City Council - Regular Meeting

I would like to note that from 2024 to 2025, we had an average increase of 1,415 additional traffic cases per month from the previous year, 2024. When we look at the previous year, calendar year 2025 criminal cases filed versus closed, 19,017 cases filed, a total of 12,424 closed. When we refer to 2024 to 2025, we see an average increase of five thirty six additional criminal cases per month during this two year period. As for our DUIs, 2025, the calendar year provided a total filing of 1,836 cases. Total closed 1,061.

From 2024 to 2025, average increase of 13 additional DUI cases per month. And finally, looking at our housing, division, total file cases in calendar year 2025 was 7,650. Total close 9,430. From 2024 to '25, 2025, the average increase of 35 additional housing cases per month were filed. Based upon the data, the frequency of case filings continue to increase, and the court will continue to perform at a high level of efficiency and in the court with the excellence that our citizens deserve.

At this time, I will, relinquish the presentation to, mister Moore, our chief clerk, court administrator. He will provide an overview of the court, our achievements over the past year, our goals for the next fiscal year, and the overall budget, request on behalf of the court. Mister Moore.

Thank you, chief judge, and good morning to you, vice chair, president Overstreet, our public safety chair and vice chair, madam chair Boone, and vice chair Martin. And to all members of council who are not present but may be watching, it is indeed a pleasure to be here with you this morning to discuss the impact that the court has had on the citizens of the city for the past fiscal year and calendar year as well. Current accomplishments excuse me. Keep up with the slides. Current accomplishments for the last fiscal year, the court just recently completed a refresh of end of life courtroom technology and equipment.

That was one of the goals that we had in last year's presentation, and that is one that we are proud to say we have, completed that. Equipment in the courtrooms, AV equipment has been in the building since it was built, I believe, twenty years ago. And so we were very proud to do a complete refresh to be able to have better sound systems and capabilities in the courtrooms. We have enhanced communication in alignment with the mayor's, pillar of effective and ethical government. We have revamped our hearing notices and FTA cards to ensure clear, concise communication with the public regarding their business with the court. We did work with the Georgia Justice Project and

IDEAS 42.

IDEAS 42, and they really took a scientific dive into our hearing notices to look at fonts, colors, bold, italics to see scientifically what people would look at when they first see their hearing notice to compel them to come to court with the goal of trying to reduce those FTA numbers. Lastly, but most certainly not least, this year, we have really honed in on our efforts in community outreach, a city of opportunity for all. The court will be hosting it as we presented in public safety on Monday. We will be hosting our first career fair in just a couple of weeks. We do hope that each of you are able to join us, and we did send the flyer for you all to be able to disseminate through our community court division.

And this is the time for any defendants or any members of the public to interact with multiple employers, including APD, Atlanta Fire Department, Westside Works, and all branches of the military will be on hand. Other accomplishments include us executing our second annual day of giving, wherein we provided, backpacks with toiletries and other essentials to the unhoused community surrounding the courthouse during the Thanksgiving season. We also had a Thanksgiving giveaway in partnership with v one zero three and R and B artists, who came and did a food giveaway the day before Thanksgiving. FY '27. What's new and improved?

We need to do more technology enhancements, city built for the future, and we are currently in the process of securing a vendor to provide e filing for the court. We've been working on this since I've been with the court now for close to two years. The time is perfect now because our case management system contract is ending by the end of this year. And so we're now looking at vendors to lump all of that together, a new case management system as well as e filing to enable attorneys and, pro save litigants to be able to file, documents and court pleadings from the comforts of their homes or office. Enhanced communication, ethical excuse me, effective and ethical government.

We are in the process of finalizing text message reminders. This is a very, effective tool that we can use in situations such as, we've experienced weather issues throughout the winter season, Internet outages, myriad of different issues where we can be able to, with the snap of a finger, communicate with all the defendants who are expected to be in court on any particular date to let them know that there may have been a change or alteration to their scheduled court appearance. Community engagement, a city of opportunity for all. The court plans to enhance its community court division with increased programming and opportunities for defendants. Two of these programs include an in house traffic offense course.

And by offering this traffic offense course in house, the court can ensure consistent and high quality curriculum delivery aligned with judicial expectations and public safety goals. This approach allows for greater oversight, accountability, and the ability to assist those who may have financial restraints by providing a low cost fee structure. Secondly, the court plans to revitalize our clinical division, which is a critical component of the court's strategy to effectively address cases involving individuals with mental health and substance abuse challenges. Our proposed budget for FY twenty seven is $16,000,007.51 $8.84. This represents a $841,000 variance.

I will say that the court is where we need to be as far as headcount, and that variance includes, last year at this time, we were only at nine judges. One of our judges had retired at the top of the year, and so now we're accounted for the new judge who has replaced the retiree as well as a new division, with the warrants department and staff being hired for those positions. And so, we have we take great pride in being good stewards of the funds that we have been given by this council. Our position count by fund. This year, the court is ending the fiscal year with a 18 vacancy rate and a 20% turnover rate.

We've had a lot of retirements, throughout the last year. So we currently have 151 field positions, 36 vacancies. This slide details the statutory surcharges, funds remitted to the general fund in the state as required by the state and the city. Over the course of the last year, there was 7,500,000 taken in through different funds. If you see the six year breakdown from 2020 through 2025, there was a total of 38,000,000 that has been remitted through surcharges.

In conclusion, as a court, we are proud of the work that was done in 2025. We begin the year with the retirement of the of a judge who served the city for over thirty years, and we were pleased to welcome our newest judge this past summer. We hosted school tours for schools throughout the city of Atlanta as well as various other metro counties. We've had schools coming from Newton County, Cobb County, Clayton County. And we also established a partnership with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Atlanta.

We hosted our first ever wellness fair, which was division of our deputy court administrator, miss Hicks, who was, to my right, wherein we partnered with various city departments, EAP, the city's wellness center, and gym to provide blood pressure, cholesterol, and prostate screenings for all staff. As I stated earlier in this presentation, we not only hosted our second annual day of giving, but we also expanded that by partnering with outside, individuals to do Thanksgiving giveaways. We put together a team to represent the court, raise money, and gave a sizable donation and participated in the out of darkness suicide prevention walk at Piedmont Park this past November. And we ended the year in style and celebration with our first ever sneaker ball. As a court, we are proud of what we were able to accomplish and look forward to continuing to excel.

I would like to thank you all, the city council, for the partnership and collaboration throughout the year, and I must also thank the executive office of the mayor who have all been most gracious and accommodating whenever we have needed them. And that concludes our presentation.

Alright. Thank you. Just wanna share that we've been joined by, chair, Andre L. Boone, as well as council member, Wayne Martin, and we'll go ahead and take questions now from my colleagues. First up is council member Martin.

Thank you so much, mister vice chair, and thank you to our chief judge, Ward, for being here this morning, to director, Moore, and to the rest of the staff. Thank you all for all that you do. I'll start with a a high point. I'm really grateful for I think it was last Friday, you all hosted the NREM symposium at the court. And for those that aren't familiar with the NREM process, it is one that allows the city to really step in and clean up our neighborhoods and communities, with these properties that that have become nuisances, whether they're commercial or residential.

And that process is very, very key, to us being able to make our communities safer. This chief judge, along with his staff, took the opportunity to really, share with the community, what that process is, how the community can play a role in it, as well as what the city can do, as it relates to these kinds of, issues in our community. So I can speak for myself as vice chair of public safety. Thank you for that. And let's continue to lean in with the community so they know that we're all in this together as we work to make our community cleaner and safer, for families, for students, for young people, for our unhoused community.

It is just we're better when we are taking those properties and getting them, back into compliance and or getting them taken down. Some of them are very unsafe. So thank you again for that. A couple questions about operations. I'm hearing about the new warrant department and the staffing. Can you share briefly and it may have been in the in the packet here, but y'all y'all printed a little small. And so what is the staffing count that you all anticipate? And what would you don't have to break it down per individual, but just overall staffing count as well as what that is gonna cost, the course, going forward.

Yes. So we currently have, a total of 22 warrants positions, and we are in the process of requesting some additional positions. We will be in the coming fiscal year requesting additional positions to satisfy the needs of the warrants division. And the average salary for the warrants employees are about $44,000 each.

Okay. So I think I think the chief judge shared with us just the other day in public safety that I think you all commenced operations for the warrant division. Was it October '25? Yes. So you kinda started kinda mid fiscal year, give or take, and you've got 22 to date. And then are you anticipating adding, is it five people, 10? Six.

Seven yes. There'll be six additional.

Six additional. So full staffing, 28 or so? Yes. Okay. And about 44,000 annually is the salary count. So $8,000,001,000,000 overall, and that's where we see the the delta between your budget from last year to this year.

No. Actually, we we do have some, other warrants. We have currently, six extra help positions, and four of them are occupied Okay. By warrants employees. And so we're we'll be adding the the positions that will be requested in the coming coming fiscal year Mhmm. Will be to replace six. Six of them will be replacing the positions that currently exist.

Got it. Because what I'm getting at, think it looks like your budget is essentially flat if you take out the returning judge as well as the, warrants division. Correct. Make a a fair assessment?

Yes. That's correct.

Alright. Well, thank you very much for sharing that. I just wanna dazzle a big little big big jump there. I just wanna make sure I understood what what is happening, but it does make sense, where we're where we're going and where we're headed. And so I appreciate you. Thank you, mister chair. I yield.

Councilmember Boone.

Yes. Thank you, mister chair. Chief judge, thank you all so much for your responsiveness again to the citizens of Atlanta, especially those seniors that are not online and need extra support. We really appreciate you all making those calls and assign staff members to them. Again, thank you all so much for everything you do. We do not take your kindness, your sensitivity for granted. Thank you.

Okay. I had a couple questions. I wanted to lean in a little bit more on that $840,000 increase. I know part of it is for health insurance, but the salary is jumping up $6.90. The math isn't aligning with me. So I think you said that there were six new positions in the warrants division at 44 each. That's only, in roundup, let's say $300,000 of the $6.90. So what's the other?

Okay.

There there are actually seven additional positions that we'll be requesting. Six of them are warrants techs, and then we'll be adding an interpreter.

Okay. So that may get me up to half of that amount. So what's the other half? Because I think you said that in in the description, it says that it's because of the hiring of an additional judge, but that already happened in f y twenty six. Right? And so just trying to understand the delta there. Uh-huh.

Council member, there's also there were statutory salary adjustments that were required for all judges. So, at the state level, the judge the judge salaries are mandated for what they should be. Those weren't captured last year, so we had to true those up as well. So it's the additional judge plus the additional across the board increases for all the other judges.

Okay. So basically half of it is salary, new positions or accounting for new, and the other half is manage statutory increases. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. Also, as I'm looking at your performance metrics from 26 to 27, I think the one that jumps out the most is case clearance rate criminal jumping from 54% to a 100%. That's a big jump. Just wanted to give you a chance to kinda articulate the strategy behind that and what the significant changes are

gonna be. Which particular division is that, vice chair Wong?

It just says court operations. It's on page two ninety six of our budget books. Case clearance rate, criminal. Goes from 54 to 100.

Council members, generally, the proposed targets for the next fiscal year, I think they have an SLA to get to a 100. It's an it's an aspirational goal versus you'll see the historicals are at 50 and actuals are at 50. This year, they know they're not gonna get to a 100. They know they have a good idea of the Mhmm. That that goal. But I think that the court's benefit is that they have an aspirational goal to get to that 100% target at some point in the near future.

And I would state that, traditionally or historically, the court has always achieved a 100%, clearance rate or higher, with the increase of filing of cases and, the court running at full capacity with the additional 35,000 cases over the past three years. We're dealing with that and, it is our goal to get back up to that level of 800, but, we are operating with an additional, 20,000 cases from last year, 15 from that and still operating calendars, to the maximum potential based upon what comes in. So, we, will be hoping to reach that, by next year's

budget report.

Yeah. I I appreciate what you're saying. But, again, even if it's an SLA and the fact that we're you know, the the data for the year shows that we're only halfway to that SLA, just wanted to give a chance to to talk through what the strategies are to begin closing that gap. So I appreciate that. If if I may,

I just want to add just some further clarification on clearance rates. Clearance rates can be affected by defendants failure to appear elongated sentences that sometime include a stay away orders, protection of communities. So we were ultimately, like to resolve cases in six months or less, but because of the particular issues and defendant's cases that may prolong and

so forth.

Appreciate it. There's a lot that's out of your control that Yes, sir. So the last thing I will mention is in finance executive yesterday, we got a presentation from, ATL three one one. And what's great about that is it provides a lot of just statistics on the types of calls that they get. And, looking at the the courts, the three top ones are fail I've I failed to appear at court. When is my court date and time? And how much is my court fine? And how do I pay? And those are just gonna be natural questions that that the public at the last minute will be in a panic and then try and figure out what they need to do. But I wanna tie that to something you said about, it's it's somewhat tangentially related, but the science of fonts Yeah.

Which I think is fascinating. Is there anything else you talked about investments in communications. Like, to me, this may be an opportunity. If the trends are going up that we have more and more people understanding that we have more and more, citations that are issued, Is there anything there that we can do to kinda learn from what we're seeing from the three one one data to improve, yeah, just improve efficiency?

Right. I have been in very close coordination with three one one, and, they've been informing me about the spike in calls regarding FTAs, and we're seeing them on our end also. And so the couple of things that I discussed today, as you stated, we're looking to those to reduce that number, the new hearing notices as well as text reminders. But, also, we are looking to APD. We have met with APD and discussed putting some language on the actual citation

Yeah.

That's

with the court's website and, you know, some language to say, for information regarding your case, visit municipalcourt.gov because all the information that the public needs is on the website, how much the, citations are, when their court data is, all of that information is captured on the website once those citations are entered. And so we've been in coordination with APD to get that added to the citations.

Sounds good. Again, I think this is valuable information that if we can continue to look for ways to improve notification, citation language, your website, the text messages I love. I think everybody, you know, is getting more and more familiar and used to being getting information that way. Again, I just I love it when I see three one one data because it gives to me a road map of things that we could easy, potentially low hanging fruit that we can do to help. Not that I wanna take volume off of three one one, but it's, again, just a signal of how we can do better. So that's really all I had. I I think your budget is pretty straightforward, especially with the explanations about the salary increases. One yeah. Councilmember Warren.

Thank thank you so much, mister chair. I forgot. Your your questions help me reminded me to ask of a question I need to ask about FIFA. I know we talked about this in public safety on Monday. Does this budget proposal anticipate the night the night court and really enhance operations that are gonna be necessary because I I realized half of the FIFA will happen in the new fiscal year. And so I think that this is probably a test case for these kinds of large scale events that happen over. I mean, nobody up there was probably old enough to remember the Olympics except the chief judge. All the rest of y'all are young. Spry spring chickens. So that's a little shout out my friend, judge Ward.

But as we think about that, do you all does this budget anticipate those those those enhanced operations?

Right. I'll say with the current infrastructure that we have, we are very confident that we're prepared.

Okay.

Yeah. I think that, you know, you you you we have contingency plans in place for anything that may happen, any unforeseen circumstances. But I will say from a budgetary standpoint, I think we're prepared.

Okay. Oh, good. Thank you, mister chair.

Alright. Any other questions for courts? Alright. Yep. Madam president.

Not so much of a question, but I always want you all to know how supported you are over here, from council, and I appreciate the, the work that you're doing. I'm glad we're keeping up with the the trends of making sure that you all are compensated in the right way. And just know that we're always here to help. Don't sit in silence. If you need us, you're supposed to let us know because I think you need everything that, that you ask for.

I will also say that the the theme of the town hall, that I had a couple weeks ago was around cleanliness with our city. And I've also received calls from your area around how we as a city can do better with the cleanliness. And I'm just keeping that out there on the record that I did, talk with the powers that be, and they agree. And so we're gonna really work on that. So just know that. I didn't hear it come up. I was debating whether or not to bring it up, but just want you to know that we all see and and hear and smell the same things. Okay? And thank you so much for coming in today.

Thank you. Alright. President Overstreet, I just want to say once again, we greatly appreciate the, support of, our partner branches of government, city council, as well as the executive office of the mayor. By working together, we can achieve great things, and that's excellence for our citizens. And, we greatly appreciate the responsiveness to support and the, the diligence in responding to, the needs of the court.

Councilmember Martin going on social media with this. Alright. With that, I think that's a great way to end high note to end the hearing with. Thank you again, for your presentation. And with that, we will transition out. As soon as they step down, I'll have the office of solicitor, step in. And colleagues, it's page three ninety one in your budget books.

Thank you. Thank you all.

You ready?

Yes, sir.

Alright. We have reset quickly. Thank you very much. This is now the office of solicitor. Again, it's page three ninety one in your budget book. And, mister Carter, I will, I hand the microphone over to you.

Thank you, vice chair Wong. To council president Marcy Overstreet, to you, mister vice chair, and to council members Boone and Martin, thank you so much for allowing us this opportunity to present our FY twenty seven budget before the Atlanta City Council. We in the solicitor's office have a sworn responsibility to represent the interests of the citizens of the city of Atlanta before the Atlanta Municipal Court. Our core functions include the prosecution of traffic misdemeanors, criminal misdemeanors, city ordinance violations, and specifically certain code violations. We also provide alternatives to the normal court process through our diversion programs.

We engage in community prosecution, which has been pioneered for a couple of decades now, and it's a mechanism not only for crime prevention, but it's a mechanism for educating our citizens and to promote safety. We have to make sure that we look out for our young people and our seniors, and we're just so happy to engage in our community prosecution activities to promote that. And I want to personally thank each of you for the opportunities you all have afforded us to do so in your various districts and citywide and in your functions as council members. We also strive to develop and improve efficiencies within the court system. We have a high volume court, and we have worked hard along with our partners in the judiciary and to some extent, and I guess I'll say a lesser extent, the public defenders, to to basically make sure that our system operates properly to protect our citizens, but also to protect the rights of those that are accused.

We are happy to engage in our youth activities through the mayor's initiatives. I'm really happy to work alongside Mayor Dickens and his administration to focus on youth activities. We want them to have respect for the system, and we want to be involved in all efforts to educate them. That's why we are so supportive in terms of our colleges and universities, our public and private school systems. We want to continue to be supportive to citizen groups, victim advocacy groups like AVA, and we want to make sure that we continue to be efficient.

Our challenge going into FY twenty six was to deal with the expansion of our courts from 10 courts daily to 12 courts daily. And we put some things in place. We made some changes internally to make sure that we set up teams to cover those courts. And, of course, finally, we are definitely in the mode of working along with all city partners to ensure that Atlanta has the most successful FIFA games ever. So we appreciate the opportunities that have been afforded us by chief Sheerbaum and his team to help with the training and the logistics that will be involved in putting on the FIFA games.

And with that statement, I will go ahead into our slides. Our organizational structure is just fairly straightforward. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the members of my team. I have our director of special properties to my far left, Mr. Jordan Williams.

I have a deputy solicitor Rhonda Graham here with me. Deputy solicitor Andrew Taylor could not be with us today. I have to my right, this wonderful young lady, Mackenzie Smith, who was recently married, who is our financial forecaster. I have my right hand with me, my operations manager, Milan Henderson, and we have our personnel guru, Mr Wendell Bryant, who is with us today, and I want to thank them all for joining me in this endeavor. Our goals are set around the mayor's initiatives, of course, one safe city.

With regard to that, our current accomplishments have included expanding our DUI calendars. Georgia, as many other states, still have problems with DUI, substance abuse. In the old days, it used to be alcohol. Now it's almost anything. We're having these issues now with vaping.

People are putting oils into their lungs. We have various types of endeavors now that are laced with fentanyl that are causing tragedies. And so we basically look at our programs to center around the proper case management and where we have to go to trial. We have our trial calendars and we want to thank in particular Judge Theresa Mann, who is our DUI judge for her organizational skills. We have really seen an improvement in that area.

Our diversion programs are something that we are very proud of. We try to provide to eligible defendants an alternative to traditional prosecution. As of January 31, we've processed over 18,000 cases. We want to expand that. So far, we've generated 2,300,000 in revenue.

We hope to be able to exceed by the end of FY twenty six over $3,000,000 Hopefully Mackenzie hope we can do so. And we're also going to touch upon the things that we're doing in the areas of code enforcement through the mayor's initiatives, and there's going to be some discussion about judicial and rim and the safe and secure housing initiative. And we'll also be talking about the blight tax. Since this initiative was started actually in late twenty twenty three, just looking at 15 to 16 multifamily properties, there's been over $700,000 already collected in fines as opposed to imposed. In terms of a city built for the future, we definitely want to look at our internship program as a pipeline to try to prepare young people for careers as attorneys.

We have had challenges, and I think all governments do, with people wanting to come into public service. I commend you all for being in public service. Public service is a sacrifice because most people and you can't blame them. They get the proper educational background, and they display their talents, and they make a good living for themselves. And this is a good living, but it doesn't compare to the private sector in terms of compensation.

So we are working to try to expand and update our screening guidelines and our fee structure for our intervention programs. I want to thank the mayor's office of strategy that has worked with us, and we have come up with a new tier system for assessing the fees for pretrial. And, what's interesting about it is is that we're trying to capture people on the lower end that can't afford certain fees, But we also wanna send a message to the people on the higher end with our more serious offenses that we need to get your attention. So state law allows us to do this. So this is a little bit more than just a fee for the advance of services.

This also has somewhat of a punitive aspect to have people to understand that, hey, you're getting a real break here because you won't be convicted of this offense and it won't go on your record. Next slide. With regard to effective and ethical government, I wanna definitely thank my deputy solicitor Rhonda Graham, who has worked for years, enforcing provisions of our ethics code. And she makes sure that we do the things that we need to do to make sure that we're above board on our practices. And she and deputy Taylor have been especially effective in helping us with our challenges with our pills.

One of the things that we noticed about FY '26 is that we normally would have maybe six to seven appeals a year that has now doubled. We have 15 to 16. And so we've done a deeper dive with our attorneys to try to cover our appeals. Many of our appeals now are going before the Georgia Code of Appeals or the Georgia Supreme Court. That's rare for us because we're a city court.

We're municipal court. So we have attorneys that are really getting some good training in this regard. And Deputy Taylor and Graham, they've been working with us. We love our collaborations with corrections, code enforcement on everything that we do. And when we give out these facts and figures about fines, we fully realize that we're just part of the process.

We're not taking credit for it because it all starts with law enforcement. We wouldn't have the case without the police. So we have the police. We have the code enforcement office, especially, miss Talley's office and the things that they've done to really bring these cases to our attention and also the things that you all do to bring these cases to our attention. There's there are several emergencies every day, and we've all got to work together to coordinate to address these emergencies within a matter of hours, not days.

And then we also have to fully realize that there are those things in the system that just drag out, that test everybody's patients. They get caught up in civil processes. They get caught up in motions and appeals and those types of things. But we got to find a way to make it all work. In terms of a city of opportunity for all, our internship program has definitely expanded.

We actually use it as an incubator to develop lawyers. So we take second and third year law students, and we put them in court. I do want you to know that they're under supervision, so they have attorneys with them. But we put them in court, and they actually win trials, and we're very proud of them. And what we're trying to do is we want to see them replace us one day.

We want to see those people continue to want to work in public service. Next slide. So as you can see, as the things go on, all you're seeing is are the same things that are repeated under each division. Under one safe city, those things are repeated. A city built for the future, those things are repeated.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Also, in terms of modernization, in terms of the future, I want to take a minute to talk about case management, which is extremely important. We started this task with the help of AIM and the Department of Finance to put in a case management system. We have we have hit a pause because we'd like to reset.

What's the main thing driving that? AI. We started our process before AI. So now we are looking at how we can recalibrate with AI, how we can work to, have savings costs with what's being offered by vendors and how much of this can be done by AI instead of vendors. So I want you to know that that continues to be a work in progress.

So we had to put a pause on it. But please look to us really taking a deeper dive into this particular area for FY twenty seven. K. Let's see if there's something here. Okay. Those things have already been covered. Let's go to the next. Thanks. With with this pause, I'd like to turn our presentation over to our our director with special properties, Jordan Williams. Thank you.

Hi. Thank you, mister Carter. I'm Jordan Williams. I'm the director of the special properties team, and I just wanna give you all a quick overview of the tools that our teams, our team uses on distressed properties. The, first one that you heard a lot about, that was started after, the Forest Cove situation, We focus on safe and secure housing civil code enforcement, and that is for multifamily occupied properties where we, you know, go after the property as a whole to, collect, civil penalties.

The goal of that, of course, is to change the behavior of the owner, and, this process is underway. Then also, you've probably heard, know about judicial and REM. I know some of you do very well. So this is the process we are shifting to as a city to handle properties in need of a demolition, and they come before the municipal court now. And these are properties.

They have severely hazardous conditions. They have to come down. And this these we are about to restart those filings very soon. And then the blight tax, there was some legislation. I believe it passed just last week to clean up the code and clarify some operational procedures around the tax.

The city's portion of for the properties designated as blighted, the city's portion of the property taxes will increase by factor of 25. And then, of course, we are hoping that they will remediate the blight, and we will not even have to collect the tax. That is the objective of it. So we will be doing that later this year, to go into effect for the 2027 tax bill. And then injunctive relief.

This is a less common tool, but we, will take cases to superior court, where there's criminal activity and, typically, a business, may need to be shut down, because of repeated criminal activity. That's it on our team. Okay.

Next slide gets into our budgetary issues. As you can see, our position count is is going down. And what we've noticed is that for a couple of budget cycles, we carried positions on the books that remained unfilled. And so with this particular budget cycle, we're able to try to rightsize that by abolishing those positions. Okay.

And,

of course, most of our positions are general fund. We have one position that's financed by Watershed, which has been done traditionally for for many years. That position started off with word word of theft cases. That moved internally with Watershed. So the position now has been reassigned to deal with site development cases.

And I think I have it here. I I had a little chart just to give you an idea of how successful that has been. For calendar year '25, our erosion control cases brought in, over, almost a $170,000 in penalties. So that that position really needs to stay here. Okay?

I know it's from another fund, but it really does help us with our enforcement efforts. Also, we've been working with the vacancy review board. And as you can see, we have some positions that are in process to try to ensure that we have sufficient capacity to work with the daily court system. As I have said before in a previous public safety presentation, we actually work six days a week because we have a Sunday bond calendar, every week that's required by law. Sometimes it has to be thrown off.

Sometimes we have to do a holiday because there is a a rule, of course, throughout our nation that we have to bring people before a judge within forty eight hours. So we we have our five day calendar, but we also have a Sunday bond calendar. And I just wanna make sure that people understand that when we're making our assignments with regard to that. What I'd like to do now is talk about the pages in the budget book and those things that are in our FY proposed budget, and I'll have Mackenzie Smith to go through those things for you.

Yes. So as you can see here on the graph, our budget is pretty much flat. We have a variance of 35,000 from last year to this year, and that typically covers the change in salaries. We did hire two positions that were vacant. We'll rehire two positions that were vacant. And we do have a little change here in our purchase contract services as well.

Okay. And and with that, that concludes our presentation. Thank you so much, and we are open for questions. Yep.

Thank mister Carter, thank you for the presentation. Again, I applaud the abolishments. I I think you're looking at staffing, as a very dynamic thing, and then you make the adjustments along the way, but then you you make the changes of of unneeded positions as you go as well. Do I have any other questions from my colleagues on this? I mean, you have a very straightforward budget.

Like you said, it's flat, and it really is just I appreciate the the detail on, kind of the the initiatives you're gonna launch going into next year. This chart that you prepared, I don't sit on public safety, but I will tell you this is probably most one of the most clear depictions of the different tools that we have. And I I do think, to the extent that we can share this with the public and have them understand as well, it it would be a really good thing. But I I I wanted to, just lift that and and thank you for pulling that together. Okay.

With that, I I will say then you're getting off easy because your your budget's pretty straightforward, but appreciate the great work and and and recognize the important piece you play in in how we respond to the public, how we maintain high levels of, quality of life in the public as well. So I wanna thank you and your entire team

for that. Alright. Okay. Yeah.

Councilmember Boone, please. Mister Carter, just wanted to take this opportunity to, again, thank you all so much and your entire team for all you all do, not just inside the court, but outside the court. Midnight basketball, being there for our young people as much as you can, going out to visit, having talks and speeches with them. We really appreciate that. And just wanted to think about what ways can we assist the public, those that cannot remember their court dates.

They are calling everywhere, trying to remember when their court date's over, and 311 was inundated with that. Let's think of ways we can, possibly have a tech service or something where people can get their court dates text to them or email to them, something besides the mail. But, again, thank you all so very much for all you do. The entire team that comes out to, the Jackson Memorial Baptist Church, CT Martin, the Darnell Center on last evening. Just wonderful, wonderful staff. Please let them know how much we appreciate them. Thank you.

Thank you. And, mister chair, I just wanted to add, thank you all for showing up this morning. Otherwise, we'd issue the FTA. Otherwise, you're laugh, mister chair.

I'm sorry.

I told him thank you for thank I thank them for showing up. Was very important conversation.

No MTA.

Alright. Well, thank you all very much. With that, we will reset. Next up will be the office of the public defender. Colleagues, it starts on page four thirty five in your book.

If y'all are ready, I'll why don't you go ahead and start? I know we're getting copies of the presentation, but we might as well go ahead and start listening. And if you wanna introduce your team, we will go from there. Again, colleagues, page four thirty five in your budget book. The floor is yours.

Alright. Thank you very much. Good morning, council members. Thank you for the opportunity for us to present the proposed FY twenty seven budget on behalf of our department, the office of the public defender. I am Kenneth Days. I am the director and chief public defender for our office. To my right, is Dennis Collier. He's our deputy director over court operations. And to my immediate left is mister John Tapia, who is a deputy director over our administration and internal operations. So the the office of the public defender is a holistic client centered law practice that provides comprehensive legal representation.

Our basic principles, are to provide advocacy, outreach, and access to the clients that we serve. Our vision and mission align directly with the administration's priorities of safety, equal opportunity, and ethical practices. We actively demonstrate that a well resourced and proactive public defender office contributes to the stabilization, health, equity, and economic empowerment of the communities that we serve. Our department structure includes very dedicated and talented attorneys, investigators, social workers, client advocates, legal support personnel, and administrative staff. Our department operates multiple divisions, which includes the representation of state traffic offenses, criminal ordinance violations, or city ordinances.

We also provide DUI representation, including the administration license suspicion suspension hearing components. We do broad and inclusive social assessments, internal counseling, and referrals to alcohol or substance abuse treatment as necessary. We provide code enforcement defense, which also includes specialties around real estate law, probate law, knowledge of vast knowledge of title standards and landlord tenant matters. Our immigration unit provides per die analysis and advisories to our attorney staff, and we also have an appellate division that seems to be very busy these days. The department staffs licensed clinical social workers and client advocates to support our the ancillary needs of our clients as well, which greatly reduces chronic recidivism, and we promote community stabilization through direct referrals to social service support.

In FY '26, our department had several notable achievements and a great portion of our success has always come from proactive community engagement. In addition to staffing 10 active courtrooms and a Sunday court calendar, we also assisted more than 400 individuals, which with much needed social services to improve the quality of life, again of those that we serve. Our department participated in over 100 community outreach events and continue to distribute our community resource guide to multiple individuals and organizations, which provides comprehensive up to date information for those seeking assistance with resources for emergency shelter, for temporary or supportive housing, individuals that are in need of securing IDs, finding health care or treatment options, for individuals who are in need of a crisis hotline for either domestic violence, substance abuse, sex trafficking, and suicide. And our resource guide also provides resources to food pantries, clothing, and employment referrals. It is updated weekly so that we ensure that provider information is accurate.

Our department attorneys and advocates also regularly conduct know your rights presentations primarily to, youth audiences. And the purpose of that is to educate and and reduce negative encounters with, law enforcement. We continue to partner also with other city agencies, nonprofit entities, faith based organizations, and other third party service providers to ensure that our mutual constituencies have direct access to meet their needs, which statistically strengthens public safety. Also consistent with our projections in FY twenty six, our overall caseload increased due to an increase in DUR appointments. Our in custody representation increased slightly, and the number of appellant filings that we had increased significantly.

And despite though the increase in client numbers, our commitment to providing holistic service delivery has been stable with no considerable reductions in referrals or internal service provision. As in previous years, we've streamlined our outreach capabilities to provide effective and efficient delivery of key services and expanded capacity where needs are most critical. Looking ahead to FY '27 based on, historical economic patterns, we believe our caseloads will continue to increase substantially, and our intention is to meet those challenges with targeted hiring and seeking ways to decrease the funding gap that exists with us and other judicial agencies. We've already begun developing new protocols for client intake and referral to services, which ensures that our service partnerships are stable and we have the required capacity and resources to meet client needs. Internally, we're seeking to enhance our data capacity and utilize technology to meet our needs in accordance with national practice standards.

As to our current position count, that is 50 full time employees, and we have one position that is proposed to be abolished for an anticipated 49 FTEs. We currently, as of this week, 43 full time employees and a total of six vacant positions. Two of those right now are onboarding. We're proud to say that. And we are actively recruiting for two additional positions right now.

We also intend very, very in short order to seek VRB approval to fill the remaining two vacant positions that we have. Our proposed FY twenty seven budget anticipates an increased variance of approximately $44,807, which means we'll effectively, have a flat budget this year. Our proposed budget for FY '27 is also closely aligned with the trend for '26, and is also aligned consistent with our '25 spend. And due to the fact that approximately 93% of our budget is related to personnel, that's also consistent with the past two fiscal years. So our priorities remain consistent, and we look forward to serving the public in the same capacity.

And with that, I'll happily take any questions or my staff would be happy to do so.

Any questions? I would say I mean, your your budget request is pretty straightforward. I appreciate the abolishment. I'm I I didn't realize you were y'all did a lot of the know your rights sessions. I'm curious to hear a little bit more about the response, who you've been talking to and presenting to. I think you you said youth. And just any lessons learned or things to lift back to us from that experience.

Absolutely. I'm I'm gonna let I didn't get to introduce her earlier. She was getting our our much delayed fault of mine, our our proposals. But Dundell Patterson is also our deputy director over our community engagement, and she can address that directly.

So the Know Your Rights presentations, can you hear me okay? Yeah. Yeah. We do we do we tailor it to different groups. Right? So we have some that we do at men shelter for men k. For men. We do some at youth organizations, at Promise Center, different schools that access to come in. And then we kinda tailor it to if we have a partnership with like a soup kitchen who we go out and feed every Friday, they will come and they will ask us to do Know Your Rice presentations. And it's actually really interesting because a lot of people don't know

Right.

What they can and cannot do. So we always get requests from different organizations to come in and do that.

Any any kind of lessons learned or or surprises from that, aside from what you said that a lot of people don't I mean, that probably doesn't come as a surprise that a lot of people don't know, but anything of note?

What's interesting is that we've actually done some Know Your Rights presentations to people in the legal community, and they're actually surprised sometimes with things that yeah. Because a lot of people don't do criminal law.

Right.

And so they do, you know, they'll do personal injury or they'll do public certain things they just don't know. So it's been interesting to be like, oh, that that we we don't have to do that. I'm like, no, you do not have to do that. But sometimes we partner with other organizations and sometimes we just have our staff go out and and it's funny because most of our staff actually really enjoy it because they like educating the public.

That's great. I I again, I I was not aware. And when when you mentioned that, it kinda caught my ear. I was like, oh, I'm gonna have to ask.

Yeah. We'll do we'll do one

for y'all.

Okay. I I might not even know my rights. Council council president.

And that's what I was thinking. I wish I had known about it because I would've had you at the town hall because I think that's a great place for you to be. And I've so many council members are having town halls now. So we'll definitely keep that top

of mind.

I think that's excellent.

We did one with, ACRB one, their board, and it was really good. So, yeah, let

us know.

Yeah. I love it.

I was

gonna say, might I might need that

lesson myself. Councilmember Martin. Yes. I'm intrigued by my colleagues, all of his interest in knowing his rights. I'm a hang with Alex one weekend, see what's going on. But, honestly, this is fantastic. And I wanna make sure that we get engaged in our high school. So I'm Yep. You know, council president O'Shea and I both live in Southwest Atlanta, and I'm a Thorell alum. And when I was at Thorell, we had the long government magnet program and center.

I think they still have some semblance of that, but I'd love to get with you, you know, chief chief solicitor, not solicitor, on the other side, chief defender days so we can plan that. And I'll definitely leave it with council president so we can get that done and helping our young people understand what their rights are now, but also want them to look at careers in the field. So this is fantastic news. So thank you for asking all those questions, mister chair. Now I know we can hang out on the weekend. We're gonna go. Alright. Thank you so much, y'all.

Hey. Let's hang out more. Okay. Well, with that, again, thank you for everything y'all are doing. You provide a really important service to our public as well, especially those that they can't benefit themselves or or need, the guidance from from your department. So with that, we'll conclude you I know you were nervous, but y'all y'all did great. With that, we'll conclude your hearing. We'll stand, on recess until we reconvene at 1PM, with the office of the inspector general. So that concludes our morning session. Thank you.

Thank you.

Alright. My clock says 01:00, which means we'll go ahead and get started. We're here in the afternoon session of day four of the city council review of the FY twenty seven budget. We'll begin today with office of inspector general followed by ethics office and then close out with the city auditor's office. I've also been joined by my colleague, council member Thomas Worthy. We have copies of the presentation coming, but in the interest of time, we're gonna go ahead and have you start, miss Blackett, and they'll catch up with us when they get here. So I'll turn the floor over to you if you'll introduce your team, and we look forward to hearing

your presentation.

And we're on page four ninety one of the budget book.

Thank you very much, councilman Wan. My name is LaDawn Blackett. I am the interim inspector general for the city of Atlanta. Thank you for having us here today. I have joining with me from the office of the inspector general, deputy inspector general Tony McNeil over our Ipro division.

To my right is Deputy Inspector General Dion McGee of our Compliance Investigation Division and Assistant Inspector General Michael Green of our Compliance Investigative Division. To go over our org organizational structure for the office of the inspector general. Perfect. Thank you very much. Since our last budget meeting, which was about sixty days into my tenure, we've made a lot of progress, in the office of the inspector general.

We have, restructured our office and those processes. We've reorganized our case management system, and we've improved our investigative timeline and continue to improve our IPRO reports with requested input from city council members. To review our organization of our department, we have four divisions. We have our business management division that is made up of Christy Carter, our business manager who is not here today. She did join our team in November 2025.

We also have our investigations unit led by, deputy McGee, who joined us in June 2025, and she is supported by two assistant inspector generals who joined us in June and October 2025 respectively. Six investigators with our most recent investigator joining our office this month. And with the exception of one investigator, our investigative team is new and fresh with fresh perspective and comes with a lot of experience to join the OIG team. Our next division is our I Pro unit. Also under new leadership, Deputy Inspector General McGee excuse me, McNeil has been with our office in the IRO division for some time, but he has recently been promoted to deputy in the 2025.

And finally, our outreach and training division has a vacancy. We are looking to fill it with someone with experience in training, public relations, and advanced legal experience working with other municipalities. The new structure of our Office of Inspector General allows us to have better oversight of our investigations by ensuring our assistant inspector generals are overseeing each of the investigative units. We have better oversight of our outward requests for evidence, for other information, documents, and communications with, individuals throughout the city of Atlanta, and we have better case management and timelines for completion. To review our previous year and also look ahead into the next year, I wanna go over some of our current accomplishments that, over the last twelve months.

In January 2026, we were able to establish quorum with our governing board. Our governing board is now, filled with five of the seven members necessary for us to get our work done. We were able to have meetings in January, February, March, and May 2026 so that we're able to move forward our cases. In the initial meeting, we closed over 70 backlog cases from the previous administration. Of those, 11 of them were substantiated matters.

All of the others were unsubstantiated or administratively closed. We were also able to reestablish the bylaws for the governing board so that the public, the council, and all parties can know exactly how we operate and have a clear understanding on how to work with the office of the inspector general governing board. We also updated our department standard operating procedures, coming up with new and renewed processes for interviewing, for working with citizens, working with employees to make sure that our investigations are both reliable, and that our audits are also reliable and consistent with good standard practices.

We

also have completely new administrative process for our governing board. So if you were to review the governing board meetings from 2025 and before, our processes include votes by our governing board members to ensure that cases are clearly opened or closed, for them to give us feedback, to ask questions, and I am very proud that our governing board is not a rubber stamp for the OIG. They are asking tough questions that allows us to improve our processes and ensure that we have reliability in all of our cases. Upon the closure by the governing board, at that time, all the cases are turned over to the city council and provided to you all for your review. What we do need for our governing board is are two members.

There are two outstanding organizations that have not made appointments. That's the Atlanta Bar Association and the League of Women Voters. In order to try to procure those departments, we have asked the mayor, our madam city council president, the chair of our board, and myself. We have all drafted letters to those departments and those individual organizations to show that we have a united commitment to address waste, fraud, corruption, and abuse. It is our hope that by each of us sending a letter that they will feel more confident in appointing someone to those boards.

We do need that, although we have quorum in case a member cannot be there so we can actually continue to conduct business each month. If we are unable to identify individuals from those organization by years end, we do anticipate returning to the council and replacing those organizations with some with another organization that can assist us with making sure that our work is done. In addition, looking, at iPro, we have, continued and and restarted our discretionary reviews. Discretionaries are reviews and audits through iPro that the contract files are complete for those contracts that are under a million dollars. That is extremely important to ensure, that we can make recommendations to counsel, and also to ensure that we are discouraging, any bad actors that may be there who do have the smaller, procurements to know that we are reviewing those as well.

We are also having ongoing updates to our I pro reports and continuing to request the input of the council on what you need to know in those I pro reports. We're also notifying you in writing and on the record when an I pro report is not complete so that it is clear on any action. And we are communicating more clearly the timeline to establish in the case an IFR report is not complete, why it's not and when it can be expected and the basis for that so that the council can make their decisions. In addition to that, in our previous fiscal year in the compliance division, our records management has been greatly approved. We have established using technology and some internal processes so that we're able to move quickly through our investigations.

We also reestablished a more reasonable case closure timeline to ensure we are protecting the interest of all parties, whether they are a complainant, a subject, a department head, or a citizen. In our outreach division, we are establishing a connection with employees by employee to employee and departmental trainings and one on one events. We are purposely in the office of the inspector general moving away from the standard online training components because we believe that we still must take deliberate steps to restore the confidence in the office of the inspector general to improve the the reliance on any complaints that are made anonymously or knowingly by any party. For new and improved, outreach, we are also doing what's called ask before you act. Previously, a party can only contact the office of the inspector general to complain and say that someone is definitely we believe someone is doing something wrong.

The advisory opinions allows parties to ask questions about what are the standard operating procedures, are we operating in a proper way without necessarily telling on someone. But it still allows the inspector general's office to do a review on waste, fraud, corruption, or abuse and use that information for training citywide. We're also doing come to you trainings. We've had the opportunity to visit ethics, procurement, and a number of other departments where we meet their employees one on one. What we have found is those communications allow the employees to understand who they are reporting to.

It has increased the types of reports that we receive to be more reliable, more credible, and we believe that's because they can trust who their OIG is. We've also employed new technology that increases efficiency. We have a strong compliance team standards for requesting evidence and reviewing the office of inspector general jurisdiction. There were a number of cases in those 70, case backlogs that really did not belong to us. And we also understand that the inspector general's office was created because of pretty large number, issues as it relates to corruption, not necessarily to review if someone misused their email or copy printer paper in the city.

While that is waste, we wanna make sure that our efforts are focused on saving citizens money, making sure that any bad actors return any funds that they should not have received, and also ensuring that, it deters any other potential bad actors telling them not here in our city. To review our position count, we current we have, slotted 16 full time, positions that is split funded between the general fund, the waste and water fund, as well as the airport revenue fund. We currently have three vacancies. Two of those are currently being filled and are in the interview process. The other is going before the vacancy review board for approval to be fulfilled.

Moving on to our budget. Our business manager, miss, Christy Carter, who is not here and joined us in November 2025. It's a breath of fresh air. Together, her and I manage the budget. All of our other OIG staff are dedicated to all the other areas.

As you can see, we have, moved along with the city's request to reduce our budget by 5%. We are able to do that and still manage our budget. We have allotted for our personnel and employee benefits $1,074,000 for our contracted services, which will make up trainings and other things that we need to make sure that we are using our best standards. We have allotted $211,632 for supplies, 65,760. For capital outlays, which will be used primarily for technology increases and improvements, 40,000, and interfund cost and charges $845 from the general fund.

This does not include our funds for our from the enterprises. With that, I present to the council the budget for the office of the inspector general, and I'll be happy to take any questions you may have. I understand you now have copies of the presentation.

Yeah. And I also wanted to acknowledge, and she just left the room, but we've also been joined by council member Eshay Collins. Anyone have any questions before I jump in? Sure. Council member Worthy.

Good afternoon, madam. G. Two quick questions. Number one, how long have we been waiting on the Atlanta Bar Association and the Legal Women Voters to give you a board member?

For over a year, approximately April. I started March. Approximately April, I began reaching out, making communications. We've reached up and down the track to try to find them. I did wanna give them an opportunity to see our new board encompassed because I thought maybe that was part of the delay. Now that we've had about three or four months to see how we're operating in good form and fashion, this letter will be my last ditch effort. So it's been over a year.

Okay. Count on me to sponsor a paper to change the appointing authorities because we need that board filled full full stop.

I agree.

Next question. FTEs remain flat, but the category of regular salaries is cut by $317,000. This may be a question for you or the CFO. Is this, reflected be because it's funded from somewhere other than the general fund?

That's correct. Part of it is funded through our enterprise funds for some of our personnel. We did do some shifting around. So for some of the enterprise funds, it was already split funded. I wasn't quite clear on how the numbers were originally derived. So for example, one party was, 50% of their salaries came from the general fund, 25 came from the other funds, but there was no real rhyme or reason. Others were seventy, fifteen, 15. So we did do some amendments to move those around to make more sense in light of the work that we did. And so while there is a lower amount, it is still covered by some of the ex in additional funding.

No. That makes complete sense. I just wanted to make sure I understood. Can I can I

just jump in? Actually, it doesn't make sense to me though. I mean, if you're just shifting between general, airport and watershed, the net effect should be zero when you roll everything up. So what else is happening?

Not necessarily. If the general fund portion decreased slightly slightly, it would the general fund so say, example, the allocation was $75.10, 15, and then the allocation went to $70.15, 15, that is a reduction to the general fund.

Yeah. But when you roll it all up, you you and the cover page is rolled up.

Oh, the cover page?

You're still showing a $317,000

Is that a general

yeah.

No. It's all rolled up because watershed shows a decrease and airport So shows a

that is if if you look at their actual projections for year end spending, they are in line the budget is now in line with the actual projection, and they're almost a 100% staffing. So there was probably some excess capacity in the personnel budget in prior years.

But she's also just said that of the three vacancies, she's got two coming on board and one, she's going to f BRB for. So are we

Oh, they're fully funded. The the yeah. Were fully funded in '26 and in '27.

Okay. Okay. Yep.

Well, cool.

I'll keep

thinking on

that. Okay.

Last question. This is probably available to me already, but while I have you here, where where did what city department do the bulk of the investigations opened in your office emanate from, or is it, really kinda spread across the board?

It's spread across the board and the number. I believe the Department of Watershed Management and Department of Aviation had a slightly higher number than the other departments, but I also think it's because of the size of those departments and the outcomes of those investigations don't indicate any higher amounts of issues and

other departments. The two highest the two biggest departments in terms of headcount.

That's correct.

Okay. That's all my questions. Thank you, madam IG. Thank you, mister chairman.

Madam president. Okay. I'll jump in. And and I did get clarification. The reason is is FY '26, a situation of overbudgeting salaries, so we're going back to where you were in FY '25 or a little above that. Yeah. Well, I just like arguing with the CFO. That's all. I did wanna ask while we're on the budget page though, the $80,000 reduction in capital outlays, 30 of it, I think, from general and six 50 from watershed. Are are you just was was FY '26 just a special year like you had extra, like, build out or equipment?

So we procured. Well, it was actually procured prior to me coming on and it rolled over a software system. Turns out the software system is not the best. It doesn't quite fit our needs. So we will. We are working on increasing that so that we're a or changing that so we're able to better do our work.

Okay. IPro, I appreciate all the work that y'all have done in terms of streamlining those reports and those processes. Two just questions on that. One is, what is the interface with procurement in terms of that feedback helping tighten up their process as well? I know that the CPO has has been trying to reform that office. I I think about, you know, two years ago, all the IPRO reports that we got that had unsigned documents or missing things. So so is that a constant feedback loop that y'all are talking with them to make sure you're correcting those areas?

Yes. I'll let deputy McNeil kinda give a overview of the process since we're here on the record. But in general, our relationship with the Department of Procurement is going really well. We may not always agree, but we are communicating. We always give them an opportunity to give feedback on our reports. The process of catching up with this new DOP process has been interesting because we wanna make sure that we're able to we don't wanna be the cog in the system. Right? But finding out exactly where we fit in the system, how to get those documents over to one another has changed a bit, but it has not been unworkable. It is still very new. I think we've only accomplished three so far.

Three total under the new process since it went into effect around October 2025. And that's not unusual because those were just starting. Okay. I pro doesn't get to, it doesn't get to I pro until the end of the process, so that's unusual. I'll let deputy McNeil go over just the general back and forth process for IPRO review.

Yes. Thank you. We receive via email requests, for the IPRO review for anything, those solicitations over $1,000,000, and then we assign it to the IPRO team, one individual person. That person goes back and forth with whoever is the contract manager for that solicitation. But also on every Thursday, we review all the open cases with the director of implementation, the deputy director of implementation.

So we're on a weekly basis going back and forth with Okay. The procurement. As far as the new process, we've actually only had one to go all the way through, but we have three that's in the pipeline. All of them have been IFB, so we haven't had a chance to fully see the RFP, which is, you know, is is usually longer. Right.

So we've only done the IFB. But what the major change is that they have moved the those documents that you see, this was assigned, this was assigned to the very end, to the only person that actually is eligible for the award. They're the only people that are going to submit those documents. So it's moved from that kind of thing. Basic concern that I have right now is the timeline because we're getting everything at the end, and sometimes you've gotten it before I've gotten it, which Wow. Okay.

Which can cause a problem.

Well, y'all know I mean, I I I really respect the iProbe process and and appreciate the findings. To me, much like three one one is a a good indicator of areas of improvement for the department, I feel like the iProve process is also good road map for improvements within procurement. I mean, again, we were seeing a lot of the same issues coming up about documentation and all that into it's good to know that y'all are are talking closely with them. And as you see more cases come through the new process, you know, I I just encourage you and I hope that that dialogue continues because what you find should inform any improvements in tightening that they should do.

Yes, And they've also did madam CPO did provide a a guide Yep. For their due process, a step kind of a step by step. So it it kind of informs us of what we need to look for, and I have written that out for the auditors that we've followed in that.

You mentioned that you might start looking at, contracts below a million dollars, which I applaud. I I encourage that. I think that's a great thing. Do you have a process or approach by which is something I I've been, raising the flag on. We may do an RFP or a contract or a procurement for $600,000.

And before you know it, we've amended that thing to death, and it is now a $6,000,000 contract. And at that point, they they did not meet the IPRO threshold at the beginning, but in reality, if we had looked at it in totality, we should have done an eye pro on them. Is there any thought in terms of how we might kind of capture that, either retroactively if there's a way, maybe there's not, or you may have a strategy that that you can share with

us. Yes. You you previewed a report that we have been working on pretty aggressively over probably the last ninety days, and where the report last landed is that we sent the draft to CPO Houston to give her feedback. And so her responses to the changes we believe are necessary based on the discretionary reports will come back to you, or will be included in that report. And you'll see in that report is approximately 16 discretionaries that were reviewed.

Okay.

And it lists out very clearly how they grew from below a million to well over a million. And we have very specific recommendations that I I I won't preview it now until I give you the final report, but I do encourage the council to look at that report because I do think there will be an opportunity for ourselves, for the Department of Procurement to come together and figure out how do we with the information that we found from this report and the necessity to review anything that may have started less than 1,000,000 but goes over 1,000,000. How do we do that without again being a cog in the system and making sure that that processes go forward? And I'm I'm really excited about that because it is gonna be an introduction to something that we will continue to do going forward.

Well, I look forward

to that. I'm curious because, again, and I appreciate you're being proactive in terms of raising that issue and and starting to think through a strategy on it. I'll tell you that all these questions that I have for you are really only born out of a level of confidence that that I've I have in you individually and you as a department, of where the reforms that you've done, the changes, the improvements, the the even just the governance processes, I I hope gives it has given me, but I hope it gives, the city as a whole, reassurance that the office as it you were designed to function and perform, you you will you are at that level. And so my last question is really more about, over the last year that you've been in in your position, are we seeing an increase? Have we seen a fall off?

Or is it stagnant in terms of reports that you get or asks that you get through the hotline or whatever, input mechanisms you have on potential cases to investigate?

So we have not seen

a major increase in the total number. There was a huge dip in 2025. Towards the end of 2024 and 2025, the number of cases and reports went down. The quality of the complaints went down. They were more, for lack of a better term, frivolous.

Okay.

Right? Or just not within the OIG jurisdiction, better suited for HR. While the number of complaints have not increased, the quality of the reporting or the allegations, and and when I say quality, means issues that I believe this body created the IG's office for. Major corruption, major waste, major fraud. And that does not say that those complaints are legitimate, but simply the, context of them allows us to do thorough reviews.

And as I've mentioned, it's just as important to me to unsubstantiate a matter as it is to substantiate it. So we can do a thorough investigation into a very serious complaint and assure citizens that either we're not doing well or we are doing we are not doing well and we'll fix it or we are doing well. So the quality the content of the complaints are much more thorough.

Good. I am I'm glad to hear that because, you know, we want you to be a resource, for everybody, and we want that confidence in that that you're right. Sometimes it's a finding of it's not substantiated, but there's confidence that you did your due diligence in terms of reaching that conclusion. So, again, I I just I wanna just close by saying that that I appreciate everything that you've done and how you've moved the department. And I look forward to I'm definitely looking forward to that that study or that report that you have coming out.

I also just wanna make keep on everybody's radar. I know that that we had talked earlier this year about the the contract, the investigation y'all are doing in terms of the don't even remember. The referendum signature thing. I don't know. So I look forward to your findings when

that Yes.

We are continuing that, and we are we are being very thorough. And if we are not able to meet the original deadline, we will have at least a preliminary summary to let you know where we are in the process.

I just wanna acknowledge that was still out there, and I appreciate you're looking into that. Any other questions from my colleagues for the inspector general? Okay. Alright. Well, with that, thank you very much, for your presentation.

Thank you. Thank you

all. Alright.

We'll go ahead and transition now over to the ethics office. And as soon as they get and it's on page four zero three of your budget books. As soon as this and go gets up here, we'll get started.

Alright.

Let's, we're gonna stay a little ahead of schedule. This is great. So with that, we are now here from the ethics office. Missing Gova, I'll turn the microphone over to you.

Alright. Good afternoon, vice chair, Juan. Happy to see you, and members of council, members of the public. My name is Jabou Sangova, and I'm I'm still standing strong as the city ethics officer. I am here with Carlos Santiago, the deputy ethics officer, and we have members of the ethics office also here in the audience.

Thank you for the opportunity to present our, FY 2027 proposed budget review. So our office is designed to foster a culture of integrity, trust, accountability, and we are proud to be the gold standard for other ethics offices, boards, and commission throughout the country. Today, I will be talking about our FY twenty six accomplishments, FY twenty seven priorities, staffing and budget overview. So I'll first start with an overview of our organizational structure. Alright.

So if you look at our structure, you can see that our organizational structure supports our core functions because it aligns our staff and resources across most of our core functions. So ethics training, our investigations, advice and outreach, financial disclosure compliance. So the structure is really helping to ensure that we maintain operational efficiency, accountability, innovation, and modernization, as well as responsive service delivery. Next, I will highlight our accomplishments from FY twenty six, which reflect our ongoing use of technology and automation because, you know, I've heard a lot of talk about just use of AI and you you'll hear that we've been doing that as well as supporting employee engagement across the city. Alright.

So far, FY twenty six accomplishments, we implemented a new case management system for investigations, and we have found that to be a powerful and effective solution to navigate our investigations. So basically, it's made our investigation team's life like so much better. We achieved a strong filing compliance for our financial disclosure filings. So we were at 95% in 2005 sorry, 2025. We are at 94% for 2026.

We awarded 27 transparent diamond awards to city departments, which is wonderful because everybody's always happy to get award. And we achieved an 87% ethics training completion rate, which is really excellent because that's you're talking about over 9,000 employees were trained citywide. We success excuse me, successfully launched our first ethics week, which where we held events throughout the city, and it was pretty exciting. We went off-site and really helped to increase, employee engagement. We also completed audits of our disclosure forms, so the forms that we feel we've been doing our audits, by using Genie.

So this is our auditing bot that we developed in 2024. This AI tool has been has greatly reduced our manual work and has improved the ability to review our disclosure forms. Moving on, we were able to fill four ethics board seats. We do now have our new board just fully operational. We do still have one vacancy with, APAP, which we're still trying to get filled.

We were also collaborating with DEAM to renovate our existing office space to support operations, and it looks like night and day. So it looks pretty nice. Our key takeaways, we continue to improve compliance, efficiency, and employee engagement. Alright. So let's turn to 2027 so we can tell you what we're doing in 2027.

So our plan for 2027, we are launching a new ethics website. We are you know, so it's all new and modern and, you know, innovative and more access for the public. We are rolling out an enhanced elearning course, primarily utilizing modern AI tools for increased employee engagement. We have contracted with a vendor, and we're really excited about the product. We're trying to streamline the delivery of ethics advice, which is one of our core functions, continuing to expand and enhance our Genie bot automation, update formal advisory opinions where needed.

And as you can see, the messaging is focusing on modernization and smarter service delivery through use of AI tools. Alright. So the next we wanna talk about, our full time count. We are doing well because all of our positions are filled. We're very happy. We just filled our last vacancy, so we have no current vacancies. Moving on to our proposed budget. So we do currently have a proposed budget that we're, at 1.7. So we are, you know, very grateful that our budget remains flat from f y twenty six. This sub excuse me.

This budget supports our daily authorization and, you know, just our overall modernization efforts. Again, the focus areas we're looking at, technology, compliance tools, training enhancements, operational efficiency. And so most of most of our purchase contracting funds are going to all of these tools that are really helping our office improve. So, really, it just emphasizes our stewardship of our city resources by using the money that's been allocated to us. Alright.

So that concludes our presentation. We do appreciate the administration's support for our budgetary needs and counsel for his support of our office. As always, we are committed to an ethics office built on transparency, accountability, and efficiency, and I'll take any questions if you have any.

Alright. Thank you, miss Ngova. Any questions from my colleagues? Councilmember Collins.

Thank you. Thank you so much for this presentation. I just have one just quick question for clarity. When I was looking at the org chart, what kind of for your purchase and contracted services, what kind of contracted services do your office use beyond just, you know, their yeah, just kinda.

Well, that I think that primarily covers some of the projects I talked about. For example, the case management system is, you know, our the GenieBot. I talked about automation for Got it. Our e training excuse me, our e training.

Yep.

Our hotline. So contracts and vendors that we use on a annual basis.

Yep. Makes sense.

Just a quick question. That's all I have.

Mhmm. Anything else, mister Orly?

Thank you, madam chair. Thank you, madam or mister chairman. Thank you, madam ethics officer. One of your performance measurements are integrity line reports received, and I noticed that that's been trending down since 2024. Please tell me that means that we're more ethical here in the city of Atlanta, or or does that mean, that people are just, more reluctant to give you a call?

So I will have my deputy ethics officer respond to that since he oversees that area.

Council member Worthy, that's a great question. So I think that if we look at this, we did have a little bit of a slight uptick this last year. 2024 was actually one of the high as our highest on record reporting. Okay. So we're kind of landing in the the trend for this year is landing right around that 150 to a 175 integrity line reports. But what I will say is that we've had an increase in other types of complaints coming in, primarily email, and we've also seen a lot of complaints coming in created through AI tools, which is

a very

interesting complaints that were

Do know because they have a lot of dashes in it? Yes.

Yeah. So we've we've seen some of those. Some of them are, you know, some they're some of them, they're, you know, complaints that we all take seriously. And, of course, when we review them, they're a little bit more lengthy, though. But that was a trend we saw for a little bit, but we're also we have seen that uptick in complaints from other sources. So we can also have walk ins, formal complaint forms, and email complaints. So overall, the volume last year, if you add in the email complaints that we got, was actually higher than the year before.

Got

it. So that integrity line, though, has has stayed pretty steady

Got it. For us. And following up on that, do you have a performance metric of entire complaints received rather than just the integrity line?

We do have that's in our annual report Okay. That was shared. I believe it was shared with the council, but it was I believe it's, like, 242

Okay.

For last year.

Perfect. Thank you so much. Sure.

Any other questions? I don't have any budget questions, but I did wanna ask as follow-up. I know that that there was a period there where we were doing a lot of changes, in separation between IG, y'all's boards, and all that. Did we finish, or do we still have anything outstanding that we really should

We have finished.

Okay.

We're happy to report. Okay. We're working very well. I mean and we do I think the separation has been something that was needed for everyone.

Mhmm. Okay. Because I I just I know you tend to be more quiet about these things, and I I know that there were some other well, in the midst of all that, there that you had comments, but I just wanna make sure that there wasn't any sort of other asks as legislatively code or process wise.

I'm I'm not gonna say that because I know there are some, you know, legislative cleanup items that I think are still necessary. But I will, you know, happy to speak with the appropriate body about that.

Yep. Okay.

Alright. I'll just just k. Madam president.

We are the appropriate body. So we could use just, like, maybe one example. I just I just wanna make sure you have everything that you need to to your your judgment is always so spot on even when I don't like the rigorous

Well, I protectiveness. Maybe I should say the appropriate office, council president. I think we do have, in just being fully transparent, there are some there were some legislative hiccups with the changes. We were happy at the separation of the two offices and our boards, but I don't think I would be, transparent if I didn't say there are some things that from a procedural standpoint that may need to be cleaned up. So I just haven't brought those things to council's attention in the midst of budget and everything and just being happy that we've just constituted our new board.

So we've really been focused on trying to make sure our board is operational. We can, you know, get them. Yeah. But there are some things that we were happy to discuss with council president as well as council.

Well, we're open. We, we're we definitely have an appetite for it. I, when you came to us for the separation, you were very detailed about, you know, how to go about it and and and all of the reasons why we needed to do it. And I'm sure you'll come the same way with, your concerns at this time. So we're definitely open for it. Let's just say as soon as budget is over. Yeah. Yeah.

Alright. Council member Worthy.

One last quick question. Is your board full?

It is we we have four. So our we have a five seated five seat board. We're still having some challenges with the APAPAP seat. We have not been able to fill that seat.

APAP planning, the MPU organization.

That's what I need in there. Thanks.

You good? Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you, madam. Yeah. I I wouldn't have asked that question. I I echo council president's comments. I wouldn't have asked that question if I I didn't wanna posture us to be helpful.

And I, you know, it wasn't intent to open a can of worms.

I know.

I know. I know. I understand. Yeah. Oh. But, again, I do remember you had a lot of thoughtful recommendations at the time, and our biggest focus was to really straighten things up. The the big kinda big cat issues, but

it's time are just clean up procedural things. So they're nothing I don't think there's anything that is impeding our work, but just things that would just make things a little bit easier.

Yep. I mean, I I consider the the triad of y'all OIG and audit that's coming up next really critical to us for public trust. And so we've gotta make sure all three are equipped to do everything they need to do. So we and we also rely on y'all to bring us what those recommended recommended changes are. So if you can leave with nothing else just here, I hope you hear that we're receptive and and wanna be, ready to help. So k. Okay. Anything else? Alright. That was easy. So thank you very much, miss Ngova and team. And we'll now transition over to the auditor. And we are doing great on time. So thank you all for being here early too. Audit.

Oh, where's my cheat sheet? Audit is on page four twenty three of your hymnal. Okay. With that, since y'all are ready to go, let's go ahead and get going. And, I will turn it over to you, miss Noble, and let you take it from here.

Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Amanda Noble, city auditor. We're here to present our FY 2027 proposed budget. With me is Stephanie Jackson, deputy city auditor, and Christopher Armstead, our performance audit manager.

So this first slide shows our organization chart. We've already had some changes since I shared it with you two weeks ago in our quarterly presentation. So as of this week, we have 18 filled positions and two vacancies. One of those vacancies is unfunded, and we have asked to abolish it in the, upcoming personnel paper. We have recently expanded our quick response team and are seeking to reclassify the supervisor's position in the personnel paper to reflect expanded responsibilities.

We experienced high turnover this year. So counting my retirement and one other planned departure in the next week, our turnover among auditors will be 36.8% for the year. And I think that's almost double the citywide average. Two thirds of the people leaving were here for sixteen months or less. So we are reviewing our recruiting, hiring, and onboarding practices to ensure that all expectations are clear and people know what they're signing up for.

Last year, turnover was 26%, and a lot of that was related to people who wanted more opportunities for remote work. So in in in our industry, that is possible. So our accomplishments, despite our high turnover, we are on track to release 12 of 14 planned audits. We did this by building our quick response audit capability and improving project management. We've reduced our average hours per audit.

You can see on our overview page, we had about a 10% decrease in f y twenty five and should have further decreased by the end of this year. Our average cost per audit hour, and this is our fully loaded cost, is a $111.79, which is very competitive. So doing the audits in fewer hours improves our cost effectiveness. As we discussed in our last quarterly, we've reduced the backlog of open audit recommendations. We've closed a 126 recommendations through the April with 83% implemented.

These include high priority recommendations such as those related to cybersecurity, controls over deletions and adjustment of business license fees, documenting stop work procedures related to building and zoning code, and reviewing job descriptions, to ensure physical requirements and safety guidelines are up to date. Also in fiscal year twenty six, the office completed its seventh external quality control review. We're required to undergo these peer reviews every three years to provide independent assurance that our system of quality management is suitably designed and operating effectively. Highlights for the upcoming year, we are emphasizing staff development by implementing a curriculum of in house training designed specifically to address current risks and to develop future leaders. We've been working on succession planning and will continue to do so.

And as I mentioned, we are expanding our quick response audit capability. We're also continuing to build on our continuous audit program. This slide shows our position count as of February 19 when Budget did its baseline pull. All of our positions are allocated among three funds. So it's 68% general fund, 16% each for watershed and aviation.

Then we budget our audit hours, commensurate with this allocation, and do an end of year, true up as part of indirect cost allocation. And finally, our, f y twenty seven proposed budget is basically flat. This slide shows the general fund. We have a small increase in contracted services based on the scheduled increase in financial audit fees and small decrease in personnel. Our proposed budgets for watershed and aviation also propose about 1% decrease each. And we would be happy to answer questions.

Alright. Questions or comments for the auditor's office? I've got a couple of comments. Well, let let me ask the question. You said that that there was a little bit of turnover due to, lack of ability well, limited ability to work remotely. Is can you talk about that a little bit more? You said it is possible to do it. Is it just an internal in the industry?

Yeah. In our in our industry, I mean, a lot of things need to be done in person. But the the city overall has gone to a four day in office rule. Mhmm. And we prior previously, we did at least two days in office

Okay.

And then three days. And and so and so moving in days has affected, you know, people's perceptions of the job, I think.

Okay. And that's an interesting I'm glad you raised that. I think it's something we can explore with HR and FEC. I just think it's unfortunate with a functionality like yours that we wouldn't be able to flex a little bit and be able to retain talent in a because that tenure is valuable to us. I think the experience that you get from year over year doing these and then interacting with all the different stakeholders in your investigations, and then just getting to a better understanding of processes here is is valuable.

So it's unfortunate. I appreciate you raising that area, that issue. Your budget request is pretty straightforward because it is it is flat, so I won't really ask any questions on that. I one observation and then one comment two comments, actually. I appreciate the the report you the quarterly you gave.

I don't know if you watched city utilities this week, but chair chairman Hillis has started lifting the notion of holding department commissioners accountable for the open recommendations, and I I think that's a good practice. So, hopefully, committee chairs will pick that baton up and and run with it because I do think it's important. The other observation or or comment is much like I mentioned to the OIG earlier, I know that y'all potentially have a piece in the investigation regarding the referendum ballot counting investigation. So, you know, I'm I'm looking forward to the findings of that. I I again, I don't know how deep y'all are in that, but just wanna acknowledge that that's still forthcoming.

And then finally, I I'm just really still not I'm in denial about your retirement, because we've we've worked a long time together. I will say when I first started on council in 2010, at that time, I remember being very, very proud and being able to brag to our adjacent municipalities about having an audit office, that would do the work that y'all did, as a measure of accountability, but also a measure of transparency and a guide for us. And I don't wanna call them out, but but I do remember some of the adjacent commissioners were just like, wish we had some we had that capacity, and I do think that they've actually added that. But it's only because of the level of work that y'all do and the, the depth and then the thoroughness, and then and really just the quality of the recommendations and the findings that come out. You're you're very honest about it, as you should be, and and I think you're just living up to the, expectations when this office was created way, way back when.

But I I I hope that you feel that appreciation from our side, because, I will admit, not all of us dial in at the same level depending on what the topic is. But at any given time, you will have several council members that are are that that is a topic that they're really, really fired up on and about almost to the point where we will hold up other things waiting for your findings to make sure that any decisions we make should be wouldn't be better informed by the reports that y'all are about or y'all are delivering. I'm gonna let that slip out a little bit. Anything else? So I just wanted to thank you for your leadership on that.

I I wish you the best in your next life. I will quote Howard Shook, who says there's a phenomenon that any once anybody leaves city hall within six months, you look and act and appear ten years younger. So you have that to look forward to.

Super.

Any other comments, from my colleagues? Oh, yeah. Council member Collins.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes. Miss Noble, I just wanna congratulate you on your retirement. Thank you so much for everything in a short time I've been able to work with you. And so just really I mean, the budget speaks for itself out. Just really, you know, see what transition looks like. And I just wanted to add Alex to your point where she talked about the, the issue in retention because of the remote piece. We had the same when I was over at APS, that was the same thing the same issue we had with hiring a May auditor was the fact that more firms and more outside organizations provide that flexibility. So we had to make it as competitive, you know, as competitive as possible.

So I do think to your point, it is something that we will need we may need to think about what that looks like because it is the industry standard. Even the auditor that we work with at SCF, like, they you know, that's just what it they don't want to come in house as good as they are. They like they like the flexibility. So thank you for uplifting that, but it is maybe something that we need to consider in terms of the competitiveness of the puts you know, position.

I I I think you're right. The value of tenure and experience with our entity sometimes outweighs the value of being physically in a location. So I that's a it's a interesting point you're raising. I'm I'll be

Thank you. Congratulations again.

Thank thank you.

Anything else from everybody? Okay. Well, thank you again. Thank you to the part to your office and your team for a great presentation. Alright. Colleagues, with that, wow. Chairman Winston, I hope you're watching somewhere. We are thirty six minutes early ahead of schedule, but that concludes our budget hearings for today. Our next hearing will reconvene on Tuesday, May 19 at 10AM with Department of Transportation, and that afternoon will be city planning, human resources, and labor. So it's a full day on Tuesday. With that, colleagues, we stand adjourned for the day. Thank you.