City Council - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good morning, everyone. The time is now 10:01 on Wednesday, 05/06/2026. Today is day two of the city council review of the mayor's proposed f y twenty six municipal budget. I am joined by vice chair Alex Wan of the finance executive committee and other colleagues that are present with us today are council members Hillis, Westmoreland, Norwood, and Martin, and other members will be cycling in and out as their schedules allow.

Today's schedule starts with Atlanta Fire and Rescue Department. We are happy to have them with us today. We'll be followed by the Department of Corrections. We'll have a brief recess, and then the afternoon session will be the Atlanta Police Department, Atlanta Citizens Review Board, and then we'll end the day with the department of procurement. For our listening public, an electronic copy of the budget book and all presentations can be found under the FY twenty twenty seven budget session tab on the finance executive committee webpage of the city council website. At the completion of each topic, council members will be able to ask questions. With that, I would ask Atlanta Fire Rescue Department to introduce their team. Chief Smith, send it over to you.

Good morning, council member West and council members. It's my pleasure to be here today on behalf of the men and women of the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department to present the proposed budget for FY '27. To my right, I have deputy chief Jason McLean who's over support services. I also have miss Shy Pickett Harden who is over everything fiscal with Atlanta Fire Rescue. To my left, I have chief James McLemore.

He's the first deputy for Atlanta Fire Rescue. To his left, David Bohatch, who is the deputy of technical services. And on the far end, I have Gary Robb, who is the deputy of field operations. And behind us, you will see the support team for Atlanta Fire Rescue, the additional deputies for airport and EMS respectively, as well as the fiscal team and the administrative backbone of Atlanta Fire Rescue. So with that, big set, we'll begin our presentation.

Here, you will see the organizational chart for Atlanta Fire Rescue, which details the leadership hierarchy as well as the accountability matrix for Atlanta Fire Rescue to make things run smoothly, on a day to day basis. The chart that you see, there has been no changes to this org chart for the upcoming fiscal year, and so we will continue, in this posture to serve the city. Next slide. I am, happy to share with you the accomplishments of the current, fiscal year FY '26. And with the help of our mayor, Andre Dickens, and this administration, AFRD continues to close the gap, ensuring that the pipeline for hiring firefighters is strong.

We currently have a 125 fire recruits, of which 19 of those are red shirts, and they are serving the various communities, with community service projects, working very closely with the council members, and we're proud to do so. In addition to that, we have a graduation upcoming of recruits, right now. There are a total of 23, and it is scheduled for May 18. And we invite you all to come out and participate in that graduation, and it will be at the Public Safety Training Center. These heavy staffing and training efforts would not be possible without the Public Safety Training Center.

So I wanna again thank you guys for your support. Thank the mayor for his support and moving forward with the training center. As a result of that, we also have, the driver's operators course. So for years, we've talked about the challenges of training firefighters, to operate the heavy equipment and having to use the city streets after hours. And so the training center effort has been, immensely appreciated by Atlanta Fire Rescue, and it now allows us to train our members, off the city streets in a controlled environment.

And we have relaunched our driver certification or operators program, in which we are teaching drivers to operate, and they receive a certification. And at the end, they get an incentive for being certified. To this date, we have certified 19 operators. Their driving course is available for for training for our incumbents twenty four seven, and so we are utilizing it to the fullest. Next, we talk about enhanced, emergency medical services and the cadaver lab that is now at our public safety training center.

EMS services continue to drive the call volume for Atlanta Fire Rescue, and we intend to continue meeting that need and staying ahead of the curve. Until that effort, I'm happy to share with you that the emergency medical dispatching program or EMD, has recently been launched by e nine one one and our partners with APD, whereby the calls are triaged in our call center for the first time ever, as it relates to emergency medical calls, giving us the full control of calls that we are dispatched to and ensuring that CPR can be or instructions for CPR if needed and can be provided over the phone line. So it is a seamless transition that we have been looking forward to for a very long time. In addition to that, we have, as I mentioned, the cadaver lab, which we are in partnership with the Morehouse School of Medicine, in which it is a forward thinking investment of the city to allow us to have a cadaver lab on-site, to be a part or incorporate into our EMS training for our recruits and our firefighters, our incumbent EMTs, providing, again, the best services possible to the city of Atlanta.

Fire station construction and renovation continues. And thank you, to each of you, and thank you that the moving Atlanta forward initiative, was approved, because it provides the funding to give us the facilities of the future that we need. And so currently, right now, we have three fire stations that are under construction, station, 30 as well as Station 26 on the North Side, and we are anticipating that those stations will be available for occupation for be occupied, excuse me, in the fall of this year. So we are looking forward to that. With Station 25, to come, shortly thereafter, we're projecting in '27.

With station thirty one's plans now currently being reviewed by Dean to determine their appropriateness for the site. So we are excited about the growth and the expansion of, the facilities for Atlanta Fire Rescue. I couldn't leave the accomplishment page without talking about the fiscal or excuse me, the fleet enhancements that the mayor and administration have done and to continue, to provide for Atlanta Fire Rescue. Atlanta Fire Rescue is currently awaiting the arrival of 13 engines and four ladder trucks. I am told of this morning, five of those engines have arrived, and they are at our shop right now, going through an acceptance inspection.

And those engines will be going in service, very shortly to bolster the fleet of Atlanta Fire Rescue. We're also scheduled to receive the two jet boats, that we ordered, in previous fiscal cycles to enhance our capabilities for swift water and flood water flash flood incidents. And so we are excited about the expansion, and we are excited about the growth. Speaking about what is new and what is upcoming and what is improved for FY '27 for Atlanta Fire Rescue. State of the art EMS and training enhancements.

We will continue to utilize the posture of moving Atlanta forward and providing the best EMS services possible to the citizens of Atlanta, maximizing the use of our ambulance simulator as well as our cadaver lab to provide real world scenarios for our EMTs and our paramedics so that they're prepared and their competencies are the best in the region. We are excited to be hosting the upcoming Georgia State EMS instructor symposium in the first in the first quarter of this year at our training center, supporting our current initiatives and our EMS training success rates of eighty eight percent for our EMS students and ninety three percent pass rate for our advanced EMTs. And these are phenomenal, test percentages, if you look at the EMS industry. Expansion of our advancement of health and wellness. We take very seriously the health and the wellness of our employees.

To that avail, we will continue, to push towards a mindfulness state through doctor Moore and the wellness unit with the public safety training center and with the city of Atlanta. And I'm also happy to share with you that the wellness initiative is now out for bid on the streets. That program is us relaunching a wellness program for Atlanta Fire Rescue, which includes a physical checkup as well as a cancer screening. Now this is not legally required, and Atlanta's health program for our employees is very robust in that they provide physicals. In fact, matter of fact, I had my own physical done, through a Blue Cross, so thanks to the city.

But this is yet another initiative of Atlanta Fire Rescue moving in a direction that will change the industry, providing additional services and additional screenings to make sure that our health our employees are healthy long after they leave the job. We will continue to train, our members for leadership in the organization. We realize that the future of our organization starts with Atlanta Fire Rescue, and that is why we have developed the Rising Phoenix program to teach our members, the requisite skills needed for promotion prior to promotion. And so you will see the next iteration of that training being provided in house, and it will be open for those who aspire to be company officers and chief officers on Atlanta Fire Rescue. And last but certainly not least, the provision of personal protective equipment or PPE, and some may refer to it as turnout gear.

We are going to ensure that in this budget that we have the funding available to provide the protective equipment that is needed for Atlanta Fire Rescue's members, ensuring that they are always operating in the safest posture possible. I inserted this this page here as a visual to give you some insight as to what is going on for Atlanta Fire Rescue. As I've said before, and I will continue to say, the mayor has never told me no for anything or any resource that I've asked for for Atlanta Fire Rescue. And we are very appreciative of the efforts that this administration makes towards Atlanta Fire Rescue, ensuring that we have the things that we need to include the public safety training center for fire stations funded to be constructed. 34 units, fire equipment, cars, battalion chiefs, EMS vehicles, fire engines, service trucks, 34 units have been received with 14 yet in production to arrive in Atlanta.

We've replaced every single, self contained breathing apparatus in the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department as well as all of the automatic defibrillators and life pack units utilized in our EMS division. We even now have through partnership with the Fire Foundation for the first time ever, recruit housing to help subsidize and help people relocate that are interested in working for Atlanta Fire Rescue. We continue to change the services that we provide, and we thank you and we thank the administration for always supporting Atlanta Fire Rescue. Here you will see, the FTEs for Atlanta Fire Rescue for the upcoming fiscal year, and this continues to support our effort of maintaining a minimum of 120 recruits and recruit school. This is due in part to the public safety training center and the recruitment efforts of Atlanta Fire Rescue.

And as I shared with you, we currently have 125 recruits in the training pipeline, and we have a sworn vacancy rate in Atlanta Fire Rescue right now of 8.8%, and that number continues to go down. When we look at the number of sworn vacancies in our field operations division, they are only 60 vacancies. At our airport division, we have sworn vacancies. We have only 39 vacancies. Thus, Atlanta Fire Rescue has just under 100 vacancies in total.

I don't know when the last time I've seen that number. And so thank you for the efforts of the administration to help push us into this posture of hiring and preparing Atlanta Fire Rescue for the future. Next, you will see the adopted budget numbers for Atlanta Fire Rescue, and thank you to CFO Bala and the fiscal team for working relentless with relentlessly with us to determine what the numbers would be for Atlanta Fire Rescue moving into the future. We understand and we accept our role in Atlanta in the city of Atlanta, but we also understand the fiscal challenges of managing a budget for the city of Atlanta. But somehow, that team seems to figure it out and make sure that Atlanta Fire Rescue has the funding that we need.

And so we are very comfortable with the numbers that have been proposed for this budget, and we feel that they address, everything that we need in the days to come. You will see in addressing the variances for Atlanta Fire Rescue at a high level, you will see that the personnel and personnel services and employee benefit numbers are up 6%. This variance is attributable to, the reinstatement of the fire pension as well as the increase in health care costs for the citizens excuse me, the employees of Atlanta Fire Rescue. You will see the purchases and contract services line with a 28% increase. This is to ensure that the department can meet its obligations, and those obligations include making sure our share of the Atlanta Fire Rescue Public Safety Training Center's expenses are met, as well as contracts like Motorola and ensuring that we can provide the PPE and the testing services that we are required to provide according to the code.

So thank you for that. Our capital outlay, while that percentage increase looks like a substantial number, the reality is it is 61 roughly $61,735, and that is to support the department's ongoing and current new initiatives for migrating to systems such as our electronic Knox Box system, which requires additional Internet connections for required updates and security access. And last but not least, you will see the inter fund interdepartment charges, which represents 15%, and that is attributable to our fleet cost and fueling cost that will be done through fleet services. And with that, we will open the floor up, for questions, and that completes the presentation for Atlanta Fire Rescue.

Thank you, chief Smith. At this time, we'll turn it over to colleagues for questions. We'll start with council member Dozier.

Thank you, mister chair. Thank you, chief Smith and the rest of your team. Always glad to see y'all. I think I share with the time and time again. Have nothing but love for our firefighters. Just as an example, last year, my daughter and I were hit by a car on our bike and the first people to arrive on scene were Atlanta Fire Rescue. The the folks at men and women at Station 7. The first time I got hit by a car on my bike ten years ago, Atlanta Fire Rescue was also the first on the scene. Last year, one of my neighbors had a schizophrenic episode and set their own house on fire across the street from me. Y'all been using that as a training.

Y'all confused a lot of my neighbors when y'all come do the post post fire AAR evaluation because y'all been back there several times on Garibaldi Street Mechanicsville. And then separately, a kid burnt down our playground equipment last year over at Winter Street Park. So it's almost gotten to a point to where I joke with Paul Girders and the men and women over there at Station 7. It's like it's always something on my block. But so I just nothing below for Atlanta Fire Rescue.

The fact that y'all's EMT services are such a big part of your day to day operation, I think goes unrecognized by the general public. I've been a recipient of those services, and many other people have. But people see the apparatuses. They see the the ladder trucks, and that's what they think of when they think about what our firefighters see, but that's not the daily work of a typical the typical day of a ladder fire rescue employee.

My question

is, and this is to dovetail on something that I asked CEO Birx yesterday about fleet modernization. As we are looking at the pipeline of new vehicles coming into the fleet, how much are we rightsizing our fleet to meet that operational demand where EMT services provide such a large proportion of the services that we're providing. I know we have we have ladder trucks for a reason. My district includes Downtown Atlanta. And if there's a fire that breaks out at one of those high rises or skyscrapers, we need those we absolutely need those ladder trucks.

But also think about the fact that most of our 911 calls is is EMT services. And with the work that we're doing to narrow Atlanta streets and make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists, adding you know, we our office spent over a million dollars on speed humps across my district, over the last four years. I know sometimes that comes there's some friction that happens with as y'all try to evaluate routes and best way to get your firefighters to a side of an emergency. But can you just talk a little bit about how we're looking at modernizing our fleet, whether that we're shrinking the size of both our EMT vehicles and also our apparatuses to make sure we can be aligned with the larger vision, the larger work that we're doing around Vision 0 or do some pedestrian accidents.

Absolutely. So thank you for that question. So in light of knowing that the the the landscape for the city of Atlanta and the traffic density is changing, we realize that the traditional fire truck is just simply not going to meet, the need by itself. And so we have started to dive in and look at, each community to determine what the specific needs are of that community. And so what you will see coming is you will see more smaller vehicles, I.

The quick vehicles that are gonna be in the communities, which are the smaller pickup trucks that are more agile to move throughout the communities. In addition to that, we just received a donation from the Fire Foundation with some some e bikes. And so just like the path force that the police department has, you will see some targeted areas depending on what's going on, in the community that we can, monitoring the city special events, section, staying closely in in touch with them and modifying our responses to ensure and ensuring that we have foot medics, bike teams, the ambulance, the quick units, whatever you can imagine, we're looking at covering those areas in a unique way that we've never done before.

Oh, that's awesome. That's great to hear about the bike program, especially. Well, speaking of electric vehicles, are is that fleet modernization looking at electrifying some of the fleet vehicles that we have? I know they're Absolutely. The manufacturers are making electric So absolutely.

So we right now to have couple of Rivian's that we have a pilot to try to see if those are feasible for working in our fleet. But absolutely, we are in touch with the sustainability office, and we're looking to go green wherever we can.

Alright. Thank you. And then my last question, I don't serve on public safety, so I don't get a chance to see you regularly for for the regular, committee briefs. But just with regards to the, talent acquisition side of the house and the personnel services, I know the conversation that I have with, whether it's, other jurisdictions or municipalities or counties. I know we, you know, losing a lot of our trained staff to those jurisdictions for whatever reasons that I'm sure that you probably heard yesterday with the fire union and their presentation.

But I imagine people wanna come to Atlanta, wanna work for Atlanta for various reasons as well. I'm I'm I don't know if in the data that we have for talent acquisition, are we only used to work poach, but are we getting officers, not officers, firefighters from other jurisdictions, and what is attracting those folks to the state of Atlanta? So this is more of if if someone from your team can follow-up and share that information, I'll be really interested to see that. And at one point I spoke with someone from y'all HR team about efforts to recruit military veterans. And if they're still interested in that, we'll love to continue that conversation. So yeah, I'll leave it at that.

Okay. We're looking forward to that conversation.

Alright, mister Ariel.

Alright, thank you. Next, we have questions from Councilmember Hillis.

Thank you, mister chair. Thank you for the presentation chief and your team. On the you did mention the turnout equipment. What is the delivery date and put in the service date of that? Of of what? I'm sorry. Equipment?

We don't have a delivery date as of yet.

But it has been ordered and

So we're working in the process of ordering it now. What we're doing now is an inventory to determine what actually is needed, and then we would be making that purchase.

Okay. But the is there a goal, like, by

My goal is first quarter.

'27. Thanks for that. On the excuse me. You mentioned the equipment that is that has arrived, thankfully, and the others that have already on order. Where are we with getting in an order this year? Because I think it's been, what, about a year since

We have made the request to Fleet Services. Okay. And I guess that's why point is Fleet Services working with, the fiscal team to determine when that order will be placed.

CFO, do you have any update on that? I know that's not fully, you know, your responsibility, But, CFO Bada? Yeah. Of course, this is not in his departmental budget, and we've talked about it multiple times. What is the timeline for the submission and the funding source, I would imagine bonds somehow, of the next fire apparatus delivery that's supposed to occur sometime this year?

Yeah.

So is the question with regards is when is the next legislative packet for additional purchases, or when is the expectation of the of the fleet that was already purchased?

For the next purchase because I I think it's been about a year or so since we Yeah. Put forth

the purchase. Our plan now is we anticipate to probably introduce legislation in the next, fiscal year, so that we can anticipate based on a debt service schedule to spread it out. We are looking at, I think we have about two or three years left of debt service payments on the current fleet. So we'd wanna stagger it so that we don't have all of the debt service concentrated in one period. So it'll probably be next year before we introduce another modest, allocation, for for fire and police.

That would be fiscal year twenty seven. What quarter do you have? Fiscal year twenty seven, it'll probably we could start the ordering in towards the end of fiscal year twenty seven. We'll probably think that for fire, the the lead times roughly about a year or two. So it'll be fiscal year twenty nine before we receive equipment. Okay.

Thank you for that. On the jet boats you mentioned and another conversation we've had previously, I know most of the swift water is centrally focused in the city. However, not all, but many of the water rescues happen in councilor Norwood's district, my district along the Chattahoochee, Peachtree Creek, etcetera, especially when it floods. We've asked or I've asked, maybe others have as well, about putting one more on the western side of the city so it can be a faster response time to the Chattahoochee and Peachtree Creek areas. And I I know we also rely on Cobb County, but, you know, we're the we're the big brother.

So they need to be able to look to us than rely on us. So where are we in those conversations and getting something at twenty six or twenty eight or thirty eight or, you know, maybe building a small, you know, garage facility where 28 or 26 could drive to, you know, standing peach tree and, you activate a jet boat from there.

So we realized that, Station 11 might not be the optimal location to service the city as it relates to flash flooding. And so we're in conversations right now. I, myself, chief McLemore, and the operations chief chief Rob, we're in conversations right now about what does having split locations look like. And definitely one of those locations will be on that North Side in closer proximity to the Chattahoochee. We realized that we need to take the lead in that space because we are the big brother in that area. And so we set we accept that challenge. And so we're looking at a station up in that area to include, not excluding the possibility of utilizing 26.

Understood. Dean giving you a date on finishing at Station 26 yet?

The only numbers we have or dates we have right now are '26 Okay. Which is this year.

Thank you.

Just kinda backing up and look at the overall budget. You know, Atlanta's a growing city, has been since the nineties when we were under 400,000. Now we're, you know, over 500, probably be approaching 600 by the end of the decade. But look at the salaries and the overtime, if you combine those, it's over a or almost a $4,000,000 reduction. The explanation is just general adjustment aligned staffing levels with operational needs.

So how are we reducing our staffing numbers by that much? And then we also have show a reflected 17 FTE equivalent reduction. How are we reducing both of those, both the funding and the staffing, and maintaining, the service level that the city expects to see in response times?

So we were challenged going into this fiscal year to look at the operational efficiencies of Atlanta Fire Rescue. And so what you will say is that specifically support positions that have not been filled. We're looking at how do we go in another direction or another posture. We are not reducing any of our scoring numbers, but we're looking at streamlining some of the positions because they haven't been filled for a while and you've worked without them. How are you operating without them? And so we are reducing or eliminating some of those positions.

Understood. Speaking of non sworn positions, another item that has come up multiple times over the past couple years in public safety and legal administration committee, and I believe we requested an audit, which has seemed to be delivered about fire inspections. How does this budget hopefully greatly enhance the men and women behind fire inspections and getting both, you know, new new build inspections done in an adequate amount of time, but also doing these yearly fire safety inspections where we expect them to be instead of, you know, discovering it after, you know, there's been an unfortunate fire. Right.

And so we just recently completed an audit of the community risk reduction section. And so right now, we're combing through the recommendations and coming up with a formal document to provide to the COO about what actions we're gonna take and what changes need to be made.

Thank you for that. And then just overall, you know, the the union brought up yesterday the the fleet, which we've we've discussed that and got some answers from the CFO just now. But one of the other things that has come up, and I had have not heard and talked about much lately, but is, you know, where the city needs additional fire resources. You know, the only recent you know, we're we're replacing already existing stations, which is a good thing given the conditions some of them are in Mhmm. Or were in before they rebuilt.

The only recent station I remember is an EMS station in Southwest Atlanta. I've heard some talk of Sandy Springs abandoning since they're building a new station and and their actual city limits selling that station back to us up in Buckhead. But where are we with, you know, evaluating the need for an actual new fire station? I know we've talked about, you know, areas of the city that see lacking response times, and so just wanna know where those conversations are about improving response times in certain areas and the possibility or need, to build new stations.

So that conversation is ongoing, and the AMPO, assessment and planning section, is up under, chief McLean. And so what they've been tasked to do is, formulate new drive time analysis to determine where the gaps are in the city. And we realized that today is the day where we need to start planning for tomorrow. And so we're trying to identify where the gaps are so that we can make plans to determine where we get stations because land in the city of as you know, is not cheap. And when somebody thinks that the city may be interested in it, the price will

triple. Mhmm.

And so we're looking at identifying the gaps and having those conversations with the administration, but it's an ongoing process right now.

Okay. And where is AFRD, as I will be asking this in many departments, where is AFRD with evaluating its fee serve or fee structure when it comes to fees for you all services, permitting, etcetera?

So we have been, in concert with the administration up under the lead of the COO, and our fees have been restructured. And so it will be a part of that total plan that rolls out for the city so that there's not a a one two punch to let the citizens know this is the direction that we're going. But we are actively involved in that, And the fees have been the study has been done, and we've come up with some new numbers.

Alright, chief. That's all I have for now. Thank you, and thank you, mister chair.

Alright. Thank you, council member Hillis. Next, we have questions from council member Warren. Thank you, mister chair,

and thank you chief and your team for the presentation. I'm just gonna jump right in. Your staffing levels, I it's great to hear that we are down in single digits in terms of your vacancies. But on page five, to the extent that y'all can provide after this meeting, the breakout of funded versus unfunded positions, that would be helpful. And then I just wanna confirm, you said that the reduction in your FTEs is just support positions. No. There there's no sworn position reduction. Okay. Because my constituents would kill me if they heard that that we were doing away with any of your sworn positions. That said, I do wanna go back and look at your budget request.

And I I'm a little surprised that if you've got a less than 10% vacancy that you're dropping overtime isn't more dramatic than than that. Can you talk about that? What are we still using? Explain to me kind of the need still with overtime.

Mhmm. So what's unique about the overtime for Atlanta Fire Rescue versus other departments is that the positions are rank and, some instances, certification specific. And so the pool of people that can fill those positions if they are vacant is smaller. And so we still have to maintain that that vacancy rate space Mhmm. And having someone to come in and fill that position.

And so when you start looking at what does that number look like, who can actually do their job, you may have a position where there are only three or four people that can actually do that job. And so when you look in the operation space, historically, we've always replaced a captain with a captain. Mhmm. But we did that because of where we were institutionally for experience. And so now that we have more people that have gone through the certification classes where they can ride the seat, where they can drive, as we train our members up, then we open those opportunities up to more people.

So then at some point though, let's say you were at a 100% filled. Mhmm. There's you'd still have some overtime, but there's still room to to at least reduce that overtime. I mean, I I the reason why I'm asking this is that it's my expectation to start seeing a drop in the overtime this cycle Mhmm. Definitely next cycle because of all the the, class and comp as well as the pension adjustments we've made. So, let's just keep an eye on that. This may be a question for the CFO. Your pension, expense is dramatically higher than all the other pension contributions. So what's what's driving that?

So the pension contributions increased primarily for two reasons. One of them was an adjustment of retirees cost of living adjustments, which if you very familiar with the old plan, the old plan does have a 3% cost of living adjustment automatically that kinda builds the bank. So when we recalibrated our annual required contribution, which is presented to the board, it was increased for police, fire, and general employees. And so concentration of most of fire's pension plan is in here. It's in it's in this budget.

So it was we will we have to allocate for it in fire's budget.

So you're saying it's it's higher for fire than the other two because of The composition of the of the employee

demographics for fire Okay. Are different than the other groups.

And we should anticipate kind of this bump this year, and then it should level out from this point

on?

It it should level out. I will say we do experience studies every three years. And so, hopefully, we're in a different environment three years from now, but just wanna be very cautious of inflation continues to be a thing three years from now, we might have to recalibrate that assumption again going forward.

Alright. Thank you. Wanted to lift two things again from what we heard from the union yesterday. The first one is around the physicals and the screenings. I think you mentioned in one of your slides that that is available now through Blue Cross Blue Shield. But is that a voluntary thing where, the firefighters have to opt in, or is that something that everybody has to do?

So it is it is it is voluntary Okay. When the city pays, when the department pays for it. We don't force them to do it. But just noting the fact that the health care plan that we have, we have options of having physicals done, and there is no I know there's been some reference to NFPA, but there is no legal requirement for the employer to provide the additional physical. We just chose to step into that arena and to continue that posture.

I I think we were a little surprised to hear that yesterday. I'm glad to hear that there is an option. I I I mean, the preventive measures given we self insure are are always a a good path to take. So I'm happy to kinda explore this further with you all as well. The other thing I wanted to ask about though is there was a kind of a narrative yesterday about retention and challenges. Doesn't seem like your numbers are are telling the same story, and I wanted to give you a chance to to dive into that a little bit more.

Okay. So interesting you asked that because there's always there's always gonna be people leaving. Mhmm. And people leave for various reasons. And so, you know, whether it be retirement, whether they be choosing to relocate or or go back home or move with a family member, we don't stand in anybody's way.

But what I can tell you is that, the message that we are getting is that the overwhelming majority of them are not leaving because of pay. They're not leaving because of benefits, especially if they have been here over five years. We just as a culture, we just don't leave. And we don't leave because as we start becoming vested in the pension, we can start seeing the end of of the road. And so, while you may have one or two members that have left and gone somewhere else and say, hey.

The water's fine. Come out here. Of course, they're gonna be a couple of people to leave. And they're gonna be, some career shifts where I was told about three members that left because they have a construction business and they're building homes. And they're just making so much money and, you know, even to the point they told the chief, hey, man. I'm I'm leaving because I can't do both. And so we don't we don't stand in the way. We don't try to prevent anybody from leaving. We just wanna know, hey, why are you leaving? Because we wanna make sure that we're doing things right.

That's helpful to hear. I I think, again, another one of the things that I'm looking for during this budget process is we made a series of investments last year, some tough decisions in terms of salary and pension, and I I need to see that we're turning the curve. And, again, the the at least the statistics that you threw out earlier about being below 10% vacancy seems to support that work was the right moves and the right decision. So I appreciate your on that. Mister chair, that concludes my questions. I yield.

Alright. Thank you. Councilmember Westmoreland. Thank you, mister

chair, chief, and team. Wanna build on one of the questions that councilor Juan just asked. When we received the the yesterday's presentation, it talked about the last complete medical and physical was 2019. The last medical only was in 2021. What did change, if anything, in '9 2019 and 2021? Like, where do those statements come from unless they're just inaccurate?

So the wellness program was established prior to then. And when the contract expired, the challenges were to retool the contract to make sure it was encompassing of everything that we needed. And so the last iteration of the contract that went out, we got, notetakers on that contract. And so having a meeting with the CPO, Shonda Houston, and thanks to her and her team for working with us. We were able to comb through that and figure out why, we were getting notetakers, and it's because of the volume, of the work that was being asked. And so we broke it into smaller section, and it is now back out on the street.

Alright. I think a better way I can ask it. Can every member of the department get a physical and a cancer screening for free every year if they want to?

Yes, sir. Okay.

What second question.

Can you talk a little

about health care costs? We received a slide yesterday that showed Atlanta is significantly higher than a whole lot of other places, and I'm curious what you're hearing from your women and men as it relates to the health care costs that they have to pay for themselves and their family.

So anytime there's an increase in health care cost, there's gonna be a decrease in what people have in real dollars in terms of spending and putting on the table. So there's always gonna be concerns that are gonna be expressed as it relates to that. We've gone through that in several iterations, several cycles during my employment with the city of Atlanta. And so we are empathetic to where they are, but the reality of it is is is is where do you meet them and where is the median, in dealing with that space.

You mentioned during your presentation about, additional gear. Can you get a little more specific in terms of what how many sets of gear, each firefighter has and what the ideal would be?

Okay. So historically, everyone had a second set of gear, and that was not out of necessity. That was out of the ease of providing or put the provision of gear. Because what we have taken ownership of is that if you have a set of gear, and it is in need of repair or in need of cleaning, we will take that responsibility. We have a cleaning contract to clean the gear, and if repairs are needed, and we always have extra gear available to issue to the employees.

And so we entertained the possibility of having a gear service station. We are not there yet, and so we are taking it upon ourselves to do an inventory that is going on right now to determine what gear is out there, who has a second set, who does not have a second set so that we can make sure we fulfill that need until we can put the service center in place.

Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Martin. Thank you,

mister chair. Thank you, chief and team for being here this morning. Councilmember Westmoreland's last question kinda leads into my first question. Do we have one for one bunker gear capabilities, and do we need that? Right? We hear we heard from the union representatives yesterday Mhmm. About the desire to have that and share with us that there's there are grants available possibly in those kinds of things. But I want to hear from you all as the as the brass of the department. Do we have the capability to do one for one? Is it or is it is it even needed?

So we do have the capability.

Okay.

And we have it in this upcoming budget as well.

Fantastic. Also, I gotta be a little selfish here. I just wanna get an update on what Station 25 is, the rebuild is.

So Station 25, as you know, it it is no more the the physical building. Yes. And so we are we are very excited about that one, and we have been told that that building will be, provided to us in the '27.

Okay. Alright. Councilmember Hill has hit hit on a little bit of a few questions that kind of deals with and councilmember Juan about strategy and innovations. We think about being the AFRD for ten years from now. Thinking about and I think also councilmember Dozier talked about this a little bit.

Do we have a strategic planning team, innovation team? And and I don't wanna know those updates today, but I think we can maybe start weaving them into some of the public safety updates that you give us at the committee level with chairwoman Boone. Because I'm I'm very, interested in, you know, what you all see down the road. I I know that you all are the fastest responders to car accidents on our major highways, and and we appreciate you for that. You all have saved probably thousands of lives in the last, you know, year or so.

As we think about that, though, we're seeing fewer fires, and we're seeing more of you more of if you all being called in EMT situations. And so where is the strategic planning, and can we weave more of that into public safety? Because then as I think about those questions, as Atlanta's becoming is not becoming is a major destination for these large scale events, that's gonna become, I think, even more critical for us. So, Bryan, any insights on that?

So yes. So we realized that the fire service is changing right before our eyes, and what you're seeing is an extreme reduction in the number of fires

Yes.

And the expansion of EMS services. And we accept that challenge because we're gonna have to pivot, into that direction. What does that next iteration of Atlanta Fire Rescue look like? There's a blank slate right now. And because we're gonna have to cater our services to the communities Sure. And the streets of Atlanta. And so that is a part of our strategic planning process, and we're relooking at our service delivery plan on an annual basis to ensure that Atlanta Fire Rescue is ready for today and we're ready for tomorrow. Looking at, how do we provide, more dedicated services towards specific communities such as the the Beltline. Yes. It's a destination now.

Yes.

And so looking at this uniqueness of the communities because at some point in time, we are foreseeing, that you're gonna have a fire station that may not have a fire truck in it.

Right.

Because the reality is they may need two ambulances. They may need

Sure.

A quick unit. Not not discounting the fact that we will fight the fires, and we will continue to come in a timely manner meeting those performance metrics. But the reality of it is we have to reinvent ourselves Sure. In order to stay relevant.

Sure. I saw this video of the zone the the drone that flies and puts out fires. So please let me know when the demo for that is. I'm glad to come and help you all test it.

So we do have a drone unit. Unit.

I heard. Yeah. So I heard. I'm glad to come help you test it. As we also think about the compression pay issues, I'm gonna be doing a deep dive with the COO soon. I'm looking forward to that and hearing getting her insights that I'm sure also and maybe some of you will be there. Do you I wanna know again to the brass setting in front of us. Is that a real issue in our in our department?

So in our current pay scale, no compression is not the issue, but we are happy to engage, and we have been talking with the administration about what does a compensation study look like for the entire city. Sure. While we feel like like we deserve pay raises, and I'm speaking for the department, Everybody in this city does as well. Mhmm. And so we don't wanna selfishly push ourselves to the front of the table knowing that there is a bigger or a global issue that has to be addressed by the city. And so we stand behind the administration and their efforts to level the playing field and make sure that everybody is compensated equitably.

Absolutely. I think and I think we all agree with that. Right? We as we look at across the board, our general general fund employees, but also, you know, you all are literally tasked with running into burning buildings and cutting people out of cars in life or death situations before the car explodes. So, you know, I personally do give a little bit of priority to our first responders because of that. But I do appreciate you all, you know, thinking about the parity across the employees of the city of Atlanta. I think that is all that I have, and I'll just close out by saying thank you. You know, it's I know if it gets bad enough, you all have to jump in a car and a vehicle and go somewhere as well to to make the city safer, and I'm really grateful for that. Thank you, mister chair.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have questions from councilmember Collins.

Thank you all so much for this information. Thank you for your service. Most of my questions have been answered. I just have one just to understand on slide six with the proposed budget. I know you went through each line item in terms of what they entail what each line item entails. For other finances uses, which is this year will be a proposed will will remain the same. What are the things that are in that line item or consider other financing uses?

That would be our debt services. Okay. Payments.

So debt debt service, the line before that is at zero. Just curious in terms of other debt services such as is it yeah. What does it entails?

That typically would include, when we receive vehicles, into the fleet. We don't start making debt payments on those until we actually receive those.

Okay.

Thank you. That's that's my only question. My most of my other questions were asked.

Okay. Thank you. Council member Bond.

Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. There were some great questions asked about the, medical screening, so I wanted to ask a few follow ups about that. So I think you said, chief, that firefighters have access to the free medical screenings, but do we have numbers on how many actually use those services each

year? Could

you could you repeat that question?

So I think I think in response to council member Westmoreland, you answered that, the firefighters do have access to free annual medical screenings and cancer screenings. Do we have the numbers on how many actually use those services?

So let let me clarify there. The availability for the screening is upcoming Mhmm. Because right now, it is out on the streets for a bid.

Okay.

And so once it gets in place, then they all will have the opportunity. So I don't have a number for you because we have not had it for a number of years.

Okay.

And so we're looking to reimplement it.

Okay. Great. Yeah. Let let us know how counsel can be helpful with that because I do think, you know, given the I think we heard some numbers yesterday on the cancer rate for firefighters. So I think it's really important we're doing this on an annual basis.

We will be encouraging every member to take it, though.

Amazing. I did have another question. I think a while back, there was, an ask from the union to institute biweekly pay. Has that been implemented?

So just a clarification point there. All firefighters get paid biweekly. Okay. Okay. The question that was asked was when does the pay cycle end?

Okay.

So they were looking to change the pay cycle from a twenty eight day cycle to a fourteen day cycle.

Got it.

That is incorporated in the CBA. Mhmm. And that CBA document, my understanding, is to be signed by the mayor here shortly.

Yes. Thank you. Had one more screening. We also heard from the union that they have been having issues, in their recruitment efforts. I think for a while, historically, the union was able to recruit at, new member, new firefighter events. Is that did something change there? Are are the unions still able to access and speak to firefighters in that way for union recruitment efforts?

So there has never been any denial of access, to the recruits. Matter of fact, there was an email, a formal email that was sent to all of the presidents in January. Mhmm. And they were each afforded twenty minutes to present their organization to the recruits. They were able to also receive and share contact information with recruits. The only restriction was that there were no applications to be provided, and there were no gifts to be provided. And so that was on the heels of a conversation that I had with the recruits knowing that we have so many young members Mhmm. That are coming into the organization about making good financial decisions. They were not told or discouraged from joining anything. Mhmm.

What I did share with them was the complexity of the pay schedule, knowing that there are three iterations of our paychecks and making sure that they had a firm understanding of what their paycheck was going to look like before they committed to anything.

Okay. So what changed is allowing them to sign people up for union membership. Is that correct?

During this session.

Correct. During the session. Okay. And was there what what changed to make that happen?

We now have more than one organization that is a dues checkoff organization. Mhmm. And so it was to create an equitable environment for the members to hear an equal length presentation from both organizations because they should have the opportunity to choose. What we found is that we have, members that are assigned to the training center, and they were influencing the recruits.

Okay. Why not in that case allow both unions to recruit members?

So it was not a recruiting effort. The effort was to introduce your organization. Okay. So it did not prevent them from recruiting. It just simply said that you cannot hand out an application or provide a hot dog or a T shirt or whatever at that time.

Okay. Yeah. I I I'm curious. This is less for the fire department and maybe more for Department of Labor, just, you know, the the city. I I'd love to make sure that opportunities are equal to all of the city's unions and that we have a standardized process. So that's something I may circle back on on one point. But, yeah, I think those are all my questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Councilmember Boone.

Thank you so much, mister chair. Chief and team, thank you all so much for all you all do for the citizens of Atlanta. Wanted to just make sure that we continue those great smoke detection and alarm blitz in our community. They are truly saving lives. Many of our constituents are elderly now and their children when they visit, a lot of times they forget to check those batteries.

So thank you for that entire team that continues to keep that program going. Also, have one of the best internship programs going. Hopefully we can, expand that. We are hearing from parents that really, really appreciate what you all have done in the internship space. The car seat program make sure that we keep two or three car seats at these stations is critical.

Many of the parents, your folks are actually training them how to buckle the young kids up in those seats. So we wanna make sure we keep that. The medics that are trained for insulin, high blood pressure. We had an incident last week on Braemar Avenue and your team jumped in, like Superman and they took over. Those folks are really happy.

So I just wanna make sure that we highlight some of the great things that you all are doing and that we continue. They're small, but they're not. They're small things that folks don't know about. You all are truly our first responders and you're very friendly to citizens, including when you attend the midnight basketball games, the food giveaways, assisting with our community meetings. I see that great team back there. If you all would just stand, That great team back there. They are you you all are truly magnificent. Please let them know that we appreciate them.

I try

to go by fire stations as much as possible. Just drop in, and we're looking forward to a great breakfast. Our president will be there, receiving an award. President Overstreet will be there Friday morning at the aquarium. So, we're looking forward to seeing you all there. And again, just thank you. But those smoke detectors, the car seats, and let's try to get 10 or 15 more internship, slots. I see our COO in the back, so she's listening to us. Okay. Okay.

Again, but thank you all so much, and we are here for you. And, those that know how to do insulin and blood pressure, pat them on the back. Pat them on the back. That means everything when a senior has a six hundred six hundred blood sugar, and someone can go right in and give them that insulin. You all should witness it. Again, thank you all so much.

Thank

you. Thank you. Thank

you, council member Boone. We do have follow-up questions from council member Bond and then Collins.

There's one question I forgot to ask, which is, speaking about, attrition and people leaving, the department. I I was curious. Are are you all doing exit surveys to understand in, like, a statistical way why people are leaving?

Yes. We are doing exit surveys.

Okay. So your your statements on why people are leaving, is that based on real data?

It's based on the information they're willing to share with us, but, yes, it is real data.

Are are are is city council able to to see that, like, breakdown at all? Is that something y'all could share with us?

I don't see why not, but we'd have to check with HR to see if this is Yeah.

That that would be great if y'all could do that. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Councilman McCollins. Sorry

about that. Yes. I just have a follow-up question, and this may be more for the finance team to answer. So yesterday, we kicked this off understanding, like, the the the financial conditions of the city. So it's nowhere near targeted towards fire at all.

But in terms of looking at, in our budget book on page three fifty three, I know these presentations focus around our general funds. One question that I do have, I know there's additional revenue whether it's from air you know, the enterprise funds. And just wanting to understand the strategy more of if there's limitations to maximize the enterprise funds such as, in this case, the airport revenue funds first, and then that allows for more savings in the general fund that we could possibly either reallocate or reexamine to for increased cost and compensation or whatnot. And the reason why I access access that, I know the the on slide six, the budget that's proposed to us from the general fund is, 146,000,000. But if we look at the total budget and like I said, this is just one department.

In addition to the airport revenue funds, we're looking at a 190,000,000. So I think that's something that I'm just curious on what are, you you know, our strategy in terms of maximizing our enterprise funds that will give some cushion or comfort in our general fund to give departments the opportunity to be able to reallocate some of those dollars for those increased costs and ask.

Yes. That's a very good question. So the, all of the fire airport operations are paid out of the airport funds, and that's managing all of the airport's fire needs. And whenever there's shared services and there's shared, applications, things that are, needed for the entire department, we work with the Department of Aviation to make sure that they are contributing their fair share to that as well. Sometimes it's based on headcount, and then sometimes it's based on utilization.

And so depending on what methodology we use for direct and indirect cost allocations, they are always made with that same thought process that you had council member, which is to make sure that we're not overburdening the general fund. So we appreciate that that that comment. We'll continue to do that going into this fiscal year and future ones.

Great. Thank you. I just wanted to say I appreciate the the fire department, for presenting. I I said, I mean, a balanced to me, a balanced budget, but anyway that we could really, support even more, just don't hesitate to let us know. Thank you so much, CFO Bala, for that, clarity. Thank you.

And, councilwoman, just in addition to which is not shown here in the operating budget, yesterday, we talked a little bit about impact fees.

Mhmm.

So anytime there's additional funding that can be used to to make sure that fire has additional resources, we'll continue to look at those as well. So thank you very much.

Right. Thank you. Thank you. Are are you, mister chair?

Alright. Thank you. I've got 11:01 and no other questions from colleagues. So I would say, chief Smith, definitely appreciate you and the men and women of the Atlanta Fire and Rescue Department, and thank you all for being here for your presentation. Look forward to continuing our conversation about the budget process. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

Alright. Next, we are scheduled to have the department of corrections. We'll welcome up chief Dancey.

Yes, sir. Yeah. Register.

Alright. We are now ready for our second briefing for today which is Department of Corrections and we welcome up Chief Elder Dancey.

Thank you, Chairman Winston. Good morning, everyone. Chairman, Madam President, and other distinguished council members. I am Elder Dancey, Chief of Corrections for the City of Atlanta. I'm joined by members of my leadership team who supports our operations and mission. To my left is director Quanah Williams. She's over our budget and business affairs. To her left, my far left, is deputy chief Timothy Quiller. And to my right is deputy chief Natasha Johnson. And to her right, my far right, is major Cassandra Wiggins.

Thank you for this opportunity to present our fiscal year twenty twenty seven proposed budget. I'll briefly walk through our organizational framework, highlight key accomplishments, outline our staffing, and close out with our proposed budget. On this first slide, this slide provides an overview of our department's organizational structure and highlights our core leadership team. Our administrative services division is headed by deputy chief Timothy Quiller. He's responsible for our career development team, accreditation, our food service team, and medical team.

And detention services division is headed by deputy chief Natasha Johnson. She's responsible for ACDC, Grady Hospital detention, Courts and Court Security. And, of course, we have the chief's office. The next slide will highlight just a few of our accomplishments for FY 2026. This past year, our focus has remained on safety.

Safety is paramount for us at ACDC, also operational efficiency and meaningful outcomes. The first accomplishment, safety management, main facility maintenance and technology upgrades. In safety operations, we've, strengthened our operations at Grady Detention. As most of you know, Grady is an open campus, so security is always something that we are mindful of. So our team has done a great job with expanding that and also relieving the APD officers who have detainees at Grady that needs medical care.

Our team has done an excellent job with improving our turnaround time. We've also continued perimeter security improvements, expanded staff parking, and advanced our FIFA 2026 readiness. We also maintain infrastructure across all our major systems and upgraded technology transitioning to digital CCTV, expanding body worn cameras, and improving screening and access control systems. Now second accomplishment is ACA and reaccreditation. This is something that we are very proud of.

We maintain national accreditation and PREA recertification, achieving a 100% in both mandatory and nonmandatory compliance. The team in Denver said that this is rare, so I definitely wanna recognize our team for doing an outstanding job with that as we continued compliance through ace American Correctional Association. This definitely reflects our commitment to best practices and a zero tolerance approach to safety. Third, of course, we have our ongoing relationship with Fulton County Sheriff's Office. Our partnership with Fulton County remains steady.

We are currently in year three of our agreement with an average daily population of approximately 430 detainees, and we maintain consistent coordination to uphold standards. And then our last accomplishment that we will highlight is community engagement program. We continue supporting the community through outreach, partnering with food drives, and providing meals during warming center activation. Actually, this year, we provided over 37,000 meals during those warming center activations for our vulnerable citizens in the city of Atlanta, along with essential supplies and services. These efforts reflect our continued commitment to safety, operational excellence, and service to both those in custody and the broader community.

In new and improved FY 2027, building on this foundation, we are focused on strengthening and expanding efforts in fiscal year 2027. Our priorities in '27 continues to focus again on safety, facility maintenance and technology enhancement. We'll continue transitioning fully, to digital CCTV to ensure situational awareness, upgrade control systems in our housing unit, and ensure staff and equipment the staff are equipped with modern protective equipment as we work to enhance safety, accountability, and efficiency. We are also implementing detainee tablets to improve communication and access information while continuing our body worn camera program as we again enhance transparency and accountability. On the infrastructure side, we will address ongoing facility need, roof and exterior repairs while maintaining critical systems across a twenty four seven operation.

Maintaining this facility requires continuous investments to ensure safety and uninterrupted operations. Then this next slide shows our FY twenty six position count by fund FTE. This slide reflects our 2027 authorized staffing level of 233 positions with a 120 a 169 currently filled as as of February. These positions are fully funded and essential to maintaining safe, secure, and effective operations. We continue to work closely with HR and finance part our HR and finance partners to align staffing with our operational needs.

Our FY twenty twenty seven proposed budget general fund. I'll close with an overview of our FY twenty seven proposed general fund budget. Our per our proposed budget reflects a balanced approach, maintaining operational readiness while remaining fiscally responsible. Personnel and benefits totaling totals approximately $20,700,000. This include our security staff as well as our support staff, our medical team, our food service team, our administrative team, our booking team.

And this also covers Grady Hospital, Court Security, and ACDC. This ensures we sustain the staffing level required to safely operate a twenty four seven facility. Contract and supplies. Contracted services remained stable at approximately $3,600,000 and supplies at 2,800,000 supported essential operations without significant change. Overall, our FY twenty seven budget totals $27,732,824, reflecting a minimal variance of about 1%.

This budget allows us to maintain a safe, stable,

and

consistent operations while meeting responsibilities for care and custody. Maintaining that responsibility requires a sustained investment in staffing, infrastructure, and operational support. This funding helps us avoid the type of challenges we've seen elsewhere and position us to continue operating at a high standard while while minimizing risk. Thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for your continued support of our women and men at the Department of Corrections. I also want to just quickly recognize our officers as well as our professional staff at the Department of Corrections for their professional and daily commitment to this work.

This week, we're actually celebrating Corrections Week, with our employees as a way to honor their service and sacrifice. Thank you again, and we appreciate your time and available for any comments or questions.

Thank you, chief Dancey. We have questions from colleagues, and we'll start off with council member one.

Thank you, mister chair, and thank you chief. I wanna thank you and your team for your service. I I think you referenced it. You hit the nail on the head. I mean, we we see the challenges other operations have had, and and it's nice to know that y'all are focused on preventing us from being in those headlines. Wanted to look at your staffing level on page four. I'm gonna make the same request that of that those positions wanna know which ones are funded and or unfunded. So if you can provide that to us after later, that's fine. You're asking for seven additional FTEs for FY '27. Can you give me a kind of an overview of what those positions are?

I mean, I feel like we're a phase where we should be going the other direction. So just wanted you to justify the addition.

Absolutely. So we definitely closely evaluate all of our positions. One, we wanted a high level position for additional oversight with a lot of additional traffic that we have in and out of the facility, especially with Fulton County, but also Grady Hospital to expand that. We've had some challenges there, especially relieving our officers as well as, one and, two escapes. So we wanna shore up that, as well as staffing in that space. So right now, we are able to collapse positions, work a little overtime, but this will help us, especially in the Grady Detention space, where, as I mentioned, is an open campus and provides an additional vulnerability for us.

Okay, I I'm sure we'll see more detail on that during the personnel paper deliberation, but I also I'm presuming that those are seven new positions and you're not abolishing any positions that you have currently.

We are, as I mentioned, closely looking at our position, so we are working with HR. We have identified some positions that we can abolish.

Okay,

so we again, we're trying to be fiscally responsible as well as maintaining safety across all of our facilities.

So what I hear is we may see some abolishments from y'all when with the personal papers before us later this season.

Yes, sir.

Okay. To your budget request, I have to admit I'm a little surprised to see everything's kinda flat. I mean, there's some savings that you're getting from, pension as well as health insurance, but everything else is flat, salaries, supplies,

all

that, which suggests to me that you are intending and planning to operate status quo for the entire fiscal year despite the fact that it's my understanding that our lease with Fulton County ends at the end of the year. So what's the what's the plan post that for this for the second half of fiscal year? And I I don't know if that's a you question or administration question, but, again, I I that was a surprise to me.

I can So okay. Answer the question. So the FY '27 budget was rebaselined back to the '26 budget because the department's actually facing a slight surplus in terms of their personnel line item where we're projecting them to be at the end of the year. So they've operated efficiently. They're gonna have some salary savings going into next year.

And instead of scaling back their personnel line items, we kept it flat to give them a little bit more capacity going into next year. So I think if you look at their projection projected year end salary numbers, They're expected to end the year total personnel at 19,800,000 and allowing them to have the 20,700,000 again for '27 just gives them a little bit more runway going into the FY '27 year.

Okay. That explains kind of the financial pieces of it, but I'm trying to understand the operational plan or anticipation of 01/01/2027 post Fulton County lease?

So so I would just definitely say that this budget reflects a disciplined approach. It allows us to continue to do what we've been doing while remaining fiscally responsible. So with staffing, at this point, as you know, Fulton County is responsible for staffing their security team as well as medical and food service. So there's not gonna be a significant shift or impact with that. So if we could sustain what we have with the as well as fill the vacancies, that will will definitely continue to be in good shape.

So, with the focus on ACDC, of course, court security. Court is open every day except Sunday. And then again, as I mentioned, Grady detention. So I don't see any, you know, pain points with that. The 27,700,000 would put us in a good place.

Maybe I'm not asking the question in the right way. So we've got the lease. And, I mean, I remember the discussions we've had and from adjustments we had to make from '24 to '25 because there were some kind of unexpected things that we needed to do despite the fact that that we were leasing the space to another entity. So we, you know, we go from 22,000,000 to 27,000,000 from '24 to '25. Great. And we we maintain that for '26. But come 01/01/2027, are we just gonna keep operating everything the same way even though we don't have a lessee anymore? I I that's maybe maybe that's the way to ask the question. I mean, do

I'm sorry.

I don't hear So, again, I'll I'll try and ask the question a different way. So we, in 2025 and 2026, are we're operating at about 27, $28,000,000, and and we understood that was because we had a a tenant in our space. And come 01/01/2027 when that lease, in theory, is no longer in place, we're just gonna keep operating at full throttle the way we knowing as if we had a tenant in the space? I'm I'm trying to understand that because I I expected there would be another scale down back to the core functionality versus, again, having having let lessee in the space?

So, I can't I think I'm following you. If you look back at '24 where you say you saw the shift in '22, a lot of that was overtime dollars where we kind of that that those numbers went down to impact our FTEs and extra help to assist in that space. So a lot of that was absorbed with that. Again, we did move some personnel in key positions as well, especially with traffic coming into the facility and Fulton County coming in and out, but that's not a significant amount of personnel. Again, most of our staff and we have to continue to maintain ACDC without direct supervision component system in place to manage that, have teams flexible so they could assist court, security, and Grady.

So those personnel over the last four or five years have been working in that space with similar numbers. We were just able to use overtime dollars back in 2324 as Fulton first came on board in '22. The latter part of '22 when we had lower staff in numbers but utilizing overtime.

Alright. I'm gonna try one last time, and then I'm I'm gonna move on. So what you said was we had to make adjustments through overtime and otherwise when when Fulton moved in. Right? And now Fulton, in theory, is about to move out. So but what I'm not seeing is that we're not going to make any adjustments. There was no incremental adjustment actually needed for Fulton being in there because we're not having to make any adjustments once they're out. Is that correct? And I see the COO back there as well. I may not be answer asking the question the right way.

Maybe I'm not explaining it right, but staffing is not significantly impacted by Fulton whether they are here or not because they have their own staff here in place for security. Is that I we are responsible for maintenance costs as they occupy housing space.

Yep. That doesn't align with I feel like over time once they went in, there were new budget requests made to us as a result of their being in the building and and some that we weren't expecting. And maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I'm happy to go back and I'll I'll look at the budget hearing tapes from from previous years. But, again, I was expecting there would be a a throttle down, not a 100%, but at least a shift backwards because we were no longer, having to manage, someone else being in our in our building in that use.

If I if I can I'm sorry, chief. If I can jump in for one moment. So council member, Juan, completely understand your question, but I think what you're hearing from chief Dancy is that you may see a small scale back. Some of the increases that we asked for as Fulton County was coming in, some of that was building maintenance for parts of the jail that had not been used for some periods of time and needed a little love and attention. So that was some, not major love and attention, but it did need some.

So that was some from a building maintenance perspective. I think what a lot of people may be missing is that whether Fulton County is in there or not, for the inmates who come into the correction center at ACDC, they still have to be separated by male, female, mental illness, juveniles. So you have to make sure that you are staffed to be able to separate accordingly, and on directed supervision. So I do think as Fulton County transitions out, you will see some scale back, but I don't think it'll be this big number that you may be thinking of because we're still maintaining the building. We still have all of those, and you still need the level of staffing for Grady Hospital because we don't want police officers sitting on people who are there to be locked up after they are released.

And you will still have some staffing in the jail, not knowing some days what category of people you may get in that have to be separated.

Yeah. I I definitely get that. So, again, I wasn't suggesting there'd be a 100% throttle back. But what makes me based on what you said, you said you we may see I I would think we should see some Some. Some pullback. As this year, general fund dollars are so precious, we see departments that are getting cut. What I've heard today, two things that trouble me. One is there's cushion in this one. The intentional cushion because they ran 1,200,000 less for f y twenty six, but we're gonna go ahead and give it to them just in case. So that's a problem.

Now the second problem is, yes, we we should see some scale back, but that's not here in the budget. All the scale back dollars are simply pension and health insurance. So I don't know what that dollar is, but, obviously, we're already in the millions of extra money here. And when we hear some of the other budget hearings when we're seeing cuts in other what I consider critical functions, there's there is a reconciling that I'm gonna have to do mentally on that. So thank you. I appreciate the the answers to the question, but, yeah, I'll just log my concerns at this point based on what I've heard today. Thank

you. Alright.

Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Councilmember Martin.

Thank you so much, mister chair, and thank you all for what you do helping to take care of our unhoused neighbors during Atlanta's crazy weather. It can be eighty five one week and below freezing the next, but you all are always there to help us kinda meet that that need with housing and, you know, warm accommodations, those kind of things, and it does not go missed. And I appreciate it. I know my colleague, councilor Boone, does as well. My question is about talking I've talked to some officers, and they've they they're sometimes bringing up there's a challenge around Grady corrections and making sure Grady corrections and making sure that that they can be relieved by you know, their their our APD officers are having to sometimes sit too long on the the Grady with the Grady detainees.

And then when it's time for them to try to transition back onto their beats or back into their duty stations, they can't because it's sometimes difficult to locate a corrections officer. Is there is there do you have any insights on that and how we can make sure we solve for that so we can get our officers back on the streets, our APD officers back on the streets, and our corrections officers, you know, over to the the you know, away from having to sit on these detainees so long?

Yes, sir. That's definitely been a a long term target of for our team. As you remember, I used to work APD, so I remember calling sheriff Labatt back then

Yeah.

About our officers sitting there, but I could tell you our team has made significant improvement. We have a contract security company there that worked with us to help assist with that. Our leadership structure has the flexibility to move personnel from ACDC to Grady Hospital as needed. We have seen, and we have started tracking those numbers in partnership with APD. Chief Schirbaum used to call me a lot, over about a year ago, but we have seen a significant drop in the hours.

So we track it by hours, how many hours per week they are officers are sitting on detainees. Last week, I think they sat for about sixteen hours that I saw. Mhmm. And some of it is built in because they have to process paperwork and so forth. The week before that, we were down to five.

Okay.

This if you look back a year ago, we were in eighties, close to a 100. So there has been a significant reduction, but we definitely continue to monitor that and work closely with our APD partners to make sure we impact that because we do understand how important it is for them to return back in service.

Fantastic, and we appreciate you, you know, being aware of repentant until it lets continue to trend downward. Other than that, I appreciate you all for what you are and what you mean to the city in terms of keeping us safe, and I'm grateful. Thank you. Thank you.

Alright, thank you. Councilmember Hillis.

Thank you, mister chair. I don't know that I really have any questions. I'm just gonna kinda continue and harp on councilmember Juan's point. Now at the end of

the

day, city decided decades ago to build a facility that houses 1,300 inmates when we have a day average daily population of I mean, it got down to the thirties and forties. What is ADP now? Close to a 100.

A a ACDC is close to a 100. Okay.

Well, still

less than 10 between percent. 80 to about a 110.

Okay.

Yes, sir. But still So 10% of its built capacity. $27,000,000 out of the general fund budget, whereas council member Juan pointed to all departments are wanting to grasp for money. We're wanting to see streets paved, actual services the city is supposed to provide. And it sounds to me like there's almost an assumption that we're just gonna continue to carry Fulton County's water for them.

You know, they don't do things in their charter that they're supposed to do. For everyone, and I bring up this point almost every year, everyone here that lives in the city of Atlanta open up their tax bill that I'm sure they got a few months ago. And look at what you pay the city of Atlanta, and look at what you pay Fulton County. Give or take a little bit, it's about the same. We can talk about the other half later. Half of it goes to APS. But they're supposed to buy provide animal services. We have to pay them extra for it. They're supposed to provide health and human services, including affordable housing. We have to step into that vein.

We now have to because they won't either renovate a jail or build a jail and just talk about it for years, we're supposed to provide them with 700 beds at our jail. So I I don't think, you know, it's safe to assume that this body just wanna rubber stamp another lease to continue carrying Fulton County's water for them because, you know, I'm certainly not gonna be in that that realm. And the city doesn't need to continue to operate a 1,300 bed jail when its ADP is is and has been for years under ten percent of that. So I'll just leave it at that. Again, not a question, just a statement. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Councilmember McAullins.

Thank you. And thank you to my colleagues. I know last year when we had this conversation, we were talking about the same thing in terms of looking at the numbers and the the impact and the effectiveness. And so my question is, has there been any conversation? Because I do know the Department of Corrections do more than that than just the, support for ACDC.

What has been the conversation, in terms of the potential redesign, reorg, re envisioning of what the of what this could be, of what the net because now it's Department of Corrections and Community Services of what that could be. Because I think what you're hearing from us is that it is very it's very hard to justify this invest the the investment or this budget request with the numbers that we're seeing, but we also understand and recognize the impact that the department and the team has in the community in itself. I do think all of us are expressing the hesitation in terms of continuing with Fulton County, just based on also some of the other resource pieces that we wanna make sure that, our other entities are being held accountable for. So the only question I have on my end is what has been the conversation, if any, in terms of what this work looks like beyond once ACDC is no longer inactive? What is the conversation in terms of, like, the other services, partnerships, all of those things, that would be great.

So we will definitely continue to do the things we talked about that we do in the community, of course, especially doing emergency incidents, unforeseen types of situation. But I just I just wanna reenter reiterate that I know we talked about our average daily population, which is right around 100, but that includes, a lot of services to sustain that for our detainees. Our booking numbers are not included in that where we have individuals coming in and processing out. I think it's critical that these dollars are made available for us to continue to to maintain medical service for these detainees, the food service we're required to provide for them three, meals a day, as well as the security staffing in a direct supervision, environment where we have to separate individuals by age, of course, sex, and so forth. So, our department is the only department in the city of Atlanta that's entrusted with the care and custody of human lives, and we don't take that lightly.

And, we are statutorily and constitutionally required to maintain the care and custody of our detainees. So, any reduction should be or any consideration should be balanced against that. It it definitely takes a lot. I definitely understand the questions about Fulton County, but we are always in partnership with the budget team, HR, always doing a deep dive to make sure that we justify the positions that we have and the other things that are needed. But we are talking about a facility that is that was started.

They started building it in the early nineties. It's right at 30 or almost 30 years old, almost the same age as Rice Street. But the city has done a good job in investing in that facility to, sustain it, but it definitely has a lot of wear and tear. And a part of this budget is to help continue that as well. So I I just wanted to make sure we highlight that.

As I mentioned, I think this budget will put us in a good space. So I definitely hope you consider the proposed budget so we could sustain what we have been doing and providing the quality service for our detainees so that we can avoid some of the things that we've heard in the news with, inhumane treatment, inadequate staffing, and inadequate supervision, and so forth. These are the things that we take seriously, and I know you hold us accountable for. So I wanna make sure that, you know, I echo that as we try to take care of our folks in our custody.

Alright. Thank you. Council member Bond.

Yeah. Thank you. I think council member Collins asked some really great questions around, you know, how how we are allocating city resources, especially if we're seeing corrections move into more, you know, community engagement type work and what that could look like in the future. Question. I was surprised to hear that the the numbers at the jail are around a 100 right now. Do we know what's driving that increase?

So I don't know how far you're going back with the increase, but obviously, when I first came on board, we had COVID that impacted those numbers. We had bail release.

Mhmm.

That has changed with state laws, a senate state bill 163, senate bill 163. We've seen an uptick as a result of that, and those numbers have kinda hit a ceiling right around 100. They go below occasionally, obviously, with APD and other details that they may have. Those numbers fluctuate, but we have, seen those, at that point for about a couple of years now. Roughly, as I mentioned, 80 to about a 110 average daily population.

Our turnaround, stay is about two to three days, so we have a lot of traffic coming in and out. And as I mentioned, that does not count the booking numbers that our team has to continuously process in and out as well.

Mhmm. And pardon my ignorance. Can you explain what that house bill is that you're referring to?

So, basically, the judicial the release that, we had prior to that with the order that was signed by mayor Bottoms, that they ended that, and now judicial, proceedings will mandate when they can be released. So that has changed or really slowed down some of the release that we have seen in the past

Okay.

Which has overall, of course, impacted the numbers.

And so in the you know, we've had a lot of conversations recently about, you know, the use of diversion by APD and making sure that people who are arrested for, divertable charges are you know, it it it it's been declared top priority to make sure those people, are offered diversion services. Do you all have numbers or a statistical breakdown of how many people go to the jail on divertable charges or ACDC?

No. We don't track that. And, of course, we are detached from the diversion center component, although they we are sharing space. We have a great relationship with Karen and her team. We work closely with them, but we are not as like APD and some of the law enforcement agencies, we are not directly involved in that because, of course, if they are moved through our space, we process them in as a regular arrest and not in that volunteer base setup that they have.

Mhmm. Yeah. I would I would love to look more into that because this is news to me as a new council member that those numbers have gone up since the conversation around closing ACDC happened. So I'd love to explore that more. I also had a question about, what what is the logic behind the Department of Corrections handling the warming centers and food drives and things like that?

So we have a commercial industrial type of kitchen where we could produce a mass amount of few food in a short period of time. Mhmm. So in a way to assist our community with those needs, especially during emergencies, our vulnerable citizens, our team, is always ready and able to step in that space, and they have done a good job. They go above and beyond. A lot of it is kinda out of sight.

We call it behind the walls. But not only do they do food service, but they also provide laundry service, when they are sleeping in those warming centers, all of the linen we provide, and we also laundry do laundry service as well as other supplies because we get them in bulk. So if they need toiletries, supplies, and so forth, we work with the mayor's office of emergency preparedness to consistently provide those items, during those emergency types of situations. So, thank you for that question because I do wanna highlight our team that work on those projects in addition to what we do every day at ACDC for our detainees that we are responsible for.

Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. I do I do wonder if long term, it would make more sense to house that work under another department, especially as we're talking about you know, ultimately, you know, we we did decide to close the jail. And as council member one spoke to, that that lease will end with Fulton County at some point. And, so I I would just love to explore what it would look like to house those services under under a different department. I think that would make a lot of sense. Thank you. Those are all my questions.

Alright. Thank you. We do not have any other questions from colleagues.

I do. I do.

Councilmember Boone.

Yes.

Without going this going out, Seth, you all do a great job with our homeless population. I spoke with them the last time they were in Old Adamsville, and this was one of the first times that an individual was able to actually brush his teeth because of the the supplies that you all give them, blankets, hot meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I wish wish that wonderful kitchen staff was here because it said it reminded him of what his mother used to give him for breakfast. We have a lot of mental illness. You all, deal with them on a regular basis and what you all do should be commended.

We have a clay safe, clean, and sanitary facility. Safe, clean, and sanitary. And you all always, always go above and beyond the call of duty in making sure that they have their medication on time. I know because the folks at Jackson Memorial and Mount Calvary, when they're grandchildren, we have to call you all about their grandchildren. They feel comfortable once they get a call from the chief himself.

So again, thank you all so much for going way above what you all could be doing for our homeless and those that are in prison, sometimes temporary, and then go back to Rice Street and then come back to you Clayton County. Very few incidents, and I hear that it's very clean. So, again, thank you all so much.

Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. And I think that was our last question from council members. So, chief Dancey, we appreciate you and your team coming up for your presentation today and look forward to continue conversations around the budget budget proposal. Colleagues, that does take us to our lunch recess for today.

We'll be back this afternoon starting at 1PM with the Atlanta Police Department. Then at 02:30, we will have the Atlanta Citizens Review Board, and we will end the day at 03:30 with the Department of Procurement. And with that, we are adjourned for recess. Thank you. Well, we're glad to welcome chief Schierbaum and the Atlanta Police Department, for their hearing.

So chief, we'll turn it over to you. Thank you.

Thank you, council member, and good afternoon, everyone. We wanna start by thanking you for your service to our city and all of our citizens that you represent, being advocates, for their safety and care and the partnership you bring, each and every day with our zones and the department for the good of your district. So I wanna start by introducing those that are with me today. Mister chair, I wanna start to my far right, our deputy chief administrative officer, mister Emmett Orr. To my immediate right is chief Carvin Tiest, the former commander of Zone 4 council member Boone, who does a very capable and able job as our assistant chief.

Our chief administrative officer who runs all the business operations of the Atlanta Police Department, mister Marshall Freeman. To his immediate left is our budget management chief Yolanda Pasquale, and then to her immediate left is the executive director of our e nine one one center, Desiree Arnold. We also have three others in the room. The chief of staff for the chief's office, which many of you, correspond to our office with. Peter Reese is here.

Also, Laline Parks, the deputy director of code enforcement, as well as Craig Burrell, our most recent commander of license and permits. Who is not here that I wanna acknowledge is the officers, the civilian team members of the Atlanta Police Department. While we are here, giving the report on our stewardship of the taxpayer dollars, while we speak and overnight while we slept, men and women of the police department were hard at work protecting our city, responding to difficult and dangerous situations, and doing the work that we expected them. So And I wanna start this presentation by acknowledging each and every one of of those members of our team. The admission of the Atlanta Police Department, as you know, we've seen this many times on, our report outs, but our our goal each and every day is to be good at what we do, whatever we're called upon to do, and be trusted by the community when we arrive and we depart the scene.

Today in this presentation, we wanna give you a report on the use of the funds entrusted to us last year for the last year for the fiscal year and how that will be used for the betterment of our city as we go into the new fiscal year. The priorities of the Atlanta Police Departments are to continue to grow back to our authorized strength. So when you call us to assist the members of your district, we're there to be able to do that. We wanna continue to deploy smart crime fighting techniques that build trust with the community while elevating the safety of our neighborhoods, continue to align being a twenty first century policing agency, which we were recognized being them being a department of excellence, maintaining our accreditation, showing that we are best in class across the country. A quick overview of the structure of the Atlanta Police Department.

As you know, when mayor Dickens came into office, one of his first initiatives was to realign the organization to develop a chief administrative office arm for two reasons, made sure we had civilian talent filling the key business roles of the organization, addressing those pressure points that existed around HR issues, fleet of facilities, technology, and also to make sure we could reassign sworn personnel out of those duties back into the organization. And so chief Taillas runs the operational side of the organization. CAO Freeman operates the other side of the house, which makes sure we are optimizing our support of the citizens. And when you call us, we're in that position. I wanna thank the mayor for giving us the talent we need in personnel and in the structure that we have to be able to serve this city.

Give you a quick update on our structure our current progress in fighting crime, which is done with many different ways. As you know, we ended last year with overall crime down 66% in our city. Last year, we ended with our third year reduction of homicides and shootings in Atlanta. Glad to report as we stand here today, we continue to see positive trends in almost every area. The two outliers of that are aggravated assaults where we had seen an uptick earlier in the year of dwelling shootings, which elevated that.

We also have seen a surprising increase of individuals using knives in fights as well as pointing of weapons, which counts as an aggravated assault. So the trends you see here as we start the summer months are encouraging. We still even when you see the negative signs by homicide and person shot, we still have too many homicides and too many aggravated assaults in our city, and we're gonna continue to aggressively target that, and it's gonna be part of the presentation as we go throughout the the next hour and a half. To give you an update on our crime fighting, last year, as you know, we awarded the crime reduction award to Zone 4 for their overall reduction of crime over the previous year. Councilman Martin and Boone, I see you nodding and agree with that.

Thank you for your support of major Clay and his team. They were able to see a 20% reduction in their crime over the previous year. We know we still have work to do along the Martin Luther King Corridor and other neighborhoods as well, so we never rest on the success of a negative in front of percent sign. We continue to work where the data tells us to go to where the citizens ask their police department to be. Zone 4 gets a lot of credit.

We have a high number of commit a high level of community involvement providing tips, joining neighborhood watches, and integrating their cameras, and providing information to the police department. In 2022, when mayor Dickens came to office, we were continuing with the highest homicide rate the city had seen in over thirty years. In fact, that year, one hundred and seventy one citizens would lose their lives to homicide in Atlanta, Georgia. One of the areas that we had to quickly get to work on was targeting the gangs, guns, and drugs that we could see in 2022 that was driving the violent gun crime in the city. We started targeting those three areas.

Since that time, from 2023 to 2025, we have charged a 385 different gang members for carrying out gang activity in the city, placing them before court. And unfortunately, we charged 29 juveniles, under the age of 17 who were also part of a gang and carrying out, felony criminal activity in our city. We doubled that with shutting down drug dealing operations that if left operating in any portion of our city, any NPU, any neighborhood, any council district will bleed breed gun violence. We have shut down 301 unique drug dealing operations from twenty twenty two, three, and '4. And I'm sorry.

'22, '23, '24, and 2025. And so far this year, we have already shut down 32 unique drug dealing operations, and that doesn't count the two that we shut down this morning. That while we're preparing to come over here, us and the Georgia State Patrol, we're simultaneously targeting two different drug dealing operations in the city. This is gonna be our commitment to make sure we focus on those. Those 301 locations netted 495 guns that we took out of the hands of individuals that would have to use those guns to protect their drug business or to be able to further the property that they want to operate in.

So I wanna thank the men and women of the Atlanta Police Department, our partners at the GBI, the Georgia State Patrol, and elsewhere that help us do that very dangerous work, and I just pray for the safety of our officers that continue to work in that space. Since 2022, we've removed 12,821 guns from the street. Those are 12,821 guns whose triggers will not be pulled in our parks, on our streets, in any of our any of your districts. We continue to remove those through targeted enforcement activities, criminal investigations, recovering them where they're stashed and may be found by children in other areas. And I wanna thank the department for their work in that space.

We're joined in this effort by a wide range of agencies that join us, the Fort County sheriff, the number of sheriffs in in the region, the ATF, the FBI, the US Marshals, the attorney general's office. We're very fortunate to have a number of agencies that join us throughout these various initiatives. This work, and not just taking gangs, guns, and drugs off the street, but the nightlife initiatives, the summer youth employment initiatives, the lighting initiatives that are underway, each of the town halls you have held. You've helped us distribute gun locks, the year of the youth, our internship programs. Since 2022, we have seen a 19% reduction of shootings in our city, and we've also seen a 42% reduction in homicides since 2022.

And so I wanna thank each of you for your efforts in your districts, promoting youth initiatives, encouraging individuals to go to our promise centers, to our power centers, we'll talk about in just a moment, to know that you have played an important role in that. And I just wanna give you one more statistic before I move on. On May 6 in '20 '22, there already had been 64 homicides in Atlanta, Georgia. This morning, there have been 28. 28 way too many.

28 that are rooted in people arguing over the most ridiculous things that one can argue about, and then a gun is handy. 28 that are rooted some in drugs and some in gangs were starting to see these results reduced, and we're gonna continue, mister chair and members of this committee, until we strive for zero in Atlanta, Georgia on May 6. But I do wanna thank everyone that's hearing this presentation whether you are a badge or you are a youth worker or you are a passionate faith leader or you lead an NPU for your efforts in making sure we have seen a drop from 20 from 64, to 28 on this day of May 6. Street racing continues to be a concern for those that contact the chief's office here at the Atlanta Police Department. I want to assure you all that we continue to aggressively target street racing that may occur in your districts.

Last year, we arrested 22 individuals and then went after five individuals that may have left the scene. Already were at 13 this year and five through warrants. We work aggressively across the region as we see many of the individuals committing street racing in Atlanta who do not reside in our city. So we visit them in Gwinnett. We visit them in DeKalb, and we visit at their home. Let them know they're promoting it. We believe they may be participating in it, and we will bring charges when that occurs. Our license and permits unit is an important part of how this police department works to do its our part in the overall safety plan for one safe city. I'm proud to report that our compliance checks from 2024 to 2025 this calendar year increased by 24% throughout the city. This is clubs and all businesses regulated by us.

Also reporting that we are working aggressively to address those businesses in your districts that are operating the coin operated amusement machines illegally by giving payouts that then lead to robberies inside the store, which can lead to murders and have already this year and can lead to robberies and shootings outside. The Georgia Lottery Commission as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation have assisted us in a number of details. And since 2023, we have conducted 21, detailed investigations, served eight warrants seizing gaming machines, asking the state to remove their license. And when we do see a reduction, around violence in neighborhoods, you can generally go back and see that we have shut down a coin operated, amusement machine that was being illegally operated in that area, that's our commitment to continue to do so. Enforcement is obviously what we're charged to do, through the the charter of of the city to ensure enforce all state and city ordinances, but we do believe in prevention, and we believe in going after the core factors that cause people to commit crime or if crime occur in our city.

One of those key components is the At Promise Center. Very happy to report that in the first quarter of this year, along the Martin Luther King corridor, we opened our fourth At Promise Center. At Promise Centers gives us the ability for young men and women of our city ages 12 to 24 to provide them academic support, counseling, and behavioral health support, skill building, de escalation, employment assistance, food support for them and the family, credit recovery, and preparing them for adult life and to navigate the complexities of the juvenile life. This is the four centers that we now have opened. And last year, 1,443 young men and women of this city were served through the At Promise Centers, which we now have officers assigned to every single one of those.

And I wanna thank everyone. Please, next time you're driving past an At Promise Center, stop in and go in and look at the number of community partners that come to that space, from the boys and girls clubs to so many. If I start naming them, I'm gonna get a nasty email at the the end that I didn't name them all. I wanna start there. Hopefully, that was alphabetically.

But we want to thank those partners because the involvement there makes sure that we do not have some of the crime that we may see elsewhere. But it just wasn't the four at Promise Centers. Your police department operates by virtue of the funds entrusted us to police athletic league centers for young men and women of our cities ages eight to 18. And last year, we provided services to 481 young men and women of this city, ages eight to 18. The year before that, it was April, and the year before that, it was four forty eight.

And while I do not chair the finance committee, that was an increase each year, mister chairman, of each of those numbers. I wanna also give what I think is an important contrast. In 2023, this department charged 13 juveniles for being involved in a gang and carrying out felony activity as part of that gang. That same year, we assisted 448 young men and women in our promise in our POW centers. Six people individuals charged as a juvenile gang member, four seventy three the next year, and then 10 last year, four eighty one.

So when I tell you this department is committed to both aggressive and smart crime fighting and making sure we're preventing crime in our city, I hope those numbers show when you entrust us with funds to be able to care for the city that it goes into both areas. The diversion center began operation January covering a portion of the fiscal year that we're in. Of the 1,000 of the individuals that were diverted to the promise to the diversion center last year, 86% of them were diverted by the Atlanta Police Department. There are over 20 agencies that can divert to the diversion center. Two of those agencies have full county jurisdiction, but the Atlanta Police Department was responsible for 86% of those, and we will continue to make sure that we act maximize the knowledge and the usage where appropriate, throughout the organization, encouraging the use of the diversion center where it is the best fit for the safety of our citizens and the individuals that we're encountering.

And so far this year, as we appear before you, we have diverted 518 individuals to the diversion center. 518 individuals were not for that diversion, would have either appeared at the city detention center or the Fulton County Jail. Now while we do not have a golden tempo as part of the Atlanta Police Department, we do maintain a mountain patrol that has been very effective in serving the safety of the city that you allowed us to maintain. Last year, we retired two of our horses, Gambit and Cody, but we welcomed the Atlanta Police Department three horses, Jackpot, Rudy, and Johnny Be Good. And many of you have seen those horses in your districts.

We use that resource for community events. Last year, we did a 107 community events using our mounted patrols, already 26 this year. Last year, they deployed into 350 directed patrols throughout the parks of Atlanta, Georgia so far this year. They're already at 218, and they participated last year in 43 special details, be it a large scale event that we're protecting, a specific search for an individual, a child, an elderly person that may have been missing for those individuals. We thank you for giving us that resources which is unique and allows us to be effective in being good at what we do and building public trust.

But this year, the the Mount of Patrol will learn that their the role that will also grow a little bit is preparing for FIFA. We know in just a few days, we will start those games here in the city, and you will see the Mountain Patrol, which you allowed us to allow us to maintain, actively present in those spaces being a key contributor to the safety of the games. In the fiscal year, on September 9, we opened we broke ground on the Zone 4 Precinct. And if you haven't driven by there recently, it is it's moving along nicely. We anticipate in the fiscal year for the budget year considering that we will be opening the new Zone 4 Precinct.

So that will be open and used with the funds that you are considering for distribution now. We wanna thank DEEM. Zone 4 is the only zone where there is not a city, a pump, either present in the zone or right on the border. That means the communities of Zone 4 often sees their police officers leave for an extended period of time before they can refuel. Now we have we did under mayor Dickens distribute gas cards to everyone, so we were able to stop that early in the mayor's administration.

But come March, they will be able to fuel right there in the zone, which will help us to again remain present. It will also help us during times of contingency operations around inclement weather, special details to be able to have those fuel pumps there. So I wanna thank Dean for listening to our concern about not having fuel pumps in Zone 4 and rectifying that for us for the good of the citizens that reside in those neighborhoods. Also, in this year, we opened our new range, which was December. It wasn't just one range.

We opened two at that location. That gave us a benefit of being able to provide for the training needs of a of a growing police department. It also gave us new classrooms, staff spaces, armors area, as well cleaning areas, for our officers and staff. It has allowed us to place the the former range on Key Road in an auxiliary status, meaning it's only used when needed, and the citizens that live in close proximity to that have already noticed a sharp drop off of the use of that range as the range is now indoors, and it is in an industrial area and citizens no longer hear the state mandated training being carried out in that space. What you recognize now, the first time citizens generally interact with their police department and fire departments when they call 911, and I want to highlight the efforts to improve 911 and the successes improving 911 through the funds that you provide to us to do so.

It's just not my recognition. Last year in 2025, the international the Association of Public Safety Communication Officials known as APCO named the Atlanta e nine one one Center's international team of the year for their efforts in reducing answer times and the process and technology enhancements they brought on board. And so I wanna thank director Arnold for her team's effort. Now this is an international organization and why I constantly believe Atlanta is best in the world. Now we have someone else telling us that when they name our nine one one center in the best.

But also last year, the Georgia Emergency Communications Conference named the Atlanta nine one one center team of the year and provided supervisor of the year award to one of our team members for their work during the attack at the Emory campus in the c d d CDC center. And so, again, acknowledging their work. And last year for the second year in a row, our e nine one one center was, awarded a department commendation at the Crimus Toast. And so please show up in just a couple months. You could see if they're a three year in a row winner.

Now this is why this is also important. The Atlanta e nine one one center is the busiest e nine one one center in the state of Georgia. Last year, they answered 1,208,453 calls. That is 3,310.83 a day. So far this year, while we've each been carrying our respective duties on behalf of the city, they have already answered 368,421 unique 911 calls.

In 2022, when the mayor came to office, the average answer time for a 911 call in Atlanta, Georgia was thirty seconds. It's thirty seconds why that a medical emergency is playing out. It's thirty seconds why the fire is burning. Because of enhancements in technology, which you all provide for, because of enhancements in processes, which you all provide for, by responding to the mayor's budget request last year, the average answer time had dropped to eleven seconds. With our best month being May 2025 when the average answer time was six seconds.

So I want to thank the team for their continued efforts to be able to reduce those answer times in times of crisis, and we're gonna continue to work in that space. You all have helped us promote our web portal submissions. Meaning, if you have an issue that doesn't have a fire or an active crime in progress or a medical emergency, but it still needs a response of your police department, you can notify us through the web of that parking complaint, that barking dog, another matter that will immediately go into the queue. You also have promoted text to 911 and make the right call versing 311 over 911. That too has contributed to the drop, to eleven seconds last year, and we continue to look forward to a drop this year in the funds that you have provided us to carry out that important service to our city.

But there's one of those process optimizations enhancements that I wanna highlight. Up until this yes. Up until Monday of this week, when an or of last month, I apologize, when a citizen of this city called reporting a medical emergency, and some of that may have been you, you know that once we answer that 911 call, we had to send that call to another 911 center. So if you lived in Fulton County, we had to send that 911 call to Grady EMS Dispatch Center for the call to be triaged, questions to be answered, and pre arrival instructions to be given. And that also goes to DeKalb County.

Under the direction of of of our deputy of our director, under the support of of our mayor and the funds that you provided the process, we have been in the works for the last one and a half years to change that. That when you call 911, the person that answers the phone can triage the call and can provide you pre arrival instructions. We've been training our staff. We now have 65 staff members that are trained to be emergency medical dispatch certified. April 6, we co located Grady EMS dispatch into our nine one one center.

And then on Monday of this week, on April 4, we started our first day being an emergency medical dispatch protocol. And on that day, 109 citizens calling the city when the first person answered the phone was able to triage their medical call and provide them pre arrival instructions for bleeding, CPR, any emergency we may have encountered. This is a major step forward for the busiest nine one one center in Georgia. And so I do wanna thank you, director Arnold, for you and your work. I wanna thank mister Freeman for your team, for the mayor providing us the resources we need, and you all providing that through funding to allow us to be in that space.

This is a new process for us. We are still working on areas. Our next goal is to be able to work out something similar with our residents of DeKalb County who reside on that side to be able to bring on, that side of the city as well. But this is a huge accomplishment, and I hope, that you're pleased with the use of, the funds provided to us to be able to establish that. We also had 17 dispatchers certified as tactical dispatchers to be able to guide us to barricaded gunmen, active shootings, bus hijackings, jumpers on overpasses in that space, and then we are very close.

While we are an accredited law enforcement agency, one of 700 out of 18,000 agencies in The United States, we will soon have our e nine one one center accredited as well, and we are very close to doing that. And so I don't wanna give all my talking points for the next PSLA chairwoman Boone, but we'll be announcing that soon once we're accredited there. Yes. Also want to thank you all for your support for continuing us to grow Connect Atlanta, being able to bring more cameras into our video video integration center to help us with a wide range of calls. We commonly think of crime and calls in progress around vehicle thefts and break ins and shootings, but it is much more than that.

It's helping us find missing children, wondering Alzheimer's patients, be able to assist with traffic control issues, and able to mitigate emergencies playing out in the city. This budget will allow us to continue to support the camera infrastructure we have. I would like to note the the work of your respective council districts and the citizens of the city. Of the 27,438 cameras currently in our network, 12% of those are actually owned by the city and have been provided for by taxpayers' monies, 3,213. The rest are privately funded cameras that are integrated into the center.

As you know, the Atlanta Police Department assumes maintenance after the third year of each of the 3,200 cameras that we have, able to use those in the license plate readers to continue to impact and push the drop of violent crime in our city. We're very mindful of of concerns around rights and privacy with camera systems. We've we approach that very seriously. The same safeguards we have in place for other databases that are interest to us around strong SOPs, audit trails, being able to audit the activity there and holding individuals accountable that may abuse those are also in place as we protect the integrity of our video integration center, which is truly the twenty first century police neighborhood watch of of our time. We also, in technology, have our pilot underway for robot dogs that are currently in in place in the city.

We're using them now on city owned properties and also allowing private citizens to integrate them into the video integration center, which is being done, and we look forward to seeing that program, progress in the future. Code enforcement has also continued to take the funds, provided to the police department to increase their impact throughout the city. Inspections, fiscal year, July through April '25, it has increased 15% under the budget that we're currently operating under. Court cases filed have increased 36% year over year, and then we currently have a 48% increase in resolved cases in the courtroom. So I wanna thank the municipal court.

I wanna thank our solicitor for the city for taking the cases that the team puts before them out of court enforcement and being able to bring a resolution in each of those. We also worked on the safe and secure housing initiatives, 15 apartment complexes that have been adopted by the mayor's office, if you will, to make sure we enhance their safety around lighting, around police controls, around proper code enforcement. Those 15 apartment complex we're targeting have resulted in 1,134 code violations being found, and more than 1,000,000 in outstanding code violations and fees have been collected through those initiatives. And the courts have also, done actions requiring the property owners to do more around the safety of those areas. We're happy to report that staffing at the code enforcement, we are now at 100% of our authorized strength with 23 code enforcement officers, three of them which are assigned, to the Safe and Secure Housing Initiative, three of which are assigned as housing demolition officers, and we currently have four, additional officers that are onboarding as, that we're currently in the process of onboarding to get us to the 100% as well as on a code enforcement manager.

And so I do wanna thank, director Talley and her team's work in that space. We wanna thank you for being conduits from your neighborhoods. Another, initiative of the department in the fiscal year that we're in that we're gonna continue is the growth of the Atlanta Police To return to our authorized strength requires two initiatives. It requires us to recruit smartly and properly, and it requires us to retain. And I wanna thank our background recruitment team, which we had added additional staff to, and I wanna thank our mayor for being fully supportive of the police department and giving us the tools and resources we need for individuals to choose us and then to stay with us.

And I wanna give you a few numbers here. We have increased our hiring and recruitment events, and we have went heavily focusing on the region and the state of Georgia. In 2025, year to date, at this time, we'd had 49 hiring events so far this year. We've had 86 hiring events across the the region and the country. Since 2022, we've seen a 202% increase in our hiring events.

We did 110 hiring events. In 2022, we did 233 last year. I wanna really thank the AU Center that has opened their doors to us, allowing us to be present on the campuses of the AU Center as we go to HBCUs across the nation, colleges and universities, the brave men and women of our military as they're exiting that career, and interns that come through the the internship programs being able to be able to be promoted for us to promote the police department to them. We also have created a number of social video contents, many of that done by our own team, that has yielded over 2,000,000 views. What that has done, that has increased the application flow into the organization.

In 2022, there were 5,676 applications to the Atlanta Police Department. Last year, there were 14,026 individuals applying for employment to APD. We remain a department of quality over quantity. We continue to have a standard that says that not all 14,000 will get through the door. In fact, that's a very small percentage, but we need volume in to to be able to do that.

And so far this year, we have 4,048 individuals that have approached us and said they would like to be members of the Atlanta Police Department. But that's on our recruitment side. I wanna thank mayor Dickens. I wanna thank members of this committee for allowing us to have a department that's worth staying with. So not only do we look at our growth of the department through recruitment, who is staying with the organization, and to be able to target those things.

And we haven't launched a greener grass initiative through our deputy chief administrative officer highlighting all the reasons that we are a first class city and a first class organization. If you're gonna serve in law enforcement, be a civilian or a sworn member, this is the location you're gonna do most. You're gonna have the most impact, and it's worth the place to say. Pension being returned, salaries being made competitive, the take home card program, the training center, new precincts being built, parental leave, health care. There is a range of matters that we have put together in the greener grass initiative that we are highlighting in a consistent effort to ask the officers to stay with the Atlanta Police Department.

And we see it bearing results not only in our improved attrition, last year, but just comparing the first quarter, of last year to the first quarter of this year, we saw a 58% improvement in our attrition from the organization. Still gonna have individuals retiring. We just agreed that a member of our department that's retiring, after thirty years, on the elevator, we have individuals that, reached retirement date. Another reason is that we believe that these are the this is the right ground where to continue to get back to our authorized strength of the police department. Thank you, to everyone, the mayor and the council for supporting our take home car program.

That was the number one reason people were leaving us for neighboring jurisdictions as we did not have a take home car program. When the mayor came to office in 2022, 70% of our fleet was past life cycle. We had many days. We had more cars in the shop than we had on the street. That has changed. Thanks to, your and the mayor's support. We have purchased since 2023 seven hundred and seven new vehicles their apartment. I hope you're seeing them in your district. They're black. They're red, white, and blue, and they were designed by SCAD.

And so you're seeing them a visible presence throughout our city. 443 of those are in at homes of Atlanta police officers. We focus first officers that reside in Atlanta, Georgia, and make that the priority here. And then we have a, on the outside, it allows us to be more mobile, more flexible during times of crisis and unanticipated emergencies. It allows us to be more visible.

It allows us to be present at the events that we're called to, and then it also allows us to be at work working during times of contingency operations such as the two winter weather events, that we've already had this year. And so when we see weather events coming, we can project our absentee rate on where those storm systems are going, where our employees live. And by having employees in the city that have a take home car, program, we are able to continue to deliver our police services during times of inclement weather because of the Take Home Car program. So thank you, and thank you to mayor for giving us the ability to do that. Cameras are great.

Technologies are wonderful. Precincts are necessary, but the most important resource is our officers. It is our civilian team members. Wellness has been an initiative under the current budget. It will be in the next budget if approved. I wanna thank commissioner Blackburn and doctor Moore for their work around wellness, particularly of first responders. Chief Rod Smith, who you heard from earlier, has been a champion for, to making sure we're providing firefighters and police officers the support they need. In the budget year we are in, we opened our second wellness center. We have a fully, supported wellness center at Public Safety Headquarters. We have a second one, that's at the training center.

In this budget year, staff were added to now be present on evening and morning watch. We are not a bank. We're a police department. We operate twenty four hours a day, seven days awake, three hundred sixty five days a year, holidays included. And so we a third of our staff works in the evening, and a third of our staff works while you're while we're all asleep.

And to make sure we have mental health professionals on those shifts, being able to meet with our heroes in the fire and the police department and corrections and provide them guidance to how to navigate the stresses of life and the job. We our officers, as do our firefighters, see very traumatic and horrible scenes and incidents and knowing that over time that weighs on those that work for the fire and the police department. And so with the men and women of APD, we're working very hard to make sure that they have the resources on all three shifts, that we have the two wellness centers are properly staffed, that we are promoting wellness visits annually. When it's your birthday month, we are requiring some units and positions that have a wellness visit. We're encouraging all others to do it voluntarily throughout the course of the year.

There were a number of wellness events, not just the one that's happening in the atrium right now, but at our public safety training center, at precincts, and at headquarters. We did a number of events around health for females, health for males, alcohol awareness, healthy eating. We wanna make sure that for us to thrive being the protectors of the city that our members of the Atlanta Police Department thrive as being the individuals that they are. FIFA, as we sat here today, mister chairman, we are 40 from our first game in Atlanta, Georgia. And as we sat here today, members of the council, we are thirty six days from the very first fan fest that will take place in Centennial Olympic Park.

Your police department has been planning for the last two years to once again, thirty years later, welcome the world back to Atlanta, Georgia, and we're going to be World Cup ready. The chief administrative office has been working tirelessly to make sure that everyone we're mobilizing for this event will be provided all these logistic support that they need to be able to eat, to stay cool, to stay mobile, to be able to have everything they need from a lost child to a critical incident in the downtown space or anywhere in the city they have that that they need. We have been training nonstop, for the days are quickly approaching. Our special events division led by chief Hampton has been working to make sure the plans we have in place allows us to be able to protect the games, protect all associated with the games, and keep Atlanta safe. So we will be obviously doing that under two budgets.

Some of the money afforded to us in the current budget has been preparing for that, and then we will continue. We currently believe at this time that the expenses through the Atlanta Police Department to be able to protect the games for those five to five and a half weeks is approximately $29,700,000. 24,000,000 of that is an overtime expenses. As has already been reported out, that will be reimbursed by the federal government through the program that was established for that. And so that is underway, and so that is something that I hope is music to the ears of the council and to mister Bala that I thought I saw sitting at the back of the room.

I do wanna thank mister Freeman and his team who worked tirelessly to make sure that we accounted for all the necessary needs of the department to be able to have all the resources and equipment in place. We're also gonna have an additional 250 officers joining us from our other agencies. They're gonna be assigned to work alongside APD in the downtown space. It's gonna do a couple things. This is gonna allow us to keep resources present in the other 244 neighborhoods that are not hosting the games.

It's gonna allow us to still respond to any critical incident that occurs in Atlanta, Georgia during the games and to make sure that we're able to do whatever you call us to do during that time. Those agencies will also be reimbursed through that grant funding through their own mechanism, not the responsibilities of our budget during this time. We're also gonna see your department in a very few days start wearing a new uniform that has been designed to allow us to be more recognizable and comfortable during the World Cup games. And currently in Boston, that uniform has actually being recognized as the best dressed public safety law enforcement uniform by the Network Association of Uniform Manufacturers and Distributors, which I wanna note that. So it's very competitive landscape.

The fire department gets a lot of praise. We just wanna say we have a good cool uniform, so we wanna put that out there. Do you wanna talk about our our staffing as as we move into the the portion of how we use the funds entrusted to us last year to the funds that will be entrusted to us in the upcoming fiscal year? We currently stand at 548 very important civilian team members of the organization. This runs the gambit.

I will not get them all here, but I wanna mention the 169 that work in E 911 that we talked about early. Our public affairs units, I'm gonna talk about our our latent print examiners, our crime prevention inspectors, our crime scene techs, our community engagement teams, our GCIC teams, our admin teams, property. We would not be the successful Atlanta Police Department that we are without our civilian team members. I thank you all for what you do and for the efforts they do each and every day, and we continue to make sure that we provide for those areas. As you know, the Atlanta Police Department, dropped to very dangerous staffing levels, and efforts have been underway, by mayor Dickens and and this body to be able to get us back to our strength.

I'm happy to report, as we said here today, that we are 90% filled in our staffing. As of just a few days ago, we were at 1,821 members of the organization. This is the first time we've been above 1,800 since July 2020, and July 2020 started a dangerous exit of individuals from the organization. And so thank you for investing in those that say yes to public service. Say thank thank you for giving them the tools to be safe and to be trusted and to continue to build back the organization.

If we keep our current trends, and these are the two trends around recruitment and around attrition, we still anticipate hitting our authorized strength the latter part of 2027, which will be the in the budget year fiscal year 2028 if we currently keep the current trend. So that has not changed in the last twelve months that we appeared before you and gave you that estimate. So far this so last year, we onboarded 304 individuals into the organization on the sworn sworn side. We have 200 officers over 200 officers in training right now. And already this year, we've welcomed 64 new members to the organization.

So thank you to everyone, our mayor, this body for making us a desired destination for service. The pipeline still looks good. We know we're gonna have to do some pausing for five weeks around the World Cup games, but we're gonna work right up to that moment and get busy again. Just looking at the variances in in the proposed budget, which you'll be considering over the next few days and weeks. From the general fund, we are going to see an approximate five on a 5% increase from f I twenty six f y twenty six adopted on approximately 16,500,000.

That, as you know, is the investment in the individuals that report to duty each and every day in the organization. As the department grows back, you continue to see that being placed with, pensions as well as pay and the benefits that comes to that. 80% of our budget are the individuals that serve. It is not vehicles. It is not technology.

It is none of that 80% of individuals that walk through the door every day, drop to the knees and perform CBR, look tirelessly through woods for a missing child, stand at car accidents, in the hot weather to make sure, that it is properly investigated and 80% of our budget goes to those that say yes to service and do the work on our behalf for the safety of our city. Purchase contracts and services, 10% of our budgets, approximately a 10% increase over the previous year. This is our camera maintenance services. This is our body worn cameras and the extensive infrastructures that supports that body worn cameras being very essential to our ability to be a trusted organization, be able to have optimal training, to be able to review body worn camera, cloud storage, services as well as our dashboards that we use to guide the resources deployment throughout the city. Many of these are very all of these are very critical systems.

Supplies approximately 2% of our budget is actually 1.6% rounded up, had a point 1% increase over last year. And this allows us to provide the ballistic vest that our officers wear, the tourniquets that they have on their belt, the tasers, all the other equipment they have to be able to navigate the calls that they are sent to. Our capital outlays are less than 1% of the budget. This is the growth of the e bikes being used, particularly in our parks and path forces, other fleet related items. And then the interfund charges 4% of our budget.

There's approximately 5% increase as we see the fleet being returned to its proper size and composition to be able to do all that the citizens expect of their emergency services networks. And we are starting to see now the surplus of more older vehicles and the cost to repair the fleet and keep it running. There's actually a number of benefits in there because the fleet is not as old as it is and no longer are we having to keep vehicles past their desired lifespan, but I will let the DPW commissioner speak to that before you. We are gonna use the budget if it's passed and if it's entrusted the department to continue to focus on the mayor's four priorities. One safe city, to continue to be able to fight crime and all the storms from health centers to app promise centers to shutting down drug operations.

We're gonna make sure that we continue to partner with our, joint partners, make sure we target those areas around code enforcement and license permits that you all contact us about to make sure in that space. Make sure the real time crime center continues to play its appropriate role, the care pro program being used and able to grow the path force to make sure it is properly patrolling the areas of the of the of the city as the belt line grows. An opportunity for all, code enforcement will continue to use that to make bolster for a safe city through our secure housing initiatives and make sure that we continue to grow the department's civilian and sworn personalities personnel rather. A city built for the future. Our nine one one center will continue to to evolve to be the center necessary to protect the most populous city in the state, our capital city.

Our take home program will continue to go. We will execute the World Cup under this budget, and then we will also be finalizing our preparations for Super Bowl February twenty twenty eight under the current budget, when approved. And then an ethical and efficient organization running out the mayor's fourth pillar, making sure e pillar, making sure e nine one one, becomes accredited. We maintain our current accreditation. We're exploring the feasibility of our own crime lab and be able to optimize the rest of technology throughout the organization. Mister chair, members of committee, thank you for your time. That was very, quick. So certainly open for the questions that I can answer. You also have the brain trust of the Atlanta Police Department part of it, that's at the at the table and so ready to answer any questions you or members of the council may have.

Thank you, chief Schierbaum, for that overview of your department and the proposed budget for your department as well. At this time, we're gonna take questions from colleagues. First up, we have council member Hillis.

Thank you, mister chair. Thank you, chief and your team for the presentation. You touched on it a little bit, the fleet. What is the current status of the fleet? I know there were some outfitting issues. Maybe there still are any current orders, either still awaiting delivery or waiting outfitting. And then what is the percentage of officers currently with take home cars, and what is the goal? Is it a certain percentage, a 100%, And when would we hope to hit that?

Yes. So the the goal is everyone right now in field operations division, and I wanna classify that as phase one. That's our goal. Now we do have a few units outside of field operations that, have a need for take home cars. That's our Apex unit, our Ace units, and there are tactical field operators. So those three units and our field operations. Right now, the number of individuals with take home cars, I'm gonna toss this to mister Orr on the your first part of your question. We have 443 take home cars that are present within the organization. So 443. Right. And then, mister Orr, you can tell them it's are in

the pipeline right now. Sure. We also have a order for this year of 02/1999. To answer your first question regarding the Outfitters, we do have two Outfitters with three locations, and we're currently not seeing any issues as far as our cars can turn around.

And are is every car we are currently getting in becoming a take home vehicle? Not necessarily. Okay. No. Not necessarily. Thank you. And, you know, I've seen the difference. I not that I would, but I could take a stone and hit two Atlanta Police cars from my house now Mhmm. Because we have take home vehicles and, you know, people love seeing those in their neighborhoods. So thank you for all the effort that you and the department have put behind that and and DPW and finance and everyone that's behind that and the mayor. Any expansion of well, I guess I should first ask, has there been a kind of thorough evaluation of the the CARES units, and does are you looking to expand that within this FY '27 budget?

Units you will see expanding particularly in the budget is the is the CARES unit, and I believe we have another 10 positions 10 positions that have been authorized for that. You also will see the PATH Force grow. Right now, we are graduating a class roughly every month.

You've looking at

my paper?

That that was one of my questions too.

No. So looking

at my paper.

PATH force. I just assigned on the last order four individuals to the PATH force. And so as the classes graduate, we're gonna be able to re return to the posture that we had previous to 2020. Many more officers on patrol and bikes, specialized units being built back up. And so you will continue to see that grow, and with the CARES unit will be one of those growing units as well.

Alright. And glad to hear that about the PATH Force because that was one of my questions coming up. You know, not only are we continuing to build the belt line, but also trails Sure. Off of the belt line are coming. There are three under construction just in my district that will connect to the belt line. So definitely want to see APD out and about on those. Where are the 93 FTEs being cut from the budget? Does that sworn, non sworn? What divisions, etcetera, are those coming from?

So most of those positions where the unfilled positions from FY '26 or going into FY '26. Most of those are civilian positions or professional positions. And then there were 25 officer positions. Understood.

What is the status of, I guess, somewhat code enforcement, but especially when it comes to license and permits and how does this budget very specifically enhance their needs. You know, we spoke about an issue yesterday about there are a number of problem properties in my district, I'm sure others, but once specifically, where there was a shooting, you all did did your part up front. LMP went out, performed an inspection, issued citations. That was in November. It has now been six months.

I look back at all the LRB dates. And so far in 2026, there have been four due cause cases heard by that committee. One was simply an application denial. It wasn't citations and violating the law. One, for whatever reason, was dismissed or requested to be dismissed by the law department.

And only two actually resulted in penalties. One, a $2,500 and five day closure, and the other one, $2,500 penalty and relinquishment of their permit. So with all of the issues we hear about across the city, with violence around these, you know, clubs or, quote unquote, restaurants, why are we not seeing more action from LNP and especially on the LRB side when it comes to penalizing, these bad actors?

We start the process of penalizing council members, you know. We we place, these entities before the LRB or the municipal court or in some cases superior court, for the penalty to be handed down. And so once a penalty is handed down, we will be in a position to do the enforcement where we may be charged to do so. Where this proposed budget will benefit the concerns that you're raising is having more officers to carry out more details. Now I will tell you, not because he's in council chambers, sir, lieutenant Burrell's team has been very busy.

I saw a a detail that was executed this weekend for the betterment of the city of a club that's operating in a manner that can makes the city less safe. These details can be very labor intensive, time consuming, and we're required to carry them out under the requirements of best practices in the law. So as the department grows, you will continue to see our ability to assign additional people to license permits. As the department grows because now what lieutenant Burrell and his team does, they utilize the crime suppression units from other zones to be able to supplement, their investigative and enforcement actions. So when you read of us executing a search warrant, it won't just be license and permits.

You generally see license permits in one or two zone crime suppression units that are present. And so as the department continues to grow, our ability to do more details, our ability to go back and inspect any sanction handed out by the courts or sanctions handed out by the LRB will be better enhanced. And so our commitment is to continue to start the process and hold people accountable. I don't wanna live in a society where we are judge and jury, but we do start the process where accountability is meted out.

That's great to hear. So look forward to seeing more progress there. And then just specifically going back to touch on code enforcement, not on the alcohol side, but on just the the housing side code enforcement. Where are they, with their staffing levels?

Yep. So as chief mentioned, right now, we currently have 23 officers, and we just got approval to hire four more and a code enforcement manager, which will make us at a 100%.

Gotcha. Alright. Well, that completes my questions. Thank you, chief. And thank for the work of all your team here and everyone, as you mentioned, that is out on the streets keeping us safe.

Alright. Thank you.

You're welcome, sir.

Alright. Thank you. Next up, have council member Dozier.

Thank you, mister chair. Thank you, chief and team for all that you do. Quick few questions. I'm trying to do them rapid fire style because I know I have some colleagues that also probably have some questions. The first one zone for I know over the last year, year and a half, two years temporarily has been in West End as y'all go through the reconstruction of the zone for precinct.

My neighbors in West End love the fact that they're right there off of York Avenue. Cadazzo, which is a daycare center. We had a lot of issues with loitering, drug deals, and things like that right outside of daycare. I did a safety wall with several members of the Zone 14. Chief operating officer Birx was out there for one of those, and having consistent APD presence has been amazing.

With the redevelopment of Mall West End happening right now and some of the challenges that continue to remain in the community, my constituents wanted me to make sure that I relate to you all that they would love to see continued APD zone for presence, particularly in the West End community. So there's an opportunity where there's a touchdown station like APD did at the Walmart or MLK or satellite precinct or something like that that's more visible and and that provides consistent presence and ensures that there's quicker response from APD. Wanted to relay that to you and and to your team to consider that as we look at getting our zone four folks back in the new precinct building.

Thank you, council member. And as the again, with the support of the mayor, the department is growing back. And as you know, after 2020, we had to shut down a number of police precincts. And so many zones had, what they would call a main Mhmm. And then one or two mini precincts, and we consolidate a lot of those into to one and two. So we do envision once we arrive back at authorized strength, areas that that we've had to deactivate, will be activated again because we'll have the personnel to staff them

up. Okay.

And when when I tell that that we're 800 and and eight 1,840 individuals on the department, over 200 of those are in training. And so that's 200 officers that are headed your way. They each have forty weeks of training they must complete. By virtue of our accreditation, we are required to assess precinct locations, staffing levels, various matters to say is the West End, as you know, we used to have a West End precinct Mhmm. That was there. And so we do look for opportunities to place a growing police department in the right areas that our presence is beneficial to the neighborhood and keeps the city safe.

Thank you. And I will hope too that y'all will consider more foot patrols in these communities as well as I'll get up to the personnel goals that we have established. I think, know, I recognize patrolling our city streets is not the same as a military deployment, but I think about how as a scalpel to lead in Iraq, getting out of my vehicle, taking off my home, and getting to know people, building relationships really helped in the work that we were trying to do. And officers being in their cars and driving around to be able to respond to emergencies, but driving around nonetheless, I think, creates a large challenge for the positive relationships we're trying to build with the community. So the more opportunities to get officers out their vehicles, the more we can explore that, I think, will be better for how APD is perceived, but also how APD operates because you build those relationships, you have a better understanding what's happening in community.

You can better respond to issues as they arise. So so I recognize both of those were comments versus questions, but I wanted to relay that. I did have a question about how well APD works with ATL plus. I recognize that program is operated or managed by ATL DOT, but I know across the city, many of my colleagues and I have gotten complaints from constituents about the a significant increase in traffic enforcement. And and, you know, looking at some of the tickets that have been said to me, like, yes, you can't park the wrong way on the street or you can't park within 20 feet of a crosswalk, and they're legitimate complaints.

However, I've also seen issues where there have been challenges where those officers are also, have different interpretations of traffic laws than maybe APD does. And so I'm curious what the coordination looks like with the ATL plus folks. There's and I'll share it. I can share this with you. There's a video one of my folks in Casselberry Hill sent me where the APD officer was arguing with the ATL plus officer about how a citation was being issued.

And I just think there needs to be some deconfliction there. And I don't know if that's something that needs to be handled through ATL DOT or if y'all have a liaison with ATL plus, but I know their contract will come up for renewal at some point soon. And as the more we can get that hammered out, the more I think we can get better customer service for our constituents. Honestly, I, you know, I wonder if we should look at bringing those sorts of that enforcement back in house and not have a contract with that. Well, that's a totally different conversation. But any thoughts on that or in response to that?

You know, certainly, obviously, that the ATL plus is a different entity than we are. Our operates independently. Where we have interaction with them is when we request their assistance in certain areas. So we can look at events that are approaching and know we're gonna see a spike in our e nine one one center of illegal parking complaints, blocked driveways, fire hydrants being blocked. So we actually inform them that we're needing their assistance in that area because we know there's gonna be a uptick in citizen complaints around parking enforcement.

Right now, having someone else to do parking enforcement is beneficial to us because we're still returning to the size that we need to be. And so not being I think if we revert back to the police department being the sole enforcer of of traffic enforcement, particularly parking enforcement, then there may be some drop in the house of those complaints. Legitimate ones are handled. We never want citations argued on the street corner. Do send me that video. I'd like

to see it. I will do.

Obviously, a citation is an accusation. It's not officially a violation until someone in a robe next door to this building just down the street says it is. And so every citizen has the right to go before a judge of our municipal court and say, was wrongly cited. And the interpretation of the Atlanta police officer is incorrect. The interpretation of the ATL plus employee is incorrect. So that's where we would want to. And I think if we see a pattern of disagreements, would want to sit down with the solicitor's office now and give direction to be given out to ATL plus.

Okay.

So that way they can know what the the belief of those that would have to prosecute those cases would be.

So the solicitor's office will be a major stakeholder in those conversations.

If if if those are the ones still prosecuting the parking tickets. Yes, sir.

Thank you. Which generally is

the case.

Thank you. The next question I have with regards to what you shared about our surveillance technology, the utilization of robot dogs. I thought we should come up with a different name for them because, you know, they're not quite cute and cuddly.

But

but I think I do have a lot of concerns about the use of this technology and the oversight and accountability related to that. I know there's been news articles written about how we share that data with federal immigration enforcement, how at risk some of that data can be if, like, particularly with some of the vendors that are out there and having their proprietary technology hacked and and what does that mean for public data. Does APD have surveillance use policy or framework or anything that guides how we're utilizing this technology, how we're protecting citizen data, and would that be some if not, would that be something that APD will be open to exploring? And and maybe that's the question for AIM in terms of managing that, but I think with the the both the sort of new technological horizon we're in right now, but also in the political climate that we're in right now, I think being forward thinking about this is we're we're kinda at a point where we gotta start putting something together.

Certainly. And and I don't believe the safety of the city or the civil rights or the citizens have to be compromised for the other. I believe we can have a a ethical, robust, and efficient camera system in the city and the safeguards in place. This department is entrusted with the databases that contain everyone's arrest history. This department is entrusted with databases, has everyone's driver's history in The United States Of America.

We have camera footage of every single call we go on that dwarfs the camera system that we have through the video integration center. And we must have robust and effective policies that says they cannot be misused, they cannot be abused. And if we find individuals that do so, we have, and we will hold them accountable. And that can lead up to termination depending on how egregious it is. And so we are more than welcome to hear better ideas around safeguards.

We do not engage in in immigration enforcement nor do we cooperate in that. Our job I have one charge well, two charges. It's to enforce the ordinances passed by this body, and it's to enforce the laws passed by the General Assembly of Georgia. That is the charge of the Atlanta Police Department. We do not enforce any of their aspects of the federal government. We don't enforce immigration law. We're not gonna force tax law. We're not gonna enforce environmental protection law. We have our hands busy with gangs, guns, and drugs, illegal parkers, speeders, and street racers. That's where we're gonna stay. That's what our charge is, and that's where we're gonna be. And we don't share our information to areas outside of our investigation.

Right?

For it for you to be able to access any any of our video from whether it be it from body worn camera or anywhere else, you have to provide the case number of what that case is, why you're utilizing it, and then it can be reviewed and is reviewed and to make sure it was appropriate. And if we find any member of this organization that abuses their ability to access any information, be it your driver's license or the body worn camera used on a call or anything on a poll in a public space, we're gonna hold that person accountable. And we're always working with our accrediting body, CALEA, to make sure that our policies and practices are the best they can be, to make sure that we have the the trusted protocols in place to ensure that abuse doesn't occur.

Thank you for that. And and just to add to that charge about all the different things that y'all are enforcing, just making sure we keep cars out of the bike lanes and off the sidewalks as well.

It's a new path for, sir.

I should remember.

My last question is a is a district specific question. I'm not on public safety, so I don't get a chance to to ask these often. But I know there was a shooting incident that took place this morning or last night in Castleberry Hill on Peter Street. Two people were shot and I believe killed any there there were no one was killed. Okay. But can you give me any update on what happened? And if there's an active investigation, I understood, but just wanna be able to respond to a question.

It's a very an active investigation. We do know what started with an argument between two individuals. We believe that argument was over parking. And we believe people had a gun, and people decided not to either walk away or work it out. They decided to shoot it out, and that's what's wrong. And we're gonna find out who decided to shoot it out instead of talk it out or walk away. We're gonna place them before Fulton County judge and ask that they be held accountable. Okay. Yep. But that's I can tell you that without any fear of being walked back.

Okay. Thank you so much, Steve. Absolutely. Thank you, mister chair. That concludes my questions.

Thank you. Next, we have councilmember Westmoreland.

Thank you, mister chair. Thank you, chief and team. Couple questions. Yesterday, we heard from four unions, and I have a question from each presentation. The entire iBPO presentation was about retirement eligibility and years of service, 30 versus something less than 30. I'm curious what if any thoughts you have on that topic.

So our first of all, we wanna thank the mayor and this body for bringing back the pension. This is a very competitive environment now. Few fewer people are entering professional law enforcement, and so we have to be very competitive to get that talent to choose Atlanta Police Department. So you all allowing that, and and we can share it with you at the appropriate time the chart we mister Orr created that compares our pension to our top competitors, and we win in every area including the federal government. So thank you for that.

I think as those entrusted with the care of our public safety employees, we should be looking for the best ways to retain talent. I think we're targeting the areas right now that needs attention, which is around the current pay, the return of a pension, as well as take home cars and facilities and precincts for individuals. As we continue this process and there's further look into what a pension should look like, that will obviously be on the table. But right now, I wanna focus on the things that are delivering successes. We want there to be a pension that is best to retain and to keep, and so we would be willing to join in that conversation and see what the right outcome is.

Pace's presentation included, someone from the crime scene investigation unit that expressed some concerns around staffing shortages and retention challenges, and I was wondering if you share those concerns around that unit specifically.

Oh, and we're working to correct those concerns. And so we we have had we do have additional positions approved with the VRB. Those are being filled. We have individual and background check now. Right now, we are working with deputy chief Spann to make sure that we allow some crime scene processing to be done by the officers to take the workload off of crime scene technicians. They do a very vital important job. They must sometimes process very disturbing crime scenes, and so we wanna make sure that they're properly supported, not only through compensation, but proper staffing. This is another area that's competitive just like police officers is, and I am confident that if we have been able to crack the code around police officers, we are easily gonna be able to solve the issue around crime syntax as well.

On your last slide, we obviously have discussed the new Zone 4 Precinct. I was encouraged to see the Zone 1 renovation, and I'm curious about your thoughts on something similar at some point for Zone 6 and then the long term plan for precincts for Zones 2 And 5. So I think

each of you have visited the Zone 3 Precinct in council member Lewis' district. It's our most newest and modern police precinct. The one in Zone 4 will mirror that. Our our goal is working with all the appropriate entities is every precinct have a main precinct that looks just like that one. Obviously, five, little different property landscape. This is Zone 2. But I think if you're gonna report to work every day, you should be proud when you walk through the door. You should be comfortable and should be proud when you leave. And I think we're on the right pathway for that. I wanna thank the administration for the Zone 4 Precinct, and we are while we did do a a refresh of the Zone 1, the future goal is to get every precinct into a new facility. And

then finally, his comment, one other question. You know I had the chance to visit all 18 roll calls during the first three months of the year, and walking into them at 6AM, 1PM, and 9PM gives you a renewed appreciation for ways we can continue to be better and for the great work that your team is doing. So thank you to all of you.

Thanks for supporting our officers.

Thank you. Next up, council member Warren.

Thank you, mister chair. Thank you, chief and your team. Great presentation. Couple of budget questions, couple operational questions, and a few comments. Regarding the budget, I wanted to affirm that your the increase in the sworn salaries line item is simply, filling positions that were authorized. We're not adding any, new creating new any new positions. Is that correct? That's a yes. Okay. I I did also wanna ask though, looking at your slide nine, when you when we're looking at your FY '26 budget adopted budget to projections, there's a 35,000,000, let's say $28,000,000 increase, and then we're scaling it back for '27.

Curious as to what's being throttled back. Usually, when we bump up for a year, you kinda are looking to hold that into the next year. So,

you know, where where are

we cutting or cutting or or scaling back? Or were there one time expenditures that we won't recur in '27?

Sorry. Which which line item did you say?

So I'm I'm looking at page nine. You'll see that the FY '26 adopted was three zero eight. We're projected to end the year at $3.35, but your proposed budget debt is actually less than that, $1,011,000,000 dollars back. So usually that's it was there a one time thing within FY '26 that we're not gonna have in FY '27? Yes, sir.

As the as the department grows back, as you know, we're responsible for protecting Hartsville Jackson International Airport. So we will be signing additional officers there that will move off the general budget into the that fund.

Oh, okay. Okay. I gotcha.

Thanks for that clarification. And then finally on a budget question, the FIFA overtime number that you said, 29,000,000, but 25 of it is overtime and we're gonna get reimbursed. How does that and that's this may be a CFO question. How does that move through our f y twenty six and f y twenty seven budget? Yes. Is the expenditure included in the budget request and then the grant reimbursement flows in a different way?

Yeah. So the expenditure is not in the budget request now. We will assign a separate Okay. Grant fund that we will receive both revenues and assign expenses to. So once those expenses are incurred, they'll be reallocated to that appropriate grant fund.

Great. That that was actually really clean. I appreciate that. Operation questions. You talked about nine one one and the nine one one response times, but I wanted to comment about the actual APD arrival response times. And just last night, I I got and I forwarded y'all this morning an email of a of a lag in time in terms of response over at one of my the neighborhoods in my district. Is that one of those things that we anticipate will improve as you continue to you know, the 200 cadets end up on the street and in beats? Is is that the inflection point where we need to wait for?

It will be. Absolutely. And we're all looking into that. I was briefed this morning on on your concern. So you have the time. The citizen call is reporting any incident. This was a prowler in this particular case. So the call has to be processed, and then it's sent to the zone console for dispatch. Depending on the availability of units is how long so the officer may have actually known about the call three minutes before he arrived. Right?

It may have been held for a period of time before he's dispatched the call. Our goal is to have sufficient staffing that when you call, that we're able to quickly dispatch a car to that. What will happen is I'm almost to a call that is a fender bender, and I'm almost at the fender bender, and you call in and say, I have a prowler in my backyard. By policy, that officer should be turned around and sent to your prowler call. And so sometimes, we we see officers almost do have calls because of staffing and because of the seriousness of the call that just came in, they are redirected.

So as the department returns back to its authorized strength, the ability to have those occurrences to be as rare as possible, that there is an officer available, there is an officer free. Back in the days when we were properly staffed, we would have what was called umbrella officers. Cars that moved from beat to beat to be able to go to those calls that came in beyond what was projected during that time. The growth of the department's gonna meet because right now, we do a very good job getting to priority calls. When we get concerns like yours, we're gonna dig into why, because we even can start cars from other zones and send there.

But where citizens now see the shortage of their police department is car accidents with no injuries, crimes where the individual has already left the scene, and disputes around noise complaints. That's where the citizens really feel that we're not yet fully staffed at and to get back to the space. But we need to know every time you all hear a concern about a response because sometimes it may be a process breakdown, a supervisory breakdown, and maybe not as a staffing issue.

Is that in your regular reports to PSLA with 911? Do we have that? Obviously, there's the response time, answer time, and then do we have a officer arrival time metric as well? So is is there a way that we can see as that number continues to shrink as more officers

that. It's of the the interaction with the mayor's office for improvements and enhancements with the city. So I'm sure that's something we can easily translate to some type of report on.

And

then we talked about the camera network. There sin still seems to be some confusion with regard to APD versus the foundation, the role with the the, cameras that are being deployed. There was a period where a lot of us were helping fund license plate readers in the community. And as we are our communities and neighborhoods are making inquiries about the functionality and then additional ones, we're getting hung up in a loop somewhere where everyone's saying, no. It's you. It's the other. So I is there any direction you can give us in terms of that aspect?

Yes. Vincent, regarding a new camera, new installs are completely handled by the by the foundation. Our budget only has in its service and maintenance for the cameras in which we own. So those that funding flows to the foundation that then funds that device for three full years. We then take it over in year four. And so if there's a question about a new that should be directed to the foundation. If it's a question about a device that is a legacy device, once we have it, then that's something that our team can

totally handle. So first three years

operational status is the foundation, and then after year three, we ask APD?

Correct.

Okay. Alright. And then finally, two comments. One, I echo council member Hillis' advocate for additional resources for license and permits. I do agree that that you know the work I've done with the alcohol code reform.

I I do think, having that, oversight is has two benefits. One, it it disciplines those that are not following our code, but I do think it sends a signal to other operators that the city is is going to resource upholding our code, and that they're best served by staying within, the code. And then the second is just flowers I wanna throw out. I I when you first took the position, you talked about the need and the importance of APD coordinating with other agencies across the state and how everyone has to be interlinked in order to fight crime. And I I have come to gain a real appreciation of that just by observation, but also in my Emory role.

I I

have to say the Emory police chief speaks very, very highly about the relationship between EPD and APD, and I know that's not unique. It is how you are with all the other forces that operate, within our area and when we have to call GSP to help. So I just thank you all for that because while it may not necessarily be obvious to, the general public, the impact and the effect that it has is in terms of the numbers and the crime numbers going down. So I just wanted to throw that praise out, while I had the chance.

Mister Chisholm is a good partner, and he's a resident of the city, sir.

So Yep. Mister chair, yield. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Worthy.

Thank you, mister chairman. Thank you, chief. Thank you, team. And certainly, I echo the thanks to the men and women of APD. Council member Westmoreland stole most of my questions, but I do want to revisit something just using CSI as an example.

But if we go back to this staffing pie chart, there's no doubt in my mind that y'all are best in the country of cracking the nut, of getting officers in the door, whether it's pension reform, take home cars, leveraging a state of the art training facility that we now have on Key Road. If you look at the staffing, vacant professional is almost not quite 50%, but knocking on 50% door compared to your field professional. And your vacant sworn is a fraction of your field sworn, and I have every confidence in the world that there won't be any vacant swarm. I think the last report I heard at PSLA was sworn staff will be fully staffed at f y thirty, by your estimates, something like that.

F y twenty twenty eight.

Oh, 2028. Can we leverage the training center to recruit the professional staff? What other tactics do y'all have in your toolbox? Because I think that, obviously, the sworn staff are are the frontline, but the professional staff back up the sworn staff, almost every step of the way. So I know that y'all figure it out, but can you shed some light on on some of your tactics that y'all have to try to get those, those vacant professional positions up to better level?

Sure. So we actually partner with, this is where, thankfully, human resources comes into, play big time for us, and so they've been a great partner. So the talent acquisitions, unit there helps us tremendously. So we do a lot

of

joint operations together and joint hiring fairs, where we, again, announce our civilian, and professional staff positions that are out and available. And we have lots of candidates show up where we do on the spot interviews. We can actually triage them and push them right on through to get them into our, into our shop. So, again, in this fiscal year, we totally plan on continuing to do those and double down on those to make sure that we can hire.

Thank you. And then, like I said, council member Westmoreland took the questions that made me sound smart. So, I'm just gonna ask one out of curiosity. What is the desired life span of a patrol vehicle as we were talking about the fleet? Is it mileage? Is it years? Is it a combination thereof?

It's a combination, but we typically do around mileage.

And that is what? Sixty, eighty, 100?

Yeah. Roughly around 60 to 80,000 miles before we start looking at a different life cycle.

Got it. And keep in mind, council member, before they ran twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. You would park it, take the keys in, hand it to the next shift, and they start driving it. So now we have the ability for this investment by the city to actually span a number of years. We we were driving cars with, my goodness, over 200,000 miles.

So so, really, the take home, program will expand the life

of the car? Absolutely. Absolutely.

That's all my questions. Thank you again. Thank you, mister chair.

Alright. Thank you. Next, we have council member Martin, then Lewis. Alright.

Thank you so much, mister chair. And chief and team, thank you all for being here today. I just wanna give a special commendation shout out to lieutenant Burrell. You know what I'm talking about. Thank you. I mean, something that we were complaining about for months and months and months. And the entire time, there was a the right kind of operation happening, and it quickly got resolved. And I'm just really grateful for that. I do wanna make sure that we strengthen those efforts because I I think there's a loophole in our city's zoning code that allows for these illegal nightclubs to pop up as event centers. And and so we're gonna do our part on the legislative side, and and we got the right enforcement team, obviously, so that we can enforce the zoning code.

I just wanna make sure that he has what he needs, because I feel like Southwest land is, the last frontier of available land, and as things are are being built, I think people are seeing opportunities to come in and do these kinds of just kinda exploiting the zoning code. So, chief, don't don't worry too much if I call you and ask you if lieutenant Burrell can get more resources for what to work. He's on extremely important to quality of life in Southwest Atlanta and all over the city. I wanna talk a little bit about the Warrens division. I think that I was told recently that it it's moving from APD to the courts, and I may be misclassifying it. It looks like you won't say something chief, and I would I probably shouldn't let you weigh in here if that will be helpful.

Yep. You can finish your question.

Yeah. Yeah. Just I wanna know that if that's if it's if it impacts revenue at all, in any way.

It it did. Yes. This was after, much discussion with chief judge Ward, and I wanna thank him for his collaboration cooperation. The the request had been for the Atlanta Police Department to fulfill their GCIC responsibilities. Meaning, if the municipal court issues in a warrant Yes. For failure to appear, that the Atlanta Police Department would maintain that. Meaning, we would hold the file. We would respond to the hit request when when they come in. We just don't have the staffing capacity to do I wasn't expecting that question, but I can provide you the number of warrants that we put on the system. Wanted individuals, missing individuals, stolen vehicles, stolen articles. That is a robust number of warrants that we put on the system. If we don't maintain a response within ten minutes

Right.