 Good evening to everyone here in the audience and those who are watching online. Thank you for attending this evening's Base Town Hall, hosted by the commanding general, greater general Adolfo Garcia Jr. I'm the director of communication strategy and operations, and I'll be serving as your MC tonight. So just a few housekeeping items before I turn the mic over to General Garcia. Please understand, again, this is a live stream event. We have a lot of folks watching online, so it's important that if you do have a question or you do have an answer for those who are asking the question, that you speak loudly, you use the microphones that we have provided. And we'll also try to answer some of those questions we've received via direct messages over the past week or those that we get during the live stream. We'll also ask that you please be respectful of everyone here and keep your questions as specific to an issue as possible. If you're dissatisfied about a particular service, we have the ICE system that is designed to enable you to address your concerns in detail and if you have a specific issue in your residence that needs fixing. We have members from the housing office, AMCC, and Liberty Housing here that can speak with you after the town hall as well. The topics we'd like to focus on tonight are about base living, not Marine Corps policy or operational commitments abroad. This session is expected to last about 90 minutes and when we reach the 7.15 p.m. mark, I'll let everybody know that it's time to start wrapping things up. Now, as a footnote, if you feel like we haven't effectively answered your question or we don't get to you in the time allotted, please seek out one of our Marines here in the theater or email us at our organizational inbox which will be displayed up here at the end and can also be found on the resource table and the handouts that are there. Our goal is to answer each and every question and if we don't answer it to your satisfaction, there are multiple ways we can continue that conversation. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to General Garcia. Good evening, everybody, and welcome. Thank you all for coming and I know that we have a lot of folks listening on the live stream. I want to say thank you for participating with us and I know you guys have busy nights and there's also a conflict with the Lejeune High School, so those are here. I appreciate it very much. One of the Commandant's priorities is to prepare the Marine Corps for the next fight and also balance quality of life for the Marines, the sailors, and the family members on our bases and all our installations. And so, you know, this town hall, the last one we did was in 2018, believe it or not, and so we haven't done a town hall in a while and that's why we want to be able to hear from you. We want to be able to receive your questions, answer them to the best of our ability, and then also listen to any of your concerns. And the important thing is that feedback. This is your opportunity to provide that feedback to us. I'm very proud of what we have here at Camp Lejeune and the services that we provide and the quality of life that we try to provide. But I know that we're not perfect, so if you have feedback, if you have questions, if you have concerns, please voice them and we'll do our best to answer them. When I got in charge, I was a young officer, I used to say that, hey, when I get in charge, I'm going to change this or I'm going to change that. What I didn't know is sometimes you have limited resources to be able to do that, or sometimes, you know, we're spending taxpayer money, so there's federal code, there is fiscal law, and there's things that move very slowly, and that's a challenge sometimes because that can be, if you're not really patient, some of the things that we're doing won't actually come to fruition five years from now, and that's just the way that sometimes military construction or minor construction works. And so I ask that, you bear with us, we are laying the road for something that will come, we'll be able to drive on five years from now. Just know that that takes time. As we talk about limited resources, most of our money goes to keeping the lights on this base, being able to provide protection for the base, being able to provide those essential services for us. But there is some discretionary money, and I would call that the CG reserve, and we will utilize that money for those quick wins or maybe something that we didn't anticipate, and so we've already used it, for example, we had a playground over there in Seth Williams, and the request was for a fence around there, and so we went ahead and placed a fence to allow certain kids to be able to play there. So we did that, and it's a quick win, and we used some of our discretionary funds for that. So there are ways that we can do that and we can listen to your concerns, your questions, and also provide some feedback. I'll tell you that we have a panel here of experts with decades of experience, and I thought that that's probably the best way to do the town hall instead of just me coming up here and trying to answer your questions at the best of my ability, and then maybe taking some questions for the record. I thought we would assemble a panel of experts so we can give that immediate feedback, answer those questions, and then maybe kind of explain on why we can't do certain things or maybe kind of just take down your information and follow up with you if we can't answer the question. We're all invested in ensuring the best quality of life possible and that's something that we can afford. And I would say that I am personally invested. I was born on a military base. Most of my life was living on military bases. I have four kids. Their greatest memories and their formative years were on a military base. I have a son who is a young marine and another son who is trying to become a young marine. So I am invested. And when we say we're going to listen to you, we care about your concerns and that comes from the heart. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce the panel here. Sergeant Major Ryan Neckl is my confidant and right-hand man. He deals a lot with troop and family welfare. He's also a great conduit from the tenant sergeant's major to be able to voice their concerns and work any issues. We have Captain Kevin Brown. Kevin Brown is the Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune CO also known as the Hospital CO. So if you have any questions on medical or pharmacy-related issues, he's the one to ask. We have Lieutenant Colonel Ed Pinellis. He is our provost-martial and he is primarily responsible for the security of the base and also for firearms registrations and many other things. We have Miss Julie Fulton. She's our school liaison. The school liaison is she is our primary liaison to the Dodia Schools and also to our schools out in the community. So if you have any questions about schools, please ask them to Julie Fulton. We have Commander Bob Surrey. He's here representing our facilities. We have Captain Jim Brown. Captain Jim Brown is our director for facilities. But Bob is our public works officer and he touches everything. All our buildings, every road, every water, every volt of electricity. He and his team of civil engineers are the ones that are doing that. We have Mike Scalise. Mike Scalise is our G7. He's also our community relations and government liaison. And so he works with our, you know, great community partners that we have outside the base and also lazes with them and provides, you know, when they come on base and they want to see the base and want to hear about some of the issues or some of the successes that we have, Mike Scalise is the one doing that. Over here we have our director for Marine Corps Community Services, Ms. Sarah Wilton. And Sarah's portfolio is not only the retail side, but also the marine and family program side. For example, the gyms, the CDCs and also any counseling services. We have Mr. Chris Perkins. He is our director of our distribution management office. So if you have household goods or something like that in the movements, he can do that. He's also representing the G4 who is here and any questions that you have on safety or any questions on crosswalks, these gentlemen could answer that. Okay, now we're going to our housing and I'm almost done here, so bear with me. We have our family housing director or military housing director, Ms. Mary Simmerman and she's kind of your liaison and advocate for military housing. Then we have our two partners, our military housing partners. We have Mr. John Gilts from AMCC and also Ms. Don Call from Lincoln Military Housing. So with that, I'll turn it over to Nat to get us started with the questions and answer. Thank you, General. For the audience, again, if you are interested in asking a question, you can queue up over here. There's one mic on a stand over here and you can have a seat over there and make yourselves comfortable and just kind of line up there and we'll make you all, the ones who took the time to come out here, you all will be the priority. So anytime I see somebody over there, I'm going to call on you first and I don't have any questions from the audience and we'll get to the ones that have been direct messages from Facebook and I also have my trusty Lieutenant who is also queuing some questions here. Probably one of the first questions that we have gotten most recently is about the reduced hours at the TOP gate. So we figured we'd throw a softball question to our panelists about the TOP gate and there is some frustration because there are a number of people who use that, especially coming from Hubert and wanting to go to Anzlo Beach where they regularly commute or they're trying to get all the way down to Wilmington using Highway 172. We understand, we've registered all those questions so does somebody on the panel want to take a stab initially? I'll go ahead and take a stab at that first and then Lieutenant Corporal Pinales can back me up if I miss something. So one of our unresolved issues when I took over Command of this base was the TOP gate. That's what the Triangle Outpost gate is what it's commonly known and so the TOP gate is about three months into it I had a commander come to me and say he had concerns with the TOP gate with the safety of the Marines serving as sentries there and also with the force protection requirements there. So that is kind of our my top two priorities is ensuring the safety of those Marines that are operating the gate and then also ensuring the force protection of all everybody that works on this base and lives on this base. So those are the two top priorities. I know that it is causing an inconvenience for some of you once we do implement and reduce hours and I understand there are second thought order effects on that. So this is what we we held a planning team altogether a planning team they took a look at traffic studies from previous years and then they also did a traffic study so it's 2% of the entire Camp Lejeune traffic goes through the TOP gate and then 50% of our unauthorized entries are gate runners is what we call them is out of the TOP gate and most of our accidents that happen at a gate are at the TOP gate because it's just not really wide enough and so that puts at risk not only the Marines the sentries because the Marine has to go on the other side because the Marine stands on the passenger side and has to go to the driver side to be able to check the ID card and then also it just becomes really dangerous so what we did is we put together a planning team that came to us and one of the recommendations was close it all together the other recommendations is reduce the operating hours to those peak times and so before I went ahead and made a decision on that I went to our largest tenant briefed them on our analysis and the rationale for reducing those hours and then also some of our local officials we talked to them and briefed them on the rationale and also showed videos of gate runners what we had there and so after that so we're going to do a 90 day assessment so for 90 days we're going to reduce the operating hours we'll make an assessment after those 90 days but let me tell you this my goal is to open that gate 24-7 and the reason why is because we have a military construction project that we have submitted planning for but we have submitted that military construction project that military construction project would provide that protection to those marines and it will also provide force protection for the base and that's what we're doing that's one of our top priorities we've submitted it for multiple years and we'll continue to submit it and so the overall goal is to open it back up once we are able to provide those protections to those marines and Alice do you have anything else you want to add I feel like we covered most of it yes sir thank you very much good evening everybody so the only thing I'd like to touch on and you mentioned the traffic studies just from poor perspective we've conducted traffic studies from PMO in 2019 traffic studies in 2022 and traffic studies last year when the CG mentioned that only 2% of the overall county June traffic goes through the TOP gate and that's based on the assessment and the traffic studies that we received what I will tell you is when we looked at the during our OPTs and our planning conference we recognized that some of the community members will be impacted by this decision so we really took a look at that and we took a look at the numbers through the entire 24 hour cycle during those traffic studies and what the traffic studies show is of that 2% that comes through the TOP gate for the overall traffic about 90% of the traffic that transit to the TOP gate comes to that gate during the times that the gate will be open in the peak hours in the morning and peak hours in the afternoon that was a very deliberate decision when we recommended these times to the CG because we were looking at the impact and making sure that we recognized our community partners and all the members of the community the other thing that we did as well is we talked to our counterparts from local law enforcement and emergency services and others in the community to make sure that this decision was made collaborating with everybody that will be impacted by this decision so that's again part of the task that the planning team received from the commanding general and then some of the recommendations that we made Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Penales we have gotten a number of concerns about the reduced hours of TOP gate we'll take all of those comments we'll roll them all up and we'll make sure that if there is an aspect that was not answered about the TOP gate that we get an answer back to you October 23rd of last year we had a spouses round table and during that time this was hosted by the CMC's wife and a number of other spouses and there were a number of concerns that were brought up and a lot of the questions that we couldn't get to came up and this is kind of us making good on the promise to address some of those that we had at the spouses round table so for the record there were some concerns regarding the lack of adequate adaptive parks on base and that squirrels and a desire for handicapped access to Onslow Beach so there was some folks wondering what has been done to accommodate special needs kids especially in the housing areas at Onslow Beach John you want to take the first shot at that for the housing thank you well good evening so first off the family that asked that on behalf of all the other families that probably have the same question thank you these are some of our most challenge and difficult and hard fighting working families every day and so to be able to find out what these facilities exist is a great question and I hope it helps the community so I can always speak for AMCC we've got 117 playgrounds and that's all over AMCC which is everywhere but we do have one special playground that was built a few years ago that is an all inclusive playground and it's right next to the Bicentennial Community Center which is right off Stone Street just a baseball throw from that new bridge on the overpass and as an example of how we definitely try to bend over backwards and work with these families last fall we had a young spouse contact us about a child fibrosis and could we put a swing in so that her child could swing and I think within a couple weeks we had one in that playground we took a bay out and put one in there so it's the best we have right now we do have future plans to move towards more all inclusive playgrounds frankly there are a couple hundred thousand dollars a piece that's hard for us right now but we do love those families and when they reach out to us we do everything we can to take care of them now as far as where the amenities are we're updating our map online that should be done by the end of March so you can click and see where all of our amenities are and we're going to have links to MCCS and when or if DOD allows access to playgrounds it might be better for kids in general as well we'll link that in there as well but thoroughly understand where that question is coming from we do everything we can for those families and thank you you want to talk about Anzo Beach there Sarah? thank you for the question as well I appreciate the desire to enjoy the beach for everyone we were looking into some of the recommendations and suggestions about rollout type of ramp access and a lot of folks have experienced different beaches and all beaches do differ and the challenge that we're finding right now and looking at some of those options are the massive tide changes that we have so we can go from having a few feet of beach to nothing so that's one thing we're just trying to work through but we are looking at the recommendations and suggestions we also have a bank of wheelchairs that are accessible and we keep those there at the beach and they're free to anyone who wants to use them and so we're also looking at other options in accessible wheelchairs there are some that are cost prohibitive and some that might be better options than the ones that we have but we do appreciate the question and we're going to continue to do some research there and now Julie has a little bit of information where's Julie on the Dodea School playgrounds right I spoke with the superintendent this week and the Dodea School playgrounds that are accessible the ones that are not on the interior are free for residents to use on the weekends and after school hours some of those have more adaptive equipment than others and the equipment that is placed at those schools depends on the students and the IEPs and what is required for those particular students so anybody who has a specific question about that I can get you in contact with Brandy Elbinger who is the instructional support specialist for special education for the Dodea Schools okay thank you the next question comes from one of our direct messages so excuse me if I have to read this can we have something done about the potholes on Boganville Drive between Wilson Boulevard and Camp Johnson Gate there are complaints about them being only temporarily filled with gravel and then they're eventually washing out does anyone have an update on potholes there as a public works officer I'm the person to update you on potholes we're aware of the challenges in that area that road wasn't built for the type of traffic that it sees now we've done temporary repairs there over time so we'll take a closer look and provide feedback via NAT on additional actions that we can take to make that even higher quality but it isn't an enduring problem in that area so we're aware of it thank you thank you Commander Surrey this one applies to housing again please address the situation regarding military base housing units particularly field grade houses in Paradise Point being rented to retirees civil service members and base employees not active duty John you want to take that alright well again thank you for the question I want to start off before I answer it by thanking those waterfall residents as we refer to them for living with us we would be bankrupt without them and I don't want to speak for the leadership sitting up here in the front row or General Garcia or the commanders before him or the common on or anybody else but I don't think the Marine Corps wants to get back into the housing business so first off to those families thank you because you take a bit of a risk and at any time you could be asked to leave and they have been asked to leave after Florence so that's my first point we need them they're good neighbors they go through the vetting process many of them are retirees many of them are employees on the base but to the question look I get it we just recently started to move into that Paradise Point area with waterfall and it's a direct result of the losses that we had seen based on empty houses for an extended period and the fact that we do have waterfall or civilian residents who do qualify and in many cases are willing to pay more than some of you are to live in that house so that's point number one point number two and some of you if you live there you may have seen just a couple hours ago what we're really trying to figure out is what the real problem is and it was referencing the question earlier to the fact that there are families being told there's no house for them and then there's a direct correlation made to waterfall residents what's really occurring as a retired officer myself is that right now and starting last month and over the next few weeks officers are getting their orders and they're calling and they're asking am I going to have a house and I can only tell you what I know there's a lot of problems in that neighborhood right now and there were five or six that were empty from last July until this fall that's a lot of BAH not being able to get put back into the project because that's where it goes and so what we're trying to do now to answer the question and really the root of the question I believe is we sent out today a request because your lease says you have to give us 30 days notice a request to let us know sooner it doesn't replace your 30 day notice but let us know sooner so that we can plan we can work with the military housing office they do all the 06 assignments and we can work the rest so that we can tell those coming after you I can't give you an address yet but you're very likely going to get a house because you're 32 on the list and we now know there's 35 moving out and in the absence of this new initiative we may have only known about 10 so the cycle of officer orders when they move when they make their leasing decisions out in town is the root of the problem and not the fact that you've got some new good neighbors in your area that are helping all of us contribute to the problem set which is as much revenue as we can bring in so I can put it back in your houses not I will say because I see the chief of staff I dork this one up a little bit he and I had good communications on the first couple that broke down on a couple after that and I talked to him yesterday and recommitted to telling him more in advance about what we're doing and why we're doing it to be able to make the case in the neighborhood about why this is okay and how a lot of logic and thought went into it and so for that chief I apologize again we'll do better, thank you I asked Nat to if we can kind of rotate instead of just getting all the questions that were sent online if we can ask if there's any questions over here inside the theater and then also anybody that's live streaming if they have any questions we can kind of rotate a little bit Nat go ahead we have plenty that are coming in a few more about the T.O.P. Gate one interested party was hoping to see I apologize go ahead sir one second I'm not quite that tall there we go thank you very much my name is master Gunnery Sir McLaughlin and I do have a question about the triangle gate you said about the reduced hours to be able to go ahead and allow the traffic to still flow through there since that gate is one of the oldest gates out there that has not had any renovation to it even though you did say that you're looking at doing renovations is there any quick fixes that can be put in place for turning lanes to help the school buses that are stuck in that traffic in the morning along with the locals that are trying to get to work since on a regular basis there's anywhere from a 10 minutes to 30 minute wait out there every single morning during this peak performing hours also the other portion I'd like to go ahead and ask is you originally mentioned the closure of the gate due to the security and the just the threat gone to the personnel that are out there and that you're going to do a 90 day assessment during that 90 days if you determine that the traffic is too overwhelming to reroute everyone to an already over populated and over traffic area out on 24 in Piney Green during that time and it shows that it had value to keep that gate open how are you going to go ahead and provide that security that you are worried about back to those marines of what you originally shut it down for thank you sir for the question I'll take the first portion of your question correctly you wanted to talk about the traffic on highway 24 in the morning due to the additional traffic going through the TOP gate is that correct yes general so it's the traffic that comes off of 172 and Bear Creek because there's those two lanes that merge together and it's a single lane that comes in there and there's also very often when you go through that gate the guard does not scan your ID which could be thrown off the data that you might have collected to determine the 2% usage because I can tell you from a frequent user of that gate it is extremely busy throughout the mornings okay thank you very much for the clarification I think I misunderstood initially but let me say first during our planning process our counterparts in the city in the state along highway 24 we will be working with them to ensure that the timing and the sequence of the traffic lights is adjusted so that we can better assess and move traffic along the way on highway 24 towards Piney Green and Hulk on et cetera in the morning hours with regards to your question about the scanning cars with divots in the morning just like to tell you that the way that we do the traffic studies does never rely on divots we rely on other devices or traffic counters for that particular traffic studies and what would be the adjustments made if you do determine to open that gate back up to provide protections to the brain that stands that post about the project the project that we have the Milcon project we're phoning a friend from the stands so I think what we're referring to is the military construction project that would build what we call a USC unified facilities criteria requirement for the gate would set the gate much further inbound so you'd have a lot of reaction time for the guards and those kinds of things that's roughly a 10 or 15 million dollar project so it's on our Milcon list it's a priority for that your question of the immediate future is it's confined to that space and so far we've made a conscious decision not to piece mail it because we have to completely relocate the gate and everything is even the small verges of that are four or five million dollars to make enough real estate there to do I think what you're asking but I think that goes into the larger question of can we continue to operate it the way we are and what we've also done is we've increased the lighting there especially at night you know we didn't have that there so we increased the lighting it's a lot brighter there and we also put rumble strips I don't know if you're tracking that we put rumble strips on there to bring just bring attention to those vehicles that are just coming down that road at a high rate of speed to alert them that there is a gate sentry there so we did that but we still have gate runners even though we've done all those things so we didn't just take a look at this and said okay let's just shut it down how do we mitigate the risk to those marines over there and we did those small things to try to mitigate the risk and now the only way that we can mitigate the risk right now is primarily do it during daylight hours and during peak hours but we're still going to do the assessment and we'll give it an honest effort and take a look at it and we may have to make adjustments based off that 90 day assessment okay we have another TOP related one coming from online yesterday at TOP at 8am there were still lines from both directions will people in line be turned around at 8am or will the traffic continue through this interested party said I was in line for 45 minutes so Lieutenant Colonel Pinellas do you want to take that one? yeah I'll take this one so as part of the process for implementing this decision on 12th March we have a few more weeks until we get there my operations thing at PMO is now working making sure we have specific procedures for the TOPGA that are refined for the new environment that we are about to get into on 12th March one of the things we talked about is specifically this particular scenario when something like that happens and we have a queue at 0800 in the morning what do we do? we close the gate immediately or do we allow everybody to come through and get to work at that in the morning we don't have a complete product yet we're looking through that but I can tell you that the decision will be to allow everybody to come in and then once the queue is clear we close the gate and that will be my direction to the staff gentlemen at the mic good evening Lieutenant Vandy Slant I work at Courthouse Bay and I know on main side it might not seem like that big of a deal for closing the back 172 gate but there's a lot of traffic 4 or 5 commands in Courthouse and along the southern edge of the base that use that gate especially if you're going over to Cherry Point it saves you probably 20 minutes trying to get over to meetings there and I have to do that a couple times a month and usually it's midday I always see cars at that gate unless it's at night which I could see just for closing the gate at night after the busy hours because that just makes sense the darkness and whatever but during the daytime we're made about closing the gate online when it was posted a couple days ago on the Facebook page and most of them were negative so there's a lot of people that's impacting and especially people saying what about Saturday people want to get to the beach they use that gate to get to the beach so could there be some hours like on Saturday or something like that I think there's a lot more questions and just doing a study of who is getting through the gate isn't going to analyze who's not and how many people is it disadvantaging by making the decision that we made I think there was a question in there could you just I guess I'm concerned could you open the gate just during the daytime and close it at night thank you for your question we're going to do a 90 day assessment we'll take a look at it if we need to make any adjustments based off of the traffic that is going through there we will look to make some adjustments I don't know what else to say about that but we will definitely take a look at it and we'll make an assessment because it's been termed the 172 gate I think there is there has been some confusion about the Sneeds Ferry gate getting severely reduced hours like the TOP gate big opportunity to clear up any misinformation I believe the Sneeds Ferry gate is still going to stay open 24-7 correct am I correct on that that is correct there will be no changes to the operating hours at the TOP gate sorry the Sneeds Ferry gate the Sneeds Ferry gate will continue to be open 24-7 there's also a question about expanding the hours at the Piney Green gate to accommodate the reduced hours at the TOP gate any measure of foot to do that that piece in conjunction with the work that we did for the TOP gate and the analysis there the traffic studies we're also conducting as we speak a traffic study at the Piney Green gate and that will continue once we open once we implement the decision for the TOP gate we want to see what happens how it looks now or it is implemented and then how it looks after it is implemented this is all part of that assessment and the 90-day assessment that we talked about we're not only looking at the TOP gate alone we're also looking at the impact in other areas such as the Piney Green gate Holcomb gate all along the highway 24 and again in conjunction with our partners in the state and the city that sequencing and the timing of the traffic lights all of that is part of the assessment that is going to allow us to inform decision makers in the CG 90 days from now so that we can either sustain improve or adjust the decision that has been made now but again we are implementing these two weeks 12 March we are already working on our assessment in the other areas and all of that will be combined and a good report 90 days after the implementation of the TOP gate decision on 12 March sir gentlemen at the mic yes good evening everyone I got like three questions if you don't mind first one is can we get some PMO presence down at the intersection of what is this Seth Williams and Stone Street that's a high traffic area during after school and before school hours and I usually walk my daughter there and there's been some times where it's been kind of sketchy people kind of running some yellows and you know I know we have road guards out there they're doing a great job but I think maybe some PMO presence out there just to kind of know raise awareness there's a lot of kids walking through that street Stone Street especially is very high traffic the curve is really close to the is very narrow is very close to the the road and my my son's a scooter through there I just freak out every day so I don't know if we can do anything about that yes sir yes sir thank you very much for that question let me first tell you that not only do I work at PMO as the provost Marshall but I am also a resident of Kamalajun so I live in this community I live right on Seth Williams Boulevard myself my daughter is a student at BITS IS just in fifth grade so I know that route that you're talking about my son is in middle school at Bristol Middle School so I know exactly that's our running route that's our work route so we know exactly what you're referring to this type of request from the community I'm always listening to that there was another resident from that same area that asked me to do additional enforcement in that area which we have done both for Stone Street and also for Seth Williams and we will continue to do that so when I get back to PMO tomorrow we'll walk with the operation section and we'll figure out a way to ensure that we can provide presence in that area right now we have a school resource officer assigned to BITS in middle school and also the Johnson primary we also have a school resource officer at Brewster Middle School and another one at the high school all of them are also tasked with that area of Stone Street in the morning for additional patrolling and traffic enforcement so that is part of our design when we assign it those individuals to the schools but there's more that we can do and we appreciate that the community will bring those issues up so that we can address it thank you second question is can we look at maybe implementing some speed bumps in some of the communities I know some people are just flying down again has some close calls potentially so you're talking about Stone Street Stone Street came up previously in a different venue as one of the places where there were speed and safety problems and public works and base safety looked at it as well as we had some civil engineers with traffic experience so let's look at it and our first answer is flashing walk sign traffic caution light for the reasons that you just articulated so right now we have a project to install five of those across walks along Stone Street and that should be done in April of 2024 for speed bumps we have to look and study the exact scenario if it's appropriate to put in you don't want to put a speed bump in where it's going to cause traffic safety problems so but potentially depending on the scenario okay yeah I mean just like in the communities themselves not specifically on Stone Street but just like inside the communities like I know you know in my residence specifically they implemented a speedometer so they can see whatever speed they're going at but I mean they're still I can see what speed they're going at they're just flying so specifically like I don't mean to cut you off I apologize you're talking about inside base housing correct? inside where you're living inside where your kids are running around and you're having a good time right okay cool I just wanted to make sure that we were being clear because we're getting a little derailed and I want to make sure we're clear yeah specifically inside the housing communities so if you can identify specific areas and we'll be around the PM and I after this is complete we'll take a look at those and get back to you yes sir and then my final question more geared towards Sarah after school programs so I've been on the waiting list for months now for my daughter are we doing anything to open up more after school programs for school aged kids so thank you for your question we are limited to the population that we're currently working with and we work those waiting lists as much as we can the challenges is the prioritization lists that come from headquarters Marine Corps and Department of Defense and you know those priorities so sometimes it's frustrating I understand to be moving along a wait list and then kind of going backwards we keep those programs fairly full but if you wanted to talk to anyone in particular within our family care program just about kind of what your status is hopefully we're giving you regular updates and we're happy to continue to make sure that we're communicating well with you yes ma'am yeah I mean I call regularly like pretty much daily I'm just trying to see like if you know there's more resources going to be allocated towards maybe opening up like in school after school instead of like busing them to a different location maybe if that's more feasible more affordable I don't know so I'm going to have to take that for further review I do know you know the two programs that we have the programs that are funded but I'll certainly you know I want to make sure I can get your name afterwards and make sure that somebody can circle back to you on further discovery yes ma'am and then just the final request I don't know if we can take a look at maybe putting some lights in the softball fields in the high schools the softball team is doing great this year but they got to cut the game short because there's no lights oh yeah I can if I if you can give your information to Corporal Brown I can get to in touch with Dr. Carver the high school principal and Mr. Smith I know they're always looking at their sports fields and what money they have available they would be able to give you the details on that yes ma'am thank you I want to thank the online audience who's emailing more statements alerting us to some safety issues they're not necessarily questions but they particularly mention Lyman Road is a race track Alabama Avenue is another area that they said people are speeding through we'll make sure these are registered remarks and also someone commented about trimming down the trees and bushes by Watkins Village entrance because it blocks the visual for kids crossing for those of us in the cars so a few safety concerns there we have another question specific to MCCS the concern is is that they want more communication regarding youth sports programs particularly point to Camp Pendleton had a facebook address for youth sports where a lot of the communication occurred and they're wondering if the same thing can apply to Camp Lejeune now thank you for the question and thank you for the patron that sent it to us so a couple options that we have we run multiple facebook pages and we would ask for the time being while we're considering this to use the main MCCS Lejeune facebook page to communicate that way we also communicate on youth sports through our website and if you're not familiar with that it's usmc-mccs.org and you can go now through the entire Marine Corps no matter where you're stationed that is the standard website and so you can there's ease of functionality every installation has the same format so you can easily locate where youth sports would be and all the information there we also communicate through our marketing marquees at Lejeune and New River and in WAN I never know how to say that messaging with ComStrat and then the main lines of communication that we would also make sure that parents are familiar with is we work very closely to communicate with our coaches and then the coaches to the patrons there was also a suggestion from the west coast about looking at a particular website which is called what was the suggestion league app again hecklers Marine Corps is the one that vets any apps or any websites that we could use and we will go to them to look at that particular option one helpful thing on the horizon that we've been excited about getting closer to the finish line we've been working this for a long time it is an actual MCCS app we're not allowed to develop those organically I know that they have a few of them out there at other installations they don't have an authority to operate and those will have to be wound down but we've been working diligently with headquarters Marine Corps on an MCCS app and that would solve a lot of those types of issues so that's what I have in reference to that topic now thank you gentlemen sir at the mic thank you sir good evening ladies good evening gentlemen my name is first lieutenant Carlos Ortiz I'm a JAG officer I'm currently a single assistant spillet over at building 66 I've noticed a recent uptake on dog attacks happening on base for example one of my clients was walking in the local neighborhood and her tiny dog was nearly mauled to death and she herself was also bitten so I'm wondering what is being done to ensure that banned breeds are kept off the base and to ensure families comply with the Marine Corps order on pets that goes to PMO sir thank you very much for that question so PMO has a section that's called the Domestic Animal Control they are their certain matter experts when it comes to pets aboard the installation their job is to ensure that people comply with these rules and regulations there are specific Marine Corps and base orders that details the requirements and the provisions for banned breeds my team at the Domestic Animal Control section is responsible for making sure that that takes place in addition to that they provide frequent inspections to ensure people are in compliance not just the moment they register but through how the time that they leave here now I will tell you that if there's a specific issues or problems that you see in your communities please call PMO so that we can go out and assess the situation we have several known emergency lines and we can make sure that we send our Domestic Animal Control to your area so that we can address the situation immediately does that answer your question yes thank you sir ma'am please go ahead with your question hello and first I wanted to say thank you I heard somebody mention about the crosswalks earlier actually the school board brought that up to base earlier this year so on behalf of my other school board people thank you for taking care of that because I see kids almost get run over every day on Stone Street in the morning and afternoon right now I hope those will get taken care of my question relates back into housing specifically I know Berkeley and Watkins has been an issue what is because we were recently told that the order was canceled which made no sense to me the order regarding juveniles being out at night we've got a lot of kids running like the wild west in the neighborhoods knocking on windows scaring people causing destruction on the homes that are you know abandoned currently in the neighborhoods do we have a base order on curfew right now and if so what is it and because there's lots of things in the old order that I could find that are relevant for dealing with situations and we couldn't find a new one thank you so I'm going to give you a reference Raincourt scheme the June order 5500.6 Bravo that is the order that talked about during our curfew and restrictions I did talk to G1 this afternoon because we saw your question yesterday the order is in fact canceled so that is something that perhaps we have to pre-look but there's no specific order that talks about juvenile curfew for Marine Corps Base Camp at this moment since that order has been canceled now I will suggest again like I mentioned earlier we do have several we have three specific non-emergency lines at PMO if for some reason you have situations where you feel like you need additional assistance please call that non-emergency line if it's not an emergency we will call and support you yes sir I understand that it's not really for me it's more for the junior enlisted and the wives home alone with small children I'd go out and yell at somebody at one o'clock in the morning and I'll have a problem but we do have a lot of younger wives and wives and spouses without their significant other at home at times and in the neighborhoods it's kind of it's become an issue these people are getting scared in the middle of the night and kids getting woken up from kids being well kids but running a muck a little bit so I appreciate that so ma'am if I may I'm not only the MCIE major but I'm also a client and I'm with you but part of the reason why we do orders and regulations and policies is because there's a need if we're seeing that there's a change in the tide that comes in need then yeah we need to address that but the other thing that we need to be able to do is one, don't wait until you're so fed up that you're losing your mind to call somebody for help if it's a PMO issue just make it a PMO issue and I know a lot of us and I'll speak from experience just now we had some issues going on in our housing area we got PMO involved they asked some questions and whether or not anything comes out at least we gave it the attention it deserved because this is our house this is our home and we live on base because we feel safe and we feel safe enough to have our children run around like little banshees until 2200 at night and we do that because we love our place so I would echo Lieutenant Colonel Pinales if there are specific things same with the dogs if part of the reason why we have some of the issues that we do have is that we don't say anything we don't make it a priority to make our home safe okay when I used to deploy I used to be okay because my wife was on base she was on base with my children and I was good with that just like you were just like a lot of our peers were and what we do day in and day out we do because we feel safe because of the gates that are here protecting the families and our children being together as a community too if there's people speeding up and down your roads right say something report it do something about it don't do anything crazy but do something about it and make it your community but yes ma'am if there's a need for a change we also have quiet hours people forget about those too right I have one other question for my husband who had to go back to work if that's okay his question is relative to housing safety as well I guess we had an issue with somebody with a gun that was being looked for by PMO in our neighborhood a while back and he wanted to know why there wasn't a mass notification to lock doors and get inside he said that's a serious safety issue there were people outside walking dogs and all sorts of stuff and he wanted to know why the mass notification system was not used this last season when that occurred yes ma'am thank you very much for your question and that is a very important question we do have mass notification systems and we have other means to alert the community this is something that as we go through this process we will make sure that we make it a part of our procedures to ensure that the communication is providing a timely manner for those that need to have that information ma'am if I could real quick also because the star major and I are partners in this with PMO as well so I'm John Giltz the AMCC project director at first I just want to tell you that your resident advisory board member brought that up emphatically on Monday so plug for the resident advisory board members that are out there we talked about it at length a couple things came up and I can't remember if it was exactly your community or not but one was kids and we definitely the PMO officer was there we talked about patterns of life and still please call they will come and you know what what I found and my oldest son was one of them kids are kind of dumb you think they run away so why call they just go down the street and they get caught and you know what they tell on everybody so please call in and the second thing was a recent trend apparently where we've got some folks coming out through our neighborhoods the night before trash night picking up a lot of stuff makes people uncomfortable you mentioned you know deployed spouse and others that would freak me out if I was deployed and I got that call from my wife about somebody out back digging through our stuff so we gave the trash schedule to PMO two or three days ago and asked them to be vigilant in the day before in the various neighborhoods to come through and ask those folks to move on you know it's a private community and look I know you're trying to make a living but this isn't what you're supposed to be doing and move along so good example of it coming up in the community to sort of major's point bringing it to a rad member and we want to push that along to resolution so sorry to interrupt the lady standing there but I wanted to say that as well I kind of want to add on to her issue with the 5500 6B being canceled the other part to that is that that was also the role for kids walking to school by themselves was included in that order so currently there is no order on the space for the age of kids being left home alone how long they can be left to home for their ages so as of right now we have universal pre-k starting next year potentially and that means we potentially have 100 pre-k kids who can walk to school by themselves from walk-ins in Berkeley over a mile to JPS on Stone Street prior the 5500 6B stated that it was the age of 10 is when they could walk to school by themselves so I'm just wondering if there is any reason now to have an order placed I will take that on personally we will make sure that we have an order that is also with input from our family members and all our tenants and also the individuals that are here on the panel make sure to get that input and to update that order but specifically I'll let Ms. Fulton talk about I just wanted to say absent an order the family advocacy program currently uses the North Carolina fire code which restricts children being alone to 8 years old and older so if you see a child that is not being supervised or you have a concern about that you can contact the family advocacy program or PMO and let them know about that and then I have one more question that you might actually be able to answer so as an EFMP family and a child who has special needs and has an IEP it is going to my attention that when the need for advocacy for IEP meetings comes the EFMP lawyer who is who we refer to is not able to help us if our child is in the dodea school systems and so I'm kind of wondering who that leaves our EFMP families to go to and be able to get that free legal help for advocating for that so I can share this one with Sara if she has anything to add to it the EFMP attorney is available for all EFMP families her name is Vicki O'Brien and she is happy to talk to any family that has a concern with an IEP or any other EFMP issue the only difference is that she is not able to litigate cases against a dodea school like she could where she is registered like in the state of North Carolina she could do that for a public school but she's still absolutely willing to sit down and talk about what your legal rights are and those types of things then our families that have a child with an IEP those families are all under the mandatory program for EFMP under an educational disability and so they would rate a case manager through the EFMP program and that case manager if requested is able to go to an IEP meeting or meet with the family ahead of time and talk through the issues let them know what their legal rights are and offer them suggestions on how to transverse that meeting for getting the support that they need through the schools thank you we've had a number of questions regarding pharmacy weights so Captain Brown I'll let you take the mic and talk about how that's going yeah so thanks I think I'll kick it off by kind of giving an update of some recent changes that have impacted us that you all risks for pharmacy and actually impacting a good deal of the nation which includes some of our network providers if you're trying to get pharmaceuticals out in town so if you're not tracking about a week ago last week there's a third party vendor that is a large vendor that processes transactions in the pharmacy world and it's called Change Healthcare is the name of the vendor it's quite large it actually processes about a third of all pharmaceutical transactions in the entire country and it so happens that all DOD pharmacy transactions are processed through this vendor and last week this vendor suffered a cyber attack and what the company did was they detected the cyber attack and what they did is they took that network and that service completely offline because the concern was that there may be risk to getting after information held in that repository. The good news is there's not been a breach of any private information the bad news is they've not fixed that yet and that service is still offline what does that mean and why does it matter to you and to us all transactions rather than being automated now for every single pharmacy transaction has to be done manually it's the only bypass and to put some numbers on it an automated transaction for a refill a single refill using this third party vendor takes about five minutes to do that same transaction manually safely takes about an hour so you look at the volume of transactions that we have and the lag time associated with that is quite significant we don't have a whole lot of decision space really what we can do is process everything manually which is what we're doing and again it's a heavy lift and it's generating some additional wait times I'll go over that in a second our only other thing that we could do and some mtfs have done this based on resourcing is to stop processing refills altogether and to just manage emergency pharmacy fills we're stretched pretty thin but we're not in a place that we think that we should do that because we don't have a good option for you otherwise because as I said this is a national hit and a lot of our contracted tricare supported pharmaceutical fills in the network are also impacted by this number one and number two even if you could get prescriptions filled out in town through a retail vendor the billing transaction is also tied up with this third party vendor such that it's possible that you may get stuck with a bill after the fact when all this clears up so because there's no good option really to us closing down refill prescriptions what we've elected to do is just continue to push hard and process everything manually knowing that that contributes to some additional wait times right now what we're looking at is about a six day lag for refills so good news is for things that are emergent you need today for those must fill now there's a wait but that'll be processed same day for your refills is really where the impact is so what we've done anticipating that is we looked at our business rules and how early you can activate a refill to turn it on and we've loosened those up considerably such that what we would ask is about six to seven days before you would anticipate needing a refill on a prescription go in and activate that and what that will do is account for our anticipated lag times until that vendor comes back online so again six days, seven days to be perfectly safe probably seven days activate the refill and we will continue to fill those at this time so in the last week if you've anticipated some increased wait times that's the why behind the what and what we're doing about that what I would also ask that you do is Riley and the PAO team are doing a really nice job I feel biased of course but I feel they're doing a really good job of pushing information and updates so if you track our website and also keep track of us on our social media sites Riley is keeping an update real time so you'll know when those services come back online and when you can anticipate us going back to our baseline and if you don't feel like looking for those, googling for those things Riley brought some cards in the back that you can pick up that has our website and then also links to social media and the app that we have that also has good updates for pharmacy so hopefully that answers that question thank you lady in the back my questions were answered earlier I just wanted to clarify I was the one who advocated for the fence park so I just wanted to actually just say thank you for how fast the turnover was for getting that done it was incredible and it speaks volumes and like you said it really means a lot I have a son with special needs who elopes I don't know if you many of you know what that means but he has no sense of danger he can run in the road he will run in the water so just having one safe space to make him to means a lot so further the other question I had I really wasn't directing the inclusive park to AMCC it was really for the base and MCCS to take that on respectfully I was kind of wanting an updated inclusive park to be handled by base by the MCCS so I guess my question is for them and then I had another question about the beach mat because that was my question as well they do make ones that roll up so the tide really wouldn't be an issue is that something there's like a timeline on and then is that something maybe the life cards could do just to like further clarify yeah thank you and thanks for the clarification so as it pertains to the adaptive playground so we do have some as you're aware at that same park at the paradise point that probably is we're open to your suggestions as we would look at adding or changing and it would just have to be something that we would put into a budget request but please make sure that you get that information to us make some recommendations and suggestions and also some additional adaptive equipment and we'll take it from there and then as it pertains to I've looked at a number of models of these roll up mats at the beach and we'll just continue to pursue it and try and figure out the art of the possible right now the issue is the tides and you know getting getting them in and out it's nothing that I could put on lifeguards because you know they're taxed with their primary responsibilities but we're going to continue to try and you know figure out a way to you know make it better out there but thank you. I appreciate that also with the inclusive park there's AMCC touched on a little bit but inclusive means actually that it's fenced and so the one at the Bicentennial Community Center isn't fenced and also means that the level is even so there's mulch there and there's turf I know it's like a simple it seems like something simple but it makes a huge difference so they're really technically, I guess now that we have the fenced park at Paradise Point it just needs some improvement because it's outdated and there's like some features that are missing that would make it inclusive just like at Hospital Point we have a playground there even though it's not fenced there is a nice playground but the one to the right of the other one has been caution taped and broken for a few years almost three years since we've been here so I was kind of wondering also on that one if there's a plan to fix that or remove it because it would be a beautiful space for them to like put in a park there in the future and then that's it. Thank you for that and I meant what I said earlier and so I'd like to get your name as well and talk to you a little bit more because this is an area that I do feel passionately about and we have done things but I'd like to talk to you about some of these other ideas if we only have one throughout our communities that I call all inclusive and you know better than me what it really means to you and your family and lots of other families then my commitment to you is I'll do what I can I raised my family here all our kids grew up here and this is a wonderful place but if it's something less wonderful for many of our families including you then I'll do what I can to make it something better than it is. To the hospital point question and the fence playground so I mentioned earlier we have 117 playgrounds across all of AMCC. The problem is somebody got the wild idea that to build most of them back in the early 90s and so when we did a 100% inspection based on new standards a year or two before I took the job many of them failed and so I cannot, will not put your families in harm's way head and trap men and other things so the ones that are fenced now there could be damage we fixed all of those that were fixable and could still be safe but the rest are going to be demolished and there's 15 left that need to be demolished most are in TT1 as a matter of fact just for the audience at one time there are 18 playgrounds in TT1 that's a 900 unit E1 to E5 family area all 18 were closed for safety reasons we've opened a couple back up but I would like to talk to you separately and hear directly from you on your thoughts I actually was just meaning like fenced to keep them enclosed like I know you know I know what you meant but there's two different types of fenced the one in hospital point the bird 2 is most likely going to be demolished because it's not safe and we can't fix it but the fencing at Bicentennial or somewhere else I'm serious I would like to hear from you and maybe it's not at the Bicentennial one but somewhere else we'd like it to be somewhere where many families could enjoy it but I'll be all yours and we'll see what we can do and I'll be honest with you. John you keep that Mike because I got a question for you this is a BAH question based on previous raises and fluctuations why does the PPV pocket every cent and why not just fix a number when people get raises why does the BAH get pocketed so why isn't it consistent some Marines are struggling like single income households with multiple children who would have to pay for child care is there anything that can be done about that. Yeah so thank you General Trollinger I won't walk over there and freak you out anymore I was actually coming over there because the camera and I wanted to talk to folks online and I don't like to sit so multiple parts to that question and first off I will say anytime your BAH goes up and your rent goes up look I get it a year ago I went on a road show in multiple communities when we did go full bond a lot of areas and I heard the stories and I understand and I empathize there are folks that were paying for college with the amount they were getting back in concessions there were folks building homes in different places and there were folks trying to put food on the table so I do get it it's a very personal matter what you pay for your home the second point I would make is that BAH is driven off out in town and it's intended to cover your rent at 95% of what your rent would be and the rest is supposed to be somewhat out of pocket I don't make the rules that's just what they are when these PPVs were put together there never was a thought that there would be a theme called a concession and I got asked as recently as this morning as to why we have concessions it's supposed to be BAH equals rent and the rent and the BAH are supposed to kind of match what you would find out in town if it was competitive so I am under severe pressure to generate as much as I can to roll back into the project so we raise rent when the market indicates and yes we did that quite a bit about a year ago when the rates went up and the idea is maybe hidden somewhere in that question if I'm wrong I apologize is not just the real thing for you which is the difficulties of paying the bills but I want to give you my commitment and back it up with some facts on what we've done I can only speak to the nearly five years I've been here and Florence was devastating but we have rolled in and we are spending at a rate on my office my phone number and cell number all over the place and I'll share details with you but we are spending 200% more across the board at the macro level on you and your homes than we were in 2018 now some of that is inflation just basic inflation some of that is utilities when the utility savings program went away folks started using a lot more utilities our property insurance is about to go up another 25% in 2018 it was 3.5 million it's about to be 8.8 million per year I don't pay that you pay that you trust me with your BAH to put it back into your homes and pay the bills and that's what we do and we spend what you bring in and I am accountable personally and directly to the CG I have spoken to the comment on about this multiple general officers at Camp Lejeune families one on one in groups and I'm willing to talk to any individual or any group a spouses group, a neighborhood whatever it is and explain to you why your rent went up what it was based on is best I know and what I am doing with what you've trusted me with and I'll end where I started I know it's very personal I know in some cases it was a dramatic increase and I do understand and I do empathize I just ask you to trust that when that comes in I am plowing it back into your community literally plowing it back into your community thanks John gentlemen sir good evening all my name is Michael Fiekes I'm a second lieutenant at Head Course Battalion Second Marine Division my question pertains to walking distances getting to work obviously I'm at Head Course Battalion where you have marines working at you have locations across the wide area but for most of my marines in H1 they're having to walk a mile half a mile to a quarter mile per day just to get to working back obviously the marines can eat that for breakfast but you know got to have better range to get plowing restriction and if I'm a 20 year old marine and I'm about to get out that's just one more reason why I may want to get out of the marine corps obviously I don't know what the way forward is to address this but I'm just curious if this is something that's been talked about in the past by you all I just want to clarify the question it's from the distance that your marines have to walk from their barracks to H1 yes sir I don't think we have taken a look at that I know that there are plans to move the division headquarters from H1 into where CLR 27 headquarters is currently at I don't know if that's going to decrease or increase the traffic from the barracks to their headquarters but we do have plans for a MEF headquarters, division headquarters and also an MLG headquarters and those are fully funded and we're just waiting on some sequencing and you can see that the MEF headquarters is already done Bob do you have anything to add to that yes sir I would just add that broadly speaking we do master planning for the base and a component of that always is the walkability but you can imagine how challenging it is to ensure that everyone you know that every building is walkable but that's a component of the planning that goes into where facilities are sighted and where barracks are it's just a challenging process thank you ladies and gentlemen good evening how are you guys hanging out up there? I'm good I'm an active member as John Guilts will put it I've exchanged some emails with him I see he brought the AMCC entourage out here I have some questions for the panel here along with himself my actual name is Thomas Moody I'm a staff sergeant the question I have to present there's probably a lot in there but my question is as far as the housing construction and maintenance goes who is the oversight for that on building codes that might be an MHO question we've dealt with them quite extensively and the follow up question for that afterwards would be what is the MHO and what do they do what are they actually advocating to answer your question for the MHO the MHO has four different branches but as far as for the advocacy what we do is for residents that reside on base we have a three step process once you've gone to your we have two PBE partners at Camp Lejeune and AMCC and Liberty Military Housing so once you've gone to your community manager for your respective neighborhood and you're not satisfied with the issue then you go to the step two process which is the PPP management for assistance then again if you're still not satisfied you contact the MHO we have an advocacy team there there's a 13 employee plus up that we did in accordance with National Authorization Act and they're there to work in conjunction with the resident AMCC we take their team their environmental team their maintenance team whatever the issue may be neighbor complaints, pet complaints whatever it is and when it's maintenance we do combined inspections and we advocate for both the resident and the partner and we're there to help mediate any situation and to assure that the complete maintenance is getting resolved and the issue is getting resolved to the satisfaction of both parties that's what we do as an advocate the each situation under advisement we do inspections and like I said the main thing that we do is we work in conjunction with the partners and try to come up to the best resolution for the resident when the inspections pieces who performs those inspections is it inspectors, certified inspectors? the inspectors we do have inspectors at the base some of them are going through certification processes now it's been a funding issue getting them certified but we're actually hosting two certification classes coming up in April and May to get them certified but the inspectors have training they have on-the-job training and I can't speak for the partners with their certifications but I know that they do have a wonderful environmental specialist there safety team and maintenance team and we try to all do the combined depending on what the issue is in the home we try to get the correct people out there to do that inspection and we do it combined so that we're all seeing the same thing at the same time to try to get to a resolution when you refer to the partners who would that be? AMCC or Liberty whichever housing partner that you reside with okay so the company that is performing the work has the same company performing the inspection yes unless they've subcontracted it out yes very well and the other question I have for the housing what is the current wait list on the housing? there are 11 different housing areas so it depends on which housing area you're speaking about I actually have the list with me for specific housing years I'd be glad to give you a copy if you'd like thank you turning our attention back to the TOP gate we've had some questions that have come online there's been some concern about emergency vehicles if that gate is closed how will you accommodate emergency vehicles coming on and off via the TOP gate? yes thank you very much as I mentioned earlier the work that we're doing is to collaborate with our home-based counterparts and also off-base counterparts and through that work we are going to assess and ensure that we have a plan to facilitate emergency vehicle access when necessary I can tell you that in working with the FAR department at EMS home-based they already have a plan for that and we're going to incorporate that into our processes and procedures by the time we get to the implementation that will be in place our fire and emergency services department participated in the planning team and they were fully involved and we received their input and that is one of the goals is to allow them to be able because we have mutual aid agreements with our partners in the county and also in the city and so when there is a mutual aid agreement or they're going to provide mutual aid we'll open the gate for them throughout and we'll continue to assess that okay we're nearing the 730 I want to make sure that anyone else here in the theater gets our question in does anyone else have questions because we have plenty of them online one question again another yes I apologize I snuck up here good evening Barbie Abernathy I had a couple things one for the hospital even before the cyber attack wait time 3 to 4 hours was about average whether it's a refill or a new prescription is there any way and I don't know what goes on behind the scenes for more staff or better procedures as far as that and also anything to flag the system when somebody is trying to get some meds because my husband was sitting there for over 6 hours one day and then he found out that like the meds weren't carried so is there any resolution with that yes so the first question staffing full disclosure in the last 3 years we're down about 20% staffing in the pharmacy some of that there are lots of reasons I think to that some of that I think is recoverable and we're working on relative to last year we've seen an increase in our staffing not modest but an increase we're looking at the staffing actually in multiple areas to include the pharmacy our performance we have active duty staff we have civilian personnel and we have some contracts not surprising the performance of each of those is not the same so we've been working hard on changing the construct for those things that perform more investing more in those things and divesting from some of those vehicles that have not performed as well and that work is ongoing we're somewhat constrained because we have statutory caps on all of those things and it's really challenge to influence that one of the more promising things that we've been looking at is for our active duty fills we are for any other conus location we are the lowest priority for active duty fills so first priority goes to operational platforms and by the way in the last five years there have been a lot more of those platforms second priority goes to overseas locations and third priority is conus locations we've made a pretty compelling argument I think up echelon that conus locations are not the same and there are market places as we reside in and work in that are at a disadvantage relative to other places where there are more resources that can be leveraged on the outside either in the network and or market places that have more assets to hire either via contract or civilian personnel and we have a draft that would maybe look at the prioritization of our active duty fills such that conus locations aren't look the same and we would be favorably impressed by that we would potentially receive more active duty personnel and I think that that is I don't want to use the term likely but I think that has promise as it goes forward which will help relieve some of the strain there another thing that we are restricted for by in policy is for hires on the civilian personnel side there is law in place that they are required to have one or two depending upon what we are hiring one or two years of experience before we can hire them on board and we have taken that up echelon actually the director for DHA is advocating for us to do away with that because we do a lot of training we have a lot of training affiliation agreements local services community college etc a lot of universities where we have people who come and do a year or so of training with us to complete their training who already live in the area who are interested in staying in the area we know a lot about them because they have been working with us for a year or so and we would love to hire them and we can't right now and what happens is they go elsewhere to get a job to get a year of experience and many times don't come back so we are working a lot of different goals there to try to increase the labor force that is available to provide pharmaceutical services and again I have a lot of promise that those are going to pay off for us the other thing if you are not tracking and we try to pitch this wherever we go Q Anywhere if you are not tracking Q Anywhere I would encourage you and we can stand by tonight and give you some feedback on how to do that unfortunately Q Anywhere is impacted by the cyber attack right now so that service is down but that will come back online and for those patients who are using Q Anywhere essentially what it is is you can wait for your pharmaceutical to be filled someplace else rather than sitting in our pharmacy and then when it is filled you are notified and you can come in and it is pretty short turn and wait actually physically in the building to get your prescription so if you are not tracking that service we brought that online about a year and a half ago and it has actually been really well received by both our staff and our patients I hit both your questions I talked a lot I am not sure if I got them both Yeah I think so Q The next big thing that I am concerned about obviously the TOP gate obviously from the online stuff it affects many people beach season is coming up weekends the commissary I know myself I go for runs with groups and stuff on the weekends here on base I just want you all to consider all that stuff my husband works Stone Bay I work New River and Cherry Point so Hubert is definitely our midway for everything so I need you guys to please consider all that stuff along with everybody else that said everything online and here tonight my second suggestion is having it closed at night even though I don't want to see it closed at night but yeah there is something to consider and I definitely agree about the upgrade so I just wanted to throw that in there thank you How are we doing on time? We are at 1930 right now but I want to give this lady a chance I just want to follow up with the question I asked earlier just two parts first what if a case worker, EFMP case worker is not knowledgeable in the IEP advocate and they don't feel comfortable doing that then where do we go because that is occurring and secondly you stated that EFMP lawyer is not able to litigate so that has left our base families who are dealing with dodea unable for the litigations that they have do you have any answers or solutions for that or who they can go to about that kind of stuff I don't have an answer for you as far as the litigation piece that's a federal law that you can't litigate against the federal government in certain circumstances I would suggest if you have any issues with an EFMP case manager that you contact the program manager which is Stacy Huntington and we can get you her contact information and for you or any parent who has an issue with a case worker some of them are newer they may not have had as extensive training in the IEP process and the FAPE and IDEA rules so they may need some support and Stacy would be able to communicate with you about that thank you so much I really thought this was going to be painful pulling questions out and I'm sorry to say or I'm happy to say that I'm wrong we have a lot of questions that went unanswered online but just note that those questions are also important we are registering them there have been plenty of comments about pot holes about speeding in certain sections that are registered with the appropriate personnel we also have a resources table if you weren't able to get your answers please look at those resources do your research but at the same time we have Corporal Brown over here who is raising his hand if you didn't get a question we're going to get that question answered and again thank you to those who are online who have been submitting questions as well General I'll let you have the last word thank you very much for coming thank you for everybody that's online there's some tough choices that we have to make and we have to make tough choices with limited resources that's not to make excuses but this feedback is welcomed this feedback is important to us so we can get better and we can make improvements and like Nat said if we hadn't answered your question just yet make sure you get that to the individual over here then also online we'll make sure we record those and get online and then we'll provide feedback to you there are other resources and ways to provide feedback and they're on the table over there and I'd also like to thank the Camp Lejeune leadership over here and their family members for attending and also listening to what we're providing to you all thank you very much for coming again and have a safe trip home