Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everybody. I am Presiding Officer Commissioner Shkira Johnson, your District 4 Commissioner. Welcome to our March 3 Committee of the Whole meeting. We do have a quorum. Commissioner Davis Johnson will be joining us late, and Commissioner Michelle Longspirits will be joining us shortly. Before we start our agenda, I wanted to issue a warm welcome to Bishop Joseph Messiah, Commissioner Messiah's father, who's in the room with us. Good morning, Bishop. Thank you for being with us. If you would stand so we can see you. Thank you.

I'm actually shy, Eddie.

Sir. Thank you for being

here. So,

now we'll move into the agenda with committee reports. Commissioner Terry first.

Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer. The Finance Audit and Budget Committee chaired by myself and joined by Commissioner Michele Long Spears and Commissioner Presiding Officer Shakira Johnson as committee members met on February 25 last Wednesday. We're also joined by commissioner Nicole Messiah and commissioner Maria Davis Johnson on on the Zoom. And we basically spent the entire meeting talking about the budget, I won't go through all of that. We all voted on that on Thursday.

And we will have another meeting next week and ahead of that meeting and at that meeting we'll be talking about our strategic goals for the year for finance audit and budget. So for committee members, let's bring our ideas and things we want to work on. One thing that I know was mentioned earlier in the year was the Magistrate Court Judge Anderson is working on an eviction like information center. And so I think we wanted to continue that conversation with her about eviction defense counsel along with that information center to help those who are in the eviction court as well as continuing the conversation we started at the beginning of the year on, the diversion center. And I know Zach is working on that as well, on some other fronts.

So we'll have an update hopefully for the committee and then bring that back to the full board for further consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Messiah.

Thank you so much, madam Peo. Great morning to all. My name is Nicole Messiah. The honor of serving as your PEC's chair along with committee members, commissioner Long Spears from District 2, along with commissioner Ted Terry from District 6. Our last regularly scheduled meeting was held on February 26.

Those were in attendance were commissioner Longspears, commissioner Terry. There were 14 items printed on the agenda. We reviewed and discussed all 14 items, nine of which were recommended for approval. Four of those particular items were recommended out of committee for deferral and one item was withdrawn due to the Board of Commissioners on threetentwenty twenty six. The next PEC's meeting will be held March 10 at 03:30.

And everyone please note the time difference instead of our regularly scheduled two p. M. PEC's meeting. PEC's going forward will be held at 03:30 this year. With that, thank you so much, Madam Pio, and I yield back to you.

Thank you, Commissioner Messiah. Commissioner Bolton.

Thank you, and good morning. I am Ladena Bolton, your super district seven commissioner as well as deputy presiding officer for the board of commissioners. I am the chair of the IRPS committee, which is employee relations and public safety. Also serving on that committee with me is our presiding officer, Shakira Johnson, and commissioner Marita Davis Johnson. Our last meeting, which was Tuesday, February 17, not only did we have our committee members there, but also commissioner Terry joined us of Super District six.

And we had quite a few items and a couple of discussions at that last meeting. One of the items that we discussed under public safety was item two zero two six zero three two zero. That item was approved, and this was an urban area security initiative or UIC grant in an amount of $382,606. Again, that was approved by the board. Item two zero two six zero three two two was also approved.

Our public safety is doing amazing. That was another grant, another UIC grant in the amount of $10,000. Under public safety as well, but animal enforcement services, we had a contract that consisted of providing animal shelter operations and services. Of course, this was deferred. This was a $22,000,000, contract request.

However, that item had not come out of audit, so we'll be reviewing that even more today during IRPS. Under fire rescue item two zero two six zero one eight three, we approved this item, which was a contract for the purchase of emergency medical supplies for fire rescue and emergency medical units and vehicles of which we need plenty of. Our facilities management items, which consists of two zero two six zero two seven two, This item was deferred, of course, and this contract consists of purchasing from the competitively led, which is for indoor and outdoor cameras with sensors for video surveillance. Also, under public safety, we're gonna have some additions to our fleet. That's under item zero four one five.

But we did have to defer a couple more items, including the resolution to address egregious littering and illegal dumping of scrap tires. We're almost through that item. Just a few more tweaks, and then we can get it out to the community for implementation. And, the last item that was deferred was co sponsored by district five and super district seven. This is to establish regulatory oversight of blasting operations in DeKalb.

As you know, we have a lot of stone, a lot of rocks, so a blasting ordinance will be very valuable to community members. And finally, the two discussions that we had, of course, one of them was the proposed budget discussion to come out of IRPS as well as the county pension discussion. And, some of you have been really excited about the death benefit that we discussed and that has gone into this year's budget. But, also, we're really working toward a strategy to increase pension benefits for the third tier employees and also establishing a COLA for retirees. So we're still talking through those things, but, hopefully, by end of year, we will have a codified plan.

And with that, I yield back.

Thank you, Commissioner Bolton. Commissioner Patrick.

Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer. I'm Commissioner Robert Patrick and Chair of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee. I'm joined by Commissioner and Presiding Officer Shakira Johnson, as well as Commissioner Nicole Masai. At our last meeting, we had a total of six items and two discussions. Three items were approved.

One was held for public hearing, one was held for further consideration, and there was another deferral. Some of the things that we talked about or approved was a nearly $50,000,000 contract for Department of Watershed Management. This was for work for the consent decree assignments along with meeting the urgent needs that arise from operational events the sewer system. That's a polite way of saying something broke and we got to fix it fast. We have a robust agenda for this afternoon, and we're looking forward to seeing you at PWI at 03:30, hopefully. Madam presiding officer, I also have

You have the ops. Perfect.

I have comments for ops, if that's appropriate.

Yes, please.

The ops committee had a total of 20 items for discussion. Let me back up. The chair of ops is Commissioner Marita Davis Johnson. I join her as well, as well as my colleague, Commissioner Ladina Boltinar, serve on this committee. We had a total of 20 discussions excuse me, a total of 20 items, two discussion items that have been recurring.

Of our items that we were considering, 11 were held and nine were approved. Some interesting things among those that were approved, just over $7,500,000 for Department of Watershed Management and Innovation Technology Department. This was the annual hosting costs and maintenance and support for state of the art customer service information solution for the customer for the county's customer billing system integration. Of course, we wanna have accurate and timely billing put together, and there is a cost that goes with it. So that was one of the items.

Sort of a smaller item, and this was with the Department of Technology as well. Maintenance support of the DCR digital recording system, audio and video equipment used in the county's courtrooms. So we're working with our court partners to make sure that justice is efficiently recorded and reported. We have another robust agenda item for this afternoon at ops, and we look forward to seeing you at 01:00. Thank you, madam presiding officer.

Thank you for the double reports, Commissioner Patrick. I will also note that today starts our new committee assignments. There has been a little bit of shuffling on the committees. So, again, new committee assignments, new committee time that does start today. Commissioner Longspears does not chair a committee, but I'll give her opportunity. Commissioner Longspears.

Thank you very much. Again, Michelle Long Spears, District 2 Commissioner. I proudly serve on the PECS and the FAB committee. I do have a report on two other items. On April 1, we are hosting the District 2 office, the state of DeKalb animals address at the new Brookhaven City Center.

It is a free event open to the public and I hope that everyone will please go and check out my website, michelelongspears.com, I believe. And, you can register on the SODA page. My second update is last year, and thanks to my colleagues that unanimously passed, that DeKalb County is constituting our very first women's commission. It is the only county based women's commission in the state of Georgia. Brings me so much pride that we had the courage to move forward with it.

Currently, we're in the process right now of identifying appointment. So each commissioner, the CEO, all of the cities, junior league, the tax commissioner, and there are other appointments. So if you have not made your appointment yet, please do so. We are hoping to host our first meeting either later this month in March or in April. Thank you so much. Oh, and if you have any questions on the Women's Commission or State of DeKalb Animals address, feel free to reach out to the District 2 office. Thank you, and I yield back.

Thank you, Commissioner Longspears. At this time, let's begin our review of the proposed executive agenda for March 10. Good morning, Zach.

Good morning, Madam Presiding Officer and members of the board. I'd like to begin the proposed agenda review with the first item, zero four four two is an appoint appointment of mister Sheldon Fleming to post eight of the Recreation Parks and Cultural Affairs Board. That'd be a PEX item.

Yes.

Next for proposed preliminary items under the airport. The very first item, zero three eight eight is a resolution to accept GDOT tentative allocation of state funding assistance associated with the project for airfield crack and seal and marking at the DeKalb Petrie Airport. It's like ops. Ops. Yes. The next two items, the first is a three eighty nine standardized office space agreement with L. Caitlin Henry, no cost to the county. Second is a consent to sublease under contract number 16Dash1710 with two zero zero five Flightway Drive LLC, no cost to the county. Consent. Consent.

Next, we have under the executive systems, Chief Operating Officer, item four fifty eight, authorizing $9,067,525 of SPLOST funding for facilities improvements to include roofing and HVAC system repairs and replacements for DeKalb County physical and mental health facilities. Is this PEX? Yes. This is PEX. And this is this is gonna be SPLOST two funding. I wanna be clear on that. We'll get that updated. Next item is to appropriate SPLOST funding to purchase, install, and repair Lew Walker kitchen equipment. This would be PEX as well?

Yes, sir.

Is that gonna be SPLOST

two

are funding? SPLOST two funding for those two items. Yes, ma'am. Item under police services, zero four six zero, to approve the usage of SPLOST one and SPLOST two funding to make needed repairs to East Precinct and the police training facility. East Precinct and the Police Training Academy. $3,019,530. We'd have that in IRPS.

Yes. IRPS.

Next item, zero four five nine under public safety. Do you approve the usage of SPLOST one funds under category two h for a public safety training facility in the amount of $500,000 to evaluate and propose the most appropriate location for a public safety training facility. And this is Erps as well?

Yes, sir. Erps.

Next, we have items under purchasing and contracting. The first is an IRPS item.

We're good.

IRPS is good. Next, we have FAB. FAB is good?

That's the one FAB item

is good. One FAB item and then ops has several items.

Ops is good.

Ops is good. Now we're on the top of Page six, which starts us with the PEX committee items. There are a total of three.

PEX is good.

Next, have PWI.

PWI is good.

Which is good as well. We'd conclude with watershed management items. There are two. The first one is 0162, agreement for the construction and financing of sewer upgrades with NEX Development Partners LLC for the contribution of $832,000. PWI? Yes. And then the next is an agreement for River Lake Information Management Services, PWI as well. Madam presiding officer, I have no further items.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. If we miss McKenzie would help us with the review of the agenda.

Do we have walk ons?

Oh, do we have any walk ons? I don't I'm not aware of any walk ons.

Yes. Have a

walk on.

District one is breaking the system.

It's not district one.

Okay.

On behalf of my good friend at district five, we have a walk on, an item to allocate $25,000 to How Big Is Your Dream Incorporated from the District five reserved for appropriation funds for the Summer Youth Academy of Arts. And, yes, consent, please.

Consent, and we will try and get that to not be a walk on next time. Thank you for stepping in the gap for District 5, Commissioner Patrick. Good morning, Ms. McKenzie.

For our, BLC items oh, we can we'll start with the recap. For on page one, proposed appointments for CEO's office. Two zero two six zero four four two, an appointment with a stop in PEX. For the airport items, we have 20260388, preliminary with a stop in the ops committee.

We did have a question from the PEX chair on this one.

Right. Related thank you so much, madam Pio. Seeing as it is a, a grant of funds and it is airport, just trying to understand understand why why ops ops opposed opposed to to PEX. PEX. Airport's Airport's a a PEX PEX item. Item. I

think ops typically handled the airport daily activities.

That was my recollection that ops went to

The P

T Airport went to ops. But if I'm mistaken, I can stand corrected. But I believe that's been our history.

Yeah.

Okay. History or is it listed under a because I thought airport was under a PAC. So if we could

It's under op

It's on op okay. Fantastic. Alright. That's fine. Thank you.

Thank you. No problem.

For the next two airport items, 03890392 appear as consent. Yes. The COO office, item two zero two six zero four five eight, preliminary with a stop in the PECS committee. Human services item zero four six one preliminary with a stop in the PECS committee. Police services item zero four six zero preliminary with a stop in the IRPS committee.

Public safety item zero four five nine preliminary with a stop in the IRPS committee. Purchasing and contracting items for purchasing and contracting for the IRPS committee zero three one one. For the fab committee 0316. For the ops committee 1760199025502600327032803910393 and 0394 For the pecs committee, 0307, 0395, and 0426. For the PWI committee, 0182, 0241, 0277, 0288, 030503290336.

For watershed management, items zero one six two and zero three six one preliminary with a stop in the PWI committee. For board of commissioners items, we have board of commissioners item zero four six three approval of minutes for the 03/03/2026 committee of the whole meeting. Is this on the consent? For board of commissioners District 20403 District 2 to allocate $18,800 from 2,001 park bond for improvements at Briar Lake Park.

Consent.

Twenty twenty six zero four zero four, District 2 to allocate $21,500 from 2,001 Park Bond for the development of a master plan at 1634 Briarcliff Road, parcel ID 180702012.

Consent.

Twenty twenty six zero four two seven, appropriation of $20,000 from the district two reserve for appropriation to stride ahead for equine therapy. Consent. Twenty twenty six zero four three five allocation of $15,000 from the district to reserve for appropriation to Bella's blessings to support pet owners in need.

Consent.

For board of commissioners District 620260424 to appropriate $43,800 of district six reserve for appropriations to Nicole Sage, Sage PR Consulting for event development, production logistics, and community outreach. Fiscal year 2026, Shakespeare on the Green Community Arts and Education Series.

Consent.

Also for District 620260425 to appropriate 32,978 of District 6 reserved for appropriations to the city of Avondale States to support and expand the 2026 X Fear on the Green Community Arts and Education Series. Consent. And clerk to the board of commissioner and CEO twenty twenty six zero four four one. Approval of the minutes of the board of commissioners meeting of 02/26/2026.

And that

is all I have in the walk on.

I was gonna say District 5 walk on for the twenty five thousand on consent.

Yes. There is urgency to that one that commissioner Davis Johnson was just explaining to me. So Oh. But we are doing that on consents

for Thank

you. You.

Madam PO or commissioner Davis Johnson, what is the sense of urgency related to that appropriation?

So they are in risk of losing their funding a timely in a near time. So there was a timely component to it. So

The funding from DeKalb County?

Yeah. Funding from DeKalb County. So and it's not even in my district.

Okay. So there's a risk of them losing funding from DeKalb County. So you're from Yeah. From us, from DeKalb. So you're gonna fill in the blank with your funding.

I'm gonna fill it. Okay.

Understood. Alright. Well, you you always question what people do walk ons. I will do the same. Thank you. Yield back.

And I will say I appreciate my fellow commissioners for having much less walk ons this year. I think that helps the public as well. Yes. We're a few meetings in, but we're still doing better than we had been. So I'm just gonna give appreciation. Thank you so much.

Wait till next week.

Alright, so we're through our review and recap. So now we will have our moderate quarterly update. And you guys do have copy of the presentations. Good morning, Mr. Hunt.

Good morning.

Good morning. The green button on that clicker will advance the slides.

Good morning. Thank you presiding officer Shi'ira Johnson, deputy presiding officer Bolton, and hello members of the DeKalb Board of Commissions. I also want to take a moment to recognize my great DeKalb board members at Marta, Rod Frierson, Devon Hudson, Shana Pollock, and Sarah Galizza. Before I begin this morning, I'd like to take time to open by saying the MARTA system that everybody is familiar with at the 2025 is no more. It no longer exists.

It's a new year and a new MARTA. We're bringing well over a billion dollars in improvements and advancements, including new railcars, a better breeze system, our MARTA Rapid a line, a next gen, bus network, and MARTA REACH. Each one of these items, to quote my grandmother, would be shouting news. They'd be worthy of a year long, rollout and update, dedicated for each individual item. We're bringing all of those items online this year, and we are extremely excited about each and every one of them and how they're gonna improve the system. I'm gonna jump into our report.

Do one second, mister Hunt. If we can get the presentations on our screen. Mhmm. Alright. Go ahead. Thank you.

Good. I'll move right into the ridership. In under ridership, prior to the streetcars closure due to Georgia Power's work, we saw ridership improving above pre pandemic levels. Additionally, with mobility whoops, sorry. Additionally, with mobility ridership, we saw strong year over year growth above pre pandemic levels.

With respect to bus, we've had steady year over year growth and improvements. We are confident that the next gen bus network will increase ridership through improved service and frequency throughout our entire service area. We're also currently installing a new Better Breeze system, which includes fare gates across 23 stations at present, and obviously, we'll complete all 38 stations. But due to this construction, our ridership numbers will appear lower for a bit, while it's harder to adjust and track the taps while we're going through the construction period. But I'll go a little bit further into the Better Breeze system later into my presentation and update.

Next, I'd like to jump into our capital program here in DeKalb. First project we're going talk about is the Buford Highway ART project. We released a solicitation for the final design consultant and expect to award this in the second quarter of this year. The final designer will develop plans and specifications for the project with the release of construction bids in 2028, and we anticipate construction beginning in late twenty twenty eight. I'd like to take a minute to thank all the DeKalb elected officials on all levels of government who've supported this project by giving us letters of support for our build grant that we submitted last week in the amount of $23,900,000.

We'll keep you posted on the outcome of that grant application, but in particular, I'd like to thank mayor Park, mayor Mach, mayor Gearman, state representative loop Loopton, commissioner Terry, as well as commissioner Long Spears. Thank you very much for your support. I'm gonna move on to the Candler Road ART project, and I'm pleased to report that the release of this solicitation for a final design consultant is already on the street. We expect an award for that one as well in the second quarter of this year. We anticipate construction beginning on this project in mid twenty twenty twenty mid twenty twenty eight, so a bit sooner than the Buford Highway ART, but they're tracking almost parallel.

And we will also keep you very well informed on the progress of this project. The next two projects, one is the South DeKalb Transit Hub and the other one is the Stonecrest Transit Hub. At the request of the county, we have paused this project of the South DeKalb Transit Hub in December due to the potential sale of the mall property. We will be revisiting the same with the county at the end of the second quarter and continually thereafter in order to move this project forward. In order to get through the real estate acquisition, we will likely be coming back to this body for a condemnation resolution as part of the real estate acquisition process.

I will like to report that on a positive note, we've received a $25,000,000 federal funding for this project. It's been obligated by the federal government, which decreases the chances of a clawback. It doesn't eliminate it, but it does decrease it greatly. And this funding does cover a large portion of the estimated cost of this project. That 25,000,000 represents a bit over 4045% of the I mean, excuse me, 50%, 55% of the total project costs.

Due to some capital project budget constraints, as I reported previously, the Stonecrest Transit Hub project is currently on hold. The final design has not been issued, but we are going to complete that solicitation package so that when funding becomes available, we will be ready to hit the street immediately. We are also working hard on finding alternative funding sources from the federal government and state to help fund that project. Preliminary planning. These projects include the South DeKalb Transit Initiative.

As you all know, we're looking at high capacity transit in South DeKalb. The project team has narrowed the routes from 10 to two alternatives, one being the Interstate I 20 from Stonecrest to Five Points, the other one being the Covington Highway alternative from Stonecrest to Kensington Station. The selection of alternative has been put on hold at the county's request while the county moves forward with its transit master planning process. We will provide any support needed for that process to move forward expeditiously so we can select a locally preferred alternative. I'd now like to move in into the station rehab and TOD section of our presentation.

We're very happy to report just next door, another successful DeKalb TOD moved forward to a ribbon cutting last month, welcoming new residents to the LINC, a senior affordable housing project, which is the next phase of our overall Avondale Station project, bringing over 80 bringing 80 senior affordable units to the area. At East Lake Station, I'm happy to report that we're moving forward with the replacement of the South Pedestrian Bridge. With the support of CSX and them getting flaggers for us, we'll be ready to install this new pedestrian bridge for use prior to the World Cup. The milestone follows the reopening of the North Pedestrian Bridge, which now includes a new elevator, upgraded lighting, and enhanced enhanced lighting. With ADA access at the north side just completed, construction crews will shift to the south side.

This will, unfortunately, require closure of our south pedestrian I mean, our south parking lot as well as the pedestrian bridge. The closure of the south parking lot interest will last about two months, but we are gonna complete this prior to World Cup. And the image above shows the pedestrian bridge that's been manufactured and currently sits in the parking lot, so we won't have any manufacturing delays there. I'd like to move now to our Kensington Station TOD. The Kensington Station master plan site includes the station and all surrounding parking lots.

We've received a $10,000,000 ARC tip award, which will help pay for new public parking and bus bays to offset some of the capital infrastructure costs that can often be a hindrance to bringing any new development to fruition. Safety improvements at Kensington include a station pedestrian walkway that were completed at the 2025. And both the Kensington Station as well as the note about Avondale Station wrap around all of our TOD efforts here in the county. There are nine stations in the county, five of which have some form of completed TOD, another that has an RFP on the street at Kensington Station at present for a transit oriented development and a master plan that's been completed at Indian Creek for TOD that will be bringing to fruition at some point in 2026. In other news, I am happy happy and elated to highlight our next gen bus network.

We are only forty six days away from the launch of the next gen bus network. The team is working hard internally to prepare for the launch. We're including setting up a large staff deployment over the launch weekend, developing launch day playbook, and training our bus operators for the new network. In February, we held 25 open houses giving the community the opportunity to meet directly with MARTA staff, our planners to do individualized trip planning or to answer any questions they may have. On March 1, our staff began outreach at all rail stations, bus loops, on buses and on every so that every customer knows what their service is and how it may be impacted by the new bus network.

As part of our next gen bus network, there's also MARTA REACH. We are at least we are only one week away from launching a brand new service in MARTA REACH across 12 zones, the MARTA service area, including five zones within DeKalb County. Rides will be complementary from launch through March 28 to allow our customers to get used to the new service and adjust to these new new zones. Customers in these zones will be able to use Martyr Reach through their be able to access Martyr Reach through the app, the website or calling our reservations department. All of our zones will connect at a higher frequency service either to bus or rail and if your trip is within the zone, it will be a curb to curb service.

You can already sign up for MARTA REACH count by downloading the MARTA REACH app or by going to www.itsmarta.com. You've heard me highlight this item previously in my report, but a better breeze is coming and I want to remind everyone that there'll be a little short term pain for long term gain. So as we replace all of the fare gates, all of the back end software, new fare cards, all of the payment systems on all of our rolling stock that will be a little painful for our customers. We're going through the process right now. As I stated before, we have 23 stations currently under construction, and you'll see more construction in the coming months.

The launch of this will occur this year in April, at the March, April, excuse me, and we are encouraging riders to spend down their balances. However, if you're unable to spend down your balance by or before March May 2, we will be allowing customers to transfer those balance or those unused trips to the new Better Breeze account by registering with the Better Breeze account. That period will go from May 2 through October 30 this year. Breeze cards will obviously be the typical Breeze card that you've seen before, updated and upgraded, or you be able to use virtual mobile wallets or your own credit card, debit card and just merely tap to pay. I want to take a moment to highlight the wonderful work of our Department.

Last year, I was pleased to report at the end of the year of our year over year safety rate, our safety numbers being down by over 25%. As of February 18, our crime stats are homicides are at 0%, aggravated assaults are the same year over year with no precipitous increase. Robberies are up 50%. That just means, and I wanna put that 50% in context, there was one incident during this period last year. There have been two through this period in 2026.

I wanna put context. I have reported in percentages, but I wanna give context. Overall crime on the system is down 21% as compared to last year. We have one of the safest transit systems in the country, and we're only investing more. In that vein, last year, I committed to my leadership group, my board, and this body to get to our full budget of allotment of 250 officers by the close of 2025.

I'm pleased to report we reached that number at the November, and we are currently at 270 light officers for the year. Excuse me. I also committed to adding 10 field protective specialists, which are light officers except they don't carry a badge or a gun. They're not sworn officers. We are still hiring additional officers, field protective specialists to reach that goal.

We've had many, many successful events in 2026. We hit the ground running with public engagement. Each of these events, we had Q and A periods, we shared information, we explored ways to support the community and each subcommunity's efforts around our initiatives and around their goals. Through the Rosa Parks Transit Equity Day, although that was headquartered in the city of Atlanta, we did partner with Amalgamated Transit Union and their leadership under President Ward and a significant portion of our work force, north of 25% are DeKalb residents. We'd also like to thank Leadership DeKalb as we hosted them for a short walk and a background for Martyr's initiatives in the cab as part of that group's leadership training.

We also presented at a tabled commissioner Johnson's quarterly breakfast this past Saturday, which was very successful and we had a successful open houses throughout the county and at headquarters this year. With that, I think that brings me to the end of my formal comments and will yield back to you to to you presiding officer Johnson. Excuse my voice, you know. I promise I will bring a bottle of water next

time. Nope.

If we need to get you water, think

I'm okay. I'm okay.

That out. I think we at least have two questions. I saw, commissioner Longspirits first and then commissioner Messiah and then the chair.

Thank you very much, madam Pio. We appreciate you being with us today, sir. Awesome detailed presentation. I do have some questions, and forgive me if you reported on it, and I just missed it as I was, double duty up here, putting out a fire. Could you tell us a little bit more about the status of house bill eleven thirty seven?

Oh, yes. Our penny legislation. At present, that house bill has made it out of transportation committee, with a unanimous vote of support. One of the rare instances where we got full transportation committee support. We're very excited that Penny represents an extension from 2057 to 2067 of Martyrs Penny legislation that pays for our service.

It's critical. We received no sustaining funding from the state. We do have occasional grants that we do receive. I won't go in too much detail, but it is a critical piece of legislation. And part of our legislative priorities this year are only the penny legislation enforcement around bus rapid transit, which in the next few years will be in all of our jurisdictions. The first one coming online is in Summerhill in the city of Atlanta, but there will be one in Southlake. There are other plans in all of our jurisdictional area.

Could you talk about next steps for house bill eleven thirty seven?

I'm gonna call up Jennifer LaRosa, who's in our external affairs group, who will give you the nitty nitty gritty

Great.

On the next steps. Because other than coming to jurisdictional briefings during the session, herself and Carolina Ramos live in the Georgia Dome.

Well, thank you, miss LaRosa as well for reaching out to my office. My chief of staff is not with us today and is out with a family emergency

Mhmm.

But she will respond back with a time for us to meet.

Absolutely. So the next steps would be it would make it to the house floor prior to Friday, which is crossover days, so it has to make it out by then. And then it would go through the same process in the senate. We after that, obviously, the it's still not in stone yet. For the policy to go into effect, we have to do another RTCAA amendment.

So passing it from the state is the beginning, and then we come back and have conversations with all of you on what's next steps in the RTCAA. That does give opportunity for discussions about projects and other pieces. So and that's gonna be up to the board commission and leadership here at the county before you come to the table with us. So it's a real good time to start having those conversations on how the process would be done internally here at the county before we have conversations together. So again,

legislation is just the first step of the process and it will work through the Senate much the way that it has the House and we have

together. High hopes for it. So we'll be able to keep those funding mechanisms and be flexible with all the opportunities that we have coming up in the county and the rest of the region.

Thank you for that update. If house bill eleven thirty seven passes, is that an opportunity to transition from ART to BRT along Buford Highway, the busiest route in the system?

I think that, I certainly don't wanna answer for specifics on the cost

of things. So Significantly more expensive. Yes.

Right. So this is an this is an extension of a current funding mechanism. It's not additional. The cost of that isn't going to change with the passage of this. We're not collecting more. We'll just continue to collect for a period of time, which really keeping that thirty year window is allowing us to keep doing bond funding and to be able to be competitive at the federal level for bigger grants like CIG or capital investment grants to do those larger multiple hundreds of million dollars of projects. So that's what this is allowing us to do. The state can change that date when they need. We just keep it a thirty year window for those two reasons.

Wonderful. Well, will eagerly be watching the outcome by this Friday. Thank you. Madam PO, I'm kinda tracking my time so I don't go over the ten minutes, but I see the clock. Is it by where I can't see it? Okay. Alright. Fantastic. Nope. That's what I had. Okay. Perfect. Alright. Moving on to, the FY twenty six build grant program. My office did submit a letter of support for you all. Could you just talk about, next steps and a little bit more about that program? Is that you as well?

This is the Buford Highway DMT. Yeah.

Yes. It does

relate to that.

Yes, sir.

Been submitted. We will receive our right now, we're in the waiting period.

Okay.

We're gonna go in with all the other competitive projects from across the country looking for build grant funding. We're excited about the opportunity of receiving funds. We've had some successes in this administration already. So we are very excited, especially considering, as you already mentioned, it is our busiest route. So the numbers really support federal support project.

If you win the grant, will that bring any additions to what you're already planning for the ART line along Buford Highway or to be exactly what you've already mapped out?

It's what we mapped out. It would allow us to to use other people's money and then that

Of the 54,000,000?

4,000,000 can be used elsewhere.

Understood. All right. Thank you for that. My final question relates to the NextGen bus network. I want to thank you very much for the amount of community engagement opportunities that you did provide to constituents.

I will tell you, and I have certainly sent this information along to you all or my Chief of Staff has, is that we are beginning to get some complaints for our constituents where routes have been cut. So my question to you is, is there an opportunity in the future if we do receive substantial pushback from those constituents that have relied on bus service that will now be terminated in the next forty six days, I believe Mhmm. You wrote, to re consider that service again.

So our plan is we're going to launch the network. This network, we're going from good to great, not good to perfect. So we are gonna take six to eight months to review the implementation of this network. And then thereafter, we're going to evaluate this. We're not gonna wait forty years to do systematic upgrades to our bus network. So the short answer is yes. It's not gonna be the second day.

Understood.

But but, yes, we're gonna be taking feedback. Our planners are gonna be actively monitoring and working on that, not only for that six month period, but going forward throughout our entire history or future, excuse me.

I don't imagine there's a perfect transit system in the entire world. So I like how you characterize So, what we'll continue to do then, and I don't know if commissioner Terry, who is also a commissioner for that, the bus stops that have been canceled have been receiving the complaints that we have. We will continue to channel them over to you.

Please. And

then we'll put a note on our calendar to follow-up in six months. So two ish months before you start reconsidering and see if there's any flexibility.

And we did receive the request for virtual open houses and I think we're trying to schedule them with those who requested. So check the emails and we'll get them on.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. I yield back.

Thank you. Commissioner Messiah.

Thank you so much, madam Peel. First, wanna say that I'm very much looking forward to our meeting. I believe we have a meeting on the ninth and sitting down and having a further conversation because that brings me to something that I heard a couple of times related to Southwest DeCab, and that is a pause in certain projects. There's been a history and some challenges related to project delivery, and I have a number of angry constituents, to be quite frank, in terms of their access to MARTA and public transportation, particularly as it relates to the improvement of quality of life, access to healthcare, access to childcare, access to grocery stores, access to entertainment. With that, you said there was a requested pause by the county.

I had not requested a pause, but no discussions, particularly in areas that affect my constituents. So where did the request for pause come from?

With respect to the South DeKalb Transit Hub that came from the madam CEO's office and as well as initiative. Those are the two that I mentioned pause. On Stonecrest, there was fund funding issues.

Okay. And I'm gonna respect Those were all three. I'm gonna respectfully ask that, of course, if it affects, you know, at South The Cabin, my constituency, that we have a conversation Absolutely. Related to it because I would, at minimal, like to be able to weigh in well, at maximum, I'd to be able to weigh in, at minimum, be able to be advised and know what's going on in and around my constituency and be able to communicate the same. With that, I see that you have mentioned the $25,000,000 that has been appropriated for some time that it would be able to satisfy 50% of the South, South DeKalb hub.

And so that's been on the books for, some time here. Do you know I see construction supposed to start commence in 2028. Do we know what quarter or when in 2028? Do we have some idea there?

Once the final design is completed, we want to move exceedingly quickly. So I can't give you a timeline and a pause, but those are the broad strokes. We're hoping that this gets resolved here second quarter of this year, and I come back to you and talk to you about how it's moving forward.

Because South DeKalb has been under 30% design phase for some time, whereas Stonecrest was not at the same design phase, and now we presently are at the same design phase. So that would suggest that South DeKalb hub transit hub is being delayed in some way now that it's at that same, design phase as something, you know, another area that not been, parallel in some in times in a excuse me, relation to a time perspective. There you go. So has there been a delay? And if so, again, the question becomes why?

The the only the the requested pause happened in December. Mhmm. So that's when, if you wanna use the word delay, occurred, that's when the delay occurred. The only other item would be the condemnation resolution, but we need to get to a further point in design so that when we come before you, we have specific exacting parcels, and we can give you the detail on who exactly is impacted. Alright. But all of this property is on on the mall's property where the transit hub is slated to be located.

Okay. Alright. And that brings me to, again, the narrowing down two BRT alternatives. And since I've been on this board, I've been requesting that, we actually have BRT and Candler. Again but now we're narrowing it down to Stonecrest and to Kensington. Can you give me the thoughts in and around not including Candler in that BRT?

On the South Dakota Transit Initiative, the Candler Road is a Candler Road ART, which is the one that's moving forward. It would merely be cost, so we can come back to you with information on the ninth in more detail.

Yes, please. Because I've been asking every every time we have a presentation. I literally have been making the same request, same comment, in and around the design phase, in and around BRT for Candler. So that would be great. And I appreciate I know that, you know, coming in, you had to hit the the ground running, and I was one of those very excited, you know, to be quite frank, in you coming in and being able to see some of the delivery of projects. But it'd be great to be able to get that follow-up. Happy to see, speaking of which, that the East Lake Station, that we're finally, getting that going.

Yes.

That's been a long time coming, and, you know, part of my constituency includes the city Of Atlanta. So I've had lots of conversation in and around it. That's the station that I use. And to be quite frank, coming back from whatever our, our travels, I decided instead of waiting on a ride to hop on MARTA and ride home.

Thank you for riding.

You know? And with that but I did have to make a call to our look one of our local, board members, I I'm Arda, to ask, you know, where are we? Can I use the, the elevator as a bridge? You know? So but glad to see that there's some some movement there. And then I think, oh, in in reference to the, the NextGen network, just seeing, out of the 12, launch network sites, it seems that six of them are in South DeKalb.

On reach, we have five zones in DeKalb County. There may be one that's really close.

Mhmm.

Not I know the picture is it's nice. It gives you a broad, but it's not a a a GIS drawing.

Got it. There should

be five zones in DeKalb.

Got it. Just, you know, Candler, McAfee that's affecting South DeKalb, Grove, Gresham Park, Kirkwood, Candler Park, of course, County Line Road, you know, close to Hillandale. And so that's, you know, not GIS, but close proximity. You know? You said what? Yeah. Yeah. So myself and Super Commissioner Bolton counted about six. So that's roughly 50%. So the thoughts in terms of expansion, which has been the thing for a while, opposed to just providing.

And I'm there are constituents that are happy about the NextGen, bus network because it allow at least that allows some level of connectivity. But any thoughts in, you know, being able to provide, more bus and and actual direct service?

So the a lot of our service and service planning is driven by the ridership as well as the community out out outreach that we've had for the last few years around NextGen. It wasn't something that we just kinda came up within this last year. So we're always studying it. So as the ridership supports it, we more than want to implement it.

Right. Well, I mean, you'd agree that we can't have ridership if we don't actually have the buses there, right, or transportation there?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Alright. And it's great that you mentioned ridership because when, you know, the decapitation, we were actually at NACO just about a week and a half ago, I guess two weeks ago now, colleagues. That's something that came out of, the meeting, with the DOT in terms of some, programs related to ridership. So that may be something to follow-up on. But again, as important as it is for well-being and quality of life, it's hard to just predicate whether we have an expansion on ridership when they don't have access.

And that brings me to my last point in terms of $11.37 and a penny. I have a huge, constituency base who don't have access to MARTA. And so they pay 1% presently for MARTA and have zero access to writing MARTA. So, as we're talking about expanding it to 2,067, from my position and the people that I represent, and be quite frank, would not do it well if I did not have the conversations that we're having. If I did not bring it to the forefront, both in public as well as in private, I would be doing them a disservice.

I really am gonna employ us to look into ensuring that the people that are helping to support and pay for MARTA throughout DeKalb County, at minimum, have access to riding MARTA. And with that, I yield back to you, Madam Pio. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Messiah. Commissioner Terry?

Yes. Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer. Thank you, CEO Hunt for the presentation. Just a couple of quick questions. So I do and maybe a couple of comments, too.

I do want to support the Buford Highway BRT ultimate goal. So I understand moving forward with ART and I think we have continued to have the conversations about can ART be implemented and then converted into BRT. And I think the answer has been yes. So as long as we're moving in the direction of BRT for Buford Highway, as my colleague, Commissioner Long Spears, mentioned having 1,800,000 annual rider ridership. To me, that just makes a lot of good sense in terms of transit planning and getting people to the locations they need to.

The Candler Road ART, so definitely agree with Commissioner Messiah about wanting Candler Road ART to also be BRT. And so I think when we're discussing sort of the extension of the penny and maybe resetting the goals from the last time it was the the agreement was amended, I think it would be good to really just try to hone in on the things that are realistic and truly a priority. Because I think what happened at the last amendment is everything was a priority and it kind of seemed like nothing really got done, although a lot did get done. It was more the low hanging fruit. We prepared the stations and did some more kind of aesthetical things as opposed to sort of big systematic things.

And so what I'll be really interested in, especially for my constituents in South DeKalb, is that if we are going to continue paying the penny an additional ten years, quite frankly, lot of us won't be necessarily paying it because we might not even be here. So our future constituents will be paying for it, that they'll see that investment paying off in a more rapid transit network in South DeKalb. And so from Avondale Station all the way down to Georgia State campus is is really, really crucial because we have a lot of county facilities. I want to hold up the South DeKalb Mall transit hub. I am glad that that is being paused.

I've never been a big fan of moving forward with it as a standalone project. So if there is an opportunity to work with MARTA, the county and anyone else that we can come together to redevelop the gallery at South DeKalb as they call it Mhmm. Officially, then the transit hub, in my opinion, hopefully could be worked into that master plan in a more integrated way. And I've seen a lot of great models of where, I think in Minneapolis, one of the BRT systems literally just goes straight into the mall. Like, but it's a mixed use mall, so and it's of course, it snows up there, so that's a little bit different.

But having the hub sort of to the side and kind of isolated to me never made too much sense. But in context of housing and retail and public parks, the hub could really, I think, thrive and be a true hub. So I do understand the pause there, but let's not pause it too long. So if there if it doesn't look like we're going to be to have a redevelopment of the South DeKalb Mall anytime soon, hopefully, there's a way to kind of sort of future proof that to where there will be opportunities to move forward with it, but also integrate it into a future plan that I think will come one day. The Kensington TOD, can you go to that slide?

I think it was Slide 14 of the site plan. We lost it. While they're pulling that up, the map that you showed the site plan is is that that's just conceptual, right? What you're asking for in the RFP is a more detailed plan proposal, Right?

Yep. It that RFP is on the street, so it's an open procurement. This is part of the imaging that was put out when we were doing the master planning process Right. With the county. So we didn't want wanted to show something that was public that people had seen.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It gets the the the key concepts. The one thing that is missing from this It's

just the massing.

Yeah. Just the massing. Right. So we wanted to one of the things that we had agreed to when we did the rezoning for Kensington a few years ago was that the soccer in the streets component would either remain where it's at or if the developer came in and needed to move it, they in essence would just replicate it. So I know that's not being shown here, but the intent is soccer

in the streets is not leaving Kensington Station.

Right. No. I understand.

Period.

Okay. Good. Yeah. Alright. Just wanna hear you say that because it wasn't in the map. No. You know, someone might ask about that. And then in terms of the next gen bus network, so I am optimistic about the MARTA reach. I was very supportive of the pilot project at Belvedere, which I thought folks, I think, enjoyed and liked. So I think that the main thing that I'm gonna be focused on is just the metrics of will it be more convenient?

Mhmm. You know, if someone's losing access to a bus route that might be a ten minute walk away from their house, does Marta Reach get them to the bus the other bus line in ten minutes? Mhmm. Right? And so, hopefully, there can be some very active surveying of all the folks who are using MARTA REACH of like, is it faster?

Is it slower? You know, because I I think the whole idea of the on demand service is that sweet spot of you have enough vehicles that can respond. If 20 people at once request it, okay, there's a busy hour or here's when we don't need it. And I imagine your these the Marder Reach will be deployed two different zones depending on or are they gonna exist in

dedicated to each zone. Right? And we're dedicating multiple v two vehicles to each zone. Okay. We're doing it balanced. It may turn out that some zones have less usage.

Okay.

And other zones have more and we'll move a vehicle. We're gonna remain flexible and organic depending on what zones. Are very excited about the service and through our studies and our planners work. The two groups that tend to be the earliest adopters are one, the young because with the apps and technology, and also the older population, once they understand the service, they tend to get a lot more of the curb to curb, door to door because they have stuff located more to where they live.

Absolutely. Okay. So the pop ups are gonna help individuals who might not be savvy with technology to, like, help them install it, how to use it. And I think, Jennifer, we're talking later this week about how we can do sort of a constituent focused webinar or something for any additional questions.

Yes. So we are planning on doing a virtual for those that have requested it. Also done a lot of work in our senior centers. We're going to we've done a whole round of touches with them. So we're doing a whole another round when the service comes online so we can actually help them download it. There will always be a hard number to call because we are very aware that that's how some of our demographic uses the customer base uses the system. But as our fearless leader has said before, we have noticed that the two groups that grasp the technology the quickest are our seniors and our youngest. So Mhmm. Hopefully, we can see those stats in real time using that, but we do have a live call line. And, yes, I do believe we'll be doing some type of surveying along the way to make sure we can adjust as he said.

Okay. So you can start with two in each zone, but then if you see a demand in one or the other, will you pull from other zones or you just add more fleet, vehicles to the fleet?

It depends.

Okay. People do you have funding for more vehicles if you need this?

Yep. We have more vehicles.

Okay.

The vehicles we have two sets of vehicles right now. One is under a national recall, so those are being worked on. Okay. But we have vehicles that are gonna start the service on time, and those vehicles won't go away. Okay. We've leased some additional vehicles.

Okay. Alright. Well, I think let's just track that and Yeah. Just, you know, make sure that we're up to date because, you know, I I think it could be really successful. But if it gets bottlenecked, then people might let's go back to the old system because that was more convenient. But hopefully, this is a way to enhance service. We are

very excited about the convenience this is gonna bring.

Yeah. And then the last question, madam presiding officer, is just about MARTA HOPE, the homeless outreach program. So one, I mean, the team does amazing work and they've come to a lot of our meetings and come to the point in time count and just been very active in the DeKalb homelessness response. So you may have heard that we're opening up a day shelter. We're expanding a lot of our unhoused outreach, whether it's diversion, mental health.

So those are programs that we're really spending a lot of time on. So in terms of MARTA hope, do you all feel do you feel that that team is adequately connected with our outreach teams and that when when there is issues, whether they're at a station or a bus stop because I what I'm noticing is that there's seems to manifest more at the bus stops than maybe the stations, but that's just my kind of anecdotal view.

I do think the team is adequately connected, but we always look are looking for a better, what we called a warm handoff when we do identify somebody or providing services and they accept having a better warm handoff depending on where they are in our system. Am I good?

You can continue your thought, but his time is out.

Oh, and I've committed in this budget, and we're going through a budget right now for additional funding for two additional case officers for that program to increase it. It's still not enough. It's not the number that I would like that program to have from Martyrs' perspective, but it is a bit more. Yeah.

Alright. Thank you, commissioner Terry. Commissioner Davis Johnson.

Morning. Good morning. And thank you for being here and for everything that you're doing at MARTA. I just have a couple of questions. And one, of course, I'm always looking out for my district. So if you could give us a brief update of what's happening at the South Indian Creek Station.

Indian Creek Station has recently completed or just a hair shy of completion of its station rehabilitation project. We have done the master plan for transit oriented development. We've had a a large number of very disparate groups of developers and business owners and potential ideas around doing TOD. We wanna engage with the county on that to make sure it's thoughtful. It's in line with what the county wants. Mhmm. But we are gonna be going out with another transit oriented development with that, hopefully, this year, but we wanna be in partnership with the county.

Okay. Well, thank you so much. My last question, you spoke of the field protective officers. Mhmm. Could you explain exactly what they do?

Oh, absolute. So our field protective specialists, they get training very similar to our officers, not they don't go through an academy. They have a slightly different looking uniform, but they are a force multiplier for our officers. They are on our systems patrolling. They have radios. They're connected. They can detain individuals that are doing wrong. They can call for support. They support our operators as well as other staff, station maintainers, etcetera, as well as our facilities. So you'll see field protective specialists out in the field, but you'll also see them at all of our facilities, all of the headquarters to garages, maintaining security at those facilities so that our officers are on the front line.

Mhmm. And are you at the I I know you said that you was looking at hiring 250 Mhmm. Offices. You have 278

Yes.

Right now. So that's great. So are you at your highest capacity for hiring officers? I heard that you were had openings for more fields.

We have 10 openings for 10 field protective specialists. I committed to 30 officers above the budget in the amount last year when I took the position. So we're just too shy of that. So we're gonna hire two more officers, but the reality is we have more than that in the academy now. So our numbers should come in just to two ninety provided everybody passes and graduates from the academy.

Okay.

Academies. Excuse me.

Yeah. So we good for the World Cup.

100%. Additionally, the World Cup, we are we've gotten commitments from 11 different jurisdictions, the majority of which are right here in the metro region where they're gonna be sharing their officers with us. Two from transit agencies, one is WMATA in DC, as well as Kansas City where they'll be sending some officers. And those officers will help on surface level to allow our officers who are more familiar with our transit system to work the lower platform levels, the stations, our police command center, our real time crime center, and the like. So we're very excited, and, yes, we are prepared for World Cup.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Bolton.

Thank you. So, because everybody went already, I I guess I don't have as many questions as I thought I had. But I do wanna start by saying just congratulations to you on being able to erect the South Bridge prior to World Cup because that could get really chaotic. And, also, as commissioner Davis Johnson just indicated, increasing your public safety team to two seventy eight. That's right on time. We need all of that right now. I did also have questions about whether we would be prepared for World Cup, but just to piggyback because she's already asked the question, will we still be actively in construction on any martyr projects while we have all of that activity during that event?

We have instituted ourselves a moratorium on construction. So I guess as the kids say now, we're gonna be 10 toes down during World Cup. I did not win any friends. She's a little close. But I I did institute a blackout, so there's no vacation other than one off instances. During World Cup, we were asking all of our contractors to help by volunteering to be transit ambassadors during World Cup. FIFA has given us a 100 volunteers during World Cup for

Oh, dear.

Major fan fest days as well as the event days during World Cup. So everybody is going to be front facing. We're not anticipating any con construction during World Cup at this time.

Okay. And do did you guys intep anticipate how that might impact, accessibility? Well, considering that we adapted the strategy for ridership and then some of the locations have reduced or lost access. Will there be a negative impact for riders during World Cup?

So on accessibility, we're we're doing two things. One, we're going to honor if you have an accessibility or mobility pass wherever you live, whatever your home country is. If you call MARTA, register in advance when you come, you can use our mobility services. On ADA, we're required to maintain, even if we're in construction, adequate ingress and egress, and that includes all ADA and mobility. So all of our facilities will be ADA accessible Okay. Throughout World Cup.

And with that, over the past year, I have been recommending and to the extent I I don't know the ins and outs logistically of how this would work, but suggesting I was calling it a World Cup pass, but a DeKalb United pass or something like that where you give, a card to the folks who are coming specifically specifically for that a event and may want information that can help them get to maybe the location, shopping, dining, stuff like that, specifically for them because you know what type of entertainment and environment that they're here for and maybe even charge a dollar more for it to put back into the system. Is that something we can do?

I love the way you think. On the charging, that rest that the purview for parking rates and fare is with our board. We have to do a bunch of public meetings before we can so we wouldn't be able to charge. But I know the convention and visitor bureau of the sports council and the host committee has all that information. We do have special breeze cards.

We have a lot of things that have most recently within the last three or four weeks just been approved. So we're doing all of our station beautification and that isn't just the four or five stations right around the World Cup site. It goes beyond that, and we're partnering with whatever jurisdictions that happen to be having watch parties or other big events so that we can service them because it isn't just about the downtown venue. We're anticipating activities every single day for the thirty five, thirty six days that the World Cup is present here and that last week when it's in New York. So we are. I'd love to charge, but I can't

So there's no way to get additional revenue for those forty five days and those hundreds of thousands of people that would descend on the Metro Atlanta area.

I would be the shortest interim if I tried to change fares in any way for the World Cup. No. Just just what the all jokes aside, when we go to change fairs, there is a long public engagement outreach process, and we are we there's no way we can get that done by World Cup.

Okay.

Alright. I tried to tell y'all about a year ago. Y'all ain't wanna listen to me. But, also, do you guys have a map of the transit hubs relative to the rail lines and stops that we could share with community members who have questions about the hubs that will be erected.

We will absolutely get that to the entire commission.

Wonderful. And in your discussion of MARTA REACH

Mhmm.

That, of course, reminds me not just of the rideshare programs that we're most familiar with, but what I've heard and have known to be PRT, the pods. Yes. Is that so my understanding is that there are some other jurisdictions doing the research. This could be more cost effective. It could be erected more quickly. Accessibility would increase. As a part of the delays that we have, would there be any wiggle room to transition the conversation to PRT if it were the will of the board?

So there is a pilot going on down at the GICC air Atlanta Aerotropolis. In fact, tomorrow, I'm going with a group to San Francisco to visit Glideways. Marta is a partner in that pilot project to see if there's feasibility, if it could even work in our system, in our jurisdiction, or in other areas, if there's cities or counties that want to go it alone, kind of like what Cobb County did with the Braves Stadium, that kind of that kind of thing. Any shift in actual mode in delivery, I would caution against the quick flip. I understand the frustrations around delivery.

When I came in, one of my primary other than safety items was getting these projects going, delivering them, and closing them out. So I am sensitive to that and I understand that, hey, can we get this in the interim while that's taking too long? I don't know if that's possible. I'm not going to equivocate and say, oh, I'm gonna do some study. The study is ongoing and they're constructing it now.

They just had the ribbon cutting after the South Metro Development Conference about two weeks ago. I shouldn't say ribbon cutting, groundbreaking, excuse me, about two weeks ago. That's a long way to say is I'm I don't know, and I hate saying that, but that is the truthful answer.

Understood. But I would argue as opposed to an in the in in the interim solution that this is a more modern approach to

Okay.

Transportation than the bus lines that we have been discussing, the rapid

Mhmm.

Bus rapid transit that we've been discussing because it's end to end transportation. I think because heavy rail is no longer an option because of how expensive it is, folks have been well, let me say it's no longer an option. It's a a far reach because of how expensive it is, but PRT could be an alternative to that because of the end to end. You don't necessarily have to do all the transfers and the waiting on the buses, but it could be integrated into the system we currently have. So I I would love to see the results of that feasibility study if you could share that with us when it does come out.

We will absolutely share it, and you'll be able to experience it. It's not just a feasibility stuff study. They're they're building it. You can you'll be able to see the pods and experience it's down at the airport. And I'm sure, Gerald McDowell will be reaching out to any and everybody to experience that. I'm not gonna go into the pros and cons because it's open. I want Marta wants to keep a absolute open mind blank slate as to what is possible and where.

Understood. And thank you so much. I yield back with that.

Thank you. Commissioner Patrick.

Thank you, madam presiding officer. Thank you for being here today. Appreciate you being here. My questions are gonna start with, sort of a follow-up from commissioner Bolton. She mentioned asking for a map that shows the service routes and stops. If you could do one that's sort of high resolution by district as well and even super district, that might be very helpful.

No problem.

I know District 1 has four cities in it and anything that would be helpful for my residents would be much appreciated as well as the unincorporated folks. On the ART Buford Highway page, you have projected goals of basically 1.8, 1,900,000 riders. What's the time frame that you see ramping up to that? And and I guess the question that should have asked been first, what's the current ridership on that route?

Buford Highway is our highest ridership bus route. I don't know the exact number off the top of of my head. I will get that to you and get you the project the projection glide path. Yep. But it that route is so popular that there is an additional service from a private entity that operates in the same exact alignment, and they are full as well.

There there are several private operators in that area that, yes, they're full. They're Yeah. It's a great little corridor within DeKalb County in in

100%.

Alright. The other question I had for you was, where is Marta on BRT for February?

On the top end around, we are taking GDOT's lead on that one. So they're very early stages of feasibility study. We plan on supporting that when they're a little further along. I know there there's a lot of work going on 400 and the peach partners. For us, it's 400 BRT. For them, it's 400 Peach Pass lanes, but two eighty five is on our in our on our map.

Okay. I just wanna make sure that wherever the transit nodes or stops were considered on February that we keep that conversation alive and engaged so that it's a benefit

As we go into feasibility for the whole Top Crescent, including all the cities in DeKalb, we will be outreaching. We're not doing this in a vacuum Okay. In the stretch of the imagination.

Perfect. Perfect. Okay. And then the final thing. So I did not see your email when you guys sent it out initially asking for support for ART. I will note that the deadline was March 13.

Mhmm.

That said, I've got you two hard copies right here.

I'd like to amend my report.

Hang on

with my

camera. Right there. Take your order, please.

Thank you so much, mister Patrick.

Just so we're clear, I love ART and BRT on Buford Highway. The Buford Highway corridor is very important. Just as a reminder, and my colleagues know this as well, we I had funded study to look at ways to help pay for BRT along 285 Buford Highway as well as trails within that area. So thank you.

Thank you.

Picture or it didn't happen, commissioner Patrick. Good job. Good job. Commissioner Terry for your second, and then I had a question.

Yes. You're you're making me cry over here, literally. That was too good. I just wanted to have a quick follow-up from what commissioner Bolton said because she makes a really good point about the future of transit

Mhmm.

And mobility. And so one, I'll just share that about two years ago, I was invited to Peachtree Corners to, you know, get on their autonomous loop that's basically a smart road.

Yep.

And, you know, what's interesting about that setup is, you know, the city as the local government help establish the infrastructure and then I guess I think they have like a nonprofit like actually running the autonomous vehicle. So I think really what that says to me is that, you know, if we say, Marta, we want you to do autonomous vehicles or pods, you might say, well, DeKalb County, can we have some of your right of way? Can we have some roads, some trails? Like, you still need Mhmm. Infrastructure and right of way and space to make it happen.

For from majority of transit modes, right of way is a is a big hurdle. Additionally, with autonomy, we are very sensitive to our partners in the Amalgamated Transit Union and our operators, and we love our operators. Mhmm. So there's sensitivity to autonomy there and and in other ways. That doesn't mean it isn't possible or we shouldn't pursue it or we shouldn't study it, which is why we're doing that in in partnership with at Metropolis.

Yeah. And I think just the the thing that would be interesting to understand is just the time it takes to deploy these methods. And so, you know, when you talk about

We are tracking

ART, you know, being, I don't know, like 2028 or something. I mean but, know, we've talking about ART for over a decade. Mhmm. And so helping us understand the timeline of all of these different modes. And I know we focus first on heavy rail, light rail, BRT and talked about the delta between conception and actually delivery.

But we haven't we don't really have those timelines for these other mobility. I guess what's called micro mobility Mhmm. Because they're not really trying to get large amounts of people from one side of the county to the other. It's more just like we need to get a neighborhood access to the grocery store, the health center, the senior center, public parks and schools, right? And so in that way, it might be interesting through our planning department because we have several small area plans that we're working on this year and probably have a few more we'll start later this year.

But if there's an opportunity for your team, if you all are looking into the pods and those types of mobility solutions, helping us understand what is needed infrastructure wise

To support that.

To to support it because then our planning department and our planners might simply ask the neighbors, hey, would y'all be interested in this? And we'll study it. Like, they'll look at the roads, the trails, the points of interest, and there might be a half mile

Mhmm.

Or a mile route, right, that could work. But I don't know enough about it to, like, opine too much on it other than to know that that's a lot of where mobility is going. I mean, we're all seeing Waymo's. I mean, they're here. Autonomous vehicles are here. It is the future. And, you know, what I'm seeing is the cities that are kind of adapting the smart infrastructure technology are are little ahead of the game in that deployment. But honestly, the technology is getting so good. You know, it's it's sort of self contained to the vehicle. So then it becomes a question of how the city infrastructure, you know, makes it a safe experience. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. So I did have a couple questions. Thank you guys for being here. Mine won't take too long. I did want to thank the team.

We met virtually, I think, last week, two weeks ago. I don't know, it's a blur. But thank you for the virtual meeting, and I wanted to also thank Carolina Ramos and her team for attending my community connection breakfast this past Saturday. We had a really good attendance, and we do get people from outside District 4 attending those meetings, so I just wanted to pass along two questions that I received after the meeting. One about a escalator at Indian Creek, and the status of that if so just I know that's District 5, but I'm not trying to bleed in, but I do get everybody sometimes comes to our meeting.

That's it. Okay.

And then another question that came up was was light rail included in future plans for South DeKalb?

At this point, we don't have LRT in the plans for South DeKalb. As to the escalator, our chief of capital, Larry Prescott, should be able to give any Good morning, sir.

Good morning. Interim Chief Capital Officer, Larry Prescott. We did do a study on that escalator on the east end of that facility. It is we're looking at funding opportunities. We'd have to extend the roof at that end and do some foundation work. We have costing in plan. We're just adding it to our next round of station rehabilitation as we get the additional funding.

Perfect. Thank you for that explanation. So again, those were two questions. I definitely wanted to pass along from our community connection breakfast this past Saturday. Most of my colleagues have touched on House Bill eleven thirty seven and just the importance of making sure that our projects are getting completed, specifically with those in South DeKalb, because again, I also hear those questions and complaints about that.

So wanted to pass along that importance. And then my final question, with the REACH program, importance of getting that reach to South DeKalb, but how do can you explain the no reach kind of North Of I-twenty in DeKalb County and just kind of the concept behind where you guys chose to go with reach.

So for reach, think of it as with the month net mark, the new next gen bus network redesign, we went to a faster, more frequent service. So throughout our service area, three times as many individuals will have access to fast, frequent bus service, fifteen minute headways or wait times. But as what's been noted here and we were recognized in our planning process, there will be some holes, so some donut holes. That's where Marder Reach is there to bridge that and fill that donut hole. Where you see the areas where you don't have Marder Reach, there is already adequate bus service at a fast frequent pace in those areas or rail service, but in the area you're talking about, bus service.

Understood. I kinda just needed you to say that, Alex.

Thank you.

Nope.

That is all of my questions. Were there any additional follow-up? Commissioner Davis Johnson for your second.

Yeah. Sort of taken aback a little bit about there's no discussions or ir to the own. So I'm go And excluded? And I say that because, of course, it was projected that most of your highest growth is gonna be East DeKalb. I mean, going through East DeKalb.

Mhmm. Now that's going to right there, and that's going to so I don't care how many lanes that you have, how many buses that you have. It's the highways are gonna fill up.

Oh, yes.

And so for there not to be any discussion about light rail or heavy rail and understand the current atmosphere Mhmm. In the going from the federal government down, it doesn't mean that it will be like that. Forever. Hopefully, we'll see a a trend change coming up soon. But to exclude it, I I just I I just don't see that, especially since you have everything going north when your growth is about to go east, and we don't have any form of transportation that would rapidly get us there no matter how many lanes or how many buses that you put on.

You're still gonna have to deal with traffic. And so I'm just a little taken back that we're not I just wanna make sure we're not excluded

Mhmm.

In the plan. I understand we're not included, but I would like to know that we're not excluded, and and there's possibilities for that.

There's absolutely possibilities. Way I understood the question was was there a LRT plan in South Decop right now? And there isn't. I I'm not going to I'm gonna be completely transparent with this group. Right now, they were not studying LRT in South DeKalb. There have been attempts in the past to try to bring heavy rail along I 20 in the past. Part of that back to the right of way discussion, that's the state. We don't have access to that right of way, which exponentially drives up the cost of something that's already pretty expensive. But studying it is not excluded. And if I gave that sentiment, I apologize.

Oh, okay. So heavy light. Mhmm. You know? I mean, you know, I'd like to and and we can have further discussions. Mhmm. But if you know if I know that my growth is eased, you know Mhmm. And my attention is more, then there's something wrong. Because we've already been told I think it who was that ARS? Who told us that was the ARC?

Sure. Yeah.

I think that was the ARC that gave us a report that our growth is going east to right there, to Newton, and yeah.

Yes, ma'am. I just wanna clarify a little bit of what the ICEO said. So when the transit South DeKalb transit initiative that we did the studies and we started with 16 Right. Went to 10. Now we have two. Mhmm. Those options were considered. And when it came to ridership and cost right away in competitiveness at the federal level to in order to really get the funds we need to deliver the service Right. It fell out of favor amongst all the options. So in order for us to deliver the service as quickly as possible as promised in a high capacity way, the two BRT options and the two routes chosen are the ones that fell out as the best choices for now.

But as he said, we are always having as a consideration as those options come available. And I will also say that when you see those additions north, 400 BRT, two eighty five, those were not funds out of MARTA. Those were funds given either by the previous governor deal or not funded yet. So we're studying those two. They're not guaranteed. We go as the state goes or as you tell us to go.

Okay. And the transit master plan that DeKalb is engaging in right now will also help shape that. That's why we paused on those two so we don't have LPA yet.

Okay. I just wanna make sure we wouldn't exclude it. No. Okay. Then we can have further talks on that. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you guys for the detailed presentation. Much appreciated. So our next presentation will be from DeKalb County School District with a student assessment project update. Good morning. You can come up.

Good morning, and thank you for being here. Yep.

Yep. So good morning, madam presiding officer, Jonathan, and members of the commission. My name is Eric Hofstetter. I'm the chief operating officer, and I love the DeKalb County School District. With me is doctor Tracilla Weaver.

She is our chief of access and opportunity division and along with our executive director of the student assignment project, missus Sarita Smith. We're here to share with you. And first of all, I do wanna extend my thanks to the the DeKalb County. We've talked quite a bit and our our collaboration and our partnerships have just been continued to strengthen. And we're all seeing the benefits of it because as we say, we all serve the same communities.

So we're very happy about that. Just a quick note about the student assignment project. So you may be aware that many school districts across The United States, including here in Georgia and in Metro Atlanta, We're seeing this phenomena about just low enrollment. Alright? We know that birth rates have been on the decline for decades, and now we're seeing some of the results of all that. Alright? With that, it has opened up many many seats within the the in within the school district. Across our 127 school buildings, we now have just about 20,000 open seats out of a 110,000. K? And that trend is continuing to drop.

Alright? 20,000 seats represents the top 20 school districts out of a 179 in the state of Georgia would be able to fit in those in some way or shape or form. Alright? So that just kinda expresses the magnitude. We have developed a process about, oh, almost two years ago now. And in that process of reimagining of what a school district would look like and how it is resourced, We call that process here in DeKalb County School District, the student assignment project. And miss Smith here is gonna talk to you more about that. And then we're gonna have some questions and answers because we do wanna hear from you. We'll let you know how things are going. And we'll turn it over right now. Thank you.

Thank you so much. The green button will advance your slide. Thank

you. Morning. My name is Sarita Smith. I am the executive director of the student assignment project. My role is to facilitate what we hear from our community and from our constituents on the SAT project and bring it back to a larger process with our board and our chiefs and executes and superintendents.

So I'll take you just quickly through our presentation that we shared. I think it's really, really important to understand that this first kind of phase was just to set the groundwork of what metrics across the district could look like. This is not a decision. This is not a recommendation. This is a start of a conversation, and we have had over 3,000 of your constituents interact with this process thus far, even just on paper, and a couple thousand more in person and through virtual interactions.

So very excited about some of the feedback that we've already received. Mister Hofstetter talked a little bit about this process, and and I I wanna stress that resourcing is really, really important. How we spread our resources in this district or or condense them to serve our kids better is a really big part of this process as we look at this, you know, number of 20,000 open seats in our school district. And we wanna really create a space where there isn't a process where this school versus that school serves students better. We want all of our schools to serve all of our students well.

This is just a visual of what that 20,000 looks like. The Cavs been playing a little bit of a cat and mouse game with open enrollment or seats, excuse me, versus our enrollment and capacities and trying to match that and as you can see right now, we're a little disjointed that the long bar graphs are the number of seats that we have total in the district. The colorful graph is the number of enrolled students that we have. So you can see that enrollment is is way down compared to, our open seats, and, we are not remiss to say and or understand that in certain districts, looks different than in others. There is more density in some versus other.

Housing challenges are also perpetuating some of that in where people live and choose, etcetera. School choice is is in there as well. So there's a lot of competing factors that leads to why this graph looks the way it does. Mister Hofstadter talked a little bit about kind of five reasons why this may be important. We talked about the declining student enrollment, which causes some underutilization in some of our school buildings.

We have a lot of buildings that need capital repairs and improvements. So thinking about how we can condense some of that so we can do more of that quicker. Again, based on certain districts, we have some severely overcapacity schools and severely under capacity schools depending on where we're looking in our district. So trying to figure out a way to balance that as best as possible, which will hopefully lead to more efficient transportation routes, so kids are not out on bus corners early early in the morning. And then again, that consolidated resources and when we say consolidated resources, we're talking about our IEP and five zero four services, our enrichment services, special education services, things of that nature that right now are spread across all of those schools and teachers are spending time driving to and from, or educators, when they could possibly be serving more kids in one building more efficiently.

We gave some if and then, if we do this, what could happen for your leisure to read? And this this part of it I think is a little challenging for our communities to understand. So right now, this first phase, we're only talking about the physical buildings that we could possibly use in this process. So when you think about 20,000 seats, there's a number of buildings, if you will, that you could equate to that, and so we wanna talk about our physical assets first, our buildings, which ones could we or could we not use, which ones could be expanded, which ones could be consolidated, things of that nature. Once we know that, then we'll overlay the boundaries and the programs, program allocation on top of the physical buildings that we're using.

So we're getting a lot of questions about, well, where's my kid going and things of that nature. Great question. So this is the hard part of the process where we're trying to decouple those and bring them back together at a later date. We have a HPM consulting group that is kind of doing the work as a third party behind the scenes for us, and they talked a little bit about funding. We have some areas that have extremely large schools and some that have really small neighborhood schools.

There's definitely a a not consensus in the community on which one of these models work better, And we're not here to say that one is better than the other, but there is some funding that is related at the state level. So for schools under 450 capacity, the state only funds certain things for those schools, and then the district has to subsidize the rest. So this is just a visual of what that could look like, you know, the state could fund a principal and a half of a nurse for a school that's under four fifty capacity, whereas if it's over, you'll see how drastically that funding shifts for a school district. So we're trying to get to a space where that subsidy gets put back into services for students in our buildings versus the district subsidizing most of those. There's also in our community, there's a lot of of conversation both about us being fiscally and operationally responsible, but offering robust programming and then small school size.

We're seeing this tug of war with kind of these three things that we wanna be fiscally fiscal agents of taxpayer dollars. Our our community loves programs. They want programs. They are very clear about that. They have talked about it a lot.

We have talked about it a lot in our in our staff committee, and so there's a lot of questions about like, how do we do this well, but still offer great programming? And then there's a subset of our community who loves small schools, small schools and walkable schools, neighborhood type of schools. And so our consultants gave us just a little bit of a visual of where where the pull and tug is with this and it isn't to say that the triangle has to look a specific way, the question is what should the triangle look like for DeKalb? So low operating cost is great and you can offer great robust school programming, but then it's gonna be difficult to have small schools. And so we went through this kind of what does the triangle look like and what would you have to give and take in order to have a specific type of triangle.

And so all three of those are kind of leading to kind of why we are here and talking about this process. So Mr. Mentioned we did a committee of a 150 people over the last two years. I love, love, love that committee. I spent a lot of time with them many of Wednesday nights.

Wednesday has become SAP nights for our district. Just talking through buildings, boundaries, and programs. We educated ourselves. We challenged the district on a lot related to buildings, boundaries, and programs. We spent a considerable time creating guiding principles around that, and then we're starting to dig a little deeper in to giving HPM, which again is our consultants, some guidance on what SAP would like to see in future scenarios.

So the scenario that has been developed, our SAP committee did not develop these, they just gave guidance. We want to see metrics across our district. They gave guidance on program placement. They gave guidance on boundaries. So this first phase is just what creating a metric that went across the district equitably and what could that look like.

So they again, we kind of transitioned to our consultants in this side of the work who obviously have a lot of experience in this work and expertise. So again, our SAP committee was just providing some some blanketed guidance that then the consultants did and used and took to work with it. So, we have this kind of community feedback loop. I think it's super super important to know again that this is a start of a conversation and there will be several iterations of what we see today. So we're gonna the HPM committee will build our scenarios, we share them publicly, that's the phase we're in right now, getting feedback as well, phase we're in right now, and incorporating that and coming back again to say, hey, here's what we heard, here's some of our guiding principles that we've used, and here's yet another possibility of what this could look like.

So it's also important to know that the SAP committee or none of us standing up here are the deciding decision making body of this. This does go to our board of directors in DeKalb County that will vote on whatever that recommendation is. So the recommendation, though we have the SAP committee, does not lie in their hands. They are instrumental in thinking through and providing guidance. However, we're in the community phase of this where we're pouring all community feedback into what an iteration could look like and eventually come to some kind of final recommendation for the board, which will happen late in the year.

Alright. So how some of this developed? So again, I've kind of hit on a lot of this like nothing is off the table, we're looking kind of at everything, we apply the metrics high level for the first round across the entire district. There is a lot of data, so something our consultants talk a lot about is there's a data piece of this and then there's the community piece of this and we have to figure out how to meet somewhere in the middle. You can't heavily just rely on the data, which you'll see a lot of today, fairness.

They rely on the data, but you also can't just only listen to community, you have to find the middle ground. So phase two, you'll see a little more of the middle ground piece. This is where we will be in your areas, in your districts, in a school building, work shopping like, hey, here's what we're where we are, here's some data related to that, help us think of a creative way to get to a solution. Again, the first round was really more merely like, here's the data, here's an overlay, tell us what you think. And we got a lot of what people think in this first process.

The other piece of this is that we there isn't like one metrics that we're looking at. It is very complex, and so we are looking at facilities that are local where students live. There's a lot of questions about is this about where kids live or where they go to school. We have both sets of that data, but we want to build based on where kids live, right? Thinking about that, how close facilities are to other facilities. There's a lot of our facilities that are like a mile away from each other. We looked at that data, Building adequacy, which also includes capacity and think of adequacy as is there a way of expanding or building onto this if we needed it for additional capacity? Could we add on? Could we build? Could we scale, things of that nature.

Does it have enough enough cafeteria seats? If you add 200 kids to a building, doesn't necessarily mean the cafeteria can hold 200 more kids, things of that nature. And then there's a process called cascading, which is a little more complex to understand, but our consultants really believe that have holding on to our largest assets, our high schools and middle schools was important. So if we did if we came to a conclusion where we didn't need a high school for high school, then we would combine middle schools and keep it as a building and use it to keep it on our portfolio, a little easier to build elementary schools in the future if we need it versus a high or a middle school building. And then thinking about how we can reinvest in facilities in the future.

So I talked a little bit about cascading. We I think doctor mister Hofstetter is working with different municipalities around reuse. If we get to a space where we're like, these are the buildings that we no longer want to use for k 12 education, what could we use them for? I wanna be really, really cognizant that we do not wanna decimate communities and have empty buildings in your communities. That is definitely at the top of our mind.

We you know, depending on what happens at the government level, pre k is a hot button item right now. Could we repurpose some of these for pre k spaces? Could there be community district community school space use? Things of that nature that we wanna start thinking about as we get to a little more of a finalized decision around buildings. Alright.

So this is an initial scenario, again, looking at this as a this is a met all those metrics that I talked about a few slides ago layered on top of a map. So what this does bring up is are there some some challenges in our district? Absolutely. And if you apply a metrics across the district equally, it it will heighten some of some of the challenges that we have in this district. So you'll see that in the color coded, if we in that metrics, if a high school came up to the top as not being used, we would convert that into a middle.

If a middle school came to the top as not being used, we would convert that to elementary. The red are potential closures, and the blue would be con potential expansion projects. I think it's hard hard to understand why some of the con excuse me, the expansion projects are concentrated north, and there are some some challenges with that that we're talking with communities about, but there is a lot of density there at the moment with our schools. There's a lot of schools that have modular units outside or a lot of our high schools that are well over capacity. So in order to shift anything there, we would have to build capacity in other spaces in order to shift any of the enrollment up north.

And then there's a lot of capacity in in the South. And so does this look inequitable? Absolutely. Is there something we're trying to do about it? Absolutely.

Which is part of the reason we started coming to the communities to have some of these conversations. So again, the next version as we collaborate could look a little bit different. The other piece is that this is going to take several splashes to to do, so none of this can happen next year, nothing is happening next year. At the earliest fall of 2720 the school year 2728 if any changes were to vote on, but there would be also a timeline phased approach that our consultants and our operations team would overlay onto this project. This is that same map, but just for people that like to see it in numbers and chart form, and these three slides just kinda go through how or what that could look like if we did cascading, so I'll leave that for you guys to look at.

This is another way. We just pretty much did the same map in multiple ways just for people's consumption, like what that could look like. So there are some buildings that are not on this map yet again because we're we're phasing this in. So buildings that are not boundaried are not on this map. So some of our specialty schools, some schools that just that do not have a that have school choice only, those kind of things are not on there yet.

They will be kind of rolled in in phase two. And especially schools that have like IEP services only, things of that nature that we need to have a little more consideration outside of just the boundaries piece are not on there yet. And then the other piece we our board and our staff committee asked us to start looking at possible grade configurations. So even looking at that map, there is an opportunity where some of those buildings can be repurposed possibly based on how we configure grade bands. Overwhelmingly, the community likes the pre k five, six, eight, nine, twelve that we are currently operating.

There are some benefits and challenges to each of these, but we did look at more pre k eights. Right now, our district only has one pre k eight, which is the CAB Arts Academy. Is there options of possibly doing more of those throughout the district? Again, benefits and challenges to each of these. We talked about a six twelve option. We are opening a Sequoia Middle High School campus in two years.

Well, 2029.

2029, which will essentially be a six twelve campus. There's a middle school side. There's a high school side, but it's still on one campus. For some of our under populated high schools, is that an option? Possibly.

So thinking about that, again, trying to get some feedback at the at the community level to see, you know, if there is any appetite for something like that. There was a question about like really thinking through a pre K three, four, five scenario where you're really concentrating those academic services and early learning in smaller buildings, smaller sizes, so there's an option services there. Definitely heard back pretty quickly from community members that like dropping my kids off at like six different sites might be a little much, but there's some benefits to that as well. So this is just some examples that grade band changes could look like throughout our district. This was us just kind of playing with reimagined idea of what some of those could look like as we go through scenarios, have already gotten some feedback around reimagining grade bands as well.

And then there's a we are accepting a lot of feedback this Sunday, the current phase one survey closes. We've been pushing it out through many channels throughout our district, throughout social media, direct contact, specialized groups. So we are putting all that in so we can use that obviously to iterate and think through the next phase of this and the next scenarios that we will be presenting. And then there's a little bit of a timeline. So through May, this process, this just the building piece is through May.

So we will again have several iterations, several conversations. We have gone to many of community meetings just to get feedback about what parents, families, and constituents are thinking. We will refine all of that stuff over the summer and start doing the boundary and program overlay and then go through a full another round of this scenario type like this with multiple iterations in the fall with hopefully getting something to the board by sometime late in the fall. So we just kind of went through the February. We're already probably going to change that March stuff because we learned a lot from the February meeting.

So those will be a little bit in person, in small groups with data, with information that families can kind of sort through with possible ideas on if this happens to this school, where would my child go, things of that nature that we've heard in this first round. A little bit of an overlay on what could a more equitably distributed school district look like if we did that. What could investment in different areas look like? So we've all the information that we've heard from round one, we're implementing for round two and then having some small group discussions pretty much throughout all of your districts. So we will undoubtedly be very busy for the next few months talking to a lot of your constituents directly and online about this process. I think that's the last slide.

Thank you so much. I know we have commissioners with questions. So first, commissioner Messiah.

Thank you so much, madam Peo. Thank you so much, miss Smith. Again, mister Hausetter. Also, I've met with miss, our board member Tate Hogan and board member Pierce. We met on the February 16 President's Day.

So immediately after, the announcement for the potential closures, you availed yourself, even on a holiday, and I appreciate that so we could sit down for me to better understand, particularly as 33% of the potential school closures or could take place in my district alone, nine of the 27, it was important to, you know, understand why I was getting immediate questions. And, again, thank you for availing yourself to answering those questions so I can be able to speak to the constituents and, as much as possible, work together. You know, with that, there is a seemingly, an equity, and so thank you, miss Smith, for bringing that up. I can't help but think about the presentation we just had with MARTA. And I would be remiss as a District 3, county commissioner who represents these constituents to say that my heart isn't is bleeding because what I keep having to deal with, what my constituents deal with day in, day out, is if not the actual inequality, at least the appearance.

Right? The optics of, and you can't get around that because, you know, sometimes it seems like perception, but perception is reality. And when we're talking about school systems and schools and we're talking about transportation. Right? Education, transportation. I mean, we can go on and talk about health care. We can talk about so much more. Again, I we can't be united and as one if we don't at least address the elephants that continuously are in the room, but I understand you have to make hard decisions. With that, thank you for adjusting the survey. I just scanned myself because I was one came in earlier.

We were all, again, in Washington, came in so I can come to the Cedar Grove meeting that was held on the twenty fourth. And you guys did a great job in pivoting because originally, it was not open to, questions. And I was one of those that had, you know, very specific questions, particularly after hearing certain things. So thank you for adjusting that survey where you don't have to pick a cluster. So for the public, you choose a school and it has other at the bottom, and you can speak to what your, your concerns are, whether you're a community member or a parent.

So thank you for pivoting there. Also, just wanna, share that I still don't, and it sounds like we are still trying to you're trying to determine what weight, sort of the, you know, h h m, HPM, I think it's HBM. Right? And the community's comments what that will have. And so are you any closer?

Because we had challenges as I brought up, constituents brought up. HPM may not be aware of the fact you can't mix certain high schools together because systematically for years, there's been ongoing issues, within those schools, and they're not even in school together, and don't wanna increase in crime, which lowers property value and and the like. So have there been any resolutions or any thoughts around how do you address or if you have to miss to combine schools that have historically been adverse to one another, what would happen there?

Yeah. So I I think the again, like this first phase was just like overall, like, here's the data on top of a map. Come back and tell us what what's not great about this. And so we've heard it. It will be you'll see multiple scenarios in the next metrics. One may be every high school stays open. What does that look like to middle and elementary? Like, so there there's definitely some some conversations happening about that. We're we're getting some kind of large categories of challenges. One is mixing high schools.

We saw that loud and clear, and so we're like, okay, so if we don't do that, what's the give and take? And that's really what the question is in those community meetings coming up in the next phase is like, so if we do this, then where where are we creating the balance? Like, help us think through alternative solutions for creating that balance. We can keep all high schools open, but then what does that look like at the middle elementary level or are there buildings that are operating in specialized spaces that can put into a high school and then we don't have to think about that at all. So that definitely is on the table.

We are looking at all that feedback, which has been super, super helpful because to your point, there's just a lens that certain people from the outside don't have and it's been really, really helpful last week to, get those, boots on the ground, emotions and lenses directly into this process. So, yes, thank you.

I appreciate you doing that. And so, that brings me to just the, building capacity and just how many of the seats they're being or that are offered being utilized. And I brought this to the attention before in terms of, the capacity in Bob Mathis because that's one of the schools that's slated to potentially close. However, it's at a 76% enrollment rate. So, any thoughts as to what that looks like?

Because if we're saying it was initially driven by and building adequacies and then there's secondary components and pieces that are weighing in. It's got to on the front end, you know, make sense specifically if it's gonna be driven by the data. So any thoughts as to how or, you know, any furtherance in terms of reconciling that at this point?

So I wanna share where data is and then I'll let Mr. Hofstedter talk a little bit about that. So we have a website, if you go to the Kev County School District and search SAP, SAP, it's probably the easiest way to get there. And on that site where you take the survey, says, give us your feedback. We pretty much broke this presentation down by the who, what, when, where, how.

On the how, there's a lot of the data that we use and there's a data dashboard in there. And so it talks about all the metrics for each school building and I think we have to constantly say it isn't one thing like enrollment or capacity isn't the only thing that drove kind of this and for Bob Mathis in particular, the cascading piece affected that. So if we did a version of this where cascading wasn't a part of that, then Bob some things like Bob Mathis wouldn't be affected. So we'll be looking at kind of those different metrics to show different maps in different ways that may trigger some of those responses.

I'll let

mister Hofstad to talk about

the Yeah.

I think overall and, again, thank you for this because these are all very important questions that we have to ask. Can and should. Right? Can and should. The data, this first pass of data is strictly that. Right? This is what you can accomplish. Now we're into the phase of of saying, now what should we accomplish? And that is a decision that we make together. Right? We do not we do not in education look at children as decimal points or data points necessarily on a line. When we talk about building capacity, it's a physical building. Right? So we know what can occur there. In the case of Bob Mathis specific, it does have extra room.

Just it's been a long served problem. Years ago, the district made the conscientious effort and decision to make it more of a diagnostic center. So there is a program within the school that has been there. Right? But that program can be moved, whereas buildings can't.

Alright? So those are all things that will come into play in part of the discussion when we talk about buildings, boundaries and programs is where best should these programs reside. But in the meantime, what you'll see is historically decades of DeKalb County School District trying to utilize their buildings for all other types of needs and programs and and other initiatives only because space was allowed. So but, yes, we do look forward to that. And again, thank you for coming to those meetings because we heard, and that's why we we engage in that. Alright. So thank you.

And just one, last quick brief. Thank you so much board, madam PO for indulging is related to, we had a brief conversation related to, the housing, and I kept hearing a lot about development. And with, District 3 having the largest amount of undeveloped land, land to be redeveloped, and projects going up, there was a brief conversation as how that is actually impacting, the multi family units, the townhouses, just some of what's going up presently, how that's impacting the overall challenge that we're having now. So can you briefly speak to that for the benefit of the board and the public? Absolutely.

Schools are built over time. Ours started back in the nineteen fifties, and you'll see that historically how these schools were built. And that was to answer what you saw as the population enrollment. Those population trends have dropped, so now we still have these buildings sitting there. As far as development, our planning team, we have a full time planning team, and they actually work very closely with the DeKalb County's planning team and the GIS, and, we do appreciate that partnership. We do monitor permit data. We do you know, we're actively involved in that because those are all the types of things that we look at when we forecast. All right? So we're aware of it. And that's why through this process right now and until we actually see the results of that potential development that may come in.

Now when we start talking about development, building houses is one thing, but then that's we attract even further. One, price points and who they're marketed to. How many bedrooms are these homes? Right? Because that all gives us statistical forecasting information on what school age children historically it may produce. What we're seeing is a lot of developments, not producing historically what it is. Alright? And there's obviously a societal movement on that over the last couple of decades.

Thank you.

But, yes, we're on it.

Thank I yield back to you, madam PO. Thank you, Kite.

Thank

you, commissioner Messiah. Commissioner Longspears. Thank

you so much, madam PO, and appreciate you scheduling this presentation. This was good and I think important for all of us to have heard because I certainly am receiving emails and calls and texts and everything above that. So just to make sure I'm clear, the Board of Education will consider your final recommendations in late fall twenty twenty six. So we have about six months of planning and community input opportunities. Correct. Further in the presentation, you mentioned a survey, when if that's already open, wonderful. And when is it open until?

So the current one just for phase one has been open since February 11. Okay. It closes this Sunday. So please, please, please tell people to go to our website. Look at the there's a video on there. Again, those slide decks are broken down different ways. We put it embedded it into the website, so anyone that has not English is not their first language can translate it as well. So all that stuff is on there. So we want people to engage through that as much as possible. There will be plenty of opportunity after this in the next process to engage a little bit further, but just that first initial brush survey that closes on Sunday.

Yep. And just so I can add to that, it's very important because you're all receiving emails and we do as well. But it's very important that we take those emails, but if we can tell those constituents to also copy and paste that into the survey so that we can keep all this data together. When we start splitting it among different people, it doesn't always get to where

it needs

to be. So we do appreciate it, but please have them also copy and paste into that survey.

Thank you for that. One question and one comment on that, and then I'll move on. So could you send us, like a little blurb that we could potentially put out through socials and our newsletter to encourage people between now and Sunday Absolutely. To complete that survey? Yes. And then, a comment. Have y'all con or I guess more of a question. Have y'all considered doing, like, targeted, targeted promotion for this? Getting trying to get to the folks that live in the impact areas and maybe through SMS, like, the text messaging.

Yeah. For sure. So we have, a part of our communications team that we connect with multiple times a week at this point. There is a subset of them called community and family engagement, and their whole goal is to look at our survey data and see what people are not showing up in that space and what people don't typically show up at board meetings and community meetings and do separate targeted communications just with them. We have a pretty pretty decent amount of families that are connected to our WhatsApp through our family engagement because they are on our traditional social media channels, but there is a specific WhatsApp group for several constituents both in the Cross Keys and Clarkson areas in particular that we are hitting through that as well.

But then there's, like, coffee conversations at schools that they go to in some communities, like, 10:00 at the school is where it says. So that's where we're pushing our community or our communications team through. Sorry, doctor Weeb?

And we also use our athletic events. We have great participation in our athletic events. And so this past weekend, we were at some of our stadiums providing information. We will be at some of our elementary sporting events this weekend. Some of those communities that you spoke to, we will be in their carpool lane.

We're doing book bag flyers for them as well as social media. But as miss Smith said, it was a targeted to look at some of those communities. One of the things that we want to make sure is that not only are we listening to the loudest voice, but we're also listening to those whispers as well. And we want to make sure that they feel that their voice is heard in this process. And so when we received our survey back, part of why we wanted to look at some of that data by those clusters is we wanted to know who's not here, whose voice have we not had an opportunity to hear, and then go right out to those.

We're also work reaching out to some of our faith based organizations, and they have also invited us to come and speak with their congregation about some of the information. We're still receiving invitations and open to those invitations as well. But thank you for asking that question because it is important to us that we hear from all voices and not just the loudest voices.

Alright. Thank you for that. On slide 18, you affirmed and then reaffirmed that nothing is decided yet. Nothing is off the table, and these are not final plans. And I'm glad that you're getting that message out there because some of the concerned constituents I have heard from think that this deal has already been done. So thank you for for doing that. My next question goes to what you're referring to as cascading. Cascading.

Mhmm.

So the old Briarcliffe High School across from Target on North Druid Hills, that has been closed and is a duck pond, basically, for quite some time now. So obviously, cascading wasn't applied there because it's a vacant piece of property. I've gotten considerable complaints since I've been in this seat over how that that property is being used. Fast forward to last year, I was alerted that the BOE decided to, change the usage of that property into a bus depot. So, of course, I, along with my constituents, were horrified, quite frankly.

And the reason is is that that corridor, the congestion, the density, the traffic that those that work and live in that area is almost unbearable. And the last thing folks wanted is between 80 and a 100 buses, you know, continually going through there for maintenance and fuel and a place just to, I guess, store these buses. And so how can you confirm to ensure us that this cascading strategy that you have talked to us about will not happen moving forward? Because that's an example, again, of something remaining vacant where there have been, again, endless constituent complaints about it. Can you respond to that?

Yes. Okay.

So if I understand correctly oh, let me clear up a few things.

Okay.

So the Briarcliffe site, specifically. Right? So that RFP listed a number of our vacant properties as potential because, sites don't like to be vacant, for very long, but they can be used at some point. So that was actually a joint effort, that we did work with local county on that because we're also trying to reduce, some of the potential crime that is also occurring on the

property. Did you do this? You said you worked with county?

This was over a year ago. That's correct. Because it backs up to the county park

Right.

Which is on the backside. So we we're what I'm trying to say is is that right now, there is no plans to build any kind of bus parking lot. The RFP simply just stated several pieces of property.

I believe the board of education voted on it. It was last spring, March, April, May.

Mhmm.

It was a five to two vote

That's correct.

That it was gonna transition to a bus depot. So you've walked that back. It's no longer gonna be a bus depot?

No. Right now, there's no plans for development on that site within the RFP. There are plans on two other sites. So that's where the board approved those contracts, not for the Briarcliff site.

Okay. So I'm just I'm just trying Yeah. Because I'm going to get questions on this since we're talking about it publicly. You are or are not going to transition that site into a bus depot at some point in time?

There are no plans to do that.

Okay. So the Board of Education's decision to do so is irrelevant. The board We can talk offline. How about that? Let's go ahead and do that because I can pull I'll go ahead. I've already got it. It's in my email. The vote on it. That's how I know it was five to two.

Okay. So going to cascading. Okay. And if what you're talking about is having buildings become open and vacant

Mhmm.

What happens to those use? So we've already begun those conversations, and those are actually beginning, to take place in more earnest and more formal. Again, right now, there are no decisions about any buildings. So we don't wanna get ahead because we don't know what if if there are any buildings and what buildings are there, and then what is best used for those buildings. Alright?

So that's why we have a slide there that there's a number of uses. We've been talking quite a bit about again, these are just ideas on the table about community needs. And we've made this very public that any vacant buildings, we want them to continue to serve the community in some way, shape, or form. And we're inviting and we will invite more through county and other municipalities where that jurisdiction lies about how they can serve the broader community in the meantime. Now at some point, right, because enrollment goes up and down over decades, we may need some of those sites back.

Generally, it doesn't happen overnight. We we can forecast in in several years and say, hey, maybe in four or five years, we may need this site back to reopen as a school, in which case then we can we can work on those problems, right, and those challenges.

Wonderful.

But in the meantime, there are no formal plans, but what we do know is we do not want buildings to sit vacant. And we also have a number of vacant properties already including Briarcliffe that, it could be of value, to the community in some shape.

We'll figure

out what that best use is.

I am almost out of time, but very quickly on slide 23, have potential capacity expansion projects. An example is Montgomery Elementary School, which is in my district. Do you mean that you will transition and remove the trailers off of that and then put up buildings? Is that what you mean by that?

Yeah. That so additional capacity is adding potential classroom wings. And in that way, yes, it is a goal to remove all students out of the modular units. We don't want them learning in modulars. So that would be part of the goal, but we also rebuild a permanent building onto that.

Understood. Yield back. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Terry, you are next.

Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer. Just as a follow-up on that question. So when you talk about the map of the expansions, is it just in terms of trailers to buildings or is it seat expansion?

Yeah. I think if I could speak to HPM's thought process is that in order to shift any of those schools in the North right now, especially our smaller ones, we would have to build capacity onto buildings that currently have adequate space, land, etcetera. So it would be physically building on wings, classrooms, etcetera to the current sites.

So enrollment would go up then?

Correct.

Okay. Well, capacity.

Well

Oh, yeah. Capacity And okay, so and just from your initial analysis because what I'm looking at is the potential capacity expansion projects are in the Northwest ish part of the county and anecdotally and then just kind of observationally there is more growth, think in terms of housing in those areas, maybe per capita to the other parts of the county. So are your projections looking at permits and future building and is that what's driving this move towards there's more people, more housing units, but I guess those housing units have more family capacity. And so you're seeing more students coming into that part of the county. So that's why you're proposing the expansion in those schools.

Yeah. Sure. So we have a couple of different dynamics working right now. So in that northern part of the county that you saw on the map, you have much smaller schools and they're much older. Okay. And when I say small, some of them are under capacity of maybe only 450 students. As you start moving south as as growth occurred over the decades, the district started building larger schools Ah, okay. To meet that. So but what you have now is larger schools that are under underutilized Mhmm. Even though they still might have 500 kids, but they can hold 800. But in the North, you might have, in those smaller schools, a capacity of 400, but they might have 450 or 500 students. So, technically, those are crowded.

Okay.

The idea is add on so that you can consolidate those students out of there, and then we can close those smaller schools and repurpose those.

Okay. That's really important context to have. And I think that would be interesting data just to and maybe you've already done this on another slide, but just how the age and the initial the original capacity of those schools differ, I guess, at what point they were built. Right? And I think when you go back to the population or the growth of the school system, you really see the eighties and then the nineties.

Nineties were yeah.

You know, that was a period of tremendous growth. So, you know, I mean, you can kind of forgive the leaders at that time because they were just They said DeKalb was growing. Yeah. That's correct. And so, I mean, it appears that at least through the February, they were right.

Pretty steady.

I mean, they the the subdivisions were built, the single family homes were built, families moved in. Oftentimes, they were moving in because the elementary school was within a walking distance. I mean, that was one of the selling points of being in DeKalb County. Every neighborhood had a school, basically. It was kind of, I think, maybe our nice check mark of this is where you would wanna raise a family.

What's interesting though is, and I think the ARC has covered this a lot, they talk they call it the silver tsunami and they've been talking about this for over a decade now. But what you have is you just have a lot of families where the kids went to school in the nineties, February, and then they grew up and they moved out. And but mom and dad are still there. Still there. Yeah.

Or now their grandma and grandpa are still there. Aging in place. Or, you know, yeah, they're empty nesters. And so they're living in 2,000, 3,000 square foot homes with multiple bedrooms, but got 100 people living there. And and so my office has been doing a lot of work with Georgia Tech and the ARC and our planning department because what we're hearing is that a lot of the neighborhoods have been concerned about the fact that there families anymore.

And what we've uncovered, and this is more of a trend nationwide, that a lot of seniors would like to downsize into smaller homes, but because of zoning restrictions, and you might know this, but you can't build a home less than 2,000 square feet in DeKalb County. So if you if a senior citizen wanted to downsize to a tiny home or a cottage home, it's very rare to find that in DeKalb County because a lot of the zoning doesn't allow it by rights. You have to go through a very complex process. So the reality is there's just not that many units and so there's thousands of seniors that are just in their home and they're either waiting for a senior living residence, which the county's been building a lot of senior residences. Right?

And that's a little bit of the the growth and the the dynamism in the housing market or they just stay put until such time as when they have to get, nursing home care, assisted living care, hospice care, in home care. In fact, actually, it's it's and what's really interesting is the the the number one really the only bright spot in the economy last year in terms of job growth was in the health care sector. And when you look at the health care sector, it's almost entirely related to elder care and senior care. So just understanding like that's where the job growth is, that's where the people are, and that's where the demographics are. So what I think would be really interesting as you all move forward in this process is provide is and this is maybe where you can work with our planning department and Zach, don't know if, you know, director Njoku or Rachel can kind of and Larry with the long range planning team can help interface some of these separate decisions.

Right? Because I I wanna just acknowledge that this is y'all show. You know, and I I don't I don't wanna be a politician that says, you know, I don't wanna castigate y'all because one, it's not my decision and two, it's a very complicated decision and it's very big picture. So it's easy to say this school here and this school there, what about that? And, you know, there might be political points to say, well, we're gonna tell the school system, you know, what's up?

But what I'd really like us to focus on is how do we solve the problem and how do we forecast the future that is gonna make create a more equitable DeKalb County, especially in the school system. So what would be interesting to know in a planning context is the capacity in the schools that are being closed, overlaying the clusters and those attendance zones with our not only our housing goals in DeKalb County, but also what would what could be the required density that would make y'all say, actually, we're gonna leave the school open. And, you know, it could I mean, so for Cedar Grove Elementary, I mean, we know there's new development pressures down there

Yeah.

And the community is going through a small area plan. Commissioner Messiah and I are working on that right now. We're literally asking them this question, you know, would you be okay with additional density Yeah. In some areas? But I don't know if those plans will impact your plans to keep Cedar Grove Elementary open or not.

But maybe it will. Maybe if you said, oh, if we had 200 more students that we knew were gonna come in the next three years and this and we have housing professionals that could forecast, you know, how many three bedroom apartments do you need or, or how many missing middle housing that would allow for seniors to downsize and then those homes come available. So just understanding that metric, so communities could understand that if there were some housing reforms in their neighborhood, if we could create more intergenerational housing, more accessory dwelling units, more cottage developments, more opportunity for intergenerational living and for more families to live in these neighborhoods, would that actually reverse? Would it stop a closure or would it reverse a closure? And this is all for this is all long range plans.

Right? So is is so if y'all's long range plan overlaps with our long range plan because we do land use zoning. Right? And I think we sometimes talk about the schools, but I in my experience, we sort of treat it as well, we that's not our problem. Mhmm. Like, we don't deal with that. We'll let y'all deal with that. But since this is a very big issue and it's affecting every single district, every part of DeKalb County, I mean, every district has a school closing in it. I think that would be helpful for us to understand how we can be supportive of you Yeah. In this process.

But also, I mean, keeping the schools open. I mean, I don't you know, it's it's it is to me seems it's a wasted investment to go and build, you know, all those years ago, build a school, have property, have potential to do things on it, whether they're early learning or other, you know, like talk about ag programs, you know, and school green school yards, Eric, you know. So there's lots of opportunities for school sites to have great quality of life benefits for our citizens at their neighborhoods. But we gotta kinda come together to figure out, like, how can we make those two plans align. So I'd be interested if we could maybe explore that and I don't know, I'm looking at Zach if that's possible long range planning maybe could have some input on how we look at those impacts in our housing goals.

Thank you.

Thank you. We appreciate that.

Thank you, commissioner Terry. Commissioner Patrick?

Thank you, madam presiding officer. Welcome to the board of commissioners. Glad to have you guys here. Many of my questions were already asked, but I just wanna review them, make sure I heard them correctly. The time frame for implementation is late fall twenty twenty six, so that's when your decision will be made by then.