Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

But let's be careful when freedom of speech crosses over and can look like you are mocking individuals. And I want to go on record. Two weeks ago, I got calls about this chairman. And I said I wasn't going to say anything about it. But today, it is on my heart. I can't speak for any of these other commissioners, but I know for me, I cannot sit in silence if any of the less of these or any of the people who may be developmentally delayed or have issues that are not their fault of being the brunt of a political joke. And so I just want to go on record that's distasteful, and I don't support it, and I don't like it.

Thank you. Continue, Madam Clerk.

Item moved.

Mr.

Chair. Yes, sir. I would like to join in and say amen to what the Vice Chair indicated as well. Okay. We don't need that up here.

Mr. Chair, I would also like to join in on that comment and agree with Madam Vice Chair. Okay.

And same for me, thank you.

Continue, Matt. I agree as well. People should be able to come up here and talk about issues and items on the agenda, but they should not be able to attack anyone or mock them or do anything like that. And I'm happy to discuss, colleagues, the bringing forth a resolution that would prevent that type of behavior. Madam Clerk.

Item moved up on today's agenda on page nine, 260555, Discussion, Update, Implementation of Chairman Rob Pitt's Five-Point Plan.

Good morning, Commissioner. Steve Narocki, Strategy Office. I'm joined today by Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney to go over a couple of the points of the Five-Point Plan. If we could please bring up the presentation. Great. I'm gonna move through the first four items you see here pretty briefly and give a more fulsome report at our next September 16th meeting. The reason why Judge McBurney has agreed to join us today, at our last meeting, at the last Board of Commissioners meeting, there were a number of questions about the operations and details of both the bond review calendar, which has just recently stood up in the past month or so, and then trying to maintain the cadence of the consolidated trial calendar which had been on a monthly cadence, will be shifting to an every other month, but again, looking at jail reduction initiatives, keeping that at a monthly cadence. So I'll work through these first four items and then turn it over to Judge McBurney to provide some comment on the two calendars. First looking at standing up the diversion hub, we are making progress here. A draft standing order has been submitted to Judge Taylor and state court proposing real time low level warrant resolution. So state court is currently reviewing that draft standing order and we're also combing through data to make sure that we're completely clear on the number of individuals currently in jail that would be eligible for these quick warrant resolutions around failures to appear, probation violations, and other such matters. And then concurrent to this, we continue to work with Department of Real Estate and Asset Management as well as pre-trial supervision who is currently in the trailer just outside the jail on the Rice Street campus where we would have this diversion hub located. and the pretrial services team moving to 515 Fairburn where we currently have accountability court. Next, the increased use of ankle monitor utilization. We'll need to provide a full update at the next September meeting. We're still working through those numbers since it's so early in the month. The next item, use of third-party labs to reduce backlog for the DA's forensics evidence testing. As stated before, this is currently being evaluated as part of our mid-year budget review, and so this process is ongoing. And then finally, implementing automated text reminders, Again, this is a joint initiative between the clerk's office as well as Superior Court and Tyler. And they should be rolling this out fairly soon in the next couple weeks. And again, I'll have a more fulsome update at the September 16th meeting. Commissioners, any questions with these items? Any questions? Okay, if we go to the next slide and I'll turn it over to Judge McBurney.

Good morning. I'm happy to answer questions. I know this was presented to you last time and I'll give a high level overview, but it sounded like there were questions or concerns that the folks who were presenting didn't necessarily have answers for. The bond review calendar is something we stood up about a month ago. It's a weekly event that occurs Monday mornings. It's currently presided over by Judge Ashley, who is one of the magistrate judges who assists us with preliminary hearings. The calendars have started out small for two reasons. One, we wanted to test the concept, but two, it turns out that the universe of eligible defendants is smaller than we had hoped. I know Commissioner Ellis, you ran into some of the confusion around this when you got a list of people who are in our county jail with very, very low bonds, and there are some people who have been in our jail for over two years, and associated with them is a bond for $2,000 or $3,000. But what we learn when we explore that individual is not only does he have a bond for $2,000 or $3,000 may be contraband in the jail, but he also has a murder case for which there's no bond. And so we can't simply say who is in jail with a low bond, but we need to scrub each individual with a low bond to make sure is there not also a probation warrant, because Judge Ashley can't make a probation warrant go away. is there a failure to appear so a bench warrant from another judge because someone missed court so when we scrub this list it ends up being a lot smaller than we had hoped the number of people who are sitting in the jail and the only thing holding them in jail is a relatively low bond but we get those in front of judge ashley and through his work public defender and district attorney They have resolved some of those cases on the spot. Sometimes the charges are dismissed. Sometimes the bond is reduced. It can't be reduced to zero. These are all offenses that you cannot enter what we call a UJR, unsecured judicial release. In the olden days, it was called a signature bond. And the legislature has increasingly restricted judges' ability to enter UJR, so it has to be a dollar amount. And if Judge Ashley thinks it's appropriate, he's lowering it, but we're finding still some people can't make even that lower amount. But at least it's shining a light on those cases, and they are subject to review in the coming future if that lower amount hasn't gotten them out as well. Last thing I'll add, and then if there are questions, happy to answer them. We had hoped that the bail project would be a good partner in this process. They are often, not always, but often willing to come in and post that bond if it is 5,000 or less. And most of the folks we're dealing with, they're in that range. It turns out that the bail project also requires that that individual have programming on the outside. They're not just footing the tab to post the bond, but there needs to be a supportive program like PAD, where their wraparound services, the potential for housing, etc. And the Public Defender's Office isn't always able to line that up for their clients. And so the bail project hasn't plugged in in as many instances as we had hoped for. So we're gonna continue this. We're actually slowing the cadence because we don't have enough to do 10 a week. We're gonna go to every other week, continue to scrub the lists, and if you all think of other variables we ought to look at, we're open to it. The current cost to the county is zero because Judge Ashley is already in court and was willing to to carve time out of the day when he's handling preliminary hearings. So it's already staffed. So everything we get is zero budget impact, but big win if people are being released. Any questions about the bond review calendar?

Commissioner Ellis.

Yeah, I had just a couple questions. Can you educate me on the eligibility criteria? Why just unindicted cases versus unindicted and indicted cases?

So our next chapter would be to explore indicted cases in two components. One would be to look at indicted cases that are in the non-complex division. So other magistrates are assigned to those. And those are ones where our bench could say, we want those to be delegated to Judge Ashley. And he could review those bonds on his calendar. So we're going there to that category. The more complicated category would be someone who's in on a $3,000 bond and that case is assigned to elected Judge X. Our bench hasn't agreed that those should be sent to the bond review calendar, but what we intend to do is Let judges know this calendar is there, and if you want your cases, if they fit the criteria to go there, you could do that. And judges will decide for themselves, I'm willing to let that case go. Much like we have the ankle monitor, I think you've all heard of the ankle monitor review calendar. Those are often indicted cases, and some judges have said that Judge Manning is able to review the ankle monitor performance of a defendant, even though his or her case is in elected Judge X's docket.

Okay. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed like that would be a bigger universe of people.

By definition, it would be bigger. We would be adding to it. The universe of people who are indicted with very low bonds and nothing else holding them is smaller than unindicted and nothing else holding them by the time they've been indicted. and other things can be going on. But that's going forward, that's what we're gonna look at. Like I said, start with non-complex where we can say those should go to Judge Ashley and then canvas the bench to see what the elected judges are prepared to do.

What would be the cadence of that playing out? when would that likely start?

So we'll turn to the non-complex universe shortly, and then the cadence would depend on what the volume develops. Judge Ashley is able to do the 10 every Monday without upsetting the preliminary hearing flow that he has. We haven't tried to grow it because we haven't had the volume to grow it, but if, in looking at indicted cases, there's a sufficient volume, we could look at having more than 10 a week. Okay. So I would say not by the next session, but maybe in an October meeting, Mr. Narocki might have an update as to what it's looking like if we scrub the non-complex division. Okay. Indicted cases. All right, thank you. You're welcome.

Commissioner Arrington. Good morning, Judge McBurney. And you may or may not know the numbers, but I think it's important if we do, and maybe if you don't, maybe Mr. Narocki does, The numbers would say the number is much smaller. Are we talking about less than 100? Are we talking about less than 500? I think it's important at least for the public to know how many of those people have the $2,000 bond but also have the murder charge or some other pending felony charge.

Great question. Mr. Narocki may know from the original estimates, because I know when we were first scoping out these initiatives, we took the look at who is in the jail with a bond of under $10,000. So unscrubbed list. And that's when we had the key learning. Oh, wait. I might have a $6,000 bond on this case, but I have a no bond on a much more serious case. And so lowering my bond on this case, there's no point in doing that. I don't have those figures. It's knowable, and we certainly report back with that. But there has been surprise and disappointment. that the universe of individuals whose only basis for being in jail is a low bond that perhaps could be lower is a smaller universe than we have forecast. Because I don't think when we were first structuring it, we took into consideration the no bond murder charge and you picked up a contraband charge for which you got a $1,000 bond. And we were just counting how many $1,000 bonds are out there.

Mr. Narocki, if you can include those numbers in the updates, it's very important because we always get people coming down talking about the people being held with $2,000 bonds and the sheriff is always disputing that narrative. And so it's important, I think, for us to make sure we have those numbers and communicate those numbers clearly so that the public knows exactly what we're talking about and we can all get on the same page.

Yes, Commissioner Arrington, we'll have that for the next meeting or the one after. Thank you.

All right, other questions or comments?

I had one more question on this before we get off this topic. You mentioned the bail project being, having difficulty interceding in this because of some of their other issues.

Well, not issues, but the bail project. Be able to kind of link in to their requirements, right?

If we had other partners, we need to try to seek other partners into this in addition to the bail project.

That's what we need to explore. I think that's the right next step is to figure out bail projects requirements are X and Y and Z. What would suffice to satisfy those requirements? Would a pad partnership or what do they mean by supportive housing? What if it was through Georgia Works? I think there are pieces out there that could go in there and address it. Our learning was just that it's not so simple as get that bond below $5,000 and then the bail project. I wanna be very clear, I wasn't speaking ill of them at all. They understandably have requirements because they're looking to get that money back so they can reinvest it and reinvestment. So I think our next step would be to figure out what meets their requirements, and so it would be more of a package. And I'll tell you all, through the Justice Policy Board, the Expedited Release Committee, formerly known as Jail Population Review, that's what they're focused on, is figuring out how do we build that package of support for someone with a $2,000 bond so that if someone's then funding it, we can get the whole package. Got it. Thank you.

Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. I just wanted to make sure we covered the consolidated trial calendar, which is the last page of the presentation. It seemed like we were about to move on, so I wanted to make sure we heard that.

I think we're just moving to the next page. I'm not allowed to leave until we talk about it, so I hope it's coming. There it is. The consolidated criminal trial calendar, consolidated trial calendar for short, is the capstone of the work that our court has done to focus on that component of the jail population that is the hardest to reduce. You will hear from every stakeholder that there are some easy wins. If someone has a FTA, let's get them into court. If it's a real simple case, let's take a plea. Someone in jail on a murder, a rape, an aggravated child molestation, you have to call that in for trial to resolve that case. That's how it gets resolved. And every judge has a different cadence in terms of doing that. What we built coming out of the pandemic was a program whereby we brought in a senior judge and the original cadence was two weeks every month. And every judge was able to send two cases each up to four defendants each. So we got some larger cases in there as well to this calendar. It'd be put together and you were prioritized by length of stay in jail and then ultimately by the number of dispositions you had. So if 10 of my cases were resolved and only one of Judge Pitts's had been resolved, he'd go ahead of me because he has fewer resolutions. But the focus is always who's been in jail the longest. Every judge has the same opportunity to submit the same number of cases. And we have, since the creation of this calendar, moved over 300 serious violent felonies. This is as if we had a 21st and a 22nd judge who was only focused on trying cases. We are very hopeful we get a 21st judge, but he or she will, of course, have a whole docket, civil, criminal, et cetera, and have to focus on criminal cases that aren't the serious violent felonies. But by concentrating those cases in this program, we've moved over 300. Unfortunately, that was all, well fortunately we had the ARPA funding, that has dried up. We are, for the remainder of this calendar year, funding it through savings that we identified in our budget. The judge who has staffed it primarily, you will be familiar with him, Judge Emerson. I think he interacted with some of you on a case. He is the judge who we brought in for most of these calendars. Every once in a while when he wasn't available, we get a different senior judge. He's taken a step back, and so it actually aligned with our funding limitation, and he's available every other month for two weeks. So funding-wise, we had to go every other month, two weeks, but scheduling-wise, that's when Judge Emerson was able to man the consolidated trial calendar. We'd love to continue it. It allows us to move some of those older cases in conjunction with the efforts we're all undertaking with our own criminal trial calendars, especially since we've been down a few judges and we continue to hope for that 21st judge. It's not expensive. I estimate if, and we can talk about the motions calendar in a minute if you want, But if we had a judge full-time, meaning two weeks every month, plus a litigation manager, that would be the support. We'd be under $250,000 to continue to move these old, serious, violent felonies.

Does that include... prosecutor, public defender?

So, no, it doesn't. But, and they should speak up for their concerns. These are all cases that are already assigned to judges, so we're not bringing in new cases from somewhere else. And the way it primarily operates, and we have to police it, but if I were to send a case to the consolidated trial calendar and Mr. Arrington was the prosecutor. Pretend for a minute. And Mr. Narocki was the defense attorney. I'm not supposed to be scheduling you for another case in my courtroom because I've sent that to the calendar. And so ideally, it's not supposed to put an extra resource drain on either office, DA or public defender. It works well on the public defender side because if I've sent my case with a public defender, I know I can't bring one in. It's harder for the district attorney's office because they have the specialized prosecutors who are in multiple courtrooms. And so I might say, I'm not gonna call prosecutor Arrington in my courtroom because I've sent something to the consolidated trial calendar. Judge Ellis might, because you're in that courtroom as well. And so we've heard very clearly from the district attorney's office that they would like additional resources The tricky part would be getting them a brand new ADA. That person wouldn't function in that space. This is where you want seasoned.

Not enough full time in that.

Well, but it's also, they're trying murders and rapes, and so you don't hire a brand new ADA and have that person tackle those cases. So they would need to do some restructuring. But we have heard loud and clear that this is imposing strain on the district attorney's office. I don't ever pretend to speak for that group, but they've asked that there be staffing considerations for them as well. So you might want to engage with them. from a court staffing, our ability to stand the calendar up. When we publish the calendar, people need to show up. It's the range that I described.

All right, anything else?

Yeah, a few things.

You were gonna mention something about motions calendar and how this tied in with this? Sure, we have also been funding through the ARPA funding another senior judge who comes in on average a day, maybe two days a week, so not a full week, any particular month. And to him, we have been able to send pending criminal motions that stand between the case and trial. Classic example would be an immunity motion. So a defendant is saying, I ought not to be subject to prosecution at all because I acted in self-defense. That's basically a mini trial. The way an immunity motion works out is the state has to put up its case and the defendant says, here's why it was self-defense. Time consuming and often a reason why a case isn't ready for trial. and we have a senior judge who's been hearing those, ruling on those, thus making cases ready for trial sooner. So that has been a worthwhile investment for us as well. So that has also fit within our ARPA spending. Were we to continue that, the estimate is that that would be about 80,000 a year. The litigation manager that I described would be able to support that calendar as well, so there'd be no additional staffing. And that's one, again, where if I sent a motion to that judge to handle, I couldn't expect those lawyers to be in my courtroom at the time because they're arguing my motion in front of another judge. We see them as working in tandem. They're not entirely linked. It could be that the trial that is made ready because of that judge's ruling, I then try. You don't have to then send it to the consolidated trial calendar. But we've supported those judges with the same support staff.

Going back to the consolidated trial calendar, you mentioned that the judge, that senior judge who had been working with this wanted to take a step back. So that coincide with, so you've gone to, you've cut the number in half through the end of the year. Is that the way for me to read this?

Correct. Second half of this year is two weeks every other month.

Okay. Was that done more for funding or because the judge wasn't available? Funding. It was driven by funding.

That's what we could afford, but then we were also informed that that's the schedule that he's going to have going forward, which doesn't mean we couldn't identify other judges. With the budget, we'll staff it.

So that's my question. How quickly could another senior judge be identified and it restored back to the same cadence? And on top of that, I mean, along with that, I'd be interested if Mr. Narocki's got sort of an estimate of like, generally all at annual cost to staff for the other folks in addition to what you just shared. But could this also be accelerated? In other words, I mean, we've been pushing for and trying to get the additional judgeship. So we know we've identified the need. this doesn't exactly fill that need, you know, because it's not a full-time judge, right? But in the absence of getting another judge, or until, could this essentially be doubled? you weren't necessarily anticipating that, but could we potentially double the throughput on this, or does that create other sort of logistical issues? It's probably not you're gonna be able to do that in a quick period of time.

So I heard two questions in there. One, immediately we could start making it two weeks every month. We could identify the senior judges if the funding.

We could get back to where we were.

We could do that. To Commissioner Arrington's question, if we had this run every week, we'd have to have a serious sidebar with the district attorney and the public defender in terms of impact that would have on their operations because their top flight prosecutors and their line public defenders would be in two places at the same time. We experimented at one point with having two judges for one of those two week periods, so it was effectively four weeks and that proved problematic. So I think that would be our constraint and there should be some important dialogue with how those two offices, prosecution and public defender's office, would envision being able to support it running more frequently than two weeks a month, which is already a strain, but we've managed it for three years.

Okay, all right, so the priority right now is really just identifying the resources to get back to kind of what we have currently, what we previously had. And then any future things on that really is gonna require a lot more thought to it. Imagine there could be some space issues too, potentially.

If we had two judges, it would be a problem. If it's just one, we use courtroom 1D, one of the ceremonial courtrooms that's not assigned. And even if we get a 21st judge, 1D will still work. So we're good for now with criminal cases.

I mean, what I'd like for us to try to figure out a way to do today is give some direction to our staff to make this... come to fruition and get, you know, I don't think it's really productive for us to continue to sit up here and talk about it, but to actually just find the ability to get this back to restore to where we were, and it's operational. So do we, and is it just the cost, is it just your cost, and then maybe it's the question for Mr. Narocki, or do we estimate that this is gonna be, we're gonna need to do, need something, It's been operating, I guess, without additional costs, but has ARPA funding been applied to those other positions for other people as well?

I believe the other departments, Commissioner Ellis, were funded under this ARPA grant, so when the ARPA grant went away at the end of, I think at the end of August, so it just expired, those other positions were also now without funding.

Okay, what do you, do you have an estimate of what that would be through the end of the year?

Not in front of me right now, but we do have a pretty good idea across each of the departments, whether it's the DAs, sheriff, having an additional deputy, clerk's office, staff. I think we know what that ask is and then could easily, with the help of HR and finance, put dollars to that and come up with a recommended amount.

So I guess roughly, I'm just thinking through kind of like the analysis we went through with state court and we had a judge and all that sort of stuff and just doing the math. So the magnitude of this probably all in is annualized as less than probably about What, 700 to 750,000, something in that neighborhood? Certainly under a million, probably. Okay. Not between half to a million. Yes. Okay.

I hope it's less than that. I wouldn't want this to become a, you mentioned the clerk's office. I don't speak for any other agency. Right. I'd be hard-pressed to see why outside the public defender's office, the DA's office, you certainly need deputies in there. Right, right. These are people in custody. And then what I put up there, we would need in terms of incremental work.

Yeah, well, maybe I don't try to put anybody on the spot with just directly on numbers or who and all that sort of stuff, but I'd like our staff to go back and I know we've got a couple of other things that we've had sort of on here that we've continued to discuss. We're gonna have at least, I think we're gonna have at least a million bucks worth of funding, which we could identify to apply towards these types of initiatives, whether it's, I'm talking about throughout for the rest of this year, it gets a little bit different in terms of an annualized figure, but I'd like to see you all come back to us with some clear recommendations around some things on here that can begin to start to move the needle and have some effect on reduction initiatives that are in addition to the stuff that we're already doing, ankle monitoring and that sort of stuff. within a footprint of a million dollars, you know, at a minimum, I'd like to see some sort of direction. I mean, I'd like to give you all direction to do that, and I don't know if I need to make a motion from the floor to do that or not, or whether you all can kind of come back with those recommendations to us at the next meeting. that we could act upon, not that we're gonna sit around here and talk about again, but that we could act upon so we could get things like this restored and then a couple other things that we know that are out there that we vetted that we just haven't brought forward. Could you all be prepared to do that?

Yes, sir, we could be prepared to do that. And the funding source would be projecting against the end of year.

Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine that we're not gonna be able to identify at least a million bucks on that, but stranger things have happened, so we'll hopefully have better information on our tax digest and all that sort of stuff to be able to make that a reality.

All right, Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was really gonna cover a lot of what Commissioner Ellis just covered in terms of getting the, sorry, this is more for Mr. Naraki, but covering the, you know, getting the numbers from all of the related agencies that have any costs associated with keeping these courts or getting these courts back to at least where they were, if not more coverage. Obviously, as with the earlier conversation, if there's not enough cases, that would fit the category. then no, but obviously to address the need. But I would also say rather, my personal perspective is that it would be good to just see what those costs are and not necessarily limit it to a particular amount, like just to know what those costs are to get it to, you know, back to where it was. And then annualize, so I guess we need the cost for this year, what can we do for the rest of the year, but also annualize what would be the addition to the 2027 budget to keep it going beyond December 31st. So I'd like to see all of those numbers if possible.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

Commissioner Ellis? One more thing, too. In Judge McBurney, if we acted upon this, and this, you know, in essence becomes moved from being a grant-funded program to, you know, a direct county general funding program, in order to sort of assess do we want to continue it and all that sort of stuff, because I do think there were some pivot points that could come in there, like, hey, we get an additional judge, that's going to mean... we've got to consider more overall funding for that and all that sort of stuff, and how does that work? Or maybe some trade-offs, right, where we want to roll that off or dial this back once we were to kind of get that in place. But would you be able, would the courts be able to provide us with direct numbers on kind of the flow and the impact of this particular, of the consolidated trial calendar? I know you got stuff going back to 2023, but would we be able to sort of see that on, let's say, a quarterly basis, you know, for 2026? Sure, I'm actually the one who has to keep the records.

Okay, all right, great. Yes is the answer. We keep track of dispositions. Could be 20 positions on the calendar, and we keep track of, by putting them on there, which we're pleased, Did anything get dismissed? What went to trial? So that's ongoing. So if there is a cadence that you all establish, Steve, whomever just needs to ask, and I can pass that along.

Yeah, because I think this is a good thing. But the way it's, it should generally be something that's probably at some point in time temporary if we have. We ought to be self-sustaining. Right. Got it. Thank you.

All right. Anything else? Thank you. Continue, Madam Clerk.

Back on page five, county manager's items under open and responsible government, 260536, finance, presentation, review, and approval of the September 2nd, 2026 budget soundings and resolution.

All right, Madam CFO.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The item that's before you today is a amendment to the annual hardware and software maintenance list. It's to add two items for the library, software license-related items, one with comprised technologies for $93,000, the other with meltwater for an $8,600 increment. No additional funding is being requested. They're absorbing the funding within their budget.

All right, questions, comments? Our motion to adopt by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Commissioner Ellis.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. 260537, information technology, request approval of a statewide contract in amount of $3 million with AT&T to provide telecommunication services and products countywide.

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

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays. 260538, real estate and asset management.

Mr. Chairman, I will make a couple of comments about this as Joe Davis comes up. Just to remind everyone, we had several years ago began the Blitz program, which is substantially complete absent the issue with the fire, which has prolonged that. We also added a year later five items which we have reported out on in each justice report. when we bring that forward monthly. One of those was elevator modernization, but other ones are the fire alarm system that you're all familiar with. By the way, Joe tells me that that one is now complete, nearing complete with one more inspection to get certification from the fire marshals. Very good news. Padded cells, kitchen equipment. laundry equipment, and then this elevator program. I also just reminded you for purposes of keeping this in perspective that the number that we're at now in asking for approval in this item, 4.4 million, is less than 1%, I think I said 1% in a note I sent to you, but less than 1% of the overall renovation work anticipated at Rice Street. By definition, as Joe talks through this, and hopefully got a chance to look at his memo, which really laid out in great detail the process followed, this is not an emergency purchase. So to characterize it as that is inaccurate. None of these were emergency related. They were anticipated infrastructure projects that needed to be done. They were done in advance. Of course, the bonds being issued, which of course the good news now is we have a judge's approval on those bonds and we'll be moving forward. But these were from funding identified back a couple of years ago. One of the reasons that I make that comment is running from pillar to post on every single thing that happens at the jail and getting outside the procurement process is not a good recipe. All we gotta do is remember Teletrax, maybe that one word, and that would keep us from going down that path again. So what Joe has done is, and along with Felicia's support, is run a discipline procurement. And in this procurement, the first step was an assessment of the needs of these elevators and then the scope of work to bid. I think it was, and Joe's outlined that, they were identified as average in nature and with replacement by 2028. So again, it defines the fact that it is a straightforward procurement process. What we do do, and I wanna make sure that you're familiar with this, again, and maybe we can do a better job of communicating our approach to all of the issues at the jail, is that a group, a joint team, of both Sheriff Office and County Manager's Office, many times with Joe doing a lot of the talking, certainly because of his expertise, meet every other week to look at issues that have cropped up at the jail and longer-term projects that we're working on. EMSI was hired and focused on providing the data to support that meeting. So the number of jail doors that have been damaged and then are out of service and the trend in that area is discussed by that group. Many other things are discussed by that group. But again, it keeps us data focused and then the decisions that are made on what to prioritize and what to move forward if there's a need for that, are made by a joint team, not by any individual. And so that all, I just say to ensure that there's a good understanding of how this project came to be, how it's postured in terms of emergency or non-emergency, anything can happen, as you all know, at the jail at the drop of a hat, particularly from a facility's perspective. And many of us have visited the jail right after some event of that nature has occurred. But if we want to have a sensible way of dealing with these issues over the next five to even as long as 10 years, we need to have a process, we need to follow the process, which I believe we're doing. We need to, in as many cases as possible, use a disciplined approach to procurement and follow those rules, and that will get us, again, the results that I think we want. And now that we have the bond issue at least approved by a judge, we can start to take advantage of reimbursement mechanisms against those future bond issues and perhaps move even faster. But Joe, that's probably a long setup, but I want to make sure that I express publicly the huge amount of confidence that I have in Joe Davis. No one knows this jail better and no one works harder at it and in tandem with the Sheriff's Office and certainly no one knows the procurement process better than Felicia Strong Whitaker. So I'm gonna depend on both of them to present this and answer any questions. So Joe, let me turn it over to you.

All right, now we have a motion on the floor to approve a motion to do so by Commissioner Arrington that is seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

I'm sorry, you want to speak now?

All right. Before you begin, Commissioner Barrett has requested to speak now.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With all due respect, Mr. County Manager, you characterized this as not an emergency. And yet, when it was presented to us on August 7th of 2024, it was presented as, quote, Dream is requesting 3.2 million to address immediate and emergency jail needs. Here's the item. And then when the work was contracted, the first part of the work was contracted with Lurch Bates, it was contracted under an emergency authorization agreement. it was characterized as an emergency when it was presented to us. And at some point, if it downgraded from an immediate and emergency jail need, we should have been informed of that. And if it wasn't an emergency, we shouldn't have used emergency authorization to procure alert space for this contract. Um, if it was an emergency and in immediate need, Then the timeline is deeply concerning because this was presented to us in August of 2024. And then it's only now in September of 2026 that we're ready to approve it. And to be clear, I have no issue with the fact that the cost is what it is now. And I'm going to vote to support it because we need to get this done. But I think we have real. um issues here with how long this is taking it was presented as a need in august of 2024. yes the report said it was average but it was average for an elevator system of its vintage which doesn't necessarily mean it's average it's average for an old set of elevators um Not only if it is an emergency and immediate need, are we not even approving the spend until two years plus later? The project isn't, the work isn't even set to begin until March of 2027. and not set to complete until January of 2029. So this is a significant amount of time for something that was character characterized to us in 2024 as immediate and emergency. And I think that is deeply concerning. So if, If for some reason something goes from emergency to non-emergency, we need to know that. And if it was an emergency as it was presented and which held true for the Lurch Bates Agreement, why was that emergency authorization not used to procure the elevator services company? either it's an emergency or it's not and so there's a lot of sort of mixed messaging here um which I find really troubling I mean I think we need to be much clearer about what how we characterize an emergency when we use those words when we use it for procurement you know what does that mean what is the public supposed to take from that what are we supposed to take from that um I I am DEEPLY TROUBLED BY THE WAY THIS HAS BEEN CHARACTERIZED AND THE GAPS IN THE TIMELINE. I THINK EVERYBODY ACKNOWLEDGES THAT UNFORTUNATELY GOVERNMENT MOVES SLOWLY AND OUR RFP PROCESS IN GENERAL IS A LONG PROCESS FOR GOOD REASON BUT IF SOMETHING IS IMMEDIATE AND AN EMERGENCY WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO MOVE FASTER THAN ALMOST FOUR AND A HALF YEARS TO COMPLETION OF A PROJECT. TWO PLUS YEARS TO APPROVAL OF A CONTRACT. I THINK, YOU KNOW, AGAIN, MY CONCERN RIGHT NOW IS THAT WE CLARIFY WHAT EMERGENCY MEANS, THAT WE ARE MORE TRANSPARENT AND COMMUNICATIVE IF SOMETHING IS OR IS NOT AN EMERGENCY, AND HOW THAT WORD IS TO BE USED AND ACTED ON BY THE VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS, AND THAT IF IT IS AN EMERGENCY, THAT'S COMMUNICATED TO EVERYBODY INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS SO THINGS DO MOVE ALONG, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, BECAUSE AGAIN, We did get two letters within a couple of days of each other from the sheriff that indicated some close calls because of elevators going down, life safety issues. So that feels pretty immediate of a need to me. It does seem to me that we need to expedite this, and I hope that we will get this approved today, but how can we move the start date up? How can we move the timeline up? so that this is not starting six months from now and finishing two years from now, two and a half years from now or so. Those are my questions and I would really like to know your thoughts.

So Mr. Manager, Ms. Strong, Whitaker, would you care before we even get to, because this is, No, I'll save my comments for later.

Mr. Manager? Yeah, I'll defer to Ms. Whitaker in terms of the definition and when we use it. And again, I think in this case, when you kept saying immediate and emergency, maybe therein is the... part of the problem, because some of these five items we've reported on, again, in every monthly board meeting. And even in the case of the laundry equipment, I think we said these had not failed as of yet. In fact, we were delaying it. So fundamentally, all through this process, we were giving every indication of moving with haste, but not without the procurement process. So let me ask Felicia to comment on that, and Lurch Bates in specific.

Good afternoon, Commissioners. Felicia Strong, Whitaker, Chief Purchasing Agent. First of all, let me clarify. The emergency authorization was requested for large bates to provide elevated consulting services. There was never an emergency request for the solicitation for the procurement. and the installation of the elevators. So the request that was submitted and approved was to provide the elevator consulting services. Once the elevator consultant provided the specifications to purchasing so that we could put out a solicitation, because that was always the intent, that is what happened. I do have the details and the timelines on when purchasing received and advertised the solicitation. It did move very quickly. We received three proposals. The evaluation committee did their evaluation process There is always a timeline for an evaluation because this is a very detailed process, very detailed solicitation. The proposals were very detailed. We did have to go back and ask for additional technical proposals. But again, I do have the entire timeline for the board if I need to go through that. But at no point was there any intent to issue the installation and the work as an emergency procurement.

I hear you that that was not what was requested of you, and by no means am I suggesting that you should have done something without it being requested that way, nor am I saying that you should not have done the initial request as it was requested. I mean, that's your job. But again, And by the way, I wasn't able to find the emergency agreement on the list of... At that time, we were getting a monthly list of emergency purchases, and I did not find it on there, so I'm not sure if that slipped through somehow.

No, it was provided as a ratification. I will provide that one for you.

Yeah, I just couldn't find it. I'm not saying it wasn't there. I could not find it. But my... My question still is, this was presented on paper to us with the words emergency and immediate, and over the two-year period, to your point, Mr. Anderson, I have asked numerous times about the speed of these things getting done. I have mostly been poo-pooed about that, but the word emergency and immediate eventually trailed off from what was presented, and then it was called immediate needs. On the monthly slides that you presented us to, it was called immediate for almost the full two years, and only in the last several presentations did the word immediate come off. So these were being presented as urgent needs. and in the beginning, emergency needs, so much so that emergency procurement was used for part one of this. It really is odd that the consulting services to analyze something would be considered an emergency, but the rest of the project not an emergency. I don't understand that, and the logic just escapes me on that. I don't understand how we could have gone from an emergency to not an emergency, DID SOMETHING IN THE REPORT JUST TELL US NO NEVER MIND AND IF THAT'S THE CASE THEN WE THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN COMMUNICATED BACK TO THE BOARD BECAUSE WE HAD AUTHORIZED EMERGENCY SPENDING AND IN IN ADDITION THE LURCH BATES REPORT INDICATES VERY CLEARLY THAT THE PRICE WAS AT LEAST THREE MILLION BY THAT TIME THAT WAS THEIR ESTIMATE AND WE WERE TOLD 1.652 ON PAPER EVERY MONTH from then until today. So I think there's a real communication problem. If nothing else, there's a transparency and communication problem here from you all back to the board and to the public. But I have some deeper concerns about what is presented to us as an emergency and how we move from that. And as I mentioned, the fact that we potentially do have real issues right now with our elevators and we're still not gonna start work until March feels really troubling.

This discussion here is a lot deeper than just these elevators, but I'll weigh in later. Commissioner Ellis?

Yeah, just so I understand, the emergency procurement was for to do the assessment and so forth, right? And then we learned in the assessment that maybe things weren't quite as bad as what because we're not elevator experts, right? That's why we had to engage these people. Elevators are pretty complex. If you look at elevator repair projects, replacement, whatever, in significant buildings, they tend to take a while, right? Very few people that do it. We weren't experts. So we hired the expert. They give us the assessment. The assessment actually turned out to be better than what we thought. at that point in time. Is that a fair statement? Yes, sir. Okay. So we had a lot of other things that we prioritized that were bigger deals, right? The blitz plan, so forth, and that got done. That's kind of what I'm hearing in terms of prioritization, right? All right, maybe our county attorney's in here. I don't remember reading anything in the consent degree report about this being a major concern. It needed to be addressed, prioritized, et cetera, related to elevators, right?

It was not listed as an immediate emergency concern in the report.

Okay, all right, all right. And so, you know, so we'll just, all right. So it's here before us to approve and then kind of get paced through, you know, just like any other project would, right? Yes, sir.

Okay, all right, thank you. Commissioner Thorne.

Thank you for that. I was going to mention that I don't believe in the consent decree that it was an urgent need that needed to be addressed, correct?

That's correct.

And that we had lots of urgent needs that we were having to prioritize at the time, and now we can go back and get to the elevator project again.

That is correct.

Okay, and I just wanna, I mean, it was interesting that there was an article published in the AJC the day our agenda came out about the elevators. So I'm hoping Mr. Reed Williams will go back and maybe edit the article to say that the amount we approved back in August was for consulting services, not for the actual procurement and installation. It's interesting how an article can come out the day our agenda comes out from the AJC. So I'm hoping we can get some accuracy in reporting on what we're doing and what we're not doing. But I would love to hear your presentation first before we... I did reach out to your office to ask about it because I was notified of this concern from the sheriff's meeting that I attended yesterday that I should be outraged about the elevators and you were gracious enough to inform me so I encourage all commissioners up here to kind of reach out to the departments instead of casting blame right away to get a better understanding of the entire story.

Commissioner Barrett?

I just need to correct the record. Commissioner Thorne, the original request was for 1.652,052,000 for the survey, the consulting, and 1.6 million for the actual work. So that was actually what we approved in August of 24.

And Mr. Davis will explain why that was inadequate funding after the consultation.

Right, but what I'm saying is you just said that the reporting was wrong and that the only thing we approved was for the survey, and that's not accurate. We approved both.

And if we approved both, we should get reporting for both sides.

I didn't ask a question. I'm just making a statement.

Okay.

Are y'all finished?

Chairman, I want to reserve the right to be able to speak after Mr. Davis speaks. Thank you.

Vice Chair, Mr. Davis, you have the floor. As has been stated, elevator modernizations are extremely complex projects. One of the most highly- Speak up a little bit, Mr. Davis. Good morning, Commissioners.

Joseph Davis, Real Estate and Asset Management Director.

Elevator modernizations, as has been stated by Commissioner Ellis, are extremely complex projects to develop and manage. In this particular case, to answer some of the questions that have been raised, particularly around the emergency agreement with Lurch Bates. Lurch Bates is the preeminent third-party elevator consultant in the business in our region, and in fact, nationwide. We used the emergency route with Lurch Bates because we had no other mechanism to hire them at the dollar value of their proposal. The elevators were experiencing downtime as they've gotten older. So we hired Lurch Bates because the best practice is to hire a third party to assess your elevators and then to develop a set of construction documents that will be set inside of a solicitation for an actual vendor to execute. One of the things that I think is overlooked is that when you factor in the issues of damage to elevators versus mechanical failures, damages are things like bent doors, crushed control panels where buttons can't be pressed. Those items have significantly longer lead times than, say, a simple component that needs to be ordered and replaced. Are we having a more difficult time finding them due to the age of the elevators? Absolutely. But when we have to fabricate That's when we see elevators out of service for lengthy periods of time. And does it impact the Sheriff's Office and the jail operation negatively? Absolutely it does. But we also must remember that during the time following the approval of the allocation of funding, That occurred in August of 24. We began the jail blitz in September of 23. Unfortunately, the jail blitz is a very intensive process that involves multiple contractors. Had we been able to, for example, start the elevator modernization in 2025, we would have brought the blitz to a screeching halt. because we were in down elevators, that we would have limited the number of elevators available to both the sheriff's office and to the contractors that have to move back and forth throughout the jail. And we're not talking about one or two. We're talking five to six at any given time on any given day. The second part of that is we also subsequently started the fire alarm project, which arguably is the single most critical project that we're doing right now. And that requires the contractor to move all over the jail, particularly when considering the number of damaged field devices, particularly in housing, that had to be replaced. So at one time, we had a fire alarm upgrade project going on. along with the jail blitz, which we've reported over the last three years. There would be no way whatsoever to facilitate the elevator modernization in light of those projects occurring. Did we intentionally slow walk the process? No, we didn't. Did we not make it more urgent than it could have been? I mean, could it have been more urgent? Could we have expedited? Certainly. However, the decision was made by me to go through the process at its normal pace simply because the logistics of working in that facility with a limited number of elevators available, considering the damage that's done on an ongoing basis, would have presented us with a logistical nightmare, and ultimately none of the projects would have moved forward in the time frame that they should. I think the last comment that I will make, unless there are other questions, would be to answer the question regarding the schedule that's presented in the bid package by the vendor. Yes, they originally proposed essentially a three-year schedule, but it was always contemplated because it would be at no additional cost to the county for them to have two crews operating at a time so that we could take two elevators offline at any one time because we have two different elevator types, hydraulic and traction, that require differing levels of expertise. So ultimately, the decision to not expedite the drill elevator modernization was due to the fact we would have had major logistical challenges, and that's probably the nicest way to put it, had we gone forward with that project in light of the other higher-priority projects.

All right, Vice Chair, I'm Drew Rockman.

First of all, let me start here with the executive team. For me, you all are very transparent and I appreciate the information that you not only give to all of us, I appreciate you all openness to speak about any and everything that we may ask before the cameras start rolling on each first and third Wednesday.

That's me speaking.

County attorney, I'm gonna ask you a question. I just need you to answer the question. How many people have perished in the jail since this has been going on? When I say since this has been going on, since this sheriff has been in position, how many deaths have there been in the jail?

Vice Chair, I don't have that number off the top of my head, but there certainly have been several that have occurred. And also, I would like to add to provide some legal context. This issue began in August, so in fall of 2024. And at that point, we were awaiting the investigative report of the DOJ investigation of the jail. In January of 2025, Fulton County entered into a federal consent decree regarding the jail, which necessarily caused us to have to reshuffle our priorities and take a look at some of the most urgent priorities at the jail. in light of the consent decree. And some of the things that we had been planning in the normal course of business did have to be reprioritized at that time.

And we, as a body, reprioritized them in order and aligned with the DOJ, the Monitor, and the working relationship that we had with them.

Yes, Vice Chair. We have been working very closely with the Sheriff's Department, with the DOJ, and with the court-appointed monitor since we've entered into this consent decree to ensure that all of our efforts and all of the resources that Fulton County puts into the compliance effort has the most possible impact towards getting us to compliance and preserving safety at the jail.

And let me ask you this. That DOJ report is how many pages long?

It's in the hundreds of pages.

Would you say maybe about 200 pages, a little shy of maybe?

I think it may be longer than that, 400 something.

It's 400. Thank you, Commissioner Ellis. And of those 400 pages, how many references are made about the elevators?

So in the monitors reports, since we've been in the consent decree, elevators are peripherally mentioned as items that we have reported on maintenance efforts, but none of the reports have highlighted them as a top priority emergency matter. Obviously they're important, they must be functional, but they have not been highlighted as an immediate top priority emergency.

Okay, thank you for that. I want to bring some focus back to this, and Chairman, please forgive me if I go a different direction. Miss me with the fake outrage, okay? I received so many calls from constituents when this was reported on the news, and it was reported on AGC, and oh my God! The house is on fire because some elevators. Now, I try to stay in my lane. I don't want to be in the lane of Joe Davis. I don't want to be in the lane of Felicia Whitaker. And I don't want to be in the lane of our county manager unless I'm going to get their checks. If I'm going to get their checks, I don't mind being in their lane. But if we pay competent people to do their job and they are making decisions, because I promise you, If you listen to what Joe Davis said, if all of those elevators were put out of commission at one time, it would have been a logistical nightmare. We've been on the news for that, County Manager. So what I'm saying is you can't win with a situation when the person in leadership wants a new jail. News flash, news break, you're not gonna get a new jail. You're not. And I don't know, I could be wrong, but I received calls from staff members, I received calls from people in the community that there is a general ideal of let them tear it up. Let the inmates tear it up and damn it, we're going to get a new jail. Now that's not Vice Chair Khadija talking. That's community people who are calling me. That is employees and former employees who are calling me. So miss me with the fake outrage about elevators. Tell a Trix county attorney how many of the emergency watches or whatever, that contract yielded how many devices?

Um, depending on the reports, it's somewhere between 15 and 100.

Okay, and this body approved how much money for that contract?

I believe that was 2.5 million.

Oh, wow, I am so upset, you all. Miss me with the fake outrage. You had no outrage for that $2.5 million that was spent on devices that were supposed to make a difference. And now, oh, well, they may have, we were just beta testing them. We were just, they, excuse me, missed me with the fake outrage. Now, I know my colleagues are not going to say what I say because they're just not built like that, and that's okay. But when I look at the AJC and I will look at the news and then the sheriff has a certain feeling about certain stuff, I get it. But I will never sit at this position and allow our county staff, whether it's at the front or it's the executive staff, to be thrown under the bus for publicity stunts. If you're gonna bring publicity stunts down here, baby, I will start all day with you. Because our people work hard down here. Our people are transparent. Our people come in and they do their job regardless of whether they're gonna be thrown under the bus or not. And so, Chairman, I will say this, if you're gonna be outraged about something, let's find something other than elevators to be outraged about. I would appreciate our county executive team being respected to work in their lane. Here again, I'm a legislator. That don't mean I can't question them. That don't mean we might not have a difference of opinion on something. I don't do your job. I don't do your job. And so I've got to trust that the decisions that you all make are decisions made in the best interest of Fulton County and its taxpaying citizens. And I believe that. I will stand on it. And until I see something other than publicity stunts, I stand remaining humbled by the fact that you all are continually under attack because somebody wants a new jail. It ain't happening. Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Commissioner Ellis? Yeah, Mr. Davis, I really appreciate you kind of walking us through things. One of the things that sort of struck me in some of the remarks you made were the comments about continual damage to the elevators, bent doors and that sort of stuff. And I guess some of that could be natural, but some of that could also be vandalism, you know, people doing something inside the elevator. Is that correct? Yeah, and that And right now, I think we received a note that all the elevators are functioning at the jail. I mean, we know that there's been downtime, but they're all... So many times, most of the elevators have been functional, but we have experienced downtime from time to time. That is correct. Okay. Yeah, and it just struck me, given that comment you made, that we get... And I'll echo Vice Chair's comments. I mean, some of the, when we received some of these correspondence and some of the stuff, it just, it appears to be a little bit more contrived. But this paragraph in a letter we received from the sheriff, you know, last night, one of the only two functioning elevators at the jail became stuck between two floors while transporting one officer and four inmate residents. And nothing happened, but his lead-in is during that time the officer was confined in an operating elevator with four individuals in our custody with no ability to exit and critically no ability for officers to immediately reach or assist him. I guess when I, I'm not into going in and trying to you know, throw all the stuff around in the press and all that sort of stuff. But when I read this, so I didn't respond to it, but when I read this, the most thing that struck me the most was what was one officer doing in the elevator with four inmates? I mean, I'm not a law enforcement professional, but I have a pretty good sense that that's probably not the standard ratio. You probably want two on there if that's the case, right? Because that could happen irrespective of whether or not whatever's going on with our elevator system. So that was a piece that struck me. And then when I go and I read, you know, kind of the, I'm getting off track here, Mr. Chairman, but this was invited, all of this was invited by others on here. But when I, you know, we've made this sort of the important thing that hiring detention officers is the most important thing we could do. And all this sort of stuff circles back to staff in many ways. And, you know, there's a, And in the monitor's report, back to us, there's a quote that says, the ability to fill those posts, talking about the detention officer posts, remain significantly constrained by staffing shortages and a lack of urgency for the Fulton County Sheriff's Office leadership to utilize all available resources to mitigate the profound staffing crisis. This stuff is not all unrelated. That's my point. I hope we go ahead and approve this, move forward with it, continue to get these things up to speed. And I appreciate you all walking us through all of the history of this in a professional way, not in an anecdotal, whatever you want to say kind of way.

All right, Vice Chair, Dr. Rockbond.

Thank you, Chairman. My last comment on this is really more or less educating the public Mr. Davis, the maintenance of the jail is who's responsibility?

Department of Real Estate and Asset Management.

And you all are required to maintain that regardless if it is something that you have to go back and redo one, two, three times a week. I'm just throwing numbers out there. Because I want the people... to listen to understand your job and part of what you all do is to make sure you maintain something. It doesn't matter if you put something in brand new and you've come back here and parked and it's broken and not functioning by the time you get here.

You gotta go back and still see about it, correct? Yes, ma'am, that is correct.

So your job is to make sure that you maintain, and a lot of things come up, a lot of things happen, and your goal in your department is to prioritize and to work with the sheriff on what the priorities are and to make sure those that are prioritized are done as well as any new service needs that come up simultaneously. Would that be a correct statement?

Yes, ma'am, that is correct.

Okay, thank you. I just wanted the listening public to know. Thank you.

All right, any other comments? Thank you, Mr. Davis. The motion on the floor is to approve. Motion to approve by Commissioner Arrington, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman. Please vote. Appreciate your favorable vote.

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

Next item.

2605, excuse me, 0539, request approval to renew existing contracts for roof maintenance, repair, and replacement services in the total amount not to exceed $1,500,000.

All right, motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdurrahman, seconded by Commissioner Arrington.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays. On page six, 260540, request approval to renew an existing contract in the amount not to exceed $1,045,000 to provide bus and shuttle services for Fulton County employees and jurors.

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

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays. 260541, request approval to increase spending authority in the total amount not to exceed $329,485.80 to provide additional landscape ground maintenance lawn care services.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair, Dr. Rockman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays. 260542, request approval to amend an existing contract for janitorial services in the amount not to exceed $139,353. Motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

And the vote is open.

And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays. Under Health and Human Services, 260543, Public Works, request approval to renew an existing contract in an amount not to exceed $950,000 to provide standby utility pavement patching and paving services.

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

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays, 260544, request approval to renew an existing contract in an amount not to exceed $245,000 to provide chemicals for drinking water and treated wastewater analysis.

All right, 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. On page seven, 260545, request approval to increase spending authority and amount not to exceed $441,034 to provide water meter reading services.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair, Dr. Rachman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays. 260546, request approval of an intergovernmental agreement between Fulton County and the City of Roswell for water main betterments and relocations in an estimated amount of $1,454,580.

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

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays, 260547. Requests approval of an IGA between Fulton County and the City of Milton for water main relocations in an estimated amount of $284,800.

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

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays. Under justice and safety, 260548, police request approval to increase spending authority for automobile repair services in the amount of $68,000.

All right, we have a motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Commissioner Ellis.

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

Now, these next three are all the same. You will sound them together.

Okay. Commissioner's action items.

Hold on. Vice Chair, did you have a comment?

No, sir. 260549, request approval resolution to support affordable home ownership in the Vine City neighborhood by approving a grant from funds previously set aside to aid in the construction of 12 new affordable single family homes and for other purposes. 260550, request approval resolution to support affordable housing in the Vine City neighborhood by approving a grant to aid in the construction of an 18-unit affordable multi-family development and for other purposes. 260551, request approval resolution to support affordable housing in the English Avenue neighborhood by approving a grant to aid in the construction of a 25-unit affordable multifamily development, and for other purposes.

All right, favorable motion on all three by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Commissioner Arrington.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. On page eight. Next three items are all. Administrative Committee of the Fulton County Defined Contribution Plan 260552. Vice Chair Abdulrahman has nominated Yanis Tsimoukidis for a full board reappointment to a term ending December 31st, 2028.

Can all three of these be counted?

Yes, take those. 260553, Vice Chair Abdulrahman has nominated Kim Turner for a full board reappointment to a term ending December 31st, 2029. 260554, Vice Chair Abdulrahman has nominated Don May for a full board reappointment to a term ending December 31st, 2026.

All right, favorable motion on all three. Motion to do so, to approve by Commissioner Ellis, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays. On page nine. Commissioner's presentation and discussion items, 260556, Detention Officer Staffing Progress, sponsored by Commissioner Ellis.

Update in terms of what our net new hiring position is for detention officers to date.

Mr. Herman, is that you?

Let's hope so.

Good morning.

On your screen, sorry, good morning. Kenneth L. Herman, Jr., Chief HR Officer. On your screen, commissioners, is our standard update on staffing related to the jail activity within the Sheriff's Office. You're familiar with this document, and I'll just walk you through the charts. There are three different sections. The top chart is a snapshot on the hiring activity of sworn officers dedicated to work specifically and only within the jail units within the Fulton County Sheriff's Office. And it illustrates our historical activity since January to where we are now in September, September 2nd. To date, we have hired 103 sworn officers and detention officer and deputy roles. And unfortunately, during that same time period, we've separated about 45, which brings the net new hires to 58. The second portion of the chart tracks our activity with our outside vendor, the Walls Group, who has been secured as a vendor to assist the sheriff with filling the 392 positions that were identified as needed within the report that we received by our third-party vendor. and it tracks the number of completed applications that we receive from applicants interested in those positions. After WALS does their review and packages up those candidates that have passed the initial review process that is a combined review of WALS and some of the questions that the sheriff asks, that information is sent to the sheriff's office. And then finally, the last row speaks to the number of actual hires. So taking those things in order since January, we received 1,300 plus completed package from interesting applicants from throughout the country. Of that population, 332 have been sent to the sheriff's office for consideration, and to date, 57 have been hired. One caveat that is not captured here on the table is, to our knowledge, the sheriff has eliminated 181 of the 332 out of the population. So he roughly has roughly around about 100 or so candidates still in the consideration process at some way along the path within his internal operations. The last part of the chart then again provides you with a forecast. Now that we have six to seven months of good data and we can now see trends with the hiring, Based on the industry standard that the HR office was able to find, our current applicant to hire rate is roughly 2.77, which equates to for each 37 applications received from WALS, we're going to make one higher. The industry benchmark that we found was anywhere between 3.5 to 5 applicants is where you need to be, which would equate to for every 28 applications, you make one higher. And then the yellow box, again, just as an opportunity to set the stage for you commissioners. is taking the current trend and timeframe that we're seeing in hires within the Sheriff's Office for these foreign officers that are working within the detention units. Based on the numbers and based on the calculations on the applicant to hire rate, to hire the first 200 of the 392 positions needed within the jail, it'll take an estimated 3.4 years to do that at the current pace. Now, in recent months, we've seen an uptick in hiring. As you can see, there's a big spike in August, where I think that's the biggest month or the highest number of hires in the month of August of 29. And I get an email on Friday that will also project how many new hires are in the pipeline for September. And I'll stop here and answer any questions that you may have.

All right, Commissioner Ellis. Just real quick. Sure. Yeah, I mean, just not really any questions, but just put the goal up there. The goal's 200, not monthly goal, it's our yearly goal. Put it up there, 200, track our progress. We're at 29%. Put that up there, that's our target. That's what we should be measuring ourselves up against. The time to fill is interesting, but it's also somewhat of a misnomer since we didn't do really jack squat up until the last couple of months. Right? I mean, let's just call a spade a spade. And then, like, we did, it looks like this process actually could work if you did what you did in August. It can work.

Yes.

All right, so that's the validating piece that it can work if we follow it through and we do the work. But right now, we didn't do anything in these months, so we're at 29%, at a target of 200%. Right?

Correct.

All right, put it up there. 200 is the target.

200 is the target.

We miss it, we miss the goal.

Yes.

All right.

All right, Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman.

Mr. Herman, did the elevators, any of the elevators being down have anything to do with these people not being hired?

No, Commissioner.

Oh wow, somebody call AJC. Somebody call 25 and 11 right now! I know that sounds ludicrous, y'all, but listen to me when I say this. And, County Attorney, if I am wrong in my statement, please correct me. The staffing issue at the jail is critical. It was identified in the report from the DOJ and as a body, this body has done everything in its power to help attack that shortage of staff. Is that correct?

Yes, Vice Chair. The staffing shortage at the jail has consistently been identified as the number one top priority to improve safety.

I just don't know what's going on. I'm just outraged right now. Do you see? We're talking about people's lives.

Now, Mr. Herman, are you able to even speak to why?

How many people did you say at the same time were separated from... The job, same time as if the hiring was going on, it was people leaving. Do you have any information, exit interviews or anything that can speak to why that happened?

Commissioners, we are in the final stages of collecting data. from that population of the 103. Of course, it's a volunteer environment that hopefully they provided some feedback. I will wait until the next board meeting before I make an assumption because I've only seen two of what we received thus far, but we've gotten some good information and at the next board meeting, I'll be able to provide you a lot more detail as to what those employees that were former county employees working full time in the jail, what they are saying were the reasons they left and chose another employer other than Fulton County Organization.

Because the concern of mine is if that trend keeps up, we're bleeding. A tourniquet won't help that, Chairman. I mean, it's nothing that we can do here even with walls. There's nothing they can do if we have that type of turnover. And so what I want to go on record here at Fullerton County, this board has done everything that this board can possibly do. We need help. we need a way to make sure that these people, not only that are working there, stay there, and the ones that have come in that are being, I guess, vetted, my understanding they're being vetted by walls, but then the final decision as to whether they are hired or not is at the hands of the sheriff, correct? Absolutely correct. Okay, so we need to make sure that, whatever decisions are being made, that they're being made with the timeliness of the fact that the staffing shortage is very critical and it was part of what the DOJ, this is not Vice Chair Abdur Rahman, this is not Commissioner Thorne, this is not Chairman Rob Pitts saying it's a staffing shortage. The Department of Justice, the monitor from day one identified that as being critical. So it needs to be taken critical by all departments. Thank you, Mr. Herman.

Thank you, Commissioner. Anything else? All right, Commissioner Thorne, sorry.

Without going into specifics, in the sheriff's office, does he have an abundance in positions while still having a shortage in the detention facility officers?

I'll coach my answer like this, Commissioner. In the CDL, in the study, it did articulate the number of positions that they felt were needed for the respective ranks. When you look at that number in comparison to the current number of positions in the respective ranks within the sheriff's department and specifically at the jail, the answer is yes. There is an opportunity to better align those positions those ranks to where we have a little bit of excess, switch those around. Of course, where we're short, and we know we're short on 200 detention officers, that's what we're trying to add in as well. So there is a opportunity for the Sheriff's Department to move closer into alignment with the numbers that were recommended in the CGL study.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

All right, other questions?

Well, Mr. Herman, I'm not going to let you off like that. In the study, did we not find that there was top heaviness? And what I mean by that, there were people in supervisory positions that did not have any direct reports?

Yes.

Yes or no, sir? Yes.

I'm trying to think back to the study. I can't remember reading that specifically, but I can say that yes, the CDL study did say that we have higher number of ranks that is needed for the facility at that level of rank.

Well, I can say it. Yes, it did. It said there was a concern that there were, in some cases, individuals in supervisor position with no direct reports, and they saw that as a problem. And so I hope that's being addressed as well. I would ask that by the next meeting, when you come back to us in two weeks, if you can just look at that and see if that has been alleviated or if that's still a problem. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Mr. Herman, anything else? No, Commissioner. Thank you. Next item.

260557 discussion update on submission of the 2026 tax digest sponsored by Commissioner Ellis.

Commissioner?

Yeah, I guess really my question here is are we, I had made a request for a response from the tax assessor to whether or not we were gonna receive a digest by September 1st. So has that information been provided to the tax commissioner It's really just my question for that. Mr. Conley, can you address that? Yeah, my question. Has the digest been submitted to the tax assessor?

Good afternoon, Chairman. Good afternoon, Commissioners. To answer your question, we have completed the outstanding land packages and we're starting the process of the cleanup working in conjunction with the tax commission's office as part of that process.

Okay, that sort of answers my question, and it doesn't really answer my question. Has it been handed over to the tax commissioner or not, and sort of when, do we have a line of sight in terms of when, and I realize there's two parties in this, but when we could receive a digest?

Well, again, our part was to complete the evaluation of the land.

And that information has been provided to him as of when?

So they started the process.

Speak up, Mr. Connolly.

They started the process as of today. Okay. So I guess if you want to call it, it's officially have been completed, and they're in the process of finalizing the digest, meaning team members from the Board of Assessors and the Tax Commissioner.

Okay.

So to get to a balance, they have to work together.

That information was provided to them yesterday?

Yes, we completed our work yesterday.

Okay, all right, thank you for that. And in terms of, and this is maybe for Mr. Rewicki, if we have this and if this paces itself through and we receive, I guess you've got some sort of potential schedule we could be looking at. Just give us the assumption in terms of what this is based on.

So, microWiki strategy and performance management. So, this again is based off of our dates and what we have seen so far working with the tax assessor and the tax commissioner. Actually, give us a couple of dates. Can we go to slide number three of the presentation? Okay. Just want to kind of give you guys a base off of this. So again, starting today as Mr. Conley had stated, the tax commissioner has been told and it has been confirmed by the tax assessor that the information was submitted. It has been completed for valuations and land packages. They are beginning that balancing process. with the tax assessor's confirmation. Currently, again, as Mr. Conley mentioned, there is review data cleanup that that team is gonna be working on along with our vendor, just to make sure everything gets done. Then there is a target for completion of the balancing in mid-September. And then the estimate packages would be sent to the jurisdictions, again, along that same mid-September timeframe. Next slide, just to give you guys a little bit more. as to what we're looking at. What we're looking at as a proposed schedule at this point in time is that in order to set the millage rate, the board would actually approve a proposed millage rate at the September 16th BOC meeting. The ad would then be sent over to our publishers, newspapers that day for publishing on the 23rd of September. We would also recommend a special call meeting of the Board of County Commissioners for September 30th in order to stay on a quicker timeline to get this submitted to the state, where you would have the first and second public hearings, one at 10 a.m. and one at 6 p.m., respectively. if that is the will of the board. That would then require the tax commissioner to actually submit another extension to the Department of Revenue for the submission of the digest, and we would then hold the third public hearing on October 7th with the BOC to actually set the millage rate. The next slide. So again, one of the things we wanna make sure that everybody understands is that once the millage rates are adopted and the tax commissioner finalizes the calculations, that will be submitted to the Department of Revenue. uh we will then need to get all of the confirmations from all of the jurisdictions that they've had their hearings they've published their ads for the millage rate then we would actually estimate that submission to dor around mid-october once we collect all that information and then we would project the approval from the department of revenue would be around the end of october and then mailing of tax bills would be estimated around mid-November at that point.

Okay, just two or three quick questions. Okay. And just sort of points of emphasis. All right, so if you go back to page three, all of this, the schedule of this outline really is predicated on this balancing thing to happen, right? Correct. All right, and so for us to be able to be sitting here on September 16th approving a proposed millage rate, when does our staff need that information by to make that part work?

I'm gonna actually turn that over to Madam CFO.

Thanks, Mike. We would need it by the previous Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest in order to put an item on the board's agenda for the following week.

Okay, so that means we got a week, is that what that means?

Yeah, we'd need it basically sometime towards the end of next week in order for it to be on the following week's agenda.

All right, so I'll ask Mr. Connolly, have you prioritized the resourcing of your people to ensure that not only our government but other governments would have this by within a week's time frame?

Yes, sir, you're correct, we have.

Okay, all right. Thank you for that. And then in terms of for our staff and everything, we've got obviously dates on here that we're gonna have to meet. So we're just all queued up for that. We've got all the folks that need to be queued up in terms of the advertisement. And the clerk notes here that we're gonna have to have To stay on the schedule, we're gonna have to have a special called meeting in September, correct? For the public hearings, yes, sir. Okay. There's no way to accelerate this schedule the way it's laid out.

I think it would be difficult. I mean, the step that we have to work through is getting the authorization from the board to, for our purposes as far as approving the millage rate, we have to get the approval from the board to advertise a proposed millage rate and have the information to submit for the five-year levy add. So we would need the board's, authorization to do that. Based on our understanding, the earliest we would have the information and be able to present that to you was September the 16th. So unless the board wanted to authorize the advertising of a proposed millage rate without having seen any of the information or unless we get the information earlier and the board is open to having a special call meeting prior to the 16th to take that step to authorize the proposed millage rate. After that, we're tied to the advertising requirements, the statutory advertising requirements as well as the lead time required by the county's legal organ, which is also now the paper of general distribution, which is where we would have to place the five-year levy ad.

Okay. All right, so absent. The key data I heard from you on that is unless the September 16th piece moves, the rest of it is fixed. Is that a fair statement?

The rest of it follows, yes, that September 16th date, spaced out based on the statutory requirements for advertising and the lead time with the newspaper.

Okay, all right. Well, I would just say this, just to close this out. Obviously, the critical nature of this cannot be understated. We got a timeline now that's on record. We had one one before, we missed it. We cannot afford to miss this again. And just whatever, for all parties involved in it, we've got to prioritize getting all of that stuff done and over to our staff. by the 15th and all the other local governments as well because we're gonna need them to do all the same work that we have to do, right? So hopefully when we come back on the 15th or 16th, whatever day that is, that this is what we're starting that process and continuing that timeline through. So thank you for the update.

All right, any other questions or comments? Thank you. Mr. Conley, before you leave, I do have a question. Regarding the commercial property appraisal audit that we discussed back in, I guess it was probably January or February of this year, and that all came about because of the concern of the public, other local jurisdictions, and this board about the high profile trophy properties, and we requested that a third party audit be done. What happened to that? The reason for that was to assure the public, because I had understood from talking with you and your staff that we were doing everything humanly possible, that we were doing things properly, and we were recognized pretty much on an annual basis by, I believe it was the State Department of Revenue, commending us for the job that we're doing, but yet still there's this belief that we're not, that we're leaving millions of dollars on the table. And so in order to get to the truth, we, and I had asked the board and the board agreed for us to hire a third-party independent firm to look at certain properties. And whatever happened to that?

Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question. And as it relates to the state's sales ratio study, you should have received more recently the 2025 iteration, also suggesting that we have met compliance. But to answer your question, We did go through the process initially for the bidding process for the appraisal services. However, I think there were only two initial bidders that went through the process. One was disqualified, going off my memory. and the other one was not accepted by the staffing or the panel. So the decision was made to try to reengage, get some feedback from those who may have bidded, reengage the process at a later date. Of course, we wanted to prioritize the digest process prior to reengaging with that.

So what is the timeline now for that?

I will bring the item back to my board at our next meeting, and I'll be able to update you from there.

Okay, when is your board's next meeting?

Next Thursday.

Okay, because in the meantime, it was my understanding that your appraisers had looked at several of these high-profile so-called trophy projects, and there were four or five of them, if I understand it correctly, that were... previously valued at a combined value of right at $100 million, and on reappraisal by your folk, it came out in the billions. Is that accurate?

I do not believe that is accurate. There may be conversations centered around the data centers.

Not the high profile. You're correct. It's the data centers. The data centers. Is my math correct?

Yeah, that would be a more accurate statement for the data centers.

Okay, but you will have a firm timeline for us at our next meeting?

Regarding the appraisal, yes, sir.

Yeah, I mean the audit. Okay. Yes, sir.

Thank you.

All right, anything else at this time? Not, I entertain a motion to, I was corrected, we will entertain a motion to recess for lunch, first of all. Second of all, we may discuss items that deal with real estate, litigation, and personnel. Motion to do so by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, six shays, zero nays.

All right, without objection, we will resume the regular order of business. Madam Clerk, continue. Items from executive session.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The first item is to correct and amend the minutes from the May 20th, 2026 meeting, Board of Commissioners meeting, item number 26-0300. to correct a reading error on that date coming out of executive session, I asked you to approve requests for representation and I read out that they were items one and two. What I should have said is that they were items number four and five. So to correct that error in the minutes and in the record, is there a motion to approve an amendment to agenda item number 26-0300 to correct a reading error in section B regarding the approval of representation by revising the reference from items number one and two and correct them to reflect items number four and five.

I have a motion to do so by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne. Vice Chair?

Clerk, Madam Clerk. Does this clear up that the way she just... Our county attorney just phrased it. I'm just doing a double check.

Are you saying that we are to go back and amend those minutes or will this motion take care of that?

It's an authorization to go back and amend the minutes themselves through a board action as is required so that it will correctly reflect the board action taken and correct my misstatement of the numbers.

Okay, so noted.

Thank you. All right, please vote.

And the motion passes, six yays, zero nays.

Is there a motion to approve the requests for representation in items number five and number six of the executive session agenda?

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

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

No further action items from Executive Session.

All right, any other matters that come before us, Madam Clerk? No further items. All right. In the absence of any other matters, we are adjourned. Thank you, Commissioners.

Can I have your bottle? Oops.

For 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.