City Council - Regular Meeting

And today is day seven of the city council review of the mayor's proposed FY27 municipal budget. I am Jason Winston, chair of the finance executive committee. I am joined by my colleagues. We have council president Marcy Collier-Overstreet and council members Juan Norwood and Martin are with us today. Other council members, We'll be cycling in and out today as their schedules allow. Today's schedule, we will start with the Department of Finance. We'll break for recess, and then we will have the offices of the city council, executive office, and then we will end the day with our personnel paper discussion. For the listening public, an electronic copy of the budget book and all presentations can be found under the FY2027 budget session tab on the Finance Executive Committee webpage of the City Council website. At the completion of each topic, Councilmembers will be able to ask questions. We have also been joined by Councilmember Hillis. And with that, I will ask CFO Bala to get started and introduce his team.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Council Chairman Winston and Council Members, Mohammed Balam, Chief Financial Officer. So this morning, we'll be walking through the FY27 Department of Finance's general fund budget allocation. Next slide. Oh, sorry, there. Thank you. The first slide here highlights our organizational structure. As you can see, the department is comprised of seven core offices with executive leadership and oversight from Deputy myself, as well as Deputy CFO Yolanda Carr, who oversees the day-to-day. operations of the Controller's Office, which is led by Tiffany Golden, as well as the Office of Financial Services, led by Sterling Thomas, and helps in critical executive functions across the financial department. We also have our Office of Treasury and Debt and investments that's managed by the Treasurer Courtney Knight, Office of Administrative and Legislative Services, led by Robert Moses to my right. To my far left is the Office of Budget and Fiscal Policy led by Sean Gabriel. In the audience, we have the Office of Enterprise Risk Management led by Jerry DeLoach. and last but certainly not least and i promise i didn't do this on purpose because i'm a little uh sad to see him go on to a new role but really want to just take this time to also thank lawrence davis for his strong leadership over the last uh five four four years with our office let our officer And if you guys recall, when Lawrence joined us in end of 21, the office was in a very critical stage. It was not functioning. and lawrence's leadership and the team that he put together with some key key contributors from sophia and jermaine and and angeline and the rest of the leadership team that was put in place uh recently joined by peter that team has really got put this office in a whole new space so we just want to take this time to really thank him publicly and and congratulate him on his next opportunity he's going to be a fantastic leader uh where where he's headed to next thank you lawrence On the next slide, oh, and I've also failed to mention, we also have Mercedes McNary, who you guys know very well as my executive assistant. Without her, this office doesn't run. So I just want to thank her as well, too. Thank you. Next slide, please. We'll talk about, you know, some of our wins for fiscal year 26. One of the major things that we were really proud of, and thank you to Controller Golden and the team, was we had a clean audit. So FY 2025 produces zero audit findings, and this is a direct reflection of the financial controls and the team that has been in place and what they have been able to accomplish. And these things, they're not given, these are earned. So for that team to deliver that clean audit was a lot of hard work and we're very proud of that. We also worked and did $2.4 billion in bond transactions, recently closed a watershed refinancing that resulted in $90 million in net present value savings. We have pricing right now, a deal in place for the Department of Aviation, this price for FY27 for some additional capital delivery. So the city's long term kind of infrastructure investments continue to move forward through that office. And then again, a big win in some occupational tax reform that we've implemented in FY26. We launched ATL Biz, which is the new permitting portal for the office, as well as completed a full rewrite of the occupation tax code, updated the fee structure. We streamlined returns and improved revenue um in fy27 we have some some big things that we're hoping to accomplish one of them is ap consolidation so we want to collapse multiple accounts payable dashboards in the single platform this is going to give us better kpis real-time visibility and a cleaner Executive reporting, we're also looking at optimization for payroll and, and so this is going to evaluate Oracle's capabilities to benefits and job offers payroll leave management. This is really going to enhance some operational efficiency and improve the employee self service. And then in the budget office. really wanna start constructing and thinking about capital budgeting. And so we were newly dedicated unit to strengthen long-term capital planning and ensure that capital and operating budgets are aligned strategically. And this is a gap that we're deliberately working on closing. The next slide please highlights our position count by fund. We currently have 134 filled positions and 40 vacancies. We're continuing to work hard on making sure that we attracting and building a deep bench in the Department of Finance. And the final slide is our FY proposed budget for the general fund. You see the FY27 proposed budget of $20.5 million. There is reductions in Personnel services. These are some abolishments that are we taking hold in the budget and we've also just better aligned our non operating dollars. So, as you know, we implemented that new fast system. So there will be continuing. um needs uh for the continuing services which will increase our purchase contract services but we're also streamlining the uh lease payments if you will for that new system over a number of years and so good portion of that will be going to non-departmental to align with the other debt services that are being paid from that that uh fund is just um should have been in that fund to begin with so that outflow is going there um and so that yields a net reduction of about 3.9 million from finance the financer's office thank you everybody now we'll open it up to questions if anybody has any thank you cfo obala uh we appreciate the overview of the presentation any questions comments from my colleagues haven't gotten a nod yet from anyone

I MEAN, YOU FOUND SIGNIFICANT SAVINGS IN THIS BUDGET, WHICH IS INCREDIBLE. I GUESS LEADING BY EXAMPLE AS WE GO THROUGH TIGHTENING UP KIND OF OUR BELT, SO TO SPEAK, THIS YEAR. IT LOOKS LIKE COUNCIL PRESIDENT OVERSTREET DID JUST RAISE HER HAND, SO WE'LL GO TO HER.

YEAH, SO I JUST DON'T WANT US TO GLOSS OVER THE FACT THAT you all have earned excellent audits and you've done the work and and you're so fluid meaning we are always going through tumultuous times or good times and i just see you all adapting throughout and i do believe that we have like the best team ever you guys are very approachable responsive and smart And that is so important. And other cities just wish that they had a team like you. So I'm gonna, no, and I do mean that. I mean, a lot of times when I'm talking to other cities, they will say things like qualifiers, like, yeah, except, you know, not like Atlanta, but... And I'm like, well, what do you mean by that? And it's because we really are the GO standard. And it's because of the work that you do. So just keep plugging at it. I know sometimes some things are challenging. And we're always going to be faced with something. But we have the team in place to make sure that we come out on the right side of it all. So thank you very much for all that you do.

Thank you, Council President, and we appreciate the collaboration that we have with Council. I know a lot of times we don't agree on many things, but what we do agree on is that important and clean data ultimately makes us make the best decisions. So we appreciate the feedback. We appreciate the open line of communication. Everybody here understands our role as dual reports, and that is to give you the information that you requested in a timely manner, to also present data in a way that is easier for you as decision makers to make those decisions and allow us to sometimes persuade you with that data. And you know, we're not policymakers, but we do house a lot of information that is critical for you as policymakers to utilize for the benefits of your constituency. So thank you for the collaboration and thank you for that opportunity to serve.

And as a piggyback on that, it's not by chance that we do have a dynamic finance committee. That was very purposeful. I do believe that there are so many different voices there and they do all rely on data and it's not a lot of feeling there. They are, it's about the city and it's about like real process and real data. And I think that's why we are always gonna stay on top because you can't, we got too many eyes, too many eyes and too many cares for it to drop, for us to drop the ball here, so.

Thank you. Council Member Warren. Thanks. I'll save my flowers for the end because I got lots of them, but I did want to talk a little bit more about your vision on the budget office reorg. First off, I presume by your head count that you're just going to kind of reorg within the positions and staff that you have?

Yeah, the staff is already in place. We're going to optimize the positions that we have in place and deliberately hire individuals that will be dedicated solely for capital. We get a lot of information about capital dollars from council members throughout the year. People want to know what is happening with TSPLOS funding. People want to know what is happening with Renew funding. People want to know what is happening with impact fees. And project delivery, and so it's real important for us to start having that depth of analytical rigor around capital planning and delivery to be able to give that information in real time and also build some KPIs and dashboards. So you can have that place as you're. Making decisions that you need to make now.

I think that's great You said the report I wrote down you just said is that that is dashboards because I do think If you're gonna go to that level of effort Which I applaud because I think the transparency side is will help everybody the public as well as us as policymakers But I do think the having real time or at least Regularly updated outward facing dashboards help as well um The other piece I want to lean into on this, though, is I would like to see, once you get that entity up and going, I think, as you've sensed and we've had a lot of policy conversations around this, engagement with us in terms of a better understanding of when a decision is made to allocate something to a capital fund or a capital project versus regular operating. Because, again, I've expressed my just just curiosity. I'll use that word. It doesn't really have a negative connotation because I don't necessarily have it. But a lot of times I think we'll be surprised like, oh, that is in a capital project or capital fund versus operating. So hopefully there will be some of that built into that team.

Absolutely. Okay. Yep.

The other request I'm going to make, and this is not related to your department, but as we go into this afternoon, the personnel paper this afternoon, I think there's going to be a lot of interesting questions. We got them this morning, but as you know, it's hard for us to know based on that string of numbers what the funds are. So hopefully you'll all be ready on the fly as we go through that if we call out a position, a department, and we see fund numbers, you can tell us what it is.

Yes, we will. We will make sure that Sean and Vanessa have their computers teed up and ready to go in the back and they'll be able to give more detailed level information that is not at that high level. So if you have a specific fund or group or position, you want to know exactly where it's being paid from, they'll have the whole accounting infrastructure behind it and we'll be able to answer those questions.

So in terms of the flowers, I mean, I agree with the council president. I mean, I know and I've watched the finance department over time just really lean, mean machine, but y'all crank out and you provide the level of support as a dual reporting department. And I know it makes it even more challenging because you've got multiple bosses as you might look at it. But the other thing I do want to, I mean, I know that we get into a lot of just policy debates and deliberations but it is that it is born out of what i i've TRULY AND GENUINELY KNOW THAT YOU'RE LOOKING AT IT FROM A FISCAL RESTRAINT AND CONSTRAINT PERSPECTIVE. AND SO IT'S FINE-TUNING. IT IS NOT NECESSARILY, SOMETIMES IT KIND OF IS, BUT IT'S NOT ALWAYS JUST THIS WAIT A MINUTE, WE ARE BEING IRRESPONSIBLE. SO I WANTED TO APPLAUD EVERYONE FROM EVERY TIME COURTNEY KNIGHT COMES UP HERE AND WE'RE JUST AMAZED THAT HE'S ABLE TO MAKE WHATEVER HE CAN MAKE OUT OF A REALLY DIFFICULT SITUATION. You know, the guardrails that y'all put around fund balance, I just, it goes noticed not just by us, but by the public as well. And then obviously by the rating agencies. But again, it would not, that would not be the case if it weren't for your stewardship, your team's stewardship. And I would much rather be on this side of that dynamic versus the other. So I just want to thank y'all for everything you do.

Oh, agreed. And thank you so much for that. I mean, we have a great team in place. And, you know, a lot of it is those decisions are definitely made with a fiscal lens in place and also the appropriate frameworks in which we're supposed to operate from. So one of the good things is I have a strong team and they're all dedicated and they teach me a lot. And so when we were going through a lot of challenges, I remember getting with the controller's team and just figuring out like, what are we doing wrong? And some of the things is, well, you gotta think about accounting, you gotta think about matching principles, you gotta think about making sure that costs are aligned with the revenue that is dedicated to them. And that is a principal function of account. Right? So we have to make sure that when we say we are raising money to do a specific thing that that specific thing gets done with that money. And so we work really hard to align a lot of our costs and continuing to have discussions about. Where that ultimately leads us, because what we've seen over the years is when you take your kind of eye off of that component, you end up burdening. People disproportionately, and it ends up impacting. Taxpayers and if fees aren't modernized, we've done a ladder on fees. It's important because that the absorption of the increased cost goes to. taxpayers. So we've worked real hard on making sure that the fees are right size and that those fees are delivering the service that they're supposed to provide as well too.

Mr. Chair, I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Martin. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and to this great team. Mine is all flowers. Many of you have been around since my days of a council staffer, and you provided steady voices and steady hands to really help the city navigate through some of its most tumultuous times, like pension reform. Y'all remember that? Yeah. And those things have really made our city what it is today, with our credit rating and all the great things that balance budgets over the years. And so closing deficits, those things seem very wonky and boring, but they really make for a strong city. And so I'm grateful as a finance committee member, thanks to Council President Overstreet, as a new council member, really being able to delve into the city's finances as we think through various departments and the work that we do from an investment perspective. I sit on the pension board as well with CFO Bala, and it really speaks volumes that you were recognized, CFO Bala, as a CFO of the year. by two major organizations, one a publication, one just an authoritative voice on these things. And so I just want to say thank you for going through this whole exercise with us as a first year and first term council member. And I'm looking forward to not necessarily the mundanity of the work, but the outcomes of it. It really is something that I appreciate as a student of government, as a native of the city, and a taxpaying resident of the city. And now as a council member. So I just want to say thank you. And I appreciate you, Mr. Chair, for allowing me this time. Thank you all again.

I appreciate you. Thank you. But, you know, we have a very great team. This car meets with the team every Wednesday, every Wednesday at 10 a.m. to go over everything with. inflows, outflows, costs that were unexpected, legislation that was dropped, that was an unfunded mandate. Where are we going to find it? How are we going to balance it? Making sure that everything is done right. From, they do, they work really, really hard and she updates me on what everybody's working on. But that team really meets, they go in and they close the door behind them and they hammer it out. And whatever comes out of it, we end up Knowing at least to expect some things that we didn't anticipate for and be prepared for them. Or sometimes they come out with good news and, you know, they find ways to have efficiency or figure out, you know, how to make the department better. Ms. Carter, you want to say anything about the team and their hard work?

absolutely i concur this is an amazing team and i also have an amazing boss here as well he's in and out of my office we're always coordinating making sure as he mentioned but it is an amazing team and a group behind us as well as the group here rob and you know lawrence and sean and i'm gonna stop naming people because i'll totally forget but you know everybody in the audience as well but Just happy to be a part of the team and they do work hard and we have a great boss here as well.

Council Member Bakhtiar.

Thank you. Mo Money Mo. I wanted also to say thank you. Not only have y'all been helpful in guiding the city, you've also educated me quite a bit on, you know, it's not people think that when you get elected, you suddenly know everything. No, it's very much baptism by fire. So thank you for the time you've taken to educate me so I can be a better representative for my community and a better member to my colleagues. One of the things I actually wanted to ask, echoing everybody here, It is an extraordinary team. And I do take it to heart when council member shook says that in his 24 years, this is the best bench he's ever seen for finance. So thank you. I did want to, I mean, I did hope though, if finance could give council recommendations, you heard us talk about the Brown Ben, you heard us talk about the finding people for yard waste, like using their yard waste bags for construction debris and for other things. And so I think there are ways that services that we should be raising cost on or fines that we should be implementing. If finance is able to give recommendations to the bodies who are able to legislate, like being, you know, acting together as a team to find out how we improve fiscal health. I THINK THAT'S AN OPPORTUNITY WE HAVEN'T EXPLORED YET. SO I WOULD, THAT WOULD BE AMAZING IF Y'ALL WOULD BE ABLE TO HELP US WITH THAT.

ABSOLUTELY.

SO OTHER THAN THAT, MY QUESTIONS FOR BALABALA DOLLAR ARE DONE.

Yeah I just wanted to reiterate and have y'all reiterate publicly what kind of deficit we had at the beginning of the year and then how where we are now because I think it is remarkable and it is so much more work than people would think.

Yes, definitely. I think it was about January, before January, but we started to get real uncomfortable about January of last year with the FY25 budget cycle at that point. We were signaling a deficit of $33 million, and it was quickly growing and kind of moving in a different direction. At some points, we had an estimate of, I think, a $50 million deficit. And so we instituted a lot of things. some constraints and budget holds in place we constructed a vacancy review board to mitigate staffing and just kind of make sure that the staffing is aligned well with the city and we also started to look at some revenue capabilities at real time too that we can implement Having said that, that hard work for FY25, we ended up closing that deficit down to $19 million. For FY26, we are closing that gap more and more. You'll see in our quarterly report that's coming up that that gap now is somewhere around $5 million. And next year, we anticipate that should be completely behind us. So we're looking forward to that.

So as we're looking at this budget, we are balanced budget so that we actually made that last five. So if we want to do the brown bins, which is the only thing that in my week and a half paying attention and being here most of the time, we really want to do. So we need to get a budget amendment that we can figure out with y'all how that doesn't. Because the last thing we need to do, and I've been here too many years, is to start all these amendments at the very end and totally blow out all the work that y'all have done. That's just so unfair. So I want to make sure that I'm with whichever colleagues want to way in and at least presenting this in a way that you're not surprised and we know what that number is and we figured out how we are going to manage it. I had asked about the non-chartered executive offices and having reductions there. I know that's a few days away from coming in from the legislation, but I think that's real important because what we looked at yesterday was workers who are dealing with something that is very physically inappropriate. We can do this better. We do not have to have our people get hurt and the things that happen when you're not taking care of your people. So that's just a direct, we want our workers to be taken care of and this is the last piece to do that. That is more important than some administrative positions, it just is. So, but I want to do that in concert with y'all as the, you know, one of the first ones out of the box saying, don't want to just surprise people next week and say, here's what I'd like to do. Let's figure out where we can do that and if we can. Okay.

Happy to have that discussion. All right. Thank you. Councilman Worthy. I'll be very brief. I just want to echo my colleagues' thanks. You know, the only real responsibility we have as council members is the budgetary process, and all of y'all have been incredible educators for those of us that didn't fully appreciate what we were getting into by coming down here. So I just want to say thank you to each and every one of you sitting up here and all of you back there, and I look forward to at least three more years of working with y'all.

Thank you.

Thank you. I think we got through questions from colleagues. I'm actually going to withhold my flowers until budget adoption. We are pretty much in the trenches right now. My hope is that I'm giving y'all roses and not a funeral spray. So we're going to keep working together until then. But colleagues, that will wrap up this session for the morning session. But we're going to take a recess for lunch. We're going to come back at 1 o'clock for city council offices. Then we have at 1.30 the executive office. And at 3 p.m. we'll have the personnel paper discussion. So really appreciate all y'all hard work to get us to this point. So thank you.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you. Thank you. you you . . music music so you Thank you. Thank you. Bye. so you Thank you. Bye. Thank you. you So, you Thank you. so So, Thank you. Thank you. you you you Thank you. Thank you. You have a water.

Okay, that's fine.

It's big, large.

Honestly, it's good. Honestly, yeah. We should, let me take a look. Is there anyone who thinks you're beautiful? I'm visually kind of weird, but it's not like I'm Mr. One. Can we have a picture? You can see it has a different presentation. Oh, sure. Thank you.

All right. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to day seven's afternoon session of the City Council review of the mayor's proposed FY27 municipal budget. I'm Jason Winston, chair of the Finance Executive Committee, and I am joined by my colleagues, Councilman Bond, Amos, Bakhtiari, Juan, Norwood, Hillis, Boone, Martin, and Westmoreland. With that, we have our first afternoon session, which is the City Council offices, and we welcome Chief of Staff, Mrs. Kimson-Wright.

Thank you. Chair Winston. Chair Winston and members of council, good afternoon. My name is Santana Kempson-Wright, City Council Chief of Staff, and it is my honor to present the Atlanta City Council's fiscal year 2027 proposed budget. Before we begin, I would like to introduce the council leadership joining me on stage. To my left is Municipal Clerk and Election Superintendent, Corrine A. Lindo, and beside her is Deputy Municipal Clerk, Teresa Payne Clark. We are also joined by other esteemed members of our outstanding team seated in the audience. Before diving into the presentation, I want to take a moment to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to every team member who supports you, your office staff, the administration's departments, support agencies, one another, and most importantly, the people of Atlanta. Their dedication and contributions are truly invaluable. Our team's work is grounded in a set of core values and guide how we serve this body and this city. Integrity, upholding the highest standards of honesty and transparency in all our actions and communications. Service, providing exceptional support to the City Council, its members, and the residents of Atlanta. Collaboration, fostering teamwork and partnership across departments so diverse ideas lead to innovation and functional solutions. Accountability, taking responsibility for our work and its impact, ensuring operations that are efficient, effective and aligned with the council's goals. Engagement, building meaningful connections with council offices, support departments and the public through transparent communication that strengthens trust. and excellence, striving for continuous improvement to meet the evolving needs of the council and all we serve. Those values are not just aspirational, they are the foundation of how we show up for you and for the people of Atlanta every day. You'll see the organizational structure located on our next slide. We are all led by you, the Atlanta City Council. Next, we'll take a look at some of your City Council highlights. In fiscal year 2026, you authored and adopted legislation to offer free swim lessons for youth from low-income households at all city-owned pools and auditoriums. You affirmed Atlanta's commitment to remedy long-term blight in multifamily residential developments. You established the Edgewood Corridor Public Safety Task Force to develop a comprehensive plan to deter crime and enhance public safety along the corridor. You designated Atlanta as a bee-trap-free zone to support inner-city urban agriculture. You celebrated the Sons of Atlanta Vietnam War Memorial ribbon cutting, the first Vietnam memorial commissioned by the City of Atlanta. You launched the It Starts With Me campaign to help Atlanta achieve and maintain a 50% average tree canopy cover. You amended the zoning ordinance to require primary pedestrian entrances to provide push-button activators. You amended the city charter to more explicitly define the purposes and uses for the city's dedicated affordable housing trust fund. You donated $1 million to the Atlanta Regional Commission and Propel Atlanta to support electric bike initiatives. And you also established the creation of a study group, which will be voted on in two weeks, to review national best practices and provide recommendations for a comprehensive update to the city of Atlanta's pay family leave policy. A few commissions, honors, and markers. You renamed a portion of Fulton Street to J. Lowell Ware Boulevard, a pioneering journalist, publisher, and community activist. You designated a portion of Ponce de Leon Avenue as honorary Paul Bianchi Way, who served as Padilla's head of school for 52 years, the longest serving head of school in the United States. You renamed Lee Street to Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore Boulevard, the first African-American woman appointed to serve full time on the city court of Atlanta and later the first to preside on any state court bench in Georgia. You renamed a portion of Pryor Road to Michael Langford Drive, honoring a bridge builder, trusted advisor and voice for the voiceless throughout Atlanta. Renamed a portion of Edward Street to C.A. Wimberly Sr. Way, recognizing Pastor Christopher A. Wimberly Sr.'s profound and lasting impact of the Hunter Hills community. You designated Burnt Hickory Drive as Honorary J.T. Johnson Way. Renamed Adair Park to Beulah Colbert Park, a constituent whose dedication since living there since 1969 helped transform the park into the valued community space it is today. Commissions established include, and are not limited to, the Derrick Bozeman Legacy Commission, the Artificial Intelligence Commission, and the Anthony Tickman Jones Legacy Commission. Your contributions were donations of over $436,000. A few of them include Atlanta Pride Festival, Clark Atlanta University Athletic Program, West Side Stride, Little Five Points Alliance, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, Athletes Youth Success Initiative Institute, Adair Park, Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, Neighbor in Need, Morris Brown, Atlanta Preservation Center, Agape Center, Atlanta Regional Collaborative for Health Improvement, Hammons House Museum, The Atrical Outfit, Cascade Nature Preserve, The Atlanta Music Project, The African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta, Seven Stages, Horizons Atlanta, the Latino Community Fund, Freedom Park Conservancy, Conservancy at Historic Washington Park, the Sarah Gonzalez Park, PATH Foundation, Piedmont Park Conservancy, In Town Cares, Holly Street Park, Gooder, and South Fork Conservancy. The next slide highlights a few current departmental accomplishments and our priorities for improvement in fiscal year 2027. We've collaborated with the Office of the Municipal Clerk, AIM Procurement, and Risk Management to advance the replacement electronic legislative management system. We've completed connectivity and testing required for electronic voting in remote testing environments. We partnered with multiple AIM teams and international collaborators, often coordinating with overseas teams during early morning hours to successfully implement an AI text-to-voice solution. We achieved exceptional communications reach, generating 29.1 billion impressions while continuing to grow social media subscribers across all platforms. What's new and improved and what we're looking forward to in fiscal year 27? is collaborating with support departments to finalize the electronic council resource guide, continue evaluating the feasibility of converting council permanent part-time positions to full-time roles with full benefits, leave pension options, and partnership with the Department of Human Resources and Finance, test, migrate, and launch the replacement electronic legislative management system, and finalize remote meeting procedures and establish alternative methods for public comment. In your packet, you'll find a handout detailing the metrics, data, and statistics for research and policy, business support services, which includes administrative support and information technology, and communications. I will not cover these sections today, so we can remain focused on your budget presentation. You'll also see several staff achievements in the handout that showcase the depth of talent on our team, and I'd like to briefly highlight a few of them. Wasana Griffin completed the Georgia Municipal Clerk Certification Program through the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government. Jasmine Tell will soon begin her dissertation for the Doctorate of Applied Sciences at the University of Miami. Jared Evans was selected as a Global Leadership Fellow with the World Affairs Council of Atlanta, joining a cohort focused on geopolitics, international business, governance, diplomacy, civil society, capital, and technology. Mark Overton will be a newly graduate of the Leadership Bucket Class of 2026 and will sit for the Georgia State Bar Exam in July. Brian Ezekie directed, alongside producer Phyllis Jackson, the high-profile CFO of the Year tribute video delivering a premium visual narrative. He also collaborated with a premier Hollywood studio as a cultural consultant and researcher for a major Apple TV production starring an A-list actor with over $9 billion in career box office earnings. Wanakama Wami, affectionately known as Nneka, will complete her Master of Public Policy with a certificate in Metropolitan Planning and Development from DePaul University School of Public Service in June. I will now turn it over to Municipal Clerk Lindo to provide highlights for the Office of the Municipal Clerk.

Good afternoon Chair Winston and members of Council. Ms. Santana Wright went through a whole list of legislation that Council adopted and as you know it's the job of the Municipal Clerk to preserve that and make that available to the public and to preserve that in prosperity. So as you know, the primary function of the Office of the Municipal Clerk is service delivery. Our office provides support services to the general public and of course to each of you. I'm honored to serve with this great team of public servants sitting behind us who strive for excellence each day. Our goal is always, how can we be innovative and improve the level of services that we provide? Last year, during the City of Atlanta municipal election, we partnered with Fulton County to hold a successful election with no major issues reported by our citizens. This year, during the midterms, we continue to offer support and assistance to the county as needed. Regarding this year, the things that we've accomplished, service improvements in our office. Last year, we implemented a project to complete a quality control review of all the final action legislation that is adopted by the city council, which is preferred in perpetuity. So to ensure that the legislation is complete, we started a quality control. We're all reviewing each legislation before it's preserved to make sure that all of the exhibits are included and the text is in a clear and searchable format. This is a project that's been led by our deputy municipal clerk, EVELYN SCOTT. ADDITIONALLY, BECAUSE WE RECEIVED SO MANY REQUESTS FROM OUR INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CUSTOMERS FOR THE COPIES OF ALL THE LEGISLATION THAT YOU GUYS HAVE ADOPTED, WE LOOKED AT HOW WE CAN IMPROVE THE ACCESSIBILITY OF THESE FINAL ACTION FOR CONTRACT AND TO FUND SOME OF THE PROPOSALS THAT YOU We need the legislation before you can move those funds forward. So we have implemented a process to make sure that that legislation is available within five days after it's signed by the mayor and returned to our office. And this process is led by our records clerk, Ms. Monique Washington, and Mr. Lamar Park, and is supervised by Ms. Scott. This year, we've also worked to increase our social media presence by posting general municipal election and general citywide election information that's provided to us by Fulton County and also posting public notices about city meeting to further engage our members of the public. This task is led by Ms. Cameron Coleman, who has a background in marketing and recently completed a social media marketing program at Kennesaw University. Our staff members have completed and continue to pursue professional development opportunities so we can better serve the public and serve you council members better. Deputy Municipal Clerk Theresa Payne just received her Georgia Municipal Certification from the Carl Vincent Institute and is also pursuing her Master's Certification as well as a certification from the International Institute of Municipal Clerks. Deputy Municipal Clerk Evelyn Scott is just a couple of classes away from receiving her Georgia Municipal Clerk certification, and Deputy Assistant Sean Brown, who worked in GIS as a planner and handles all of our annexation requests, has taken several classes and is also on his way to that certification. Additionally, to better serve our public better, our records management staff is currently pursuing the process of obtaining certifications in government records management. This will help our team to advance their expertise and ensure that the city's record management practices reflect the highest standards in the field. And one of our goals for next year is to work with the finance department staff to review how the city records overall are kept, the priorities for maintaining the records and where those records are archived. several of our staff members are also participating in the national league of cities conference scheduled for the fall which we think will help to provide a valuable opportunity for them to connect with their peers in government share experiences and learn about effective practices that we can emulate in closing the office of the municipal clerk is it has a dedicated team of staff members who are who has a commitment to public service and my goal as the city clerk is to encourage and motivate staff to pursue these professional development opportunities which will help to grow their skill set and help them generate innovative ideas that will serve to enhance the quality of service delivery to both the public and the City Council members for years to come.

Thank you, Clerk Lindo. Next, I will cover the City Council's headcount. In fiscal year 2026, we abolished three positions, a graphic arts specialist, a legislative compliance manager, and an assistant deputy municipal clerk. Our total headcount, 54, is comprised of 16 elected officials, 27 council staff positions, and 11 municipal clerk positions. As of today, we have nine vacancies resulting in a current vacancy rate of 16.7%. Your council communications director candidate is in the final interview phase and the digital content manager candidate has entered pre-screening. Both positions are expected to start by July, which will reduce our vacancy rate to 13%. We will then move forward to build the visual content creator, which is the still photography position, and the communication specialist three position, further reducing the vacancy rate to 9%. Remaining vacancies include the deputy council chief of staff and a council legislative assistant. The fiscal year 2027 proposed budget totals $15,824,252 and includes 20 call centers covering 16 elected officials and operational areas such as the office of the municipal clerk, council staff, including the research and policy and business support service units, shared services and communications. This budget reflects a variance of $3,448,535, an increase of approximately 28%, primarily attributed to pre-funding and front-loading your carry-for fiscal year-end closeouts and carry-for true-ups. This approach should reduce the carry-for true-up budget adjustments exercise typically completed in quarter two. Last year, your true-up totaled $2.9 million. The fiscal year 2027 proposed budget breakdown by major categories, personnel and employee benefits, $10,955,072 representing 69% of your total budget. Other costs proposed carry forward $3,911,130 accounting for 24.7% of the budgets and purchase contracted services and supplies, $957,384 making up 6% of the budget. The FY27 funding allocation for salaries part-time permanent temporary positions in each year offices is funded at $237,000. This reflects a 15% increase over the last four fiscal years and has remained unchanged since fiscal year 2024, July, 2023. Your expense accounts are funded at 71,000. This concludes our presentation. We appreciate your time and are happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. We appreciate the overview of your FY27 proposed budget. At this time, we'll take questions from council members, my colleagues, anybody? Council Member Wong?

Thank you for the presentation. Wanted to, and thank you all for the work, incredible work that you do. We would not be able to do half of what we can without you and your team, especially the responsiveness and just the execution. I appreciate that. Wanted to get a little bit of reconciliation on the FTEs. So on page six, we've got 54 FTEs In FY27, though, that's projected to drop to 53. But when I look at the personnel paper, what I see is a creation, a position creation and a reclass. And so that doesn't get me from 54 to 53.

It doesn't. And so this is the FTEs as of February the 19th, 2026. So finance pulled these numbers, which was prior to the existence of the substitute personnel paper document that you have. So that would increase our total headcount.

Okay. Yes. Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay. So this, the budget book is actually not correct?

So the budget book, the FTEs that we were provided by the finance department were pulled in February, which was prior to any information that we submitted regarding personnel transactions that we wanted to complete. So no, this would not be up to date as of what was submitted last month or yes, in April.

Let me roll back a little bit further. You said that there were three abolishments. We did that in the 2025 personnel paper, and that was done. still don't make sense to me. Because we didn't do a mid-year personnel paper, right? No. So we would have been 54 through the year. You're creating a position, reclassifying another. So your head count actually should go to 55.

Correct. So again, the display that you see, if I were to have inputted, it would have said 55. However, I'm using the finance numbers.

OK. Good. So we are, as usual, on the same. The budget request is flat, so really no questions about that. I think we need to continue to emphasize to the public that it is not a 28% jump. We're not asking for more money. It is simply a result of our carry forward and the accounting that's done from that. So again, every chance we message that out, I think we should. But I do want to follow up with a conversation you and I have had in terms of looking ahead for your team in terms of your research and policy staff. Y'all that support all of us in our meetings do a fantastic job. I think as the world gets more sophisticated, as issues become additionally more complex, I think there is certainly appetite on my side, and I would imagine a lot of us up here on the dais, to continue to resource your office so that your team isn't stretched so thin that we can have the robust research and analytics and skill sets. I'm excited to hear that Mr. Overton is sitting for the bar so that we will have some legal experience as well. So things like that. Just continue to elevate the capacity and the capabilities of your office. Just know that you find support with me in requesting those resources. Ms. Lindo, I'm constantly amazed as I'm reminded of all the work that your office has to do in terms of people forget that you are the record keeper for the entire city, that you're responsible for contracts that get signed. It's not just when we see you every other Monday running and generating our meetings, but there's so much more that y'all do. The reports, the financial filings that we all have to do. And I would say the same thing to you in that you have a lean, mean, mighty machine that gets a lot done. But as we continue to evolve, as technology continues to evolve, I would say even, you know, investments in technology that we're using, we've been having some challenges, continue to have some challenges with Elms. Please don't be shy to ask, because if you're not highly functioning, we're not highly functioning, and we're not delivering to the constituents and the residents of the city what we need to. So just don't be shy at the appropriate time. So that's it. I'm just throwing flowers out. And Mr. Chair, I yield. All right. Thank you. Council Member Bakhtiari.

Thank you, guys. I have to echo Council Member Wan on everything. Clerk Glendo and the team, you all have done an extraordinary job. Santana, sorry, it's against the right. You've done a great job as well, and very grateful to you all, and also the resumes of most of you. Makes me question what I've done with my life up until this point. So well done. And I actually just have one question, not about anything, it's a question about the work y'all are doing. Echoing that I would love to see more resources allocated to you all because I do not want you all stretched so thin. You have a lot of different personalities to contend with on this council. And you do a great job doing so. And so one of my questions is, Council budget over the last 10 years. What was it 10 years ago? What is it now?

Wow. Okay, that's a loaded question. So I was with City Council 10 years ago. I joined you all in 2014. And if research serves me correct, in 2017, your salaries budgets, and this is salaries for your staff, was $181,000. That increased to 215,000 in fiscal year 23, I'm sorry, fiscal year So July of 2023. And then again, there was a small adjustment of about 15,000 to 237,000 in fiscal year 25, which was July of 2024. Expenses, shameful, but they were 43,000 in 2017. they are now 71,000 and that essentially it was increased to 51,000 fiscal year 23, 24 and to 71,000, which is where you are now in fiscal year 25. So thank you for the recap.

and for the ability to pull those numbers out of your head. I do wanna say that, I kind of wanna ask how that compares to other departments and how they've grown because it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel like over 10 years of growth that that is with inflation factored in, with changes in demands that have changed, like when demands have only grown as I've seen with other departments, it does not feel that we're keeping pace with what we are giving to those as well.

And council member, I would not be in the best position to speak about the other departments. I can just state from reviewing the prior budget years and even this current fiscal year, if you are looking at salaries, and again, not salaries, we're not talking about our team salaries, we're talking about your respective salaries. If you are looking at that and comparing growth, growth in personnel count, as well as in the salary amount itself that's been allocated, it has exponentially grown. And I'm pretty sure there are several factors that go into that. And I would defer to finance to speak to that and even maybe pull the research as to what that's looked like over the past five to 10 years.

Let's do with our salaries more to do with the budgets and our ability to to support our districts. And I thank you for giving me the last 10 year breakdown. It doesn't feel like a lot of growth. In terms of salaries, hear you on that one. In terms of office budgets and the ability to support our own staff and ensure that they can keep living standards and pay and to ensure that we can actually hire our own staff to support ourselves and to ensure that we can better serve our ever-growing constituencies and the larger demands that we are all facing each and every day. So I just wanted to ask that point. Thank you for giving me that information. And I think my colleagues would agree with me with what we just discussed. So thank you so much. And also great job, all of you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Council Member Boone.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for what you all do to help the City Council with all that we have to do. Will all members in the audience that work for the Atlanta City Council please stand? all are to be commended. You are special. You are magnificent. Thank you for all you do for us. You may be seated. Thank you so much. Thank you. We have to motivate and make sure that our staff knows that how much we appreciate them they are here every day you all are responsive from the clerk's office to our chief of staff to her staff whenever we need something right away we can depend on it as far as research goes you all are well beyond what you should be so again thank you so much and special kudos to our spectacular communications staff i will not call brian and phyllis's name today but thank you all for all All talent, raw talent, and you all are appreciated. So thank you again.

All right. Thank you. And then we'll finish off questions for this session from Council Member Martin.

Listen, much of what I want to say was said by Councilman Raboon. What you all do is yeoman's work, and we appreciate you. As a former staffer, I know what you all deal with on a regular basis. The research and policy team, and we call with last-minute legislative drafting requests to the clerk's office when we need historical items pulled to our communications team. When we are last minute events and we need a photographer there, you all answer the call every single time. And I, as a council member, am grateful. I think I want to echo Council Member Bakhtiari's sentiments. We have a much more plugged in constituency because of social media. And folks expect their government to respond to them and their elected officials. And you all are the reason why we're able to do that efficiently. And I just wanted to say thank you again. And thank you, Mr. Chair.

All right. Thank you. And as we all have given you your flowers, so we appreciate you. Thank you so much. At this time, colleagues, we will transition over to our next session. We will welcome up our 61st mayor, Mr. Andre Dickens, and the executive office team for our 1.30 session. And then we will end the day with our personnel paper discussion. And again, for our listening public, an electronic copy of the budget book and all presentations can be found under the FY2027 budget session tab on the Finance Executive Committee webpage of the City Council's website.

Talking too much.

Ready? Hear you, hear you. Good afternoon, everyone.

We're going to go ahead and get started with our next session, which is the executive offices.

And I am pleased to welcome our mayor, Mr. Andre Dickens, and his executive team. Mayor, I will turn the floor over to you to give us an opportunity to hear about your FY proposed 27 budget. Thank you.

All right. Good deal. Do I? Am I? All right. I'm on. All right. Good afternoon, council. And thank you. Thank you, Chair Winston, for allowing us to present right now and to all the members of the Atlanta City Council and to you, Council President, and to all of our team members and staff, thank you for your time today. And thank you for your thoughtful conversations and exchanges with the various departments and offices over this whole session these last several weeks. They've been engaging, you've been thoughtful, you've been present. So I really want to thank this Atlanta City Council for your relationship and hard work with the various departments and the people behind me and the people that are out doing the work of the city. I really also want to thank our city teams. For those of you that are watching here, I've watched a few of the hearings and the conversations, and thank you for the work that you do on behalf of the residents and businesses and visitors of the city of Atlanta, and for your commitment of delivering excellence every single day out and about in these communities, and for the fiscal stewardship that you display in your budgets as those department heads. And so I'm thrilled to be here. This is my fifth time presenting our budget as the mayor of this great city. I stand before you today with my team that's here. And I'll just start right to left, as you know, our chief of staff, Courtney English, and our chief operating officer, LaShondra Butler-Burks. And we have Zuffer Sangay, which is our chief strategy officer. And behind us is a whole lot of good people I do a whole lot of good work. But I stand before you today proudly offering up a balanced budget that requires no reduction in force of our great employees. That's on behalf of all of them. And no adjustments needed to our fund balance or reserves. That is fiscal responsible and all without compromising our core city services and city functions. Balanced, no reduction in force, no adjustment to our fund balance, and no adjustments on the downside to any city service. That's what we've presented in your budget books and that's what we have here today. And I really want to take a moment to get into before we get into the executive office budget details to reflect on where we've been. And because it's very important to remember where we've been as we chart a path for where we're going. There are some of you that's been with us for four years. We've been together and a few have been here five months or more. It's important to talk about when we took office four and a half years ago, and we set promises to the people of Atlanta. And none of these promises were easy. They were all big promises. And I'm proud to stand before you today saying that we have delivered. Let's go to slide number three. Well, first I'll go over today's agenda.

There's the remote.

Oh, I have the remote. To your right, ma'am. I have it. Well, first, so today's agenda is gonna be reflection on term one, and then we'll talk about our 20 year vision that we wanna share with you and start working with you on a 20 year vision and why we need one. And then fiscal year 26 highlights, And then the administrative orders that we did and needed to update. And then org chart, so you'll be able to see who's who. And then our FY27 budget highlights. And then the executive office financial information. And then we'll go to questions and answers.

Yeah, why don't you take that away?

So as you look here at all that has been accomplished, we achieved a triple A credit rating. We invested $185 million in youth services. And because we did that, Homicides are now down almost 50%. That number is a few weeks old, but it's about 50% year to date from 2022, alongside overall drops in crime, not just in homicides, but in crime in general. That is not a coincidence. That is a cause and effect that is proof that when you invest in our young people, that is the most powerful public safety strategy that the city has ever deployed. We decried that it was gonna be the year of the youth, and it's been so good and so successful that it's the year of the youth every single year. We invested. $6 million in food access, and we are on our way to opening our second new municipally-owned grocery store in a food desert on Camelton Road in District 11. Councilmember Martin is showing that he's excited about that. And the first one I just left today. I literally left from Invest Atlanta's board meeting. And I went to Azalea Market for Memorial Day needs, just gifts, food for Memorial Day that I needed for, and I shop at Azalea. And so we built and broke ground on 13,000 units of affordable housing. We launched the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative to bring more resources to parts of the city that have been left behind. we defeated the buckhead city movement and kept this city whole again we achieved a triple a credit rating with our cfo and this city council the highest possible that you can get which means every dollar dollar that we borrow for infrastructure costs atlanta taxpayers less and less and our park score is now number 18 in the nation and when we started we were around 50 just four years ago. We're moving up and things are going well. While we are doing all that, we also became the city that the rest of the country looks to As a model, we're the number one city to start a business, number one place to live in the United States, and according to Forbes, the number one for recent college graduates, number one for black home buyers, number one for black-owned businesses, and number one most educated city in America. We are also the best city, best sports city in the nation. This is all just recent good news of being number one in the city of Atlanta. Thank you. And there's so many others that we could list because we keep, I mean, we're best summer vacation spot. We just became listed recently. This stuff just keeps people continue to see what we're doing and highlighted. Atlanta is winning. And we did it while keeping our fiscal house in order and improving our core city services. We are delighted to be number one. But here's what I need the city council to understand and really what I want everyone in Atlanta to understand that we are not done. We are still just getting started because Of all of those great rankings and all of that growth, all of that momentum, Atlanta is growing, but not all of Atlanta is seeing the same amount of growth. The growth is not equal. We have built something remarkable, and now the work is to make sure that all of Atlanta gets the best of Atlanta. This is what this budget is about. It is not just about maintaining what we have built. It is about accelerating the work, more affordable housing, safer streets, stronger youth programs, better infrastructure, and the full implementation of the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative at the scale that these communities deserve. We have proven the concept. We all know what works. We have identified the resources. And the only question left is whether we have the will to finish what we started. And this budget is my answer to that question. And so I look forward to working with each of you to get this budget passed, as well as our NRI and a number of other things that are helping us move Atlanta forward. Next slide, please. And so as we move, we wanna talk about a 20 year vision that Zephyr is gonna share with you all. We thought it wise to begin to plan 20 years out. There's a lot of things that we had to do in coming in to make sure that public safety was taken care of and to get a number of things in order. We did not have a document or a roadmap that gave us what to do next. What are some of the things to consider? What are some of the implications as this city grows, as this region grows? And what are the jobs of the future? What are the challenges that we'll face? How to move this city forward, even down the road 20 years? So this will be the first time you hear us talking about a 20-year plan. We're not going to, you know, give you the whole plan because we want to work with you on the plan. But we started that because think about how good it would have been had some of you that came in eight years ago, if you had a roadmap. that kind of talked about where we're headed. And if I had four years ago, four and a half years ago, a roadmap of some of the things that we see from a revenue perspective, expense perspective, et cetera. So Zuffer, if you don't mind, take it away.

Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Council. My name is Zephyr Sangay, the Chief Strategy Officer of the City of Atlanta. The Mayor stood up this office a little over two years ago, and the charter was to help define what that long-term vision and strategy was. with the COO focused on day to day operations of our great city, really wanted to ensure that we had some mind space and mind share thinking about the long term. And there was also a couple of events that occurred a couple of years ago, most notably the water main break in 2024, which in essence triggered the idea of what are our assumptions and what are the long term strategies that we need to put in relative to our aging infrastructure of the water? And then similarly, as it relates to the 2022 legislation around moving Atlanta forward and the infrastructure bond, how do we actually move faster in executing that? And those are some of the topics that created the impetus and are some of the topics that we continue to focus on in this office working in collaboration with the COO. But after the mayor got reelected, he challenged us to say, hey, what is this 20-year vision going to really be? And how do we craft this and lay down roots and foundation that sustain beyond a mayoral term? And so that's what we've been on over the last six months. It's a deliberate process to really assess where we are with our current vision, which is making Atlanta be the best city to raise a child, to understanding what the current priorities are that we're working on. What are the capabilities that we have? What are the competencies that we have? What should we be working on? And we spent a meaningful amount of time working as a senior leadership team, getting input from cabinet, understanding what the enterprise is working on. And so we're here to kind of start to unveil some of the output of that. And as the mayor alluded to, we look forward to really spending time with each of you on this to really influence and finalize it. And so I want to introduce the vision statement.

There you go.

Okay. And so the vision statement is Atlanta will be the best major city to thrive and raise every child. And I'm gonna pass it over to Mayor Dickens to make a few contextual comments on that before I jump right back in.

You've heard me say a lot of times about being the best place to raise a child. We wanted to make sure that we, you know, rounded that out with not just a child, but every child. And to make it even more distinctively clear that it's talking about every single corridor, you know, community and home in our city. But we also thought to... not only just talk about where you are as a youth and how you grow, but just thrive, how the city thrives for businesses, thrives for adults, thrives for neighborhoods. We spent some time designing this statement that you guys can give us input on in the community. And how that works is we want it to be measurable. And so the best, we've talked about our rankings and what ranking that we could use as the best metric, which is the Child Opportunity Index, which is not decided by us. It's an index that's judged by others that we want to be in the top 25 of that, of the 100 largest metro areas. and being able to support those people that are living here to help them thrive, to help those individuals get to where they're going. That's the thriving portion. And so this is our 20-year vision, top line. And so now you can go down into some of the details.

Great. And so look forward to having more conversations with you on that. We're super excited about the vision statement because it is intended and is more inclusive and leans in on the strengths of the city where we're really good relative to growth and economic development, but also is really honest about what we've been talking about, the tale of two cities and how we can actually elevate the opportunity for all citizens in Atlanta. And so we've kind of landed this first draft of the vision statement, and the next steps that we've been working on really is to think about how we start to implement and cascade this across the enterprise. There's a lot to digest here. I was hoping we had a little bit of animation, but since we don't, if you can kind of work with me from top to bottom on what you see visually here, is that we clearly have spent a lot of time on the why. And that is really the vision statement. And we still have a lot of work to do to refine that, to cascade that into the enterprise. We then said, okay, in order to achieve this vision, what are the goals that we need to have to achieve this vision? And then what are the primary outcomes that we need to achieve those goals? Those are outlined there by those strategic pillars that you see on the top. And these are the lanes of impact that we have as a municipal government. Those outcomes are outcomes that our citizens are going to experience. And so they include things as looking at reducing violent crime rate, but also if you kind of look across there, we're also looking at things like cost burden households. And what do I mean by that? While we'll continue to measure our progress on a topic such as housing on the number of housing units affordable housing units we bring into our city we recognize that we need to ensure that that's driving an outcome for our citizens and one of those outcomes is that we should be reducing the amount of houses that are that are not cost burdened we should be reducing evictions and so this is a real significant challenge There's a multidimensional nature of achieving those outcomes, but we are challenging ourselves to ensure that what we work on is driving outcomes for our citizens. And this is the underpinning of what you will hear within the NRI impact framework. It's essentially doubling down on ensuring that our activities are driving outcomes. And so once we've kind of landed that, we then said, okay, what are the strategies? What are the things we need to work on to achieve those outcomes? And I alluded to a couple of them around investing in our aging water infrastructure, continuing to invest in our city infrastructure with moving Atlanta forward. But these will also include areas such as violence reduction, permitting, homelessness. How do we drive sustained revenue growth for the city long term? leaning in on early childhood education, youth programs and housing. And so we've identified these priorities as the areas that we're going to invest in. And that has influenced our budgeting proposal that you have seen today and will continue to influence our budgeting cycle for the remainder of this administration. And so that takes us to where we are today. So we've defined the what, the why, and the what, but we're also now going to be spending time on the how, which is clearly the most challenging part of this whole equation. You know, what is the organizational structure that we need to achieve these outcomes? How do we leverage this place-based approach with NRI to execute on these ambitions? what are the performance management what's the organizational capabilities that we need as it relates to executing large capital projects and that becomes this 20-year foundational framework that we're hoping to in essence anchor into city hall for decades to come and then what administration comes in we in essence will prioritize and enter integrate that into a long-range roadmap and you see moving atlanta forward below which is our administration's focus and we've tied those to those strategic plans and the intention is to do that for any administration that comes through so this is all fresh paint there's a lot to digest here we look forward to to speaking to you guys more about this i think that the big takeaway is that this is contextually influencing in essence what you're seeing from us in our budget and we'll see from us going forward and so with that i'll pass it on to salo burks to talk about fy 26 budget highlights

Thank you and good afternoon to Mr. Chair, Madam President, and all the members of the Atlanta City Council. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to just give a few FY26 budget highlights. You have heard from many and all of our departments who have come before you over the last two weeks that have kind of given a few FY26 highlights, but there are a few more that we want to touch specifically under the mayor's four pillars. Starting with one safe city, the mayor mentioned our 42% reduction in homicides. That goes from 2022 to 2025. And if we continue to go towards the right, we are investing in seven new public safety facilities. Five of those are for fire, two for the Atlanta Police Department. We have seen a 17.6% reduction in E911 response times. We have opened the fourth at premise center on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in council district 10. 482 new police officers and firefighters, which is really unprecedented and has been for the city over the last few years. So we're excited about that. And just last month, we celebrated the one year anniversary opening of the Public Safety Training Center, which we will be having a one year birthday party soon that everyone will be invited to. Our next pillar is a city built for the future. A few highlights here. We completed phase one of Concourse D widening, and I won't go over all of these, I'll just touch on a few. And in June, many of you will be hearing about additional Concourse D widening project and how we're gonna be out there to celebrate it. The mayor mentioned our park score, acquiring 95 acres of land for new green space is what helped us rise in our park score. 94.5 paved lanes of roadways and streets. I think that is worth celebrating in one year. If there's one thing we request we get from every council member is, I want this particular street paved. And so we are glad to celebrate 94.5 lane miles of roads paved. And then the opening of the new integrated command center just ahead of FIFA World Cup. If you have not had an opportunity to go up on the fourth floor in the Department of Transportation to see that, we welcome you to do so. just last night we were here for the public hearing and had a weather incident and all the team were able to go up immediately pull up all of the streets that we needed to look at that we heard that there were flooding and began to act on that so we are excited about that and welcome you all to go see Our next pillar is we look at ethical government. Redesign the supplier portal for city vendors. Many of you sitting on this panel made those recommendations. And thanks to our procurement department who was able to implement that. 97% financial disclosure compliance filing rate. And I will say a big portion of the 3% are employees who left the city not realizing that they still had to continue to do their financial disclosures for one year.

We've launched the ATL direct to increase transparency of the city of Atlanta.

And this ATL direct website has received national award of excellence. So we want to give communications team a shout out on that. And now, and now, as we get into the mayor's next pillar city of opportunity for all, I'm going to turn it over to our chief of staff.

What was the contract compliance?

All right, the mayor wanted me to make sure that contract compliance successfully closed out 19 audit recommendations from our internal auditor, which is a huge, huge success. And the interesting part, once we got the audit, it was our director, Rashawn Spencer's third day at work. And so kudos to her for finishing out all 19 audit recommendations. Thank you.

Thanks so much, Madam COO. Just a few highlights regarding a city of opportunity for all. Last year, we officially launched the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative, the mayor's comprehensive strategy to bring the ingredients of healthy, whole neighborhoods to every part of the city of Atlanta. We are already delivering on this promise. Monthly neighborhood working groups, THE FIRST MUNICIPAL GROCERY STORE IN DOWNTOWN ATLANTA. THE SECOND IS ON ITS WAY. BORN HOMES GROUNDBREAKING. BORN HOMES WILL BE ONLINE, FIRST PHASE, BY THE END OF THE YEAR. PHASE TWO WILL CLOSE WITHIN THE NEXT 30 TO 40 DAYS. ESTATE PLAN AND SUPPORT FOR 100 SENIORS IN NRI NEIGHBORHOODS. EXPANDED CAPACITY FOR NEIGHBORHOOD PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS. AND AN EXPANDED ANTI-DISPLACEMENT TAX FUND TO HELP LEGACY RESIDENTS STAY IN THEIR HOMES. AND OF COURSE, WORKING WITH COUNCILMEMBER DOZER, on the legacy business expansion program to ensure that our legacy businesses can continue to thrive in the communities in which they have served so well. Housing, of course, is our love language in the Dickens administration. The mayor set an ambitious eight-year goal of delivering 20,000 units of affordable housing units, and we are ahead of schedule. Today, more than 13,600 units have already been delivered or are under construction, including 500 units of permanently supportive housing for our unhoused neighbors. We set a goal of building 500 units of permanently supportive housing. We built 534. That represents the largest investment in homelessness in the city of Atlanta's history. Earlier this year, the mayor issued a number of administrative orders that were geared towards reshaping the administration, reshaping executive offices to align with second term priorities. And so we wanted to take two seconds to provide a brief update on those executive orders. The first administrative order focused on ensuring the structure of government reflects the priorities of the mayor's second term. We've implemented new leadership development steps. I'm sorry. Missing one. Let's go.

Okay.

It's on me. The first administrative order was designed to move NRI from concept to operating framework across the entire enterprise. Since its issuance, we've aligned the city's 20-year vision and performance outcomes around NRI priorities, improved project tracking, launched an internal NRI strike team, and continue pursuing new revenue tools, whether it's TAD extensions, a trust fund, or other tools that the chief strategy officer are exploring to actually infuse additional capital into the city's general fund budget. The next administrative order focused on ensuring the actual structure of the mayor's office. The structure of the exec office reflected the mayor's priorities during his second term. We've implemented new leadership development standards, identified operational savings, added stronger spending controls, and redesigned organizational structure to improve accountability and increase execution. With that, I'll let the mayor talk about our organizational charts.

All right. So you've seen the work that we've done in 26 and before, and you've seen the 20-year vision, just a quick review of it or a highlight of it, a preview of it, actually. And we couldn't give you all the highlights of everything that has occurred, but those are just a snapshot and a little bit of what we've done. We're still You know, everything from the world's busiest airport to your sanitation department picking up your garbage on time. All those things matter to us, and we have to look at those things each day. And so the org chart is here. You guys know this org chart, but this is really for the citizens of Atlanta that want to get a—they got to meet with me. No, they can meet with LaShondra Burks. They can meet with Courtney English. And they each have teams that you can all talk to. So you see on the next slide, this is the Chief Strategy Officer's team, Lily Madali, and a series of great folks that work on that team that are instrumental in helping us with everything from the work that they've done to help us with the water and sewer work that we've been doing to moving Atlanta forward, to even implementation of some of the preparedness for FIFA World Cup and how we actually will get reimbursed for our police activities and fire activities. And then under the Chief Operating Officer, you want me to handle this or you go ahead? She has the most complex organization, of course, with a number of constitutional codified departments that you all know quite well because they stood before you over the past couple of weeks. And she has her deputy COOs and team members there. And then you have the chief of staff. You want to do yours?

Yeah. Okay.

Okay.

So there have been a number of changes into the chief of staff office. We have, of course, created the office of the chief policy officer. We have essentially blended the organizations together. And so what is reflected here is a new organizational structure that has diffused both the roles of the policy office as well as the roles of the chief um uh chiefs of staff office into one functional organization designed uh and optimized to to achieve uh the mayor's second term um priorities uh many of the same functions that you are used to uh all of the same functions that you are used to uh still remain uh the one thing of course we went through uh earlier uh or late last year rather a transition from uh the mayor's office of equity diversity inclusion to the mayor's office of one atlanta that led by our chief impact officer, Candace Stansel. The chief staff also serves as the primary point of contact for our external quasi-governmental organizations. We have made some small adjustments in terms of We've got one new deputy chief of staff and a new special assistant to the mayor. All of you have had opportunities to interact with those folks. And so I'm sure we might have questions about this, but we did want to give you at least an overview as to what was happening with the office. As we move into the next part of the presentation, we get into our FY27 budget and what we plan to do with the money that you all are considering to allocate to us and how we, what are you paying for? What are you essentially going to be buying as we move into the next year? This budget continues the Mayor's historic investment in youth, building on $185 million spent in youth spending over the last four years. Through continued partnerships like the Mayor's Summer Youth Employment Program, Apprenticeship, ATL, PACE, Teen Leaders Academy, Midnight Basketball, we are connecting young people to jobs, to mentorship, and to pathways towards economic mobility. I mentioned earlier that we are committed to housing. Affordable housing is, in fact, our love language. And so, while our primary commitment in the general fund is reflected through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, I wanted to let you know, because we've had lots of conversation about what is in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and what isn't. One of the things that we have done is move some staff into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. But here's what that staff has effectively leveraged. 57 housing projects are currently under progress. They are helping to convene, organize, and deploy almost $500 million worth of public subsidy. This is an 11-member team whose budget is right around $1 million, and they are currently coordinating $1.8 billion of development opportunity. or development that are in progress as of today. These include major catalytic sites from Thomasville Heights to transit-oriented developments at Oakland City and the H.E. Holmes train station. They include a partnership with the Atlanta public school system. Lakewood Heights, People Street, Rosalie Wright are all moving forward and moving towards shovels being in the ground on all of those particular projects. And so this how we are incredibly proud of the work of all of our team members, but the housing team has really, really become a model across the country for how to develop affordable housing efficiently and at scale.

I'll just chime in on there. You could go to Brock, you could go to Pulte, you could go to Beezer, you can go to any of these people. You will not find 11 folks on the staff that do $1.8 billion worth of development. So one of the largest developers in the state of Georgia is actually in our shop. They coordinate 57 projects. There's nobody doing 57 projects at the same time in the state of Georgia right now but the city of Atlanta and our associated partners to the strike force.

So what else are you paying for? There have been a number of highlights. I'm going to run through these quickly to preserve as much time for questions at the end, but do want you to know what you're getting out of the money that you have been spending and will allocate this particular year. First, for the Department of Labor, not going to spend much time here because their actual budget hearing was yesterday, but through workforce programs, career fairs, and youth employment initiatives, the Department of Labor connected thousands of Atlantans to jobs, to training, and economic opportunity. The Office of Constituent Services expanded direct community impact through housing support, senior engagement, violence prevention, violence prevention programming, and neighborhood-based outreach across the city. Atlanta's film entertainment economy continues to grow with more than 900 film permits issued, major productions hosted, and stronger partnerships supporting one of the nation's leading creative industries. All right. They're a rowdy bunch. through coordinated training, enforcement, and partnership strategies, crime around nightlife. Okay. Through coordinated training, enforcement, and partnership strategies, crime around nightlife establishment has dropped more than 40% since 2022. Crime has dropped more than 40% since 2022. When the mayor came into office, there was a huge surge, actually, in crime around our nightlife establishment. The office that helped coordinate All of that activity to ensure that our folks were trained up to keep our citizens safe as they visited our nightlife establishment was this particular office. The Office of Cultural Affairs expanded access to arts and culture by supporting over 29,000 youth, funding local artists, launching new public art initiatives, and strengthening Atlanta's creative economy. They are, of course, one of the leading partners in our efforts towards FIFA World Cup with the expansion of the Atlanta Cultural Exchange. We're super excited about that. And obviously this weekend, we have the Atlanta Jazz Fest expected to host almost 300,000 and individuals. The Office of Sustainability and Resilience, Advanced Climate Leadership through Climate Resilient, ATL, Youth Climate Investments, Energy Savings, and Weatherize, ATL, which has supported and will continue to support over 140 homeowners through retrofits, making their homes more energy efficient, driving down cost. We're going to spend some time talking about the efforts, the ongoing and continued efforts of our Intergovernmental Affairs Team, which is a team of three individuals led by our Deputy Chief of Staff, Gabrielle Slade. During the 2025 and 2026 legislative cycle, the city monitored more than 500 bills and successfully helped defeat or reshape legislation that would have negatively impacted Atlanta's economic development tools, annexation authority, and local control. At the federal level, The city secured major outside resources, including $6.25 million in congressionally directed spending and $52 million in FEMA FIFA World Cup grant funding. This team is small but mighty. A lot of the times we are playing constructive, proactive defense under the gold dome, but they have done a great job in protecting the interests of the city of Atlanta. the office of One Atlanta. All right. The office of One Atlanta. One Atlanta expanded equity, accessibility, and inclusion work through the FIFA Human Rights Plan. They expanded the employee resource groups from one to eight. They have hired the first director of disability access and ADA compliance to expand the city's ADA access. They have supported our young women through the Women's Advisory Councils and International Day of the Girl. Again, a small but mighty team that's helping to build a more inclusive city. The Office of International and Immigrant Affairs. The Office of International and Immigrant Affairs has served nearly 330,000 residents through community resource events. A major win is the deployment of six bilingual community navigators who connect residents to city services. This is the office that helps put together a number or helps coordinate all of the delegation visits to the city. There have been over 63 delegation visits through the city. since 2025 alone, representing 77 countries from around the world. I'll take a special note just to say, I'm not going to say too much because I don't want to give the game away, but when folks wonder what we are doing to protect our immigrant populations in the city during troubled times, this is the office these folks call. This is who they call. This is the office that is on the ground. providing this is the office who's on the ground providing direct resources they're in communities we can't talk about it we can't publicize how they do what they do but just know that the city of Atlanta has a place for people to go to get help and access to resources and so we're super proud of the work of this particular office the office of special events has managed more than a 550 outdoor events serving over 1.4 million attendees while modernizing signature city celebrations like Countdown over ATL. And so if you were out last year during New Year's Eve, you saw a very, very different New Year's Eve experience, and we plan on moving that forward. Let's turn it over to the COO to talk a little bit about emergency preparedness.

All right. So many of you know all the departments within the city of Atlanta, but few know some of the offices that are under the operating division within the mayor's office. You are familiar with the emergency preparedness led by Philippe Denbrock. I can't begin to tell you the work that has been done to get us prepared for FIFA. from 17 FIFA All Agency public safety meetings where they have done over 10 tabletops. They have coordinated citywide critical incidents for all departments. We briefed you all before on winter ice events. We briefed you all on severe weather events, the seven that we've had over the last year. They have been the ones at the lead coordinating all of our efforts with the departments. And then the grant funding that's been secured, you can see that. And our vulnerable populations, they have led citywide warming center efforts. And thank you for those of you, last year we had 34 activations where we served right at 9,220 of our most vulnerable populations. The Office of Innovation and Performance, which is led by Dr. Symetra Epps, launched our OpenATL, which is an interactive dashboard that supports where we can see our KPIs and our metrics on a daily basis. They have also been instrumental with our performance matrix and data and dashboards. Many of you have heard the departments talk about dashboards and metrics this year. Those things are monitored by the Office of Innovation and Performance. And when we see too many reds, that's when we get them to have some meetings and figure out what's going on so that we can make sure we have a better serving Atlanta. The Mayor's Office of Contract Compliance led by Ms. Rashawn Spencer. You heard me talk about the audits, but I also want to talk about they have monitored 654 active contracts within the city of Atlanta to make sure that they are meeting their goals and abiding by the contract. We have 632 certification applications that they have processed, and they have been very instrumental in partnering with GDOT and MARTA on the new federal disadvantaged business engagement and airport concessions disadvantaged business engagement recertification process. So I want to thank them for their work on that.

And then there is the Mayor's Office of Violence Reduction, which is led by Marcus Walker.

Even in the public hearing last night, you heard from people who came forward to say, we wanna make sure that we're continuing to fund the Mayor's Office of Violence Reduction. And that is actually in this budget. We're talking about 22 violence interrupters, incredible messengers who have been out on various streets within Atlanta, and they're working through nonprofit organizations. This is our non-policing side of policing. So when you hear about crime rates going down, homicides going down, there is a policing side, and this is the non-policing side that contributes to that. We have held, this office is also responsible for our FIFA anti-human trafficking work, where we have done trainings across this city with hotels, restaurants. The mayor had an event on yesterday at the airport with the governor's wife, the first lady of the state of Georgia, where we have trained right at 2,760 people around trafficking and what that looks like. As we look at our crime data consistently, one of the things we learned last year as we were looking at crime data and talking to Chief Sherbaum on a daily basis, when we look at the reasons for a lot of our crimes, they were around domestic violence. So then as we realized what the reason was, we turned to the Office of Violence Reduction and said, what can we do about this? And so many of you saw the No More Domestic Violence campaign, where you've seen celebrities post, we've seen radio ads, all the things that we could do to support people around domestic violence. That work was led out of the Mayor's Office of Violence Reduction. So I want to give kudos to them for really standing up, being a non-policing side. One of the things we know is that this is an office just based on the way violence interruption, incredible messengers are set up. It is not one that it can be advertised. It is not one that you will see people in uniforms. They really, in order to be credible and accepted in the neighborhoods, they have to spend time in the neighborhoods connecting with individuals. And you would be amazed at how many retaliation they prevent in the city of Atlanta from many of our shootings, homicides, and aggravated assaults. So kudos to that team. And now I'll turn it back to our chief of staff who will talk you through our budget.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Madam COO. Just a brief overview of our position count by fund. This slide reflects an overview of the staffing across executive office. By funding source, as of February 2026, exec offices had 237 total positions across the general fund, airport revenue fund, and wastewater fund. Of those positions, 161 are currently filled and 76 are currently vacant. The most important point here is that we are not simply carrying vacancies forward year after year. We have worked closely with finance and HR and the leaders of these various teams to evaluate which positions are mission critical, which positions align with second-term priorities, and where we can streamline operations. As a part of that effort, the four coming personnel legislation will abolish 29 positions. That allows us to reduce 29 vacant positions. That allows us to reduce long-term personnel obligations, tighten operational focus, and redirect resources towards the highest priority work of the administration. This reflects a broader shift toward a leaner, more accountable, and more strategically aligned executive office structure. Additional notes on budget reduction. We've outlined that we are eliminating some staff, but we're eliminating some positions, I should say. But we've reduced expenditures overall by approximately $2.1 million through operational streamlining, again, position abolishments, and reductions in temporary staffing and contracted services. gives you a snapshot of the budget itself. The FY26 adopted budget was approximately $27.8 million. The FY27 proposed budget is approximately $27.77 million, essentially flat year over year while aligning resources to second term priorities. Again, we plan on abolishing a number of positions. We've cut back on some spending in a variety of areas. And we're also evaluating where emergency services, things like our warming centers, our other emergency services, how those allocations, where they reside in the budget to ensure that they are in the appropriate place so that you can get increased transparency into how those dollars are spent as well. That being said, I'll turn it back over to Mayor to close this out.

All right. So members of council, before I close and take your questions, I really just wanted to, you know, we talked a lot about dollars and cents, and I'm sure we'll talk even more about that. But let's just really talk about what's all underneath that. which is that the results that you've seen have not happened by accident this is very intentional to be in a position where the city has achieved a number of its goals exceeded many of the goals as well as to be able to be in this position to present to you yet again a balanced budget without adjusting to our uh workforce without doing a reduction in force or touching our reserves to be able to do that and then also not reduce any of our service delivery. To do that with the AAA credit rating that also, and we've done Moving Atlanta Forward and the Aura Bond all at the same time and the Homeless Opportunity Bond that has all deployed these great resources for our community. to do that and while being thoughtful enough to launch a 20-year visioning process of strategic planning to go out into the future to take us to a place that Atlanta it has not gone before to go even further the foundation is what makes everything possible so we are on our way and constantly improving our service delivery and Again, we are positioned to thrive. This foundation means real impact for our residents, our businesses today and in the future by investing upstream in the conditions that produce crime in the first place. We've had historic drops in crime. We are attracting major global events from Super Bowl to FIFA to many other things. Infrastructure delivery. You must remember that this team coordinates with the Beltline. on a daily basis water infrastructure green space we've added 600 acres of green space and all the road construction that you see and last but not least all of the new resources for our neighborhoods a lot of that work comes through us through invest atlanta and our associated work in the community So with that, thank you all for your partnership, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you, Mayor Dickens and your executive team for a thorough overview of your FY26 accomplishments, as well as overview. As you know, this session, this part of the session, we allow my colleagues to be able to ask questions. And so I'm going to get that started with Councilmember Dozier.

Looks like I have a mute button somewhere down here. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I didn't realize I was going to be first in the shoot. So now that I know that, I will be brief because I know I have some colleagues who are going to have questions of their own. Firstly, to echo Councilman Winston's comments, thank you so much for the very thorough presentation. I get it. you know i was coming up with questions and then you would get to a slide and my questions would be answered and so it's been really helpful to go through this especially the org charts i know oftentimes with uh transition of personnel and changes in the structure the work that uh chief english has been doing to restructure the executive offices uh this is helpful for us to know who to go to whenever we have an issue so i'm gonna frame this and make sure that i can i know who exactly to go to so i don't have to bug CEO Berks or Chief Englishman if I need something. My first question is actually for Chief Sangay. The 20-year strategy continuity plan, I guess, that you laid out, I recognize we're a strong mayor city. New administrations might have different priorities. What sort of frameworks are you putting in place to ensure that that strategy continues across administrations or across councils?

Yes, Council Member Dozier, great question. It's certainly one that we continue to reflect on and challenge on. In fact, I had an opportunity to even pick Mayor Franklin's brain this morning on that very question. It really starts with ensuring that that vision that we just shared with everyone is very well understood, it's measurable, and everyone in the enterprise can connect to it. And so at the heart of it is ensuring that that vision is the vision that creates the inspiration and drives the actions. Two is that it's ensuring that we put accountability metrics around those outcomes that are embedded in how we measure success. And so you'll, as I mentioned, hear a little bit about that in the context of the impact framework for NRI as well. And then thirdly, it's ensuring that we have the organizational capabilities and culture to sustain that. And so usually, to the extent that you can get those three ingredients in place, what you decide to do in an organization can sustain, and that will change by design. as needs and priorities change for a given administration. But then those levers that I shared in that framework, and I don't think we can go back to the slide, but that's fine. Those are universal levers, right? Those are 20, 30, 50 year levers. What you do inside those levers is what is the priority, and then more importantly, ensuring that it connects to a long-term plan. So we're laying out five-year horizons of roadmaps intentionally to go beyond the mayoral term. Next administration would come in, they'd be able to see their priorities and how it fits into that strategic lane. So there's more to kind of respond to the question, but conceptually, vision, performance management, culture.

Thank you. My other question I have is a bigger question because I know there's been a lot of conversation over the last several months about our community violence interrupter program here in the city. I see some of the folks who operate in that space in the room and one of the things that wasn't made clear of in this budget is what are our general funding obligations for this work through the Mayor's Office of Violence Reduction and separately what funding opportunities exist to expand this work recognizing some of the high profile youth center shootings that we've seen take place across the city, the teen takeovers and things like that. I know APD and Chief Scherbaugh have been doing a remarkable job to keep our city safe, but they're only one part of the larger public safety equation and continuum of care, if you will. And I recognize a lot of the CVI work that we have been implementing over the years has been funded through ARPA funds that we had. And so I also didn't know the $4.3 million in grants for violence prevention work was tied to ARPA funding, or if that's any sort of general fund obligations tied to that. So if y'all can unpack that a little bit, that would be great.

Sure, thank you for the question, Councilmember Dozier. As it relates to our violence interrupters, so as you've mentioned, the 4.3 over last fiscal year was ARPA dollars, but because we have seen the success of this work in partnering with multiple non-profits and the work from the office staff, you're going to see that amount transferred over to the general fund, and it is a part of the mayor's priorities in this budget.

So 4.3 in the general fund, okay. And then what does that mean in terms of from an organization standpoint, from an org chart standpoint, how many staff members are in the mayor's office? I recognize some of this work is being executed in partnership with these organizations, but I imagine there's some administrative overhead that ties into that.

so in the mayor's office of violence reduction we have a director who is marcus walker and there are several staff members there angela smith reginald is there and so is christopher harrington so their work is very specific based on angela mostly on the domestic violence human trafficking original is focused on a lot of the youth pieces and christopher harrington is focused on the prison re-entry And so working in those three areas, in addition to all three of them, five of them, four of them, will be managing an RFP process for nonprofit organizations who are literally in the streets every day building relationships and working to prevent crime. But I also want to say that is one portion of it, but midnight basketball. I mean, there are a lot of things, just parks and rec period. We've had extended hours during spring break weeks at times when youth are out of school, you see. So it's every department we challenge to play a role in violence reduction in the city of Atlanta from a non-policing perspective.

Okay, no, that's very helpful. Just my last sort of follow up on that, recognizing that we're looking at a $4 million general fund allocation this fiscal year, would there be an opportunity to find matching funds, whether it's through a community foundation of greater Atlanta, whether one of our foundations that support, you know, community redevelopment, or whether it's Blank Family Foundation and others? reason why I asked if there's an opportunity to leverage our general fund allocation because I know in the conversation I've had with several of these CBI organizations and the consortiums that they developed to try to advocate for more opportunities in partnership with the city they're looking at upwards of an 11 million dollar a year need to address this challenge that we have across the city and whatever we can do to fill that gap that seven that I can't do math, $6.7 million gap, you know, all hands on deck. So how do we make that happen?

Yeah, so I would say broadly, we are working on a strategy designed to do exactly what you have just described, and we will be bringing that strategy before council in relative short order. Our partnerships, the Mayor Senior Advisor, our partnerships, Megan Sparks is in constant contact. with a number of external funders. We have received funding in the past, not just for this type of work, but additional community development work. We believe we will be able to bridge some of the funding gap via external partnerships, and we'll be having conversations about how we can squeeze every dollar out of the hopefully soon to be passed 2027 budget to get us down the road.

Thank you. And just my last comment on this is as y'all are having those conversations, make sure to include those organizations who are doing this work in the field every day in the room when those decisions get made.

And we will be careful of how we include them because we're going to have to do a request for proposals.

Fair point taken.

yes but we will make sure that they are all included and at the table and i cannot um go without speaking about our partnership also with grady memorial hospital who has a hospital-based non-violence reduction team where when we have gunshot victims who are there or if they're hurt in any type of aggravated assault they have an opportunity to send violence interrupters in to talk to patients the day after they have been in the hospital. And then that information helps feed to our partners. So I don't want to leave them out of this conversation as well for the great work that they're doing. So there are partners and there are funding opportunities where we can look.

Thank you for that, and I appreciate that response from all of you all, and good luck with the rest of the Q&A, and Mr. Chair, I yield. Good luck. Oh, man, that's crazy.

That's crazy. Thank you. To that note, we'll keep it moving. Council Member Norwood.

Yes, I'm very impressed with everything the administration has done, and I applaud you all. I want to say that on May 4th I had a resolution that passed 12 to 1 asking that we get from the chief financial officer and the head of human resources the executive offices that are not mandated by the charter. Some are, as zoning and police and fire and streets, but many are not. And I'm not trying to abolish them, but what we have heard over the past two weeks is every department says, we're fine, we're fine. but then the council members at every single one of these have said but we had a we couldn't get a permit or we couldn't get a street resurfaced or we couldn't and we know that we can't do it all i understand that but what we are feeling up here every day are those in the street changes that you see that we need and that is those operating mandated charter responsibilities So, what I was asking for, and it's supposed to show up on June 3rd, just want to let you know, it's not controversial, it's not confrontive or combative, but if we have 45 executive offices, and they do good work, I get that, but it may be that if we have to have a balanced budget, that we need to look at some reduction there, which will be painful, and we all understand that. in order for us to make sure we have enough code enforcement officers, enough people looking at permits, enough people out in the street for the things that we're trying to get done. And so we've heard, and I know some of y'all or all of y'all have listened to some of these sessions, so you've heard it come in. It's not that your departments are saying, I need this, I need that. It's council members who are saying, you're saying you don't, but yet here's what's happening in my district. So... good job on doing so much to move us forward. But let's make sure we get a balanced budget and we get those frontline workers that we really need to have for our offices to not be as challenged as we are to try to get the things done. literally out in the street, so that's my request.

And the answer is I think you'll get it by the deadline that you requested. You've requested 30 days, you'll have it in 30 days. I don't hold up council people's requests, so your answer is sure.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I didn't think that you would. My point was to explain in front of everybody that it's not confrontive and it's not combative. It's just let's see if there needs to be some small reduction so that we can keep a balanced budget, but we can fund some of the things that we understand we need to fund. And so it's more of a heads up before we go into deliberations and you go, well, they could have told us. Yeah. Thank you.

You're welcome, thank you. All right, Councilmember Bond.

Yeah, thank you all. I wanted to follow up on some of Councilmember Dozier's questions about CVI without repeating everything he said. So I just wanna clarify, is the 4.3 million, is that spread across all those different bodies of work or is that all specifically for community violence intervention?

It's spread across what body of work?

You also mentioned like human trafficking and related issues.

So all of that is a part of the Mayor's Office of Violence Reduction. So that particular amount is for the Mayor's Office of Violence Reduction.

Okay, and how much of that money is going specifically to those organizations on the ground that you mentioned?

And so we won't know until we do the RFP. Okay. We currently have a contract now which will expire soon, so we'll issue an RFP, and it may be multiple organizations, but that we cannot answer right now.

And how much was previously going to organizations?

The 4.3.

Oh, all of it, okay. And how are y'all distinguishing, because I've met with some community violence interruption groups and they really stressed to me that there's this distinction between intervention in at-risk individuals versus high-risk individuals. So how is that office distinguishing between these two things in terms of funding?

Well, that's going to be the work in the RFP. So once the RFP goes out and we receive proposals, there are some organizations who focus in one area, some in the other. We will make sure that it's balanced. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

Council member one. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. Mayor and team for great Presentation it's always impressive to see and do recaps because I think we're so embedded in the work. We're just flying day to day it's nice to look back and See a list that kind of makes us all very proud to be part part of the team a couple of specific questions first off the 4.3 million You said that the ARPA money will run out and that the funding, that the general fund will pick up. I want to find out if you have magnitude of the ARPA money that will expire or dry up in FY27 and what the general fund's commitment will be.

So the general fund commitment will be the same amount for FY27 as the ARPA commitment. And then it'll be time to do a new RFP in order to get providers in order to do the work.

There's no ARPA money for FY27. It will solely be general fund? Correct. Okay. And is that already embedded in the budget in the executive offices or is it coming from somewhere else?

It is. I have to ask the CFO if it's...

It's in the non-departmental allocation, so it can be ready for the RFP process.

Okay. All right. Second question is the Office of Innovation and Performance. I think you've heard us a lot in the quarterly reports, really. You talked about those red indicators in terms of SLAs, and I have to say sometimes we don't have a clear vision or sight into how that data is being turned into improvement strategies. So what are the ways that we can kind of engage with the findings and the recommendations of that particular operation to help us understand better how we're going to turn the tide on some of those red markers?

And so we can figure out a way, council member one, to do that, whether it's some form of presentation once or twice a year. But I think one of the things you heard was an example during planning's presentation, when there was questions around permitting, which we all talked about. ad nauseum on that day, right? Many of you get calls, all of us get calls equally around something that may be stuck in permitting or what have you. And so as a result, as we were looking at our KPIs through the Mayor's Office of Innovation, one of the things that we were able to do is what you heard Executive Director Greg Pace talk about was co-locating because we found out not only that we have some departments, but in some departments, people are doing multiple things. And so you've got to call, hey, there's something in, there's something in Acela for you to look at. Can you take a look at it? But having everyone co-located was one of the strategies that we tried. And the other one that you will see coming this fall is transitioning from Acela to a new system called Opal. which is an Oracle permits and licensing software, which is far better communicator to the client as well as for, it's much more user-friendly, I'll say that. But one of the things we've also learned, which is why we want to make that transition, is because what we also found was that a lot of times people, there were comments in Acela that the permit, the one who applied for the permit had not looked at to address, so we couldn't continue to move it forward. But a seller will give constant reminders. Opal will give constant reminders. So that's one example of many that we use. Sometimes we look at audits that come out of Amanda Noble's office and we take those and create dashboards around those recommendations and make sure that we're implementing those. So we use it for multiple reasons. We can think through what that looks like, but it is something we use to guide our work on a day-to-day basis.

Yeah, and I think it's coming from a spirit of how do we we are always looking at the SLAs trying to figure out how do we get to all, ideally all of them will be green. And I don't know that it's readily apparent to us who's kind of behind the curtain grinding through the 311 data, grinding through the SLAs. And it doesn't always have to be these big tectonic plate shifts in terms of we're going to implement this. I'll tell you, software platform shifts or MIGRATIONS MAKE ME NERVOUS. I'M NOT SURE THE CITY SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME HAS HAD A PARTICULARLY HIGH SUCCESS RATE, BUT I APPLAUD THE CONTINUED PUSH TOWARDS DOING THAT. BUT I JUST I THINK IT WOULD BE HELPFUL BECAUSE WHEN THE DEPARTMENTS COME TO PRESENT TO US, WE DON'T UNDERSTAND THE MACRO that are working with all these data inputs to make sure we're heading in the right direction. And then all we can do is harp on the fact that some of them are not moving in the right direction.

So were you gonna say something? Yeah, Councilmember Wynne, if I could just add a couple of comments to that question. So within the 20-year work and those primary outcomes that we shared, we are going to be partnering with that office to extract out those KPIs that aligned to those particular outcomes and drive some further definition, and more importantly, the governance mechanism that you're referring to.

I mean, at the end of the day, I think focusing on our core functions, making them better, more efficient, and improving service delivery, I look to you for that. And having, again, a line of sight into that would be really helpful. I have a number of questions around the staffing level, but I'm going to save that for the personnel paper session that's coming up next. I did want to talk a little bit about budget, though, your requested budget. First off, again, looking from 26 to 27, Where you're projected to land for FY26 and then what you're asking for in 2027 is a 10% decrease. And so I want to understand how we're getting there because most folks are kind of just shifting over laterally, whereas that's not an insignificant decrease in your budget starting point. So I'm not sure who needs to field that question.

Yeah, I want to make sure I understand how we are actually arriving at the decrease.

Yeah, so if you're going to end the year at $30 million and you're saying that we're going to be able to do the same thing, if not more, with 10% less, help me with that.

Yeah, so first I'll say that our budget reduction reflects a reduction from our actual spend from the last fiscal year's budget and what we are projected to spend this year. And so our goal is to essentially hold that number relatively flat. We are cutting- Wait, hold on a second. You're saying you are holding flat at what your projected is? We're holding flat at what our projected spend, where we will end the year this year, we're rejected to, and what our budget request was for FY25.

let me just clarify council member um so the budget is flat year over year but it's down where the expected year is to end so you're right projected year ends at 30 million next year's budget is at 27 million in the slide before you will see where those reductions are coming from So there is eliminating some positions as well as reductions in extra help and purchase contract services. The totality of those reductions yield about 2.1 million. And then there's some additional efficiency enhancements that It's projected to take on over the year through VRB and others to allow the department to stay within that constrained 27.7 million. So flat year over year budget to budget down projected to budget.

Okay. Yeah, I guess. I'll dive into that a little bit more later. Is any of that a result also of being able to hold flat transferring expenditures over to grants or trust funds?

No, there will be some abolishments that you'll see in the personnel paper. I think the office is expecting 29 abolishments in total. And so you will see a good portion of those abolishments are funded positions that are actually will not be filled next year that were filled this year and have been rejected by VRB for rehiring. And so you'll see that in the personnel paper outlined.

So there's no new expenditures, personnel, or otherwise that is being moved over to a trust fund or to a grant fund?

No, all of those have already been accounted for last year and have already been transferred.

Okay. Final comment, though, is, again, it was really nice to see all this work. I'm really looking forward to seeing the work of the strategic plan, the 20-year plan. I do think that's going to give us a lot to chew on over the next time period, and I think It'll give us a great message to send out to the public in terms of understanding why we do what we do. So looking forward to that dialogue. Mr. Chair, I yield. Thank you. Council Member Collins.

Well, thank you. Thank you so much for this presentation, extremely informative. I think most of my questions have been answered. I just have two questions for clarity, one going from what we just talked about with the positions. CFO Mo, those 29 positions are unfunded, but some of their reclassifications actually put an increase in a grade level or salary increases. So it pretty much is balanced in that regards. Is it safe to assume that?

Say that again one more time.

So there's 29 on the slide 40, there's 29 vacant positions that are being abolished. You stated that most of those are funded, but however, looking at the reclassifications from the personnel paper, some of those reclassifications actually are increases you know entitled and and of course respectfully increases in salary so that pretty much those savings are what we say those are balanced a little bit because 47 positions will still need to be filled based on the difference between the position count of 76 minus 29 no I believe a good portion of the 29

are funded vacancies that are going away and some are unfunded. So that will be a net reduction in personnel expenses. I'm not sure if there's any significant salary enhancements in... There are none. Yeah, I don't think there's any in the personnel paper.

Okay. Yeah, the numbers are real. So the reductions actually represent the reductions in staff. There are 29 reductions. A number of those are funded vacancies that we're actually reducing headcount. They actually had bodies in a seat at the beginning of this particular fiscal year, and we're making the decision to move forward without those. There are no major salary increases, no major significant salary increases that are represented or reflected in this particular budget. We also had to account for, we're absorbing a lot, we're trying at least to absorb a lot of the pressures, inflationary, additional support and staff time needed for FIFA within existing resources.

Yeah, I think that kind of answered my question. I was really leaning to the fact of just kind of making sure the numbers are balanced so it does not appear or be construed that there's an increase in the salary positions, that it actually is a little bit more balanced. So just in terms of wanted to explain that on a human resources side, since that was a question. So we'll just look at the numbers there. The second question that I have, I know, and it goes to what we were just saying, just to be clear, clear cut, last year's projected, last year's adopted budget was $28.8 million. This year's request is $29.5 million, which is, I don't know, to me it seems like a de minimis increase of only like $700 million. And $63,000 I know that that is a combination of the revenue that will be coming from the airport revenue fund and the water and waste management fund, so I just wanted to make sure i'm just looking at that increase it doesn't seem like is. A lot, but I just want to make sure that it's fair enough for us to look at those two figures.

Thank you, Councilwoman. I would orange you to the general fund portion on the budget book, which is 161. I think you're looking at from the entire executive office, including the enterprise funds. Yes. But it's essentially the same story, which is the budget is... flattened it down year over year. But where we're making the most efficiency is where the office is expected to end by year end. The office is expected, if you could go to slide 42 on the presentation. If you see right there on the screen, Councilmember, that $30 million is where the office is expected to end FY26. We've asked all departments, including the Executive Office, to look for efficiency and propose a $5 percent reduction where they're ending the year and the office has done that and they have brought forth some abolishments funded abolishments that will not carry forward to next year, so that we can get back to a balanced budget approach and then the office will not be overspending in FY 27. Okay.

All right, I got it. And then my last question that goes to the additional funding pieces for like, you know, any crime, CBI, any other initiatives, I think it's probably for CFO, that you said that'll come out of the non-departmental line item of purchasing and contractor services. So that those, the funding to support those initiatives will come out of the 41.9 Million.

Correct.

Okay. Sounds good. All right. Thank you. Those are all my questions. Thank you all so much. I know I had more questions for CFO than you all, but thank you so much for the presentation. Appreciate it.

All right. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mayor and team, for being here. My question is similar to Councilmember Dozier's. As we think about NRI and the long-term continuity of it, the importance to our city, I ask this question as a supporter of NRI. I grew up on Campbellton Road, and Campbellton Road doesn't look much different than it does when I was growing up in high school. And so I applaud you, Mayor, for making this a signature aspect of your second term. And I'm in full support of it. And so, but I don't want to see it go away. Unfortunately, Atlanta's mayor is a term limited. And so as we think about the future of Campbellton Road and, you know, my support of NRI, what is the framework that allows this work to continue as it relates to your budget? Like what staff, what offices? I know Chief English is supporting the work, but I just wanted to talk through just a little bit how this budget, how it lays the groundwork to make sure that NRI comes to fruition in full.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Martin, and thank you for your support of the NRI. And your community is all behind it. They are actually at the point where they're like, when is this going to get done so I can see stuff? I want to remind everybody that because this is a long-term plan, it goes beyond this administration. In three and a half years, there'll be someone else occupying this seat, and the city council will work with that administrator and that leadership team to deliver upon the promises of whole, healthy, thriving communities across the city. While the position holders may change, the goals should never change. Some of the underlying project lists will be approved by the council members as well as the tax allocation. I mean, the tax allocation District Advisory Committee and part of the legislation package that you received the other day that y'all will be debating next week is a change and an enhancement of the accountability measures and the accountability input players, the community members that will be able to put more input into what projects get agreed upon to do and what the outcome should be and to the evaluation of those projects. So in the past, Our predecessors that created the tax allocation districts, in their wisdom, they created it to be an economic development tool in those areas. But the community and the accountability measures, they probably didn't think 20 years down the line. And that's where we are now. blueprint as a guide that we're building upon so thank goodness that they created it but now we can add on to it and get it even more perfected and with the community input more in mind and so councilmember as you look deeper into the four packages that's out there most people will just talk about the tax allocation district extensions which is substantial that's the first one but I really want you all to pay attention to the TADAC, the Advisory Committee composition and those required reporting structures that will enable whoever sits in those seats or this seat to be able to be held to how to go back to the community for approvals and what project types they want to see. When we first came to you all, We thought, just take the list that have been sitting out there for the last 10 to 20 years. Those LCI studies, those MPU studies, we thought that was smart, saying, hey, community, we took what you said, and we're saying, here, let's do this in the NRI. But through the NRIC and through a number of communications, y'all have opened our eyes to, well, So some of those are 20-year-old documents. Some of those are 10-year-old documents. What happens 10 years from now if a new set of documents need to be created? Are we held to a 20-year-old document? So those 20-year-old project lists, I should say. So now we're saying, okay, thank y'all for that. that helps us to try to see how to make this more evergreen so that now we can have a, every five years or so, look at a list and say, here are the things that you're gonna achieve in this area, in this area, in this TAD, et cetera. And I just thank you for asking that because it gives me the opportunity to explain a little bit better.

Oh, absolutely. And I think it's critical that we have the conversation for the viewing public that may be watching for them to understand that NRI, You know, there are options where it moves forward with or without, you know, the TADs being extended. We want them, I, let me speak for myself, want the Camelton Road TAD to be extended. Because of the catalytic change that we can bring to District 11 and Camelton Road as a result of it, I just want to make sure that we're giving the executive branch the tools it needs to to ensure that there are people in place in your office that can bring that work to fruition. I mean, I'm a legislator. It's my job to do what we're doing right now, which is help to build the toolbox. But it's not my job to swing hammers day to day, right? I don't mind getting in every now and then. And so we leave that expertise to you all. And so I just want to ensure that, you know, I think this, I want a District 11 and a Campbellton Road that my two graduates, my high school and college graduates from last week can come back into and move into. And for all the young people that are growing up in Southwest Atlanta, I don't want them leaving. And so, you know, as we think about the future, you know, you were there. You came to our meeting. It was packed. You know, we got as many folks as we could into OMG. Shout out to OMG. Y'all need to go visit OMG if you want to get some good bourbon-glazed salmon. They've got great food there. But the community really came out. Yes, I'm plugging restaurants on Camelton Road. But I want to make sure that, you know, the public understands that we've heard you loudly and clearly. And now is the time. respond and act if we want to create generational change in a long under invested a long disinvested community and this mayor and administration along with this council member does support that work going forward that is my final question mr. mayor thank you thank you council member Martin thank you council member Hillis thank you mr. chair thank you mr. mayor and your team for the presentation I've been

I don't know the weather the past few days, but trying to get back into the groove of things. So glad to be back. I'm going to first follow up somewhat fresh on kind of what Council Member Juan was talking about, but maybe from a different perspective or asking a different way. When I think about the departments and performance that I'm really worried about and see is three are kind of top of mind is ATODOT and DCP that was brought up by Council Member Juan and DWM as the CUC chair. DWM, of course, they're a little different. They're an enterprise fund, and I think we have a way forward with them. Their issue over the past few years has been revenue, and as we've talked about before, I really want to implement that stormwater utility this year. I believe and I hope I have the support of most of my colleagues on that, especially after what we saw yesterday, and also a fee study there. So that's an enterprise fund. That's a little different. But going off those red vision we see when we see those SLAs, just really want to emphasize what Councilmember Juan said about who and how are we, the offices, responsible for improving those. We see them, the same ones, time after time, and it becomes You know, and transportation, I called out a few, that it becomes more of a performance issue, and some of these almost become legal issues. They become what issues? Legal issues, because we see emergency as the first word in a few of these SLAs, yet they're consistently in the red, some even being in the single digits in the teens. And it's, unfortunately, again, you know, report after report, And then I say that and bring it up in budget hearings. You know, that usually comes out, you know, in our quarterly reports, as Councilmember Juan said. But how I kind of look at the budget and see this is, you know, those two departments, and I don't see the DCPs a lot. I'm not on CDHS, but probably need to look at some of those, but also get the feedback that was talked about from, you know, developers and builders and private citizens that are, you know, trying to build extensions on their houses and their businesses. But how are we supposed to look at this budget and say, OK, we have two of our worst performing departments. Let's cut some positions and let's cut their funding. So that I have to ask that because I get asked that by my constituents. No, they are upset about. know the pothole they called in ten days ago and you know I will first I need to back up and give credit we're certainly doing better when it comes to capital projects you and I have gotten together and we've gotten a lot of capital projects off the ground but we can't forget the day-to-day because that's what people see you know when they get in their cars and they call 3-1-1 and the day-to-day issues that's what we're seeing in the SLA reports And you mentioned the potholes and I'm glad to see the work being done but and also glad to see you know the paving mileage increase and hopefully I don't want to see the pothole number repairs go up. We want to see the pothole repair numbers go down as we increase the mileage of the lane miles that we So, you know, just a little heartburn for me and my colleagues about certainly DCP and ATL DOT when it comes to cutting those funds. So, you know, just any feedback you can offer as to the cuts, and I know, you know, We'll get more in depth in the personnel cuts during those sessions coming up.

So I'll tell you off top, we asked everybody to cut 5%. That was the goal, right off the top. Everybody has to cut 5%. We told that to cabinet members, as you see, even the executive office, everybody. And that was because You know, we have a lot of uncertainty in the federal government right now. We have a lot of uncertainty whether we're in a recession or not. Costs of things are going up. And we did not want to offer, you know, do a tax increase, a millage rate increase. So a way to achieve a balanced budget is if you're not going to You're not guaranteed that everybody's, you're not gonna ask more for property taxes. And inflationary pressures and challenges with people, UPS laid off folks, MailChimp just laid off 3,000, Amazon laid off a bunch of folks. So you end up starting saying sales taxes are gonna be affected because are people gonna go out there and shop as much, because they're now conserving their expenses. So we're looking at economic factors when we said, hey, we gotta cut some stuff. And we want to just trim some, you know, be very efficient too. So just starting from there, off the top, the goal was to be as lean and efficient as we possibly could. And I, you know, even in accordance with your research work that you're going to do, Councilmember Noah Wood. So, but specifically, I'll let Madam COO talk about the budgets of those To specific departments that you mentioned DCP city planning and DLT but just remember also in DLT in one year we stood up the downtown paving the aura we we put a new plan in place of how to do these type of projects that paving. from the minute that we issued that bond well it took us probably longer to come up with the list than to do some of the stuff and that that was just about you know council and administration interactions and but we came up with the list after a while and bonded against it got the contractors and as far as work is getting done. And I think we, and then we did the same thing for after taking a beating on moving Atlanta forwards, slowness to get off the gate, as you guys called it, you know, we, You know, we went to the public at the end of 2022. We got our money at the beginning of 2023. And we, you know, started coming up with a project delivery plan. And by 2024, people were, you know, telling us we're not moving fast enough. We said, okay, we're still trying to deliver renew and T-Splice work. I still just try to pave DeKalb Avenue or Cascade. The same department that's only, at that time, five years old is now seven years old. The Department of Transportation has now hit its stride. And so you can see aura got delivered downtown. Moving Atlanta forward now has every single project is in, it's off of the, it's in some form, it's in some stage of development from planning to, it's all started, to put it that way. So now we are moving more forward. And those are capital projects, as you said. same infrastructure, capital projects are very important, and we're getting those done, and we're in coordination with our partners to get a lot of it done. Now, the day-to-day, the potholes, et cetera, those are things that we still try to do at the SLA, and we're trying to reduce the number of potholes we have by paving roads instead of just doing the potholes. But Madam COO, you can take it from here around how he's saying that there's a budget reduction. But in essence, we have so many pockets of money that's either in a trust fund or in a capital project plan that it's actually a growth in a total expenditure, right?

You're absolutely right, and I know the CFO is looking for very specific numbers, but for both ATO DLT and for Department of Planning, there are other pots of money to support them, not just general funds. So the budgets that you've been looking at over the last two weeks are general fund dollars, but it does not show, and I think there's a portion in the appendix of your budget book that begins to show all of the other funds that are available to those departments in order to deliver.

I mean, the one pushback I would say to that is most of the issues we're calling, and we're praising the progress on the capital funds, which that's where most of the desplace, bonds, et cetera, go to. But the general fund is generally what fuels the, you know, the in-house planning, the signal repairs when they go out, the, you know, storm drain clearing, so to speak, or, you know, the pothole filling, things like that. So it's the, while we applaud the progress on the capital funds, and projects, we just see that most of the day-to-day funding comes from the general fund, and that's where we see the decrease. So that just gives a little pause.

Well, not all of the day-to-day funding comes from the general fund. It still comes from multiple sources. So even on some of the staffing, some of them can be paid out of the capital funds or other funds as well. So it's the projects as well as the staffing. Some of it is split funded. And so we can go very specifically around those two departments, if you like.

I don't have that in front of me today, but I know that they're all in the budget. But I'll take that, the planning portion of this, because, you know, one thing that we've really, we're hammering that scenario really, you know, the permitting process, trying to everything from a short-term solution, which is put them all in the same room, not just the people that are in the planning, but you have watershed people, the site planning folks, site development folks, and then you have fire folks, and then you have, you know, DOT people, where now they're all in the same room, so the documents are moving a lot faster. Hey, you didn't sign off on that. you missed it, get that taken care of, versus days and days in between. And then the seller, it still only sends the notice out to one individual. That's the one person that the developer put on that document. Now, what if they fire that person, or what if that person's on vacation? So now Opal, and I know Councilmember Warren said he's a little concerned about anytime people do a software change. know oracle the timekeeper we we kind of delivered that you know it took a while but um and when i say we i was a council member when i got done and then and then we really took it to task with the timekeeper uh coo and cfo so i think when we go to opal you'll be very happy to know that more people including you guys we can all get notifications about certain things um but point well taken about a day-to-day council members

Easier question next okay on the on your kind of metric sheet in the budget, but here budget book here It is community safety stabilization and if initiatives implemented and it goes from one to two to three to five are those cumulative numbers are those Like this year is five are we going to do five this year? Where's the total going back from year one on a total five? I want to make sure. What are you looking at? This is on page 158 of the budget book. Oh. Starts in 2024, actual 25, actual 26, actual. Hand me a budget book so I can look at page 158.

I got my presentation. 58. All right. Bala, you find page 158, Austin. Y'all just came here looking cute. There we go. Thank you. Thank you. We got the photographer's seat. Thank you. And other duties as assigned. We can't cut the comms budget. Okay, start over now. I'm sorry. What did you ask?

So it is, I'm asking if the line where it is the community violence, I don't have it in front of me now so I can't read it word for word, but initiative, it goes from one to two to three, I believe to five. I'm asking is that, are those cumulative or are those per year?

Those are per year targets. These are the metrics and so someone from the violence team will probably be better to discuss it. But it looks like these are the initiative targets. There's five large initiatives that are expected to be completed in FY27. And in prior years, there was three. And so they're building the capacity and the capabilities of that office up. And this year, they're going to complete five large safety stabilization initiatives.

Okay. Just maybe check in with your community violence intervention, just checking with them to get clarity on that.

Sure.

And if they haven't identified yet, I would love to know the communities that they've done so far and the ones they plan, if they already have planned out the communities that they're going to do in FY27.

Some of that is driven by police data. So where we're seeing most of our violent areas, those are the areas of focus for Yes, we will get you those. So they plan events around that. They may be walks. They may be events around after someone is killed, they come together and have a visual. So there are various different types of events that they have. We can notify you as those come up, but the areas are very specific to police data.

Thank you. And just lastly, just picking up one thing to add some praise to is the nightlife assessments and that reduction of crime around nightlife establishments. I hope that we can keep that up. I know at least two of you, C.O. Burks and our chief of staff, English, have been copied on some issues we're having in one, if not, well, really more than one. It just depends on the week. where three individuals were shot at a nightlife establishment. And there seems to be some issues around LRB and getting those due cause hearings. I brought up in PSLA where it looked like there had only been A FEW OF THOSE IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS AS FAR AS DUE CAUSE HEARINGS, INCLUDING CITATIONS THAT WERE ISSUED FOR THIS ONE ESTABLISHMENT OVER SIX MONTHS AGO. SO WANT TO GET THAT NIPPED IN THE BUD, SO TO SPEAK, BEFORE THOSE UNFORTUNATE AGGRAVATED ASSAULTS TURN INTO EVEN MORE UNFORTUNATE HOMICIDES. SO I JUST WANTED TO PRAISE THAT AND SAY KEEP IT UP AND LET'S GET SOME MORE WORK DONE ON THAT PERSPECTIVE.

Thank you for that. I was going to say we received your information and thanks for even suggesting days and times to visit and we've committed. between police and Fire Marshal to make those visits.

There's also, just from a nightlife perspective, that's also one of the few areas that we have actually hired this calendar year. We dramatically slowed, if not all, but stopped hiring in exec offices. We did add additional personnel there. We actually started today to be able to increase our capacity for those types of visits.

Thank you all, and that completes my questions. Mr. Mayor and Mr. Chair, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Bakhtiari.

Sorry. Actually, a majority of my questions are I think I'm going to save for personnel because that's what they're related to. But I did want to ask one thing when Council Member Bond was asking about One Atlanta. As a queer individual, I selfishly want to ask about what, if any, that's going to be allocated towards, I know we have to be careful, LGBTQIA plus affairs, just because being the gay mecca of the South, this is the city that made me feel safe enough to come out. And so I was just, I thought we could ask about that.

No, thank you for that. I really appreciate the delicate way that we have to try to still serve everybody in our community, despite challenges from a new federal administration. So the short answer is yes. We still have a LGBTQ affairs, this QA affairs office in the city of Atlanta. Dwayne Queen is still handling that business. There he is. He's right behind me, literally direct center behind me. Yes, he's still there. There he is. And his role is still the same. And we had to navigate this very carefully around one Atlanta equity office, the name change, but still stay firm in who Atlanta is and took a heck of a lot of work with the Department of Law. A lot of work, of course, with inside counsel, outside counsel, etc. And then, you know, you got contract compliance and things to stay with the federal regulations and stuff to be able to do what we're doing. And then the way we did it and now you are seeing court cases come back in our favor. The DBE program still stands. The work that we're doing to stand up for people, to fight back against anti-immigrant culture that's trying to take waves across this country, we're still standing. We carefully do so and appropriately do so. And we don't, you know, beat our chest and say we got you because that just puts another target on you. But I appreciate you for hanging in there and, you know, allowing us to make the... And staying gay.

I got you.

Yeah. I should have stopped answering this question two or three sentences ago. All right, I'm done.

Councilmember, can I... Can you jump in after that? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, jump right on in. I do want to take just a brief moment of privilege, if you will, to acknowledge that office. One, Atlanta generally, LGBTQ Affairs specifically, they have been through a lot this year. And this transition has not been easy on those individuals in the office. So thank you for hanging in there and for...

Thank you. And I know that there's going to be, I know that we're discussing line items and having to balance, but I do hope that there is an opportunity to talk about this because, to talk about this at greater length, because Candace Stancil, who deserves tons of flowers. As we're continuing to see the possibility of, you know, ban contraceptives not knowing what we're going to have with the next gubernatorial race and everything else is going on. I know that we're looking at ways to try to lower poverty like poverty hygiene or I'm sorry hygiene poverty and looking at other ways to protect young girls and looking at making things more accessible and I know that we have to always focus on project delivery first but I'm hoping that we can discuss those line items. I know it's very uh It's constantly changing right now and things are very ambiguous, but I hope that we can further discuss what a line item for that type of work can look like.

Yeah, I definitely welcome that and we can talk through it. You know, one of the other things that I think about is You know, we have an ecosystem of a lot of businesses and other leaders around here that have not stood as firm. Three to five years ago, they were, hey, we are all in on a lot of things that are social equity and community equity. And then once federal government changed and said, we don't like those things, those people ran for the hills. And they immediately changed their business models. They stopped doing certain things. And they were like, well, And I'm sorry, but we're in another direction. I think that there's an opportunity for some of this stuff that if we are being asked to fund it and we don't have a new revenue source, those people that ran for the hills that can still sell products at any price that they want to sell them, we should go back to those people and say, hey, you don't have to put it on your website where AI bot can look for the word gay or LGBTQ or anything like that and sue you, but you can definitely fund this this thing a lot easier than the city of Atlanta can fund it because we have an open check, but we have an open everything. You could just find out that I just paid to that organization and now I got a target. So I'm just really being clear with everyone about navigating is just as hard as doing nowadays. We want to do stuff, and now we have to figure out how to do. And so I respectfully take your request, and then I'm going to try to see how we can deliver it through one or multiple sources that still allows us to meet federal guidelines, meet our own personal guidelines, and city code.

Thank you. And there are just a couple other shout outs I wanted to do. And one of them was Paulina Guzman, who's over there and head of immigrant affairs. And the reason why I say that is because, you know, we don't do in this in this really, really downtrodden. social media-esque landscape that we currently live in, and especially being a child of immigrants and refugees. Somebody showed up outside of Grady to my father's pharmacy, a Sudanese man who could barely speak English, who had who was legally here that but didn't know how to navigate resources we didn't know how he got to grady but he came into my dad's pharmacy my dad called and asked me for help i called paulina who called her team and before you knew it we had them down at my father's pharmacy a translator and everywhere else and a case manager actually also from in town and we were able to get him into a mosque that spoke his native dialect and last i checked he's doing well and that's only one story And today we housed a man named Sam who's been homeless in Cabbage Town for over two decades, a Ralph David house. And so those types of stories are important for me to highlight. And I hope, you know, when we get to the personnel paper next, I am going to ask a lot of questions. I'm going to ask a lot of questions because I believe in the vision that's been set forth. And my biggest concern, and COO, I know you heard this yesterday. My biggest concern is making sure that we're having my questions answered about how the budget works. Supports that vision and you heard a couple of colleagues and counselor Hillis and Norwood say, you know our biggest departments In the concern about project delivery something. I know that's the topic of all of our minds, but I only say that to preface That's where those questions are coming from. I'm saving them for personnel and appreciates All the work done so far, but I really did want to highlight those individuals who who have those everyday wins and highlight that and There's no shortage of talent here, and I know that this is a difficult budget season. I know that the conversation around personnel will probably be detailed. Santana, if you can please go ahead and order dinner. But I appreciate it, and I know that this will, the conversation will continue. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Council Member Boone.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all so much for this great presentation. I will be brief. But first, I would like to thank you all for spending so much time at the Promise Center a few weeks ago with Southwest Atlanta residents. Hopefully, we can open that presentation up to the public. It was marvelous, spectacular, and members of our community appreciate you all everything you all are doing and spending that time with them. Also, the responsiveness that you all have given this entire body should be commended. Thank you, Madam COO, Mr. Chief of Staff, and also, I do not see our Deputy COO, Mr. Pace, but thank him for... Right here. Stand, stand. Thank you. let me let me finish my remarks let me finish my remarks he left out to get the budget thank him for um just answering the call answering the call um whether it's morning midnight and he tells me now madam ceo i gotta stay in my lane i said okay try it So thank you, thank you, thank you. Mr. Mayor, also our senior home repair program, wanting to keep that at the forefront of this administration. The least of these are seniors. We need to continue that program. If we can find any extra funds for roofing repairs, bathroom repairs, toilets for our seniors, please let us know. I know we do have some in the budget for them. But we are out of money pretty much in four months. But thank you again for that. Public Works, ADOT, thank you for showing out at the Harriet G. Darnell Center with 200 seniors last week. Great, great, great. Backyard Pickup is back on track. And the seniors were extremely happy. These are some of the feedback that we are getting from that. joint town hall meeting. Also, Madam COO, this is for you. The shuttles at the old Adamsville Rec Center, I think there are two or three, those are still being used by our children for after school. So when our seniors go on a field trip, they are kind of pressed to get back by 2, 2.30. They would like to stay out until 3.30. So we need to get some new shuttles for our seniors. They want their own shuttles. The seniors want their own shuttles. They want their own shuttles. Also, thank you for the... Great, great, great jazz festival. You were able to come out. Myself, our president, Overstreet, and Mr. Bond hosted a spectacular jazz festival. We brought that back to West Manor Park. We were able to get the show mobile out there, and it was just wonderful decorations, great food. So thank you so much. We do need to work on a plan for the cold winter shelters. We have to. We want those that are unhoused to be welcomed. wherever they are. And sometimes in the neighborhoods, I know that my colleague, Mr. Amos, is dealing with that as well as the seniors on Oak Cliff, Del Mar Lane. We want to rectify those issues before the cold winter. So we want to take care of our unhoused, those that are addicted to drugs, those that have issues with alcoholism and mental illness. We want to make sure that they're just not placed and we're just putting a roof over their head temporarily. Again, the summer youth program seems to be going well, well, well. Want to make sure those students at Mays and Douglas High School are serviced and that they are serviced before July. They are saying that they only have four weeks to work. We want to get them at least six to eight weeks of employment. So our employers, if we're having problems with them, let's try to help our students make some extra income because that is truly helping their households. Again, I want to be brief, but thank you all for all of the big things, all of the big things that you all are doing for the citizens of Atlanta. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Boone, always.

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lewis. And Meryl, I also want to say thank you and give you some kudos as well. First, thank you for the NRI growth, NRI growth. The work I was able to do with the deputy, with Chief of Staff Courtney English was amazing. And with Gabby Slade was amazing to see you include all of the spaces that we needed to include. I was actually able to ride these areas with Matt Westmoreland over the break. And we spent about three hours, the same amount of time I spent with Council Member Mary Norwood in her district. And what I showed him was these same areas. You got it right. And so I want to say thank you for doing that for us in our area. The Pittman Park splash pad. Thank you for the Pittman Park splash pad. Thank you for bringing white waters to Pittman Park. Yeah. Thanks for bringing Whitewater's to Pittman Park, and we are looking forward to you bringing it down to either Southside Park or Ruby Harper Park as well. I don't know where we're going to go, but either of those two places, we will be looking forward to those.

Would you like it at Ruby Parker? Because we have the skate park there, right? Perfect. It might be Splash Pad and a skate park. It's time.

It's time. It's time. I also want to say thank you for the ATODOT, Michael Lankford, the Brownsmere Road, Cleveland Avenue, Metropolitan. I want to say thank you for taking care of the south side of the city. Sylvan Road, thank you for fixing our sidewalks. The road I want to look at now, I know last week you and I both were at the Carter Project. We were there at different times, but both there you opened it up and you closed it. I came at one point. All in District 12. If you look at Springside Drive, I've been working with the Atlanta Habitat. If you look at Springside Drive, they can do the Carter Project times three. So right in District 12, the Atlanta Habitat can have three of the nation's largest projects. If we look at Springside Drive by itself, paving one road, we can do the Carter Project times three.

Okay.

One last thing. Hospital Metropolitan Parkway. Last week, I met with Morehouse School of Medicine. I know that our chief of staff, according to English, has been all over this. But we need to do that. You need to be the mayor to make sure this happens. So I know that the NRI and the TAD extension is key to that. I know that right now is the bond time. We have to get it in before June. So time is of essence. So thank you for putting this forward right now. Hospital and Metropolitan Parkway, Morehouse School of Medicine. And in the one Atlanta, one more growth. One more way we can grow together in one Atlanta. One Atlanta, I mentioned this in our training as well. One Atlanta mentions every group except myself and Wayne Martin. And what I mean by that is, when you think about the stories of Atlanta, I'm looking at the council and Byron Amos, I apologize, and I'm looking at this, I don't see the way that the young black man from Atlanta is in one Atlanta. Right? I'm thinking about the person who goes to summer camp, who eats free and reduced lunch, and they went to summer camp for free. Person who can't pay that $0.35 at school for free lunch, right? Every day, because that's a lot of money if you add it up every single day. And so One Atlanta, when I'm looking at it, and I know that when they got rid of DEI, they took out, they was focusing on making sure that these stories don't happen. Wayne Martin, Antonio Lewis, and Byron Amos story doesn't happen anymore. And so I don't see the young black boy in One Atlanta.

So I really need your help with that. Thank you. Thank you for that. That makes all the sense in the world. You're actually talking about me, too, then. I just didn't want to—I'm talking about Courtney English as well. Yeah.

But imagine if when the—because we're fighting back. I've been trying my best to assist on this side to make sure we fight back against the federal administration as much as possible, right? And so y'all are going to see some more stuff coming because we have to do more to build a beloved community that we all know about, the one we all grew up listening to. And so the only way we do that, we have to do a little bit more. So that's why I've been fighting for summer camp for free and reduced lunch. And you have, you've made every exception possible. We still ain't got there yet, but you've made every exception possible, but don't let them do that to us. And I think that we have the team to make sure it happens. So one Atlanta, just when you go through it, when you go through it, you're going to say, dang, I don't see them. But thank you again.

No, that's a good point to make. Thank you, Councilmember Lewis, so much.

Thank you, Mayor Dickens, for sitting with his body for over two hours, answering questions about your executive office's budget. I told CFO Baller earlier that I was going to save my flowers until adoption day. But I do want to thank COO Burks, Chief Shearbaum, Chief Smith. Last night while we were dealing with a public safety crisis in the city, they came in and answered questions from the public. We had just talked about swift boats and the need for that in this budget from AFRD, and literally I was getting text messages last night saying there were boats that AFRD was using in the city to go rescue people. So I just want to stop and say thank you to them for coming in and being able to answer questions. The part I really like personally is that every good CEO has to have a long-term strategic plan. And I think seeing what you're doing with CSO, Sanjay is going to fulfill that obligation, especially as making that a priority in your second term. So looking forward to continue working on that as we go through this budget process. And I know my colleagues and I are looking forward to getting to the personnel paper discussion, which we're about to transition to. So thank you for sitting with us and looking forward to the next session, which will be our personnel paper discussions.

Thank you all so much, and we'll talk soon. All right. Thank you, team.

so

Quiet down and get started with our personnel paper. Don't break it. There we go.

All right.

All right, everyone, we're going to finish these conversations after we get finished with the personnel paper. I am going to turn it over to Commissioner Blackburn so we can go ahead and get started. Commissioner, we'll let you go through, and then council members will be able to chime in as they have questions throughout this presentation. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Good afternoon to Chair Winston. I thought I saw the president call you over the street earlier, other council members. Can you hear me? I'm Calvin Blackburn. It's my pleasure to serve as Commissioner for the Department of Human Resources, and I'm pleased to present today's Fiscal Year 27 Personnel Paper Review. Before we get started, I want to introduce you to some members of my excellent team. To my left, Deputy Commissioner Jennifer Hicks. To my right with me, our incomparable Compensation Director, Merlandi Vincent. Also, I want to just recognize any HR folks out there. Can y'all wave? These folks have worked very hard. Thank you. Wanted to acknowledge them and also just a smaller part of the team who helped drive and bring this personnel paper across the finish line. Director Weeks, you and the rest of the folks here, are they hiding? Director Weeks and Ms. Hopkins, anybody else here? Ms. Barber? Thank you all. They're being a little shy, but we couldn't have gotten it done without the entire team and smaller group as well as our collaboration with the departments. So before we get started, let me help the council providing a little preliminary information. Throughout this presentation, council will hear a significant focus on converting extra help positions to authorized positions. You should know the authorized positions of those formally created through a personnel paper and adopted by city council. That means they are fully recognized in the official staffing structure and budget of the city. In contrast, extra help positions are administratively managed by HR and are intended strictly for temporary or short-term staffing needs. They are not part of the official authorized position count and therefore are not consistently reflected in the budget book. By converting appropriate extra help roles into authorized positions, what we are doing is, first of all, improving transparency in the city's true workforce size, strengthening budget accuracy and oversight, ensuring that positions that effectively are permanent and are properly classified, supporting better workforce planning and accountability across departments. This is not about increasing staffing. It is about correctly classifying existing positions so the council has a complete and accurate picture. So when you hear about conversions from extra help to authorized, that's what that will be about. And secondly, I want to give a prelude to something you hear about as far as total abolishments. This proposal includes 238 abolishments. This may appear significantly low at first glance, but reflects a deliberate and collaborative workforce process. Back in December, departments initially only submitted about 10 abolishments. After further review, departments were asked to reassess their structures more critically, validate current operational needs, and identify positions that were no longer necessary, unfunded, or misaligned with service delivery. As a result, departments return with a more accurate and comprehensive set of abolishments, totaling the 238 positions that you'll hear about shortly. It is also important to note that we are simultaneously creating 182 new positions. This means the net impact is much smaller than the gross abolishment number suggests. And in many cases, this is a reallocation of resources rather than a reduction in capacity. Majority of the position creations are within the Department of Watershed, and that is due to the conversion of extra help employees. Overall, these changes are about improving accuracy, transparency, and fiscal discipline in how we manage positions, but at the same time, not reduce services. So by way of a prelude, I want to thank you again, and I appreciate the opportunity to present our personnel paper, and I hope this clicker will work. Thank you. We move now just to terminology. Again, I explained again for some of the newer members on council what we mean by a position abolishment and other sort of items we'll discuss. So those are definitions and terminology that you see repeated frequently throughout this paper. These are the overall... Overall personnel actions, again, for each of our departments, we had a total of 974 actions. Again, as I referenced, 238 abolishments overall and 182 position, I'm sorry, 182 position creations and 135 position transferred for a total of 974 personal actions overall across the city. I'm sorry. oh it looks like the wrong presentation has been loaded up so we have the right copy in front of us you have the right copy okay okay you all have the copy then so i'll okay so just for i'll just quick quick question right what i just won't click does that mean the incorrect the incorrect version is up on the screen okay can the public see this version

Okay, my concern is that the public is seeing something that is incorrect. Maybe they don't understand, but that's still, it's their way to guess.

Right, well, I'm happy. Do we need to pull it down at all and just speak to what we have? Is there any way we can get some technological assistance, maybe pull it down?

Go to a slide that doesn't have this information, and then you've already explained it, so we're fine. We'll keep going.

Just take this down, please.

Maybe I'll just go back to... original okay and I'll just go everyone as I understand everyone council has the correct hard copy and I'll just move through that with some dispatch starting next Atlanta City Council you'll note for them there were two total actions one position creation for an office manager and one reclassification with incumbent to align resources more appropriately as a legislative records clerk so two actions for the Atlanta City Council with any questions Next, in the copies you have in front of you, we next move to the Atlanta Department of Transportation. 51 total actions for ADOT, 10 position abolishments, 13 funding allocations to allocate or transfer positions from the general fund, which is designed to align personnel costs with operational activities and capital project delivery efforts. You'll note seven reclassifications with incumbent and 17 reclassifications without incumbent. These were done to support the department's transition from temporary or outdated classifications into positions that more accurately reflect current business operations and organizational priorities. Atlanta Department of Transportation. Are there any questions?

Customer one. All right. So is the process just if we have questions, we jump in? Sure. Yes, please. Funding allocation changes. So we're moving from general fund and I can't tell from the account stream where they're going.

I think I would ask someone from the Department of Transportation to come down.

And while they're coming down, I also will ask, as part of the analysis, maybe in advance of Wednesday, if we're going to actually vote on this, is an accounting for each department of both the funding allocation number as well as the position transfer, the total dollar amount from general fund into each of the different funds that they're going into, be it a trust fund, grant fund, or capital fund.

Yes, the funding allocations, they are going into from our general fund into our various capital funds. Of course, as it's been noted, TSWOST, MAF, Does that answer your question, Councilman?

Am I correct in seeing that on page 11, the fourth item, the commissioner's moving completely from general fund over to a capital fund? His salary?

Commissioner, yes.

Yes, that's correct. How is that possible? How is that, yeah, how is that even defensible? Does that mean the commissioner is no longer going to do any oversight management of general fund activities?

No, that's not what that means.

But isn't that how the allocation is supposed to go?

Yes, that's just how our general fund allocation was supposed to go. We moved him from our general fund into a capital fund.

The answer is no. I mean, that's... This is, shame on us last year for not looking through this more carefully, but I can assure you that I'm gonna go through this based on that first answer, line by line between, and I don't know that we're gonna be ready to do the personnel paper for this very reason on Wednesday. I'm gonna fire that shot now because y'all, this really makes me angry. And it cannot be a way for us to balance our general fund budget on the backs of these other funds. I mean, all right, I yield. This is outrageous.

Martin and then Hillis.

uh thank you mr chair and to you commissioner blackburn thank you for being here with your team i have a couple questions about the conversion of extra help status employees to ftes um i guess what is the process i guess is there an elevator 30 second version of what that process entails like what goes into it um Do departments let you know, hey, we've got these five people that are in extra help positions right now, and we need to convert them over to FTEs? What goes into that thought process? D.C. Hicks will speak to that. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. So what we actually do when we get those type of requests to come in, we look at those five positions, and we first, from the HR business part, business partner standpoint. We look to make sure that the funds are there. And then we come to you guys and request that this has to be created. We can only create positions through this process. So you are actually seeing those positions. When we create extra help positions, those are administrative. So we create those throughout the year, throughout the budget year. And those can be created through the departments if they have the funding. And so HR and finance will go through the process. take it through VRB and ensure that the funding's there, that the position is available, speak to our compensation person. She'll make sure that it exists, the job descriptions, and that's the process. But we can't create a position unless we come through this process first, the legislative process.

Got you. So at the outset, we'll see a department that will be utilizing extra help positions. And then through this process we're in right now, that's how we go from that position being converted to an FTE.

Absolutely.

Got you. And is there a sort of prescribed amount of time that they remain in extra help or is it just until this process happens? You know, do we see them happen budget cycle over budget cycle or is it usually done in a fiscal year?

It's typically we try to do it within a year. That's where we should be as it relates to extra help. But sometimes it exceeds that time frame. And so it could go from one budget year to the next budget year.

is there like an expiration date on the the extra help portion because i think that's what i'm not understanding is it doesn't expire sir gotcha so from a budgeting perspective um i guess how is it being funded right if it's not in the department's budget how If there's no expiration, how can an FTE, I'm sorry, an extra help position move from year to year, or are those funds being pulled from other areas?

So the funds that are left over, and I think finance might have to speak more to this, but there typically is a budget line item that said extra help.

Got it.

And so that's where that money, you can actually move, we can move our dollars between our budget. Got it. So we can fund that if there are extra funds somewhere else. So say a position wasn't filled, so we have that flexibility. You have a frontline individual, and say you have a salary of $200,000, now you want to fund for two positions versus one. You have that flexibility, extra help is created, and that's kind of how that flows, if that makes sense.

It does, it does. I have a couple more questions, but I'll wait until we get to some of the other departments. Okay. But thank you, though. He'll listen in the backyard, and then we'll lose.

Okay.

Council Member Hillis.

FIRST OF ALL, WHEN WAS THIS BOOK FINISHED? WE RECEIVED THIS BOOK EARLY THIS MORNING AND THEN EXPECTED TO COME INTO HEARINGS AND BE ABLE TO REVIEW THIS AND COME UP WITH QUESTIONS. SO I'M WITH COUNCILMEMBER JUAN. We're really going to be ready to expect to approve a budget and committee when we receive this book with no time to review it. So that's just, you don't have to respond to that, but that's just a comment. The other questions I have are similar to what I raised with previous presentation. We're abolishing 10 positions at least to ATO DOT, four of which seem to be integral to getting those SLAs better than where they are and have been for quarterlies on end. So I would just like to hear, you know, the reason is change in priority. So how is ATOD changing their priorities by abolishing positions that at least by their job title seem to be integral to addressing lackluster SLA performance?

Thank you, council. This is Solomon Caviness, the commissioner of the Atlanta Department of Transportation. So as part of the personnel paper, there were positions or rather titles that were abolished. We are actually in the process of hiring upwards of 13 additional frontline workers that will support our SLAs. We're also reappropriating some funds from other areas to support our SLAs and our maintenance frontline workers. And you'll find in the personnel paper there are about 13 positions beyond those that are being pursued now that will focus on frontline workers.

All right. Thank you for that. I'll please my questions for now. Thank you. Council Member Bakhtiari.

Good afternoon. I think it's clear to say that you can get the general gist that The majority of the body is frustrated. I really want to ask first a couple questions to piggyback first off of Councilmember Juan's earlier questions when it comes to the commissioner and the change in classification. First, who makes the allocation? Who decided to move his salary to capital?

That would have been the department's, their decision. Okay, Commissioner.

Again, Solomon Cavins, Commissioner ATL DOT. So we do an analysis throughout the year in terms of our time and what our time is attributed to. Going back to the split funding issue, especially related to the leadership team, it appears that there's an error in the amount. So I'm sorry that got you so riled up. Councilmember Juan. But that is not 100% allocation for capital. There's 30% of our time that's focused on capital and general fund absorbs the remainder. So those changes will be set in place prior to acceptance.

Mr. Chair, would you mind if I allowed Councilmember Juan to respond before I continue? Please, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for indulging. So how can we trust any of the other line items? Not only your department, but everybody else's. This is not insignificant. You're saying 30% is capital versus what's in your 100. And so you've put us in a very, you collectively, administration, have now put us in a very, very difficult position because every single one of these, I am going to have a question about. And I don't want, I'm not gonna bog down our entire personnel paper, but again, for the very first one that I asked, and it is a commissioner level entry that is decided by the commissioner, And it's wrong. It's a problem. So I'm sorry. I'm venting continually, but you get my drift.

And if I can respond, Councilman Brown, I encourage you to go through each and every line item. But we are committed to making sure that all of this is in order. We'll make sure before it's accepted. And I understand your frustration.

If I can.

So, Council Member Warren, if I just may, in addition to, and thank you for this, that was definitely an error that was caught on the front end. So, in the steps of the personnel paper, there's how it's constructed and presented and passed. Then it layers and it goes on a conveyor belt. to HRIS before the inputs are changed. At that time, if there's anything that is caught that seems weird, we will get notified. And then also, all these positions that are reclassified, we do have end of year audits that audit all of these expenses to make sure that they are aligned appropriately. And if anything is flagged, it would get flagged at that time as well. Two, we have a direct audit that is done, and we also have an indirect cost allocation and consultants that look at the indirect costs. So I am very assured and positive that any allocation at the end of the day when it's done it is done to the appropriate funding source and there are mechanisms and safeguards in place when human error happens that is caught and caught on the front end. And this is exactly why we have this process. So it's transparent, it's upfront, it's in front of everybody, and it allows people such as yourself who are very knowledgeable to be able to ask these questions in public so we can catch an error and fix it right away.

So the defense and the deflection is angering me even more. Like making all these excuses up, and I'll be honest with you, yes, you may have these controls in place, but when does that happen? It happens almost 18 months after we pass this budget. personnel personnel represents two-thirds of our budget that's why we spend so much time on the personnel paper and to to just dismiss this as oh you caught an error is insulting if i came off dismissive or deflective i apologize that is not the tone that i wanted to set at all but i did want to say that

Just assure you that there are mechanisms that are put in place to catch errors. So, again, I apologize if I came off in that tone at all. That was not my intent. I was rushing down here upstairs and, you know, they were telling me about it. And we take full responsibility. The commissioner takes responsibility in the error. You know, we... Hopefully, you know, we want to go through these one by one to make sure, and we'll have the team here and we'll revalidate every single one again before it's adopted. It's not a deflection or anything of that nature.

Respectfully, the safeguards that we're talking about in this instance was Councilmember Wan that caught an error in a personnel book that was given to us only a couple of hours ago. So... I WOULDN'T CALL THAT A DEPENDABLE SAFEGUARD. SO I MEAN, FIRST OF ALL, THE COUNCIL REPEATEDLY ASKED ABOUT THIS, ALMOST THE MAJORITY OF COUNCIL MEMBERS. WE ONLY GOT IT A FEW HOURS AGO. AND NOW THE ASK IS WE JUST CAUGHT AN ERROR. on the front end that is not a small thing, which then makes us question everything else and how are we supposed to review to make sure it's fact-checked when we only got it a couple hours ago and then are being asked to adopt the budget on Wednesday. Makes it difficult. So I'm highlighting that and I'm highlighting that. The safeguards here was a council member that managed to catch it because he is so quick and intelligent and happened to see it as we were sitting here in the first 10 minutes of the meeting. So I do think that that is something to be taken extremely seriously.

So Council Member Bachter, if you don't mind me stepping in, I'm going to take a point of privilege here as the FEC chair. I'm going to ask that we take a 30-minute recess or to at least 4.30 to allow the departments to go back through these funding allocations so that we can come back and ensure that each one of these is correct going forward. And if there is a change that needs to be made, it's made prior to this Biden going through each one of these different allocations.

Mr. Chair, I'd also just request that we make sure that the slides are updated as well, once those corrections are made.

So if there's no objection to that, I'd like to call a recess until 4.30, and then we'll reconvene to make sure that we have these numbers allocated.

Mr. Chair, if I can, just because I don't want to yell, I will ask all department heads to please meet me in the cabinet room, please.

All right, thank you. We'll see you all back at 4.30.

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All right, we are back in session for our personnel paper discussion. I appreciate everybody's patience as we work through this, but I thought it was best that we went through the exercise and making sure the numbers were correct. And so I will allow Madam COO to address us and then we'll continue forward.

Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Council President, and members of the Atlanta City Council. Thank you, one, for taking the break and then giving us an opportunity to fix a few things. We are ready to start back. The presentation has been changed. We have about five departments where we had to make a couple of changes. So we are printing those five departments over. But the summary sheet is correct. And so I'm going to turn it over to Commissioner Blackburn. If it's OK, we may go out of order a little bit because I want to make sure you all have the copies for those five departments where it's corrected. But all the other 20 plus are correct. So, Commissioner Blackburn, I'll turn it over to you. And thank you again. And we apologize.

Thank you, Madam COO. Thank you, council members. We will pick up with AIM. AIM has a total of 33 actions, 26 position abolishments, two position transfers, I'm sorry, two position creations, and five reclassifications for a total of 33 actions. Are there any questions? I'm sorry. Oh, is this? Okay.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, if I might ask, I trust y'all are going to highlight the departments that did have changes from what we are looking at in our books as you go along.

Yes, yes, we are. We're waiting to update those pages and we just want to move ahead with the ones that didn't have changes. Five departments. Thank you. So we're moving ahead with the ones that didn't need any changes. So that was AIM. Any questions regarding AIM? next audit department audit has two actions one position abolishment one reclassification with incumbent due to additional roles and responsibilities any questions concerning audit hearing none i'll move next to aviation Aviation had a total of 41 actions, 12 position creations to convert extra help employees to authorized positions within ATL enforcement, business unit for public safety and security division in the operations office, 15 position transfers to ensure appropriate call centers are aligned with the appropriate position, 11 reclassifications with incumbent for alignment of current duties and responsibilities due to realigning resources, of multiple divisions in the enterprise, 41 actions. Any questions regarding aviation?

I have a couple, Mr. Chair. Thank you. As we think about This is related to the questions I was asking earlier about our extra help positions being converted into FTEs. I think some of them are, let me see, let me make sure. Our booklet, our packet is updated, right? But it was just what was on the slides that was not, right? Yes, correct. We're updating the slides. How many roles in aviation are moving from FTE, I'm sorry, from extra help to FTE?

That specific level of granularity, I may have to call up Mr. Smith. No, no problem. I'm glad he's here.

Yes, thanks, Councilman. Ricky Smith, General Manager, Department of Aviation. We have 10 positions that are in our ATL enforcement unit that we're converting from extra help to FT positions.

And that's ATL enforcement. Can you tell me exactly what that is?

So ATL enforcement is the unit that does traffic enforcement for the airport.

Okay. So these roles have been, how long have they been in the extra help category?

So they have about 20 extra help positions, only converting 10 of them. I believe those 20 extra help positions been in place now for a couple of fiscal years. This isn't the sworn folks, right? This is... So they're not sworn, but they are certified by the police chief.

Okay. And so we've got 10 of the 20 that are being converted from extra help to FTE? That's correct. Got you. Do you have any other... What is your full extra help count at the moment?

Okay. And I told Kathy that that question was going to come up.

39. Thirty-nine.

Thirty-nine, in aviation?

Mm-hmm, that are field.

All right, they were ready. They had your back.

This is as of today.

As of today, what's the number? Thirty-nine. Thirty-nine, okay. So are we taking out the 20 you mentioned that are in the traffic enforcement area? Well, 10 of those are going away, so it's going to drop to 29 in the proposed budget, right? That's correct. Mm-hmm. The other 19 that are not traffic enforcement, what roles are those folks in those 19 extra help positions?

They're scattered throughout the organization. So some of the operations and maintenance, we have some that are administrative, we have some that are executive level.

Administrative and executive level? And operations and maintenance. And operations. Because I'm trying to, my questions are really around how we're utilizing extra help positions. Because I feel like it and I'm not saying that this is the case, but it could be where roles are kind of being funded that really need to be moved over to the FTE category. And I'm trying to make sure that we are utilizing those kinds of positions in the right way. I don't think they're really intended to be long term. Am I correct? You're correct. And so why are we just converting 10 of 39 positions to extra help i'm sorry from extra help to fte and not looking at the long term because i would imagine that that a part of your budget request is still funding the other roles right yeah so in terms of atl enforcement the reason we're only converting 10 of the 20 is that we're looking at a large an expanded scope for atl enforcement okay

And that will affect how we populate the workforce. And so we may find ourselves having to add more than just the 10 extra help positions to increase their workforce level.

When you say adding 10 extra help, are you saying taking the other 10 and converting them over to FTEs?

So once we complete our ground transportation plan, which will affect our ATL enforcement plan, we may find that we need more than just the 10 extra helps that are left. to satisfy that plan, so we wanted to wait until that was completed before we converted the last 10.

Got you. And the other 19, what would be the reason for not converting them, or do you think their roles are going away, or help me understand the operational plan with those other 19 extra positions?

No, any other extra positions should be converted. They should be converted? Be converted. Our plan is to only use extra help positions for temporary functions. I think that's the city's plan is to only use extra help positions for temporary functions. And when there is a permanent function, then we'll request an FTE for that position.

Got you. So there is a plan For the 19 remaining extra help, I get the traffic, so I'm going to say the, let's see, yeah, it would be 19 additional roles that are not traffic enforcement related at the airport. There is a plan for those folks in the next fiscal year to continue to utilize them in their extra help roles.

Yeah, the plan is to convert any extra health position that is not a short-term function to FTE. Some of our FTEs, some of our extra health positions, for example, that's why I don't believe the number is 39, which also includes our summer and our summer interns and our summer youth participants as well. They're also in extra help positions.

And these are like intern, young people?

Interns and summer youth employment. And so we certainly don't plan to convert them to FTE. Sure. But any position that is... I got one you can hire. ...in a full-time function, as of probably a few more years before you can hire them. All right. But any position that's in a full-time function, yes, the plan is to convert them to FTE. Gotcha. You're trying to ask them? No, please, please, please.

Okay. Some of the extra help roles, they're in the public safety and security at the airport. So that would be our airport security representatives and our assistance and security and the operations group.

All right.

And I'm Kathy Roby, the HR director in aviation.

I'm sorry, say it again.

Kathy Roby, HR director in the Department of Aviation.

Nice to meet you, Kathy. Nice to meet you as well. And General Manager Smith, you mentioned that they're in some executive roles that are also... that also being utilized under the extra help category? Or admin roles? I'm hearing the traffic enforcement, I'm hearing...

Okay, so we have three positions that are extra help that are considered members of our executive management team.

Is there a plan to convert them? Pardon me? Are they in this conversion plan for this fiscal year?

The plan is to convert them. I'm not sure if they're in a conversion plan right now.

Okay. So I guess my question is when FY27 begins on July 1st, will those folks in those roles be still extra help or will they be full-time employees?

I would think that any employee that's in an extra help position that is a permanent function would be converted to FTE if they're going to serve longer than a year.

All right. And I guess my last question on that would be, is that reflected in the personnel paper? Is that reflected in our personnel legislation?

The personnel paper only reflects new actions. Okay. So those extra help positions that you're referring to, those FTEs associated with those were approved in the fiscal year 2026 budget. So they would not be reflected in this action.

Well, if it's 2026, they would not be. If they were funded to be converted from extra help to FTE in 26, they would have already been so. We're almost at the end of FY26, right? Yeah. And so they were not converted, though? Not yet. Okay. Is there any reason why?

I don't know.

We're just waiting for approval through the vacancy review board.

Got you. Yeah. Okay. So the VRB, and I have no dog in that fight, right? If it's approved tomorrow by the VRB, they would then be funded by, as FTEs. And it could happen this fiscal year, not next fiscal year. That's correct. But it's been authorized. Now I understand. Got you. Okay. That's all for now, Mr. Chair. Thank you all so much.

You said you were waiting on VRB. How long have you been waiting?

The question is how long have I been waiting on VRB? I don't know that I've been waiting on VRB, but are you talking about all 19?

What she was just discussing about waiting on VRB.

So those three positions were hired about 10 months ago.

Yeah, she said as she was answering Council Member Martin's questions, you said you're waiting on VRB. My question was how long have you been waiting on VRB?

I'm not 100% sure, but it was approximately August 2026, I mean 2025.

What?

Excuse me? August 2025. So we're just waiting for an approval. There was a decision, but we're waiting on an approval.

I don't, I'm not sure what to say to that. That's a very long time. That's an extraordinarily long time. Do we, can anybody who sits on VRB speak to why it's, why the length of time?

I happen to sit on VRB specifically. I don't have to look back at that.

It's been 10 months.

I would hate to contradict my employee, but I'm unaware of some position changes they were looking for that have been sitting for more than a year, and I'd have to look at that. I'm not aware.

There are position changes that have been sitting close to a year?

Not to my knowledge, but I'd have to look at that. I don't want to speak out of school without looking at that particular issue, but I'm not aware of that. Perhaps Director Roby has some information, but I'm not aware. I know we just talked about some airport positions recently at VRB, so I'm not aware which specific positions she's referring to and certainly not aware of a year hold on those positions. So I would have to circle with Director Roby. DC Hicks, do you have some additional information?

Yeah. I do, Commissioner. So typically the way the VRB runs, they meet on a monthly basis. So if it's not approved in August, it could roll back up to September, but it has to roll back up. So they have to be resubmitted. So if something was not approved, just say it wasn't approved in August, you would need to resubmit for September. If that didn't happen, it would seem like a delay, but not necessarily a delay. And so we would need to kind of talk about how many times it had been submitted. if it was still pending approval. So we get those notices if it's not approved or if it's not, and it rolls back over.

Well, I hear that. Ten months is still a very long time. Thank you. But would like to have an understanding of why that is. Again, I would say that these are the types of decisions or this is the type of information that helps us make better informed decisions on things as critical as this. So if we can have that information by... I mean, how long does it typically take to gather?

Well, I mean, I feel like I could just circle back and just look up the particular positions and see. But again, as D.C. Hickson mentioned, when there's a denial, that doesn't mean we're holding it. You've been denied. So you have to resubmit it. You have to provide better justifications. It's not that it sits there in a queue and it's just held necessarily for 10 months. Generally, there's a denial. And we express why. And then people resubmit or they, in a sense, appeal, if you will, to the VRB and want us to reconsider it. So as I sit here without looking back at the records, I would be surprised to think there has been positions since 2025 or 2026. I forget what Director Roby said, that we've just been sitting there holding. I imagine there have been some rejections and some requests for more information along the way for these particular positions.

I do want to say, Director Roby, I know we're talking about you like you're not in the room. So I do want to acknowledge that you are here in that you know, but I also want to affirm while that is the case, I also want to validate that that is a response from somebody who is dealing with the department every single day. So I do trust that she is a subject matter expert on the work that she does. So if we can find out why that may have lasted so long, because I think it's clear that there's a lack of understanding of how this operates when it comes to the hiring. I mean, we've had a lot of questions. So having a better understanding of what potentially occurred just would, I think, help better. I don't, again, it's hard not to jump to assumptions, so I'd like to have a better understanding so I have an educated understanding of what has gone on because this seems to be something we hear a lot.

I'm sorry, Madam Councilman, make sure I understand. You're hearing a lot of positions being held for a year?

We're hearing a lot of issues with the RV in general.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, I just want to, any information you can find would be great because if there are VRB decisions that are being protracted, it ripples out because I know that, you know, I've been asking a lot of questions about starting budget, ending budget for 2026 and then beginning budget for 2027 and a lot of that has to do with some of it is due to vacancies that the departments may be trying to fill but can't, and so they almost get penalized for it. And then there is the other fear that I have is that there was a push to abolish vacant positions that have not been filled for some time but again if that's not a fault of the departments and yet that action is being taken and I think we it kind of muddies the budget request for the next year so I do think once you find that information out not just for the aviation cases but for all of them I think that would be helpful for me because I just need to get a level of comfort of, like I said, our starting point, our ending point of 26 and our jumping point in 2027. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

No more questions on aviation. We'll proceed.

Seeing no further questions on aviation, we'll move to Citizens Review Board. Okay. For Citizens Review Board, there are 12 actions to employee salary adjustments for an equity adjustment and additional responsibilities. And it also includes six reclassifications with incumbent to align resources to correct the classification titles based on job duties and responsibilities. 12 actions, again, for the Citizens Review Board. Any questions? Seeing none. Our next department is city planning. city planning has a total of 70 actions nine i'll just touch on a couple of nine funding allocations to split fund positions to the tree trust fund 32 position transfers to align funding to the correct funding source and also reclassifications with and without incumbent due to reorganization and to address additional duties and responsibilities 70 actions for city planning i have a question so you said that the funding allocation those nine were all to the tree trust fund

Is that correct? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. The funding allocation, all nine of those were to the tree trust fund?

Split funding, split funding to the tree trust fund, yes.

Okay, so general fund and tree trust. That would be my understanding, yes. Okay, and then the position transfers, those 32, are those all to tree trust as well, or are they going to another?

I would have to ask the commission of city planning to speak to that particular issue.

Councilmember Juan, you're asking about the position transfers.

Well, can I confirm that all of the funding allocation changes are all to the Tree Trust Fund? Let's start with their first. They're all field arborists. Yep. Okay. And so, yes, the position transfers, the 32 actions are two. I see a bunch of 7701 numbers, but I don't know if that's also Tree Trust Fund.

The ones starting with seven are the... transfer to aviation. It's for the inspectors that we send to the airport.

Okay. That is a trust fund. 7702 is a tree trust fund as well. That is a position that is moving to the tree trust fund, 70-30 split.

Oh, hang on a second, so. No, no, no, so I think arborists that are going to 7701, those numbers are Tree Trust Fund, but is 5502, is that aviation? 5502 is aviation.

Okay.

And that is the plans review specialist. I see one of those, but everything else is going to Tree Trust Fund? looks like it maybe including urban planners urban planners in the tree trust fund rationale for that there's one a position that we're getting back from parks and recreation that had been transferred in a previous fiscal year with an employee transfer and we're just getting it back there are multiple urban planners that are going to 7701 or being split funded over and if 7701 is tree trust fund want to understand that. It looks like all the same account, including a data reporting analyst, urban planner, one, two, and three.

I see which ones you're looking at. Those are the ones going to be transferred to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund because those employees work on affordable housing.

Yes.

Okay, so... All right, so Mr. Chair, I think one of the things that will be helpful, again, without being able to see the actual title of these accounts is... I'm sorry to interrupt.

I can provide some context. Okay. So as a part of the ATL Next program, we rely on city planning to do certain work to support the program. And so in fiscal year 2026, the positions were actually...

coded to aviation incorrectly and so this transaction is to have them coded in city planning as they're supposed to still being funded by aviation yeah i got you so that's where the plans review specialist yeah i was cool with the one of them yeah i was cool with the one moving over to aviation i guess i was uh the affordable housing trust fund is a flag that we've collectively been waving in terms of um the the rationale uh for shifting those over and so for for all of the the departments that are have transfers or funding allocation it'll be helpful to have kind of a financial summary of where it's how much is going from general over to those particular trust funds so I'll make a formal request at the end of this process in terms of it I think a report a summary report that would incorporate all that but I think what I'm hearing from Commissioner Prince is that all of these except for the ones going to tree, except for the one that is going to aviation, all of the other ones are going to affordable housing trust fund.

There's a significant portion. They're the ones that have the distinction of 600465. Those affordable housing trust fund numbers, you'll see that the second to last set of numbers. But council member, yes, we will aggregate these in the manner that you want. We'll do that holistically.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Looking at city planning, seeing the changes that have been made, during the budget's presentation it appeared that there were a number of vacancies and Nova Staffing apparently is someone that we have contracted with the last few years and it looks like we spent about nine million dollars the last three years, I think, three or four years, which is quite a bit of money. So I'm curious, what were they able to do that HR couldn't do? And why do we still have as many vacant positions within the department as we do if we had invested $9 million into trying to staff out?

Council Member Bakhtiari, about the NOVA contract, we needed to hire 12 residential combination inspectors to do the work that NOVA has been doing, and we've done that.

They specialize in specific types of staffing?

yes nova engineering contracted with us for building inspectors for plan reviewers and for planners okay we first phased out the planners and then we phased out the plan reviewers we have now phased out the building inspectors okay may i ask how many positions did they fill from you know

how many positions they were charged with filling from the moment they were contracted?

They billed us hourly based on the number of inspections that they did and from that information we extrapolated how many staff members we would need to replace that consulting service or that contract service.

Okay. So HR is unable to do the type of hiring that NOVA staffing was able to do, correct? That's what we're saying.

I think at one time we had difficulty hiring building inspectors, and the NOVA contract was a multi-year contract. So when we saw that we were able to replace that contract with bringing the service in-house and it be cheaper, we went ahead and did that.

Definitely. I'm just trying to find out why $9 million over a rather, in my opinion, short period of time for staffing. And when I'm seeing that we still have vacancies, and I'm not saying the contract is decided by any individuals, not me trying to pit blame, but I am trying to understand that amount of money. being spent on staffing we still have lower like staffing levels that are that are needed and i want to say i want to commend the people in the department who work really really really hard but as i said during the budget hearing the experience here has been a lot of inconsistency and a lot of overturn the department and a lot of burnout and i don't see how there couldn't be given given everything the department has been tasked with while also having their budget cut so and again we we've we've talked this part to death but i'm still confused on the on the money i'm still hung up on the level of the amount of money spent because i can't help but think that we could have brought that in-house sooner and that money could have been utilized for the department and and really helping to beef up office of buildings and zoning again given how heavily burdened they are and given that they set really the direction of the city I guess then that leads me to my next question I asked about VRB with aviation. How has DCP's VRB experience been? I mean, are there any requests that have come in? Is there a status on hired positions? Are you currently waiting on any decisions for the department, be they raises for individuals or creation of new positions or filling positions? What does that look like?

We have submitted some positions for this month's review. I don't have those in front of me, but I can get that to you.

That would be helpful. And what about previous, what was your typical wait time on VRB for other decisions in the past?

Well, as you know, they didn't meet for a few months. That kind of held us up a little bit right then there. But for the most part, they saw the urgency of getting these inspector positions filled and getting this work done and ending this contract. Okay.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Council Member Lewis.

Anyone else? Sorry, I caught you mid-bite. Council Member Barcterra, I appreciate you for your questions. And did we say 12 people? How many people did they hire?

So it was 12 building inspectors, residential combination inspectors, rather than specialty inspectors, so they could do the plumbing, the electrical, the HVAC. Three plan reviewers and two planners.

Thank you. And that's the mix too. So if we, and did we say $9 million?

We haven't spent that much on them this fiscal year. I don't have the past numbers.

Can you find out, because Council Member Bakhtiari, did you mention the number, how much money it was? Can the finance department tell me how much money?

Yeah, I think the 9 million number was over numerous years that go back to, I believe, COVID era time when the NOVA contract first came online, and there was strong utilization during that time. There was some backlog, a lot of stuff that had to get done, but the department has done an excellent job weaning off. I think this, we can get you the number for the most current fiscal year, but it was nowhere near as much as it used to be. I mean, at one point, we were spending $3 million a year on that contract, and I think we're all the way down to a little less than a million.

And the entire time they had 12 people higher?

No, no. I think they had different augmented staff at different levels at different years. So was it less than 12? More than 12. More than 12 than 212. And I think now we're weaning off of that.

Because that's a high number. Even if it's at 3 million...

AND COUNSELOR LOWE, I WOULD BE HAPPY TO GET YOU THE CONTRACT BREAKDOWNS BECAUSE I DO HAVE THOSE RECORDS. THERE WERE $3 MILLION FOR THREE YEARS AND THEN AS COUNSELOR As Bala Bala Dalla said, the most recent contract was, I believe, just over $900,000, but I have the breakdown of all of them. I don't think it was as far back as COVID, but I do have the, I could be wrong, but I do have the breakdown of those contracts.

And I would like to get it only because even if it's $3 million, 12 people per year that's 250k per person and that's something we can't bring in the house we need to look at what we're doing as a system if we don't think we can bring that in the house and try to do that thank you any other questions all right we can move on thank you next we move to corrections

Corrections reflects a total of 25 actions. These include five position abolishment, 18 positions that are being created, including 10 corrections officers, two positions, eight corrections officer, three positions. This has been being done to establish a tier structure within the corrections officer classification. There are also reclassifications with and without incumbent to align resources more appropriately due to a change in responsibilities. 25 actions for corrections.

Yeah. First question, why on earth are we creating new positions in corrections?

I'm having trouble hearing you.

Sorry. Why are we creating new positions in corrections?

Oh, I'm happy to have someone from corrections come and speak to their operational needs.

And I want to highlight, though, I do want to also say that I believe our contract with Well, Fulton County is coming to an end, so it doesn't make sense to me why an emptier jail would warrant more officers. But please, thank you.

Thank you. So these 18 positions are not really creating new positions. We are giving our officers, as he explained, a chance to move up in a tier situation. So those positions, once they move into those 18 positions, Ten of them are CO2s, from CO1 to CO2s, and then eight will be CO3s. Those will not be backfill. So it's basically just giving our team an opportunity, giving them a career path, an opportunity to move up based on certain criterias that we have put in place. So they will not automatically move into those positions. They would have to meet those criterias, but it does give them an opportunity for growth. And so but again, we will not be back filling those positions. So our numbers will not change in that space. However, with this paper, we are abolishing five positions. So actually, we'll lose those five and be stagnant with the 18 increase.

So as our FEC chair just broke down for me, that your budget went down but your FTEs went up. Is that correct? I couldn't. I know. I'm like really quiet today. I'm sorry. I'm just going to hold this right here. I said as FEC chair just told me, so what you mean is that your FTEs went up but your budget went down?

Essentially, yes.

Essentially, yeah. Okay. But I was looking and there's in each of these positions that we have with the reclassification with incumbent, Those are seeing some pretty significant increases, is that correct?

Not significant increases. No, actually it's going to be a decrease with one and the other one will remain the same. Yes, so no increases.

Understood. All right. I believe some of my colleagues have questions, so I'll take it back to you, Mr. Chair.

Any other questions for corrections? Council Member Bond.

Yeah, I just want to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. So are there no new net jobs created on net?

Correct. That's correct. Yes, ma'am. Is this an opportunity for them to see some growth? If we're looking at job performance, we're looking at years of service, we're looking at certain certification, we're looking at additional training. So we have officers that are responsible for training our personnel, but they don't get anything for it. But they go out to outside training that we mandate. They have additional certification. So this will give them an opportunity to see that we are investing in them as they perform and do a good job.

And just because I'm new and this is my first time going through this process, I'm just wondering why that isn't reflected in the abolished positions.

So as I mentioned earlier, once we move these officers into those positions, we don't plan to backfill. So as we look at our operational plan and as we work with HR and finance moving forward, we will likely look to abolish those positions as they promote into those positions. But we can't abolish them now because they're currently in the positions. Correct. Right? So if we have 18 positions that we want to move them into, Once we move them, we can abolish them. But currently, they have to sit in those positions.

OK. And when is this all, what is the timeline for moving them into these new positions?

So first, hopefully it's approved. But we're going to immediately. We have been in discussion with HR. We've been looking at the criteria. They have been assisting us with developing a plan. So we, as soon as those officers qualify, then we will move them. Some already have those certifications, as I mentioned. Some are training officers. and not getting the benefit of additional pay for it or any other incentives. So as soon as we can, but we're not looking to fill all 18 right away. That would be a gradual process. It would be a review process in partnership with HR and our leadership team.

And so the plan to not backfill those eventually vacant, to be vacant positions, is that that's baked into the current budget and current numbers?

Correct. Okay. Yes.

All right. Thank you for clarifying.

Mr. Lewis. I just wanted to say I had the opportunity to come over and visit the ACDC a few weeks ago to meet the staff. And I do think that if that's the change you made, I do think it's needed. I think that your staff is hardworking. I think that this week they were able to work with me on freeing every single black woman who was in jail for less than $100. Every single person. who's a woman who's in jail for less than $100. And your staff work with me to free them, work with me to get them jobs. So if they're trying to advance and if they're trying to stay in the same department, that's the way we keep good people. So I do think that you're thoughtful in what we're doing right now. I will have some questions later for the Parks and Rec department who's losing 51 people and also about the...

and also about the i apologize councilmember also about the public works department who is losing positions that we need when we got the all these things coming thank you all right thank you so i just want to confirm what i heard that um these new creation positions we're shifting folks over no salary changes no nothing everything is kind of one-to-one move them over um and that's why your your budget request so no that for those uh

CO2 and CO3 positions, there will be a slight salary increase as they move into those positions, but we don't plan to backfill the CO1 position that they're moving from. I'm sorry. So that's why I say slight increase. Most of these officers, thanks to the pay and class study, have moved up already, so they have seen an increase, but this will give them an opportunity for growth, and the slight pay increase would be an incentive to move into that role that we are asking to fill, which would be more responsibility. Were you gonna add context?

And I just wanna add, the reason why they're requesting the new positions is so that they can make it competitive, right? So everybody can apply. If we just put them, if we just took the approach of reclassification with encumbering, you automatically are moving into that position, and then it doesn't feel fair if you're a two or a three. So that's the reason we have to keep it competitive. Okay, what council?

I know what you're thinking. I'm reading your brain as you're putting it through. So if you recall in their budget presentation, the department is projected to be under their fiscal year for personnel. They're also adding five abolishments that will reduce it further and so there'll be enough incremental cushion to absorb the slight increases for the higher grades.

That again, that's why you and I were talking during the break about it'd be really helpful to see the financial impact of the abolishments, the financial impact of the classifications to understand that. When you say a slight adjustment, I'm just kind of curious as to What range we're talking about? It's only like about 5%, roughly. Yes. This is more of a remark observation, not for y'all, but maybe for HR and the administration, though. There is a part of me now that is also nervous when we're saying we're going to create positions and then abolish some later, because this past year we've established that it's now okay for us not to do a mid-year personnel paper. which is our guarantee that we won't have these funded vacant positions kind of floating out there. Now, I understand the VRB is there as an added protection, but there is a little bit of just unease in terms of that. I'll pay you Wednesday for a burger on Tuesday. So anyway, more of an observation than anything else, but I appreciate the clarity on these positions. All right. Thank you. We're finished with corrections.

Mr. Chair, if I can ask you a question. Some of us have to leave because of the late time. Is there a way to follow up with questions for folks that have not, for departments that haven't gone yet?

Yes, there will be a lot of follow-ups before Wednesday's NBC meeting.

Okay, thank you. And thank you all.

Thank you, CNN. No further questions. We move now to customer service. This is one of the departments where we had some updated information. Regarding customer service, there are 14 total actions, 13 funding allocations to align positions with the general fund and solid waste fund, and one position transfer to align resources to the correct fund. So 14 total actions.

Colleagues, the presentation online looks like, I mean, on the screen looks like it has the correct information. Uh-oh.

General watershed.

All right, so this is one that has changed. Yeah, this is one of the ones where I've gotten the updated materials as I was sitting here, so I was going to this one to give you the updated information.

No, we have... It's on the screen. Our books still are the old ones. Did you say that they're going from general fund to solid waste, or they're...

They're going to general fund to watershed... to DPW, so General Watershed DPW.

Okay, all right. You said solid waste, and I'm like, why would we be sending? Okay, so great, thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from colleagues on that?

All right, CNN will proceed. Thank you.

I believe we have some corrected materials for Dean Enterprise Asset Management. It should be up on the screen. 32 total actions, 12 position abolishments, 16 funding allocations to either allocate or transfer from the general fund to the MAF bond project funding stream, and three position transfers updating the department organization or function activity. So 32 total actions for Dean.

Can you highlight what the correction is on this? Because it seems to be matching what's in our personnel paper books.

I suspect it had to do with allocations, those funds, but I'll have him come up.

Mr. Chair, are we waiting for copies of the changes? I mean, would it make more sense for us to wait for those, keep going? Because I'd rather not have them just tell me in case I transpose the numbers incorrectly. Initially, we were just going to do the ones that were corrected.

Right, and then they brought them to me, so I assumed that you all don't have them yet. We'll come back, Mr. Davis.

So we should not have any questions. This was the original request, I thought, so there shouldn't be a correction on here.

Okay.

All right. Okay, any questions from colleagues on this? Yeah, this is correct. Okay. Council President.

So we are not expecting a corrected page from Enterprise Asset Management?

That's correct. This is correct, what we have here.

Okay.

And did I hear you correctly? So we're split funding now into moving Atlanta forward? That is correct. The rationale behind that? I mean, it's small number. I mean, it's like 30%, 60%. But what's the logic there?

Well, the logic behind that is that it's an opportunity for some efficiency of some funds that was available, that we had an opportunity in some cases to use these funds to be able to bring in either a consultant to do some of the work. But since I have my staff that's actually doing a lot of work as it relates to the Moving Atlanta Forward piece, this was just an opportunity to be able to utilize those funds.

So it's displacing contracted services

NO CONTRACT OPPORTUNITIES. SO THERE WAS NO CONTRACT SERVICES FOR THE MOVING ATLANTA FORWARD PIECE OF IT, BUT WE HAD IT WITHIN THE MOVING ATLANTA FORWARD BUDGET TO BE ABLE TO UTILIZE FUNDS FOR THAT PURPOSE. AND SO SINCE PART OF MY STAFF IS ACTUALLY UTILIZING MAJORITY OF THEIR TIME ON THE MOVING ATLANTA FORWARD PROJECTS, WE HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO PAY FOR THEIR SERVICES OUT OF THAT PARTICULAR FUNDING STREAM.

SO WHAT EXPENSE ITEM IS IT DISPLACING OUT OF THE MOVING ATLANTA FORWARD

I see what you're saying. That would have been a consultant service portion of it.

Okay. Okay. Thank you, Council President.

Under Accounting Manager 2, what fund is that is going from transferring, you know, changing it to another fund? What are those two funds?

The position transfer?

Yeah.

So basically what we're doing there, we're just trying to do an alignment within the divisions. So I had some people that was actually at one point was part of like the operation divisions, our part of the technical service services. So we was just realigning their service to be within the right divisions within the department.

So those are staying in the general fund. They're just moving from one organization to the other organization internally for his operations.

Okay, so it's the same. They're both general funds.

Yeah, it's both 1001 general fund to 100 general fund. The second number at 310301 to 310101, that's a department org. So internally, he's moving it from one function to the other.

Just the function. Thank you.

Yep.

Any other questions for Dean? All right, seeing none, we can proceed.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ethics, no actions. Any questions concerning ethics? Next, executive offices. Executive offices has a total of 71 actions, 29 position abolishments, four funding allocations to update the account number to the salaries and regular line, eight position transfers to convert extra help employees to an authorized position, four reclassifications with incumbent to update the titles to reflect changes in job responsibilities, and 20 reclassifications without incumbent to support the conversion of extra help staff into authorized positions. 71 actions for the executive offices.

Council Member Warren. I have four questions on this particular. First off, on page 65, the project manager position, project manager two, that's going to a 5501 account. What is that 5501?

5501 is aviation and so that is most likely contract compliance so these are the people in the mayor's office of contract compliance we're doing the DBO work for aviation contracts okay all right the second question is the chief strategy officer

Have we created that position yet? Because I didn't see it in last year's personnel paper, because we were still referring to the chief policy officer, and I think that was the shift. So shouldn't we have that in this year's paper?

Chief strategy officer was created in the other paper. It was already created.

in last year's personnel paper? I believe it was last year's. OK, let's confirm that. When I went and looked, I did not see it. But it was fast today as I was comparing this one to last year's. And the third question is just a The chief of staff mentioned that with the reclassifications with incumbents, as well as there's a salary grade amendment, and I think there's also a title amendment, that there were no significant salary increases. Is that correct? And is that question better?

Hey. Hello. Hey, members of council. Yes, that is correct. In fact, what actually happened is the reclass is due to the fact that the function, part of the function that was held by the incumbent was we added additional functions to the role and we didn't have a chief policy officer for the first we didn't have a chief policy i'm sorry we didn't have a chief housing officer until january and so this is bringing that into alignment um to reflect what's actually happening inside the organization yeah i get i get the whole uh the match to what the org structure is i looking at specifically the the dollar amounts um and perhaps oh yeah it's minimal from a classification standpoint it's minimal

All right, so Mr. CFO, again, that chart kind of for each department kind of outline that would be helpful.

I mean, just 100%, I think that chart would be very helpful. But if you look at the reclassification with incumbents, you have a 17 to a 17, a 13 to a 13. That doesn't change. There's a 15 to a 17 that has a slight difference. increment change and an 18 to a 19 that has a slight incremental change too. It just provides larger bandwidth also for growth opportunities but we'll work with the office to see exactly where the salary would land and offset that with the abolishments. I think that exercise will be very helpful so we'll coordinate with HR to get that by department for you.

Yeah specifically the high end of that particular position, the high end of the previous position when it was grade 18,

was I believe 197 the high end of the new the salary that the current incumbent is on the lower end of the new classification okay and then finally mr. councilmember Lewis as he was walking out asked I think he had remembered at some point there was 51 positions that are associated with World Cup and I don't know that I understand his question but are those positions kind of just sprinkled throughout, and it's not necessarily, we're not charging them to a different fund, right? They're just specific positions in different departments that have functionality associated with the World Cup. Again, I don't, didn't really understand the question as he was running out.

And I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.

Okay, I think those were pertinent to Parks and Recreation. They were not.

Oh, Parks and Rec. Yeah, his question was about Parks and Recreation. Sorry, never mind. Sorry, just the messenger. All right, thank you, I yield.

Council Member Bond, sorry.

Yep, thank y'all. I'm just curious, just because there are so many executive offices, I would love to see this information classified by each office. Something I'm really curious, and this might live somewhere already, is how much, how many staff each of the executive offices has and what the budget of each office is. That would be great information to have. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Bone, I can share that with you.

We'll proceed. No further questions. Seeing no further questions regarding executive offices, we'll move down to finance. Finance, your package revealed finance has a total of 16 actions, three position abolishments, five position transfers to IT staff in the Office of Revenue, transferring from the Office of Revenue to the Office of Financial Systems Services, which places all the finance IT within the same office. Also, there are reclassifications with and without an incumbent to ensure the staff roles and responsibilities accurately reflect their perspective, roles, and job opportunities. 16, actions with finance. Seeing no questions, I'll move next to, I believe that's fire. What do we have next? Thank you. Fire reflects 40 total actions. These include 16 position abolishments, 17 position transfers to align resources in the appropriate call center and improve overall efficiency, and reclassifications with and without incumbent to coordinate the youth activities for the mayor's year of the youth initiative and to ensure internal equity and alignment with organizational pay standards. 40 actions for fire. Any questions? Seeing none, we can proceed. seeing no questions grant community development no actions Next, human resources. We have 32 actions. This includes 13 position abolishments, seven position transfers to ensure positions are charged to the correct fund based on employee job duties, responsibilities, and the departments they support. Then there were reclassifications with or without incumbent to address administrative changes to better reflect the structure of the organization. 32 actions for HR. Seeing no questions, we can proceed. Seeing no questions, move to Inspector General. Is that what I have there? Inspector General, yes. 15 total actions for Inspector General. 13 position transfers to update the department organization. Two reclassifications with incumbent to align resources more appropriately to job duties and responsibilities. 15 actions for the Inspector General. Any questions? Seeing none. I'm sorry. Sorry, Mr. Chair. Please proceed. Seeing none, I'll move to judicial agencies. For judicial agencies, 14 total actions, seven position creations. This includes six warrant technician ones and one court interpreter. Seven position creations with that. Also reclassification with and without incumbent to align resources more appropriately. So 14 total actions for judicial agencies. Seeing no questions. Move next to Department of Labor. Okay. Department of Labor. I'm sure I can see this. Yes. 14 total actions, two funding allocations in order to better align the agency's resources more appropriately. One, position transfer, being transferred from Workforce Development Trust Fund to the Federal Fund to align resources in the appropriate cost center and align a broader strategy to improve overall operational efficiency and reclassifications with and without incumbent to align job duties with job description. 14 actions for the Department of Labor. Next, the Department of Law. Department of Law had a total of nine actions, four funding allocations to align position to the appropriate fund based on job duties, and then further reclassifications with or without incumbent to reflect additional responsibilities and duties assigned to the roles. Nine total actions for law.

Council Member Wood. So the funding allocations, what are the 5051 accounts?

5051 is water.

Okay.

Very good. That's it.

Thank you. All right. Please proceed. Thank you. Seeing no further questions regarding law. Moving to parks and recreation. One moment. Yes. Yes. Do you all have a new parks sheet? Do you vote? Should we skip it for now? I thought we had an updated sheet for parks.

Yeah.

Just go ahead and do it if everybody has it. That way we can stay on track with the presentation.

So for parks, update information, this 89 total actions, 54 position abolishments, 19 funding allocations to correct the account number, four reclassifications with incumbent, aligning resources more appropriately due to increased responsibilities, and finally 11 reclassifications without to better align the position with the job duties. 89 actions, parks and reg.

Any questions from colleagues? I do have one on the aquatics facility assistant. It says for cost-saving measures, but I do know that, I mean, we get calls about our pools and having enough staff in those, so I just want to make sure that we're properly staffing our pools, and this is, you know, commiserate about what we're trying to do.

Mr. Cutler. Mr. Chair Winston, members of Atlanta City Council, yes, so what we're doing in this, proposing in this personnel action is to Sorry, which one? Where is it? Yes.

Phase 112.

So this one is reclassification. What we'll be doing here is we'll be moving these positions and these resources to extra help, which gives us more flexibility for part-time positions, helps us to save resources on benefits and provide better service and more flexibility. This also helps allows us to hire younger staff who may not need a full-time position, thus encouraging more youth employment. Okay. That works for me. Any other questions? I have one.

3501, our Park Improvement Fund account, is that correct?

Yes, 3501 is Park Improvement, 7701, that is our various trust funds.

All right, and you have, there are significant changes from what was originally in our budget book. I take that back, I was looking at the wrong one. It was just three changes. 19, 411, okay. I understand that, sorry, I was looking at the wrong page, thank you. You're good. Any other questions from colleagues?

Seeing none, we'll please proceed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner.

Next, police. Police had a total of 69 actions, 18 position abolishments, six certification and license incentive pay to support the enhanced scope of work, expanded duties and functions, and required licensing for positions within E911 Communications Division. So there were six certifications there, 19 position creations to transfer extra help employees to authorized positions. And finally, reclassifications with or without incumbent to better align positions with job functions, including changes related to licensing, permitting, and code enforcement operations. Additionally, there were reclassifications of several positions to support expanded operational needs, records management responsibilities, and increased job duties within the code enforcement and crime prevention sections. Atlanta Police, 69 total actions. Questions from colleagues?

Customer one so there was talk during the budget hearing regarding License and permits and inspections in that area and I noticed that there aren't any necessarily position creations for that, but did want to at least ask about the number of funded positions in that department vacancies and and what the if any additional resources are needed and

I'd invite Chief Sherbaum. Chairman Winston, good evening, Madam President, Councilmember Bond, Councilmember Dozier, and Juan. Good evening, Darren Sherbaum, Chief of Police. I do have our Deputy Chief Administrative Officer here to assist in answering the questions. So we will answer your question now, Councilmember Juan. Thank you.

Good evening. Can you repeat the question? So license and permits, both Councilmember Hillis and I expressed interest and just hope that we could make sure that that department is adequately resourced. I know that we had added a couple of positions a couple of cycles ago, wanted to know kind of what the status is in terms of whether those positions have been filled and if there's any intent to increase

add positions for for that area yes we do have all of our license and permit inspector positions field and as far as this paper we do have a one position this reclassification with incumbent without incumbent which will help us back to that position okay and that is for license and permits that reclass okay thank you sir any questions from colleagues and I'll just add that I do appreciate seeing the incentive pay for our e911 dispatcher so glad to see that in there

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Next department is procurement. Your booklet should reflect 11 actions for procurement. This includes five position creations due to reorganization of compliance division, and then reclassifications with and without incumbent to update classification title to director. 11 actions, Department of Procurement. Seeing no questions, please proceed. Next department, public defender. 10 total actions, five employee salary adjustments due to an equity adjustment, and also including four reclassifications with incumbent due to additional roles and responsibilities and abolishment of one position. 10 actions, public defender.

Council Member Bond has a question.

Yeah, just curious, I don't know too much about the Public Defender, Department of the Public Defender, but what was the reasoning behind abolishing the data scientist position?

Thank you. John Tapia, Deputy Public Defender, House members. At this time, we're abolishing this unfunded position, so we're not able to fill the position at the moment. OK. We'll just regroup at some point when we do have funding.

OK. Is that, wait, could you repeat that, please?

At some point, we'll revisit the issue of bringing a data scientist on board. But at the moment, we just don't have the maturity for it. So we're going to bring on some data tech, some individuals to work on our case management system. And at that point, hopefully we can bring on a data scientist.

So is the issue other staff capacity or what is...

What do you mean by maturity? Well, just our case management system is getting a little outdated. So we're probably going to have to invest some studies into how we develop a better system for our office. And at that point, once we have the ability to get that data, then somebody that can analyze that data.

Oh, OK. So you need a better data tracking system in order to hire a data. OK. I'm a former data analyst, so I was confused. That's it. Thank you.

We can really use your advice on that.

Sure. Yeah. We can talk.

And if I'm reading between the lines, it sounds like you were getting a little ahead of yourself by having that position as a funded position. Correct.

Okay.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. No further questions. Thank you.

We can proceed. Next, Public Works. And again, we had updated information with Public Works. You should have that in front of you now. 67 total actions with Public Works comprised of 19 position abolishments, seven position creations, four of those were to convert extra help, and three to create diesel mechanics for heavy equipment repair and maintenance. There were seven funding applications to support both special ops and solid waste collections. 22 position transfers are being done to align resources with operational needs. Reclassification with and without incumbent to align the titles with the work being performed and to move a position for an employee to the correct title. All in total, 67 actions for public works.

Any questions from colleagues? Mr. CFO, 5401, is that solid waste fund?

Yes.

Thank you.

All right, any other questions? Seeing none, we'll proceed.

Move next to solicitor. 21 total actions for the solicitor. This includes comprised of 14 position abolishments, seven reclassifications with incumbent as incumbents are operating at a senior level. Grand total, 21 actions, solicitor. Seeing no questions there, we can proceed. Watershed. Watershed reflects 257 total actions. 33 position abolishments, 109 position creations to convert extra help, employees to authorized positions, 29 position transfers to align the positions to the correct department organization, 61 reclassifications with incumbent as a result of an internal job audit, and 11 reclassifications without incumbent to align job duties and responsibilities. Watershed, total actions, 257. Any questions from colleagues? Seeing none, we can proceed. And I think we had some business to attend to at the beginning. We turn back now, I guess, to ATL-DLT. I believe we received some updated information potentially from ATL-DLT. I don't know that there was a change to the slide, but go ahead.

We have on funding allocation, we have three updates.

Well, I can read off what we have here. Let me do it that way. Our sheet reflects 51 total actions, 10 position abolishments, 13 funding allocations to allocate or transfer positions from the general fund, aligning personnel costs with operational activities and capital project delivery efforts, seven reclassifications with incumbents to better align employee duties, responsibilities, and skill sets with the operational needs of the department, 17 reclassifications without incumbent. These actions also support the department's transition from temporary or outdated classifications into positions that more accurately reflect current business operations and organizational priorities. 51 actions for the Atlanta Department of Transportation.

So I just want to confirm, I see three positions and under funding allocation that have now, instead of 100% going over to capital fund, are now split 70-30, which is the commissioner, deputy commissioner, and program management director. Those were the only changes, is that correct?

That's correct, Councilman. Okay.

All right, thank you. All right, we'll move on.

I'm sorry, we'll move on. Thank you. That concludes our report. Did we get to customer service?

Yeah, we did customer service.

We did? Okay. Yeah, we did customer service.

There might be an update to customer service.

We got an updated sheet, so I just want to make sure that we have the correct information. Let me make sure you all, the updated sheet I had for customer service, The only change we see is a position transfer, so. Yeah, I had total 14 actions, 13 funding allocation, one position transfer.

Correct.

Got it.

Any questions on that, colleagues? Okay.

Okay.

All right.

I think we're good. Thank you. Thank you. Some general comments before we break. I think first off, if Mr. Chair, if I might. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. So first off, I had asked Ms. Weeks, we usually get a chart every year that summarizes the number of positions per department by fund. And this one actually goes back to 2015, so that we have a kind of a running... log of where our staffing units are again for general fund and then the second page is enterprise grant and all other and the third page is total all funds so I believe that y'all are still waiting on some information with the departments but we're going to need that before we have the personal paper before us in committee second we just gave you the thumbs up so Second thing is that as CFO, you and I spoke, I think having another financial summary of each department's actions in aggregate would be helpful. So the decrease in the for abolishments that were funded and then particularly the fund allocation funding allocation of the position transfers understanding what's leaving the general fund and what's going to the other various funds again per department will be helpful. Third comment I just wanted to make is that I guess I know that y'all do a good You try to do a very good job of scrubbing. But I do want to put out there that I thought the abolishment number would be higher. And I know that y'all have worked very, very hard to get that. But with 238 abolishments and when our employee headcount is somewhere in the neighborhood of, I would say maybe 11 to 12,000. And we know that we've kind of been experiencing anywhere from 15 to 25% vacancy rates. That to me is the vacant positions are somewhere in the 2000 to 2500 range. And if there is discipline around, if you have vacant positions that you haven't filled that we will go ahead and just clean up a little bit. We've only got 1 tenth of that. And so in a way, in my mind, those numbers are not matching up, particularly in a year where the first message sent to us during the overview was that all the departments were asked to make cuts. So I just, you know, I guess I'm just, this personnel paper, I'm going to take a closer look through it. doesn't seem to hit where I thought it would hit. Also taking into account the catch-up from what are the mid-year kind of what I had in mind that I thought our mid-year personnel changes would be. So I just as I digest this as we start looking more through kind of the total aggregate numbers I just want to put that out there in terms of just an observation and somewhat of a concern as well. I know it's hard and there's a reluctance to abolish positions because you have to then take the extra step of creating them again if you need them. But if we're also still imposing the extra step of a vacancy review board, then I feel like that extra step of creating a new position to replace one that we abolished is also perhaps worth it. I think I signaled that last year. And I'll signal that again at this point. But I do appreciate the hard work that y'all put in this. I know that it's a lot of moving parts and that y'all are kind of just the compilers. And then y'all, I understand also you didn't get some of the data until late last night. So I get that. But at this point, the job is in our hands in terms of diving into this. And if we have additional questions, Mr. Chair, I'm sure we'll pick those up either in committee or further in the process.

So thank you. Second, everything council member Warren said, obviously we've got a lot of work to do before next week's committee. I'm sure we'll get a lot of questions from colleagues moving forward. And I know we have a lot of questions that came in today, so we'll try to do everything we can to correlate those and get those out to you all so we can get those answered before next week. But appreciate everybody's patience today. I think it's critical that we get this right and that we get the correct information in front of us so we can move forward. Thank you everyone for being here and staying along. So we'll adjourn this session. So thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.