Boc Joint Planning & Zoning - workshop

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Good morning and welcome to our September 14th, 2026 work session of the Douglas County Board of Commissioners. This meeting will come to order. Welcome citizens of Douglas County. County Clerk, please take the roll for the record.

Commissioner Henry Mitchell III, District 1. Present. Commissioner Whitney Kenner-Jones, District 2. Present. Commissioner Martin Rexton, District 4.

Three. Three.

Present. Commissioner Vice Chair Mark Alvarez, District 4.

Present.

Chairman Dr. Ramona Jackson-Jones.

Present. Thank you so much, Madam Clerk. This morning, Board of Commissioners, first of all, Madam Clerk, did we have anyone sign up for public comment?

Yes, ma'am. We had two. okay all right i got to found the decorum chairman you can go ahead

Okay, she's ready. Thank you, Chair.

When making remarks at a meeting to your public comment at either a voting or non-voting meeting of the Board of Commissioners, any person desiring to address the board shall address all comments to the chair or in the absence of the chair to the vice chair and shall not address staff members or the audience. Avoid making rude, obnoxious, slanderous, impertinent, profane remarks or personal attacks to any member of the board, staff, or general public. Shall exit the meeting room quietly if the board meeting is in session. Refrain from clapping, applauding, heckling, or verbal outbursts in support or opposition to the speaker or his or her remarks. And immediately cease comments when the allotted three minutes are expired.

Our first speaker is Laurie Rowell.

Good morning.

I'm so glad you read that because that's what I'm here to speak on.

I'm here to speak on chapter 10 court services section 10.08 enforcement of county meeting decorum ordinance effective 4-16-26. Sheriff Tim Pounds established the standardized procedures for deputies assigned to the BOC meetings to ensure that you do not violate our first and fourth, constitutional rights. Because it was brought to my attention on September 3rd that a constituent on social media, that a constituent of Whitney Keener Jones' targeted and was threatening me at the September 1st meeting. This ordinance 10 pounds put in is necessary due to the adaption of the court decorum ordinance. The officers will respond to these situations based on constitutional standards, not based on whether the board or any official agrees with or is offended by the content of the speech. Deputies recognize that any physical removal or restraint of a person constitutes a seizure under the Fourth Amendment and must be supported by lawful justification. Torres v. Madrid, 592 U.S. 306 in 2021. Deputies enforce conduct, not viewpoints. Public comment at a government meeting is protected by political speech. Removal or seizure must be based on objective disruptive conduct and not the content or tone of speech. That's White v. City of Norwalk, 900F, 2D, 142, 9th Circuit, 1990. No deputy will remove, detain, or seize a person solely because their speech is offensive, They call someone's name, their disrespectful criticism of the board or the staff, including personal accusations. A citizen may not be excluded from speaking because officials disagree or dislike the substance of their remarks, which is what happened to me. Deputies are not required to enforce directives that would result in a violation of our constitutional rights. A request to remove a speaker based on disagreement, offensiveness, personal criticism is not a lawful basis for seizure. Improper removal may result in civil liability. Under 42 U.S.C. 1993, criminal liability under 18 U.S.C. 242, deputies remove people for what they do, not for what they say. Thank you.

All right. Thank you so much, Ms. Lohan.

Our next speaker is Sabine Kelly.

I need to speak. Sabina Kelly, Box 536 Winston, Georgia. I'd like to address our meeting that we had on September 1st for the West Atlanta Energy Storage LLC, Z202677 and S202678. We tabled that, and I'm a little stressed about that because we're also going to be talking about millage rate and for our commissioners to have to pay to go to Tampa with our tax money. I'm a little upset about that, and I feel like that we should be able to have the company that wants to build the battery center to pay for any expenses that we have here in Douglas County. However, the people that all got up and spoke about, yes, we need the battery center. It's 113 acres. What are we going to do with the batteries? Are we going to have to build another place to figure out all those dead batteries later on? Where are they going? Are we going to put them in the oceans with along with the plastic bags that we now have to deal with? So anyways, I just like us not to table things that we're going to have to address month after month over and over again. Thank you.

OK. Thank you so much, Ms. Kelly.

All right. Madam Clerk, anyone else? That was our last speaker.

OK. Board Commissioners, before we begin our meeting, we do have two presentations this morning. But certainly, like all of us, to just take a moment of silence. I have been notified. and heard as well that Susan, Suzanne Hudson passed. She was a pioneer trailblazer and certainly an advocate for the museum and she's a long time citizen of Douglas County and would ask that we could just bow our heads and just silence just for a minute out of respect. Thank you. All right, Madam Clerk, you have the floor.

Our first presentation this morning is Malden and Jenkins' 2025 audit presentation.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Vice Chair, Commissioners, County Administration. Here to present on behalf of Malden and Jenkins is the partner Mr. Ryan Jones is going to present to you all the 2025 audited financial statement that they've concluded. Thank you.

Thank you, Dominic. Madam Chair, commissioners, thank you for having me today. As Dominic mentioned, I'll be presenting the results of the 2025 audit for the year ended December 31st, 2025. This document, this presentation actually contains all of our required communications from an auditor to governance in the interest of time. Oh, thank you. You told me to do that like twice. in the interest of time i'm not going to go through every single one of them but i will touch on some of what i consider to be the highlights and as you all are reading through that document if you have any questions please certainly reach out to me i'm happy to discuss them with you So the agenda this morning, I'm going to talk about the engagement team, more importantly, give an overview of the audit opinion, financial statements and footnotes, audit scopes and procedures, and then some required communications, financial trends, and some of the accounting recommendations and related matters that we identified during our audit. So Malden and Jenkins, over the past three years, we've served approximately 725 state and local government entities. And just on behalf of the firm, I want to express my gratitude to Douglas County for giving us the opportunity to serve your county as well. So first off, our responsibility under auditing standards is first we consider the internal control structure for purposes of expressing our opinion on the financial statements. But we do not do this for the reason of giving an opinion on the effectiveness of internal controls. We do perform our audit in accordance with relevant professional standards, generally accepted auditing standards and government auditing standards. objective is to provide a reasonable and not absolute assurance that the basic statements are free of material misstatement and while we do assist the county with the preparation of the financial statements at the end of the day the financial statements are the responsibility of management And towards the bottom here, our report on the basic financial statements. Our audit procedures allowed us to express what's called an unmodified opinion on the basic statements. That doesn't sound great, but it is a clean opinion and it's the highest level of assurance that an independent CPA firm can provide on a set of financial statements. As part of our audit, we also issue a compliance report. This is sometimes called a yellow book report or a government auditing standards report. That report contains information about our tests of the county's internal control and compliance with laws, regulations. It is not intended to provide an assurance on compliance or the effectiveness of internal controls. The significant accounting policies that management uses to produce financial statements are reflected in note one to your financial statements. Those policies are the responsibility of management. As an audit firm, we do review those policies to make sure that there are no discrepancies between what is stated and what the accounting requirements are. And there are some fairly significant judgments and accounting estimates embedded in your financial statements, mostly involving actuarial assumptions. Our relationship with management, we did not have any significant disagreements with management over the past three years. I feel like we've built a very good professional relationship in getting through these audits and getting the county closer to where the audits are being done a little bit more timely within the six month deadline. And I do just want to give finance and accounting a little bit of a shout out. They've done a great job over the time that I've worked with them, just putting in the effort to really learn the accounting standards, identify where things have gone wrong and correct those issues. so audit adjustments during the course of our audit we did identify multiple adjustments to be to be posted to the county's accounts there was one what we call a past adjustment so it was an error that due to its immateriality we did not feel the need to post that and that had to do with a restatement of the prior year's net position for your government wide financial statements and that was $306,000 fell below our materiality threshold. So we did not require the county to post that in order for us to express an opinion. And some financial trends here. This first chart really shows you the makeup of the general fund. And keep in mind, the general fund is the county's primary operating fund. This shows the breakout of revenues for 2025. As you can see, property taxes and sales taxes comprise the overwhelming majority of that revenue. Total revenue in your general fund for 2025 amounted to $148.7 million, and that's compared to fiscal 24, which reported $141.1 million. That's about a 5.5% increase. This shows the tax revenue sources, those major tax revenue sources over the past six years. As you can see, property taxes have for the most part gone up over the past six years and sales taxes, same thing up until 2025 when it dipped a little bit from about 31 million to almost 29 million. This next slide shows the relationship between the assessed values within the county and the county's millage rate. As you can see, those assessed values as everywhere in Georgia have been rising steadily. And that millage rate began dropping back in 2022, holding flat at 12.063 for the past two years. This just gives you a visual representation of the difference between revenues and what are referred to as other financing sources. So it could be transfers from other funds, issuance of debt, and then the expenditures, again, in the general fund and any transfers out to other funds. It's usually a positive indication when that yellowish bar is taller than the blue bar there. That just means that you're bringing in to the general fund more than you're expending on an annual basis. So this next slide, this is your general fund expenditures by year compared to unassigned fund balance. Unassigned fund balance is the residual equity that is not restricted by external sources or committed by the county commission. GFOA does recommend that you keep about two months worth of expenditures in that unassigned fund balance classification. If you do the math, at the end of 2025, Douglas County had about five months of expenditures sitting in the unassigned fund balance. this just shows at the end of the day after all of the revenues and expenditures and other financing sources and uses are taken into account what that net change in fund balance for your general fund has been over the past six years as you can see there there are some fluctuations there from year to year but overall nothing in the negative which is which is a good indicator of financial health in your general fund so throughout the course of our audit we did have some audit findings that i'm going to discuss with you all today i want to start off with referencing the 2024 audit there were five audit findings that we identified in the 2024 audit Once we concluded the 2025 audit, it was determined that four of those findings for the five from the previous year were resolved. So that goes back to what I mentioned previously about finance doing a good job of taking our recommendations and incorporating those changes into their policies and procedures. So for the current year, this is a formal audit finding. They are reported behind our compliance report in your financial statements 2025-001. This has to do with the schedule of expenditures of federal awards. During our audit, we identified that about $1.1 million worth of expenditures were reported on the prior year's SIFA, the schedule of expenditures of federal awards, when they should have been reported in the current year. We were able to test all of those expenditures, so there were no compliance issues with that. It was just a matter of timing and the placement on the SIFA. We also identified that expenditures totaling 467,000 were incurred and reported in the basic financial statements in the prior year, but not included in the schedule of expenditures of federal awards for that year. So 2025-002, towards the end of the audit, we identified an unreconciled cash account in the county's general fund. Historically, that balance had represented amounts due from the custodial funds, most significantly the tax commissioner. We did have to post some reconciling entries after working with the county to determine what should be posted and those adjustments amounted to about $1.1 million just to clean up that cash account and adjust the revenues accordingly. 2025-003, again, this is grant related. In the prior year, the Capital Transportation Fund reported about $800,000 of unavailable revenue as unearned revenue. They're both essentially liabilities on the fund level balance sheet, but the differentiator is that unavailable revenue gets recognized as revenue in your statement of activities, which is the full accrual level of reporting. That misclassification did result in, it resulted in an understatement of revenue overall for the county and your statement of net position for the prior year. And also going back to the issue I noted with the SIFA, the general fund reported $1.1 million in receivables and unavailable revenue in the prior year. It was determined in the current year that that receivable and the deferred inflow should not have been recorded. There was no fund balance impact because essentially what you had was an asset and a liability. But unfortunately, that did result in an audit finding. So 2025 dash 0, 0, 4, this has to do with franchise taxes. And during our audit, we identified that about $455,000 worth of franchise tax revenue was earned in the current year. But it was not the receivable was not recorded on the books. So we did. We were required to post an audit adjustment in the amount of 455,000 to put that receivable on the county's books. 2025-005 this error resulted from a payable that had been recorded in the prior year but not reversed in the current year so that came up in our audit procedures and an adjusting audit entry was posted to correct that issue and that amounted to about a million dollars in your SPLOST fund and lastly as far as formal audit findings go 2025-006 this was the only repeat finding from the prior year and this has to do with the accounting information that we received from the elected officials what what's been happening is that we we basically get a lot of data that helps us kind of back into what those numbers should be as part of our financial statement preparation services but What we're really wanting to see is a more formal, what we call trial balance, a balanced set of accounts, just to show the ins and outs and put them in the right bucket so that we are not having to go through that process ourselves. Because we do have independence considerations, and like I mentioned earlier, we assist with the preparation. Management does take responsibility for those financial statements. so that was all of the formal audit findings that you will see reported in the financial statements we do report less significant matters in our opinion through a management letter and again separate from the formal financial statement reporting but we do have a couple of recommendations based on the results of our audit subscription-based IT arrangements this was a new standard about three years ago it does require governments to identify long-term subscription arrangements and capitalize that as an asset and report a liability if certain criteria are met during the current year there was about $95,000 worth of assets and liabilities that we identified that had been omitted from the prior year statements. It was not significant and we did record that in the current year, but technically that should have been required in the prior year or reported in the prior year. And Interfund receivables and payables. if you look at the county's financial statements you'll see the due to other funds and do from other funds there's some pretty significant balances in there it's my understanding that this will be remedied with the implementation of munis which will help do some pooled cash allocations Typically, you just don't see that much interfund activity reported in the county's financial statements. Those amounts are typically reflected as pooled cash, and I do know that the county is moving forward to correcting that through the software implementation. And I did want to point out the deficit net position in the solid waste fund. It's my understanding that management is aware of this. The deficit net position or the deficit equity at the end of 2024 was $147,000 deficit. That increased more than doubled to 481,000 at the end of 2025. And I know that you all were dealing with some extraordinary events. I believe there was at least one fire that really that really shut the operations down. I know management's aware of it, but I just wanted to make sure that we're fulfilling our responsibilities and communicating those concerns to the commission. It's my understanding that that will be remedied over the next several years. And that's really it as far as my basic presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions that you all might have. I do have a copy of the financial statements. If you have any specific questions about that, I'm happy to answer those as well.

Okay. Thank you so much. Appreciate the collaboration on the process regarding the audit certainly and I do want to extend my deepest appreciation to our CFO and Deputy CFO and their entire team for working so hard and working along with Malden and Jenkins to make sure that this information is brought forth. Thank you CFO. I requested that they come in and chat present this information to the board commissioners and you've done quite well so thank you so much and also I just had a question for you regarding seems like a lot of their findings you were able to address those real-time you know For example, you said receivables, they were in the wrong year. So did you transfer them to the correct year? Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Sure. Let me flip over to that.

That's what I want to know. Did we make corrections real time?

Yes. So all of these errors were corrected, to be clear. So we do that just so that we can issue our opinion on those ending balances. So all of these adjustments were posted. The prior year receivable and deferred inflows, like I said, didn't really have a fund balance effect, so there wasn't much to do with that. That revenue was recognized in 2025, as it would have been anyways. So there was no... no significant accounting ramifications from that other than just our identification of the underlying internal control issue.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Board of Commissioners, do you have any questions for me? Okay. Commissioner Raxton, you have the floor. All right.

Good morning. Good morning. I just want to find out, when are we going to receive the finalized audit itself that we can review and just go through and peruse? So, it was email? It was email? and you have you have a book okay okay because i didn't see the hard copy so sure um and just to just make you aware we do have an internal audit committee that will be supporting and working with our finance committee to ensure that any audit findings or anything that we can support along with that get those closed and to address those with our you know augment the team there So they want to just make you aware of that. And then lastly in regards to the regarding the last finding related to the elected officials of those on the similar elected officials outside of the Board of Commissioners that these opportunities are resulting.

constitutional officers right right so in your financial statements you have a statement of fiduciary net position that is it's basically the sum of all of the constitutional officers accounting activity that excludes what they are collecting on behalf of the county that goes back to Gatsby statement 84 several years ago And it is typically a challenge to They usually have very small staff, especially accounting staff So they don't necessarily have like an accounting department and this is a common struggle that I have with with many of my my County clients just being able to to reach out to them and set expectations about what format information needs to be provided in but but that's It is not included in the in the results of the county's operations for it for the year, it's it's still reported in the financial statements, but it's outside of the primary government. If that makes sense, so it doesn't doesn't impact any of the the county's revenues or you know balance sheet accounts.

OK or the ratings of that they can take a my concern is like you say they carry from one year over to the next. can you repeat that I'm that it carries over from one year to the next of this was the only on clothes are defined from 2024 that carried over into 2025.

That's correct and that there are a variety of ways to to help them out over my career I've seen where sometimes finance like like in this instance County finance would take a little bit heavier responsibility in taking the information that's received from those constitutional officers and putting it into you know something approximating approximating a formal accounting trial balance but but it can be challenging because lots of times they do see themselves as outside you know somewhat separate from the the county and and getting them to address audit findings can can be challenging okay all right thank you all right madam chair you the floor back to you okay thank you any other questions for commissioner mitchell you have the floor

I do have just a couple here. So, great job, though, I must say, though, and I appreciate. That was a lot of information to kind of read on and try to stay with you, though. But my quick questions are, you said, and you may have answered this a moment ago, there was five findings in 2024, but of the five, four of them were resolved. But there was one that wasn't.

That's correct. Can you explain that one? So that was the finding, let me just pull it up on here. It was 2025-006 involving that decentralized financial accounting and reporting, speaking specifically about the constitutional officers. Okay. And the way in which they give us financial information to audit. it's just a lot of detail and it's not really like a summary of all of the activity of a certain type, if that makes sense.

But are you prefer, are you wanting, are you wanting a summary or are you wanting detail? from our end because i'm just trying to make sure i understand kind of how we're going at this because i'm assuming staff delivered the information as a summary if i'm hearing you correctly versus the detailed of what that is that one that you not of concerns i mean but but at least that's the conversation i'm trying to figure out kind of where we were with that particular one

so it's the it's the opposite of that so okay we're getting all of the detail and none of the summary so we internally have to summarize all of the detail to get to what we think the summary for the year would be and it does just put us in a situation where As auditors, we're not supposed to be making decisions and really making calls about that preliminary information. So it injects a little bit more risk in the process when we are having to do that kind of work. And typically the information is clear enough where there's not a whole lot of judgment in there. ultimately as auditors we would like to get the summary and then we determine you know which which revenue sources or which which cash outflow accounts we we want to address and then test from there and I'm assuming don't like to assume but you communicated that to staff as to kind of how you would prefer to receive that information so that

going through your process, it won't be, it'll be non-judgmental. It'll be more or less, this is the fact, this is kind of how I got here, and this is the information that I used to get here. That's correct. And we have discussed that with management. Good, good, good, good. In 2025-02, you talked about unresolved cash, the cash account of about $1.1 million. I'm assuming now that we understand kind of how that was in question, not that it was a problem, but it's in question, what have you recommended to staff as to that particular process? Or is there a recommendation other than don't use that account as such?

So it's my understanding, and maybe management could speak to that a little bit better, but The account was used appropriately for several years, essentially reflecting the cash that was owed to the general fund from the constitutional officers. Okay. It's my understanding, and you all can correct me if I'm wrong, but the process changed in 2025 to where they're accounting for that activity a little bit differently. The problem was, the actual account which was grouped in the cash balances had not changed from the prior year. So it really, from our perspective, it boiled down to just more of a complete comprehensive reconciliation process where each balance sheet account in the accounting software is looked at individually and questions are asked, is this the right balance?

And with our new software that we're receiving or getting engaged with will be a bigger help on your reporting as to getting to that particular account. I believe so. MUNIS is a very powerful accounting system.

You all are currently using New World. There's good things about New World, but MUNIS is very, very good. It's just a much more powerful accounting system. do a little bit more with it and and i think it will be these types of issues will be more easily identifiable in a munis platform compared to the previous platform and that will potentially help with the process so we won't get that far behind when it comes to your process of accounting for what we've done i certainly hope so yes good good good um outside of that

your opinion and all your findings, you may have already kind of stated this, but what is that? Your finding and your, I mean, I kind of heard the report, but in a summary or in a two-word sentence, what is your end result of your opinion and your finding? Sure.

so the reason we I can't do it in two words okay I just I didn't want you to go through the whole process no no so the reason we're engaged obviously is to perform procedures on the numbers that comprise the statements and issue an opinion about whether whether those ending balances and the activity in the current year are materially stated are they materially accurate and that gets us to the point where we issue an auditor's opinion and it's the first report in your financial statements after the transmittal letter and all of that and it's in the first few paragraphs where we say in our opinion the the balances presented in these financial statements are materially correct essentially that's so it's a clean opinion yeah a clean opinion is all I was looking for though and more for the general public

because they don't get a chance to see the documents that we receive and we all read and come about and say, this is kind of how you got here. And we tend to understand that. But the general public don't. So right.

Thank you.

Yeah. Even with with adjustments and findings, we still make sure that those adjustments that needed to be made were made. And so we can still issue a clean opinion.

with the caveat that there were some audit findings i just like the clean opinion clean opinion yeah that's that's that's that's the portion i like most okay outside of that uh i'll yield back madam chair and thank you again for a job well done thank you all right thank you thank you any other questions for it all right thank you so much for your presentation madam clerk next we have t-spot update

Good morning members of the board. I don't know if a student was going to be here as well. I don't want to get in front of my boss. If not, we can proceed. Good morning and thank you for having us this morning. Michael Hightower, the collaborative firm, and we are glad to be here this morning to give you an update on a lot of our exciting activities. I want to first start by thanking Interim County Administrator, Ms. Tiffany, stanley stewart for her help over the past several days and weeks and you did a good job by putting her in that role and she's she's representing you well so thank you for that i said that in particular because uh in clarity there was some delay in getting started we got started on july 27th so i want you to know that that there's a little over three month time frame this is a typically six month time frame but say that as it may we have we have taken the an aggressive approach only just for the record to make sure i say that so thank you mr stanley for getting us And I also want to recognize Yvette Jones from Communication, and of course Sulaiman, who they've been very helpful. So your staff has been very, very helpful. So Tiffany, thank you, and I appreciate your help. Very quickly this morning, we will not take a lot of your time, but we have this morning a variety of updates for you to give you some idea. There are three or four highlights that we're going to cover. Messaging, clearly, and talking with Yvette and others, what's the real messaging for the process and for the outreach. Two, of course, outreach, very aggressive outreach, which is critical. Thirdly, Douglas County, one of the beauties of this county, you have a variety of different organizations and entities. And thanks to David Good and thanks to Dr. Johnson and others. And, of course, three of our top people from our company live or work in Douglas County. So we have very on-the-ground knowledge of what's happening here. I think finally we, as B.B. Williams would tell you, we have a fairly aggressive schedule. Our outreach will encompass three or four categories. Number one, it will be on the ground touching people. To date, we've covered over 18 events. In the next 30 days, we have already committed another 25 events. We have a Super Saturday coordinator who will be working with the team. And probably before the election, we'll probably have another 20 events. There will be no shortage of activity with this project. I want to thank you as commissioners, Commissioner Mitchell and Mr. Alvarez, and of course, Ms. Kenna, Chair of Transportation, Mr. Braxton. You guys have been very helpful in opening up your doors for education. Let me emphasize, for education for the public, education. This is not our first rodeo. We handle these matters throughout the region, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Clayton, Fulton County, and we are no stranger to doing this kind of work. So thank you for the honor of serving you. And we're going to have a very aggressive timeframe until November 3rd. I also want to thank, in addition to the Vets Office and Sulaimah, your Elections Department. One of the things that we did off the bat, we basically did some very deep data review. And Ms. Jones, you know what I'm talking about. This is right up your alley, data and metrics. to look at past election results, voting and everything from early voting to absentee voting to determine some patterns. And that's critical because at the end of the day, you know, we want to be in a position come evening on November 3rd to say we got a minimum of 50 plus one. So there'll be a lot of activity. Over the weekend, you've seen signage. We have people putting up signs in the rain this weekend. We have a very aggressive canvassing. Again, educational signage, because I don't want some of the folk in part of this county to kind of mislead through things and kind of put things in the wrong amount. It'd be very direct and very transparent. Educational signage. And we want their help, too. uh we're not just saying vote for we just think just educate citizens for the right decision so uh bb williams will not come and uh we'll be as brief as we can but this is a very thorough process and again we thank you for allowing us to serve you maybe

Good morning, good morning. Our team, the collaborative firm, continues to advance our public engagement plan throughout coordinated outreach, community education, strategic partnership, and consistent communications. Our focus remains on ensuring Douglas County residents receive clear, factual, and accessible information about the 2026 TSPLOST. our public engagement plan remains the guiding framework for this project focused on education and engagement activities execution is centered around our strategy educate plus engagement plus information leads to empowerment the plan coordinates community outreach events stakeholder engagement communications collateral distribution canvassing and strategic signage placement The team is maintaining a master engagement document and tracking all of the information and activities so that we can accurately and consistently update county leadership. The team has moved from planning into active execution with an emphasis on broad geographic demographic coverage across the county. The team is participating in community events, as Mr. Hightower stated, town halls, thank you to the commissioners, festivals, senior activities, business meetings, and other public gatherings. Our outreach includes educational presentations, working in collaboration with Director Rana and his team, community canvassing, informational booths and tabling at events, literature distribution, digital collateral, signage placements, hopefully all of you have seen the yard signs as you were coming to the courthouse this morning, as well as larger signs that will be placed at intersections off of Benders 820. We're also partnering with community organizations involving our educational collateral in their newsletters, their email blasts, their social media, and community applications. Engagement activities are designed to meet residents where they are already gathering and provide consistent fact-based information. Presentations and materials are being refined based on the feedback from the community to ensure the information is clear, concise, and easy to understand. Outreach continues to emphasize the primary areas of congestion relief, road resurfacing, and safety improvements. The goal is not to simply attend these community events, but repeated exposure to accurate T-spots information through multiple trusted community channels. We are developing and have secured partnerships with organizations like homeowners associations, civic and nonprofit organizations, faith-based organizations, Greek letter organizations, business, professional groups, senior communities, and community event organizers. Particular attention is being given to the county's largest HOA communities, not exclusively, but focused on HOA communities and organizations with established community networks. Partners are being asked to share approved information through newsletters, email lists, social media, websites, and again, community platforms. Where formal presentations are not possible, organizations are receiving digital materials, literature, talking points, and an opportunity to host signage in their communities and in their offices. Outreach is intended to expand the county's reach through organizations that residents already know and they already trust. These partnerships serve as a force multipliers, allowing approved information to reach residents beyond county owned and county managed channels. Now we have some key upcoming activities that we're looking forward to for the duration of September as well as October. We're continuing executing confirmed September and October community engagements, which Mr. Hightower already gave you the numbers for. We're going to expand HOA business and non-profit and faith-based organizations outreach, continue to coordinate presentations and educational support for the commissioners and district level events. We're going to continue canvassing and distributing literature in those priority areas. As well as the yard sign, we're going to advance signage deployment at approved intersections, business corridors, community entrances and exits, and other high traffic locations. As you'll hear more about later, we're going to continue our work in collaboration with Ms. Jones and her team, continuing to update website, social media, with additional and updated collateral information. Monitor geographic and audience coverage to identify communities requiring additional outreach. And then, of course, maintain weekly progress, reporting and promptly elevating any decisions and approvals needed from the county. In conclusion, moving forward, our priority is disciplined execution, expanding the reach and frequency of engagements while ensuring that every public-facing message remains accurate, consistent, and aligned with county-approved information. as well maintain momentum and optimize and maximize public awareness. Thank you. We'll now hear from Amanda Getman who will update you on the website and the social media content.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

As Bibi mentioned, I'm just going to give you an overview of our messaging on our digital space. Our core messaging, it relates back to what is TSPLOS going to do for the citizens of Douglas County. We want that to be clear in everything that we put out for the citizens to consume. we're also taking public feedback to tackle any misinformation or anything that we need to be more clear about via social media responses you all have a very responsive audience and that's helpful in our messaging we also want to be very transparent and accessible with our messaging so not all of our materials will be high level some of them will be granular and some of them many of them within the upcoming weeks will show places that citizens pass by every day, GIS maps, you know, showing how the TSPLAS proposed projects are going to directly impact citizens. So that will be the main message that remains consistent through all of our social media platforms. The collateral that we have so far, we have push cards, yard signs in various sizes. We've taken out ads in local newspapers and made sure that we have educational materials posted at recreation centers, senior centers, etc. so that there should be a TSPLAS presence wherever the community is present already. um the website that we are directing everyone to has been cleaned and updated with 2026 projects there is no longer any outdated information on that website so that will continue to build as we climb as the campaign progresses as we you know go out into the community and have more events then the citizens will be able to find us on that website and meet us where we are where they are already going to be at as well And we will also continue to update based on, like I said, that feedback that we're getting from constituents to make sure that we're placing the correct information in front of them. And again, with our social media with the responsive audience, we're really going to focus within the next couple weeks of doubling down on the 18 to 24 year old voters by, like I said, again, increasing that social media presence in the form of reels. instead of static images. And then I also want to be very clear that the images and posts that we will be making have a lot of strategy behind them. So whereas someone may see a 15-second reel, you know, going over some TSPLOS information, there's been election data mapping projects and a lot of discussion that goes behind what we're putting into these posts to make sure that we're making the most of the digital real estate that we have. Again, we're working in step with the communications team, with Yvette and her team. They've been extremely helpful for us in making sure that these website updates are happening promptly, and we are just going to continue to be flexible throughout this campaign to make sure that we're educating to the best of our ability. And then I can pass it back to David, and if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer.

Thank you.

Well, good morning, everyone. How's everyone doing today? Doing great. Trying to adjust this real good. Thank you, Madam Chair, Mr. Vice Chair, District Commissioners, Administration. I'm David Good, and I'm here to go over our outreach. One of the things that you guys will see is that we have our We have a list of HOA communities that we have been reaching out to. There's a list of 25. So far, we've reached out to all 25 of those. And as well, we'll continue reaching out to more of the homeowner associations. We've reached out to places like Silver Creek, Mirror Lake. We have those that's going to be at Kinston. And we have Anawaiki Trails, Chapel Hills, and as well as one of the places, Kinston, they reached back out to us. It was letting us know that they will put out some of our educational material into their newsletters, and they said they would invite us to their community meeting. Now, a lot of places will not allow you to come to their community meeting, so those that will not allow us, because that's just how they're set up, we will make sure that they have the educational material that Ms. Amanda spoke about. We will still continue to make sure that we reach out to apartment places that actually have a small community center, making sure that we're able to distribute all the important information, especially the pushcards. Then when you go to signage, we're making sure that we are hitting these key intersections. As we spoke about earlier, we want to make sure that any time someone leaves out their neighborhood, comes down any of the major thoroughfares, they are seeing in our science that they actually understand what t-splash is that we're educating them on that and then finally we have the canvassing and we have a chemistry team um that's making sure that we go out like when i went out to the uh labor day parade i made sure that i gave out the newly pushed cards that we received as well as digital information that looks like this printed out now one of them is the fact sheet and the other one tells people what is on We will be coming up on the ballot. And right now, I believe there is a yellow ballot two-sided. It's the very last question on the back side. So for those who are in attendance or anyone that sees it, they want to see what it looks like, there it is for them. And I appreciate it, and I'm going to turn it back over to Michael Hightower. Thank you guys for your time.

of the time and we here to answer answer any questions you have and also as David indicated this is like an army campaign on the ground virtual HOAs you name it's an army campaign and also I want to tell you madam chair members of the board call me a David any time of the day or night and I answer my phone up until about 11, 11.30 sometimes, or as early as 6, 6.30. So David's phone, you have him. So we are here. If you hear something, say something, let us know. But the next time, I want to thank Bebe. Her church is in Douglas County, and she knows Douglas County. Brian Hontower, who's been with the program for 20, he's managing. We have quadrants of zones. I know some folks who may not be on the same team with us, but we're going to be in every neighborhood. west, south, east, north, every neighborhood. And if you hear something, as David mentioned, let us know. We can clear it up. We have four zones of signs and canvassing. This is a real campaign. We take it very serious. And we're excited about it. So here for questions, anything? I got B.B., Amanda, David. We were at four events Saturday. We woke up and we communicated Saturday morning about where we had to be. David and I were at one event with the Dems. We were at the Republicans on this Saturday, too. We were bipartisan. We went everywhere. We welcome everybody to be a part of this campaign, but also let the truth come out. the truth about education. So help us help the citizens, because at the end of the day, as Sulaiman charged us, it's about safety, congestion, and those critical locations for the betterment. But also, as I stopped and did a little shopping on Saturday, let's get those folk who riding through your county on the tax. this is the beauty it's those folk around the york county as well as the citizens so questions are we i got i got the a team here madam chair so we're ready and and and we can clear up thank you so much mr hightower and your amazing team our board issues you have any questions okay vice chair you have the floor since we're talking about the importance of how important this campaign is what was a three-month delay um i don't I can give you the timeline. The BOC, and thank you, on June the 2nd, you guys approved us. And I think we submitted with three other companies. And we got the NTP on July 27th. OK. I would suggest we have it to you. That's an internal question now.

No, that's OK. The aggressive outreach. What aggressive outreach has been done between? Because two weeks ago, I'm just being fully candid.

OK.

as of two weeks ago until i inquired about it and i know my fellow commissioner kenner jones inquired about it we have not seen anything we have not heard anything and then only then two days later did i get a phone call from your firm saying introducing themselves to me and then saying we're starting on this project so what aggressive outreach has been done until I inquired about it.

First of all, let me correct this for the record. Long before you made a call to our office, we were out here working. So let me just correct that. Okay. What you said is not correct, sir. Okay. I would hope that we could work together to get correct information out. So I appreciate the call and the man who talked with you, but what you said is not correct. I'm going to ask Bebe to come to the mic. And on the screen, we have several events and activities that were going on even before that. Let me just say that first of all. So just make sure that we don't get any erroneous information on the record.

Sure, sure. Then to that point. You said until already, there's been 18 events, because you just said seven. There's been 18 events, and then there's 25 more planned. So what are those 18 events, and then what are the 25 more that's planned?

OK. I'm going to ask Bebe to comment. Bebe, come on. The screen we had at first, Commissioner, we will go to those events again. And I appreciate the call. Thank you, Amanda. But what you said is not correct.

All right, on your screen, you should see all of the events that we've taken, the engagement activities taking place from the beginning, mid-August. Let me go back up for you so you can see that. All right, so, and these are events that we have, we started with virtual educating events, and of course we did a pivot based on that response to more in-person engagement events. So as you can see, these are the engagement that we have confirmed thus far, starting at August 20th. Even before then, planning was taking place. So, of course, as you know, with these particular campaigns, getting the pre-planning and pre-information and analysis and all of that done beforehand before we actually hit the ground running was also a very important part of this because good planning also has good outcomes. So we want to make sure that that planning took place. And as I scroll down, you'll see the engagements through the beginning of September. In green is what we've already completed. As well as if I scroll down, you'll see all of the ones that are upcoming, including this briefing as well. And we have events all the way until the end of October. Now, mind you, this is a working document, and as the BOC receives updates every Friday, which we've committed to, you will see additional information and additional engagements on this document as well. So it is a working document, so you should see updates on those.

Can you send us that, please? Absolutely, yes, sir. Yeah, because my glasses are upstairs, so I really cannot say that from here. Thank you. Absolutely, yes. I yield back, Madam Chair.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions for... All right, no other questions. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you, and we're excited about being here, and we're going to keep working. If you hear something, let us know. If you want us information, clarify it or let us know. We'll clarify it so we can have the facts out with the citizens and so we can move forward for this benefit for the citizens. So let us know. Call David and myself 24 hours a day. We can keep going forward. And I appreciate the honor to serve.

Okay. Thank you so much. All right. Madam Clerk, I hate you.

Tomorrow we'll have two other presentations.

Thank you all so much again.

One of those tomorrow will be citizen recognition of David Anderson, and that will be Chief Allen. And then tomorrow we'll have a presentation of funds to the Douglas County Special Olympics race through the Drive for Call Scramble Golf Tournament. Next thing on the agenda after that would be agenda adoption, Chairman.

okay thank you what commissioners you have had an opportunity to review the agenda are there any changes or additions or deletions that need to be made okay if not do we have a motion some and so we have a motion in a second in a discussion board we have a motion in the second please prepare to please indicate by raising right hand yes for your approval we have a 5 0 unanimous vote in the motion carries for the approval of the agenda

Next thing on the agenda is your time.

OK, thank you. Board of Commissioners, as a reminder, please remember we all have three minutes to make remarks and two minutes for rebuttal. Tomorrow, you will see approval of the minutes on the agenda. Those approvals will be for September 1, 2026 Commission meeting, August 31, 2026 work session, and August 31, 2026 executive session. uh commissioners please review the minutes before tomorrow's meeting and be prepared to approve or deny accordingly financial report be prepared board of commissioners to accept the financial budget report for the month of august 2026 in tomorrow's meeting agenda items madam clerk you have the floor to begin those items okay

Let's see tomorrow we will have up with its for proclamations. The first problem is proclaiming September 14th through the 18th, 2026 as national construction appreciation week in Douglas County. The next one will be proclaiming September 17th through the 23rd, 2026 as constitution week in Douglas County. The next one will be proclaiming September 26th as recovery month in Douglas County. And then the next one will be proclaiming September 26th as National Hispanic Heritage Month in Douglas County. Next on our agenda, tomorrow we'll have a millage rate hearing. And then we have the next public hearing, a second public hearing on an amendment to Douglas County Code of Ordinances to add Article 23, excuse me, Development Impact Feeds, Allison Duncan.

Hey good morning madam chair and board of commissioners. This will just be the second required public hearing if the board chooses to contemplate the adoption of a development impact fee ordinance. This will proceed two items that we have later on the agenda in regard to adopting the capital improvements element and then the article 23 is the clerk read into the record for development impact fees and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have at this time.

Any questions for our planning and zoning manager?

OK.

Thank you.

No questions. Next will be our grant item. Approval of grant funds in the amount of $22,500 from GADOE and GSAN from Building Opportunities in Out of School Time Boost Grant Program. Amend the budget and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review. Chad Griffin.

Good morning, Chairman, Board of Commissioners, County Administration. The Georgia Recreational Park Association Boost Grant provides Georgia parks and recreation agencies funding for local after school and summer learning programs. Their program will run through a partnership with the Georgia Department of Education and the Georgia Statewide After School Network. Douglas County Parks and Recreation is a proud recipient of the 26-27 boost grant and will be reimbursed $22,500 in funds used for towards the summer camp program in 2027.

Okay, any questions for for just this one so shadow we are we looking to use the 22 5 or that's just what they're going to give us or we've got to use it or how that work. Yeah, we'll use the entire. So you got you got. Plenty to do to kind of use that I guess to make up for that difference and I guess will be reimbursed. Yes, yeah, and there's no match or anything correct. No, sir. Thank you very much already. I do.

Thank you so much. Question that you have questions, Mr. Axton, you have for a good morning morning.

All right. Congratulations on getting this grant. Do they have a 2026 version of the RFP? Because I've seen in the backup documents the 2025 version. Is there a 26 version? I can ask for a 2026 version and get that over to you. Okay. Okay, that would be great. And then I know just hearing from the public, some of the opportunities that we're seeing, especially in the summer, is programs related to teens. And if there is any thought to really broadening the scope of supporting more teens in the summer, that would be greatly appreciated. We're seeing an uptick of teen takeovers and other activities that's occurring in the summer months. So I would just greatly ask that if the administration will look at programs to enhance and then get more teens involved, that would be greatly appreciated. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. With that, Madam Chair, I yield the floor back to you.

OK, thank you. Any other questions for our director? Thank you so much, Director Griffin.

Our next item, adoption of the capital improvements element prior to the adoption of Article 23 development impact fees to the code of ordinance and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review. Allison Duncan.

All right. Thank you again. Following up on our impact fees, you may remember several months ago we drafted and circulated the capital improvements element. We also have the draft CIE included in your packet if you would like to take a look at what that's all about. Essentially, this is going to be a requirement for all of the projects that are impact fee eligible. We have to indicate those in advance. The requirement will be that this is adopted prior to adopting the development impact fee section of the code of ordinances, which is why we have it as a separate item on the agenda tomorrow. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Any questions for our manager of planning and zoning? No questions. Okay.

Chad, I realize I skipped one of yours, but I'm going to go ahead and let Allison do her next one, and we'll come back. Allison has adoption of Article 23, development impact fees to the code of ordinance, and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents, pending final legal review.

All right. Thank you. And as we had indicated, once we adopt the capital improvements element, if it is the will of the board to adopt the development impact fee ordinance, this would be the action that we would take to do so. If it is adopted tomorrow, the implementation will be deferred until January 1st of 2027. We will spend the rest of third and fourth quarter of this year working with the finance department and the building department to integrate the tracking system into our software. And again, happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

We'll go back to Chad's item that I skipped. Approval for Parks and Recreation to enter into a contract with American Red Cross for lifeguard training services in the amount of $250 for new certification and $150 for recertification per lifeguard to be funded by the Parks and Recreation Aquatic Center budget and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review.

Good morning again chairman board commissioners got administration. We use the American Red Cross to train and certify our lifeguards. The cost would be $250 for a new certification and to be re certified as a $150 will be paid through not 22 budget.

Any questions for. Thank you thank you.

Our next item, approval for Douglas County E911 to renew its agreement with Virtual Academy, a division of Savant Learning Systems Incorporated for the continued provision of its training management, continuing education, and communication training officer CTO platform at an annual cost of $2,425. to be funded by the 2026 E911 budget and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review. Katrina Hartley.

Good morning Madam Chair, Vice Chair, Board of Commissioners, County Administration. This request is for the continued use of Virtual Academy as our online training and training management platform for E911. This is important because our communications officers are required to be certified through the Georgia Peace Officer Standards Training Council. and under the official code of Georgia annotated 35823, communications officers are required to complete continuing education annually in order to maintain that certification. The platform provides more than 350 hours of continuing education, specifically available for professional development for our operators. and it has already been approved by Georgia Post for education credit. The platform also includes certification tracking, which allows us to monitor training completion and certifications instead of trying to manually manage those. The platform also supports our communications training officer program. Our CTO program is extremely documentation intensive. Every new employee and employee that is being trained on radio disciplines in E911 require weeks and months of observation, evaluation, coaching, and daily observation reports, and the CTO component actually helps to streamline and standardize that documentation process. Lastly, at a cost of $2,425, it breaks out to approximately $93 annual dollars per employee. or less than eight dollars per employee per month for that investment we receive a training library continuing education certification tracking and cto documentation virtual academy gives us a cost-effective way to complete a significant portion of the required continuing education in-house While preserving outside training opportunities for more specialized certifications and advanced professional development and with that out you Any questions for our director hardly Thank you, thank you

Our next is approval of the CJCC physical year 27 AW-ACFP-27-106 and CJCC FY27 AW-ACFP-27-147 grant-funded employee contract with Gabrielle Johnson as juvenile programs mental health clinical case manager and authorized the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review. Jill Hobson.

Good morning. Ms. King is away at their annual CACJ conference for accountability courts at the University of Georgia this week, so I'm presenting this for her. They have filled the open position for their clinical case manager. This is funded by two grants. It's a 50-50 split. It's 100% funded by the grant. There's no impact to the county's general fund. This position is contingent upon grant funds being available. Okay, any questions forward?

Is that just an annual contract, just for one year?

Yes, I believe it's an annual contract that's signed every year.

OK, I yield back, Madam Chair.

OK. All right.

Any other questions for our grants manager, Jew? All right. Thank you.

Our next item, approval to officially rename the renovated Douglas County Public Library facility to the Selman Public Library of Douglas County and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review. Lindy Moore. Good morning, everyone.

When the Douglas County Library was opened, it was the only library in Douglas County. Therefore, it was called the Douglas County Public Library. And to align our library with the renovated Selman complex of the Cobb Douglas Public Health and the walking trail to downtown, we are proposing that we modify, update the name of the Douglas County Public Library to this would be the best time to do so with our renovation that is nearing completion.

OK. Any questions? Just one comment. You have the floor.

When we were younger, we went there. We called it the Selman Library anyway.

I know. Everyone calls it the Selman Library. During our whole renovation project, it's been known as the Selman Library. The reason we're having such a lengthy name is we need to keep our branch code to be DC so that it streamlines the process of changing the name. Makes it a lot easier. I yield back, Madam Chair.

Any other remarks or questions? All right, we're excited.

Thank you.

Our next item, approval of a contract with Bartow Paving LLC in the amount of $1,090,284.38 in connection with the PI 0020661 State Route 166 at Chapel Hill Road roundabout project pursuant to ITB 26-022 to be funded by SPLOST 2022 fund and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review. Settlement. Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Board of Commissioners, and County Administration. State Route 166 at Chapel Hill Roundabout is a SPLOST 2016 and 2022 project that proposes a roundabout at the intersection. The project aims to address the rising congestion and safety concerns. With that, we have, upon advertisement, we've received seven responses with a range of 1.09 million, the current bidder, a barter paving being the lowest and the highest in the vicinity of $2 million. Therefore, with the bid process successfully completed, we're recommending this contract for your approval. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Okay, thank you so much. Any questions forward? All right, no questions.

We have a clerk. Our next item, approval of a task order with KCI Inc. in the amount of $33,031.68 to be funded by SPLOST 2016 for construction support services of PI 0020661 State Route 166 at Chapel Hill Road Roundabout Project and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review. Solomon Ronan.

KCI served as our prime designer for this project. Therefore, we're requesting your approval to extend their contract to support the construction services as engineer of record to address any RFIs that may be needed. Recommending your approval. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Any questions for what? OK, no questions.

The next one, approval of a consultant services agreement with Atlas Technical Consultants, LLC, in connection with PI0019889, Lee Road Extension Project, in the amount of $133,375 to be funded by SPLOST 2016 and 80% reimbursed by federal funds pursuant to solicitation number 26-011 and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review. Salaam.

A Lee Road extension project that proposes an extension between Fairburn and Bomar Road, terminating with a roundabout at Pope Road and Bomar Road intersection, has successfully completed the design process, and we are now in right-of-way acquisition phase. To kickstart that phase, we required appraisal services and legal services, and that's what you'll see on today's agenda. Upon advertisement for our appraisal needs, we received three responses, and Atlas was deemed the lowest and most responsive bidder on that, and we're recommending your approval on this contract. The scope covers 26 appraisal reports and 10 specialty reports to really understand what the fair market values may be for those acquisitions. Recommending your approval.

OK any questions for.

Managing director. I'm next one approval to award on call pavement marking contracts to peak pavement markings and typical traffic solutions pursuant to I TV dash 2, 6, dash 0, 1, 5 with no impact to the budget and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review.

Madam Chair, every year DOT Traffic Operations utilizes its annual budget to perform striping, maintenance striping and preventive striping throughout the county limits. Our budget is between $180,000 to $200,000 that allows us to address 10 to 15 miles of striping across the county. We retain on-call vendors so that our services may be expedited. Upon advertisement, we received four responses, and via cost analysis, we determined that Peak and Tidwell will be the most cost-effective options for our annual needs. Therefore, we're recommending your approval on this on-call contract. Thank you.

What triggers them being called out what is that you know step or what requires them to be called out.

Thank you for that question. We've gone around the infrastructure needs across the county and built our priority list similar to our roads, our signage. We have one for striping and we've ranked it between A being the best and F being the failing roads. So what we do is we just go down the list and address the most needy roads with striping upgrades. If, let's say, for example, our budget is approved, FY2027 starts, we create our list and start issuing work orders. And we'll address them in batches, so we're not doing all 10 miles in one go, but we'll spread them off in quarters. Most of it is done between second and third quarter because of favorable weather conditions.

OK and I'm assuming like you said there is a list of this where or just want to find out we can get a copy of this so we know what you know residents are asking they're saying paving going to stripe and going that we just had a visibility.

Yes, Sir, we have that ready. I'll share one after the meeting right. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I'm sure you before back to you.

All right, thank you so much, Commissioner Raxton. Any other questions? Manager and Director, at some point, maybe a year, two years ago, we received some funding from the state for pavement markings and stripings. Is my memory on point?

No, Madam Chair, that is correct. I think it was between 2024 and 2025 when the state offered us funding through their OSS program. It is a safety initiative that funds signing, striping, or any other components of infrastructure that improve safety. Luckily, we were able to send our project list to the state. They handled the entire delivery of it, so we did not have to provide any matches or be involved in delivery, and all of our priorities were addressed.

Very good. Thank you.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you so much, managing director.

Is it another one? Yes. Now he's got let's see one more.

Twenty two.

Twenty two. Approval of an agreement with Dyer, Westbridge, Argo P.C. to solicitation number twenty six zero one three in connection with P.I. 0, 0, 1, 9, 8, 8, 9, Lee road extension project in the amount of 62,000, $850 to be funded by spots, 2016 with 80% to be reimbursed by federal funds and authorize the chairman to sign our related documents. Solomon Rama.

Madam Chair, this relates to the same project we just discussed, which is Lee Road Extension. We discussed the appraisal services that would be performed by Atlas. Along with those appraisal services, there are legal services required for title searches, closing, and contingency services, depending on how those negotiations go. Upon advertisement, we received four responses. Dyer's Rust Bridge was the most cost-effective option, and we're recommending your approval. for the contract, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Any questions? Okay. No questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Managing Director Rana. Thank you.

Our next item, approval of pro bill to perform an annual inspection and certification of the Douglas County Fire Department Training Center in the amount of $6,500 to be funded by the fire department budget and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review. Chief Allen.

Good morning, madam chair, commissioners kind of administration. Yes, we're looking at approval to have these annual inspections and certifications for training center are tower to be inspected.

Okay, the question is for.

Next one approval of the Douglas County fire EMS department and one 800 board up of Georgia to enter into a memorandum of understanding to provide emergency services for manmade and natural disasters with no impact to the fire department budget and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review chief Allen.

Yes, we're looking at recommending this approval for 1-800-BOARDUP, the MOU. 1-800-BOARDUP is a company that comes out after an incident, a fire incident at home. They come up and they basically secure that home to prevent people from going in and to help the residents of that home to be whole later on down the road.

Okay.

Any questions for Commissioner Kenneth Jones? You have the floor.

I was looking over this MOU and my first question is what is the benefit to the county for partnering with this organization?

Well, it helps us for when a home is pretty much destroyed. The benefit is it just allows the communication between us and the community to know that their home is going to be secured once 1-800-BORNUP comes out and provides the security for the home.

And I assume that there are multiple organizations that provide the same or similar services? Yes, ma'am. Did this go out through a procurement process or was there a bid that was open to the public for all of the companies to be able to have the opportunity to get recommended as this company?

So there's no bidding process because there's no cost to us. I don't know if it need to go out, but the next item is a similar one for the same thing.

And I would assume that there is a cost associated, though, to the customer, like the resident that is receiving this service.

Well, the company will reach out to their insurance companies to make them whole in that sense as far as whatever insurance is based on their home.

Director Choice, can you come up?

Good morning.

Do we know what the procurement process is if the county is going to be recommending a specific service provider to residents.

no we don't have anything that i know of that actually addresses that we only have things that address the issue of whether or not it's going to cost the county some type of money so if there's a funding involved then we follow our procurement process however just making a recommendation to the citizens we don't have anything in our procurement policy that

And I'm asking, and we probably should, because I know that at least in 2011, the city of Augusta got in trouble for a very similar MOU setup because there are several other companies that provide the same service, but the county has elected to only recommend one of those. And so I don't want to have... an issue where we have agreed that this is who we're going to tell or refer to residents, but then other contractors that provide the same service never had the opportunity to be that bitted service.

I understand.

Madam Chair, I yield back. OK. Any other questions?

OK. Vice Chair, you have the floor.

I understand what Commissioner Kenner-Jones is stating on this. But two, maybe we want to look at this a little bit different. Because like the Sheriff's Office, whenever they need to have a car towed, there is a rotation. of multiple companies, and those companies are on rotation. One like that entire week, and then the next week it's a different record company. So that might be a different approach that we need to look at with this. So that such as Paul Davis, or ServPro, or this 1-800 board, they all get an opportunity to provide the service to the citizens of Douglas County. I think that might be a different approach. And I believe that's what my fellow commissioner is trying to get to on that point. And I yield back, Madam Chair.

OK. Madam Attorney, County Attorney, you wiggled the mic

thank you madam chair some we will research this it's interesting that vice chair Alcaraz had that same example because in talking to commissioner I can or Jones this morning about her concerns that the same example I gave so we can research this if the board is not prepared to put this on consent and get back to you about a different approach maybe with procurement to have other companies provided they exist and are interested in providing the service to the citizens.

Mission rexton you have the floor.

All right. Thank you. So along those lines, I guess one of the things that I was confused with I just want to clarify was the difference services that were provided by one 800 board up and Paul Davis restoration are there any differences because looking at the mo use they were almost identical.

They're pretty much the same. There's really no difference. It's almost like when you have American Red Cross come out, you know, providing blankets, things of that nature. 1-800-BOARDUP, Paul Davis, they do the same thing with regards to a fire in someone's home or someone's business. They come out and they'll actually secure that business or that resident. and get with the homeowners and look at their options as far as if they have insurance and reaching out to their insurance companies to help them become whole later on down the road.

Because looking at the MOU, it appears that you know for both of them there was item number 10 that was not included and I just want to see if there was anything that was missing in the MOU item number 10 for both okay I don't have in front of me so I apologize for that okay all right well again as was mentioned I would also recommend that we pull this from consent agenda tomorrow and put this on the new business this item okay I'm sure that I yield the floor back okay any Commissioner Mitchell

yeah just just one so so that i'm clear you're you guys are recommending 1-800 board up however it's up to that citizen or that business or whomever else as to what they use correct this is not something that's that we're we're just either recommending it or saying here's um Is there a way to have did this the same way, however, included the other 10? I don't know how many it was. here's a list of folks that can board up your property in the event that was a fire that you need to board it up. Could it have been easily done that way so that that'll get us out of the realm of being specifically notified, getting you to notify 1-800-BOARD-UP. Just a question about.

So it's not mandatory for the citizen to use 1-800-BOARD-UP. Okay. We use 1-800-BOARDUP and Paul Davis, if approved, to come out there for the immediacy. So if something happens right then and there, we want to get that taken care of. We want to get their homes secured right then and there. So there will be a list of different companies that will come out, and Paul Davis and 1-800-BOARDUP are those companies. do that we looked at and that's somebody that you guys have become more associated with based on these types of situations correct correct um there's not go ahead i'm sorry no and and at that point in time there's no commitment amongst uh no commitment on the on the citizens to actually use any additional services that 1-800 board or paul davis would provide

Got it. But they'll have that option to say, yes, go ahead and board up my home, 1-800-BOARD-UP, or no, I'm going to call whoever else incorporated.

I mean, it's their home. They don't actually have to, you know, they're not forced to use these companies.

And as you, I mean, as the fire chief, This is just your recommendation, but hey, homeowner, business, or whomever else, you can use whomever you so choose. Yes, sir. Okay. And I guess that's probably why Anthony is, I mean, Mr. Choice is saying we don't bid that out because there's not a cost associated with what you do. You're just trying to get someone... to to get on the job and secure the business secure the home secure whatever that is and here's the person that can kind of get that done for you if you so choose yes sir okay i think anthony behind yeah and if i may if i may commissioners um we definitely our deputy director is on it now we definitely will look into it and uh make a recommendation to the chief to make make a recommendation to you all so we definitely were looking into it right now to see what is the best avenue it may be to create something to where there is a rotational or you know just say hey we might not need to get into this all together right just just to let you guys know we are looking into it right or could it have been just announce them all here are five firms or five companies that could board your home up you decide on because again we're not getting into the cost we're not getting into how how well they are or we're not we're not actually recommending someone that we don't even do business with other than they're doing business with you.

And that's the avenue that we're looking at right now is just kind of taking ourselves out of the recommendation phase. Right, right. But again, we will come back and let you guys know.

Okay, okay.

So hopefully we'll have an answer this afternoon to present to you all for tomorrow. You got it.

Thank you. Okay, Chief. Okay, Mr. Choice. Appreciate it. I yield back, Madam Chair.

All right. Thank you so much for your permission. okay commissioner kenna jones you have the floor and i will say even though the mou is not listed as a recommendation i think as a county we need to be mindful of the imbalance of power between the fire department and the average citizen and if you are giving them information about a specific company it can be seen as that is what the county or what the fire department is recommending and again i don't want us to have any issues with somebody saying they didn't have the opportunity to generate revenue for their own business or if something goes wrong and they're not happy with the work that this particular company came up with that they're now looking at the county or the board of commissioners saying why did you recommend this because that is how people would perceive or could perceive something like that so I appreciate you Director Choice for looking into that and making sure that we do this the most appropriate way. I'm sure you're back there. Thank you so much, commissioner Jones.

All right. Any other questions for. And I know that there are some that we may be contemplating whether this appears on the agenda tomorrow or is there any room for delay to make sure that everything is but none before comes to be more this board. Director choice as well, I know you researching that we don't want to rush it want to make sure that. I was going to make a recommendation to table those yes, I think that's what we're doing just to give you a little time she's.

So their action wouldn't be to table? They just won't appear on tomorrow's agenda? Right, they just won't appear. They won't be on consent, and they won't be on new business. They just won't be on the agenda at all, and you'll see them again once the research is complete.

Right, correct. That's what I'm requesting.

Okay.

I think the same is going to be true for number 25.

Yes. Chief okay, I'm going to 26 please stop.

I'll remove 24 and 25 just get you but no number 26 approval to enter into a cooperative a quick equipment agreement with Georgia forestry Commission to provide the O. D. firefighter property for the purpose of fire suppression and fire prevention but no impact to the fire department budget and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review chief Allen.

so we're looking for approval uh to get into this agreement with the georgia forestry commission when we have wildfires or when we have brush fires georgia forestry comes out and they bring heavy equipment to kind of move vegetation around so a portion of that is allowing them to loan us the equipment to help us to do that okay any questions forward all right we're gonna

Madam Clerk.

OK. The next item, approval of an employment contract with Molly Cooper as an assistant public defender for state court to fill a vacant position already approved in the budget and authorize the chairman to sign all related documents pending final legal review. Monica Miles.

Good morning board. Good morning. So basically as it reads we have a vacant position for an attorney to work in state court and we're asking for approval to fill the position and to approve a contract for Molly Cooper.

Okay, any questions for? Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. All right, any other remarks board before I tap on the shoulders of our amazing county attorney? Okay, Commissioner Kenna Jones, you have the floor.

madam commissioner I just want to take a very brief second to acknowledge deputy Campbell who passed away this past week at 88 years old anybody who has worked in the Douglas County courthouse for any period of time knows mr. Campbell and knew him personally he has been a or had been a sheriff's deputy for almost double my age at this point and loved absolutely every single day of it. I remember when he retired and left from being a bailiff at the courthouse and so it's just very sad weekend for the residents of Douglas County. I yield back.

Could we have a moment of silence for Deputy Campbell? Any other? okay please if we could just have a moment of silence for him as well he's really had a major impact on our county okay thank you all right I'm going to miss his smiling face. All right, we're going to move on. Certainly, Madam County Attorney, do we need to go into executive session for litigation, personnel, real estate, and cybersecurity? Do we need to go into executive session?

Yes, ma'am. Okay.

With that being said, citizens of Douglas County and our staff, of course, the Board of Commissioners and I will be taking them on. calls to go into executive session. And we will return momentarily. Board of Commissioners, with that being said, do we have a motion to go into executive session?

So moved. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please indicate by raising your right hand. Oh, wait a minute. You can vote now. I'm so sorry.

I got ahead of you, Madam Clerk.

That's OK.

I got my hand up.

Okay. Motion carries 5-0.

We have a 5-0 unanimous vote and the motion carries. All right, Board of Commissioners, I'll see you all upstairs.