Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Right.

I feel your passion. Yes. So thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate all of the insights that you shared. And I look forward to hearing more and maybe potentially tasting some of the items from your garden one day.

Yeah.

All right. Thank you so much, Mr. Edwards. So that has been another episode of Experience Fulton, Experience Fulton Healthy Aging. And we thank you so much for tuning in and look forward to you joining us again next time.

When I think about what has the power to change the world It could all be said with just one word Kindness What if we lived with a heart of kindness What if we loved like we've been loved If that's all that we're remembered for Well let that be enough So when they stand and tell the stories Of who we are and what we've done Of a thousand things that we could leave behind us What if we lived with a heart of kindness? What if we loved like we belong? If that's all that we're remembered for, we'll let that word be kindness.

In a time full of war, be peace. In a time full of doubt, just believe. Yeah, there ain't that much difference between you and me In a time full of war, be at peace In a place that needs change, make a difference In a time full of noise, just listen Cause life is but a breeze, better live it In a place that needs a change, make a difference

I want you to sing to me in that voice that whispers my name.

If the world was a dance floor I'd walk you shore to shore While the steel and twin fiddles play A love song that goes on forever For worse and for better We'll two-step together And I'll hold you closer

Amen. Amen. you Amen. you Amen. you you

or a written transcript of this meeting, or if you need reasonable accommodations, including this communication in an alternative format due to disability, please contact the clerk to the commission's office at 404-612-8232.

All right, good morning everyone and welcome to the second regular meeting of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. Today is August 19th, 2026, it is 10.03 AM. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Chairman Rob Pitts. Present. Commissioner Bridget Thorne. Present. Commissioner Bob Ellis.

Present.

Commissioner Dana Barrett. Present. Commissioner Marvin Arrington, Jr. Vice Chair Khadijah Abdul-Rahman.

Present.

Mr. Chairman, have a forum.

Please rise for the invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let us pray. Almighty God, we give thanks for this day for your continued grace and mercy upon our lives. We pray now your blessing upon those who are here. Bless those who serve. Continue now, Lord, to give us your strength. It is in your name that we humbly pray. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Now one more time, people always ask, why do you go so fast? There's no comma after under God. Continue, Madam Clerk.

On page two, consent agenda, 260469, adoption of the consent agenda. All matters listed on the consent agenda are considered routine by the county commission and will be enacted by one motion. No separate discussion will take place on these items. If discussion of any consent agenda item is desired, the item will be moved to the second regular meeting agenda for separate consideration.

Anything, Madam Clerk?

I don't have anything. I do. Sir.

I'm sorry.

Yes, I'd like to remove. Mr. Van. Thank you. I'd like to remove 26-0471. It is on page three, top of page three, 26-0471 for separate consideration.

Okay, anything else? I entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended.

And the vote is open.

Our motion to approve the consent agenda as amended by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. On page seven, 260493, adoption of the second regular meeting agenda. Mr. Chairman and members of the board, we have amendments to today's agenda. Items to be revised. First item is on page seven, 260495, Presentation of proclamations and certificates. We're amending the title of a proclamation recognizing National Council of Negro Women South Fulton Area Section Charter Day sponsored by Commissioner Arrington and Vice Chair Abdulrahman. Second item to be revised is on page 11. 260511. Real estate and asset management. This item is amended to change, amended the requested action. It should read request approval to close out a contract for janitorial services for Fulton County Government Center and Justice Center facilities. And a total amount not to exceed $755,251. The amount has also been amended. All right, anything else?

And we also have an item to be moved up on page 12, 260517, senior services.

That presentation of the senior transportation services assessment, that item has been requested to be heard after item 260497 on page eight.

Okay.

And that's all I have.

Commissioners, any items? If not, I'll entertain a motion to adopt the agenda as amended. Motion to do so by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. 260494, ratification of minutes, first regular post-agenda minutes, August 5th, 2026.

All right, motion to approve by Vice Chair, Dr. Rockman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. 260495, presentation of proclamation and certificates. The first proclamation is recognizing National Breastfeeding Month sponsored by Chairman Pitts with full board support.

Hey there. Chairman Pitts would like me to read it. I guess he doesn't want to talk about national breastfeeding. Yes, yes, so come on down, come on down here. Thank you. Whereas every year August is recognized nationwide as National Breastfeeding Month, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, WIC, uses this time to raise awareness about the benefits of human milk and increase support for nursing mothers. And whereas the goal of the Fulton County Board of Health's WIPP program is to protect the health of families by providing wholesome, nourishing food, health education, and referrals to address medical needs, and whereas this federal program was created to reduce food insecurity and to help establish good habits which are vital for adequate child growth and development. The program serves pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding women, as well as infants, children under the age of five who have nutritional need. And whereas studies have found that WIC saves lives and improves the health of nutritionally at-risk women, infants, and children. Research proves that WIC is one of the most successful and cost-effective nutrition programs in the nation. And whereas the Fulton County Board of Health through its WIC program helps to reduce fetal deaths and infant mortality, reduces low birth weight rates and increases the duration of pregnancy, improves the growth of nutritionally at-risk infants and children, improves the dietary intake of pregnant and postpartum women, and significantly improves children's diets and helps get them ready to start school by improving their intellectual development. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners hereby commends the Fulton County Board of Health for its commitment to supporting women, infants, and children to help improve their overall health and well-being, and hereby proclaims August 2026 as National Breastfeeding Month in Fulton County, Georgia. Thank you for the work you guys do.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Felicia Chin Morrison. I'm the Nutrition Services Director. Nutrition Services Director for Fulton County WIC and I'm accompanied here today with Raven Dove Dargan. She's our District Breastfeeding Coordinator and Holly Ireland our District Program Director. To the Board of Commissioners on behalf of the Fulton County Health WIC program, thank you. We extend our sincere gratitude to the Fulton County Board of Commissioners for recognizing National Breastfeeding Month and honoring the important work being done to promote, protect, and and support breastfeeding in our community. This proclamation is a meaningful acknowledgement of the vital role breastfeeding plays in improving the health and well-being of women, infants, families, and communities throughout Fulton County. The recognition of National Breastfeeding Month by Fulton County highlights the importance of creating a community in which families feel informed, respected, and supported in their infant feeding decisions. It also recognizes the dedicated WIC professionals, healthcare providers, community partners, breastfeeding advocates, and families who work together to improve maternal and child health. Again, we are deeply grateful for Fulton County for this proclamation and for recognizing breastfeeding as an important public health priority. This honor strengthens our commitment in ensuring that every family, regardless of their income, has access to nutrition education and breastfeeding support they need to give their children a healthy start in life.

And I just want to give a shout out to the work you do. We recently opened 4700 North Point Parkway Health and Human Services Building. So I get a chance up north to walk by almost every day your office and see the people that you serve and all the people that you serve in the community, especially up in North Fulton. So thank you for the work that you guys do.

The next proclamation is recognizing Emergency Management Appreciation Month sponsored by Commissioner Thorne with full board support.

It's me again. Hi again. Good to see you again. I am delighted to be here today to present a proclamation honoring our emergency management staff and leadership. Last week I had the pleasure of paying them a visit and going on a tour of the emergency management headquarters right here in this building, alongside with a bipartisan group of legislators. And we were deeply impressed with what we saw. While their work may not be visible, we actually hide them in the depths of this building with no windows and everything. And they're not as visible as our police department and the other public safety agencies that you see is absolutely essential in keeping our community safe. The dedication of this team ensures that when a disaster strikes a comprehensive plan across the entire county keeps our communities safe.

So I wanted to thank you guys for your commitment.

I want to thank you for all the work. I'm sorry that we don't recognize you more often, but it gives me great pleasure to present this proclamation. Whereas the Atlanta Fulton County Emergency Management Agency, AFCEMA, is the lead county organization responsible for providing coordination and management of preparedness, response, recovery, prevention, and mitigation activities within Fulton County. And whereas local emergency managers, Across all sectors, community leaders, state governments, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, dedicate countless hours to developing preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation programs to protect the lives and property of all persons living in the United States and U.S. territories. And whereas emergency managers across the United States and U.S. territories are charged with establishing and maintaining the capabilities necessary to effectively direct, coordinate, and support emergency and disaster response and recovery efforts. And whereas the mission areas of prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery align with the core capabilities identified in the National Preparedness Goal, And whereas the emergency managers serve the nation by responding to countless emergencies and disasters each year, demonstrating commitment, compassion, and professionalism in protecting the public. And whereas the efforts of our nation's emergency managers have helped millions of community members across the United States recover, rebuild, and become more resilient in the face of adversity, Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Fulton County Board of Commissioner commends the dedicated emergency management professionals and partners whose service leadership and commitment helps safeguard and strengthen our community and does hereby proclaim the month of August 2026 as National Emergency Management Awareness Month in Fulton County, Georgia. And I just want to comment that it's appropriate that this month we recognize them. They just went through all the FIFA World Cup this recently, and Atlanta proved itself that we are a safe community and we can put on worldwide stage events here in Atlanta, Georgia. So thank you.

I'll make it brief, I promise. After 40 days of working straight during the World Cup, I think we're all still trying to recover a little bit on that. I'm incredibly proud of our emergency management team. The work they do is often behind the scenes. We are way behind the scenes sometimes, located where there's no windows and no way for us to see outside. So it makes us a very close team after spending 40 days together, for sure. They work long hours solving problems under heavy amounts of pressure, always keeping the safety of the community in mind first. This award is just a reflection of what the team has accomplished, and I'm very grateful and blessed to have a team like this. So thank you so much for the recognition and the award. Thank you.

some things that we could leave behind us but if we lived with all of kindness what if we loved like we've been loved if that's all that we're remembered for well let that word be

In a time full of war, there won't be peace In a time full of doubt, just move Yeah, there ain't that much difference between you and me In a time full of war, there won't be peace In a place that needs change, you make a difference

time full of noise just listen cause life is but a breeze in a place that needs to change

Don't hide in the dark. You were born to shine.

In a world full of hate, be alive.

If love was a melody, I'd want you to sing to me in that voice that whispers my name. If the world was a dance floor, I'd walk you shore to shore while the steel and twin fiddles play.

The love song that goes on forever.

Three, two, one.

This is the... signing of our T-SPOS agreement. This is the third of a five-year agreement, and this one will amount to some right under $700 million to be used for transportation purposes for our 15 cities.

As someone has stated earlier, this is

France efforts such as Convoy of Care across Georgia and Stuff the Bus throughout the metro area have dynamically rallied Georgians to deliver disaster relief and school supplies to children and families in desperate need, strengthening WSB-TV's mission to make a meaningful difference across the region it serves. Now, therefore, be resolved that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners recognize the 40th anniversary of WSB TV's family to family program for 40 years of extraordinary community leadership, dedicated public service, and strengthening the fabric of families across Georgia. And does hereby proclaim Wednesday, August 19th, 2026 as family to family 40th anniversary day in Fulton County, Georgia. Please put your hands together for such a wonderful program. And I am so honored to bring this young lady on to accept this proclamation.

Thank you so much for this proclamation. WSB for more than 40 years, 70 plus, but who's counting, has always believed in using the powerful platform of broadcasting for good. Every employee wakes up every day to figure out how we can positively impact the communities we serve. So thank you so much for this proclamation. We appreciate it. We look forward to 40 more years, and we believe in always erring on the side of angels. I would like to recognize Condis Presley for her leadership and thank her for guiding this important initiative day after day, weekends, holidays, et cetera. So thank you, Condis, and to all the employees and faces of WSB, and thank you very much for this recognition.

You've got to say family to family. Come on. You've got to say that. Come on.

Well, good morning, everyone. As our general manager, Marian Pittman, said, we do work every day to err on the side of angels. And we just want to thank the Board of Commissioners for the opportunity to serve in this community, always working each and every day to deliver community coverage you can count on. Thank you very much.

Now I feel very special.

The last proclamation is recognizing National Council of Negro Women South Fulton Area Section Charter.

Don't start, Chairman. Do not start.

Do not start. Commissioner Arrington and Vice Chair at Dual Rock Mine.

Okay. Can y'all come down from the right, please, if possible? Oh, I'm sorry. Leaving off, leaving off. Come on, come on, come on. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The Chairman threw me off. My sisters in my chapter, please join me. Today is a great day in Fulton County. The co-sponsor of this, Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr., unfortunately couldn't be here today. We're going to lift him up in prayer. He had surgery, and we're praying that that goes well for him. But other than that, he would have been here. These beautiful, beautiful ladies with the black and the purple flower are all my sisters from the South Fulton chapter. So ladies, come in and tighten up for picture purposes. Now, see, any other time, the chairman cannot be found. And he's right here next to me. But I'm gonna ask, I see Madam President, you're next to me, but if I can get the granddaughter of our fearless leader, Mary McLeod Bethune, right here next to me, I really would appreciate it. All righty, and as I go into this, I am so proud, but one of the things that I wanna do, and the chairman is just gonna have to wait, is when people do great work, I want them to have their flowers while they're living. So on behalf

of Vice Chair and Chairman Pitts.

He didn't pay for them, he just wanted me to put my name on them. I want to give you your flowers, and you have a great team, Madam President, but I only had so much money, y'all. Don't start. But I do have something for everybody else. The National Council of Negro Women Incorporated, NCNW, was founded in 1935 by Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune and is comprised of over 350 members. campus and community-based sections, and 37 national women's organizations that enlightens, inspires, and connects more than two million women. I will say that again, connects more than two million women and men with a mission to lead, advocate for, and empower women of African descent, their families, and communities. And whereas on June 18th, 2026, The South Fulton area section of NCNW was chartered and the official chartering ceremony being held on August 23rd, 2026 at Southwest Art Center with 153 charter members. The organizing members of this new charter are Tiffany Morris, Tenetra Barrett, Elnetta, I hope I'm pronouncing that correct, Mitchell, Gloria Johnson, and Marilyn Francois Glass. And whereas the South Fulton area section consists of dynamic, as you can tell, and phenomenal women with a diversity of talents and resources who participate in key community events, all while focusing on the four core areas of this national organization, economic empowerment, education, health and social justice. And whereas the NCNW programs are grounded on a foundation of critical concerns that are now NCNW priorities that promote education, encourages entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and economic stability, educates women about health and access to healthcare, and promotes civic engagement and advocates for sound public policy and social justice. It is with immense pride that now therefore be resolved that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners congratulate the new South Fulton area section of the National Negro Council of Women and does hereby proclaim Sunday, August 23rd, 2026 as National Council of Negro Women South Fulton. Area Section Charter Day in Fulton County. Please put your hands together for such a wonderful group. And the next two voices you will hear, we will bring on the President, Tiffany Morris, and we'll bring on the granddaughter of Mary McLeod Bethune. Please, Madam President.

Good morning, good morning, Chairman Pence and members of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. Again, I'm Tiffany Morris, president of the National Council of Negro Women South Fulton Area Section. And on behalf of 153 members, I extend a heartfelt gratitude to Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. and co-sponsor Vice Chair Khadijah Abdur Rahman for recognizing this historic moment in our journey. The National Council of Negro Women's mission is to lead, advocate for women of African descent and their families and communities. And as we prepare to fully charter, we accept this proclamation not only as an honor, but as a charge, a charge to lead, to advocate, and most importantly, to serve. We are proud to plant another NCNW flag of service here in Fulton County while carrying forward the extraordinary legacy of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, our founder. And it is especially fitting today that her legacy is present with us, not only in spirit, but through her granddaughter and one of our own South Fulton area section sisters. So it is my honor to turn it over to Dr. Evelyn Bethune.

Good morning and to all of those who are in charge of everything. We thank you for this moment. Each time I do something of this nature, it is just a reminder of the legacy that still continues to produce fruit. So it's important where we stand and the positions that we take and how we love on each other. That's what my grandmother did. Every institution that she set her hand to is still functioning today. Bethune-Cookman is still producing fruit. NCNW is intergenerationally producing fruit. Here I am at 74 hanging out with young folks. Imagine that. But that's what my grandmother was about. It was about making sure that we are civically responsible and that we continue to move forward because it takes all of us to make it work. All of us standing together, loving on each other, being kind, and doing the work. Doesn't matter how much you pray if you don't get up and do the work. And so, NCNW has the receipts. We do the work. So join us. We're happy to be here. And South Fulton is where I live. So it's where I spend my time, my money, my energy. And until I turn to dust, I'll keep doing the work. Thank you.

Come on, brother. Madam Clerk, continue please.

Continuing on page seven, public hearings, 260496, public comment. Citizens wishing to participate in public comment will be allowed to appear in person or may choose to participate virtually via Zoom video conferencing by registering on the county website, www.fultoncountyga.gov. Priority for public comment will be given to Fulton County citizens and those individuals representing businesses or organizations located within Fulton County. Speakers will be granted up to two minutes each. The public will not be allowed to yield or donate time to other speakers. The public comment portion of the meeting will not exceed 60 minutes. In the event the 60 minute time limit is reached prior to public comments being completed, public comment will be suspended and the business portion of the BOC meeting will commence. Public comment will resume at the end of the meeting. Mr. Chairman and members of the board, we will start with the speakers here in Assembly Hall. We have received six speaker cards. Will all six speakers please come forward? Lisa Jones, Denisha Dorr, Harrison Chapman, Carmella Carrington, Maria Guardio, and LA Pink.

Good morning, commissioners.

My name is Lisa Jones and I am a resident of District 6 and I am here to speak with you about Libra's paw print and what it represents. Libra is a court case dog who was a victim of animal cruelty. Libra spent 756 days in shelter custody at a cost of $20,000 in taxpayer dollars. His case is resolved, and ultimately Libro was deemed not placeable due to his length of stay, and he was euthanized. And you'll have to forgive me because this is a little emotional because I fostered Libra. But I'm not here to talk to you on an emotional basis. I am here to talk to you about $20,000 and what we have to show for it. And it's a paw print. Libra is not an isolated case. When I came to speak to you in June, we had over 20,000 court case days accrued in the shelter at a taxpayer cost of over $500,000. And to be clear, Major Dwyer with the Fulton County Police Department and Manager Lawton with the Animal Control Division have busted their buns to get these numbers down. They have worked on field surrenders. They have worked these cases every day. But they don't have a standard legal trigger. We have been asking for over two years for the board to enact something. We need a cost of care petition for every court case that comes through the shelter. We need to look and examine these court cases at whatever the board deems fit, whether it's 90 days, 120 days, to figure out an automatic legal review, whether it's because the defendants have done a no-show and we could use a motion to dispose after two non-appearances, whatever it takes to not have these animals sit and suffer with taxpayer-funded cruelty. Libra's case ended with a paw print, and it doesn't need to be this way. We know the problem.

He didn't notice. He didn't say nothing about it. You guys got to pay attention.

One moment. Hold on.

Good morning. My name is Tanisha Dorr. Two days ago, I stood before Atlanta City Council and told them that Fulton County is right about something. Thirty years of public investment should not move forward without clear projects, measurable outcomes, protections, and accountability. Investment cannot move faster than protection. I held Atlanta accountable for this side. Today, I am here to hold Fulton County to the same standard. Fulton has emphasized more than 413 million contributed through Atlanta TAD since 2013. That belongs on the ledger. So does the return. The tax-based growth, the investment leverage, the revenue returning as districts close, The communities that benefited and those that did not. So put the contributions and the return before the public together. Accountability cannot mean calculating what community investment costs without also calculating the disinvestment costs. And that brings me to the jail. Fulton has authorized up to 1.3 billion in financing for jail capital improvements. People incarcerated deserve safe and humane conditions. But Fulton also says it believes in diversion and behavioral health intervention. then those priorities should be reflected with the same seriousness. Do not make incarceration structurally secure while prevention remains structurally fragile. Fulton helped build and fund the diversion system. The documentation I have provided shows why past care navigation, legal navigation, re-engagement, post-arrest continuity, and long-term stabilization must be protected within it. A building is not a diversion system. A referral is not stabilization. So my position is clear. Put tag contributions and returns on the same public ledger. Pay long-term jail investment with a long-term funded prevention and diversity strategy. Protect continuity of care across contracts and institutions. I brought Atlantis its responsibilities before I came here with yours. I am not choosing size. I am applying one standard. Invest early, protect people, measure the return. That standard belongs on both sides of Prior Street. Thank you.

All right, good morning. My name is Harrison Chapman. I'm a ninth grader headed to Woodbury Forest School this fall, and I'm here to talk about the topic of mass surveillance in Fulton County. 28,626. This is the current number of cameras wired into Atlanta's surveillance system network as of this July. most of them being license plate readers feeding into a database any officer at thousands of agencies nationwide can search, and it's not slowing down. This month alone, Invest Atlanta improved $536,000 for 33 new cameras, and the Atlanta Police Foundation added $1.2 million for 75 more. But the results are not there. FBI data shows homicide clearance fell from 53.4% in 2021 to 48% in 2025. The exact years this network grew eightfold. Meanwhile, the police chief claimed a 77.55% clearance rate at a press conference. The department has never explained that gap and we were promised safety in exchange for privacy, but we have seen a percentage that we cannot verify and our privacy should never be sacrificed for safety that is barely there. I'm not saying to tear these networks down. These cameras have found stolen cars and kidnapped children. However, There's a difference between a tool with the limit defined by the people and a machine expanding by default because no one told it to stop. So here's what I'm proposing. A hard stop on expansion until every camera is justified and hard limits on data retention and a public vote on future expansion and a public ledger of what we're paying for. And we cannot keep the tool, but we must reject, I mean, no, we can keep the tool, but we must reject unjust mass surveillance. Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning, my name is Carmella Charrington. I flew in this morning from Bethesda, New York. My father has been kidnapped from probate court with Honorable Kenya Johnson. My father has been in New York for over three years. We have went back and forth with probate court in regards to the abuse that my father has been experiencing. They have tried to eliminate all of his asses without any petition or anything. Our property was illegally stolen in Befit Stuyvesant under Luann Bonnie. We started A whole action stopped the theft. It was due to the courts. We did everything. We petitioned. We let everyone know what was going on. And we asked for help from every aspect. I was locked up for six days in Rikers Island because there was a habeas corpus for my father to be presented illegally. There was no guardian in the state of New York for this to even be administrated. But the two judges collided together to put this fake habeas corpus against us, had a warrant out for my father, which was illegal, abducted him off of the street in Brooklyn, New York, put him in an ambulance, put him in the hospital, held him in the Marriott Hotel, and then called DSH, Asian Services, here in Georgia to escort him back to Georgia. So we're asking you, I have at least 10 families that's been affected under the probate court under Kenyon Johnson. We are asking you to do something about it. We are asking you. There's a whole bunch of families. Thank you.

So as you guys can see, we are ruffling feathers left and right because the unmarked cars and the funny phone calls have started. But a couple of things on the list. Let's talk about the escape. You guys call it escape. We call it a let free. There was two officers that asked the young man what he had on, why did he still have his uniform on, and let him walk right out the door. To the public, you guys put it out as an escape. That's not an escape. That's a release. So let's get that straight. But because of the incompetence of the sheriff that we have in office right now that is a de facto officer, let's keep that in mind because he has not been re-sworn in on this new assurity bond. So until you guys fix that, you're going to be uphold for it. Then you have another case with Tigger's wife. Ms. Brown, her situation is the same as mine. Isn't it funny how you guys just honor black women, but they continue to drive us in the dirt? The sheriff attacked her just the way he attacked me, with the false TPO, false warrants. getting involved with stuff that he has no jurisdiction to. But isn't it funny how we continue to talk about he needs a new jail. We can't make this stuff up, y'all. We gotta get it together. As we continue to ask you guys and continue to bring you issues after issues after issues, we are asking today for you guys to do an emergency, we need an emergency called to the governor. We need an emergency because right now we need an investigation on this sheriff. His abuse of power has to stop. You guys are going to continue and he's going to cost one of our lives because the warrant that he put out for her and the TPO he put out for me could cost both of us our lives had we been stopped and not caught it in time.

Hello, my name is Maggie Goon, woman, and I am running for District 1 Commissioner against busy tolls because everything is her fault.

No, it's not.

Shut up, Mrs. Hands. This is Mrs. Hands. She's my friend. First, I want to thank Dana Barrett because she gives me papers and words before every meeting and tells me what to say. Sometimes I don't know those words, but I try. You're dumb. And I would also like to thank Marvin Ellington, who gives me numbers for the tech seminar. I don't know what the numbers are, but I use them. You're stupid. I think you need to know why I'm running for District 1 Commissioner because everything is Bridget's own fault. No, it's not. And the sheriff, he's a good guy because he's my friend. No, he's not. Mr. Chairman and members of the board, we have 10 speakers on Zoom.

Good morning, commissioners. The first person to speak will be Robbie Caban.

Hello. Hello.

Good morning.

Thank you. This board just recognized emergency management and spoke about protecting people, communities, and property. Bridget Thorne, what about animal control and animal services? This August 17th, Fulton County Animal Welfare Board meeting, a volunteer working inside Fulton County's approximately $40 million shelter, publicly described rampant disease and estimated at one given time, one third of the dogs are affected, calling the kennel conditions unbearable. Then today, this board directly heard from another taxpayer, $20,000 in court case delays have accumulated in the shelter system and that As the taxpayer stated, 500,000 alleging years of requests for correction. The speaker called it taxpayer-funded cruelty. So where is Fulton County's $7 million a year shelter manager Lifeline Animal Project? Why are volunteers, whistleblowers, and residents repeatedly bringing these problems forward? Where is the shelter manager? Where is Lifeline? Commissioner Thorne, you and I sat for approximately two hours listening directly to Lifeline Fulton County whistleblower Amanda Brennan. You have been told, this board has been told, and Fulton County Animal Control, if Fulton County Animal Control is functioning properly and the shelter, why did our own county manager, Dick Anderson, pay $300,000 a year and need to go directly to Atlanta Police Chief Yates regarding alleged loose dog's involving he and his wife's safety in their own neighborhood. Chief Yates then directed Captain Dwyer to assist. What happens to ordinary Fulton County residents who don't have access to the Atlanta police chief? Animals are property in Georgia. This is public safety, public health, animal welfare, and taxpayer money. Lifeline is the county shelter manager. The vendor cannot be allowed to police itself. Where is the investigation? Where is the independent oversight? After years of complaints, whistleblowers, and now these public statements, where is the independent forensic audit?

The next person to speak is Arega Margosson. Hello.

Hello, commissioners. My name is Arega. I'm a Fulton County taxpayer and a volunteer at Fulton County Animal Services. I'm here to address a massive, unnecessary financial drain on our county. The prolonged holding of court case animals. Because these animals are held as evidence pending their owner's abuse trials, they cannot be adopted. They are property of their alleged abusers and Fulton County taxpayers foot the bill for room and board. So let's look at the numbers. At a minimum of $15 a day per animal for care and staffing, Our peak population of 121 court case dogs in January 2026 cost taxpayers over $1,800 every single day. On average, that adds up to well over $600,000 a year just to board animals trapped in legal limbo. At Case in Point, we recently housed seven court case dogs for a combined 745 days. That single case cost taxpayers over $78,000. Worst of all, two were euthanized when the trial ended, meaning the taxpayers paid tens of thousands of dollars just to hold them until their death. The solution is simple, cost of care petitions. The county attorney's office can petition the court to force accused abusers to pay for their animal's care during the trial. If they fail to pay, the animal is surrendered to the shelter, freeing them up for adoption. Filing these petitions will save lives and save Fulton County taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I urge you to direct the county attorney's office to start filing custom care petitions immediately. Thank you.

The next person to speak is Tracy Hedrick.

Good morning, commissioners. My name is Tracy Hedrick and I'm a Fulton dog foster and involved in improving animal welfare. I've fostered court case dogs for several years and I currently have four former Fulton court case dogs in my home. Two spent more than two years at Fulton and one spent more than three years there held as live evidence. Recently, many court dogs have been released because animal control prioritized obtaining owner surrenders. And I appreciate that effort because it shows what can happen when releasing these animals becomes a priority. However, the recently released horoscope case still waited more than two years until it surrendered. During that time, I repeatedly asked that their motions be prioritized. I never received an explanation of what barriers prevented the motions from being filed. Fulton County should provide transparency about what barriers have prevented these filings for years, why they are not being filed, and how and when this will be resolved. These dogs cannot file forfeiture and cost of care motions themselves. They depend entirely on the people with authority to use the legal mechanisms available to them. And I don't think this can go both ways. The motions are not being filed while very few eligible court case dogs ever make it into foster. The restriction prohibiting court case dogs from interacting with resident dogs is extremely prohibitive and I have repeatedly requested that it be reversed. Fulton needs shelter-led marketing efforts driven by shelter staff, specifically recruiting court case dogs and prioritizing placement for court dogs who are eligible for foster. There's also a subset of court case dogs who, because of their case or behavior, are not eligible for foster, and they're never going to leave that building alive. They are literally waiting for their death. To allow those dogs to remain there for years without filing the motions that could attempt to release them is, in my view, highly unethical. These dogs cannot advocate for themselves, and they need to be made a priority.

The next person to speak is Matt Rowenzack.

Morning, Commissioners. We have a problem with suppression of public feedback and input when it comes to the Board of Elections. I don't think they've ever been the shining star example of how to be transparent and open to public input and feedback, but now it's worse. Let's start with their public comment policy proposed by Board Member Doug Selby that is unlawful. For example, within the policy under prohibited conduct, it states, A speaker may be ruled out of order by the chair for obscenity or for providing public comment in a manner that is violated of these regulations. It goes on to define obscenity as inclusive of depicting or describing in a patently offensive way. Oh, so whenever Doug Selby gets offended, then they could potentially shut down public comment. Does that sound in line with the First Amendment to you? It goes on to define obscenity as material taken as a whole that lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Well, who gets to define that? Does Doug Selby get to define that too? Where does Doug Selby even come up with this stuff? And he's an attorney. Seems pretty embarrassing to the legal profession. Recently, the board has also moved public comment to the end of the meeting. How is the public supposed to comment on agenda items if it's at the end? They also require you to sign up 15 minutes prior to the meeting. So if a board member doesn't show up to the meeting 15 minutes prior, does that mean that they can't participate in the meeting? In true hypocritical fashion, the board allows the public to, holds the public to a different standard than they hold themselves. They also don't allow virtual public comment like the BOC does, despite the meeting location usually being at a very inconvenient location for most county residents. Also, I don't think Sherry Allen, the chair, or other board members check their email when the public emails them. They don't seem to ever respond. When it comes to public comment, the Board of Elections could simply adopt the policy of the Board of Commissioners, but they do not. Why? Chairman?

The next person to speak is Jade Gonzalez.

Good morning, commissioners. My name is Jade Gonzalez. I'm a district four Fulton County resident and a volunteer at Fulton County Animal Services. I'm here because on Monday, I attended an animal welfare board meeting and heard representatives discussing FCAS facilities states that the play yards were fixed and that the only remaining concern was a few HVAC issues. As someone who's in this building multiple times a week, I was stunned to hear such blatant lies. The gates are not fixed. We are constantly using carabiners to keep the gates securely closed and dogs still get out. A carabiner is not a replacement for a player. The playards are far from fixed. They don't drain properly. GRD is rampant and standing water and the inability to promptly remove feces creates an environment where controlling disease becomes incredibly difficult. Grass was installed as a temporary solution, but now we have sand filled crater sized holes throughout the yard. This isn't a golf course. This is where dogs get to spend maybe 15 to 30 minutes outside a day. These dogs deserve safe, sanitary, and properly draining yards. Inside the building, there's mold, bugs, and I've personally seen maggots. We have areas blocked off by plastic barriers for construction that isn't happening. Fulton County residents, excuse me, and this summer, conditions became so hot, intake was reportedly having dogs pass out. I personally helped facilitate the donation of more than 30 fans and portable AC units. Fulton County residents should not have to donate fans to make this building habitable. I want to be very clear with this condition, with the responsibility for fixing these conditions lag. This is a Fulton County facilities issue. In fact, Fulton County's own Animal Welfare Board meetings state that all maintenance projects are managed and handled by the Department of Real Estate and Asset Management. I know these facility concerns are being reported. What I'm seeing is little meaningful follow-through. Lifeline cannot repair Fulton County's infrastructure. Volunteers cannot repair Fulton County's infrastructure. Fulton County has to do that. I volunteer because I love the animals, but fixing the government's infrastructure is not my responsibility. It's the responsibility of the county. So today I'm asking the board for three things, a public accounting of the outstanding facility issues, a timeline for completing these repairs, and accountability for making sure they actually happen. Please co-see yourself. Walk the yards, look at the gates, walk through the building, talk to the employees and volunteers who are there every day. The animals cannot become before you, and I demand better. Thank you.

The next person to speak is Janet Hill.

Hello?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay, good morning. Thank you. for the opportunity to speak again on this issue of deed theft crimes. A few comments today on the severity of the crimes and a sample of pending and or adjudicated cases. There's a Fulton County company several years ago by the name of DocX that robo-signed over one million deeds in Fulton County. The owner of the company was arrested and we believe is serving at least five years in prison. There's a New York case, much of what you heard this morning from the Charrington family, where the probate office or the probate courts are involved somehow in cross state lines, financial and deed theft transactions. Then there's a Cherokee County case that was filed in Cherokee County and mysteriously showed up in Fulton County, signed by a Fulton County judge and a Fulton County clerk. Then we have a Virginia property owner who has also come to Fulton County. and has evidence of the admission of an involvement of a Georgia law firm, we believe also located in Fulton County, where a fake deed was signed. There was a recent arrest of a forged deed incident in DeKalb County using the name of a deceased homeowner. We are again demanding respectfully that you do your duty of your sworn office and return these stolen properties and adjudicate these cases immediately. Thank you.

The next person to speak is Jen Simmons. Jen Simmons. The next person to speak is Charmaine Crook.

I have submitted some documents to be on the record because an odor of mendacity plagues the state and county, and I continue to be under defamation and in constant extreme mental anguish and emotional distress, taking time that can't be given back. How much more would be wasted because of Fannie T. Willis? How do you guys think it feels to see the very same DA making statements about domestic violence and sexual assault like she cares, is combating and advocating for those causes, but is the very same person protecting the person that sexually assaulted you? How do you think it feels to see that same DA claim someone cheated on an election when I can't forget how she got Paul Howard out of his position? Without hearsay, memory needs a visit. In 2018, there was a Milton shooting where a convicted felon, Oron Seinfeld, shot into a vehicle with an adolescent child and saw. Paul Howard had been already extended leniency because O'Ron's cousin is the CEO of Quality Control Music, Pierre Thomas. So since his leniency extinguished, Fannie comes along saying she could help O'Ron and he wouldn't have to go back to prison or jail. But it was decided she couldn't be trusted and should be liable for any help she provides. So she had to go back to the DA's office as the first black female district attorney from Fulton County, where she had to get a team of people to help her and to make her prove her loyalty by stopping anything from getting outside. When Fannie became DA, she gave Oron two years probation. Oron's attorney for the 2018 Milton shooting ended with Nathan Wade. And before Oron's two years was up, he raped and impregnated me. So before Fannie makes another appearance, reporters need to ask her about Charmaine Seacrook. Because while Democrats cry racism, I can never forget, I and all other women lost rights when we had our first black... female vice president kamala harris so the republicans because of you guys i know what my rapist fingers and toes feel like from within because of you guys i had to endure my dna and my flesh being stolen longer than i had to because of you guys the breaking and entry upon my ancestry lasted longer than it should have because of republicans i had to witness a woman body used as an incubator while dealing with a black female detective using GA abortion ban as a tool to aid and bait the man to rape me. A step in to lead him to stop further collateral damage and additional damages. Swift justice for Charmaine Seacroft because no justice, no peace.

The next person to speak is Marcia Sanborn. Marcia Sanborn. And this concludes our Zoom public comment. Is that it, no more?

No further speakers.

Thank you. All right, continue, Madam Clerk.

On page eight, County Manager's Items 260497, August 2026, Justice System Update.

All right, Madam County Manager, what do we have?

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the commission. This morning, Steve Narocki will provide the justice update and Kenneth Herman will also provide updates regarding staffing.

Thank you, Dr. Rochelle. Good morning, Commissioner, Steve Narocki, Strategy Office. Mr. Chairman, same as we've done the past couple meetings, we'd like to start with the sheriff's hiring update provided by Mr. Herman, and then I'll give an update on our five-point plan jail population reduction initiatives. And then after that, if the commission has any questions on the rest of the justice system update or the jail facility update, we can provide updates. answers to any questions you have. But if I write with you, Mr. Chairman, we'd like to start on slide 15. Turn to you, Mr. Herman.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much, Steve. Good morning, commissioners. Kenneth L. Herman, Jr., chief HR officer. As we bring the slide up, I just want to do some homework from the last time I was here. We had some questions that was posed to the HR department, and I went and I got some answers. There was a conversation about a revelation that the sheriff was unhappy with the walls engagement and walls for the listening audience is the company that the Board of Commissioners has secured and partnered with to help the sheriff with his staffing concerns as relates to the consent decree. We've reached out to the sheriff's department and we're still awaiting to get a specific document that outlines his specific concerns so that we could address them internally as a team and also additionally with walls. So that's where I'm at with that concern. There was also a question about, I think it was made during public comment about the website where the HR department poses the opportunity for the detention officers which links to the WALS portal. So we checked with the vendor, and apparently we are limited by the size of the font on that website, so we cannot make it more pronounced relative to the $10,000 sign-in bonus or the relocation bonus and the like. The vendor has indicated to us that the most we can do is what we currently are doing is the callout of having that text and that specific information in red. So it's a specific callout because we can't increase the size of the text. So I just wanted to share that with the Board of Commissioners. Exit interviews, I am nearing getting to a comfort level where I'll have enough responses from exit interviews to come back and provide the Board of Commissioners with a relative sample of what the sentiment of those individuals are. I think it would be disingenuous if I come and give you just a feeling of five individuals that does not send a trend. So I'm trying to get to about 15 responses and then we'll be able to collate that and share what the commonalities and the themes are from those exit interviews of detention officers and deputies that have left the jail during the course of the last six or seven months. And lastly, Commissioner Ellis is not here, but I'll just say the assignment that we got from Commissioner Ellis at the last meeting was to compare the the overall time to hire of the law enforcement team, the law enforcement personnel within the Sheriff's Department with his civilian staff. And based on the numbers that we were able to identify, the time to hire civilian staff in the Sheriff's Department hovers around 54 days, which is under the county's benchmark of 60 days. So once Commissioner Ellis comes back, I will share that information with him and see if he has any further comment on that.

As we go to the slide, and I will- Just a minute, Mr. Herbert. Do you have your comments in writing, or could you? Because I've been trying to follow what you've been saying, and I cannot follow you.

I can share them, Commissioner, but no, I have them here, but I didn't have to make them part of the presentation. But I can share them with the board. As we transition to the slide, and again, this is a timing issue that Steve and I are going to try to solve once and for all, but as you can see, the date on the slide is August 11th, and for the hires for August, it's to be determined. glad that the comments that I made last board meeting that we were trending on the hiring we were moving in the right direction relative to hiring is accurate as of yesterday and today this morning my team has entered 24 new higher transactions for detention officers and deputies in the jail unit unfortunately again due to the timing of when we have to present the report to the board of commissioners to get it into the agenda system, it was at zero. So we had 24 hires, which brings the overall hiring to 99. And we have four separations for the month of August so far, which brings the overall separations to about 47. So our net new hires is 52. So we have a net new hire of 52 based on current information as of this morning after entering and approving those 24 transactions from the sheriff's office within the last two days. Also, commissioners, you'll see in the second chart that we made a modification. after having a conversation with the board and the sheriffs. And I think we also agreed that the interactions from walls was not a good measure to include. And if you recall, the interactions was like closely like 11,000 interactions. And basically when we sat down with wall, what that means equates to is someone picked up the phone and say, hey, is this share of jobs still available? And the answer is yes, that's an interaction or something to that extent. So we removed that line and now we're actually tracking what I think is a little bit more meaningful to everyone is the number of completed packets that WALS has received from applicants. So these are applicants that have gone through the webinars and have taken the time and energy to submit their packets, do the initial background checks with WALS and answer all the initial questions. OF WALLS SCREENING PROCESS AND THOSE PACKETS HAVE BEEN PROCESSED BY WALLS. SO THAT NEW NUMBER IS 1,276. OF THAT NUMBER, 314 PACKETS HAVE BEEN SENT TO THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE. AND AGAIN, THIS IS OLD DATA. WALLS HIRES IS 34, BUT NOW YOU COULD JUST ADD 24 TO THAT, SO THAT'S 58. 58 WALLS HIRES. In the other chart down on the table down on the bottom is a new component but something that I introduced you to back in December when we first engaged with WALS where it was applicant to hire rate. And the current applicant to hire rate within the sheriff's department now based on the hiring activities is for every 36 applications that the sheriff receives from WALS or completed packets, he has made one hire. The industry benchmark that we found in order to ensure that you're keeping your staffing at the right level, we need to be somewhere within the range of 3.5 to five hires per 100. So roughly about one hire for every 28 packets. And the reason why I'm sharing with you this information, and the last piece got cut off in our development of the slide, is we had a conversation with the sheriff about this document and to illustrate to him and his team that at the pace that they're going, to hire the first 200 sheriff detention officers for the jail, it will take them roughly 3.4 years at this current pace. So our goal in sharing that information to let everyone understand that there might be some advantages in acknowledging that some changes might need to happen on the share side to ensure that we could move the pace a little faster on hiring. The last thing I'd like to share with the board before I open for questions is because the hiring has ticked up significantly, the sheriff is now moving into the first batch of 50 positions of the original 200 positions that were funded in non-agency to now start filling those positions. He has exhausted all of his detention officer vacancies with this new set of hiring, and now he's starting to hire out of the initial 200 that the Board of Commissioners have set up in non-agency for the Sheriff's Department. And I believe I can stop there and take any questions that you may have. Thank you.

All right, again, I'd like that first part of your presentation in writing so that I can follow it.

Yes, sir.

Okay. Questions? Commissioner Thorne?

Thank you. So you're saying that he all of a sudden hired 24 in the past couple weeks?

Yes, so we processed those 24 transactions on Tuesday and this morning.

And what was the impetus to all of a sudden, because I see, you know, 0100310613, and then 24. So all of a sudden he's hiring, what changed?

I can, well, remember last year, I mean, last month we were 18, and my presentation was, I think, because of all the modifications that the sheriff and walls have made to their process. Remember, the sheriff has eliminated the... the physical agility test, so that might account for a little bit more throughput, which was a lot of the individuals were being excluded because of the agility exam, as well as walls have fine-tuned their screening process to make sure that the sheriff has better quality candidates that do not lead to elimination through his process. So those are my assumptions as to what have led to the uptake in hiring for the last two months, which would get us on track for the first 50 in a three month period of time.

Okay, I'm also aware that the monitors report is coming out at the end of the month that will highlight some of the deficiencies in the sheriff's office. He just sent over, I haven't had a chance to read it, but a lengthy letter disputing the monitors report that's coming out soon. Thank you.

You're welcome. Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman.

I'm glad that he's hired some more people. So, Kenneth Herman, thank you for whatever you did with your wonderful charm that you have, and hopefully you can continue to use that wonderful charm that you have, and by the next time you give us a meeting, he will have even more. Thank you, Sheriff. Please continue to hire.

Commissioner Ellis?

Yeah. It's August 19th, so I guess it's good that we finally got started. We're only at 26% of our goal for this year, so that is still a failure on something we called out as a high degree of importance, but it's good we're making progress, but significant amount of progress additionally needs to be made. And people have the tools to do it, and we just don't need any other excuses. We need to see the action occur and the hires to get made. So thanks for the report. Hopefully we'll continue to see that move in that direction.

Other questions or comments? All right, continue.

Thank you, Commissioners.

You can go to the next slide, please. And here we'll do an update of the five-point plan, our jail population reduction initiatives. So I'll go one by one here, starting first with our increasing ankle monitor utilization. We did for the month of July have a net increase of 47 monitors in use, which takes us to a total of 756 total monitors that we're currently using. So great progress there. Next is implementing the automated text reminders to reduce failures to appear. We are getting very close to launching this. It's targeted for the end of this month, so within the next couple weeks, or at the latest, early September. But it seems like the clerk's office, Tyler, and Superior Court are finalizing all the remaining configurations to launch the text notification system. So again, great progress. Next is establishing our bond review calendar. We have now had bond review calendars the past two Mondays held on August 3rd and August 10th, totaling 21 individuals. Eight bonds were reduced, three cases were outright dismissed, meaning those individuals were released from jail, and the remaining did not have any change. Our next calendar is targeted for August 24th, and we'll have about a dozen or so individuals on that calendar planned for the 24th. Next, maintaining the Consolidated Trial and Motions Calendar. Again, this is to maintain a monthly cadence of the Consolidated Trial Calendar. Superior Court is currently shifting to an every other month because they're losing staff due to an expiring state ARPA grant. So this initiative would fund those positions that they're losing. We are currently evaluating, providing funding to the Superior Court and the other justice partners involved in this consolidated trial calendar, evaluating the funding as part of our mid-year budget review. So as decisions are made around mid-year budget review, we'll evaluate funding this initiative. Next is standing up what we're referring to as the Arrest and Warrant Review Hub, also known as the Diversion Hub. Again, very good progress here. Our partners with the Georgia Justice Project, who are, again, reminder, subcontractors to Grady, our operator of the Diversion Center, The Georgia Justice Project has drafted the standing order for warrant resolution by state court judges that was completed and sent over to state court on Friday last week. State court is now reviewing this draft standing order and is providing comment back to us, which we'll be scheduling time with state court representatives. This is being led by Judge Taylor, so we'll be meeting with him in the coming days or weeks to understand any modifications, changes that need to be made to the standing order. and get that established. And then concurrently, Dream and Pretrial Supervision are working on all the move planning to move Pretrial Supervision out of the trailer that's currently just outside of the Rice Street Jail on the Rice Street Campus and moving Pretrial Supervision down to 515 Fairburn. So that's also in progress right now. And then the final item, Reducing forensic evidence processing through use of third-party labs. Again, this would be supplying support to both the DA and Public Defender's Office by utilization of external labs, third-party labs for drug evidence, ballistic evidence, and rape kits and sexual assault. Again, this is being reviewed as part of our mid-year budget review, and if funding is identified, we will look to fund at that time. With that, I can take any questions on these initiatives. All right, Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of questions. On the bond review calendar item, you mentioned eight bonds reduced and three cases dismissed. On the bonds that were reduced, do we know if they were reduced enough that the individuals were actually able to post bond and leave the jail?

most of them yeah just an apologies commissioner i actually realized when i came down here i did not have my cheat sheet of what the bonds were reduced at but for order of magnitude most of them were reduced in half a lot of them were in the between five eight ten thousand dollars and then cut in half so you're still talking about amounts that are in the thousands um so to my knowledge the individuals that did have a reduced bond have not posted bond yet because they still don't have the funds to do so. But what this does do for third party organizations like the bail bond project, their limitations are closer to like $1,000, $5,000. So there are third party groups out there where this is now in that target range that they could post bond on these individuals' halves instead of something as significant as a $5,000.

know 2 500 or a thousand is a lot more attainable to postpone thank you i think it would be useful to track um the folks that are um impacted positively by the bond review calendar and follow it through so that we know how how it really is impacting i mean these are jail population reduction initiatives so it would be worthwhile i think to know how they actually reduce

jail population so i don't know if that's something you're planning but it would be we are we wanted to get a couple calendars under us right now we've just only just had the second we've got the third one coming up but i think once once we clear that third one out in late august we can start showing kind of what that throughput is yeah i think that would be very helpful yes ma'am um oh i had another question i know i forgot what it was um oh on the um the

Arrest and Warrant Review Hub, when is that? I know you said great progress and that's good to hear, but when do we expect that to be up and running?

It would most likely, at the earliest, it'd be at the end of this year. It is gonna take some time to get the, on kind of the administrative side with the standing order being approved by the state court bench, that will be a process that we're going through and just started. Again, we just put the draft standing order in their hands last Friday. So that review and modification process is going on right now. And then with DREAM, speaking with Tim Diamond, it's probably about a three month or so timeline to move pretrial out and then move the individuals who'd be running the hub into the space of the trailer. It's probably about a three month timeline or so. So looking at probably, we're targeting the end of this year.

Okay, and we have the APD is aware and going to use the trailer and all of that?

We have not started the outreach yet with the partnering agencies, partnering police jurisdictions, but that'll certainly be part of our plan as we're rolling this out.

Yeah, it'd be good to kind of hear what their take is and if they're amenable.

Yes, ma'am, and we do have a Justice Policy Board, which, again, is the oversight organization over the Diversion Center. We're gonna have, we've got Operations Committee coming up at the end of, this month, and then the full quarterly meeting is in September, and we're planning on giving an update at that time on just the progress that we're making. And of course, Atlanta, the city, and both APD are made very prominent in those meetings. And so at a minimum, they'll hear it there. But again, broad outreach is still part of the plan forthcoming.

Okay, great, and one last thing. Though we didn't go through the rest of the slides, we have our meeting with the sheriff's office that they offer before every board meeting, and this week they made us aware that the overall jail population is at 3,000 at this point, and the Rice Street, I think, population is about 1,999.

Yeah, so there's about 1,000 less than the full.

Yeah, so my question is, I mean, it seems like we've had a major uptick, and I certainly don't expect you to know, you know, to expound on why that has happened, but more what are we doing about it? Because they did mention that they were working with, I believe it was Walton County, for some outsourcing, and then I forget the name of the other county. Do you remember what it was?

Scriven.

Scriven, which is, and how much further away is that?

Scriven is probably multiple hours. Walton's, I think, like about an hour outside of Atlanta.

Okay. And so I was just wondering on those options for outsourcing, you know, sort of what kind of agreements we're getting into, what kind of pricing, for how long, where that's coming out of the budget, because it certainly wasn't something that was, you know, planned for in this year's budget. So I'm just curious kind of what the status is on all of that, how quickly we'll have those options. And secondarily, and I can repeat the second part if you like later, but they also mentioned that they felt like there was a need for the entire sort of justice system to get together and sort of work together to try to get more cases through the courts and move things along so that they can alleviate some of this higher population. And I'm just wondering if we're able to help facilitate that or what's going on with that.

Yeah, certainly, Commissioner. I'll start with the first part of the question about outsourcing. I do know the sheriff's chief counsel, Amelia Joyner, I know she's been doing a lot of that outreach and negotiating terms, rates, things like that with Walton and Screvin. I believe the pricing is in line with our other outsourcing locations right now. I don't know the exact dollar amount, but it's somewhere in that $60, $70 per inmate per day rate. um and i think the amount that they're getting at or targeting at walton is in the 50 to 60 range so certainly a little bit of help and much you know that's certainly not going to solve the problem but at this point i think every little part is helping is that sorry to interrupt you is that with our staffing or their staffing i believe walton is their staffing okay yes i'm fairly certain uh i think most of the options that they're looking at right now given the constraints we have with the Sheriff's Office staffing. It's looking for options where staffing is supplied by those outsourced locations. So I know they are moving that forward. In terms of the budget, would defer to the CFO, but I believe it's coming out of our current outsourcing budget, and if any additional dollars are needed, I think we'd look at a soundings process or something similar, but I don't think that we've gotten the full request yet from the Sheriff's Office to actually quantify and identify any gaps in funding that we would need yet, but that would be part of the process.

Has there been any outreach to APD? Because apparently we get more people because they're making more arrests. And in particular, they mentioned that there was a much heavier population of women. So I'm just wondering if we have had contact with them on... Not on this specifically, no.

But something that has... This trend, this upward trend of the jail population has been notable and it didn't just happen overnight. And I know the past, at least the past two months, full two months, so June and July, the bookings have outpaced releases. So there is a greater influx of individuals coming in than going out of the jail. And of course, that is one of the contributing factors. There's others, but that's at least one contributing factor to why the jail population is going up.

uh right now and so in terms of getting everyone together to try to um work together on this where i would be more than happy to help facilitate that participate and lend any support on behalf of county administration okay and madam cfo before i give up the mic do we have enough money in our outsourcing budget to accommodate this additional need

I actually haven't looked at Walton County specifically.

I don't think we've gotten anything formal from them yet.

Right, we still had an unobligated balance in our inmate outsourcing. bucket the last time that I looked at it. And to Steve's point, if we exhaust all of those resources, then we would look to perhaps some underruns coming out of the bucket that we set aside for consent or other mid-year underruns.

Okay, thank you very much.

Commissioner Ellis. It's kind of interesting that our population went up, sort of coincide with the World Cup, just observation. Streets look different, too, during that period of time, too. I know different points we've had, probably go back and look at patterns. Sometimes there's a correlation with that. And also, we had... courts shut down for portions of that period of time or lessened during that period of time as well?

Lessened, not shut down. I don't think on any of the days where definitely games and maybe even like the larger fan fest, I think they did not have jury trials, but that was just single one-off days. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think therein lies part of the thing is like, you got this going on over there, there's no reason for us to slow down stuff. Really, and it shouldn't take us to go sit over there with a group of elected officials to say, this is an issue, we need to drive behavior and change it and move cases through the system faster. A couple quick follow-through questions on here, which will speak to some of the comments I just made. So on this automated text, it says anticipated launch. We had anticipated launch last time too. Maybe I misheard you. Is this taking place or not taking place? Is it done?

They're finalizing the configurations right now. So we are still expecting to launch by the end of this month. And we're slipping into early September.

Okay. So a day that keeps moving. I mean, just sort of speaks to a sense of urgency and movement. Bond review calendar. Is this to be interpreted that there were 80 to 130 that were reviewed in this first batch and then they held those calendars with 21 people or was this more like this target population impact was we thought it would be higher in terms of the number of people that were gonna be reviewed?

I think we're gonna be close to what the, and maybe you need to do a better job of how we're framing what the population impact is. I think by the end of the month of August, we'll probably total, it's not gonna be 80, it's probably gonna be half of that. We set criteria, we did a kind of point in time snapshot of everyone in the jail that we thought would be eligible. It looks like we may undershoot that by by a good deal again i think we're probably max going to have 40 people for this first month but at the same time this is also the first month that they've done this targeted calendar i think there's also some options to expand maybe what the criteria is that may broaden the pool but it could also be that this may not yield the same this may not yield the return that we originally anticipated

Yeah, I mean, I realize it's the first time they've done it, and I think it's important to learn from it, and you'd expect either sort of one or two things to happen. Slow, because we got fewer things coming through, or within the first couple months, see a larger amount, because you picked off more low-hanging fruit, if you will, kind of things, cases that would probably tend to be obvious. So are there, is this a, are these like specific judges that are running these calendars or is it a rotation?

It's a single magistrate judge, Judge Ashley, who already had a standing Monday calendar and just had capacity to add this bond review as part of a standing Monday calendar. Okay.

So there's, How are the Superior Court judges involved in this? Well, they're not hearing these cases. It's the magistrate judge. Right, I know, but in terms of just identification, I mean, they've got their own caseloads and stuff. Are they recommending, you know, are they doing their own sort of review of their case logs to say, hey, you know, these are candidates for the review calendar?

I need... I don't wanna be very careful. That's fine.

I just think that there, at some point in here too, you would expect that there are learnings that should help inform some of this stuff, how bonds are getting set on the front end. Right.

And I think where we can expand, so Commissioner, if you see in the description, we do have the very high-level criteria. So it's only looking at unindicted individuals, the 10,000 bond limit, and then 90 to 120 days. So what I was saying, so for the unindicted, I think, I'm trying to recall conversations I had with Judge McBurney, I think these individuals would not have been assigned to a judge yet, a Superior Court judge.

That's right.

So if we start going, expanding to indicted cases, you know, we could maybe get some better throughput there.

And I thought we had, we were, when we had initially, I thought they had proposed, they being the Superior Court judges, had proposed back the concept of their own, running their own separate calendar on that indicted bucket.

They may, but I'm not recalling, sir. Okay. And this may be a great candidate if I could ask Superior Court to join me next meeting or a meeting next month to kind of walk through the mechanics of this. I think that would be great. Yeah.

Okay. Because that's obviously a larger portion of the population, right, in terms of that. And the people that are aging cases and so forth and all that sort of stuff. And it would be opportunities for intersection with the ankle monitor piece as well as just... lowering bonds, et cetera. On the consolidated trial and motions calendar, so this, I just want to make sure, this is not, okay, it hasn't started yet, or it has started yet, I'm just trying to square up the piece about the grant.

It has been a calendar that has been going for some time, I don't know when it started, but it is because they are losing the grant, instead of having a monthly calendar cadence, they're dropping down to an every other month. So by funding positions across the DA's office, sheriff, clerk, and then court admin staff, and an additional senior judge, we would return to a monthly cadence.

So it doesn't, that doesn't get you any further than where you are, that just gets you to where you were. Am I misinterpreting that? No, that's correct. Okay. So we should have those numbers quantified. Is there any ability to not tread in water? Is there any discussion about a framework for... And when this was started, I guess that was the thing too, right? When they got the grant, it was to move cases faster. Did that actually happen? I mean, what sort of data do we have to show that it actually did happen? Because that should naturally be the question before we go and fund it. that this is something that actually you can show and you can demonstrate pre-getting this, post-getting this, it actually had an impact. So I guess if we could get that data and then maybe also kind of square up kind of that in light of that other conversation I was just talking about with bond review on the indicted bucket, that potentially some of these things could be kind of intersected on that. Okay, that's helpful to get a little bit better understanding of, particularly this consolidated trial and motions calendar, because that was not the way I initially understood this in terms of this being, Not necessarily a new, this is really not a new initiative the way it's framed up right now. Maintain existing. Okay. All right, thank you. Yes, sir.

Commissioner Thorne.

Could you explain the grant that they lost?

All I know is that it's a state ARPA grant that expires at the end of September.

So it's a state grant?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. And then also, expanding on Commissioner Barrett, the sheriff mentioned that there was an uptick in women's arrest and we don't know why it's all of a sudden women that are being arrested, but don't we house women at ACDC?

I believe, yes, once they've been classified, the women are all held at ACDC, yes ma'am.

And we have 236 beds available at ACDC according to the chart, so. I don't understand why there's an issue with overcrowding if we have 236 beds available there. Is it a staffing issue? I think it's staffing at this point, right. We cannot staff ACDC to accommodate more women? Correct. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Also in the meeting, he mentioned that the magistrate court was not doing first appearances. They were only doing it three days a week. but I reached out to the magistrate court and they said they're still doing six days a week and the state court has their accusation calendar three days a week. Do you know anything? Can you shed a light on what could be the difference in communication?

No, ma'am.

Okay.

They can look into that.

Okay, yeah, and again, I'd like to learn more about this consolidated trial calendar and about funding that more fully at our next meeting if possible.

Okay, yes ma'am.

Thank you.

Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had the same question as Commissioner Thorne about the magistrate court, because that is what Attorney Joyner told us, that they were not doing first appearance as frequently. Sounds like you got an answer. But it brought me to this other question, too. The bond review calendar is run by the magistrate court.

Yes, ma'am.

Did we allot extra resources to them to accommodate these extra days of court calendars?

Again, it's a standing calendar that Judge Ashley already presides over, and he had capacity. And so you already had the DA's team there, public defender's team there, and so they spend an extra hour hearing these bond motions.

Okay, so prior to this, this was not happening, and he was just sitting there with nothing to do? What are we saying?

No, ma'am. I don't know what other motions he was hearing. The standing Monday calendar, he was hearing other types of motions and conversations with Judge Ashley, Judge McBurney. There was a request from Superior Court if he could hear these bond review motions, and he graciously said, yes, I can do that, and I've got the capacity, and so we started that this month.

Okay, that's great. I just want to make sure that if we're expecting them to do more, that they have the resources to do it. Sounds like for now, we're good.

For now, we're good. Okay, great. Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

All right, other questions? Krista Thorne.

There was a public comment about the jail, the inmate that escaped. Do you have information on that?

Nothing more detailed than what would have been provided to the public.

Okay, thank you. Yes, ma'am.

If there are no other questions on the rest of the justice system update or jail facilities, that concludes my presentation. Okay.

All right, thank you.

Madam County Manager. Yes, Mr. Chairman and members of the board, because of your commitment, the senior transportation program in Fulton County is one of the best in the country. It is impactful and a very high demand service. to that point and in preparation for the upcoming solicitation for both programs, Uberlift and the bus service, both of those contracts end at the end of this year. And so in preparation for that solicitation, the Department of Senior Services engaged a consultant to conduct a very in-depth analysis and assessment of not only program operations, but of a five-year cost sustainability. And so today we are joined by the leadership of Senior Services, as well as Dr. George Harris, the external consultant that conducted this assessment. So today you will hear an overview of the findings and key recommendations. So I'll turn it over to Dr. Qualey-Henry. Yes, sir.

Commissioner Barrett has a question.

I'm sorry, just a quick question on the last item before we get into this. Yes, ma'am. I don't want to forget. We were also told in the call with the sheriff that the... that part of the reason we were not able to use all the beds at ACDC was because of maintenance issues on that there was a couple of pods or at least a pod that was out of service at ACDC. If that's the case, I think it would be good to have that update as well. So we're aware of whatever the issues are, not just staffing, but if there are maintenance issues over there that are keeping us from using beds as well. So I just I wanted to say that before I forgot. So thank you. I'm sorry. I think Steve's already left the building.

Yes, ma'am. Joe Davis will follow up and provide an update.

Okay. Also, anything else on animal control?

Yes, sir. It's after this presentation.

Okay.

Good morning, and thank you, commissioners. Thank you, Dr. Rochelle, Kweli Rashid Henry, Interim Director for Senior Services. Joining me today is Raphael Patterson, our Senior Program Manager, and Dr. George Harris, the President of Calyptus Consulting. I would like to acknowledge our Interim Deputy Director, who is also here, Mr. Andre Gregory, and members of the Senior Transportation Team. So as Dr. Rochelle mentioned. Could you bring up the presentation, please?

Okay, are we on 517 now? I didn't sound it. Okay, the item is on page 12, 260517, Presentation of the Senior Transportation Services Assessment.

That's Animal Services.

It's item 0517.

Thank you. So the board approved the contract with Caliptas Consulting in January, and three key deliverables were included, assessment of the current state of our transportation services, assessment of the future state, and as Dr. Rochelle mentioned, preparing us to release two solicitations for our flagship senior transportation programs as both of those contracts expire December 31st, 2026. So what we'll do is have Dr. Harris present the findings, high-level findings from the assessment, including the consultant recommendations, and then Mr. Patterson will wrap us up with the departmental recommendations and next steps.

Good morning, all. I'm glad I didn't have to do the animal presentation. I don't think I would have done very well there, sorry. Yeah, I'm Dr. George Harris, and this is my second time here. Back in 2012, I did present to the board on a procurement study that we did. So glad to be back. So we've been at it since January, February. Good support from the local internal group. Can you go to the next slide, please? So I think our first conclusion here in terms of summary was that the demand response program is stable, but we have an aging fleet. You have an aging fleet. I'll get into that here in a minute. And that has implications, and there are also a lot of late cancellations on the service. Costs are rising faster than ridership. I'll get to that point as well. And there are some things I think we're suggesting you do in your contracts to forestall that. The rideshare program is very cost competitive. And we did not find a comparable program. You have a terrific program for 60 plus seniors here. It's a great program. But 2026 is the leverage point because this is when you have an opportunity to make changes to your contracts, metrics, cost. And I think we've got some good recommendations there that might be helpful. So you see the 2025 at a glance, 273,000 rides. Roughly divided between demand response and TNC, which is basically your Uber and Lyft services. $10 million basically total cost. You see the cost per ride. These were very well researched to get to this point. I'll get to that in a minute. And you can see the breakout of the rates below. So there are some additional information I want to provide later on some of these areas. Next slide, please. So the demand and response service is scheduled door-to-door service. You have to be 60 or above or older. You get qualified for that. Operates Monday to Saturday, Saturday only for medical or dialysis services. It's the only service that allows for ADA, so if you need a wheelchair or some sort of assistance like that, you have to use the demand response. 6,600 accessible rides in 2025, that's roughly 5% of your rides required a ADA accommodation. And then also, it's higher cost and below target productivity right now. The average or with the metric in the contract is three rides for, three trips per ride. So when they schedule a ride, they want to get three people on the ride. If not, they lose a little productivity. You have to pick them up again. So it's a lot of dead hours on that. And it's below the benchmark. There's no fare for demand response. You can only take two trips per day. And the key thing on this one is, I'll get into this later, is that you have to make a reservation on the third week the prior month. or your medical, right? So it might be a little bit of a problem for some folks where they try to reach out, and there might be a reason for the cancellation rate. I'll get to that in a minute. So the TNC rideshare, you basically, it's like a Uber, Lyft service. There is an assisted service there. You call the common courtesy, who's the vendor, They schedule the ride. They communicate with the rider. They track the performance. And you can see it's capped at eight standard rides, plus folks can request two medical trips per month. But you're running at a 4.3 average. So the eight, there's only a 4.3 average. So people aren't... using the full capability of that service. And there's a $1 copay. Some of the other orgs that we benchmarked has a sliding scale based on income. You haven't done that here, but I just want to bring that up. Next slide, please. So here's the demographics that we present in our reports. There's a 16% increase in senior population, 65 plus, by 2031. That's going to increase the number of rides, I think, that folks want to have. We expect somewhere between 10% to 20% more rides for both programs. And the oldest cohort, which is 65 and older, grows faster and probably going to want more medical trips, which increases costs and may require some adjustment in the contract response that you want to get. And then the ARC, as you know, projects future growth in the county, and they're suggesting 40% to 60% increase by 2050. So this is a longer-term scenario for the county. And there's going to be a larger variety of transit that folks— When you get 65 and older, there's like 6% of folks 65 plus don't have cars. So they have to get around. So you've got a great program to make that happen. So next slide, please. So we did some interviews and we took advantage of some secondary research on feedback from seniors. They value the service. They like the service. They don't. They want to continue the service. They have some suggestions, talk to you about that here in a minute. And this is a key to a senior independence is to get out, see friends, go to the shopping, go to the senior centers. So it's essential to staying active. And they also would like to have access to the 13 senior centers because they go there on demand response and they're able to take trips with their fellow members. So they really want to continue with that. Medical trips are highly valued and are increasing. You'll see that in some data later, that there's more medical trips wanting to be served. And then also that we have a good 82% felt that it's meeting basic needs for many riders, but there's some improvements that I'll cover here in the next slide. Can I have the next slide, please? So the first area that they felt needed improvement was reliability. There has been some missed pickups. There has been some incorrect cancellations across various parts of the county. If you have a 70-mile, I think, distance between one part of the county and the other, you service all of it. So if you're in the far reaches, it takes a long time to get there. To return, it takes a lot of dead time for the provider. So that becomes something we have to consider. There's some communication gaps. There have been reports of 30 to 40 minutes when they call for a demand response that they're waiting. We haven't put in our contracts, or you haven't put in your contracts, the need to have a metric for wait time for phone calls. That's typical in transit, so we're suggesting that might happen. So we'll monitor how long people have to wait. Advance reservation rules. I mentioned this earlier. For demand response, you have to basically call and start booking the third week of the previous month. And the reservations are handled on a first-come-first-served basis. So they would like some more flexible service there. And the quality of life is at stake. They would like to continue their independence, do more. These are for both the services. And then service hours. There's been some mention of weekend service and also late night and more coverage outside the current hours. So that was just a few folks mentioned that. And then they would like to basically... address the use of apps. I know this was addressed at a previous meeting. Generally, that population 65 and up, they don't really they're not accustomed to using apps. So they probably need some help to book appointments, track appointments and things of that sort. Next slide, please. So this is the combined program at a glance. You can see the total rides, net cost, cost per ride. On time performance has been really excellent from demand response, it's increased. But there's a late cancellation rate that we're finding that has happened over here. I guess the last two years it has doubled. And what that means is that someone's made a reservation and They either don't cancel the ride and the van shows up and they don't pick someone up, so it's a wasted trip, or sometime after they booked it and the van's on the road, they do a cancellation. So that becomes a problem. So that's doubled. here in the last couple of years. So that's a concern factor that we have to kind of address in the contract. As I said, the wheelchair accessible service is only provided by demand and response, and it's about 5% per year. And just to know on the TNC, the ride share, there's no accommodation for ADA presently. Something to be considered. Next slide. So this gives you a trajectory of sort of where we've been in the last couple of years in terms of on-time performance. The on-time performance on demand response has a big uptick. So even though their volume's increased, they've reported on-time performance at 97%. But you see the cancellation rate jumping from 6% to 12.7. So basically, one of the ways that transit agencies like MARTA and others deal with this kind of thing is they have a program where they have an awareness a pitch that says, you know, when you cancel, it causes a lot of delays, it causes costs to increase, it impacts other seniors, so, you know, it's probably something you may not want to do. So that's something that I believe DSS will be working on. And then the productivity sets at the 1.75 of the three target, and I think that what that does is that it means that the vehicles aren't PROVIDING SERVICE TO AS MANY SENIORS AS WAS ORIGINALLY EXPECTED. SO THAT'S SOMETHING TO MONITOR. AND THAT'S BELOW THE METRIC WE'VE SEEN OR THE AVERAGE WE'VE SEEN. SO ANOTHER, NEXT SLIDE PLEASE. SO THE OTHER THING I BRIEFLY MENTIONED EARLIER WAS THE AGING 94% of the fleet is beyond its useful life. And that's set presently by the Federal Transit Administration for MARTA's vans and so forth. Five years are 100,000 miles. That causes lots of issues you can imagine. Aging fleet means more maintenance costs, more cost to you, missed trips, wheelchair accommodations not working, things of that sort. So that becomes a concern. And there's an increased demand that's coming on, 20% demand through 2029. And we did do some research on what it would cost to replace that entire fleet. and we developed an estimate of $8.5 million. So if you wanted to buy the new vans and then have the vendor basically run the service using your vans, about $8.5 million of investment. Next slide. So this slide on the left, this graphic shows the growth of medical versus non-medical rides. And you can see that this is for TNC, which is the only service that was able to provide this to us. We didn't get this for demand response. 24.22 per ride, cost competitive. Medical rides are increasing. You allow rides of 15 miles for medical purposes. And one of the things that we are recommending in the contract is we don't really get, or you don't really get performance data on the demand response and for the TNC on time, safety, complaints, and so forth, call center. So we don't have that information and we're suggesting that be put in the future contracts. So you monitor, you have oversight. Okay, the next slide. So this slide talks about how you compare it to peers. This is the demand response cost, and you can see it ratcheting up from Fayette to Fulton. The Fulton County rate or cost was fully researched. We went, did all the accounting on that. Solid number, 100% certain. The other numbers are either projected or they're from something called the National Safety Database from Federal Transit. We extracted that data from there. You provide more services than these other counties, door-to-door, wheelchair, recurring dialysis trips. You have more features to your program. The others, because we derived them from working with Federal Transit Administration data, That's really complimentary for paratransit. It's just a different service. So it's not apples with apples, but it's okay for comparison. But we feel like that's a solid number, but it is affected by higher maintenance costs For your aging fleet, it's affected by the cancellations. And so we feel like those things can be reconciled in the new contract. As I mentioned, reporting is the major, it's a market-wide gap. We want to make sure that's included in the future contract. Okay, next slide, please. So this is various scenarios about what the projected combined program would cost. So here we set about 10 million in 2025. If you just take an inflationary factor of 3% per year, which is what typically is done, it ratchets it out to 2030, and you see that that cost increases to 11.8 million. The last contract that was negotiated with with Transdev, the demand response contractor, had a 7% increase. Because in the contract, you didn't have a rate cap. So we're recommending some sort of cap based on producer price index or something like that, which will bring it more toward 3%, 4% per year. But if we don't do that, if you don't do that, then those costs are going to be up to about $14 million. And we have some specific recommendations in that area. So I think that, oh, my last is the service options. So this is one of our key parts of our recommendation is that if you have no change with the current program, your cost we project at $14.1 million. There's no mileage cap. There's no cost or performance controls. The demand, the late cancellations for activity remain key cost drivers. without really oversight, putting in the contract terms. Our recommended policy is to hold the 15 mile cap for TNC and basically shift as much of the longer medical trips to demand response. That will reduce the cost of your TNC fares, and then it'll be picked up by demand responses. As you know, you pay by the hour for demand response versus trip. Keep the co-pay at $1. You have basically, this is for TNC, some of your county cohorts do charge More than that. And you could adjust it, you could test a free fare, really up to the board here. And the key thing down in the lower end here is reduce the late cancellations to at at least or under 8% versus where you're at, 12.7. That'll free up some additional operating costs. And then leverage your new RFPs because there's an inverse relationship between the new vehicles, your maintenance and operation availability to actually having new vehicles. So we're suggesting that happens. And then increase communications. That's all I had. I'm gonna pass it over to Raphael. Thank you, Joe.

So just a minute. May we ask you some questions?

Yes, sir.

Okay, I just have one just to clarify. On page 11, how Fulton compares to his peers, why isn't Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton included?

We have that data, sir. We can get that to you. This was just a summary of what we have, but we have that data.

Do you have it with you?

I do. In my backpack, yes. Sir? Yes, in my backpack. I do.

Okay, I'm just curious as to where we would rank with respect to.

Oh, I think it's still, you're at the top.

Right, I'm assuming we're at the top. You're at the top. But specifically Cobb, Clayton, and Gwinnett. The cab is in, as I see.

Yes, we do have data on that, sir.

Okay, if you could share that with us, I'd appreciate it.

Okay.

Okay. All right, Commissioner Ellis, followed by Commissioner Thorne.

I don't know if it might be appropriate, Mr. Chair, to let them just to wrap the rest of the presentation up. You had a couple, because there was like one or two more slides, right?

One more slide, please. Okay, sorry.

And then we can jump into that.

Please go back to the previous slide. So based on the Caliptus Consulting Assessment, the department will take the following actions to improve the program. We want to reduce the late cancellations. DSS will develop an awareness campaign to help seniors understand the impact of the cancellations. It should be 8% or lower, so we'll definitely look into that to reduce that $615,000 cost. We're gonna leverage the new RFPs. The department will incorporate new performance metrics and measures to help with cost controls as we develop the RFP solicitations that will go out. We will look at the fleet replacement plan. The department will require a fleet replacement plan from vendors before awarding the solicitation. Next slide, please. This slide represents the future roadmap of the transportation program within the Department of Senior Services. We want to let the board know that both programs are solvent through December 31st, 2026. We will be seeking contract extensions through 2027 for both programs. We want to advise that the programs will anticipate future demand by trip type and growth, and there will be new performance metrics and cost controls that will be incorporated into the new solicitations. We also want to advise that demand response solicitation will require a fleet replacement plan before it being awarded. Thank you all so much.

Okay, Commissioner Ellis. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the report. And I want to thank the staff, too, for all the work on this. And is Fulton County a transit agency? No, right? But with your assessment and looking at this, you would say that we have probably the most extensive senior transportation program that you've seen within comparable counties in the state.

Yes, and outside of the state as well.

In the country.

In the country, yeah. In the country. No, I just said at the beginning, this is a good place to be.

Yeah, yeah. And I would just sort of highlight that as like, that's not our core competency, but under the leadership of Dr. Rochelle and then all of our staff, you know, this is a phenomenal program. But, you know, as you brought to us, there's some things in there that we've got to wrestle with. I just wanted to make sure, I heard a couple of pieces here, right, that demand's gonna grow, right? We've got pretty much the trends there on that. We've got this sort of bifurcated operation of demand and TNC. The cost and sort of the challenges on one, on the demand side with aging fleet and so forth are some pretty material things that we gotta wrestle with, right? I don't necessarily like to take credit and stuff, and I'm not actually taking credit. I'm gonna give some other people credit for this, but so we've got roughly these sort of the riderships about split equally now in these two programs, right? And if we didn't have one, the TNC program, we probably would be not be able to meet the need just because we wouldn't have the fleet to do it.

I would say yes, and also the TNC program is the same day, potentially, or the next day. So the planning piece is another component to have the vehicles ready.

Right. So back in 2016, there were a group of seniors at the Friends of Benson Mr. Gregory Wright, and they wanted to run a little pilot to see how we could shuttle seniors to the advancement center using Uber. And we ran that. It looked good, they were in constant communication with me about it, and I'm like, okay, this is pretty cool. And I don't even think I was using Uber at that point in time. And so we did, we passed something in June of 2016 authorizing up to 10,000 bucks for a pilot using Uber to transport seniors to our multipurpose facilities. And here we are today. How many riders? Roughly about 125,000, something like that, on the TNC program. So that's been a great model of success. It innovated out of our actual seniors and listening to them and then fashioning a program around that that's since grown and been very much material. But we got this sort of, it's got stress points on it. We've been wrestling with this for the past couple years. There's stress points on, and we saw this like a few years back where there were significant stress points on transportation road infrastructure, right? We had our cities were coming to us and all this sort of stuff. And there was all the stress and all these projects that needed to be done, but there was no funding mechanism to do it. We collectively got together and we launched the TSPLOST effort, which now we're looking to do our third authorization of. And it's been very successful, and we see sort of how that's mushroomed out and built a lot of stuff and made a lot of significant impact on our communities. And I go back, we're not a transit agency, it's not our core competency. But we've done a pretty dang good job of it, despite that not necessarily being what we were necessarily set up and designed to do. We do have a large transit agency that happens to be here. based in Fulton County, that we were an initial charter member of, right? And that we, along with all Fulton County residents, have significantly funded that operation. We've talked about this on and off in the past, but we've never really gotten anywhere materially with it. And I just think that now's the time for us to explore a potential partnership related to this area with MARTA. And I'm just curious from your standpoint, from looking at this and thinking about this and looking at things across the country, do you think that there likely are potential intersections with how we could engage with and work with the transit, particularly on the demand response side, which is a little bit more like you know, a typical transit model. I'm just sort of curious about your thoughts on that.

Well, you both share the same contractor for demand response. They're running same vehicles for MARTA as your – well, same types of vehicles. So that could be some possibility of sharing. There's also MARTA Reach, which is a new service that has – started in March, I think it was March, which basically has identified I think nine different sections of the county where if you start in one section and end in the section, you can call same day. So it's almost like a TNC. But there's some work having to be done on how you actually coordinate that and what that works. So that's a potential. And Marta just, It's service. So if you live a certain distance from a bus stop, you're able to get complimentary paratransit, which mostly for folks who are not able to take the fixed route. They've changed their routes, and that now might have changed the folks who are presently on getting demand response now from Bolton who may be able to get complimentary paratransit from MARTA. So I think, to your question, it basically is... It deserves a future review on that and maybe stacking things side by side and taking an evaluation of that would be useful. So that would be our comment on that. I think it's definitely worth taking a look at. But I think there are, you have your contracts that you have to kind of put in place. And one of the things we've recommended for the contract is that the contractor would have a plan to work with MARTA and other regional transit agencies, ARC and others, to improve your service. So we've got that as a component to your statement of work that we're recommending.

Okay. I'm not gonna belabor this particular point, because I think it's just, a lot of the stuff is sort of self-evident, and the stuff out in front of us, you know, we'd be, foolish not to take the next steps on it. Mr. Chair, just to memorialize this, I'm gonna certainly make a motion to accept this report, but also to, so that we provide a little bit of direction back to our staff, that we initiate discussions, we direct the county manager and county attorney to initiate discussions with MARTA regarding an IGA under which Marta could participate in the funding and potentially the operation of portions of our senior transportation program. and then to report back to the board within a reasonable time frame, I think roughly 90 days, you believe 90 days might be an acceptable time frame, Dr. Rochelle?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Annette, the exploration of that, sort of contemplate the following things, MARTA engaging in funding responsibility for portions or all of the program indexed to kind of where we are right now and some sort of potentially growth escalators on that based upon sales tax growth, that we would retain kind of the authority to establish design of the program and determine the manner in which it's operated, whether directly like we're doing it now or through MARTA or through some sort of combination. And then if there were some funding agreement that would reach that it would sort of line up, it would line up with MARTA's current sales and use tax authorization that's applicable to Fulton County. And so that's the motion I'd want to put on the floor to direct this activity so that we're memorializing it and starting to begin work on it, Mr. Chair.

Okay, Commissioner Ellis has verbalized a motion which has been seconded by Commissioner Thorne. So I will properly before us. But I do have a, I understand Commissioner Ellis. why it's important and I understand why the consultant has made the statements that he has made basically in support of your motion. And it would be to study, to review would probably be two words, would that be accurate?

Now, to actually explore an IGA with them, with Maura, I mean, that we roll up our sleeves and jointly start talking, I mean, and I'm not repeating the motion, I'm just summarizing it, that we get together collectively with Maura, have our staff to sit down and engage in terms of a potential IGA framework in which it could be a participatory arrangement, both, both funding and operations, or some combination thereof. We'll see kind of where it emerges out and shakes out. But it's a directive not to study it, but to actually explore it and sit down and engage in conversations around it. Obviously, this doesn't obligate us to anything or Marta to anything. That's not what I'm advocating for.

That was my next point.

Yeah, no, there's no financial obligation on either party in this. It's just that we're acknowledging and providing the direction that, like, We need to start it and start a serious dialogue around it and get going on it. I see this no different than different matters of scale and all that, but I don't see any different than any other things that have started, like the stuff that led us down the path of T-Splice or the stuff that led us down the path with you know, Grady and the hospital that we'll be moving forward with in Union City, right? It started with that direction from our board to our staff to get to start the work on that.

Yeah, I would say that in theory, it probably makes sense as long as we're exploring, but this is a program And you would anticipate that this would take, what, 90 days for those exploratory phases?

Yes, sir, 90 days to explore the potential around funding, retaining design, and the sales and use tax. reference we would host conversations with Marta we would gather all of the feedback and information and suggestions and just bring back a report to the board within 90 days and we would go from there with any recommendations that you want us to further explore and the 90 days would be a part of the motion

within 90 days. Now I would also though, because I take a lot of pride in this program, personal pride, and I would think and hope that the board would have some parameters here. First and foremost, that $1 per ride would be non-negotiable as far as I'm concerned. The new fleet, all of those things, What is it, $8 million for a new fleet? I have no issue with that. There's probably a lot of merit to what you're saying, to explore and talk about it and see where we land. So I have some other thoughts, but let me, Commissioner Thorne on the motion on the floor, followed by Commissioner Barrett on the motion that's on the floor.

Okay, and I mean, I support the motion on the floor. I believe MARTA, our taxpayers, we pay a lot into MARTA, and there are experts in this area that they should take on a bit more responsibility. Did you look at other senior ride providers? I know our senior services, North Fulton Senior Services has their ride programs as well.

Yes, we looked at North Fulton and also South Fulton.

And South Fulton, okay. So they overlap with our programs there in addition to our program, correct? Yes, they do. I also, the 12.7% cancellation rate, you said to do a campaign. This is for the buses. And you said they had to book the buses how far out?

I think you can book them pretty close to when you want to ride, but to make sure you confirm your ride, it's the third week of the month prior to your medical appointment or when you want to go to the grocery store or something like that. So yeah, so it's at least two weeks, could be longer from when you can actually.

Is there any way of shortening that window?

I think so. I think that's a scheduling question and that would also be something that could be included.

So to book a trans day of medical appointment, the seniors have to call in the third week of the prior month to book a ride for that next month. And that's due to just the amount of clients that we have and that will give their booking system time to accommodate all of those requests.

Do they get a reminder of their upcoming ride that they've scheduled, a text message or some kind of, so they can go ahead and cancel in a timely fashion if need be?

TransDev does send a voicemail the day before to alert the seniors that they're coming out that following day.

Okay, but we still have that high cancellation rate.

Yes, ma'am, and it's due to our population, but there are things that our department will work on to kind of help the seniors have a better understanding of the late cancellation.

Do they have an unlimited number of rides with the trans-dev system?

in terms of demand response. So they can book two trips per call. So if they start calling in on that third week, that Monday, they can only book two trips that day. They would have to call again the next day if they wanted to book two additional trips. Does that make?

Yeah, is there any kind of penalty if you cancel?

Right now we don't have a penalty for cancellation. That's why we're going to start the campaign.

Okay, and maybe with TransDev, when they give that reminder, if they could kind of put the campaign message in there of how detrimental it is and how costly it is to keep this program going and put some responsibility on the person that's scheduling that trip and failing to cancel.

I agree with you.

That'd be great. Thank you.

Okay, Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one clarification on the motion that you made, Commissioner Ellis. You said the first thing you said, I think, was you are making a motion to accept this report and IGA with MARTA, blah, blah. Is that right? Okay. So what do you mean by accept this report? I just want to know what I'm voting on.

we could remove that portion. That's fine. Yeah, I think we should take that out. Let's separate, yeah.

Not that I don't appreciate the report. I just don't. I feel like those are two separate things. And I do have some issues with the report. That said, I think the data's very helpful. I actually wish there was some more data here. There's some areas that weren't covered that I think would be helpful to us as we look at other options and understand what the cost is going towards and all of those kinds of things. First of all, on the aging population data, our program starts at 60, so on page.

Hold on one second. Are you now, because I agree with you, we need to separate the accepting the report from exploring. But the motion on the floor contains both. So what I'm going to recommend is that we that the seconder, that you withdraw your second and ask Mr. Ellis to withdraw his, and we deal with the acceptance of the report first, and then deal with the substance of his motion with Marta, because I happen to support his efforts to explore this. But I do think they're two separate issues.

Yeah, I think we can just strike the word, the first part of it, and move forward, Mr. Chair.

All right, so how would it read? I just want to make sure that we're,

It would be everything I said except for the motion to accept the report. We would strike those three words. The motion to accept the report, be the motion to, and then the stuff that I just said. I'd be glad to repeat it at the end after we go through the discussion.

Motion to direct county management.

Yeah, okay. That's fine, that's fine.

So, Mr. Chairman, just for clarification in terms of the way you want to run this conversation, I have questions about the report, and then we also have this motion that Commissioner Ellis put forward. I'm happy to just stick to the motion if that's what you prefer, but I do have questions about the report.

No, I want to hear what you have to say about the report, because I have some other questions about the report as well. But the motion, though, that's on the floor is exploring... OPTIONS WITH MARTA.

I GOT IT. AND I AM SUPPORTIVE OF THAT AS WELL FOR THE RECORD. IN A SHOCKING TURN OF EVENTS. ON THE REPORT ITSELF, ON SLIDE, ON PAGE 4, YOU HAVE AGING POPULATION DATA FOR 65 AND OLDER, BUT OUR PROGRAM STARTS AT 60. DO WE HAVE THE EXPECTED GROWTH OF THE POPULATION FROM 60 UP?

This data was gathered from the census, so that can easily be done. We also use the ARC data that they published. They published a 65 plus.

I mean, I get that most people don't really count 60 as senior, but we do, and so it would be good to know what the impact is there. And the other question I would have about the data in that regard is, It would be nice to see, I think, again, as we evaluate our needs and what we're spending money on and how we prioritize this spending along with the rest of the county spending or even the rest of the senior services spending, would be the usage of our program in terms of age in terms of geographic location you know so like a geographic map of how much usage we get in different parts of the county a map of or you know a graph of the use by age I know we don't collect income data but it would be good to know even that because you know you talked about you mentioned and correct me if I'm wrong but you mentioned that other counties have sliding scales for pay

Yes, for the copay, yes.

Yeah, and it's something we've discussed but didn't implement, but it would be good to have some more information about how those work. If they're causing people not to ride, what is the cost of implementing something like that?

So for your earlier comment, we do have the GIS maps in our report that show where the demand is and where the rides are taking place. It just wasn't our presentation, but it is in our report.

Can you speak to that, though? I think that's relevant.

So is that attached to the agenda item? I'm sorry, maybe I missed it.

Mr. Chairman, let me provide some additional clarification. So in the interest of time and in the interest of digestible information today, the full comprehensive report is not this. There is a full comprehensive report. We can provide that report. But in the interest of time and digesting all of this, what we did as a team is this. coalesced around the salient points that we wanted to share today. So we will gladly send the full comprehensive report that has more information. We can provide an opportunity to meet with each commissioner or whoever you designate once you've reviewed that full report, now that you have the overview to answer any additional questions you may have. But again, today we wanted to provide a comprehensive overview of the full report. This is just a presentation that's representative of the full report.

Okay, thank you for that clarification. I would like to see the whole report if possible, yeah. On the survey, first of all, thank you guys for doing a survey of our seniors. I think that's important. It's something I've asked for in the past, and I'm glad that it happened. Although I am just curious, the total number of riders. What page are you on? I'm on page, looking at page five and six, what seniors and staff value, the surveys and the responses. But the, you... show on the first page, what, a total of 273,000 rides, and how many riders is that? That's how many rides, how many riders? That's how many rides, yes. Right, so how many riders total?

We have about 10,000 plus registered Uber and Lyft participants, and about 1,500 TransDev participants registered.

Okay, how many riders? I get registered, but...

I'm sorry, maybe 3,000.

Combined programs?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. And so my question just on the survey is, is 45, and maybe I'm missing that it was 45 plus the interviews, I'm not quite sure, but is that a good sample size to get a real take on how they feel? And I'm just asking, I'm not a survey expert, so this is not a criticism, just a question.

I'll first say that... The Trans-Ev in their contract is required to do a survey, and they didn't complete that. So we want to pretend. They did not. They did not. The information we received was not very good, a very, very minor amount of information. So we had limited time to actually go and interview. So we went to the senior centers. We interviewed the seniors there. Probably, I would say statistically, it's probably not statistically solid, but it was, you know, what we're able to do in the time that we had.

I'm sorry, what was the time constraint?

It was just the length of contract for our contract. I think we were originally four months when we went over. But there was also another survey that was commissioned by the University of Georgia. And they actually interviews Fulton County seniors. We picked that up as well. So I don't know the exact number of those surveys. And then there was also a Survey done by ARC. broad survey about everything in the county. So there's some, we pulled some information from there. So there were three sources that we used.

Okay, so maybe I'm gonna withdraw my congratulations on doing a survey, because it doesn't sound like we really did a, it sounds like we started and we did some and we pulled from other places, but I do think it would be good to just survey our active riders on the service and how they perceive it and the things that they would like to see changed and then to act on those results.

I'm sorry, just for awareness, our department does survey our seniors quarterly to ask those things that you just suggested.

So where are the results of those surveys? Is that what I'm looking at?

I can prepare those for you. I mean, is that not? That's not in this report.

Okay, that seems like a miss. If we're doing that, that seems like we should have that in the... you know, in the results. But it's good that we're doing it. So I just, it would be good to include that, I think, in our assessment of how we're doing. Because, you know, you've got two pages here based on what the seniors and staff value. And I guess my concern is, these are great, I mean, I'm glad to see some of these things. These are things we've talked about in the past and we've heard about in the past. The issue of the three, you know, you have to make your reservations for demand response on that only in that third week of the month and the month before and you only two reservations per call and all of those things. I don't see in the and maybe I'm missing it, but I don't see in the. recommendations that that be fixed. And that does seem like a problem. And I would echo Commissioner Thorne's comments about addressing the late cancels with a communication effort to let seniors know why it's a problem as probably not the only thing we could do to try to address late cancel. First of all, and I'm not suggesting we charge for demand response, but when people have skin in the game, they're more likely to cancel. Also, It does seem, to Commissioner Thorne's point, that when you go to the doctor nowadays, you get 20 million different reminders that you should be showing up there. You get a text. You answer yes or no, confirm or cancel. You get an email with the same thing. I mean, I wish they would do less of that. But it doesn't seem like we're, other than trans dev leaving a voicemail, we're not really doing a lot there. So I think we could probably improve the late council numbers if we implemented some of these sort of more modern communications programs. And I don't see that in the recommendation. Not that they're not recommended, but they're not in this presentation. And then lastly, and I'll just say this, I think you mentioned, and I think rightly so, that 2026 is a leverage point. It occurs to me though that the recommendations sort of assume that we're going to, and I think this is Commissioner Ellis' point to some extent, that we're going to do the same two things. We're gonna have a fleet that we own managed by a vendor for demand response and we're going to have the common courtesy model, the TNC model that's going pretty well. I would argue that, or ask I guess maybe that we consider other options because it, My recollection, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, any of you, or Dr. Rochelle, that when we went out to bid for Transdev, for demand response, we were limited. They were the only respondent, correct? Is that right? Yes, ma'am. Yeah, and my recollection was, and again, tell me if I'm wrong here, but my recollection was that that was partly because we were only looking for a vendor that would be willing to run our vehicles versus a full-service vendor.

So the vehicles are not actually the counties, they are actually owned by TransDev.

Okay, so what am I missing here? Why were they the only respondent?

because there was not another vendor who we believe had the capacity to purchase their vehicles or lease them. So there were several factors and Ms. Strong-Whitaker can speak to that. So maybe, what am I missing on the cost of the fleet replacement then? So it's a pass-through cost. So it does increase the cost of the contract. because it is a part of their operating cost. So if they're purchasing the vehicles or leasing them, that's a part of their budget, and so it's included in the cost considerations.

So we're buying a service, I just wanna make sure I understand, we're buying a service from a company who isn't keeping their vehicles up to date and wants to charge us to replace their vehicles?

So they purchased the vehicles at the top of the contract, in 2016 or 2017. we as a county are recommending, whoever the new vendor is, that those vehicles and the associated cost be a part of their operations, not ours. It may not be trans-dev. And so because of the complications and the complexity of this type of solicitation, we are proposing a couple of things. One, to release the RFP in October after incorporating the recommendations that we're beginning to discuss today. So we do plan to bring back to the board a more comprehensive update about what those recommendations will look like for the new contract, what the cancellation campaign will look like. Today, our goal was to provide you with a high-level overview because we knew we could not provide as in-depth of a conversation and information today. So it's in phases. Today was the goal is to provide an overview of the assessment, the direction that we're heading with the recommendations, get some general feedback from the board. So now that we're hearing, for example, You made the comment about perhaps being a bit more aggressive with cancellations. We've had that discussion, but based on previous board direction, we did not think as a total board that any punitive measure that included cost would be something that the board would... support. So we did not include that and we're starting with a softer approach, which is an awareness campaign.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to suggest I would want them there to be a punitive approach at all, but if that's what you heard, that's not what I was implying. What I was saying is the reminders that we, you know, if we had a more robust system of reminders and requests to confirm, then maybe we wouldn't have so many cancellations. I was by no means suggesting that we have any kind of a punitive thing. I was just saying that there are, generally speaking, when you have a If you have an event as an example and you get a free ticket, you're much less likely to cancel than if you paid for your ticket. That was just a broad statement, not a suggestion that we should charge or that we should be punitive in any way. So to be clear. Okay, thank you. But I do think we should consider weighing the cost of investing in better technology for reminders.

Absolutely. Yes, ma'am. So what we will bring back, a couple of things. coming out of today. And we certainly appreciate all of the suggestions and feedback. We will make sure that all of you have the full report. We are available to review all of the outcomes and recommendations in more detail. The team will bring back the scope and scale of the RFP. We will show you options for insourcing or providing the fleet at a cost that the county would incur versus the vendor. and we will, of course, provide an update on our approach to cancellations. We will commit to, as Commissioner Ellis has directed us with the conversations with Marta, so we certainly, again, appreciate the board's commitment and plan to bring back all of the information that you are requesting today. But today, again, was just the purpose was to provide the kickoff point, the launch pad for this conversation in preparation for the RFP.

Thank you, Dr. Rochelle. There was only one other thing I think that I'd like to see. I don't know if the rest of the board agrees or not, but I do think... potentially looking at investing in a reservation system for a demand response that allows people to call on any particular day or online reserve or something. I agree that training is needed, generally speaking. The age thing is such, so 60 to 65, I think, can use an app. But regardless, I think a reservation system that is a little bit more flexible, as the survey indicated, and I think, as we all know, might help with the productivity or the efficiency of demand response, too. Maybe people aren't as reserving because if they forget to call that week, then they can't get a ride for the whole next month. So I think, you know, not that we're looking for ways to increase ridership, but perhaps we're looking to move some ridership there to make it more efficient.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

So noted. Thank you.

Okay, we're still discussing the contract. We have a motion on the floor. Vice Chair, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chairman. First of all, thank you all for the great work that you all do. Thank you, executive team and Dr. Rochelle and the consultant. Thank you. In some of the report, the water is still wet because it was information that we already knew. We had this discussion four years ago when we talked about how, as a county, we could start making people a little bit more savvy or finding alternative ways to make sure those that were not app savvy This is a conversation we already had that we were working on. Another conversation that we already had was the quality assurance, was to get the surveys done, to see areas of improvement and areas that we were excelling. This has been ongoing since I've been sitting here. So thank you for doing that. Unfortunately, we give sometimes the wrong impression when we start going in left field. Let me tell you, the seniors, Chairman, who are blowing up my phone right now, transportation is not going anywhere, okay? We are looking at what is the best use for taxpayers' dollars, and I do agree with Commissioner Ellis that we may need to look at going a different direction because I remember Dr. Rochelle, trans-dev, was the only one at that time because of fuel costs they even wanted to bid. So let's not get amnesia, Chairman, that we didn't know what was going on. In fact, I commend you all because you all saw this happening and you got in front of it. That's why we have the consultant. and thank you for the great work that you're doing. I want to reiterate again, I travel these entire United States. Fulton County is number one, Chairman, when it comes to senior services, and that includes everything that Fulton County is doing for seniors. So, excuse me if I get a little perturbed, or less sensitive when it seems to me that we're being a little bit critical of a department that is leading in the nation. And so I want to say that, Dr. Rochelle, thank you, thank you, County Manager, and thank you all that are standing here because I want it to be known that Fulton County is the leader. All of my colleagues, I believe, have the same drive and the same hope But this colleague is out there with the seniors every day. I hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'm the one that sometimes get on the phone, Dr. Rochelle, and I say, hey, I got a call from so-and-so, so-and-so. I don't wait till the BOC times, Chairman, to say it. Because like anything, you're going to find something wrong with it if that's what you're looking for. But if you're looking for the good in it and to improve it, you will. So I'm a little, just a little thrown off a little bit with some of this conversation because we by far nationally... treat our seniors wonderful and we make sure they have the services. Does that mean that there's some gap somewhere? Yes. Does life, life? Yes. But I would never tell anybody in their winter years, well, you know, we got a new program, man. If you have to counsel and you don't counsel, well, this is the new rule for counseling. Chairman, we should be making it easier. not harder for our seniors. And I believe that is the core principle of Fulton County, and that's the core principle of these people that are standing in front of me. And so I just wanted to, because for a second there, things got to look crazy, and I just had to bring the focus back on that we, by far, are number one when it comes to the treatment and care of our seniors. Do we need to do things a little bit better with transportation for longevity? Yes. I want to reiterate, Dr. Rochelle, I said this three years ago, there are private and public partnerships that I believe that we can at least give the seniors an option, because the calls I get is, I have no more trips. I have no more money. So if there's some kind of way that we can say, we understand that, but hey, call so-and-so. They offered this. Call so-and-so. I believe in empowering people. I don't believe handicapping people and telling them, okay, if this happens, too bad. And I believe that's the core principle of Fullerton County. We believe at our heart of hearts of empowering people. And that includes our seniors. But someone who is 62 years old And there's some apps that I don't know how to use. And by God, I would hate for a senior to some kind of way get caught up in a glitch somewhere and miss something because they weren't doing something the right way. And so I just wanna, once again, thank you Dr. Rochelle, thank you County Manager, thank you Senior Services, thank you Consultant, because we know what you said today, we already know that we're number one, but even a number one draft pick has to continue to work hard to stay number one. So thank you for that.

Okay, any other comments on the report? All right, hearing none, we'll go to the motion on the floor. And let's restate the motion to the extent that you can, Commissioner Ellis, with the report due back within 90 days from today. All right.

Make people listen here a little again. All right. Hopefully this reads very similar to what I read before. So the motion would be to... direct the county manager and county attorney to initiate discussions with MARTA regarding an IGA under which MARTA would participate in the funding of and potentially the operation of Fulton County Senior Transportation Program and to report back to the board within 90 days. And that the general principles of that IGA would follow, seeking that agreement would In pursuing the discussions, county staff should seek an agreement that reflects the following general principles. One, MARTA would assume funding responsibility for an amount equal to the full current cost of the program using the most recent fiscal year's actual budgeted program cost as a baseline. Two, the funding commitment be subject to an annual escalator tied to the rate of growth of MARTA sales tax receipts. Three, Fulton County would retain authority to establish the program design and to determine the manner in which the program is operated, whether directly through county procured vendors, through MARTA, or through some combination thereof. Four, that the term of the agreement would run concurrently with MARTA's retail, sales, and use tax authorization applicable to Fulton County. And then lastly, that the agreement would include reasonable reporting, coordination, and accountability provisions appropriate to an intergovernmental agreement.

And that's it. All right. Thank you, Commissioner. You've heard the restatement of the motion. The motion is properly before us. Motion by Commissioner Ellis, seconded by Commissioner Bridget Thorne. Let's vote.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes. Five yays, zero nays.

Okay. Let's proceed with the, before we recess for lunch, the animal services update.

260498, presentation, operation report, animal services update.

Double. Okay. Sir? Good afternoon, commissioners. Mike from Wakey Strategy and Performance Management. I'm here today to provide you guys an update on the animal services and some of the data, statistics, and information behind that and what we've been doing and what we've been moving forward. First of all, I want to say, I think that we have made, can you pull up the presentation, please? Next slide. So some of the items that we're going to be reviewing today are going to be dealing with the animal shelter operations itself. We'll actually provide some detail on field services. And then we're going to provide some information related to court cases and how we've been making progress there. Next slide. First of all, one of the key items that we renegotiated in our contract was the usage of kennels and our population at the shelter. With this report, what we'd like to show you is that currently there are a total of 430 dogs that are in the kennels at the shelter. 392 of those kennels are actually in use with those dogs. And there are 18 spaces that are actually vacant, meaning that we still have some capacity. What that means is there are some dogs that are doubled up. There are some litters of puppies that may be in the shelter. So again, that's where you're gonna see multiple dogs in the same area. OVERALL YOU CAN SEE THE TREND LINE THAT KIND OF SHOWS YOU HOW WE'VE BEEN PROGRESSING AND HOW WE KIND OF HAVE STEADILY BEEN LEVELING OUT OVER THE PAST SEVERAL MONTHS IN TERMS OF THE POPULATION AND ALSO AGAIN AS WE PREVIOUSLY HAVE MENTIONED IN OUR PRESENTATIONS YOU CAN SEE WE HAVE over 1300 dogs or animals in our possession and are taken care of. 587 are total population of the shelter, including dogs, cats, horses, chickens, pigs, whatever it is that we have taken in. But one of the big things we want to note is that 747 animals are actually out in foster care. That means those animals are out in the family, interacting with the family. They still are available to adopt. And again, if anybody wants to go adopt an animal, please go ahead and do so. Look at the animals on the web pages and go visit the shelter and see how you can help us get that accomplished. Next slide. Animal intakes, this is always a big portion of what we look at to see what our trends are gonna look like for the year. Currently for this year, our total intakes have been over 6,800 animals and constantly growing. At the current rate of over 1,000 animals per month that we are actually taking in, we actually expect to take in over 12,000 animals this year. That's another 1,000 over last year's projections. Currently doing that with the same funding levels as to what we did at $7.4 million. Animals have been handled carefully. We always are looking out for their health and their safety while they're in our care. One of the things we did wanna note, we have mapped out where those animals are actually coming from. And in the map on the presentation, you see the area in red, that is 67% of our intakes are actually coming from animals that are inside the city of Atlanta boundaries, as we're looking at. And you can see, as the areas get lighter, it's less and less animals, but our largest portion is the city of Atlanta. Next slide. Animal outcomes, it's always we know what's coming in, we need to know what's going out. We have taken the information and broken that out as to how animals are actually going out of the shelter. You see we had about 6,800 animals that have come in from the last slide here. We're showing that we have actually sent out 6,652 animals. So again, with the difference between what we have in population and what's coming in and going out, we are leveling off at that point in time, and we break out actually how those animals are coming out of the shelter. As you can see, our largest portion of animals going out of the shelter are the blue at the bottom, which is the adoptions. We have transfers out where those animals are either going to either nonprofits or other partners that we work with in order to get them housed or taken care of. And then we have actually found a large number of animals that are being returned to their owners once we can locate them. Next slide. Oops. So one of the items that we did this year in terms of our contract with Lifeline Services to provide animal services was we put in some key performance measures. Again, we're not perfect, we always have room to grow, but we have made progress in terms of what we have accomplished. So for our KPIs, what you can see is that our staffing levels, where we require them to stay at at least 90% of their staffing levels, they have maintained that 99% of the time. Facility requests in order for them to report and respond to any of those immediate requests with our animal services team that's over here next to me, they have responded 97% of the time within that 24-hour request. Save rate, again, a big issue, always supporting no kill, if at all possible. Our save rate is at 90%, which is beating their 85% target rate. Staff training, one of the things that we put into place is we wanted to understand how staff is being trained, ensuring that they're being trained, and currently, in looking at the records, the animal shelter staff has verified that 100% of all those employees have been trained within that 90 day timeframe when they've been hired. Facility damages, we require that if there is any damage or any item that is out of sync with the operations of the facility, that the vendor actually report that to us within 48 hours so we can ensure we get timely response to that. Currently that is at a 97% reporting rate and the requirement was 95. Kennel capacity. Again, they have met all of their kennel capacity over time, meaning they've stayed within the population ranges, number of animals within those kennels for 100%. So animals are staying safe. One of the requirements in the contract that we have required is that only animals that are either owned or found within Fulton County are accepted into the shelter and they have to provide documentation or state where they found the animal at. And we are saying yes, those animals are from Fulton County or have been Fulton County when we verify the information. One of the other items that is big, we heard the community talk about was spay and neutering, ensuring that all of our animals that are going out are spayed and neutered, unless it is a medical exemption that they can't be. And the records are showing that, yes, they are meeting that requirement, and the animals going out are spayed or neutered. The last item here is events, and we want to make sure that all commissioners are aware of this, is that part of the contract is that Lifeline Animal Services has to provide six annual adoption events, one per commissioner district. And that is coordinated with the external affairs staff. And currently the requirement is six. We are still scheduling those items and want to encourage each of you for your six districts to actually have those scheduled work with external affairs. You can either do an adoption event or you could possibly look at requesting that they do some vaccination clinics for that event. And there is, just to note, budgeted for those events is $2,500 per event for your communities. So again, you can see KPIs are doing well. We're making progress. We're not perfect. We're getting there. We're gonna try and do better as we move along. But again, we've made great progress this year. Next slide. So today, I wanna talk to you about a couple of things. Number one, the Play Yards, which you've heard about in public comment. The storage containers are gate locks and some future projects. So the play yard drainage, our biggest goal here was we had heard complaints that the play yards were flooding. So we took a couple ideas, tested them out, they didn't work, and then we finally came up with trying to put grass into those play yards. As you can see from the pictures, the grass is growing. It is not flooding at this point in time. So that issue of flooding has been resolved. Are there, but we will agree, public comment said the golf course treatment, yes, we are doing that. That is part of our maintenance plan for these areas where if a dog does dig, if dogs do dig, I have four in my backyard, sometimes get holes. And It was actually good to hear that that actually is a maintenance routine. People are keeping up with it. They are putting sand into the places where dogs dig until the point in time that they can get re-soldered or move those things along. So if this option does not continue to work, we do have an option B where we would look at in the future. But again, it would be a difference between a $35,000 fix versus a $1.5 million fix. We have storage containers that we put in to actually increase more offices space within there. The gate locks is we actually now do have a protocol in place that every morning our vendors that are providing the maintenance do look at all the gates, make sure the locks are working. It was mentioned about the carabiners. That is a policy that staff is trained on, that if they are putting dogs into those play yards, they need to use the carabiner to ensure that the gates are locked and secured as extra protection so dogs do not get out. So, yes, we do agree carabiners are in use, and that is part of the policy and protocol that staff is trained on. future projects will be the construction of two offices that are underway. We have a trailer for the field services that we're going to be looking at putting on the property. The other item that was mentioned today is the air conditioning HVAC system during public comment. We do know that there is an issue there. There are four modules that are broken at this point in time in terms of those cooling towers. Those cooling tower specific modules are not something you just get off the market. You actually have to order them, get them programmed, and we actually have an estimate for those to be in within two weeks, and then they would be installed. Currently, the Dream Team is actually looking at options to get a temporary chiller, if at all possible, for that to work, so we are working towards solutions to that. Again, not perfect, but working on things to get there. Next slide. So field services, this was one of our big items that we changed in our contract this year when it went from lifeline services to the police department. Part of that process was that we wanted to make sure all cities see all the information, all the data that is out there on the service calls that they're getting from the police department. And what we want to show you is that we do have a website that is internal only at this point in time. just to make sure that all the data is correct, nothing is, that is private information is released out there to the public in case there is any of that information that goes into any of those reports or data reporting. But this is available to all cities, all city managers, police departments, anybody that has requested those cities. We've granted the information so they can see all the information on the court cases, population, service calls, all of those items as well. At some point in time, once we get to the point where we're comfortable with the data, we'll take this data to our open data review committee, get it looked by legal to make sure that we have nothing out there that is private information that should be held back, and then we will try and release some version of this to the public for public information as well. With that, that is my part of the presentation. I'll be back at the end, but I'm going to turn it over to Major Dwyer who has had a great impact on our field services, so she can provide you an update.

Good afternoon, Major Dwyer over Animal Services. If you could go to the next slide, please. So our total calls for service this year, we have 8,000, almost 9,000 so far. Numbers of call this last quarter was 3,700, and then we're averaging about 1,200 to 1,300 calls over the past few months. Next slide. So our response times, you can see last month we are all in the green, which means our priorities, one through nine, we are responding within the time we say we're going to, and year to date, we are on track for all of those, which is the first time this has happened, so residents are getting response times when they expect it. Okay, you can go to the next slide. All right, our courtholds, we currently have 35 dogs in courthold status. 13 of those dogs are in foster care, and 22 are in the shelter. In January, we had 121 court dogs, whole dogs, and so our numbers are way down. It's a 71% downfall there, so that's positive to see. We've been doing that by negotiating with owners and working with their defense attorneys to get a surrender, what's best for the animal, or utilize diversion when we are able to. We've had magistrate court assist us with expediting scheduling of cases. So if we have a live evidence case come in within two weeks, they're giving us a court date and so that case is heard. Also the improved processing of cases by the Solicitor General's office. We did just have a large case where we had 27 animals that have been held for court for over a year and that was a seven day trial and we ended up winning that case. He was convicted on all 25 counts, 24 of those being animal cruelty. So that was a big win and a good partnership with the Solicitor General's office. That's my part.

So the last point I want to talk about was cost of care petitions, again, which was mentioned today. So for cost of care petitions, actually, We've heard comments about that, been trying to explore it currently. That has been an issue brought up at the Animal Welfare Board meetings, here at a Board of County Commissioners meetings. We have asked the County Attorney's Office to review those petitions to see how they could be used, what would be the process to get all of them filed properly, and by who do they need to be filed. Last week with our review with Lifeline Animal Services, they actually offered for free of charge to actually file these on behalf of the county. if that was something that the county attorney's office would agree with that they could do, and even do some test cases to see if it went through the courts, how those results would come out. So those are options that are on the table. We are looking at that as options with the attorney's office, and we'll see how we can implement those as we move forward. With that, then next slide will open up for any questions or comments that you guys have.

Okay, just a couple of quick things. Number one, has there been a problem with the air conditioning and so has that been fixed?

The air conditioning, we have identified that there are four modules within the chiller that have, are not working. And Mr. Davis or Mr. Diamond can provide some more information to that.

There was a problem or still is a problem?

There still is a problem with it.

Three or four days is what I'm told. Is that accurate or inaccurate?

Yes, about three or four days.

So no air conditioning for three or four days? In that certain area, yes. But they can provide the more detail for you.

Good morning, Commissioner Joe Davis, Real Estate and Asset Management. So there are a total of seven control modules that regulate the HVAC system at the animal shelter. Four of those modules have been found to be defective or failed. Our vendor is currently working to source those. They are not a off-the-shelf item. They are a specialty item that has to not only be acquired but also programmed. We're working with the original design team as well as the original HVAC subcontractor that built the facility to get those. We are now being told that we are approximately two weeks away from having those and getting them programmed and being on site. But it affects...

Mr. Diamond, would you say about 40% of the facility?

30, 35% of the facility is impacted by this particular module failure. And I might want to note that approximately four weeks ago, we experienced a lightning strike on the property that wreaked havoc with a lot of electronic systems. Not only the locks for the gates, various control systems were impacted and we had to go into panic mode to try to start resolving system by system. Not saying that this is definitely what impacted those modules, but it is a strong case that it very well may have been impacted by the lightning strike, and we would not have known it until the system failed to react to the increased heat that we've experienced over the last two to three weeks.

So, well, nothing we can do until the park comes in, I suppose.

So, as Mr. Rewicki indicated, we are looking at an option for a temporary chiller to be brought onto the site, although the feasibility of installing an exterior temporary chiller has to be assessed. We have a vendor on site.

When? Hopefully, today or tomorrow.

Either today or tomorrow, we'll have a vendor on site that's going to assess whether or not a temporary exterior chiller can be connected to the system and what that would entail. And of course, we would measure that against cost, time, versus when we'll get those new modules in.

Okay, I guess the real question is, is it a problem for the animals or not?

I can't speak to it being a problem for the animals. Maybe Major Dwyer can...

I'm just asking, I don't know where this is going.

It's not really an issue for them. They do have a bunch of fans set up, and so they have air circulating, so it's not extremely hot in any one of those areas. It's just warmer than usual.

Okay, next quick one is a note that you say that someone said that 67% of the intakes are from inside the city of Atlanta boundaries. How do you measure that? I'm just curious.

So we actually have a pet point system which is the database used to collect all the information on where the animals come from or where strays are found at. That data is recorded within that system. We then map out where those boundaries are at, where those dogs are found, geocode that data to make sure they fall within those boundaries, and then that is how we collect that data.

I have to believe, it doesn't make any sense to me, but anyway, I'm a little slow. And then lastly, on the events that are held in the various commission districts, There's supposed to be six. We're in August now. How many have been held?

Currently, we do not have any that have been scheduled or held. You know why? I do not have the specific reason. I do know External Affairs has been reaching out and will be reaching out again. And today, again, we want to encourage the scheduling of those events just to make sure that we get that resource out there into those communities. All right.

Commissioner Thorne.

Thank you. Yes, we had several public comments today about the cost of care petitions. One example was the dog Libra $20,000 we incurred in caring for that dog only to have it euthanized in the end. And it's just heartbreaking that these dogs are in our shelters in the first place. So with that being said, legally we can have a cost of care petition. to avoid the financial obligation of us caring for the dog and put that on the owners instead. So I'd like to make a motion to direct the county attorney's office to work with Lifeline to set up a process or procedure to submit those cost of care petitions, or perhaps the county attorney would like to do it all within our office, not working with Lifeline, using current staff or outside counsel. to go ahead and start doing those petitions within two weeks of an animal being seized by field services in order to help expedite the resolutions of these cases and save the taxpayers' cost to care for these animals until the petition is approved.

All right, that's a motion?

That's a motion.

All right, I'll second for discussion. Madam County Attorney, is that, did you hear the motion?

I did, I wrote it down.

Is that something that we can do consistent with the motion?

It's not something that we currently have staff to cover. If we did outside council, we could begin it right away. We have had council approach us from private firms offering to work pro bono, and we have been trying to develop a program with them. That process has not been completed, so we're not in a position to do that immediately. But it is something that we've been discussing, internal components within the county but also with interested parties within the legal community who are willing to volunteer their services I do have a little bit of concern about volunteers because you can't necessarily control the consistency of coverage when you've got just volunteers I do think that if we wanted to do it in the long term and maintain consistency of pacing and It would need to be done with maybe additional staffing in my office, reassignments within the office, or some judicious use of outside counsel.

Could we have some overseeing of using a combination, having staff that oversees volunteers, or pay a nominal stipend to resolve a case so then that there's some kind of contract between us and the volunteer attorneys?

So we, just a logistical matter, we are currently down one attorney that we are recruiting for in the animal services division. So we can't even ask that person to take on the additional duties right now. Once I have that position staffed, One of the things I considered was seeing whether or not we could get someone with the kind of background and interest that would put them in a position to cover that, at least for supervision of a combination of volunteers and perhaps on staff or outside council. But at this, I am not opposed to it and have expressed support for it and some progress in looking into how it can be done with a minimum of additional resources. But because of that vacancy in my office, I don't know that we could begin that immediately. Unless we do it with outside counsel.

Well, looking at the cost, it seems like outside council would be.

I think it's prohibitive to try to recoup a fairly comparatively nominal amount by utilizing outside council, which you've seen the cost of utilization of outside council. So we would have to look, I think, to make it practical and beneficial to some kind of utilization of volunteers and existing resources.

Okay, thank you.

So the motion's still on the floor. All right, Kristen Barrett, you have a motion on the floor to approve. Kristen Barrett.

Yeah, thank you. On that, it's a cost of care petition, do I have that right? Didn't you just say that Lifeline was volunteering to do those?

As of last week, they volunteered to start to try and file these free of charge.

So why would we not take that up? That seems like a good deal. Free is good.

Is there a reason? And I have no opposition to it. And in fact, Mr. Roeke had mentioned that plan to me and I thought we had reached a, I think we have reached an accord as to that. We, to the extent possible, would be happy to look over the petitions to make sure that the templates being utilized have been reviewed by an attorney.

So is that aligned with your motion? Okay. Okay.

That to work with Lifeline.

Have our county attorney work with Lifeline.

If not, then work within her office or outside council.

Okay, perfect. Just wanted to make sure I was on the same page as everybody else. I'm getting hungry. What can I tell you? On the commissioner events, I think there's a disconnect from a communications perspective. I actually, we're in the process of scheduling ours now, except we did one last year of our own accord and we just decided to repeat it again this year. No one reached out to us from external affairs or anyone else. telling us that this was something that we could coordinate through External Affairs or Lifeline. No one told us that there was a budget or that there was any help. So we've been working to plan one ourselves as we did last year, which was a great event, by the way. We had a great time with the dogs. But we would love to help. And I don't think my fellow colleagues can be held accountable for not doing the events because we weren't told as a body that, to my knowledge, unless I just didn't get the email and everyone else did. I do think there's a disconnect there, so maybe we could get that coordinated so all the districts have the money and the information and the help, and we can get those to happen. The other question I had was just a really more high-level generic data question. Have you looked at or I think you've told us this before in some other reports when we were looking at the space and how full we were and all those things, how we compare to other sort of large urban counties across the country. I know you mentioned one of the reports a couple months back that there was, you know, that the amount of dogs in shelters has gone way up nationwide. I'm just wondering how are we right now stacking up against other urban counties? large urban counties.

So we are in line actually with large urban counties overall in terms of our population increasing. Like the per capita. As a per capita type basis. So again, we're not really high above, but we're right in that range of what everybody is seeing on a national trend level.

Yeah, I think that's good. And maybe that could get included in the report periodically, just because I do think for the general public who's not engaged in this on the regular basis, it seems like the numbers are really high. And the first question might be, what are we doing wrong in Fulton that our numbers are so high? But that's just not the reality of it. That's what's going on nationwide in these kinds of areas. So I just wanted to sort of, I thought I knew the answer, but I just wanted to make it sort of known that we are, there's not something that we're doing wrong in terms of our rules or our laws or any different than what's happening across the country. Not to say that we couldn't have better controls on backyard breeding or whatever, but at the end of the day, this is sort of a nationwide problem. So thank you for that.

All right, Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman.

Thank you, Chairman. I've just been made aware by my colleague, Commissioner Thorne, that this is more of an urging, asking you to basically take the action. I just want to make sure, because I have been getting some of the calls, and just like with anything else, I have to decipher what is true for what is fiction. And so for me, even though I just had a conversation with her, which... we should do more. And she explained to me, because I was going to ask for it to be put on hold, but when she explained to me, Chairman, that it's really an urging, then it's not something that can really be held up. It's just for you all to start whatever it is. It looks like you all have already started something. And maybe by the next meeting, if you could just give us a report on it, I really would appreciate it. Also, I want to say that that I've been well aware of having the events and pulling Lifeline and pulling Animal Services in. In fact, my rescue, my dog that I got, Fergie, is doing well and tearing up stuff and eating up stuff and all that. I generally for the most part always include something because of the one this being just really a hectic election year and also the temperatures have been so crazy right now. I think everybody has been just really reserved in what they are really doing. I got a great appreciation not only for the relationship we have But the fact that I think out of the four or five people out of my office that adopted a dog when we had it for free, I think three of them are still in place. And so I will even do more to make sure we try to have something by the end of this year. But I just wanted to make sure that I go on record that I've been known this. And that doesn't mean that's because somebody else doesn't know it. That's just neither here nor there. I have always just made it a part, just like I've made it a part of our senior summit. I've always tried to encourage our public to make sure if they have the love in their home for a pet. We just know that from a cultural perspective, a lot of our pets are not spayed or neutered. And I've had conversations. I've tried to educate. I've had people to call my office and be out of dog food. And I've told them to go down to the animal services and pick up dog food. And so it's really about relationships. But thank you for that reminder. I still have a couple of things going on this year, and I'll make sure I incorporate it.

Commissioner Thorne.

I just want to be quick and give a plug that the month of August is Clear the Shelters Month. So anybody can go down and adopt a dog for $25. And there's free adoptions August 27th through the 31st. And those adoptions include spay, neuter, vaccines, and microchip and more. So if you're spurred on to go down by our conversation to go visit our shelter, I encourage you to go this month.

because you can get a really good deal on a dog commissioner ellis yeah and i just want to thank commissioner thorne for putting the motion on the floor and urging or not i just i do want to say at least for myself that what i want to be taken away from that is i think if we're voting to pass this This is more than urgent. We're making a statement that this is a priority that we get this addressed, right? We've heard about it. We're kinda all tired of hearing about it and wanna see a plan put together, developed, and put in place and acted upon. Is that a fair statement? Okay, so.

All right, the motion on the floor is to approve. Appreciate your favorable vote.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays.

All right, 132, I entertain a motion to recess for lunch, items in the executive session to include real estate, litigation, and personnel. Motion to do so, my Vice Chair of DuRoch Mons, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes. Four yeas, one nay.

We just go out and have fun. We try to make enough money, make enough vegetables to give to

So just for an update on our schedule, currently what our schedule looks like is tentatively at the beginning, we had looked at having mediation completed by August the 3rd. At this point in time, we know that we've gone beyond that date, but we still have some time as a buffer. We did move ahead of schedule just to make sure in case there were any delays in getting to that resolution. Then on September 1st, we are looking for all the cities to have submitted all of their signed agreements.

Without objection, we will resume the regular order of business. Madam County Attorney, items from executive session.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is there a motion to grant the requests for representation recommended in items three and four of the executive session agenda?

All right, motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yays, zero nays.

Is there a motion to deny the request for title ad valorem tax refund in item five of the executive session agenda?

All right, motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yays, zero nays. I have no further motions.

All right, several personnel items from executive session. We'll need to approve a motion to reappoint Tanya Greer as clerk to the commission at an annual salary of $155,175 per the employment agreement. A motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yeas, zero nays.

All right, motion to reappoint Anthony Nix as County Auditor at an annual salary of $232,452 per the employment agreement. Motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdul-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yays, zero nays.

Motion to reappoint Richard Anderson as County Manager at an annual salary of $383,800 per the employment agreement. Motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdul-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yays, zero nays.

Motion to reappoint Sue Jo as county attorney at an annual salary of $383,800 per the employment agreement. Motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdirahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays.

All right, continue, Madam Clerk.

Back on page eight, under open and responsible government, 260499, finance, presentation, review, and approval of the August 19th, 2026 budget soundings and resolution.

Madam CFO.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The item that's before you today is a modification to the 2026 Annual Hardware Software Maintenance and Support List. It is a request from the tax assessor to increase spending authority of $53,513. and a name change for the same product. It is a name change from QPublic Snyder to Snyder Geospatial. That's the only item before you, no additional funding is needed.

A motion to approve by Commissioner Barrett, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yays, zero nays. Mine didn't take, can you? Five with Vice Chair. 260500, Finance, request approval resolution authorizing the execution, delivery, and performance of behavioral health crisis center contract between Fulton DeKalb Hospital Authority and Fulton County, Georgia.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yeas, zero nays. Five with Commissioner Ellis. 260453 Human Resources Management requests approval of a memorandum of agreement between Fulton County Government and the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia to provide the Certified Public Manager's Training Program for Fulton County employees at a cost not to exceed $175,000 annually.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Barrett, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. 260501, registration and elections. Request approval of a statewide contract in the amount of $214,000 to provide printing services.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdul-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Barrett.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. On page nine. 26-0502, Real Estate and Asset Management. Request approval of a statewide contract in an amount not to exceed $607,993.36 to continue providing preventive and corrective maintenance services and requested capital improvement projects.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. 260503, request approval for statewide contract and amount not to exceed $500,000 to provide preventive and corrective maintenance services for the Fulton County Animal Service Facility.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yeas, zero nays. 260504, request approval to increase spending authority for on-site door repair and overhead door preventive maintenance countywide in an amount not to exceed $70,000.

All right, motion to approve by Vice, strike that by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yeas, zero nays. 260505, request approval to increase spending authority in the amount not to exceed $100,000 to provide additional pest control services.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. 260506, request approval to award a contract without competition in the amount not to exceed $2,350,000 to provide postage services.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdurakhman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. On page 10, 260507, request approval of the lowest responsible bidder for the therapeutic pool maintenance in an amount not to exceed $800,000.

All right, we have a favorable motion by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. 260508, Request approval of the lowest responsible bidders for HVAC and call maintenance services countywide in a total amount not to exceed $1,200,000.

All right. Favorable motion by Vice Chair, Dr. Rockman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes. Five yays, zero nays. 26-0509. REQUEST APPROVAL TO UTILIZE CORPORATIVE PURCHASING FOR ELEVATOR AND ESCALATOR MAINTENANCE AND SERVICES IN THE AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $1,612,050. ALL RIGHT.

MOTION TO APPROVE BY VICE CHAIR ABDUR-RAHMAN SECONDED BY COMMISSIONER THORN.

AND THE VOTE IS OPEN. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. 260510, request approval to utilize corporate purchasing for vehicle signal and restraint equipment in the total amount not to exceed $1,064,407.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. On page 11, 260511, as amended. Request approval to close out a contract for janitorial services for Fulton County's Government Center and Justice Center facilities in the total amount not to exceed $755,251.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdulrahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. 260512, request approval to renew an existing contract for mail services operation in a amount not to exceed $400,055.76.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. 260513, request approval to renew an existing contract for general landscaping and lawn care services in the total amount not to exceed $2,435,000.

All right, we have a favorable motion by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. 260514, request approval to renew an existing contract for landfill post closure services in the amount not to exceed $750,000.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman. And the vote is open.

This is my invitation. And motion passes, four yays, zero nays. On page 12. Commissioner's action items, 260515, request approval resolution to approve a grant from funds previously set aside to support public safety and neighborhood revitalization in the English Avenue-Vine City neighborhoods to aid in the emergency stabilization and preservation of the historic St. Mark AME Church and for other purposes sponsored by Commissioner Barrett.

All right, motion to approve by Commissioner Barrett. Is there a second? Is there a second? All right, I'll second it for discussion. Commissioner Barrett, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is another request to release some of our Westside Tad funds that are being held for those purposes. And this particular project is the St. Mark's AME Church, which is a historical church that has seen extensive damage and is essentially a shell that which is also a bit unstable. So they've gotten some grants to stabilize the property. And, you know, without this, if the property remains blighted and the work doesn't get done, then, you know, it increases the... has a negative impact on public safety and of course getting it done and revitalizing the space and having it be able to be used for events and things like that will help address neighborhood revitalization in that area. Our portion of the grant amounts to $15,000, so asking for the board's support on this measure, thank you.

All right, motion on the floor, excuse me, is to approve, let's vote.

And the vote is open. And the motion fails, three yays, zero nays. Next item. 260516, request approval resolution to abolish Fund 419, Clerk of the Superior and Magistrate Court Technology.

What was your vote?

Approve. So 260515 is approved with Commissioner Ellis. 260516, request approval resolution to abolish Fund 419, Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Court Technology Fund, and Fund 439, Clerk's Fund for Excellence in Technology in the Courts, to require all fund balances and all future revenue previously associated with such funds to be deposited into the County General Fund to preserve funding continuity for court and land records technology to establish enterprise technology governance and reporting requirements and for other purposes. Sponsored by Commissioners Ellis and Thorne.

Is there a motion? Motion to approve by Commissioner Ellis, seconded by Commissioner Thorne. Commissioner Ellis, you have the floor.

unless folks have questions, I'll be just real brief on it. Special appropriation fund is just a fund where funds from a particular revenue source get restricted for a particular purpose. These two things were a product of our own creation, our being Board of Commissioners creation, so we created it so we also have the ability to abolish it. Special appropriation funds in general from a financial control standpoint are not recommended by, The GFOA, which is the Government Finance Officers Association, there's a host of reasons for that, but they're generally to, they encourage local governments and all governments to really not have these unless they're absolutely really necessary. We've developed these, improved most of these, both of them, I think, right around the 2018 timeframe. Wanted to be a little bit longer than that. What's changed since that point in time, and these are, as they state, sort of funds we're supposed to go to specifically for technology purposes. Since 2018, we've had a major cybersecurity incident which demonstrates that one security, one office's security posture is really inseparable from the rest of the county. We've got AI, we've got hosted cloud systems, et cetera. So stuff doesn't live on its own and really needs, everything needs to be thought out and planned much more today than what it was during that portion of time. Additionally, we've had one of these particular special appropriation funds, which we did abolish back in November of 2023, the Sheriff's Inmate Welfare Fund. when we discovered that the revenue of that and expenditures were inconsistent with its purposes even though we had had audits and so forth which hadn't detected it. So this is not some sort of implication that any of that's going on with either of these funds. It's really just a recognition that there's not really a good strong material purpose for this and we should really look at and fund and plan for technology just like we do. In this particular function, just like we do everywhere else, this doesn't stop the fees from coming in associated with these revenues. It would just bring them into the general fund. I had had this. I had brought it forward, but I pulled it back back in, I believe, in January this year because we wanted to make sure we had a natural integration towards the end of the calendar year, so this will allow for that. for us to plan for it in conjunction with the next budget cycle and have an orderly process associated with that so that going forward that this will mean that our technology framework will be funded just like everywhere else. It'll be appropriated by the board, coordinated through the CIO, procured through purchasing, and visible to the public in one budget, and I ask for your favorable support.

All right, motion on the floor is to approve. Commissioner Barrett, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly think there are some valid concerns raised by this resolution that if we are not addressing, we should. As an example, I would certainly agree that we experienced a cybersecurity event and that we should be we should have policies in place that are as preventative as possible of a future event. Just because I want to make sure I understand, Mr. Kerrigan, do we currently have policies in place that prevent technology from being introduced into our networks without approval?

So I don't know if we have complete strict policy around that. I'd say there's governance models where we have talked with procurement and with departments and agencies about bringing technology solutions through what we call our architecture review board so that we have a chance to look at it through the lens of security, form and fit into our architecture, duplicity to make sure we don't have something that already meets that need. I would say there needs to be tightening governance around that. There's times where things land on procurement's plate that did not come through the technology review first and then we're kind of playing catch up to understand the needs, the wants, the desires of that department or agency and whether that's the best move and they're ready to move forward at that point. So it's kind of out of sequence.

I would assume, and maybe correct me if I'm wrong here, but I would assume that there's a certain amount of control that we have legally to make sure that nothing is introduced that is unsafe. But at the same time, there's a little bit of a... inability to force certain things on, in particular, constitutional officers who have sort of the right to make some decisions for themselves. That said, again, with the safety precautions that we have a right to in place, correct?

Yeah, I mean, there should be minimum security requirements. So every endpoint should have... you know, antivirus detection, you know, firewall technologies as needed. You know, those things should be on every device, and there should be a process in which that's occurring both on the endpoint in your hand, your laptop, heck, your phone, as well as any server infrastructure that we've stood up in our data centers or in the cloud with our own technologies or with vendor technologies. But to me, that's bare minimum to ensure that there's a level of security across the environment.

Okay, and so would you agree that those kinds of policies are needed across the board, not just abolishing these?

It needs to be for all agency. We operate under a shared services model, right? So we're providing our Microsoft stack, the workstations, a set of tools and technologies that every department consumes. And so they all should be using a base level of security tooling around that. With that said, we do have updated and revised policies that are coming through the policy update process that will be presented to the board that include tighter language around cybersecurity policies in general and technology policies. So those are making their way for updated and revised approval to the board.

Thank you. So I guess my point in asking those questions and bringing that up is I think it's valid. We need those things. I look forward to seeing the policies you come up with. I don't think that it's specific to these two funds. So as a... or what problem are we solving with the abolishment of these two funds and the additional, therefore, be it resolves on this resolution that we should probably, if we need a resolution to assist you in any way with that, Mr. Kerrigan, it feels to me like that should be a separate resolution that is focused on technology and cybersecurity and not really aimed at these two funds in particular. That's sort of my problem, I think, with the way this resolution is put together writ large. It's unclear to me, based on the arguments you even just made, why these two funds. We have 46 different funds altogether in Fulton County, nine major funds and 37 special appropriations funds. And it seems like some of the complaints you have about special appropriations funds apply to, if not all of them, some of them certainly, some of them are statutory. So maybe not those, but it's unclear why these two are the specific targets of this resolution as it relates to some of those problem descriptions. There's also, you know, I'm not willing to right now approve this or, you know, vote yes on this as written because there are some word choices in here, some descriptions that are not factually correct in my interpretation or are misleading in some way. So for example, on page two of the resolution in the whereas clause that starts on line seven, it says special appropriation funds, quote, remove essentially a growing share of county revenue and expenditure from the annual appropriation process, unquote. And then in your email yesterday to the clerk regarding this, it defines this as the one point of disagreement. It says, quote, appropriation governs whether the county spends how much and for what. And you go on to say that even if expenditures from this fund go through our county procurement process, the spending is not appropriated, never weighted against competing county needs, and never seen until after it occurs. And I would again say this is not correct. These funds are not outside the annual appropriation process. They are in fact in the budget we approve. They are appropriated and their revenues and expenditures are included in the county budget in the same way that all of the other funds are listed separately. In fact, this year in 2026 adopted budget on pages 89 and 90, we appropriated an expenditure budget for 419 at $523,738 and fund 439 at 1.1 million essentially. And so, that to me, with that whereas written that way, it's not correct. We do actually appropriate these funds. I would also disagree generally with the rest of that particular whereas clause that suggests that the existence of these special appropriations funds impairs the ability of the board, the county manager, the CFO, and the public to evaluate county spending as a single coherent financial picture. I mean that is to some extent just the nature of fund based budgeting. We're never going to have one sheet of paper that has the entire budget on it because the budget is broken up into different funds. Um, and so that comprehensive cohesive picture can't really exist. Um, uh, and again, abolishing these two funds does not change that because it's two funds out of 47. Um, On page two, the whereas clause, I guess let me step back a little bit. Another problem that you define as a reason for this resolution is that these special appropriations funds INTRODUCE FINANCIAL CONTROL WEAKNESS. ON PAGE TWO THE WHEREAS CAUSE THAT STARTS ON LINE 18 SAYS IT SAYS THAT THE CONCENTRATION OF AUTHORIZATION SORRY EXPENDITURE AND REPORTING AUTHORITY IN A SINGLE OFFICE WITHOUT INDEPENDENT APPROVAL OF INDIVIDUAL EXPENDITURES CREATES A FINANCIAL CONTROL WEAKNESS BUT THAT'S NOT REALLY WHAT HAPPENS IN THE CASE OF THESE FUNDS. The clerk authorizes purchases using the county procurement process by law, but county finance handles the expenditure and disbursement and the PO creation. So there are other people and other departments involved in the process. And I would, I guess I can ask the CFO, but I mean, do you not, Madam CFO, have the ability and or responsibility for financial reporting on all of the funds?

We do, they're part of the annual comprehensive financial report.

Yeah, so, I mean, the wording in this resolution says that the financial reporting responsibility falls with whoever is making the decisions for that fund, but the reporting process belongs to the CFO, so that's not quite right either. So I would want to see all of these pieces corrected before I was willing to sign on to this. Not that you need my vote, but... YOU KNOW I THINK THERE'S ANOTHER REALLY GOOD POINT IN HERE THAT WE HAVE NOT HAD SUFFICIENT AUDITING OF THESE FUNDS IN GENERAL. OR NECESSARILY SUFFICIENT FINANCIAL REPORTING TO GET A CLEAR UPDATE ON HOW THEY ARE GOING WHAT THEY ARE BEING USED FOR IF THEY ARE BEING USED. We have a fund out there that's apparently been sitting there for a while that's like the Sandy Springs TAD fund that has $3,000 sitting in it that's just sitting there. So maybe we could, yeah, that's it, get rid of that. But in any case, I think we probably do need additional audits. But again, not just these two funds, all of the funds. And if there's inherently something wrong with funds that are, I don't know what the right word is, not managed, I guess, but sort of, I'm going to air quote this because I don't know what the right term is, owned by a single elected official or single office, then as an example, that would absolutely hold true for the SOLICITOR GENERAL'S FUND, AND YET THAT ONE IS NOT TARGETED HERE. SO, YOU KNOW, I'M VERY UNCLEAR ON WHY WE'VE CHOSEN THESE TWO FUNDS IN PARTICULAR WHEN THERE ARE A WHOLE HOST OF OTHER ONES THAT SHOULD HAVE THE SAME LEVEL OF SCRUTINY APPLIED THAT YOU'RE ASKING FOR. I AGREE. WE NEED MORE SCRUTINY. WE NEED MORE AUDITS. WE NEED MORE FINANCIAL REPORTING ON ALL OF THE FUNDS. So, you know, I don't necessarily I'm not necessarily pro or anti special appropriations funds You know, but I don't know that this really solves any particular problem and then you know last but not least I think there's there's language in here certainly that implies that the concern is That THESE FUNDS ALLOW PURCHASES TO BE MADE BY THE CLERK IN THIS CASE WITHOUT INDIVIDUAL I'M SORRY WITHOUT INDEPENDENT APPROVAL AND I ASSUME BY THAT YOU MEAN BOARD APPROVAL THOSE CONTRACTS DON'T BECOME THEY DON'T COME BEFORE US BUT THE REALITY IS THOSE CONTRACTS ARE SIGNED BY THE CLERK AND THAT DOES NOT CHANGE IF THE if the purchasing is still owned by her department, she has the right as a constitutional officer to sign her contracts. We do not approve her contracts in general. So that doesn't change if these funds go away. You know, one of the things I think it does solve is the multi-year fund balance growing year over year or multi-year contracts. But I would argue that those are features of special appropriations funds, not bugs. So in any case, while I appreciate a lot of what's in here in terms of more controls, I cannot support it as written.

Commissioner Ellis.

Again, just would ask for everybody's support on this. Obviously, the reasons in there are multifold. They're not just cybersecurity. They're not just control-oriented. They're just the whole nature of how you go about and approach stuff. It's just... This particular one is growing in nature. Some of these things that are out there, yes, we have too many of them, but some of them, quite frankly, are immaterial, and many of them are restricted by law in terms of the way that they were structured and they were put forth. This one is not. This was a function of our own creation. It's not needed. It doesn't provide any material benefit to us in terms of not seen any material benefit to us in terms of having the structure versus just bringing that stuff into the general fund and then evaluating technology and the decisions and building a plan around that. So there's no reason for this to continue. We're at the approachment a new budget cycle, this is a clean way to consolidate it, move forward and work together to start eliminating technology purchases and it's not eliminating any particular revenue source. All that stuff will still be there.

Commissioner Thorne.

Yes, I met with the clerk and kind of went over her initiatives because I really do appreciate what she's doing with AI as far as e-filing and the technology she's using. But with that being said, I also understand as being someone who's involved in software development, how technology has changed a lot since 2018, and most recently with our cybersecurity attack that we had from an international operative, and how important it is to have our systems closely aligned, interconnected, and how there needs to be a general oversight with everybody in the county, including our justice partners, that our systems need to be integrated and functioning well and that multi-year contracts need to be made aware of with someone managing it well beyond an elected official's term of office. With that being said, I think it's, also a matter of transparency and accountability, which is something government really needs. And that's oversight of money that's coming in, having another pair of eyes before an expenditure is made, before the implications of buying software. I mean, the software purchases are not cheap. They're $400,000, $500,000. pieces of software that we're investing in but we have no oversight in, not that we need to have it integrate with our system. The one that the clerk presented was a pilot program she was doing with Tyler Technologies, which I think is fabulous because we use Tyler Technologies so they can be trusted. There was a group of clerks, one in Savannah, one in Gwinnett, and I believe Cobb, that all pilot programs and are testing them to be implemented here. I think it's good and fair for our other justice partners to also have part of this technology fund for their use as well, although I couldn't get that written in here. I didn't know how to... get it to fit in the current resolution, but I would like to see the fund being used across our entire justice system, not just with the clerk's office, to get other integrated software, to get other pilot programs done by different factions in our justice partner system. So that's why I supported this. The overall, there may be some technicalities, like okay, technically maybe another person gets to see it when they sign off on it, but the decision's already been made. without oversight by our board. So that's basically why I accept this resolution.

Commissioner Thornt, strike that. Commissioner Barrett?

With all due respect, this board will never have oversight over the individual expenditures made by the clerk and she's a constitutional officer. And so that's not gonna happen regardless of whether it's in her general fund budget or these fund budgets, she has the right to sign a contract and that contract does not have to come before us for approval. So that doesn't change. And to your other point about wanting the fund to go to the other parts of the justice department, this resolution abolishes the fund. There is no fund anymore, it's just general fund. So there would be no consolidated justice technology Again, there's a lot wrong here and while I appreciate the intention at some level, I do have concerns that this is politically motivated and I can't support it.

I would say it's revenue coming in to the county to our general fund that I'm hoping our CIO here will be implementing software and have some control. Obviously, we're not gonna have oversight over the clerk's budget, the entire budget, but when it comes to technology, it's important that we have a plan, that our systems are integrated, that our systems are all protected, It's crucial, it's a crucial element. We live in a different world right now than we did in 2018 and it's important that software systems, especially those dealing with AI that can pull from who knows where and pull things into our system are monitored and tracked and integrate well with our computer architecture.

All right, any other questions, comments, thoughts? Motion on the floor is to approve, please vote.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes. Four yays, one nay. Commissioner's presentation and discussion items. Mr. Chairman, I believe the 260518 was heard with the justice update, the implementation of the five-point plan.

That's correct.

Next item, 260519, Commissioner Ellis' discussion.

That was heard.

Okay. And 260520, Performance Bonus Plan and Incentives, sponsored by Commissioner Ellis.

Yeah, I'll be real brief on this. Tend to be real brief on it. So we've got some people, you know, just to refresh, right, we've got this... pay for performance, KPI-type structure that we've had in place for a number of years, and that runs generally every two of each of the three years. It's not an insignificant program, the cost of our performance payments in 2024, 15.3 million, and 15.5 million in 2025. I think in many ways this has been a good program, but one of the things I do think is important for us is that ensure that as we've got these things structured that we're actually incenting and looking to have the right kind of behavior and that if there are situations where there's not a mesh with kind of what those KPIs for an individual department are in a clear mismatch with what our objectives and goals are as a board and real priorities we've had as a county, that we need to square those up. And so the purpose of this is just really to, not on the spot right now, but just to ask the manager to... you know, look at this in light of, look at our current KPIs in light of kind of these big, large priorities that we have, and the ones that are out there, I think, are pretty self-evident, and ensure that we've got an alignment, and then if we don't have alignment in certain places, let's go ahead and, you know, deal with those and address those now versus wait until a point in time we're paying out on something and we're looking at ourselves and saying, why did that occur that made no sense given kind of what played out. So that's my ask on it. Again, I'm not asking for any response from the manager on that right now. Just ask for some reflection and look back on that and then back to us with any recommendations if he feels like they were indeed some recommendations to be made around it. So. All right, thank you, sir.

Next item.

Item removed from consent, back on page three, 260471, budget commission, fiscal year 2027, budget development cycle. Commissioner Ellis is the only eligible commissioner to serve as the northern representative. Vice Chair Abdul-Rahman is eligible to serve as the southern representative.

All right, is there a motion? Motion to approve by Vice Chair, Dr. Rachman. Is there a second? Seconded by Commissioner Ellis. All right, Commissioner Barrett, you had this one removed for further discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not convinced that there's any real discussion that's going to occur amongst my colleagues. You all voted to support this at the last board meeting that we have this budget commission that I think is, you know, not designed right well, not designed well. And I think more importantly, the eligibility requirements for the First of all, I think it should be more than two commissioners on there. A quorum is four, so three people could certainly serve. So I think there should be three if we're gonna have it at all. I don't think people should be restricted based on when their term ends. Myself and Commissioner Arrington and you, Mr. Chairman, are here doing our jobs through the end of the year and have our citizens, the people that elected us, have as much right to be heard and represented in this process as any other. And I don't think the new commissioners should be limited from being on the commission next year. That said, as reported in the AJC, two commissioners wrote a resolution that made it so only they could be eligible to serve on this. I think the whole thing is a farce and I cannot support it.

Well, my position on this whole budget commission has been clear from day one. We had a budget commission for many, many years. I thought it was useless at the time and I was on it as a matter of fact. And I feel that even then, we changed it at my urging, but it's back to where it was. So be it. Vice Chair Abdurakhman, you have the floor.

Yes, Chairman. I believe all the commissioners here are working, not just you and Commissioner Arrington and Commissioner Barrett. So let me be crystal clear. I believe... in respect to my colleagues, that all my colleagues are working. We may disagree from time to time. I hope we can disagree respectfully, but all of us are working, for one. For two, I want to stand again on what I said before. The county manager, CFO, all of the county executive team, We watched how individuals played politics. If you wanna talk about a farce, then let's go there since you brought it up. County manager, with all due respect, I think it is a slap in your face when you take time to spend sometimes two, three, or four hours to entertain any commissioner down here, to have discussions about the budget And then the person comes on BOC day and says, I just don't understand. That's a slap to me. Because you're doing it for political points, you're doing it for the camera. The purpose of this one was not only to protect the employees, but to make the, in my opinion and appreciation, to make the commissioners have a conversation with each other. There is nothing that says that anything that Commissioner Ellis and I have a discussion about and bring back and have a discussion with the new commissioners, Doesn't mean that our ideas won't be changed, our thoughts won't be changed, but it's to streamline and take that political messiness out of it, in my opinion. However, any city commissioner can meet with anyone at any time with any question and concern about a budget. There is not a vote taken, so there's no need for a quorum. You can try to put words in my mouth, and you can try to use the AJC article, but at the end of the day, it was abusive what was done to this county executive staff. I stand on that, Chairman. I'm gonna continue to stand on it. This is why people have a hard time coming to work here at Fullerton County in some respects. because people want to do their job and do that person's job as well. I'm a legislator. I have one vote. However, I have an opportunity to talk to anybody at the county executive level. I have an opportunity to talk to any department head. I have any opportunity to talk to anybody working in this building other than at the BOC when the cameras are rolling. And so in my appreciation, regardless of how you want to turn it, and say it, this from my perspective protects them, our employees. This in my perspective moves that foolishness away of our executive staff having a meeting with seven different commissioners. and having several different budgets that we have to talk about. At some point, you gotta put on your big boy, big girl pants, have a conversation with the commissioner that you may have differences with. But at the end of the day, we're here what? For the Fulton County taxpaying citizen. At the end of the day, that is my motivation to remove what we saw for a whole year. And so if you're gonna put words in my mouth, I'm gonna correct you. This is about executive staff being able to do their job. This is about forcing commissioners to have a conversation with each other. But for me, this is the pull of that foolishness Because everybody wants to be a social media star. Everybody wants this, that, and the other other than to come down here and serve. So part of service is having a conversation. We can agree to disagree respectfully. But what I saw for almost a whole year were some of the greatest talent that Fulton County has. Be disrespected. and for what, for some extra likes on social media? You imagine being a county manager or you imagine being a CFO or any of our executive team and you send in a meeting with one, two, three, four, five possible commissioners going over Everything they asked, then asking them, is there anything else you need? And they say, no, that'll be it. And then when the camera's rolling at the BOC, I didn't know. You didn't tell me. I don't understand. That will not happen because this takes that away and I stand on it.

Thank you. All right, any other comments? The motion on the floor is to approve.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes. Four yays, one nay. No further items.

No further items to come before us. We are adjourned.

or a written transcript of this meeting, or if you need reasonable accommodations, including this communication in an alternative format due to disability, please contact the clerk to the commission's office at 404-612-8232.

and he sent three of his children, we had 11 children, he sent the last three to college off that little farm, which is still in my family. And so, I think it's a historical thing for me, and I know what it has done for not only the black community, but the whole world.

Yes.

Because without farms, without food, how are we going to exist? And so I feel that farming or raising your own garden is a way of being independent.