On Thursday, April 23, 2026, the Carroll County Board of Commissioners held its morning open session in Westminster. All five commissioners participated. The board began with the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of reflection, then honored youth and community programs, approved Fire and EMS cancer-screening and Stop the Bleed items, advanced two planning text amendments, heard one remote public comment, and discussed public comment rules and a future communications policy.
All votes were approved by voice vote without recorded opposition.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Thursday, April twenty-third, two thousand twenty-six open session for the Board of Carroll County Commissioners. As we always do, we'll begin with a Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silent reflection. So we're going to move through the first segment of our agenda as rapidly as possible. Commissioner Krebs, you are up first today. But I was at opening day last week for Sykesville baseball, and I did not realize at the time, but there was a longtime resident of Fairhaven, which is a continuous care retirement community for people that are older and they live there. But there's a resident that's been there, his name is Alan Borgman, and he's 85 years old. And he kicked off his 20th season, and you're going to see a little video, as a youth baseball umpire on opening day for Little League. And he's been umpiring for 20 years. He's 85 years old. And he also sang the Star Spangled Banner after the Pledge of Allegiance. It was really cool. He stood behind the plate, and he he coaches and teaches kids how to be umpires as he goes every weekend and has been doing it for many years. So I wanted to show you this little video to show you how important uh people's service can be and their mentorship to our youth. We watch the screen, it should come up. Sound. We have picture but no sound. You can read it. All the others in school, you should better read that. Audio is not coming through the system. That's okay. All right, you can read it. 85-year-old umpire celebrates 20th season. There he is, after he sang the Star Spangled Banner. And it's right adjacent to this. These fields are loaned to us or rented to us from Fairhaven, which thank goodness we have those. There he is, Mr. Brogwin. There he is. That's it. So just want to show you how um valuable people's time is for our with our youth and what what an inspirational what an inspiration this gentleman is, and I thank him and the parents of the kids down there just love him, Mr. Allen. Next, we also had an Eagle Scout project. This is just a picture of it. Eagles are Boy Scouts that have have to do a certain service project before they get the highest honor of being an Eagle. And this young man's um Eagle Scout project was how to properly dispose of a battered or faded or torn U.S. flag. Um you're not supposed to throw flags away, you're supposed to respect the the flag. And there he scan on this QR code, it tells you how you take care of your flag and what do you do when it's old instead of throwing it in the trash. There's supposed to be a way to dispose of it. So he put together a flag retirement box. It's sitting in the town of Sykesville, um, right by there. Where is that? The townhouse, and there's an actual box that he made that you can put them in, and then every so often the different Boy Scout troops actually have a ceremony to retire all of the flags, and they burn them. They burn them respectfully so that they're not just thrown in the trash. So if you are interested in that, it shows you even how to care for the flag and how it's supposed to be flown. The American flag always flies above then the state flag and then the Carroll County flag. There's a certain order of of how you're supposed to display and take care of your flag. You're never supposed to let it you know drag on the ground. You that's why you hold it up.