Carroll County, MD Carroll 101, 14 Jun 2021

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From YouTube: Carroll 101- Tim Burke County Attorney

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Carroll County Government
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Greetings, my name is tim burke, I'm the county attorney and I appreciate you taking a few.

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Moments to learn about what our department does. The county attorney's office is currently staffed.

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By the county attorney, which is myself- and we have two additional assistant county attorneys,.

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As well as three support staff members, we have no deputy. Currently, so I supervise each staff member.

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Directly, we have a budget of seven hundred and sixteen thousand two hundred seventy dollars per.

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Year, which sounds like a lot, but when you're running a law office really isn't each county.

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Department has a mission, and the mission of the department of the county attorney is to provide.

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The highest quality legal representation possible to our county commissioners, our county boards and.

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Commissioners and our fellow employees, we like to practice what is called preventative legal.

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Measures which would avoid you from getting into legal disputes much like preventative medicine,.

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Avoids you from having future medical problems. In addition, we want to make sure that everyone is.

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Treated fairly and that all county legal documents, contracts and the like are of the highest quality.

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As stated earlier, what we do is provide legal county council to the county commissioners.

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As well as our fellow employees and some of those legal services include collecting delinquent.

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Taxes from our citizens, where we've exhausted all other remedies and we handled real estate.

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Matters on behalf of the county, the county is often buying and selling property or easements.

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We also help with our department of citizen services in helping with our senior citizens.

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They do a wonderful job with our senior citizens when they have nowhere else to go and we provide.

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Legal representation to them through guardianship, petitions.

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And whatnot we also represent our sheriff. Our sheriff is our independent constitutional officer.

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But he often requires legal help which we will provide in certain instances.

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Finally, we coordinate with our other county departments in ensuring that we are complying.

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With the public information act which I'll talk about later and our open meetings act.

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Now I mentioned real estate earlier and much of what we do is involves the agricultural.

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Preservation program for carroll county: we once the documents have been negotiated with the.

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Property owners- that's turned over to the carroll county attorney's office and we prepare the legal.

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Documents we work with the property owners to make sure the documents say what they have agreed to.

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And we actually handle and schedule settlements on on the real estate matters, so we we actually cut.

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The checks at the end at a settlement. In addition, when individuals are developing land in carroll.

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County they often go through the subdivision process or go to the planning commission. One.

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Of the conditions of the planning commission is that the individuals uh enter into a subdivision.

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Package, which includes, uh in many cases, storm water management, easements, forest conservation.

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Easements road bed transfers to the county in each of these cases, we, the county attorney's office, is.

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The one who drafts the public works agreements and any other legal documents, including the easements.

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That are required as part or a condition of the approval for the land development.

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We also handle public hearings when there is a requirement for one in state law, for example, in.

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Ordinances or where there's a master plan of some sort is being adopted. Oftentimes a public.

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Hearing is required. The county attorney's office works with the particular department.

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And ensures that all legal requirements for the public hearing are met. Finally, we do draft.

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Bills for our county commissioners that are submitted to the general assembly.

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Those bills are in the end, written by the attorney general, but oftentimes. The.

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Commissioners will ask our delegation to submit a proposed law to the legislature.

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For their consideration and in those instances we draft the initial draft of the state law.

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For submission to our delegation now there are some things that we're not allowed to do.

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We can't provide private legal advice to our citizens, so we couldn't draft a will for you.

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We can't handle your divorce. We can't represent you in disputes with your neighbors on matters.

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That don't involve county ordinances or laws. We are also not affiliated with our court system.

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We are there a lot we're practicing there, a lot we're appearing in district court and.

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Circuit court, but we're not a member of the court administration, so we can't give you advice as to.

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How your case is proceeding or when things are going to be scheduled or where your case is headed.

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And finally, we do not prosecute criminal cases. Those are handled by the state's attorney.

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He is a independent state office whose job it is to handle crimes.

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Prosecution of crimes, so, if there's a crime, it's going to be the state's attorney versus.

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John smith, for example, and the county attorney is not involved in any state prosecutions. Sometimes.

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We're witnesses, but we are not part of the prosecutor's office. He is completely independent.

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Where did the county attorney's office come from a county, attorney's office.

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Was actually created by state law, state law requires that carroll county have a.

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County attorney and as one of the commissioners reminded me at one point, the state law requires.

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You to have a state have a county attorney. They don't require to have this county attorney so.

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Anyhow, so carroll county is required to have a county attorney and in addition, there are several.

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Other bureaus and departments that are required by state law, which we are required to provide.

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Legal representation to including some what are called quasi-judicial boards, those are court-like.

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Commissions, like your board of zoning, appeals your planning commission, your liquor board. We.

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Provide legal representation to them, we sit with them during their hearings and we assist them in.

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Drafting their decisions once they have made an oral decision again by law, we are unable to.

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Provide private legal representation to any of our citizens. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't.

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Call the office if you have a question: if we can't help you in many cases, we can direct you to where.

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You need to go and give you a phone number or a person to talk to. As I mentioned earlier, we.

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Have a staff of three attorneys and what we do is we break up our our county into departments.

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Boards and commissions and we assign the attorney to a particular department or board or commission.

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And they provide the legal representation to them. They draft the documents they sit through, whatever.

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Hearings are needed and they provide whatever legal advice is needed by the department or.

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The board of commission board or commission, we have, as I said, a very hard working support staff.

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And they're often the ones who work directly with our citizens in attempting to collect monies that.

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Are owed to the county for taxes, for example, when we've exhausted all other options, we often have to.

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Go to court to collect delinquent taxes, even in those instances we work with our citizens.

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To come up with a equitable solution, there are other court sorts of cases that we handle. There's.

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Vandalism cases there are cases involving the destruction of county property like guard rails.

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Or things like that, we also correspond directly with citizens and attempt to collect those debts.

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If we're unable to collect them by any other means, we do go to district court to collect those.

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From our citizens, we also handle, as I said, all of our real estate matters. Any real estate matters.

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And settlements are conducted by the county, attorney's office and our support staff is.

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Instrumental in handling those as well the county, attorney's bible, if you will, is called the county.

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Code and the county code is available online or in hard copy, and it's broken up into two sections. The.

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First, section is called the code of public local laws for carroll county, and that is actually a.

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Compilation of state laws enacted by our general general assembly that pertains solely to carroll.

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County some examples of that are the state law that required the county commissioners to be.

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Elected by district and to number five that was a major change of state law several years ago,.

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In addition, we recently had a state law enacted that enabled us to create a fire.

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And emergency services department, the second half of the code- is called our ordinances.

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Those are ordinances, those are local laws that were passed by the county. Commissioners.

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Or present and past county commissioners and some examples are the noise control law.

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The animal control law, the zoning law, subdivision regulations- those are all laws that can be.

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Repealed or amended by our board of county commissioners, a code of public local laws.

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Would have to be repealed or amended by the state legislature? Why do we need a county.

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Attorney's office well number one. As I stated there are several departments and commissions.

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That need representation and that they need a county attorney's office that is knowledgeable.

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Of all county government as a whole and county regulations, we need an in-house council versus.

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Outside council, I believe that's the case, because expense alone would dictate that counties.

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And towns often employ outside attorneys, at a rate of 300, to 500 an hour which, as you.

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Can imagine could get very expensive? We are here eight hours a day at least and provide immediate.

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Legal access to the county, commissioners or our departments at considerably less than three to.

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Five hundred dollars an hour and we're also able to cross train each other so that there's always.

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An attorney available in our office whenever you call or whenever the county commissioners call in.

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Addition, we believe we're saving money by ensuring that the county commissioners and our departments.

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And employees are following the law. The failure to follow the law can result in fines, penalties.

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And other undesirable results for the county in such an event. Lastly, I did want to talk.

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To you about the public information act, the public information act is a state law that was.

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Adopted in maryland and in many other states in response to the watergate scandal, it was an effort.

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By the state legislation tours to give the public some access to what goes on behind the scenes in.

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Government and they do that by giving the public access to governmental records upon request under.

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The state law anybody can request a public record from carroll county government for any reason.

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You don't have to disclose a reason. You don't disclose your name and the governmental agency.

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Is not allowed to even ask you why you're asking for this document? In addition, there's some strict.

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Compliance regulations set forth in state law that governments, including carroll county, have.

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To follow once we receive a public information act request once we get a request, we can either.

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Produce the document immediately, if we have it handy, for example, if somebody requests a.

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Copy of a permit or a copy of an ordinance, we should be able to hand that over immediately.

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If the documents are not readily available, then we have 10 days to either compile the documents.

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Or to let the requester know that we're going to need some additional time up to an additional 20.

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Days to produce the documents, and during that time we've got to compile the documents, make copies or.

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Or put them in the form requested by the citizens and produce them within 30 days of the request.

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Notably, we do not have to create documents in response to a public information act, request.

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We only need to produce documents that are in existence, and I want to give an example.

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Our bureau of permits and inspections, they are bombarded with public information act.

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Requests usually up to 10 per day, and they in most cases, immediately apply as the documents.

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Are readily available, they don't even come up to the county attorney's office. In many cases.

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Some requests involve documents that are privileged or otherwise.

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Should not or cannot be disclosed? In that case, we conduct a review and determine which.

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Documents can be disclosed under the public information acts in response to a request.

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Currently, what's going on in our office, well we're handling about 50 land acquisitions.

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Including a lot of ag, preservation, easements and some other public works land acquisition projects.

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We are processing or have processed up to 227 subdivisions and related files, in other words,.

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227 proposed developments are being processed through this office. We currently have 243.

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Collections files opened those are bad checks, delinquent taxes, accidents, vandalism, cases.

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We have 243 of those collection files in progress, many of which will end up in court. Unfortunately,.

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We also have 19 permit and zoning violations when the permits office or zoning office.

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Has worked with the property owner and is unable to get compliance with their particular code.

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The matters are referred to the county attorney's office. We then attempt to work with the landowner.

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To get compliance with the law and if we're unsuccessful, unfortunately, we too have to go.

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To district court for those also, we have 28 guardianship matters currently active.

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That is where the county has assumed the guardianship of the person of a senior.

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Citizen or otherwise incapacitated person, because no one else is available to do it. We are managing.

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With the department of public works, 110 leases of public property, those are leases involving our.

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Property which are being farmed or otherwise rented out to members of the public.

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And finally, we are reviewing hundreds of other contracts, agreements, uh purchasing documents and.

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Other type documents for legal sufficiency- that's just a small sample of what we do here in the.

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County attorney's office, I urge you to give me a call at 386-2030 if you have any questions or need.

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Additional information or my email address is also available. I look forward to hearing from you and.

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Look forward to working with you in case you need our services in the future. Thank you.