Minutes - 20051102 - Laserfiche WebLink

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John Link said that each year the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce recognizes the Sheriff's Deputy Officer of the Year and an Emergency Management Officer of the Year. He recognized Deputy Jasper Clark as Sheriff's Deputy Office of the Year. Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass said that Deputy Clark was the first alternative school resource officer last year. He introduced past recipients of the award and also the family of Deputy Clark. John Link recognized Emergency Management Officer of the Year Eric Griffin. He has also won the Vance EP Award, which is a competitive award conveyed to him by the North Carolina Emergency Management Association. John Link then recognized a group of employees that won the Norton Group Award from the North Carolina Public Health Association. The Public Health Educators won this award. Health Director Rosemary Summers said that the Norton Group Award is given to a group for outstanding cooperation and service to public health in North Carolina during the past year. She introduced the staff: Donna King (Director of Division of Health Promotion and Education}, Louise Eckels, Maria Hitt, Ellen Young, and Matt Strange. Susan Clifford, Renee Kinski, and Nan Partington could not attend. She said that they won this award because of their outstanding models of community collaboration. She described the projects that the employees coordinated. John Link asked Annette Moore to come forward. Ms. Moore is the special counsel to the Orange-Person-Chatham Area Mental Health Program. She has been inducted as the President of the National Association of Human Rights Workers. This is the oldest professional civil rights association in the United States. 2. Public Comments a. Matters not on the Printed Agenda Isabel Geffner is Executive Director of The Community Backyard. She distributed a handout (yellow). The Community Backyard is anon-profit organization working in Orange and Chatham Counties with all of the public child-serving agencies. The mission is to look at mental health and substance abuse needs of children in the two counties and to identify the gaps in services far these children, and to help develop models of intervention and treatment. She said that one of the areas they have been focusing their work on is substance abuse prevention and treatment. This is one of the most severe areas of need in the two counties. She reported that they have been recently awarded a federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Drug Free Community Support Grant. The County Commissioners offered a letter of support. It is initially a $100,000 grant, which has a dollar for dollar match locally. She said that they were going to work hard to alter community Harms to get people to realize that the statistics that they see indicate that children in our counties are using drugs and alcohol at alarming rates. The Chatham County Commissioners contributed $10,000 to this effort. She hopes that the Board will support the renewal of this grant. She said that a lot of the heart and soul of their work comes out of the passion and commitment of Dale Pratt-Wilson. Dale Pratt-Wilson is with the Committee for Alcohol and Drug-Free Teenagers. She said that she witnessed 200+ teenagers at a party using drugs and alcohol and then driving to another party. A group of concerned citizens formed a committee in Chapel Hill and Carrboro and have been working aver the past year and a half to raise the community's awareness of the local epidemic. She said that they have also worked to build a community wide coalition of stakeholders and they will be meeting tomorrow at Squids at 12:00. She invited everyone to attend. b. Matters on the Printed Agenda (These matters were considered when the Board addressed that item on the agenda below.}