think of it. So one more, I also had a uh meeting with um friends of Robert Moton, and we've all talked about it for a long time, and they're bored, and I was very pleased with just um their vision for what they want to do with a museum in the old school, and we're gonna be talking about that later. But um, very impressive group, they have a plan, and the thing that I was very pleased about, they're including our wreck in um career in tech students in the drafting department to come up with a plan for how they're going to build out or they would like to build out the inside with the museum spaces, and they're actually doing a field trip to Harry Tubman Museum, which is in Cambridge, to see how that's done there, and then and then have a contest with these drafting students so they can put their talents to real world and have something come out of it. So very pleased that they pulled that in and they've been all over the county talking to different groups um about what they're trying to do and set up a foundation and philanthropy to be able to achieve their mission that they've been working on for this museum. So it was very fruitful day. All right, thank you. Uh good morning, Carroll County. Uh just a quick note. Um so obviously we're we're into budget session now, and the Carroll County Public School System budget is always uh a big topic of of conversation. And um I'm certainly not an expert on the school's budget, but um we've got some previous board of education members here, so I think we've got a lot of expertise. And uh I am a product of the Carroll County Public School System, and so is my wife and my sister and my three kids. So I think I know a thing or two about the Carroll County Public School System. And what I've been doing is I've been reading this interesting book by Chris Pabst. He's uh with Fox 45, I guess you could call him an investigative journalist, and he focuses very closely on school issues and this um very important issue of outcome. Um and I just, you know, you'll hear that word a lot over the next couple months, and you'll hear it throughout the state as in particular um this book focuses on the Baltimore County Baltimore City school system. And you know, this issue of outcomes is so important because it's easy just to say you can put more money towards a solution, but it doesn't really get you a solution. Uh Baltimore City is probably the the poster child for um in absence of outcomes, if you will. This book talks about how the Baltimore City School system since 2017 has an increase of funding of 500 million dollars. Uh and since 2017, graduation rates have increased by one percent.