Board of Town Commissioners - Regular Meeting

all right yeah all right it's now 4 30 p.m plus a little on april the 23rd 2026 and the bella board of town commissioner's budget work session meeting is now in session i'm going to call the roll commissioner foss here commissioner chismar here commissioner taylor here and commissioner hanley here all right great now first we have the approval of the agenda may i have a motion

So moved.

Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion of the agenda this evening? All right, Mr. Krantz, we're ready.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for approval of this evening's agenda of the Bel Air Board of Town Commissioners Budget Work Session Meeting, April 23rd, 2026. Commissioner Foss, how do you vote? Aye. Commissioner Chismar? Aye. Commissioner Taylor? Aye. Commissioner Hanley? Aye. And Chair Edding? Aye. Tonight's agenda is approved, thank you.

Thank you. Under new business, we have resolution 1269-26, the appointment of an interim town administrator. May I have a motion?

Yes, Madam Chair. I move that the Bel Air Board of Town Commissioners approve resolution number 1269-26, providing for the appointment of Michael L. Krantz as interim town administrator effective April 23, 2026, with all powers and duties of the town administrator as provided by the charter and code of the town of Bel Air, Maryland.

Thank you. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Thank you, Commissioner Chisholm. Mr. Krantz, anything you want to say about this? Obviously, we need an acting interim so that we have someone to sign documents and otherwise conduct the business of the town.

Yes, and absolutely. I'm ready and prepared to accept the duties of interim town administrator, and we need to keep the ship sailing and keep everything moving in the right direction. So anything that needs signed, I am prepared. All right. Thank you for being ready to accept that. I'll keep the board informed, of course.

Thank you so much. All right. Any further discussion of this? No? All right. Mr. Krantz, we're ready.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for approval of resolution 1269-26 for an interim town administrator. Commissioner Foss, how do you vote?

Aye.

Commissioner Chismar? Aye. Commissioner Taylor? Aye. Commissioner Hanley? Aye. And Chair Edding? Aye. The resolution is approved. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, presentations. First, we have the Army Alliance here to make a presentation during this, the budget session.

The letter from the Army Alliance is on page 117.

Certainly being in school, we have to all turn to the page in our book first.

Okay, everyone open to page 32.

Exactly, exactly, all right.

So you're school or church?

All right. We are here on page 117. Thank you. Is it? Oh, it's a two-pager. All right. You're correct. 116.2. We're ready.

I didn't write that, so I'm just here. So thanks again for having me on behalf of the Army Alliance to support the FY27 budget request. Yes. Michael Ray, President of the Army Alliance. So I will say this will be probably my last time I have to come upon you. My term as president ends at the June dinner, which I'll invite you to now. So I'll do it at the end. It's currently for June 3 at the Maryland Golf and Country Club. But as I think most of you are aware, Army Alliance, we're here to sustain and grow the mission of APG. We've been in existence since prior to BRAC. That was our big claim to fame. But we continue to look on ways to get them to grow that mission out there. And FY26 has been a pretty exciting year. Last year, we, with the support of the sponsors, we were able to bring in a bigger federal lobbying firm called the Roosevelt Group. This is a group that, besides their full-time staff of professional lobbyists, have a cadre of retired general officers and SESs with, still have worthwhile connections into the Pentagon. and we've been able to tap into that expertise to go after what I'm calling mini BRAC opportunities. The government is afraid to talk about doing a BRAC, so they're doing mini BRACs where they just move little entities around, and then lo and behold, there may be an installation that is down to about 30% of its original capacity, and then they're going to close it up. So that's been our target. There's been, using the Roosevelt Group, they've set up several meetings with us, with all of our Maryland congressional reps. I think we've been down there probably four times since last August, meeting with them. We have just submitted our legislative request that we have passed through all of our congressional reps for their awareness. These include, there's a small disadvantage Yeah, well, it was given to me as parity. It's disparity. So if you are a tribal-based organization with Alaskan natives, American natives, Hawaiian-owned, you can get a sole source contract for $99 million. They just hand it to you. If you are a plain vanilla small business, that's maxed out at $9 million. So the contracting world and the government has the easy button. They give it to these Alaskan natives. We are looking to bridge that gap. Our original tact was we're not going to change the $99 million. The Alaskan lobbyists are just way too strong. We just wanted to bring up the $49 million. With the current administration in DC, we're sitting back a little bit, seeing what happens, because that 99 million may just completely go away. But we are actively watching that, have our legislation ready. The other things that we've done are, And this could bring additional work to APG. We have small businesses that have more work in Delaware than they do here because of the sole source problems. But right here locally, some of the asks that we've put in for military construction, $44 million to upgrade the water towers down the APG south. $8 million to build an applied science center for the chem bio center. That is just to cover the planning and design work. That effort has stalled at about 35%. This ask will get them across to complete the design. From a defense appropriations ad, we've asked for $6 million to go to the biomanufacturing with the new push to take agricultural waste and create carbon fiber out of that that would then be used for ballistic shielding for individual soldiers. And then there's two drone-related efforts that come to about $6 million. So these, you know, right there there's, yeah, I've asked for a number of jobs. That's probably over 200 jobs right there. The other effort we worked was we secured congressional support to bring the Army Data Operations Command here, brand-new command that has been secured that will be approximately 200 positions between military, federal, and contractors. That's the initial stand-up is 200. As that grows, that, you know, The estimate's probably around 400 people. So, you know, another very large influx of people. That has been secured. We got our staff, you know, our reps to send letters into the Department of Army saying this has got to happen, it's got to happen here. They gladly presented, you know, all of our reps signed off on that. You know, it was not, it was a very bipartisan effort and it's been very successful. So those kind of efforts don't happen without the support of sponsors. This lobbying firm, we've increased our throughput more than 100% because of them. And plus, we've also stood up a legislative committee to keep a bigger focus on that. And so all of that takes resources and the funding that sponsors are able to provide to us. So I want to thank you guys for the current sponsorship. I hope FY27 we'll be able to continue the sponsorship. And again, invite you to the June 3rd dinner. That event will have APG leadership talking. I think this will be General Tornetti's last event. So it'll be good to bid him farewell. He's been very successful with General Tornetti and his support to the alliance. Hoping to find out who his replacement is any day now. So again, appreciate the time to come to you and open to any questions you may have.

Mike, I think either one of the brunches or the dinner talk about the biomanufacturing, the bioengineering, the legislation that was going before Congress, did that ever get put through? I think it had to do with, or was that the state of Maryland?

That was state of Maryland. That was state of Maryland. So that got signed into law. last April. So, yeah, we were successful in changing the state environmental laws after probably about a three-year effort to allow CBC to do some testing with some chemicals, which sounds a little scary, but by the time the air comes out, it's cleaner than the air it's going into. So, yes, that was, yeah, last April signed off on.

And you think the new lobbying firm is doing a great job, a good job, much better than before?

We had a one-man federal lobbying firm. Was he good? Yes. But we said we need to up our game because, you know, we're competing with Huntsville. I mean, that is our number one competitor out there. And so we knew we needed to bring the A game. And the Roosevelt group, we interviewed five different firms, and they outscored everybody by a mile. They also represent Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois collectively. and Guam and some other state of Virginia on something that's not a conflict. When we heard that, we were like, oh, yeah. They may not be our competition from an alliance standpoint, but they're our competitor from a state standpoint. And they also support the folks down at Pax River. So they have looked for things where we can jointly collaborate to include there's a drone corridor that they're looking to establish that would go from Pax River to APG and eventually further north.

So there's definitely pressure to expand operations in Huntsville and other campuses like it for some political reasons and so it's good that we have some folks advocating for local here. You had a great advocacy team, a different advocacy team at the state level who pushed that bill through and they did a fantastic job too. and I was able to watch that go through when I was working down there, and I was glad that that bill was passed. That was incredibly important. When we first got elected, Steve and I, our first budget, we were coming in to a time when, for one reason or another, the relationship between the Army Alliance and the town had, you know, been put on the back burner and we were glad to restore that and we're, I'm certainly very supportive of, you know, continuing that relationship because when you look at the people who work in and around APG, 21014 is the biggest zip code. Correct. And so that's not all the town of Bel Air, but that's people who either A, live in the town of Bel Air such as yourself, or people who live around the town of Bel Air and regularly travel into the town. They're spending the money that they earn by working on those APG adjacent jobs. And so APG being the number one economic driver in Harford County, I'm certainly in favor of doing everything that we can to support your mission because It's precisely because of those large national trends that we have nothing to do with, but that can affect major economic output here locally because somebody wants to move something to Huntsville. I'm very glad that we have you on the watch for that. And so I appreciate what you do, Mike, and I appreciate you coming to present to us today.

Do you have any information on the Army Data Operations Center that was recently announced?

That's the one that's coming here, the ADOC. It's going to be about 200 people initially. The infrastructure it's bringing, some high-speed fiber will have to be brought in just specifically for that. I guess I'll say it. high probability of a small nuclear reactor, it's called a CMR. So my nuclear experts tell me that you could hit it with a car and it wouldn't cause a problem. But the power, yeah, it's a data center. So of course everyone's like, oh, we don't want data centers, but they are, it's coming with its own power. But that's going to be initially about 200 positions as they stand that up. And one of the generals on post has already been named as the commander for that. So he's in place. He just needs to get his staff and the workers in place over the next six, nine months.

Thank you. And thank you for all you do to make sure that APG is the economic driver it's always been.

All right. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, and next we have the Beller Independence Day Committee.

That letter is on page 196.

Thank you. I'm Dave Williams, president of the Independence Day Committee. Our treasurer, Don Stewart, was ill this evening, so he wasn't able to join me this evening. But first of all, I'd like to thank you for your support in the past, and for some of you also I know are individual donors also, so it's greatly appreciated. Without your support, obviously, we couldn't do everything that we do on the 4th of July. We've been working diligently and trying new sponsors this year to and we actually have landed at least one if not two more to help fund everything that we do on the 4th and pay for all the bands and everything else that goes on including the fireworks which price keeps going up every year on those but it's day that you know most of you guys know exactly what happens during the day and we're just doing our best to stay within budget and do what we can with the funds that we have. Thankfully Jones Toyota, pardon me, not Jones Junction, it's Jones Toyota that's actually going to be our premier sponsor again this year thanks to them. We're getting some significant funding from them and that's really helpful too in addition to all the, I'll call it smaller donors. And we're still waiting to hear whether everybody else signs up.

I love the 4th of July parade both of my kids were in the 4th of July parade in years gone by I think it's a great community event a great family event my personal favorite is the fireworks so I know they're going up in price but they are really the you know the final finale for the parade and I enjoy them every year I tell you what's really interesting is the company that does that

The fellow who runs that literally wrote the book on fireworks safety. He is a nationally recognized fireworks safety expert who wrote the National Fireworks Shooter Test, does the training and everything else. And for some reason he likes Bel Air and We try to keep him happy. He has a great team. I've been out there and seen what they do as far as safety and stuff, being a safety engineer myself. And they work really hard to make sure everything is done extremely safely. And given the limitations that we have of launching fireworks from in town, they do everything they can to make it a great show within the limits that they're guided by.

They do a great job, and I'm not surprised to hear that they love to come to Bel Air. Doesn't everybody want to come to Bel Air?

Yeah, they do. I know of all the places that he could go to, he likes to come to Bel Air on tour. I know. I've talked to him before, and it's unbelievable. He just likes to come here to shoot off the fireworks. He can go anywhere else, but no.

Wow, that's it.

Thank you so much for what you do. My youngest son is in the Marine Corps, and so he was away for eight years. And last year, he was able to be here for the 4th of July. So he was like, we're doing everything. We went to the pancake breakfast, and then we went to the watermelon eating contest. And the grandchildren all had their little 4th of July outfits on and everything. And now I know not to do that. I need to put on T-shirts, like, you know, like, you know, smocks or something. That was so much fun. But we really enjoyed it. And he just enjoyed every minute of it, being away, but then, you know, growing up with all of this. So it was really special. So thank you so much.

Yeah, and even, you know, it's interesting, I've worked on horseshoes for over 20 years, almost 30 years now, and I had not realized that our horseshoe tournament is considered one of the big tournaments in the region. And that's the reason we get people from as far away sometimes as even Virginia and Pennsylvania and New Jersey coming to the horseshoe pitching tournament, too. It's amazing.

Thank you for all you do. I mean, it couldn't happen without all the volunteers like you, and we really do appreciate it. Yeah. Any more questions about the parade? We'll be there.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

All right, next on our agenda is the continued detailed review of the general fund expenditures, and we are starting with technology. I see we have Josh here.

Good evening. I'd like to do a little bit of a lead in. As Director of Human Resources Administration, Technology is one of the departments that fall under my purview. And while you are turning to page 87, I believe, in your book, I just wanted to talk a little bit about Joshua Forth, our technology manager, and Thomas, or TJ Little, our IT specialist. for the two people that really do work behind the scenes every day to ensure the town is functioning seamlessly their commitment their attendance their quality and literally the quantity of work they're able to do with a two-man team to do everything from installing modems physically, personally in PD cars, to managing the network, to ensuring our cyber security is quadruply covered in the case of unfortunate disasters which face our nation and even our municipalities every day. Mr. Forth has proven to be second to none he was hired in 2012 I believe is that correct Josh yeah 2012 and I can't sing his accolades loud enough so with that I just want to talk a little bit about on page 87 you see the the expanded report and the salaries overtime etc the first section includes medical dental vision insurance I'm going to kind of gloss over that and look primarily at the spreadsheet which you'll see on page 95 which covers the the bulk of the expenses which includes six hundred and thirty eight everything primarily the the hardware software a lot of recurring purchases and contracts and and then some of the capital hardware and some of the things we'll be purchasing this year so without any further ado i'd like to turn that over to mr forth who is the subject matter resident subject matter expert on this and this and he will carry us through an explanation of some of the bigger ticket items and we'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have thank you mike appreciate it much appreciated good evening everybody

I'm going to walk you through some of our larger items in the budget and new items this year. So starting on page 95, I'll start in account 210, line item one. That is our copier leases for all the departments. We're doing our copier lease a little bit different now. We pay per page, we pay a base charge and then we pay by volume instead of having a pool that we pay for and have been able to reduce the amount of expenditures for our copiers so we've been saving a little bit of money by changing that up we have we are leasing all of our equipment through canon so we have our copiers through canon we have a large format device that scans and copies and it's a plotter down to tpw we also lease a number of small printers for various offices throughout the building That would be line items one, two, and three, and account 210. And then I skipped down to line item 12, Sentinel-1. This would be a major upgrade for our cybersecurity this year. It is a SIEM, which is security information and event management. It really does a deep dive into our systems here and it monitors much more thoroughly than what we have now. This was recommended to us by the state of Maryland. We had an overview of our cybersecurity and we identified the areas that we needed improvement in. This was specifically one of them. This was recommended by the state. Josh, so this would be an additional piece of software? This would be a replacement to what we're using now. We're using Malwarebytes Threatdown right now. This would be replacing that. So this additional cost is slightly more expensive?

It is more expensive, yes.

It includes a lot more functionality than what we have now. A little bit farther down, line item 18, 19, 21. I'm sorry, 18 and 19, those are our Microsoft 365 renewables, all of our licensing for email, Microsoft Office apps, and then the Entra suite, which is all of our security that we add to Microsoft. Next item underneath that is our backup, I'm sorry, email protection from Barracuda. It's our email firewall. It's all cloud-based. It also offers archiving. Cradle Point Net Cloud Manager. This allows myself and TJ to manage our fleet of routers that we have in patrol vehicles. Rather than configuring each one by hand, we get to do it from a single pane of glass, as they call it. Anybody have any questions before I go to the next page? What do we use our Amazon Prime subscription for? We do a lot of purchase. All the departments do a lot of purchasing through Amazon. So office supplies. So saving money on shipping. Yeah. Got it. A lot of shipping costs saved.

I was just curious if anybody was watching movies. I'm just kidding. That makes a lot of sense. I'm sure that the amount of office supplies that we consume, we probably wind up saving more money than we spend on the membership, I would imagine.

We do. Even IT, we purchase hard drives, batteries, keyboards, mice, all the accessories. We pretty much purchase it right through Amazon. Right. Understood. Okay, going to the next page, 96. Go down to line item 33 and 34. These were two items that were brought up from the event that we had on New Year's Eve this past year. The first item being Microsoft Teams phone licenses, so we would effectively have a backup phone system in the event that we lost access to our primary phone system. These would be backup phones so we could still make and receive calls to the community. And then also a Starlink satellite backup for our internet service as well. Worth case scenario, if all of our layers of internet access were inaccessible, we would fail over to the satellite. line item 36 doc star eclipse we are moving to a hosted version this year currently we run it on a server on premises this new version would be hosted by well whoever it's to be decided whoever whoever comes with the best bid then the recurring cost neck starting next year would be eighty five hundred dollars a year

just as a little addition to that if I may interrupt doc stars where we are archiving at least in the administration department in town clerk's office archiving everything going back to ordinance one you know the minutes from I think 92 might be our oldest minutes. The ones from the date of incorporation have been, I think, lost to the ages. But we do have some pretty historic minutes and some pretty historic legislation and things like that. So this is where it will exist as we slowly, I emphasize, you know, but accurately archive all this information, God forbid, in the event of an emergency and town hall would no longer exist due to fire or hurricane or whatever tragedy might be, we pray never occurs. This is a critical piece of software, so I just wanted to point that out.

Thank you, Mike.

next item down Josh just a sec sure line item 37 and line item 50 the whole punch took out the numbers what's the cost on this let's see 37 yeah

I don't have that. I do have 50. Line item number 50 is 19,460. Okay. 18,460.

And then that's the Fortinet support for firewall analyzer. I can tell you.

Yeah.

What's that?

Yeah.

Yes, I'm saying, yeah, line 37. Line item 37 is the Fortinet support for firewall analyzer. I'm just saying.

Sorry, looking it up right now. Hold on, what?

Yeah. The hole punch.

Please proceed, and I will have that for you momentarily.

line item 40 is our barracuda backup service that also includes we have a physical appliance on-site this includes off-site replication to barracuda's data center that is hosted by amazon that is twenty thousand dollars Line item 47, ArcGIS licensing, $16,100. This is basically for all of our users that utilize GIS primarily in planning and public works.

That number, 230, number 37, Fortinet support is $6,580. I feel like a bingo caller.

Thank you Mike. And that basically provides, that provides licensing and support for all of our critical network hardware, our firewalls, some of our switches, our wireless access points throughout the building. Okay, turn to the next page unless anybody had any additional questions.

Josh, I got one more item. Okay. If you're moving to page 97 now, correct?

Yeah. Yeah.

I just wanted to add, before Josh touches base on it, or he might not be touching base on it, but I will. If you look at line items 55 and 56 under Lexapole, pd and admin the 16213 and the 6045. i just wanted to report that the police department has completely finished its transition from a paper manual to a web-based lexapol manual and lexapol continues to be an outstanding partner to the town of bel air not only does it provide the that unlike never before when employees had to reference the old paper binder in the supervisor's office if they wanted to look up a policy, then you always wondered, geez, did I update that with the newest amendment or something like that? This now provides a seamless online portal that employees can access the town's policies and procedures even directly from their cell phone. So it's wonderful, I've received a lot of positive feedback from the employees who really appreciate being able to look up those policies whereas before sometimes you'd get a little bit of gossip in the break room about what is this policy? I don't feel like going to ask my supervisor about it and then there's sometimes misinformation. So just from that basic thing alone, I think it has had a positive impact on morale and it also, Lexapol comes with, this package comes with the legal support of the Lexapol organization. So when a law changes, Lexapol does update our policies and we get policy updates that we can then immediately send out to the employees and one great thing about this system is it does require our town employees to acknowledge each and every policy. So this is good from that legal sufficiency standpoint and it does force a person to at least click on it and take a look at it. So we do appreciate that. And once again, the police has completely finished with their transition from the paper binders. Unfortunate to say that the town admin department in my office is not done. We are about, I'd say 85, maybe 90% complete with the personnel manual policies. There's about a dozen or so policies that need to transition to Lexapol on the personnel manual side, which include things like the disability policy and things like that. And we were purposely holding off on that one because as the state is working, looking at this you know, state mandated sick leave. You know, it may change how the disability policy is in the future. But Lisa and I were talking a little bit about that, and I think we're just going to issue our policy as is, because frankly, if somebody needs it, we're still referencing that policy. It's still an active and needed policy that employees can rely on. So I think we're gonna get those last few policies done and issued into the online lexical manual. And then we'll be moving forward with all the departmental procedures. We'll be looking at those and then moving them into the online platform as well too. So just a little bit of a status update and to let you know how pleased we are with that system.

It does sound like it saves a lot of work for particularly the police department where there have been a number of changes. But did that state mandated sick leave policy, did that law pass? Is it in effect?

i think in january of 2027 we have to start contributing okay you know so it's it's on the horizon very much so and it will become a serious matter of discussion because you may remember two years ago the town did sign on to participate in a consortium with other Maryland counties and cities and towns to try to mitigate the administrative impact that this law is gonna cause. And I'm still a little behind the eight ball in terms of my expertise on this policy, but I know for sure that we're not gonna be able to maintain our short-term disability policy the way it is because it'll be like,

you know it'll be double dipping you know you can't have both it unfortunately made a mess for those places that already provided sick leave and had a short-term disability long-term disability and all that and now we have to figure out how to make the two work together and

Yes, I'm personally opposed to this state legislation. I wish that they would allow the private and us, the public sector, continue to move forward with our laws. And to be able to require an employee to have to apply to the state to get their sick leave, I think is going to be cumbersome at the least.

I would use the word nightmare, but cumbersome works too. I know it's, we'll see how it all works out and how, Happy or unhappy employees are because that's what I'm concerned about. You know when you work for a governmental entity and you have sick leave it just you just get paid and there's no delay and you get your paycheck and your sick leave and pay your bills and As usual.

And my logic from this perspective, even though that policy may change sometime in the next six to nine months, I think it would be best to get it live on Lexapoll so that employees, even the ones that, because we rarely use it, but when we do use it, an employee needs it. Right.

I think that's a reasonable thing to do. I lost track of the timeline for that. I remember us meeting about joining the consortium and how to fund it and that sort of thing. Yeah. practical problems that was going to cause here both administratively and for the employees. I can't imagine having to apply for my sick leave to the state, but there we are.

So we're going to get our policies all updated and online so the employees can see it. You know, whenever there's a change, they'll be notified about it, and then they can acknowledge it. And if we do have to change those policies, it will be more transparent for our population. And there will, of course, be meetings and discussions with the employees in the break rooms as the state law becomes – more of a reality, I suppose.

Thank you for that update.

Okay, thank you. And Josh, sorry about the interruption there, but please continue, sir.

No problem. Line item 67, know before security awareness training. This is how we send out test phishing emails to make sure that everybody stays on their toes and report the phishing emails to us and not clicking on the links inside. So we like to do that periodically. Line item 69 is for Adobe Acrobat, 60 licenses. This is going to be a recurring fee, $16,000. We are no longer able to purchase a perpetual license for Adobe Acrobat, so it's now a subscription service that we'll be paying for annually. GovQuest PIA, which is line item 71. Mike, did you want to explain that?

With the recent retirement of our 40-year veteran in the Police Records Management Division, who has expertly handled Public Information Act requests for the Town Police Department for many, many years, As we've evaluated the responsibilities and the sheer volume of PIA requests as they continue to bombard our small town, we are recommending that the town purchase a PIA, a Public Information Act Management System, that should streamline it and help us track in a universally transparent manner not only for requesters but primarily for internal staff because public information act requests often cannot be fulfilled by a single individual because sometimes PIA requests are so broad that they impact sometimes every department in the town of Bel Air, from the finance department to planning to public works. Certainly the police department experiences the highest volumes and that's one of the things that is definitely new and it will be recurring. I'm old enough to remember when you could purchase a license and use software for years and years and years. Now it's a recurring annual fee.

Okay, the next item I have is down at the bottom of the page. We have 13 new computers, 13 replacement computers, $13,000 this year. Then the final page, page 98. At the very top, line item 35, YubiKey fishing resistant multi-factor authentication. So I'm looking to get 75 key fobs to issue to office staff. this would basically replace having to use a password to log into a computer and it is not a fishable type of authentication because it is a physical device that you hold in your hand and that you have to tap after you type your pin number and you tap it to verify that you are at that computer tj and i have been testing it out over the past year for ourselves it's been incredible so we're going to roll that out to the rest of the office staff Next line item 37, we are going to start replacing the older routers in the patrol vehicle fleet. We are going to split this up. Some of them are going to be purchased in this fiscal year, I believe. And then seven will be purchased in fiscal year 27. Laptop replacements, we are going to do 16. and that would be, there's a hole punch got that as well, but the correct amount should be $27,200 for those 16 laptops. It was 44 total and I believe we're going to purchase the remainder in this year. The last A couple items that we have here are also a result of when we lost connectivity to HMAN. So the first item in account 812, line item one, is a new fiber optic run for HMAN for full redundancy for Town Hall. Now it's tentative the route would go from Hickory to Lee to Shamrock out to 22 and then join up with the rest of the trench going down 22 towards DPW. This would give us a fully separate segment to the H-man. So if we lost the link that goes to the sheriff's office, we would not notice anything here. That means the dispatch would stay up. That would be the most critical thing that we have that's connected to HMAN. And it's not just the phones and dispatch. It's the radio. It's their dispatching software. Everything in there is dependent on HMAN. So having another separate physical link is critical to keeping that up. I also have, next line item, redundant links to the Armory and DPW. So if they were to lose one of their connections to Town Hall, they would still stay online. Same thing, just a shorter run. The next line item, we are looking at rack space at Hickory, DES, so we can have a little bit more added redundancy and rack a couple of servers in that rack. Those two line items, three and four, go together. It would be a domain controller and a backup file server would live in the rack at DES in the event that Worst case scenario, we lost the file server and domain controller in this building and at Public Works, we would still have running copies at DES. And they are very well supported there. The last item I have is eight Toughbook replacements for the patrol fleet. These are special semi-rugged laptops to go into each patrol vehicle, and we replace them in quantities of eight to ten. So this should be our last replacement for a couple of years before we have to start the next group again. Did anybody have any questions?

Josh, on the fiber optic trench, We only have one, you're saying we only have one H-man connection, one fiber into the building? That's correct. Right now? Yes, sir. Okay, and it's above ground, right? Yes, sir. So was an above ground option looked at versus a trench?

The last I heard, you cannot have any more aerial runs for fiber off utility poles. It all has to be trenched.

It all has to be trenched. And there's no shared trench to use for somebody else?

not that I know of them until we get out to 22 we have an existing fiber trench that goes to the field at Rockfield that's how our fiber to DPW gets connected now in the county also utilize that for a couple of other things that would be the only shared trench that that I'm aware of.

So and that's where you've been tying in yes to you becoming from this building.

A pickery actually be And it might change, but the drawing that they gave me would come out to Lee Street, go down Lee to Shamrock, and then come up Shamrock to 22 and go across 22 and continue down to DPW. There's a major tie-in box as you turn into DPW. There's a big, quite large bundle of fiber in there that we tie into along with the county.

So that's going to be about $100,000. Sure.

Trenching is pricey. Is it the utility?

This would be done by KCI.

I saw that KCI was on here. Is the utility that says we can't use the polls BG&E?

I believe so, yes. To the best of my knowledge.

Thank you. Thank you, Josh. you're welcome thank you everybody have a nice evening good to see you I know having a single point of failure is not the the best of all things but I'm especially one that's exposed to the elements it is not we learned that the hard way we did we were lucky we were back online pretty quickly but it was a little scary there yeah I would like to avoid that in the future if possible It's shocking how dependent we all are on that, everything now, phones, all of it.

Agreed.

Thank you so much.

All right, thank you.

All right. Next we have human resources.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Michael Krantz.

I will ask you to turn to page, let's see, let me, I'm not even on the right page. Turn to page 41 is the beginning of the human resource budget. And I'm gonna ask you to skip over the first couple pages which is salary and benefits. The HR department itself, it's not that large, it's myself, human resource specialist, Christine, three part-time office assistants who also are file clerks, and then under the admin, it also includes, well, not in this budget, but supervision of public relations and Julia Potler in the Army. We'll talk about PR momentarily. And of course, we just heard from Josh. But if you go back to the explanation page, unless you have any questions on anything preceding that, I'd be happy to entertain it. I'm gonna really start looking at page 47. Pardon me while I pull up my notes. The first you see employee recognition, $2,500, relatively unchanged, and we're looking to continue that just for employee morale perspective and keep the team energized and keep them focused on how much we appreciate and are thankful for everything that they do. Moving on to advertising it's the same 500 as it was before we we have probably overspent that in the last year or so but it's so so difficult to understand or maybe understands wrong word predict you know when we will will spend in that area for primarily human resource systems our current hr our keldare applicant tracking software includes Indeed.com, everything automatically gets posts on Indeed.com. And then when we have special needs, like when we were recruiting for the planning director or recruiting for the financial director, we would spend extra money and try to target specific websites or associations that might be where those people are. with CR ads more frequently, like even LinkedIn as well. I used LinkedIn to recruit Mr. Bear, as a matter of fact, who we recently hired. Nevertheless, we're gonna keep that at 500, and if we overspend a little bit in the interim, we'll try to make that up with savings and other portions of the budget. The recording secretaries is down, because now we did hire Jane, who is the director lovely recording secretary assistant who's sitting here next to us thank you very much she's now a part-time office assistant file clerk and still fulfilling her recording secretary duties so those budget dollars for her recording secretaries have been moved to the salaries page on on the administrative section if you wanted to see that so these are now pretty much reflective of the seniors the senior committee moving down to contracts. You see the summary there, the postage machine. General code, I should say, is a big portion of that. My relationship with general code continues to be outstanding. I would not recommend attempting to move laws, ordinances, charter, the town code to a different system. I've been very, very pleased with their responsiveness, very, very pleased with their customer service. And twice a year, we incur the expense of all the laws that the board passes, kind of fall into a holding pattern online called New Laws, if you go to General Code and look at them. then twice a year we we contact general code and say okay this looks like an appropriate law I have all the new recent stuff uploaded and we please codify it which they will then adopt those laws into the ecode online and we have stopped we have cut back on some of the paper binders that we've had for ecode and I think i think that's a good thing i always worry that the paper binders if the if the department isn't keeping up with the uh the paper updates you could accidentally end up with a out-of-date code book so i'd still highly recommend utilizing the online version of the code is the best place to look at our town code for the most up-to-date version and if you ever have a question for anyone watching out there you can always call myself at the town clerk's office and be happy to answer any questions for you there So that estimate is just a generalized estimate based upon what we expect, the number of ordinances that might pass, and then the complexity of that ordinance sometimes impacts the cost of that update. You see those reflected there. And then we do outsource our ACA, Affordable Care Act, required reporting that's mandated by the federal government as far as the prescription reporting that is mandated as well. Innovative Insurance Solutions, our insurance broker has been providing that service and we're grateful for it because it is administratively significant in getting that done if you move over to page 40 48 under physicals and testing all the math is laid out there for you for pre-employment physicals fingerprinting background checks every now and then we get out-of-state applicants so we do expend some extra money using in a third-party firm to do background checks in out of state areas. As I've learned, not every state is as easy as the state of Maryland. You actually can do a criminal background check through Maryland CEGIS criminal, what does CEGIS stand for again? Anyway, the criminal justice information system, that might be it. There you go. And you're able to get a statewide background check very easily in the state of Maryland, but not so in Pennsylvania. You have to go through the jurisdictions and all the little things like that. So we do do that for out-of-state applicants and budget a little bit of money there. Driving records, psych exams for officers, the Federal Motor Safety Carrier Administration Clearinghouse, the annual reporting, the random... because we have truck drivers, you're required by federal law to randomly drug test them. And one of the things that we do with that, I know it's only $420, but I'll point out that's an important $420, because otherwise we don't want the liability of choosing the random selection process in my office. So we do outsource it, and Worksite Medical provides the outsourcing program for that. they keep our list and we change the list as employees' names change, new ones added on and old ones fall off. We keep that list and they generate their random selections for us. So no employee can accuse me of playing favorites. cdl testing for for drug screening of course uh is 50 according to the law and 25 from breath alcohol and then we use the same uh the same requirement because i've never been able to find in the uh in the maryland law if you're certainly required to test police officers but i can't find the rubric of how frequently So we're using the same requirements that we require of CDL officers for police officers. And I think that works out good for us. Plus it keeps our employees on their toes. They never know when a test is coming. No one's ever informed. There's no standard protocol. Nobody knows. It's not the first of every month because it's not. We purposely pull those tests and have those random things happen throughout the year. supplies printing, certificates of recognition, proclamation, various awards, all our papers, the town seal, various supplies, our labor law posters, various other office supplies needed for the events manager and the technology department. That budget is coming in at $5,000 as before. And that's all I have. Right there, unless there's any questions, I could go over to the PR budget. Lisa, if that would be okay? Okay, if you could turn to page 99. And again, I'm not going to go over salaries. You see that in front of you right there. And while David Anderson, our PR specialist, is in the room, I'd like to thank David Anderson for everything he does to keep our social media fresh and active, to keep our proclamations well worded, wonderfully done as well as our website and some of the spotlights that you see the articles the news flashes are extra important to keeping our community informed and Mr. Anderson you do a fine job in doing that sir thank you very much and Mr. Anderson's budget is relatively small it's mostly salary but if you look at Where am I? If you look at page 104, there is some travel training and memberships. Mr. Anderson is part of the National Public Relations Association for $500 and he does attend the Maryland Municipal League Summer Conference. So there's the $2,500 there. He does utilize Canva. as a graphic design tool so that yearly subscription is included there as well as from time to time about $500 for social media boosts and online advertising and I have nothing else to report there

Everybody OK to move on. All right. Page 29. 29 and 30 are the two justification pages for the town administrator's budget. So again, skipping salaries and benefits as Michael's done. On page 30, you'll see the travel training and memberships page. Very similar to what's been done in the past with the fall conference, the summer conference, emergency management dues, various tolls in parking and other meals and mileage for a budget request of a little over $3,000. MML dues. We really won't receive what those are until we get the bill. It has changed on how they restructured the dues to be based on population, so shouldn't be an increase based on our population, but that doesn't mean that they won't increase that fee. It was $15,000, so we just factored a slight increase into that. And then there's a cell phone for the town administrator and various supplies and miscellaneous of that $1,500, $1,000 was budgeted for the continuation of the Municipal Citizens Academy. Any other questions on the town administrator's budget? Okay. We're gonna move on to legal then on page 61. Two line items here counts within this budget department. Legal references and memberships, which is around $6,000 and is based on historical spend. And then, of course, the bulk of the department, which is legal counsel services. There is a $38,000 increase in this account, twofold, just based on history, and an increase to the rate from 300 to three and a quarter per our existing contract. We did not factor into this budget any type of anticipation of legal fees with lawsuits. It just doesn't make sense. It's just pulling a number out of the air. We'll deal with it when it happens. So this number here has that assumption excluded and any type of historical historical costs that we've spent in this fiscal year not factored in when we look at history if that makes sense any questions on legal okay all right then lastly we have uh commissioner's uh budget on page 85 Really the bulk of your budget is in travel. So various dues, of course the MML Cecil Harford Chapter quarterly dinners. We budgeted two commissioners to attend the fall conference, four to attend the summer conference, and then there is various function ticket costs for anything you know that may come up during the fiscal year that you all would like to attend we've budgeted for that as well as meal meal and mileage reimbursement and advancement for the different conferences are you all okay with the some those two assumptions of two for the fall and four for the summer we try to look at it based on history I will be attending neither I can tell you that I'm sorry not yeah so this is the summer of next year what we're talking about because that's in the fiscal not this summer because that's fiscal year 20 we're talking about summer of 2027 but we are talking about this fall but we're talking about this fall, correct? Right, okay, yes. 2026. I got you. Correct, correct. You know, and I'm not asking for y'all to make a decision. I just want to, in general, does four and two make sense?

Every now and then, if there's like a nonprofit that we want to find $500 for, and we know that somebody's not going to MML, that's a good place to find that $500. That's why I said that. But, yeah, we can cross that bridge if we need to.

Okay. All right. Then we'll leave it as is if you all are comfortable with that. advertising is you know whenever we have to advertise for town board public hearings this is the account that those funds are charged to your telephone again five telephones for each of you is about $2,600 and then lastly on page 86 we have another account very similar to the town-wide budget of other. Just really doesn't fit in any particular account So really, if we were to, if it was our turn to host an elected officials meeting, it would come out of here. When it's our turn to host this MML Cecil Harford chapter, it comes out of this account. Our main sponsorship events and ads for the Greater Bel Air Community Foundation, annual golf tournament, and military appreciation come out of here. Our display fee for the Greater Hartford Committee reception in Annapolis, as well as any type of supplies that you all need or new shirts, jackets, what have you, is budgeted within this line item. Is there anything in your budget that has not been included that you'd like to see?

okay I think that I've been here has been fine for all the commissioners there wasn't anything missing that we thought yeah Aaron there's usually because we know I think it's on the fall MML only one that went usually have enough money in there should there be something that we need correct and I I have not been I've not budgeted for the

Maryland mayor's conference for the last several years. Right, because we don't attend, so that's been cut from this budget for probably for the last two or three years. Okay, so those are the, that's it for presentations for this evening for the budget. Our next budget session is next Tuesday after the normal work session. I did pass out, you should all have in front of you, the updated list of outstanding budget items. So we have those three to date. Have any additional ones that you all would like on the list, either from tonight or that's just come up in conversation? I can add to the list if you all would like.

None that I can think of. Anybody else? Okay.

All right. We'll leave the list as is then and continue next Tuesday. So that is it for me.

so we have now completed our open portion of the meeting and we are going to move into closed session may i have a motion yes madam chair i move that this portion of the meeting will be closed under the provisions of the maryland open meetings act general provisions article 3 section 305 b1 the topic of discussion will be to discuss potential appointments to the vacant town administrator position and the reasons for closed session discussion of the above topics will be because public discussion of candidates names qualifications experience and background could discourage people from applying for employment or compromise their privacy rights

thank you do I have a second second any discussion of the motion and just for the people who may be watching at home we will not be going back into open session at the conclusion of our closed session we will be adjourning only so in that instance Mr. Krantz I think we're ready

Thank you, Madam Chair. To approve the motion to go into closed session, Commissioner Foss? Aye. Commissioner Chismar? Aye. Commissioner Taylor? Aye. Commissioner Hanley? Aye. And Chair Edding? Aye. Now entering into closed session, thank you.