Veterans Advisory Council - Regular Meeting

That wasn't as loud as I'm used to it being. Oh, well. Hey, thanks everybody for coming out to the March 19 Frederick County Veterans Advisory Council. If we could kick this off with the Pledge of Allegiance, please. All right.

I believe we have a quorum. There's one, two, three, four, five, six members. All right, let's go ahead and do we have an approval of the agenda, a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

Fantastic. Do we have a second? Second. So we have a motion and a second. Any discussion about the agenda? Hearing no discussion, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? So moved. Fantastic. All right. Let's get into old business. It looks like the only old business item we have is approval of the previous meeting's minutes. Those were sent out electronically. Do we have a motion to accept the previous minute previous meeting's minutes?

I move to accept the previous meeting's minutes.

Fantastic. We have a motion. Do we have a second?

I'll second.

We have a second. All those any discussion on the minutes? Hearing no discussion, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Also so moved. Fantastic. We'll get real quick into Chair's comments and then into presentations, and we're moving right along. So although all of you here should hopefully be signed up for our newsletter, if you have not signed up for our newsletter, you can go to the VACS website and sign up for it. It gets sent out pretty regularly. It's called the SitRep. It's fantastic. There's a little section in there called the chair's message, chairman's message. I just want to talk about that, what's going to be in the next one here a little bit.

I talk about all the different organizations that support veterans in Frederick County, the VSOs, the nonprofits. There's a whole slew of them. I used to think there were too many, truthfully. A couple of years ago I thought, there's so many different organizations trying to help veterans. I didn't understand that I don't think there's actually enough.

There can never be enough organizations trying to help veterans. So my call to action this month is to say, look, whether it's a veteran service organization, a nonprofit helping veterans, whatever it is, find one and help them out as much as you can, purely from the fact they need it. What nonprofit maybe helps me in a way that works for me may not work for him, may not work for her. All these different organizations speak to people in a different way for different reasons, and that's why they all exist. So that's really my call to action is find time to volunteer.

A lot of the folks here are obviously doing that. Find an extra couple of minutes. That's my ask. So yeah, that's my message to you all. If we want to kick it off with presentations, we'll go right into Veterans Treatment Court of Washington and Frederick Counties. Julie Ann.

All right. Nice to be back with you guys. I know we came last month. I did get some inquiries about mentors. But here tonight to share a little bit more about the actual up and running of our program. We are active at this point. We have three participants right now. And we are slated to get, I believe, four more hopefully within the next coming month. So we'll at least get into it. And what is a veteran treatment court?

It's a specialized court program designed to address the unique needs of military veterans who have become involved in the criminal justice system, often as a result of issues such as post traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, or other mental health challenges related to their military service. We're aiming to rehabilitate veterans through treatment, giving them that option to go ahead and get treatment rather than imposing traditional punishments. Our goal is to reduce recidivism, help veterans reintegrate into society successfully, address any underlying issues that lead to criminal behavior, and provide veterans with tools to achieve long term stability and success. It really is a program that is tailored to address the individual needs of every single veteran. Especially with this type of problem solving court, the demographic is very wide.

We're facing some people who are facing homelessness. We have other participants right now that are in fear of losing their jobs because they hold the top secret level clearance. So we are really aiming to actually tailor this program to everybody's individual needs. So our judge is Judge Eric Schaeffer. This is a little bit about him. He is a 1991 Penn State Dickinson law graduate. He was a assistant public defender for several years, state's attorney right here in Frederick for several years. He then went on into private practice and was part of Schaeffer Black and Flores. He was appointed an associate judge here for the Frederick County District Court in 2018. He became the administrative judge.

So he is the head judge for District 11, which is Frederick And Washington Counties. And the best part about Judge Schaefer, he himself is a veteran. So I think what's at least good here about Judge Schaefer besides being a veteran is he has really been on all different sides of the table. So he can have a full bird's eye view of everybody's perspective. And this has been really an important endeavor for him.

So he's incredibly excited now that we're finally up and running. So the rest of our team, our backup judge is Judge Victoria Loebly out of Washington County. She does also handle Washington County inductions. What I do really like about our particular regional Veterans Treatment Court is the fact of we are bringing people from both counties to the table. A lot of regional aspects kind of focus on, hey, we're transferring everything into this one court, the same group of people are handling it.

We've got state's attorneys from both counties. We've got parole and probation agents from both counties so that everybody kind of has their seat at the table, especially just because the challenges between both counties are sometimes a little bit different. Not to mention, we do have one participant who his case is originating out of Frederick County, but he lives in Washington County. So that kind of gives us all a seat at the table to kind of discuss going forward what the best plan of action is going to be. So our Frederick County state's attorney is Mike Moore.

Washington County state's attorney is Kenny Shapiro. Angela Oding is the representative from the Office of the Public Defender. I do believe we are getting a panel attorney here at the April. I, of course, Julian Clappert, am the treatment court coordinator. David Gowers out of the Martinsburg VA is our veteran justice outreach specialist. Our probation agent from Frederick County is agent Fiorello. Our Washington County parole and probation agent is agent Marielo. Care our care coordination and a lot of case management is handled by Nikki Felzone and Ashley Poindexter of Platoon twenty two. Our peer consultant is Carrie Lance, who himself is a veteran. He is here completely volunteering his time.

And he is a clinical social worker in both a mental health and a substance abuse Basically, he's been in private practice now. And our backup Veterans Treatment Court Coordinator is Teresa Hegel Sherman, who is her primary role is the mental health court coordinator for Frederick County District Court. So what regions are we handling in this Veterans Treatment Court? It's a regional problem solving court that covers the jurisdiction of District 11, which is going to be Frederick and Washington County. So all treatment court dockets do take place at this time at the Frederick County District Court.

Inductions and the plea have to be handled in Washington County before they can come here. But all dockets are held on Tuesdays at 02:30PM. For the most part, the second, third, and fourth Tuesday of every single month. The requirements for the Veterans Treatment Court it has to just be you have to have a veteran status. And it has to be an honorable discharge.

Uncharacterized discharge is we're going take on a case by case basis. We will accept active duty service members. That is something we're already starting to see basically our proximity to Fort Detrick, Fort Meade. It does sometimes happen. Participants, they have to have a criminal or traffic case within the jurisdiction, the Frederick County or the Washington County District Court. In the future, we haven't talked about taking on circuit court cases. But that does kind of take some fancy footwork to do, especially just because it has to be a crime that's within the jurisdiction of the district court. That's not always going to necessarily happen. So it's in our wheelhouse. But it's something that we have to still work on with the state's attorney's office.

And anybody coming into the veteran treatment court, it has to be approval by the state's attorney or the designee from the county in which the charge did occur. How are our participants identified? Judicial officers, which in Maryland involve judges and commissioners, state's attorney, public defenders, division of parole and probation, private counsel, detention centers, law enforcement, veteran related organizations, nonprofit organizations. We have partnered with the district court commissioners. They are flagging people when they are doing the public defender eligibility and asking them their veteran status.

That gives me the ability to go into our electronic computer system and go ahead and run reports to see basically how many people have what is called a veteran status indicated. That kind of allows me to reach out to the state's attorney, public defender, or the private counsel right off the bat and say, hey, you have a veteran on your docket. Maybe it's something you'd want to consider for veterans treatment court. So any referrals that have to be made come to me. And then I basically send them forward to the state's attorney's office, who will then work on any type of plea arrangement.

And then we have a meeting with Judge Schafer to discuss all the referrals that we do have every single month. The structure of programs so we do have two different structures. Post plea sentence deferred so this means they do have to plead guilty to something. Their sentencing will be deferred pending the program participation. And upon successful completion of the program, the case may be dismissed or an appropriate probationary period may be imposed. We've already seen several different things. The state's attorney is willing to drop something. He's willing to offer probation before judgment. I think we have one case right now where the only agreement was, I'll recommend a suspended sentence with no active jail time. So there's a lot of different things.

That gives us the ability under the post plea sentence deferred. It gives us the opportunity to kind of meet this person where they're at. And we are also taking on violation of probation cases. That gives veterans the opportunity who didn't have this the first time that they were sentenced the opportunity to come back to the table. So this is kind of new.

The BTC is comprised of two tracks. Track one is Mission Rebuild. It's a five phase, fourteen month treatment based program that will offer intensive rehabilitation services to eligible defendants. The phase structure includes acute stabilization, clinical stabilization, pro social habilitation, adaptive habilitation, and continuing care based on the National Justice for Vets Treatment Court model. And this track is built for participants who may require a high level of care.

This is usually what we're going to say when we do risk needs assessment. These are people who are high risk, high needs. But what led us to track two, which we're calling Operation Resilience, is a more independent program that is built for participants who are already clinically stabilized with no or minor criminal history. And track two could be anywhere from six to twelve months in duration. And these will generally be low risk, low need participants who do not require such an intense level of care.

We were starting to see people come through the system that maybe didn't have a record at all, but they really wanted the extra help. They wanted the care coordination, and they wanted the accountability. And we wanted to be able to offer that to them. A lot of problem solving courts will tell you that they only take high risk, high needs individuals. I don't think that we really agree on that as a team.

We kind of feel that if we are bringing in low risk, low needs participants, that is maybe what will stop them from being a high risk, high need institution in the future. So the main thing that sets VTCs apart from other problem solving courts is the mentors. Every veteran in the Veterans Treatment Court has the opportunity to be matched with a volunteer veteran mentor who will be a coach, guide, role model, advocate, and a support for the participant during their time in the program. This includes listening to the concerns of the participant, making general suggestions, assisting the participant to determine the needs, and acting as a support, especially when the participant may feel overwhelmed or isolated. And they need to have genuine concern for veterans in the criminal justice system, be of good standing with the law, commit to participate for a minimum of six months, participate in required training.

As of right now, we have six participants, and I am still in need of females. I do need female mentors. I believe I might have two female participants coming in within the next month. And the mentors I've seen so far that we have we have a wide array of mentors coming in. And it's wonderful to see, especially because they kind of coordinate together and they complement each other.

We have a JAG officer who knows, obviously, a lot about the law, the court system. But then we have a mentor who is himself a veteran's treatment court graduate from Alaska. So we at least have a wide spectrum of people that are able to offer support where one maybe doesn't have as much verbiage. What are the veteran mentor duties and responsibilities? Attend court sessions when scheduled, participate in lead mentoring sessions with the veterans before court, be supportive and understanding of the difficulties other veterans are facing, assist the veterans as much as possible to resolve their concerns about the court procedures, assist veterans in accessing and navigating the Veterans Affairs system, be supportive and helpful to other veteran mentors, maintain required records of mentoring contacts and sessions, and be aware of and maintain required privacy and confidentiality.

This has been we don't mandate that they have to have a mentor. We offer it to them. There's going to be sometimes that there's going to be certain participants that maybe just need a little bit more. So we try not to force it, but we give them the option and we do pair them up with somebody. So how can I help? Refer participants, refer mentors, attend Veterans Treatment Court to better understand our model, give suggestions, get involved, volunteer as a mentor. And the biggest thing is spreading the word. Just being out and engaging in the community, I've gotten a lot of feedback. I've gotten a lot of people that have come to the table and want to give ideas. They want to give referrals.

They want to volunteer their time. So so far, we have seen a lot of veterans coming in just wanting to volunteer their time and just asking how they can help. And the biggest thing I say is just talking about it, I think, the biggest thing. A lot of people, when they come into the program, are saying, I didn't even know that something like this existed. And this is my contact information. The best way usually to contact me is by email since I am I'm sometimes teleworking. I'm sometimes in Washington County. I'm sometimes in Frederick County. So usually email is the best way to reach me. I know the last time that I was here, was asked if I was gonna be attending the the Veterans Appreciation Day.

And I spoke to Judge Schaefer about that. And we have coordinated with platoon twenty two to set up with their table. So we will be with them. Questions?

Thanks for the presentation. You mentioned maybe coming to observe one of the veterans VTCs. How would we find out if there was a docket available that when we could come and actually see something just so we're better educated on how it works.

I can set that up. I can email Mikayla and let you guys know. Because we have it set up right now where Judge Schafer sets the dockets as he sees deemed fit. There's going to be some people where it will be, hey, see you next month as long as you're checking in with me and the probation agent. And there's other people where it's, hey, we need to see you next week. We do have one this coming Tuesday. However, instead of having an actual docket, we are doing a field trip with the participants where platoon twenty two will be shuttling them out to Paradise Stables at Common Grounds. And the whole team is going. Judge Schafer himself is also going where basically we're all going to do that together as a team.

What are the minimum requirements for a mentor? For

a mentor, we just say that you can commit to six months and that you're within good standing of the law. I know a lot of VTCs will actually they do the full background check, they don't want people who have any criminal record. I don't have an issue. I know that the rest of the team doesn't have an issue if you do have a criminal record because honestly, that's going to be who's able to relate to these people standing before the judge a little bit more, right? I mean, we can certainly sympathize with people with an addiction. But unless you're in recovery, you can't exactly empathize with it.

Go ahead. What community service opportunities

do you have for that court?

Well, so that usually, if that is something that Judge Schafer wants to order, usually is something that I go to platoon twenty two and say, do you know of anybody who needs somebody right now? Because we want to keep it within veteran related organizations just for that camaraderie, obviously. And the concept of giving back to those who have given to me is, I know, really important. But yeah, that's usually the route that we're taking is asking Nikki or Ashley out of Pluton twenty two if they have any availability or if they need any help themselves.

In the cases that you've seen so far, could you identify a common thread?

DUIs. DUIs For the most part, I think there's been several cases that I've seen where it's just been simple possession, petty theft. But from some of the more high risk, high needs individuals, what I've seen so far is they need the accountability because they're kind of used to having somebody telling them what to do, when to do, and how to do it. So they're really looking to that accountability and for somebody to really be telling them what they need to be doing next.

Any other questions? Fantastic.

Thank you

so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

Up next, veteran deflection team, Corporal Knight.

If I may approach.

Stand Get upright, Rasmin, use

some swag for you guys.

That scared me. So

thank you for having me. My name is Corporal Matthew Nyatt. I'm a police officer instructor for the Department Veterans Affairs, primarily working out of the Baltimore VA Medical Center here representing my cohorts that also represent the Department of Veterans Affairs in Martinsburg that is this catchment area for Frederick County. And I want to talk a little bit about the Veterans Deflection Initiative. So unlike Veterans Treatment Courts, our goal for the Veterans Deflection Committee is to intercept veterans before they get introduced into the justice system.

Our main goal is to try to get them into some type of treatment, into some type of program. It doesn't necessarily have to be offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs because like we talked about a couple of times and like the gentleman, a chairmember who had mentioned before, there's a lot of programs out there for veterans. And the VA has identified most of these initiatives out in the communities and is trying to help collaborate and bring them all together so that we all have options and so that we can all band together, try to fight this as a group instead of individual teams. We're partners with Maryland Governor's Challenge. We have members part of that team as well.

We have veterans treatment courts, mostly in the East Coast. And that's really just what we're trying to do. We're just trying to get ahold of veterans before they enter the justice system, deal with the homelessness, deal with drug and alcohol abuse, and deal with that lack of mental health care that that plagues our veterans every day. The deflection team was formed shortly after the VA central office started with this initiative. The Baltimore or the VA Maryland Health Care System started our deflection team just as a collaboration between the different units.

Because we all know that like government, we all talk to each other, right? All the teams in government, they all have perfect communication with each other. We're composed of Veterans Justice Outreach program members, suicide prevention, and of course the VA police. We tend to deal with a lot of these issues at first contact with first responders. So firefighters, EMTs, police officers, we get calls.

Sometimes we identify someone as being a veteran who needs some help or is in some type of crisis. And they're not quite there at that point where it requires some type of criminal justice intervention, but it's right there at that threshold where it could be breaking into that threshold. And that's what we do. We intercept them. We stop them from getting into those problems, get them connected, and try to collaborate with our local agencies.

Right now, we're not a crisis response unit. There are some VAs across the country that are doing more in the crisis areas. But those are more areas that are more rural, like areas where there's not a lot of response options for some of these veterans who are in these rural areas. If you have someone who's a vet who is specialized in this type of training, they can actually go to those locations and address those individuals with their teams and actually be able to help them a little bit better. Not quite there yet.

I've got a couple of things to go over first before we can get there. The information here, Jennifer Kelly and Corporal Todd Williams, both of them work for the VA Martinsburg. Jennifer Kelly is the head of the Veterans Deflection team out of Martinsburg, and she is co chaired with Corporal Todd Williams. Their information is here. I can certainly share the slides if you want to reach out to them.

I also included a flyer with the presentation so that you guys can have their contact information on the flyers, the old care flyers that are keeping veterans safe. Some of that information right there on their website. If you scan the QR code, it goes right to their website so that you can get more information about their program. These are the catchment areas for Martinsburg. It's a big, large, wide area, lots of stuff included in this.

So there's a lot of outreach opportunities for the team. So that's why we're doing this is so that we can reach out and so that we can let you let you all know that we're here and we're listening. And if you need help, we're gonna be there for you. This is an overview of the catchment area. Basically, all of The United States, The Virgin Islands, Hawaii is all divided into what's called veteran integrated service networks or VISNs.

And each one is specially tailored to those regions so that they can offer the best kind of care for our veterans. And this area here where it's basically this whole section of Frederick County and this wide swath of West Virginia and some of that's the Martinsburg team's catchment area. It's a very large area. It's very wide. Know, hundreds of veterans out there that are in some rural areas that don't really have like a lot of outreach opportunities or don't have a lot of connections with other veterans groups or even with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

So getting this word out to them if they're able to see these presentations and stuff and know that we're still here allows them to at least get in contact with us so that if somebody can go out and reach out to them. This is our deflection team in the VA Maryland Health Care System. It's a really, kind of how we break it down in our area because we have such a large population of veterans that we deal with. We have different veterans justice outreach specialists assigned to different counties to try to handle some of the load. And they do stuff like go to the jails.

They go to, community events. They pass out business cards. They go to those places, those scenes where police officers or firefighters or EMTs are interacting with veterans, and they're the ones who are doing most of the groundwork. They're the ones who are going to be the first points of contact. But we also have community engagement and partners. We have, suicide prevention individuals who just specialize in nothing but suicide prevention. Then we also have police officers embedded in our team as well, myself and Jason Kalger. We run our deflection team for the Baltimore and VA Maryland health care system. This is our catchment area. Not really super relevant to this conversation.

But if you look at the way that we kind of break it down, you can see that we have a large area of Maryland that we have to deal with, especially in the Eastern Shore where there's a lot of large veteran population. The biggest challenge that we have right now is that interagency collaboration. Because it's so spread out and because it takes so much time to get to some places, that's how we really kind of form this team so that we can help with that collaboration. The deflection committee was formulated to increase that collaboration between the VA community and everybody else who doesn't know about some of these programs or doesn't know that there's a lot of programs out there. We're trying to formulate a team so that everybody has one resource, one sheet that you can just because everybody likes simplicity.

Right? Or, you know, kiss. Keep keep keep it simple, stupid. Right? You gotta keep you gotta keep it simple. So if we can develop a resource sheet like the cards that I presented to you all with just some numbers on it so that you can just grab it, take it, give it to someone, great. Perfect. That gives you a phone number of a live person that you can call because has anybody ever tried to contact someone at the VA? Sometimes it's a little tricky sometimes. Now you have a phone number you can call. You can contact someone. Now you can get them right then and there. We like to try to talk about problem solving. We like to talk about triage. We like to talk about some of the stuff that we do.

One of the biggest successes that we've had so far, we just did this presentation to the Aberdeen city government. And before I even had a chance to do my presentation, we already had success with a veteran. He had been disconnected from care for years, hadn't been connected to anybody in the region. One of our VJO specialists reached out to him, and the lieutenant from the Aberdeen Police Department came up to me and thanked me and said, hey. Thank you for taking care of him. We haven't heard a peep out of him since you guys took care of him. So that was a small success for that. We have success all over the country, as far up north as New York City, as far down south as Orlando, Florida. You know, people have been reaching out to us. So that's just an example of some of the stuff that we do.

Especially if someone gets lost, you know, that's that's the hardest part about this work is once you get into the system, where's the follow-up? Does is there anybody there to follow-up to help take care of you if you're in some type of trouble? And that's what we do a lot of. We do a lot of follow-up and just making sure that people who are brought to us were reaching out to them, keeping an eye on them. We hold a monthly or a bimonthly, deflection committee meeting.

If anybody is interested, I'll be certain to get the information to Mikaela so she can distribute that to the council if you would like to join. It's on Teams. Mostly just talk about some of our stuff that we do here. Reaching out to other agencies is the job of the intergovernmental subcommittee. They reach out to other agencies and they help set this up. Public safety, that's just for us for mostly for consultation within the public safety realm. So the safe space for us to talk about some triage stuff and talk about some of the issues that we're dealing with in the veteran community. And also we have a supportive services. If you would like more resource cards, If you can get them to any first responders that you know, get them into their hands. We can get you more if you need them.

That would be much appreciated. So how can we help? Assistance with transitions to care, education on different mental health and homeless services and the VGO outreach initiatives, and education sharing with our law enforcement, EMS, and firefighters, very paramount to our success in these types of settings. CIT training, crisis intervention training is the forefront of police training nowadays. Everybody needs to focus on that mental health aspect.

We do that. We also do mental health first aid training to help us out. So if there's any other problems within the veteran community and our police departments, EMS, firefighters, we have peer support groups that are ready to reach out and to help us out. And then have access to resources in real time so that you have that phone number to call, and you can get someone on the phone. We need collaboration, connections, communication. We need to know what's working and what isn't working. I know that there is, a big issue right now with navigating a lot of the government right now because of what's happening in the political spectrum. That's a challenge. That's a challenge that we can help overcome. A big question that we get asked a lot about is eligibility.

If anybody has ever tried to navigate eligibility at the VA, it's a a big complicated mess of all kinds of different things. We can certainly help out with that. That goes into what I was about eligibility most of all. The compact act kind of made eligibility a little bit trickier. Compact act makes certain improvements relating to the transition of individuals to services from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Suicide Prevention for Veterans, and care services for women veterans and other purposes.

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced that any veteran in suicidal crisis can go to the emergency room and get emergency care. Any veteran, whether enrolled in VA or not, can go to VA or non VA emergency room for emergency suicidal care, and the VA will provide treatment to cover the costs for treatment, including transportation, inpatient, or crisis residential care up to thirty days and inpatient care up to ninety days. We have a social worker who has reached out to our team and said that she will be available to any questions about eligibility through the compact act. Her name is Jill Finkle. And her email address is here on this board if you have any questions eligibility.

So regardless of VA enrollment status, the following are eligible to have their medical expenses covered by the VA. Those who are discharged or released from active duty after more than twenty four months of active service, former members of the armed forces including reserve service members, and those who served more than one hundred days under a combat exclusion or support of a contingency operation. So that's kind of a broad definition of what the compact act has done. But it's made a lot of individuals in the community eligible for services. And we're no longer asking the question no more, are you a veteran?

We're right now asking the question, have you ever served? That way it allows us to reach these individuals who otherwise may not have been eligible for services. Now we can see if we can get them connected to some type of services. And with our community partners, especially in Maryland, like the Maryland Governor's Challenge, their definition of what is eligible for their services is different from what the Department of Veterans Affairs eligibility is. So we can always refer them to those groups and actually get them into treatment, especially if they don't want to come to the VA to receive their care.

We can certainly help out with trying to get them alternative care to the VA. So some of our current works and project in progress, we're trying to develop a triage kit to try to assist our first responders with screening, case consultation, getting our resources cards passed out, trying to model our current deflection committee initiatives to mirror other VAs, establishing those good memorandums of understanding and memorandums of agreement with our neighboring jurisdiction. I know that's a huge no no topic nowadays with MOUs and MOAs, but we can certainly try. Discussion of administrative issues such as jurisdiction resource sharing, that's always a challenge. And then acting on our current MOAs and MOUs, talking about our regional general counsels.

Lots of information. Thank you for having me. Does anybody have any questions?

Do you have are you are local police and fire are they having training? Do they get training?

Yes. So actually, with our current initiative that we're trying to do, we're trying to the the WIFM, what's in it for me for the police guys. We're offering a course called Veterans Center Policing, which we're trying to get approved by the Maryland Police Training Council to offer first responders and police officers that want to receive this training two credit hours towards their certifications. All the police officers in Maryland have to maintain a certain number of credit hours of training per year. We're trying to develop a course so they can come to us and they can receive training from us so that we can actually get them some help with that.

Especially when it comes to stuff like identifying veteran culture, there are some things that a lot of veterans talk about that maybe civilian life doesn't really talk talk about. If the CSM walks into the room, that's kind of a big deal. We have kind of trying to bridge that gap and trying to get that information to people is helpful. Because when you're dealing with someone in crisis, sometimes you have to know. If you don't know, you might not make a good connection with the veteran.

Any other questions?

Do we have your cards? Or are you thinking about coming to our Veterans event in July?

Stan Seidl, actually. I'm not sure if Stan. Yeah. So, yes. Stan is actually on our our committee, and he's told us all about this stuff. I haven't didn't even know about this. I live in Frederick, and I didn't even know that all this stuff was happening, and he turned me on to this. So I'm I'm excited to go to those. There's also a career fair that is supposed to be happening too. We're trying to arrange it so we can set up so we can reach out to maybe some vests that might wanna be police officers because we need police officers too.

Thank you. Thank you.

I'll send you the registration form because the Frederick County Fire Department and Sheriff's Department will be there.

Awesome. Thank you. And you can talk to them. Thank you. Appreciate it.

I know you didn't come here to talk about numbers, but are you seeing any upticks as of recently because of what you're talking about with what's going on?

A lot of the stuff that we're encountering now are mostly, drug related, drug and alcohol abuse. We are experiencing a uptick in mental health issues. That's why we have mental health support services with our group to actually help us with that kind of thing. The biggest challenge right now is just trying to figure out, what works. And, unfortunately, what's going on now is that people feel isolated.

They feel alone. They feel like there's no help, especially with the reductions in the VA staff and stuff. The work still continues. So that's what we're we're at right now is just trying to get as much outreach as possible to let people know that we're still here. We're still here fighting for vets every single day, and we're not gonna stop until till we stop, till we're done. So that's pretty much where we're at right now. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Fantastic.

That's all our presentations. Public comment, anyone have any particular things they want to bring up? Sir? Just a question.

Is there any update to changes in bylaws? I was gonna do that in announcements,

but since you're right, okay. Okay. So we

just had the the public hearing for the change in the last night.

Push to talk.

Just had the public hearing last night. For those that couldn't hear me in our viewing audience, Somebody came to speak. He said something. I don't know what it was about, you know. No, but it was good.

It's going go through fine. I'm not too worried about it. I mean, we've had Vice President of the Council. He's asked a couple times now about the change in the discharge status and whether that might overly restrict our recruiting for members. And so we've talked about it a couple times now as we've been discussing the bill.

I don't think he's gonna try to amend it. If we do, we'll talk about it. So I'm not too worried about it. There hasn't been a challenge in recruiting members to this commission. Right? I mean, we got a lot of very dedicated people that want to help veterans. So I don't think that's really going to be much of a concern. So don't ask me when we're voting on it. It's two, three weeks from now. I don't know that Mikayla probably knows the date more than I do.

But yeah, that's the status.

Anybody else? Great. We'll go into staff report, please. Okay.

Talking about the Frederick County Veteran Appreciation Day. So one update is the county executive is now attending herself. So we are going to start a little bit earlier. It'll actually end up being the same as we did last year where we're going to say doors open at 09:30 and the ceremony starts at ten because that's when the county executive is available. So that's one update.

And here's the flyer again that I shared last time. If anybody hasn't received a copy, just let me know. I can email it to you. I have some printed out with me here tonight as well. Registration has been open since March 3.

There is a list of the current vendors. If anybody needs it, we can pass it around. So far, we have 41 vendors out of the 70 vendors that we can accommodate and this is the list that we have going so far. So yeah, very happy with how vendor registration is going. So the vendor registration, the fees that we're collecting just go straight into the event.

The venue is very generously being provided by Frederick Health but we do need to rent tables and chairs and pay for a sign language interpreter and then a few odds and ends like printing and signage and things like that. So all of the fees that we're collecting just go straight to those costs for the event. So, if anybody has any suggestions of vendors you'd like to see, you know, please let me know. You're welcome to invite them yourselves or if you send me the contact I'll send out an invite you know so and we'll just go until all the spots are filled up Mikaela, how does participation list compare to

is it similar representation that was there last year?

Or do you feel like this is like, people that were there last year aren't here? Does that make sense? A lot of it is people that were here or participated over the last summer. A few that are new. As far as like the categories, it's about the same very heavy nonprofit government veteran service organizations, which makes sense. A few new businesses, which is exciting. Yeah, we are able to accommodate more vendors this year because the venue is a little bit bigger.

Do we have folks that were there last year that haven't RSVP'd yet

that like we should maybe Yeah. Try to really get them nail down income or? Yeah. And one thing that is interesting is Frederick County government itself, way more divisions. You can see just the Frederick County divisions alone. So, yeah, hopefully everybody in this room has their organization or division registered for a table. Mikaela, I have a suggestion.

Reach out to the United Way because their Ride United program, that is geared towards veterans and rides.

Yeah, I know I have invited them, but I will know, maybe if you send one as well, Maybe I will knock on the door.

When

it is sold out.

There's another big event that day. And I think that may cause some competition for vendors if businesses or organizations can only send one?

Yeah, so the block party. Yeah, the block party. And we had discussed that. And so we kind of thought maybe the block party yes, it is a conflict, but maybe the people that go to the block party may not necessarily go. But as far as for vendors, yeah, you're right.

So actually, the Division of Aging has asked us if we would move the date of the event after this one because it makes it really, really difficult for the finance folks because this crosses crosses fiscal years because we collect the fees in one fiscal year, and then we're spending it in the event is in another fiscal year. So it was suggested that we consider maybe moving it up to May or pushing it to September so we can keep it in one fiscal year. So that's something to think of for the next one.

Kayla, how are we doing on like still doing food trucks? How are we doing on that?

I haven't invited any food trucks yet. And the way that it works, my understanding of what we did last year is as long as they're on the Board of Health, like they have the certificate, we can see if they'd like to participate.

Did you reach out I was just thinking maybe like Navy Federal Credit Union, Pentagon Federal Credit Union, anything like that, because they have usually car loans and help with the VA home loans and that sort of thing, and very specifically targeted to veterans and active duty folks.

Okay. Yeah, I can do that. Do you have like a contact or just the I can try to find it if not.

It would just be on the website. But I think the main branches are all down sort of in the DC area. But certainly some of those ATMs are up here in the county now.

Navy Federal's got a branch right over by Wegmans.

Oh, really? Oh,

Cool.

All right.

What about the Chamber of Commerce and the veterans?

They don't know if they're a mature enough organization yet to have the presentation.

Chamber of commerce registered.

Yeah. But, yeah, they don't know if the veteran's group is going to participate in that.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Katie and I walked around downtown Frederick just when was that, Tuesday? And walked into some of the local businesses, like the local outdoor sporting what's it called? The Trailhouse? Yeah, and some other ones to see if they'd be interested or just if they would put up a flyer if they had like a community board.

The other thing, I took you up on the veterans tickets at I used the

Weinberg?

At the Weinberg Oh, yeah. So it really does work.

Okay.

And I don't know if this is another venue that we could advertise more broadly about veterans can get free tickets to the performances at the Weinberg. Or if they want to advertise that at this event.

Oh, Okay.

It really does work. And it was a great date night for my wife and I.

Oh, cool. Yeah. Katie and I walked by there, and we saw that they're having an army concert. The army what was it? Army band concert is playing at the Weinberg. Do you remember what it was? Army band is having a concert.

Tried to get the individual who wrote the guitars for veterans to come up with a table there too.

Okay.

It's a great organization. Yeah. So

if you know of any businesses the only thing is we just ask that, obviously, the businesses don't sell anything at this event and we also were asking for the, you know, the non profits that they're not going to solicit donations at the event either. So that is one thing. So, okay. So, yeah, so 41 vendor tables sold and 29 tables left. And another exciting update is I am enrolled in the Veteran Service Officer Training Course, April 21 through the National Association of County Veterans Service Officers, so hopefully I pass.

So that's exciting. So hopefully by November the county will have this pilot program going where I can help submit claims for the veterans. Again, like I said, we're hoping that at least for this pilot program, we're going to focus on veterans either 65 and over or 18 and over with disability, probably more veterans who are homebound or maybe don't have transportation, things like that, people who aren't as able to go down to Platoon 22 to meet with the service officers there.

I know we have a line item for new business, but I don't think we have any new business. Anybody? I'll give myself an action item to come up with at least one new business item for next meeting. We'll go into announcements. I know your announcement already.

Go right

ahead. Let's have a second.

My other announcement is that last night, the council passed unanimously the administration bill to amend the disabled veterans tax credit. And what this did and it will be effective in sixty days. But this kind of closes you can call it a loophole, perhaps. But there is a situation where a veteran could be 100% disabled but not permanently disabled. And based on the language of the codes in place, until Annapolis made some changes themselves, they weren't eligible for the 100% exemption and also weren't eligible for the county's property tax credit.

So now they will be and they'll be eligible for the 50% property tax credit. That's now taken care of. What was really nice though, through this process, and I probably mentioned it before, I'll mention it again because I was really pleased by it. That an individual came forward in this status. And rather than just, sorry, you're not eligible, our Treasury Department made it happen. So I was very pleased that when you see that kind of discretionary decision making the letter of the law maybe doesn't say it, but this is the spirit of the law. So now we're just fixing the letter of the law.

New Jersey Department gave a very effective presentation again to the Fort Detrick and Tory Council of Lester. That's the largest attendees we always get, between 40 to 60 individuals.

They're great at outreach. They really are. They get out there and they let people know what they're eligible for. Are they on the list of the Frederick for the Appreciation Day? Are they on the county government? The Treasury Department?

I don't think so.

I

did send an invite to Mandy Menzel.

Yes. Yeah,

know. Yeah, but maybe reach out, put a tickler back over there. Because they love those kind of things.

They have to pay full price though.

They are the treasury.

Any other announcements from the board or anybody? Fantastic. I'll happily entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second? Anybody? All those in favor say aye. Aye. So moved.

I've never seen Sheriff.