Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

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For a written transcript of this meeting, Or if you need reasonable accommodations, including this communication, in an alternative format due to disability, please contact the clerk to the commission's office at 4046128232. All right. All right. Good morning everyone and welcome to the first regular meeting of 2026 of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. Today is January 7th. It is 10:01 a.m. Madame Clerk, please call the role.

Chairman Rob Pittz, present. Commissioner Bridget Thorne, present. Vice Chairman Bob Ellis, present. Commissioner Dana Barrett, present. Commissioner Mo Ivory, present. Commissioner Marvin Arrington, Jr., present. Commissioner Kadijah Abdul Rakman, present.

Mr. Chairman, you have a quorum. All right, please rise for the invocation followed by the pledge of allegiance. Let us pray. Almighty God, we are thankful for this day for your continued grace and mercy upon our lives. We pray now that you bless those who are participants in this event. bless now our leaders. Give them your wisdom and guidance. It is your name that we humbly pray. Amen.

Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the one indivisible andice for all. I continue. Madam clerk,

on page two, consent agenda 260001, adoption of the consent agenda. All matters listed on the consent agenda are considered routine by the county commission and being and will be enacted by one motion. No separate discussion will take place on these items. If discussion of any consent agenda item is desired, the item will be moved to the first regular meeting agenda for separate consideration. Mr. Chairman and members of the board, we have one item to be removed today on page four 26006. Solisto general requests approval of recommended and required personnel and operating funding. This item will be removed and will not be discussed for separate consideration.

Right. Which item is that? On page 4, 26006. Well, we have a question about that. First of all, why is this on this agenda? How did it get on the agenda? That is not that would be a county manager item. Yes, sir. I'm prepared to address that.

Um, I think with both Christmas and New Year's, uh, and I'll take responsibility for this, we did not have our normal, uh, bi-weekly call with all departments to review any agenda items that were going on. So when we saw the draft agenda, it had one one item which was the discussion of the budget and you know that is outside of the commissioner items. Uh when it was published was when we learned that this item was on as a separate item and obviously it's on the consent agenda. It uh didn't have proper documentation but more importantly it's duplicative of the budget discussion. So the suggestion is remove this item as a separate item. include discussion which we have at least a one-page summary in the budget presentation that you've already received. There may be obviously more that is desired to be presented but that's when it would be uh that's when it would be discussed. Um we've tightened up the one last part of our process that allows an agenda item to get on the final agenda where it will require even if I don't have all department heads on a call it would require my approval. So again, I take responsibility for it getting on here inadvertently.

Okay. I'm glad to hear that because this could get out of hand if every department can just put stuff on our agenda. Yes. So I'm glad you caught it. Yes, sir. All right. Anything else, Madam Clerk? That's all I have. Commissioners, any items? All right. I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended. And the vote is open. And the motion passes unanimously. First regular meeting agenda on page four 260007. Adoption of the first regular meeting agenda.

All right. No items. All right. Motion to adopt by Commissioner Barrett, seconded by Commissioner Abdul Rakman. Please vote. And the vote is open. And the motion passes unanimously. 260080008 appointment of the vice chairman. All right. Entertain motions. Commissioner Thorne. Um I make a motion to nominate Commissioner Kada Abju Rockman. Is there a second? Second.

All right. Any other nominations? Any other nominations? Nominations are closed. Let's vote. And the vote is open.

And the motion passes. Four yays, two nays. Next item, 260009, ratification of minutes. First regular meeting minutes December 3rd. Second regular meeting post agenda minutes December 17th 2025. Any additions or corrections? Madam clerk? Nothing. All right. Commissioners, there's a motion to approve by uh Commissioner Thorne. Seconded by Commissioner Abdul Rakman. Vice Chair Abdul Rakman. Please vote.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes unanimously. 260010 presentation of proclamation and certificates. There are no proclamation for presentation today. Praise the Lord.

On page five, public hearings 260011 public comment. Citizens wishing to participate in public comment will be allowed to appear in person or may choose to participate virtually via Zoom video conferencing by registering on the county website www.ftoncountga.gov. Priority for public comment will be given to Fulton County citizens and those individuals representing b businesses or organizations located within Fulton County. Speakers will be granted up to two minutes each. The public will not be allowed to yield or donate time to other speakers. The public comment portion of the meeting will not exceed 60 minutes. In the event the 60-minute time limit is reached prior to public comments being completed, public comment will be suspended and the business portion of the BC meeting will commence. Public comment will resume at the end of the meeting. Mr. Chairman and members of the board will start with speakers here in Assembly Hall. We have received seven speaker cards. Will the um seven speakers please come forward? Camille Houston Jackson, Kevin Anderson, La Pink, Maggie Goldman, Brother Anton Muhammad, Elen McGee, and Darius Cash Cash. All right, first speaker and uh if you know the rules, you have 15 seconds remaining. I'll just say 15 seconds and that'll give you and then to begin to conclude your remarks. Thank you, ma'am.

Okay. Vision for a cleaner Georgia presented by Uptown Cyber World. Speak up a little bit, ma'am. We'll come closer to the mic.

Presented by Uptown Cyber World Corporation. Vision for a cleaner Georgia. Good day everyone. This is my vision of a cleaner Georgia. But before we do that, I need to stop the city unfrozen, a movement dedicated to undergraduates cleaning up the streets and sincerely not violence or with O's. Uh but with you, I am Elena, your Atlanta creating a healthier atmosphere not only for the sheriffs, but for everyone pretentious. My American champion, community dollars. I have 90 million community dollars into circulation up to date. By the end of the fiscal year, it it and myself will more clever attain 900%. I am able to waver my interest of not a game. I'm sorry of uh my Met leave last year, but I will be back in accordance due to my severitions. Uh don't doubt me, please. Uh would a sworn in. I am in my third phase of the Federal Reserve RNSF SBIR monetary pitch. all and I am butch too. Uh with the the rebottling of peach tree will be enough to emiss the vision of an e collateral judy. Fair enough. Okay. Matrimon resident public Catalina dela rose Houston Jackson. Okay.

One last thing. One last thing. Uh, no more power for the people. Thank you.

Uh, good morning, commissioners. My name is Kevin Anderson. Uh, I am an assistant public defender for the county, but uh, I just want to make it clear I am appearing on my personal time today in my personal um, private capacity, not representing the office of public defender at all. Um, but I did want to address the proposal to move the office location from downtown Atlanta to outside the perimeter uh closer to Mapleton than downtown Atlanta. Um, you know, this is a difficult one to address because it it does not really, aside from purely budgetary reasons, it does not seem what uh clear what sense that would make. This takes a 10-minute walk to the courthouse from the office and turns into, you know, in good conditions a 20 to 30 minute drive, need to look for parking, you know, get from the lot to the courthouse. Um, and this is just simply not sustainable for our attorneys who need to regularly be in court, sometimes be in court on short notice. Uh, you know, I'm I'm sure the court, the judges themselves would not appreciate the additional delay. um is is just simply not sustainable for the attorneys. Uh it is also farther from the Fulton County Jail, which means is more difficult for attorneys to visit the clients that they need to see on a regular basis in order to represent them effectively. And it is also less accessible to the population we serve. It would be moving the office from, you know, the the confluence of our our two main train lines, lots of bus routes, uh, to the end very end of the of the Martyr line and then an additional bus ride from there. It's simply more difficult for our client population to reach us.

15 seconds, sir. Uh, you know, I I I just do not see this as respectful of of the work that we do, the space we need. I would ask the commissioners to do what they can. You know, don't need to stay at 100 peach tree, but we need to be accessible to the courthouse. Thank you.

She don't give a damn. We all seen it shoving them shoulders, baby. Your face expressions always tell your whole corruption. Anyways, same corruption, new year, which is a shame. Here it is. We dragging in that same year from last year right here into 2026. But of course, we all witness something glorified. I know the demon rats don't like it, but hey, y'all going to have to accept it cuz it's coming to Georgia. Trump did his thing. And just know that bomb that he dropped, he about to drop one in Fulton County for this voter fraud election. Y'all just don't understand what's about to take place. He started with a top dog to show y'all he coming to get you little dogs. Ike Aronson, Mo Ivory, all of y'all that's, you know, done involve yel into this political broom. Especially when it deals with the sheriff. I don't think y'all understand how connecting yourself with the sheriff and and and funny Willis and all of that you doing. You shaking your head, you know, but you running for a position that you I don't think you ready for. I think you need to stay right there and kind of take some notes. I know you call yourself an attorney, but you really might have wanted to go and do some some checking. Yeah, cuz Georgia got you twisted. They got you twisted in your job description. But however the case may be, hey, you know, live your life how you want to. We got some other people coming for you. Um, but what we really need to work on is this jail. Like I said, I'm going to continue to apply pressure to it until it pop. Because if y'all continue to think that the sheriff is going to continue to sit there, y'all got another thing coming. And I want to make sure that he knows that that picture on Trump's wall was taken directly by him.

So that's a direct insult to what's about to happen.

So for all y'all that is connected, and I know you probably think that I just be up here talking, but I'mma walk that walk cuz I'mma be down here singing. Maggie Goldman, District 1. Ever since I learned about the excellent programming of nonprofits serving families facing homelessness in North Fulton, it has been clear to me that there are only so many spots available if you are a family that is not in an established program. There is very little if any access to case management which could include financial literacy, credit repair, assistance re with receiving qualified benefits including food and child care, resume and job searching support and resources to obtain permanent housing because many of the working poor live in extended stay hotels. I have been looking for ways that Fulton County can provide services to this population and I was referred to a hotel count that was just completed in Dicab County. A presentation was given yesterday to the commission detailing their results. They visited 42 hotels and identified 714 families that they would consider homeless, including six 1635 children. 60% of them were single moms. 82% of them were black women. I asked the same organization to prepare a proposal for hotel count of homeless individuals and families in North and South Fulton. And the proposal mentioned 200 hotels they they would screen for homeless residents. Even if that number came down to say 150 hotels, that is three times the number of hotels that they counted in Dicab. North and South Fton's hotel count of homeless could

easily double or more of the DIC cab count, potentially 1,500 families and 3,000 children. These are families who are living in the affordability gap. With the numbers of residents this large, we could develop a public private partnership for needed services. I'll be reaching out to each of you with the proposal and the DAB presentation in hopes of funding this hotel count in the 2026 budget. And you could always fund it by properly appraising commercial properties in Fulton County. I am that I am. Brother Anthony Muhammad assalam alalayikum matra hotel namaste. My soul honors your soul. I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the light, the love, the truth, the beauty and peace within you because it is also within me and share indeed thing. We are united. We are the same. We are one. Now I come down here just occasionally members of this council commission to talk about your Fton County dog control. We have in the problem in Atlanta affordable housing and affordable housing has began to be a problem in communities as mine in district 11 where we have had people living over there for 30 or more years. Over 40,000 people live in that community. one of the largest dark anti-mod people look like us Mr. Pit and you Miss uh Rockman and you Miss Arvy and all you Caucasian Mr. Aritton as

well but what I come to talk about is how Fton County had these dogs that they seen come out to my house. I told them the dog was loose and they were in the yard on my property because he don't have a fence in the private property next door. Don't have a fence. The man let the dog run free. Now you had the dog pound to come out and they told me just take picture brother Muhammad and we'll come back out and give him a citation. Then it says you're the same man that did it two years ago with the last people that lived over there. Yes. Cuz they were the same people rent property. But if you going to have fourth and kind of not follow up according to Mr. Trump we have a right of the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment specified 1981 all person within the jurisdiction that are dark matter. What? And he said in policy of contract and public policy in Venice as well, something should be done. I'm going to stay to talk with your peoples that represent you all. They're supposed to g y'all.

Thank you, brother Muhammad. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Brother Muhammad. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Next speaker. We'll get it. We'll get it. Yeah. Get it. I got Listen. Vice Chair. Next speaker.

Brother Muhammad, please. Next speaker. Next speaker. Good morning. And I'm just want to be thankful for this opportunity. First of all, I want to thank my commissioner Marvin Arington Jr. for causing this moment this this moment where uh I'm representing the Veteran Empowerment Commission. And my my my reason for being here is that I represent a call to unity not just for veterans but for our community uh nationwide. The passing of uh Joe Beasley and Isaac Clark this uh the past month gave us an opportunity to see uh that all veterans in Fton County are not homeless or in trouble but all relate to some kind of conditions that they develop for military service. And I'm wearing my uniform today because I want to remind you of the presence of our US military and the need for it and what our young people are going through right now. I have a grandson in the military. He has to come back to Fulton County, Atlanta, Georgia, where I live, where I was born, and where um my family live. what we are here today. Uh, Commissioner Arrington started a v a veteran empowerment commission about three years ago and we've been functioning for the last three years. Fton County has put up uh $3 million into the community to help veterans, which uh I think is a small amount for

the problem that we have, but that was a effort. And we touched over 4,755 veterans. But that's a drop in the bucket. When you come downtown, 15 seconds,

you still see the um homeless uh in our streets. So, I'm asking the Fton County Commission today to support Commissioner Bob Ellis amendment to this um commission because it's the best thing that we can do right now. There are five of you come together and make this decision today. Thank you. Happy new year. My name is Darius Cash, founder and executive director of Noah's Fund for Mental Health Research and Education, a 501c3 nonprofit organization that was started here in Atlanta. Noah was the son of a friend of mine. He was fatally abused while his mom was at work. Her boyfriend, who had no prior diagnosis of anything to do with mental health, became overwhelmed while he was babysitting and harmed Noah in a way that caused his death. Noah was 16 months old. Our mission is to protect children like Noah who may be at risk of physical abuse or neglect from parents or caretakers that may be experiencing untreated mental issues or emotional instability. To do that, we assist with things the families may need for the children, like for example, purchasing new shoes. Our vision is a world where no child loses their life at the hands of an adult. On the way to that vision, one goal we have is to decrease cases of pediatric vehicular heat stroke by 50%. Pediatric vehicular heat stroke claims an average of 37 to 39 children each year in the US alone. Georgia ranks fifth in the nation for hot car deaths since 1998. Noah's fund for mental health research and education is now registered as a vendor for Fulton County and we look forward to the work to come. Protect our children, strengthen our families.

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, we have eight speakers on Zoom. Good morning, commissioners. The first person to speak is Robbie Caban. Robbie Caban.

I'm calling in to express my support for the prior speakers who have who have come in monthly as a taxpayer. One in regards to the human rights violations occurring in our prison system jail u under Patrick Sheriff Labat. I as a resident would expect that he be investigated given all the deaths and the federal mandates coming down. Additionally, I want to express my support to the residents who have come forward to the predatory real estate practices ongoing throughout Georgia that are increasing our taxes in order to accommodate affordable housing. Additionally, the problems at the tax assessor's office with incorrect assessments, failure to notify, tax leans that are problematic. I personally have experienced this myself and if I was a senior and didn't work for myself, I would not have been able to correct those matters and in fact I would have had a tax lean that was fraudulent on my home. I also challenge the assessment correctly which many seniors cannot do. Their system is disconnected, discombobulated and in need of correction. Lastly, I want to reiterate the need for the animal control contract to have meaningful meaningful reform, not a band-aid. You have removed Lifeline Animal Project, the county contractor from enforcement, but Lifeline still influences not only Fulton County, still remains the shelter contractor. And instead of 9.5 million tax dollars, you've paid them 7 million tax dollars with no investigation despite the harm, the public risk that occurred, the lack of services that whistleblowers came forward about. Where is the refund for taxpayers who paid for services that are unrendered? You even allowed the Atlanta Fulton Emergency Management under Homeland Security to hire a employee who was terminated by Lifeline with cause reported by whistleblowers who admitted that city

taxpayers did not receive services and there's been no investigation on that. Instead, you are silencing advocates. You are retaliatory towards advocates. Specific commissioners have been retaliatory. This is unacceptable.

The next person to speak is Cassandra Little John. Cassandra Little John. The next person to speak is Fig White. Fig White. Next person to speak is Greg Beck. Greg Beck. Next person to speak is Carla CPO. Carla CPO. The next person to speak is Chanette Williams. Chanette Williams. And this concludes our Zoom public comment. And continue, Madam Clerk. Continuing on page five, county managers items under open and responsible government 260012 finance review and approval of the fiscal year 2026 final adopted budget and fiscal year 2026 resolutions.

All right, Mr. Manager.

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and commissioners. Of course, this is the one of two meetings in January to finalize uh the 2026 budget. So, we appreciate your patience with us as we've put this together. We've now finalized 2025. Kudos to Sharon, uh, Ray and Sabrina and their staff for working uh, pretty long hours over the holiday to pull all that together. The good news is the actuals coming out of 2025 were 20 million better than projected. So that is once you take out the uh the amount required for the reserves um is a is a good number as you will see as we go through this. We've elected to outside of addressing a couple of items which seemed like there was great consensus on which was for the BOE compensation um increase and then the animal services prosecution support in the solicitor's office. we have placed that at least for purposes of today's discussion into a reserve that would be addressing the uh consent order. Uh and I think as we look at that further and I'm sure discuss it in in great detail um you'll know that there are known knowns which we've talked about before contracts that we've already entered into commitments that we've already made. Those have a certain financial uh implication for 2026. And then there are known unknowns, most notably the uh staffing emphasis. In other words, we know that we need to commit to that. That needs to be the highest priority inside the jail uh both from a monitor and a practical perspective. But what we don't know, as we said here today, is how successful we will be. Will the incentives that we've reviewed with you work? Will those need to be enhanced? Um and how that uh how that will play out. And that has a very significant financial implication. by putting this into the reserve and we've reviewed this with the county

attorney and her staff in detail yesterday and she's supportive uh of this. As you'll see, we move from about 17 million in actual expenses this year against the consent order uh to a budget of 53 million recommended for next year. So that's almost a 3x or so improvement or um I would say I guess increase improvement and increase uh in that effort again with the primary focus on staffing. So again I'll leave it to the county attorney to enter to uh interject and give her opinion on on this either now or later but certainly we reviewed with uh with Sujo yesterday and was very pleased to get her feedback. um you know I think at this level of budgeted expenditures will also show uh it requires a certain level of revenue. So I'll obviously defer to Sharon Whitmore our CFO to explain the millage rate implications of that. uh when you get to mid year, you will know more than you know today in terms of both the expenditures which drive the revenue which then require the military because by then with the known unknowns at least in the consent world will be a little bit more um solid than they are as we sit here today. The 1% reduction that we recommended across all departments has been absorbed. So in other words, they have presented plans back and that is now plan four in the budget. So I don't think that's a major issue. You may hear differently or you may have heard differently but not from not from our perspective and not from my my experience. Uh the last thing just to remind you of and again much of this as I say is not evenly spread but from a taxpayer perspective this still represents about a 7% increase in revenue and a 16.7% increase in the budget against the actual expenditures in 2025. So that's

not insignificant. Again, a lot of it's in different areas. Not it's not a 16% increase across all departments by any means, but if you're looking at it from 30,000 ft, that's still uh still fundamentally what uh what this recommendation represents. And then last, keeping an eye on uh financial stability, and I think I'm sure this will be covered by Miss Whitmore. the uh the fund balance requirements uh with this level of spending uh are 253 million. That's almost double from the time that I started. So we have built the fund balance 98% more from the time I started to now. not because of my management but because of the work of this board to identify the priorities be judicious in their use and maintain this fund balance for uh purposes of financial stability and of course the AAA rating which you'll find as we not in this discussion but as we move into subsequent one in January and early February we'll be talking about in uh specificity the amount of bond uh funding that we need which you're already aware of but when that will go to market and when that AAA bond rating will be uh will be most important. So with that, Mr. Chairman, I think we have a brief presentation that the CFO, Miss Whitmore, will lead us through and then we're prepared, of course, to not only answer questions, but take any direction from today to really crisp this up for uh for the next meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Manager. Madam CFO,

um thank you, Mr. Chairman. Next slide, please. um commissioners, the the county manager covered some of this with his remarks, but um this is um the uh behind the word schedules um if you will. So, this first slide is our a view of our 2025 um actual results for the general fund um and it is uh a comparison to what we presented as part of our um midyear review from a revenue perspective. At midyear, we projected revenue at 932.9 million. Our actual results were 933.3. It's about a $400,000 difference. From an expenditure perspective, we had projected $939.9 million. Um, our actual results were $920.3. That's a um 19.6 million um additional underrun on the expenditure side. Um those numbers together um the uh the additional revenue and um the lower um expenditure number resulted in about $20 million in additional fund balance that we were able to carry forward into um 2026. So, our projected um ending fund balance at midyear was 232.7 million and our actual was 256 I mean 252.6. Next slide please. We just kind of wanted to review some of the um um underlying um uh results, some of the the reasons for the changes in our um uh final results from the point in time that we made our mid-year projections. On the revenue side, um we did receive about 1.7 million more than what we had

projected at midyear. Um at midyear we had some revenue that we had received that came to us um with a description that was questionable and we were working with the do to ensure that those resources in fact belong to the county um before we included them in in our number. So upon validating that um uh we do see that our um local option sales tax numbers increased um slightly over what we had projected in our public utility um uh property tax area in our mid-year projection. We did not expect that we would receive um much from the current year public utility tax billing for the last several years. those billings have gone out very late in the year um in a way that did not allow for um sufficient time to collect uh the current year billing in the current year and and much of that had had ended up being carried over um as a prior year receivable in the next year. So in 25 we ended up collecting um a significant portion of the 24 public utility as a prior year receivable plus bills were able to get out a little earlier this year and we collected um more on the current year portion than we had um projected at midyear. What we try to do is from a budget perspective make is to make sure that um between the two current the two categories current year and or public year we at least account for a full year's billing because the um billing time frame has not been very predictable over the last um several years. So what you'll see is um uh an increase in current year public utilities. Um from a reductions

perspective in our actual 25 revenue, meaning um categories where we did not receive the revenue that we anticipated, we saw um less revenue come in in both the current and prior year real and personal property tax categories. Um we had we had projected to collect about 96% of um the current year um billings uh we came in closer to 94% and the um prior year uh tax amount um that we had projected that we would we received we received um a little bit less than what we had projected. So the two combined is about 11.4 million. And then in all other revenue categories, um you know, we had about a $800,000 um uh reduction from our projections. When you just net everything else together, all the all the ups and downs, it it resulted in about a um $800,000 less. Um on the expenditure side, the areas that we saw um uh uh reduced expenses from our original projections um the consent decree um we did not spend 100% of what we had um allocated um and and in our projections we made the assumption that we would spend 100% of what we had set aside for that purpose. Um we had u um delayed bond issuances. Um the manager spoke about the jail bond earlier. We also had money in the budget this year for the um freestanding emergency department which at the last meeting in December the board acted on um for that issuance. As a result of that, we did not need to make a debt service payment on that issue this year. So that resulted in about 8.1. Those two combined resulted in about 8.1 of unused um resources. Um,

from our mid-year projection on um, salary and fringe benefits, um, we ended up spending about $3.8 million less than what we anticipated. We had about 2.2 million in um, uh, obligations that invoices were not presented on and uh, purchase orders lapsed at the end of the year. And then from an election perspective, uh because there was not a statewide runoff um uh required the uh runoff election um that happened in December for the municipalities. That cost was borne by the municipalities and so that freed up resources that the county had programmed for elections. Next slide, please. Excuse me. That did not go down. It just didn't go down the right the right way. Um our changes that we're recommending for the 2026 uh general fund budget. This slide represents um the changes that we're recommending to the overall revenue budget. As a result of um the items that um happened differently in 25 than than we had expected them to happen, we have some changes that we need to make in 2026. for the prior year property tax um uh prior year receivable number um we're requesting to increase that amount by 5.9 million. And for the current year property tax for public utility um we're requesting to increase that by 12.7 while at the same time in the prior year

property tax public utility category reducing it by 14.5. This has to do with the timing of receipt of the um 25 public utility um receivables and the fact that we didn't collect as much on the current property u current year real and personal property tax digest as we expected. Um together that um increases the total revenue by 4.1 million um bringing our um 26 proposed revenue from 996 million um to 1 bill100,000. Next slide please. From an expenditure perspective um the uh proposed budget the November proposed budget total expenditures were 1 billion 53 million 53.2 2 million. Um, and we have uh three categories of increases um that we um have recommended in the revised proposed budget. The first is um a reallocation of about of a little over $400,000 um for registration and elections. Um there were invoices um for costs that were incurred um in December that are uh the county's responsibility to pay versus the municipality's responsibility. So, we do need to um uh roll some funds over and allow for those invoices to be presented um and paid in 2026. We also, as the manager indicated in his remarks, um have provided an additional increase to our um consent order um fund of 19.5 million. And then we have um two additional departmental enhancements um that total a little over 600,000. That brings the total um expenditure change to 20.6 million and the total um

proposed uh general fund um uh expense budget to 1 bill73,700,000. Um and the manager commented to this a little bit in his in his remarks. Um this does represent a um it's a 8.4% increase over the 2025 general fund budget. um and a 16% increase over um 2025's actual um results. Next slide, please. Walking you through the um consent decree compliance fund. Um as the manager mentioned in his remarks, our um 25 actual expenditures were 16 um 9 million and in the proposed budget, we had um uh recommended 31.8 8 million for uh the consent um compliance fund. Um we are recommending in the revised budget that we do two things. One is that we um reallocate um the balance of what was sitting in the um inmate services unit to the compliance fund because those resources are currently being used to support um compliance related cost. um either this federal consent order compliance or a previous consent order that was um issued into the GAO consent order. Um and then uh um the additional uh 19 million that was recommended all all of that combined um totals 53,56,868 um which were recommending the funds would be held in non- agency in a separate unit um for consent compliance. Next slide please. Um the two additional departmental enhancement requests that have been recommended the manager covered um that's the clerk of superior magistrate

court um funding in the amount of 370,000 um 370.8,000 8,000 um which is sufficient to support an increase in the BO the BOE member stipen to $150 per day and um for the office of solicitor gen general for an animal services prosecution unit $276,000 um and as the manager um indicated in his comments that comes from the um presentation that was made during the last um operations report regarding regarding um the outstanding cases related to animal services. Next slide, please. And then the um uh also the the item that the manager mentioned um when the agenda was set relative to the um uh state court um judges. We wanted to present the board with um the information that we had received during uh the budget process related to the request for funding um related to the two additional state court judges. So this slide um is provided to show you a highle summary of the number of positions requested and the associated budget and then what we have recommended and what is included in the revised proposed budget um relative to these these two new um judgeships. So in total there was a request for 36 um positions totaling um 5.1 million um within the um proposed budget and within the revised proposed budget. We have funded um 20 positions totaling 2.8 million. Next slide please. And then

um Mr. Chairman, this is um this is our last slide and and then we'll you know turn it over to the board for um questions or comments and feedback. Um this is just to to resummarize uh the general fund proposed revised proposed budget uh FY26 beginning fund balance of 252.6 6 million with the recommendations that we've made. Um for revenue, the uh proposed revenue budget would be 1 bill100,000. Um the proposed expenditure budget would be 1 bill73,700,000 and the um ending fund balance would be 179 million which is um equal to 16.67% 67% of the um uh expenditure budget and meets the county's u minimum fund balance reserve requirement. Um we also just wanted um to note here that um the revenue um that is proposed um assuming with the all of the underlying assumptions that we've made regarding uh growth in the digest collections um it does um estimate out to about a 9.2 26 millrate in order to support that um uh total amount of revenue and we would expect based on the current calendar that we would um be before the board um in June the second meeting in June to uh finalize the um millage rate for the year. And um with that, Mr. chairman. Oh, the only other thing that I wanted to mention um is that in the binder that you received and in the electronic version of the document um that was attached, we do have um two resolutions included um in that document. One is the um required uh budget resolution and the

other is a um uh resolution that um would uh go ahead and authorize the um 2026 COLA uh and would make it um effective um for the first pay date in March. That's it, Mr. Chairman.

All right. Thank you. So, I'm going to make an assumption you stand by all of the numbers that you have before us at this point in time. Commissioner Arrington, you have the floor. So, if we can go back, uh, I think it was maybe slide eight or seven. Um, my question, yeah, eight, eight is perfect. So, understand that we have the two new state court judge positions coming. Um, and I see that you have four positions recommended for the solicitor general. Is that two per judge?

It's one attorney um and one investigator um per judge. And uh Commissioner Arrington, that's the same for the public defender. So we we gave them each one attorney and one investigator per judge.

Yes. But it's not the same for the other 20 state court judge courtrooms that are there. Each state court courtroom has two solicitors and two public defenders. So I'm trying to understand how we expect to these people to operate on calendars with 80 to 100 people and we're only giving them one solicitor, right? How how do we give these judges one solicitor and all the other judges have two solicitors? How do we give these judges one public defender and all the other judges have two public defenders? I I see we got our state court judges and our solicitor here. Maybe perhaps since no one was able to answer my question, I'll ask our solicitor and our judges if they can answer the question. And I guess maybe I'll ask a different question, Mr. Gamage. How many solicitors do you have in all other courtrooms? Uh, thank you, Commissioner Arrington, and good morning, commissioners, chair, vice chair, two prosecutors, two assistant public defenders, a victim advocate who's tasked with ensuring that we don't violate Marcy's law or the

crime victim's bill of rights, an investigator and a legal support staff member, parillegal. And I think it's clearly critically important, and thank you all for calling us up. Clearly these are minimum standards. These are minimum constitutional standards. The state court is an ecosystem. The clerk has to have resources that are effective and appropriate. The judges have to have resources in their chambers. It doesn't stop there. The people assigned to the courtrooms have to have appropriate resources. And across the metro and across the nation, whether it's superior court or state court, the minimum standard that's accepted and not enough resources, Commissioner Thorne, is two prosecutors and two assistant public defenders. We've got some information we've shared. Uh, I think it should be extremely telling to you all that the public defender represented by Miss Walsh, the state court prosecutor, the former chief judge of the state court, Judge Wes Taylor, who actually really stepped out of the county, went up to our legislature, revealed the case numbers, revealed the standards, and our state legislature said, "You're underresourced and underfunded, and so we need a minimum of fully staffed, two fully staffed additional courtrooms. And then we have our new recently appointed state court judge, Jame Morrison, all united under the same theory. And we all all we want to do is our best for the people that we're sworn to serve. When

these two new judges are sworn in by Governor Kemp in about another week, I think it's the 13th, when they're sworn in, they'll begin with a backlog that they need to address because we've already been underfunded. I say that respectfully, and underresourced and overwhelmed with the number of cases. And so the notion respectfully that they would begin with half of the standard resources that are presently available in all of the other understaffed courtrooms. We do have a presentation. I've shared it with each of you. Uh my chief of staff, Mrs. Bicker staff has just a few slides she'd love to show to show you what our ask was. I think it's also telling that last year in preparation for Judge Taylor's and the judges communications with our legislators, we presented a unified budget. We said, "Here's what we need to function at a minimal constitutional level." So, this is not new. We don't mean to be coming here on the eve of a vote regarding the budget. And we've had these conversations on an ongoing basis. And out of all of the so-called enhancements that we critically need, you can't overlook these two judges. They should be equal at least to the other courtrooms. Again, we do have that slide. We understand your time, but I do want to turn next to the judges or to the public defenders representative. And this is very, very important because all people have to be safe. and it's the number two legislative item last year as identified by Fulton County. It's number two legislative item.

Miss Walsh.

Thank you. Good morning um everyone. I'm here on behalf of the office of the public defender with apologies for Mr. Kenner who is unable to be here today. Um I just want to say that we have been in conversation with uh both Sister Gamage and with the courts in general regarding the needs um of the the courthouse community in general in state court. We are all in consensus that we um need these extra source sources. They are not an extravagance but a bare minimum that's necessary to have the um courts fully functional. We have presented to finance and pre previously to the board of commissioners data that shows that we are already working above the standards that have been established by the American Bar Association in terms of case loads. Um we are that was before we had the addition of the two judges. While the additional two judges do help to spread out the case load, they still do not address the needs for um sufficient staff to be in compliance with the the bar association standards and to provide the best service to all of our clients that they require that is needed under the constitution. Um we are fortunate that we have been able to have a very good working relationship with our other court members. Um we have reached consensus of what we believe to be the minimum standards. Again, we do not believe that this is an extravagance. Um this is not a matter of trying to um have Cadillac services. We are just trying to have a vehicle that can get us from point A to point B without breaking down. So I just want to say that I encourage you all to consider the joint proposal that we have made and to seriously consider how um your vote will impact the efficient or inefficient op operations of state court. Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Commissioner Arrington. Thank you for the invitation to join you this morning, Mr. Manager and all the commissioners. I just want to stand here today as Jane Morrison uh whom you may know in uh past roles, but also as the new chief judge of the state court of Fulton County. And I want to assure you that the proposal that has been brought uh forward to you that was crafted by the former chief judge Wes Taylor is one that comes from the experience of your state court bench. This is a bench that we've been doing this for decades, many of us. And uh when we come to you and we say we need X, Y, and Z to run the courtrooms smoothly, that is uh something I hope you will have confidence in uh given the fact that we've been doing this, many of us for years, for decades, and we know what it takes to run your courtrooms in state court uh smoothly. Uh this is a very high volume court, one of the highest volume courts in the southeast. and the resources that we're asking for uh do come out of carefully thought through and uh uh coordinated uh conversations amongst all of the different parties. It's important today that you've heard from the actual litigants who use the courts, the solicitor, the prosecutor, the public defender. These are the people who know what is needed and I want to thank you very much for your consideration of the coordinated uh thought through proposal that uh Chief Judge Taylor put together and presented. Thank you.

Take one one minute. I don't Please

a lot of your time. I know you have a busy day. Good to see everybody. Hope everybody's doing well. Happy New Year to everybody. Um I did I I guess I did get this uh ball rolling uh back last year. And I really do want to first off thank all of y'all for being a partner in this and getting this to happen that we have two new state court judges. According to the the statistics, of course, you know, we have fewer than what even the state would say we should have, but that's okay. We're going to do great with 12 judges going forward, and we really do appreciate the fact that y'all got us here. I also want to say, because I know we're always comes up asking for money. I want I want to tell you the good things. I also want to tell you that I want to thank uh County Manager Dick Anderson and his team uh for making the theory reality. We've got the courtrooms. Everybody's ready. We're going to be ready to roll when these two judges uh get appointed next week and that's very exciting. Joe Davis was huge in this. Kevin Carrian, Tim Diamond was integral and I really want to thank Micro Wiki who really made all of these move because there were a lot of moving parts to make this happen and make it reality. And so that's one of the wins. It's a really good positive thing that happened in the county and didn't spend a lot of money getting it done. So, everybody uh came together to make that happen. It was a real positive in the county. I know we hear about negatives all the time. Um, and I just want to say to y'all and and say thank you for all of that and to let you know that I I do think that you really need to give some serious consideration as to fully funding those two courtrooms. Um, this uh is something that is a small percentage of what I know you're considering spending to keep people in the jail. This is a small percentage to keep people in the jail for the time they should be

in there and not more time. And it costs a lot more to keep somebody in jail than it is to have them on probation and to keep them supervised and get them the services and the resources that they need. And I just want to give you the one example and I see it all the time and I've seen it recently and that is I get cases new cases coming into court and I say well man that name's familiar and I look back and I'm like oh I have two open cases with this individual and the reason and some of them are back a lot longer than they should be. I mean, our case load, unfortunately, because of the way we're staffed, and the reason why we have the two new judges coming on board, is because we have cases that take longer than a year, way more than we should, way more than the National Center of State Court says that we should. And what the result of that is not just, oh, it's just people, you know, we're not getting to the cases from a criminal perspective. It's real people's lives. It is people who aren't under supervision, who aren't getting the resources, they're not doing the classes that they need to do, like the family violence intervention program. And so what do I get? I get another case where somebody has gone and beaten on their spouse, significant other, you know, child's mother, whatever it is, and they've gone and they've done that again allegedly. Um, and they haven't had a single class. They don't know anything other than this is the relationship I've always known. It's how I grew up. It's all I know and I have no other perspective other than that. The only way we get there is if we can actually manage cases effectively. Get them to resolution as quickly as possible so that we get them the resources. Mental health, you name it. All of those things. That's just one example that I'll give you that's real that I have cases pending in front of me for with right now. And I thank you all

for your time. If you have any questions for me, I'm happy to answer them. But thank you all very much for what you have done. Thank you. I do have a follow-up question, I guess, uh particularly since it was uh your plan. Um I see that the judges got eight positions that were uh they're recommending eight positions, which is what you requested. Yes, sir. Uh, I see this clerk requested nine positions, but they're only recommending two. Uh, is anyone from the clerk's office here?

Uh, the the chief clerk is here. Okay. And and I didn't mention, but he's you can't, but I will I mean, you got to have the clerk's folks to manage the um the the paperwork. It's not paperwork anymore. And then I'll get out of the way for him. Uh I will say one quick thing since you brought it up with the clerk's office being understaffed that is again a very real issue. It's not just about paperwork not getting done or the you know things moving the way they should. It causes mistakes and those can be ministerial in nature because of what the clerk does. What that means is they aren't necessarily subject to sovereign immunity. And so that leads the Fulton County, not to our not to our budget, I guess, but to Fulton County's budget of possibly seeing issues that might be brought by

folks who stay in jail longer than they ought to because the paperwork wasn't done because there aren't enough resources. So anyways, that's one thing I'll But if you want to hear from Donald. Yes, I do want to hear from I do have one more question though. Yes, sir. H how many uh solicitors and public defenders do you have in your courtroom? I have two and two. Two and two. Yes, sir. And you know better. Can I ask you a question? Sure.

As well. I'm sorry. Um because you know better than I do now, but when I was an assistant solicitor in Dicab, we had two prosecutors and two public defenders. And a lot of that was because especially with prosecutors, you have a senior prosecutor who knows a little bit more than the other usually and can help train the junior prosecutor. And so you get that constant um training effort that comes in when you have two folks with one. I mean, you really you never know what you're going to get in a courtroom just from a training perspective. Mr. Damage, you can probably talk to that, but that's what I've seen across Metro. I don't know if you have seen anything different than the 22 model.

No, I haven't. Um but and I was going to also ask you, have have you always had two? Yes, sir. And I assume, Judge Morrison, you've always had two solicitors and two public defenders in the courtroom as well. And and there have been I'm sorry, I will let me I will correct. There have been times when I've had one public defender because of of issues with staffing and things like that, but it's pretty minimal um that I've only had one, but for short periods of time, right? Yeah. I mean one time sometimes when you have staff you don't have enough staff then you got to only manage it with one I but generally I have two two

and what is the average size of the case load we talking what 80 to 100 cases uh that's a month that come in we we average I think it's 900 per judge um open pending cases and when you talk about the number of cases and not to but the the numbers are astronomical especially like when you consider to superior court now their cases are different obviously and the the type of case is different but our our case load is very high n over 900 right I'd love to hear thank you thank you judge Taylor

I'd love to hear from the clerk's office about the resources and why I guess you know why you requested nine and you only got two I mean you know how many why why did you request nine and you know doesn't look like you're going to get nine but you know perhaps you might need more than two.

Yes. Thank you. Good morning everyone. I'm Donald Tally. I'm the clerk of court and the court administrator for state court. I know you don't see much of me as being the clerk of court, but there's another clerk of court besides the clerk of superior and magistrate court. Um, first of all, thank you for what has been provided uh as resources upon the request that we've made uh to be able to manage the two uh new the case load of the two new state court judges. But with the clerk's office, I can tell you that we are severely understaffed. Uh if you look at what other Craig's office have around uh metro Atlanta, neighboring counties of equal size, equal volume such as the cab cobb county, we're probably about 25 to 30 staff members less than what they have. We have the same volume. Uh when the AOC made their recommendation for uh 16 judges, they based it upon the number of new filings. Our new filings equate to about approximately about 50,000 a year. But what they don't take in account are all of the filings. When they say new filings, they're looking at our criminal case loads as well as our civil case loads. But what they don't take in consideration are the subsequent filings. Last year alone, we had over 400,000 filings. 400,000 with only approximately about 26 staff members. Of those 400,000, many of them were subsequent filings. No one looks at the subsequent filings. They only look at the new case filings. So when we're talking about motions, small things for discovery, uh there's a lot that takes place. Of that 400,000, approximately about 180,000 of those were touched by my staff. It is difficult for us to be able to not only build those cases because in order for a case to move, you have to have case flow management and it starts with the clerk's office. So we ask for those nine positions just to be able to manage what we have in place. To give you another idea of what has happened here in the last few years on the civil side of things with dispossessory cases because

we've done such a great job of managing our dispossessory case load, we've seen a significant increase in the number of dispossessory filings. In 2017, we had approximately about 170 dispossessory filings for the entire year. This past year, we had approximately about 17,000 dispossessory filings with the same staff. What has happened over the last few years? There have been many changes. The the community has demanded changes. As a result of it, we've implemented new projects, new systems. However, we've done all this with the same staff. As you all know, in 2016, there was a separation of magistrate court from state court. And a lot of the staff that was there uh with state court went over to magistrate court and superior court. That was about 39 or maybe 50 employees. Well, here recently, as of 2021, first appearance cases are now back with state court. They're back with state court. I have the same staff and we're still trying to manage those case loads. No additional staff. I need some assistance. I need some help. I'm begging of you.

So, if you can be more specific about the clerks that are needed for the two judges. I I mean, I get it. I understand your your your overall and I'm thank you for providing that background information but I think specifically what we need to hear is how many people do you need for the two new judges?

For the two new judges I definitely need the nine and that is clerical staff. Okay. In addition to that we also ask for some uh some additional court reporters. Right now, we have seven court reporter positions, 10 judges, and I've been trying to manage what we can with just seven court reporters to uh handle the trials, motions, and probation revocations. It's challenging to do. We've also had to use outside agencies just to bring court reporters in on our civil cases. So, included in that that request for nine staff members, our clerical staff, and as well as five court reporters. This is not an absorbent request. This is something that we absolutely have to have in order to survive. Two new judges have come along. They're going to be moving cases a lot quicker. I have to have staff in order to make sure this case these cases are flowing properly. So, I ask you to please support us in this request.

All right. And I I don't know if I clearly heard how many are needed per per judge.

Per judge. Yes. Well, per judge, I'm I need at least three clerical staff per judge in the clerk's office. So, that would be six then plus, as I mentioned, five court reporters. So, in all honesty, we need 11 uh positions total. Now, please keep in mind, I have no vacant positions. There are no positions for me to go and hire or to fill. I have no vacancies. We don't really have vacancies in state court. We're fortunate that once someone comes on and they're working with us, they stay with us. So, but we need additional staff. So, when I talk about the clerical staff, that's court operations specialist positions, senior court operations special. These are entry- level positions that we're requesting along with the court reporters.

Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions? What you want to ask him? I know I'm not next in the queue, but before they leave, can we They're not leaving. Let here. They were brought here for a reason. Just so you who do you want to ask the question on? All right. They want to go on the queue. All right. Vice Chair Commissioner Ellis, you have the floor, followed by Commissioner Barrett, followed by Commissioner Ivory. Do not leave now. We're just rehashing all of us that we've gone through at budget time. This is the same thing that y'all have heard. So, I guess we will invite everybody else to come. That's fine if we got time.

Mr. I think we can stay on this particular topic. I've got I'll sort of make a macro statement about you know kind of the budget budget as a whole with before I lead in because it going to lead into kind of the comments I want to make relative to this I'd say certainly with you know a proposed an additional 16.7% spending over the prior year I think the amount of funds that we've got allocated in total for the entire entirety of the budget are more than adequate. Um and and we're and it's a significant number that we're asking taxpayers to uh to fund. It's an additional about $153 million in spending over the prior year. Now there's a lot of components and as as the manager had noted that make this up in that this is not spread evenly and clearly we can see one particular component which is um overweing you know kind of the spend on this and it's an important one. Um, but there's a balance to all this in terms of front and back end like uh was noted by Judge Taylor I believe. Um, and that's a that's an interesting argument that can kind of flip both ways that people can overuse. U, but this particular priority was something that we had as a board, right? We wanted to collectively go get the new additional state court judges. I think state court has done a good job of terms of of all our courts in terms of more clearly very clearly outlining their efficiency and the need

for this and we all bought into it and I think we all want to see this come out of the gates with success. Right? So there seems to be some degree of breakdown in communication. I don't think you would all have proposed this to us with the idea of this coming out and not working. I don't think that would necessarily would hope that's not the intent. Uh but we seem to have some degree of breakdown in communication. I don't want to ask you to kind of what happened with that, but my really what I would like to see and I've got a couple of specific questions in here. I don't get too far down in the weeds, but I would hopefully we could get re in this next two weeks sit down with these constituents that and stakeholders that are here today and better understand this because I I I I'm assuming what you have attempted to do here was try to determine what the proportional amount of resources that were needed to fund the two additional judges, not necessarily other ask that you know kind of the individual stakeholders may have had outside of that. Is that sort of what was attempted to be done in terms of what was recommended here? Uh, Commissioner Ellis, we were um trying to ensure that we provided for the um judges, their chambers, and um proportionally for um the uh solicitor and public defender um attorneys and investigators.

Okay. So, that I don't know, maybe I heard two and two, and I guess that is four and four, right? That's kind of where some of the stuff you were you were hearing, but with the solicitor and the public defender, right? Yeah. So, we we provided for

I get it, right? I mean, but there there other some other points that have been raised. So, I we could all kind of get down and weigh in on the weeds on this stuff and we want to that's fine. But I think there more than adequate enough funds here to look at reallocating some funding in some other areas into this and and let's get it to a point that we all feel comfortable and we get right. Maybe the number's not 5.1, maybe it's 4.9, maybe it's 5.3. I don't I don't know. But I think we're within, you know, kind of a framework here to basically, I believe, get this out of the gates, right? And it would be my ask and hopefully the other the rest of the board would concur with this to for you all to sit down, take another look at this and then come back and recommend some reallocation of funding into these areas but maintaining but not going you know above the sort of top level of spend. Um, and you know, so I think there's some good points that have been raised. I mean, obviously there's there may be some underlying questions that need to kind of get at, and I would leave to you all to kind of wrestle with a little bit, but I I think we're probably there's got a need, it's been demonstrated, we probably need to get closer to the 5.1 than we are at the 2.8. Um, so I'll I'll come back on some other things and I've got some suggestions about some areas we we need to think about potentially reallocation, but I'll I'll I'll let other folks sort of talk on this specific issue and come back to that.

All right. I agree with you, Commissioner Barrett, because the reallocation that's where the rubber is going to re meet the road where we take if you fund something now, you're going have to take it from someplace else. Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all. Um, first of all, uh, Madame Chief Judge, congrats on the new role. Uh, look forward to working with you. Um, thank you all for putting this together. Um, thank you Judge Taylor for getting it started and putting it together and and all of you guys for being here. Um uh I have a question about the total number because I I did uh go through the presentation um and obviously I spoke to um solicitor gamut yesterday um in some detail about this and I know I've spoken to a variety of you over the course of the year um leading up to this but right off the bat uh the original number that um you had solicitor gamage in your um enhancement request was higher higher than the 1.8 um on the slide up there. So, you had like a 1.954 I believe was the number. And so, I'm I'm my question is for all of you um are these numbers on the left side the accurate numbers for everything you would need um to accommodate the new state court judges. Um, in other words, I believe when I when I talked to uh you uh yesterday, uh, solicitor Gamage, you were the 1.954 not only included um your um two solicitors per courtroom, but also and investigators and what have you, but also um the victim witness assistance program folks and the um for the Marcy's law. I may be getting the terminology wrong, but

you have it perfectly well.

Okay, great. And the um and some operational funds as well. So, I just want to make sure that we are not even if we look, my my recommendation is that we I agree with with uh Commissioner Ellis that you all sit down and work through these numbers. Um, but I think I want to make sure that we're not just saying, "Okay, here's the people." And then you're also you're still short on funding for, you know, paper or whatever else it is you need to get the work done. So, I want to make sure these are comprehensive numbers so that you can actually um use the judges to their full extent. Um and and to your point, Mr. Gamage, um uh this is all in service of better throughput in the courts, moving cases through, not building up backlogs, and in many cases uh improving the uh at least the length of stay in the jail, getting people in and out faster um who have gone uh through your office. So, so the question being again just to circle back, are these numbers the right numbers on the lefth hand side there for each of you?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Commissioner Bear. We we are in accord that these are the right numbers and and I I would ask you to consider we're here county management team is here perhaps on a break since we're all here from our various court proceedings and demands perhaps we can get together today

if that's reasonable um we have a number it's not an overreach it's what standard and so respectfully I I think I Commissioner Ellis is right on in the court systems because of being having these resource challenges. Lots of cases get reset as Judge Taylor shared, but we also have the opportunity right now today, I think, to deal with this matter and and the right parties to do it are here. I hope you all would consider that.

Yeah, I I appreciate that. And I want to say um I'm in support of of us funding this fully so that they can do what they're meant to do. Um but I don't want to let go the comment you made solicitor Gamage about um the the sort of underfunding that has gone on uh over a number of years. And um I will basically hold my comments right now to this HB625 issue because I do have other things I want to talk about as well regards the budget. But I do think, you know, I sat through 90 something% of the um enhancement meetings that budget hearings that you all had um this year and I I heard again and again from the justice agencies, those of you that are here and some that are not here, that they were underfunded, that they were understaffed, um that there were not enough resources. And I've asked consistently um when Mr. Naraki's been presenting um what is the you know, how do we start to measure the backlog? we measured sort of the COVID backlog and then you know how do we measure backlog building up again now without enough staffing. So, I do think, you know, as you know, put it under whatever fund you want to put it under, call it a consent decree fund or whatever else you want to call it. But at the end of the day, all of this is relevant to improving the situation at the jail. And we have to invest not just in, you know, you know, fixing plumbing at the jail and helping the sheriff get staffed, all of the things we need to do, but also to funding the entire, and you use the word ecosystem, just this ecosystem. Um, unfortunately we don't have a CJCC in Fulton County. This would have been a great forum for all of us, including you, Mr. County Manager, to have these discussions and for the board to be read in a little bit earlier to some of this. It's not there. You guys are doing the work together. I appreciate that. Um, and I think we need to really be serious about investing in justice. So, I'll let it go there. I I I just wanted to make sure everyone knows those judges are going to be sworn in and so we really need to and the why the reason I pressed

is because we need to start interviewing people to put the human beings in those courtrooms as those dockets are starting to be transferred and increased. So any delay has potential detriment. If I might just add one thing with respect to the chart that is presented, I believe that the number on the left, the requests for the public defenders office, I'm showing that the comprehensive need that we had um um submitted actually is a higher number than the five that's reflected on the sheet. So we had asked for four total public defenders for the two courtrooms, two for per courtroom and to include also a supervisor, two investigators, a social worker and a legal secretary to manage all the additional um administrative matters that were um that we need to take into account with the added judges. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention um while while I had the audience here.

No, that that was answering my question. So I appreciate that. And and so can we get a comp a comprehensive list of um of all of the not just the staffing requirements but all and not just the staffing for the two and two but the full list of requirements that everybody has to um to make this work. You know I understand I totally get where you're coming from Mr. clerk and like and so I think we really need to understand the full set of operational costs here and make sure that we're not um sort of you know giving you a car with three wheels. Excuse me, Commissioner Ivory.

Thank you so much uh Mr. Chairman and thank you all so much for being here. Happy New Year and um I appreciate your patience and standing and going through while we're um doing all this. I want to thank our finance team and county management for the work um that went into preparing this revised proposal. I will note though um that the materials were sent to the board at 8:11 p.m. last night um in advance of today's vote. So uh that obviously is not enough time to do a thorough examination of all of the documents that were sent. And so I'm pleased to hear that my colleagues would like for us to have more discussion over the next two weeks before we take a vote on this budget. I think that's what I'm hearing and I'm um pleased to hear that. Um I am keenly aware of these issues not only as an attorney but as a person as a commissioner who has a chief of staff who was not only a former public defender but also a former prosecutor. So I on a daily basis that is attorney Maria Banjo. I on a daily basis get the opportunity to dive deeper into what is really happening because there's someone in my office who has done both of those jobs. So, we had a conversation with the county management team many months ago about this very topic when the state court judge when we knew that we were going to have to fund this and we talked about the most minimal of standards was two and two and all of the requests that you have in here. So it does surprise me that we are not funding this fully and completely because we know and I have witnessed in this county that we adhere to minimal standards that even in the way that we handle the idea of rules-based budget is anything that is like required and that we must do to meet minimum standards we do that except we're not doing it here. And so I I feel

like we will have the opportunity to have these discussions a little bit more and figure out if it's um not what I believe to be true about reallocation because we are always working with thin dollars for the needs and the services in this county, but really being honest with ourselves about what amount of money it takes to actually run this county properly. the crisis we have right now and the word underststaffed is the most used word in Fulton County. Everybody is underststaffed. Year after year the departments and I sat in almost every single department budget meeting says they are underststaffed that they need more in order to do their jobs effectively. and most importantly in the areas where we spend the most money, the jail and the court system, our justice system. We've accepted that we're in a crisis in Fing County with the jail. We have heard it on the news. We have the consent decree. The federal government has said that and we have all accepted that we're making allocations for that in our budget. Not probably even enough, but I'll talk about that later. But we sort of stuff under the table the understaffed other department which are our courts because we don't have a consent decree because it's not talked about in the newspaper all the time. But we have two crises. We have to fix our jail and we have to properly fund our courts. And both of those cannot be done without the other. So, I would just like for um solicitor Gamage to come up um or actually chief judge to come up as well, the chief judges, former and present.

And would you your team, could you just speak to the impact on a person's life and the jail population when the courts are underfunded? Because I think that a lot of constituents understand what happens when people are sleeping on the floor of the jail and that our monitor has said that we are underststaffed in the jail and this is the reason why the number one priority for the county in 2026 is to staff the jail properly. Tell me what underststaffing in the courts does to a person's life life and how it affects the population at the jail.

May I begin? Uh thank you for that question. Criminal matters customarily criminal matters customarily begin with an arrest or the issuance of a citation and then an individual is booked in. And as we all are aware that's occurring 24 hours a day every single day. We've even proposed collectively to have 24-hour court night courts. That's never been funded. we made that request since law enforcement is making arrests 24 hours a day and people are being booked into the jails. Directly to the question though, as I as I trembled thinking about it, every single case represents someone who might be innocent. And so when prosecutors and when public defenders and when the system is underfunded, there is a failure of justice. And so in as much as we are working stridently, honestly, you all, our teams are working almost 24 hours a day, prosecutors don't get sleep. The effect is that they're overwhelmed. They're overworked. And as much as they care and are conscientious and are well trained along with our public defenders, they're tired. They're stretched thinly. They're quitting at alarming rates. The effect that it has is that one of those individuals or two or 500 of them will not be properly prosecuted. Why? Because we're just too damn busy. We're overwhelmed. Someone may get stabbed in this dilapidated jail who needed mental health treatment. But you know what? My prosecutor had 500 cases to manage. And

one case might have 12 charges. How much time do we expect an individual public defender, judge, prosecutor, clerk to spend trying to determine whether this human being is innocent or not? How many investigators should go out? I only have 27 for tens of thousands of cases. How many of them should go out an extra five times to try to to try and find a victim of domestic violence? How much effort should we expend? 27 investigators, tens of thousands of cases. That's been part of our enhancements for years. Judge Taylor and Judge Edline run an amazing accountability court for the most high-risk impaired driving offenders, many of whom are seeking help. I got to go through the cases and make a decision about whether they should go there. There's a criteria. I got to do a whole bunch to get the case filed. If I miss that, by me, I mean my team. If we miss that, justice is denied. Not only for the victim, like some of us here who've been injured by drunk drivers, the people here today who have been a victim of drunk driving. Justice fails. The guilty potentially go free without punishment. Cases linger. some for three years and it ain't our fault cuz we're working hard and we've been making these petitions and honorable, reasonable, thoughtful requests and you've been helpful. But if it's my nephew, if it's my neighbor, I want a damn system that really tries to find out whether they committed the crime, whether they can get resources. I want a victim advocate. When a dog attacks someone and malls them, I want to have enough victim

advocates. I only have 10. We lost our state funding for victim services. We petitioned for that. It was denied so this victim doesn't get caught. So they miss coming into court. And they moved in this transient society we're in. And I didn't have enough investigators or enough victim advocates to track them down and find them. What it means is justice is denied. It means that defendants who might be innocent might miss their due process rights. It means that people might spend two minutes with a case. Somebody might get convicted because we didn't have the resource to go and uncover the truth about it. And you know it's really difficult at times you all for elected officials. I'm an elected prosecutor. I have to make the community think we're safe. It's part of my job. They're not. They're not safe. This is not hyperbole. These are facts. Judge, you want to hear from each of them?

Yes. Okay. So, try try to be brief. Want to hear trying to accommodate everybody and the final analysis is going to boil down to the millage rate.

Mr. Chairman, I will keep that in mind. And there are people who've been far more articulate about this than I need to be. But you all know the old adage and it's an adage because it's something we understand. Justice delayed is justice denied. Charles Dickens writes about this centuries a century ago. Um not just in criminal cases, but in civil cases when families can't get justice to resolve issues throughout our court system. uh when business people can't get cases resolved. Backlogs are an issue that cry out for public attention and for your attention as the lawmakers. I'm going to turn the details over to Judge Taylor who worked on the proposal here, but just thank you for your attention to this important matter, not just in criminal, but in our civil cases as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Judge.

I'll be real quick and try to answer this specific question. Um here's here's an example for actually what happened to me recently. So because of the way the clerk is funded and the the the number of staff that he that he has which is minimal like he said 20 fewer than Dicab Cobb and we all have the same case docket and he's got 20 fewer folks to manage the same case load. I mean it's ridic and even more than what Dicab has. What happens is we all try to work together to overcome that. So, our litigation managers, who you funded for each state court, they manage our docket, our criminal docket for us. What's happened over the 15 years that I've been here is more and more work is put on the litigation manager. They have to do more and more of of making sure that the case is is filed correctly, that if somebody gets uh arrested, it used to be that the clerk's office could go through there, they'd notify us, they'd say, "Here, here's what's going on. Here's what happens." Now, it's being shunted to the litigation managers. Not I'm not I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying it's a thing that we are doing because we're having to try to figure out how we deal with the case docket. So, what happens is things like this. If your litigation manager is out on vacation during the holidays and somebody has a bench warrant for their arrest because they didn't show up to court, but lo and behold, it's because they've been incarcerated in three other jurisdictions during the time when they were supposed to be here in court. And that person's mama is emailing me directly. So, what do I do? I have to send this to my litigation manager to try to figure it out. So, what do we do when we get back? He's on a calendar. I'll be seeing him tomorrow to figure this all out. Public defender's office frantically having to try to work to figure out, you know, to figure out where was he incarcerated on the date he was supposed to be in jail. But that is something that because the clerk's office is underfunded had to come to us from his

mama rather than the clerk's office picking it up when he was incarcerated and sent to Fulton County. So, those are real instances where he didn't he didn't necessarily have to be in Fulton County Jail if we had known about it before. He might have. We don't really know. We're going to find out tomorrow, but we could have addressed it sooner. So, that's why this funding is really important. Just Thank you. Can I just hear from the public defender on that?

Um, yes. Thank you. So, I I think that the picture that I want to to give you all is that we are operating as though everything is a crisis. We are having to rob from Peter to pay Paul. We are only able to deal with the items that are the people who are in front of us that day or this week always trying to play catchup. We can't really spend the time that we need to spend that we should be spending that the bar says that we should be investing in all of our clients and investigations and on for people who are out on bond and who are pending. I get calls all the time from people saying, "I can't get a job because this is showing up as an open case. I can't get the case calendared because there's a delay in the system and it's going to be, you know, another six months before we can get this resolved." People are getting picked up on bench warrants. As has already been said, it's going to take us another two weeks before we can get them on a calendar. It's just I I'm speaking in an animated way because that's how it feels. It feels as though we are always acting in crisis mode instead of being able to manage professionally um with all due diligence. Again, we're not asking for Cadillac services. We're just asking enough to be able to do the job that we are supposed to be doing um effectively. That's what we're tasked to do, to give our clients effective representation. And some days it feels like we're just not there because we just don't have enough people. So um we just again ask you to consider um that the people that we're represented representing are entitled to effective assistance of counsel that the effects that um that are spilling over do affect the jail population. I stand here in a different position from other stakeholders here in that our office also represents clients in superior court. So we also have a lack of resources on that end as well. So again, it just feels as though we are always trying to figure out where we're going

to get some coverage in superior court. If somebody's out, we have three attorneys, I believe it, is who are going out on maternity leave. We have no clue how we're going to to um cover those um you know, those cases um because we are fully staffed. It's not like we can hire additional people while those people are out on maternity leave. So again, I just feel as though our clients, the citizens, Fulton County, the courts, everybody deserves a system that is working um as it should be efficiently and not always feeling like we're under the gun. So we're just asking that you give full consideration to the requests that we've made and understand again that we're doing this in a very thoughtout um way um in conjunction with each other.

Thank you so much. And Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for obliging me um with your patience. I have one quick very last question and this is not a court of law and I am not a judge like many of you are but I do have that um that uh lawyer in me. So I'm just going to ask you a very simple yes or no question. Just please reply yes or no. Does the gross underfunding of the court system have an impact on the jail population? Yes. Thank you very much.

All right, Commissioner Thorne. Um, I'll be brief because a lot of my questions have already been answered and I do concur that we do need to adequately accommodate the two new judges. Um, which has previously been said. Um, Miss Walsh, I you kind of went quickly because I had a question about the five positions and you kind of rolled off all the positions. Um, can you give me those positions again and then the total number?

Certainly. So, we need four uh PD2s, two per courtroom. We need an additional supervisor, not just for those two attorneys, but for the other attorneys who have been um under supervised uh because of the number of attorneys we have, two investigators, one social worker, and a legal secretary. Okay. And a legal secret. Okay. And that's an addition to the the two the two defenders per judge. the four this is a total ask. Okay. Okay. Great. So a total of nine nine positions as opposed to the five that are reflected there.

Okay. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. Um and then uh Mr. Gamage um you mentioned that you lost funding for victim services uh from the state. Yes. Um was that across the board? everybody in the state they just decided not to fund victim services or can you give us a better history of that?

Sure. Thank you for the question. Uh to Asha Grin, over the course of the last eight years, we have been getting a reduced budget, federal funds made available through the state under particularized statutes to serve victims of crime, make contact, counseling, etc. based on a written criteria of cases. That amount has been becoming less and less over the years. And so we work with the prosecuting attorneys council of Georgia and for the last I would say probably three budget I'm looking back at my chief of staff probably the last three budget seasons that deficit was made up by funding from the county and that's what the state and the feds suggest you do go to your local funding source when grants and and and and you know since you asked and thank you for doing it. We also lost the funding at the state level to staff abandonment court which happens uh in the magistrate court and abandonment court criminal abandonment court is where and we've sought that funding from this from this body but it's where and it's victim related as well but it is where custodial parents whose non-custodial parent is not upholding their responsibility. Those custodial parents don't just take the civil route of child support. They come to the court and petition the magistrate court to issue an arrest warrant. And that process involves a number of different things, but it is best when there's a prosecutor. Well, we also lost those state funds not due to any fault of our own. It was just simply cut. And so I I I wanted to open it up to the to the fact that it's those victim services as mandated under Marcy's law and the crime victim's bill of rights. And it was four positions most recently that we

uh lost um in addition to that other state funding from the Department of Community Services. And so to the point that Miss Walsh and the judges have made and the clerk, what we've been doing is taking the taking the prosecutor out, Judge Taylor's courtroom, and sending them over on a day when they should be preparing their cases, sending them down to the magistrate court under the theory that, forgive the pun, we can't abandon the children because if I'm not there to prosecute those cases, then there is no prosecutor. And so we're we're doing that on a rotating basis to make to make up for that gap. the accountability courts. I've got prosecutors rotating through there. The misdemeanor mental health court, which we stood up back in 2017. You all made an investment in it. It it it's got great results, but we're rotating prosecutors there and Commissioner Thorne and other commissioners every single year. We point out these things. We We really do. And and that Cadillac kind of justice that that I believe people deserve actually. And Miss Walsh suggested if we had the the resources to really investigate a case in those accountability courts to really give more than just a helping hand, but the actual attention that a mama needs who's coming to court for help. That would involve obviously a much more robust investment. But the benefit is that people would really be safer. People will be closer to receiving just resolutions in an efficient and fair manner. And with those victims, I am constantly worried, constantly worried that we're going to find ourselves caught violating Marcy's law. And there's not, you know, we got County Attorney Sujo here. There's not a lot of

penalties right now under Georgia law, but it is a statutory requirement. I've got 10 victim advocates. We've got thousands and thousands of cases. And and Commissioner Thorne and commissioners, thank you. Thank you all for wanting to hear more from us. I don't know that that means every department needs to come back down here, but what I do know is that if we're not safe in the community, then we shouldn't expect business to come. If we're not safe in the community, Commissioner Thorne, lastly, we're not safe in our own homes. If our court systems fail and our jails fail, none of us are safe. These are just minimum investments we're asking for.

Um, I would I would like to see if we could try to secure some more state funding for you as well. I don't know if that's adding to our legislative agenda or how um I guess Jessica would have to answer more to that if she could start some conversations to restore the state funding. I don't maybe we can get the history if it's been cut. No, it's money that comes from the federal to the state and then disperse. So if it's coming, why aren't we getting that dispersement? That's my understanding.

Yeah. It's it's been cut through the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council of Georgia. And again, this has been, you know, each year I get a letter and it says this is how much the decrease is going to be this year. Um, and and customarily we come to the county and that deficit has been met. This time it's had it's caused us to lose those positions, for lack of a better way of putting it. Okay. And and not provide those services. Okay. Yes. I think victim services are very very important and being in compliance with Marcy's law is very very important and the abandonment that you mentioned too as well.

So um probably have some more offline conversations with you on that as we rolling into the legislative season to see what we can do and hopefully restore some of that in from a state level. I welcome it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate appreciate all of you for coming down and congratulations on your new position. and I'd love to have a meeting with you to, you know, get to know you a little bit better and what you do and how you do things or what you're looking forward to doing in managing the state court. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much, Commissioner Eric. You want to be heard again?

Uh, yes. So, um, thank thank you to everyone. Uh, I think this has been very productive. I really I don't want to beat the uh the horse to death anymore, but we heard we heard from everyone up there except for court security. What is court security and who provides that? Is that the marshall's office? Is that the sheriff's office? Um I'm glad to hear all of you all are in alignment, but the one person we haven't heard from is either the marshall or the sheriff. Who you know what is this court security? Is that again? Is that the marshall or sheriff? Who is that? And who would be providing that? Is that outsourced? I' I've only seen sheriff's officers in the courtroom.

The way I understand it is it depends. There are some some of that is managed by our sheriff, Sheriff Lebach, some by our marshall. Uh I don't know if it's marshals in magistrate court and the sheriff's deputies in the state and superior court. Uh but I did ask our chief investigator Tim Pete to step down. He may have. Yeah. Because I mean my experience I've only really seen the sheriff's officers in the courtroom whenever I go into the courtroom. And so I guess my question is is this court security for two for for sheriff's officers or or marshalss?

This was we had asked the various stakeholders. I believe this is from when we asked the marshall um to to be here. So this is the marshals ask and the marshals do do they do some of ours they do our traffic calendars and so they actually do provide security at um some of our calendars but not directly to I will say this would not be directly related to the two new state court judges. Well I mean because that's my

I mean that's my understand I shouldn't say that since the marshall's not here but this came from the marshall. I I would just say let's make sure we have the marshall and the sheriff included because my my experience over the last 30 years as a practicing attorney inside the state court of Fulton County and the superior court of Fulton County is that there are sheriff's officers and there's not just one there's always two sheriff's officers in each courtroom at least whenever there's a judge on the bench. So um and and your experience is similar to mine. Mine is there's one in in state court there's only there's one unless there are inmates and if there are inmates there are two.

Thank you. So, I I just want to make sure as we're having this conversation, county manager, that we are including the sheriff and or the marshall andor the investigators, whoever. I just want to make sure that it's comprehensive and that we're really and certainly Chief Judge Commissioner Arrington, thank you very much for bringing up that issue as someone who had the uh privilege, although it was a sad privilege, to represent the family of Julie Brandal, the court reporter who was slain. Um, court security is essential and thank you for thinking of that. Thank you. All right, Crystal Ellis, I'm done with this. I mean, I don't know if we want to continue on this topic or move start to move to other areas.

You want you still on this topic? Okay. Who uh one last question here for this with the court security followup. That is a a funded position, but when I looked at the marshall's office, the budget only went up a hundred,000.

Um, commissioner, it's actually sitting in non- agency for this very reason. When we asked the marshall in her budget hearing, um, because she did not present anything at that point for additional resources for these two state court judges, she indicated she would not be providing the security. So, we funded this and and um through the meetings that we've been having about the move have been trying to get to a final answer on where the resources really need to go um in order to ensure that security has been covered. My understanding was that the sheriff's office had indicated they would be providing um the coverage in the courtrooms and would also provide escorts as needed outside of the courtrooms um through the um um justice center. Um and that magistrate court covers I I'm not going to remember the two specific court that she said she covered. Um but there were two like calendars or something that specifically that her team covered. So this has been discussed. We we put the resources in the budget. They're in non- agency until we get um some direction on really where we need to place them. So if there's going to be a follow-up discussion, then um perhaps we can close that out um as part of that discussion and and move the resources where they should be. Thank you for that explan.

Okay, thank you very much. All right, Commissioner Ellis, Commissioner Barrett, Commissioner Thorne.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Um, I just want to get back in and talk about places for reallocation and numbers to look at. Um, and I had three or four things that I wanted to note. Um I think obviously a lot of there was a lot involved in that discussion but I think the main thing for me is let's just get the funding for the two courtrooms right I mean that's the main thing and I think in terms of where additional resources that should be looked at as well as some areas where I think just some general questions if we need additional funding which it sounds like we will for that let's look at let's look have you all go look at it and identify where those funds can come from. I think this 19.5 million and the additional recommendation that's located noted on the consent debate compliance that can be a source for it because I think hey if if investment in this reduces that then it's going to reduce the outlay we need for the other so you know test some of that out there's some rationale for it and then um you know or there are some other areas within non- agency to look at um another spec two other specific areas they're smaller but I want to note them. Um, one in terms of just a this is more of a mechanical transfer. Um, and may need to we may need to look at it from a legal standpoint, but I don't really think we do. I think it um I think it's a change we should make is we've got we have we used to have multiple art centers in the county. Um, now there's only one. Uh the the existing ones that we had have been move migrated over to um to all cities Southfol and Atlanta and Sandy Springs respectively. Uh we have one that's remaining that's the Darnell Center. It sits in the

unincorporated footprint. Um I think those centers right now in the cities are funded in city budgets. We should shift the funding for the city for for that into our FID budget. It may not be a lot of money, but I just think mechanically we should do it. Um the um and then on just from a number to look at and evaluate um you know and and I can have some conversations with you offline on it, but the number if I look at regardless of the additional 466,000 you've noted that sort of floats in to pay for things that billing that took place in the in the prior year that we got to pay for is I struggle with in the registrations and elections area how we've going we're going to a proposed budget of 33 when in 2024 our actual was 31 85 or 65 I can't see uh whatever that number is um 65 it looks like um and I would hope we could kind of look at that and give that some consideration as we're looking at um trying to find funding to re reallocate over to this area that we just we just discussed. Um and then just to verify the the board of equalization, you know, bump is in here, correct? And that's addressed already. So that comes in there. We've got um compensation or a cola of what amount?

It's the dollar amount we have set aside for cola. The percentage 3.45%. So that's in here and that's based upon a full year impact. Uh no, it's based upon 22 pay periods um with the cola uh being included in the first paycheck in March. First paycheck in March. Okay. So that comes in in March. Okay. And then which is kind of how we've historically it comes in and we bounced around but that's sort of been that target, right? Uh yeah, this effectively it allows if the board approves it. Um so you can get the payroll set.

Yeah. After Yeah. allows it to be implemented as soon as possible after the board takes action on the budget in January.

Okay. Okay. Um, just my last statement is not necessarily a budgetary statement per se, but just sort of I would just say it impacts all of this and I I it's something I think we need to bring attention to within 2026 and it's, you know, outside the budgetary discussion, but it's related to all this is I see it and I hear um in terms of the different things that we do and I think it's most prominent within tax and courts I think we have clear opportunities for some technology efficiencies to be brought to bear um and I think a lot of times when it comes to those things it's a matter of will not money in terms of being able to just look at what you're and have people step back and do things different ways. Um, and I know a lot of that's easier said than done, but we've heard about some stuff specifically, you know, in some areas where we just have been doing stuff via paper for god knows how long. And, you know, that wouldn't be tolerated. And you know, you got you got restaurants that are run with, you know, more sophisticated scheduling systems and all that sort of stuff than we have running very large operations. Um, we do some things in technology well, right? And but there are opportunities for us and I think that's something that we've got to more aggressively get our hands around in 2026. uh because you can't you can't run any operation whether it's a government or a private business without applying technology more effectively and efficiently. I mean it's

just where we're going is where we are. You don't have you're not never going to have enough re enough financial resources or people resources to continue to do things the way that you've been doing them for for the prior decade. The world's moving in a whole different direction than that. and you know, we've got some opportunities with that that I hope we can kind of start to bring into focus in in 2026. Thank you, Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, I have a variety of questions here. I'm going to start um since we were talking uh with the the group that was here about um people not being safe and about victims and all that, I have a couple of things I'd like to sort of point out um in terms of victim protection um that I think we really should be considering in this budget. Um, first of all, in the uh solicitor's budget that that um the position, the victim witness assistance program position, uh I think it's positions that um were where the grant funding was lost. Uh I believe it's uh the number I have is $413,417, which is what it said in the trunch. I don't know if that's still the right number, but I do think, you know, we can't while I understand and and have participated very much in the discussions around lessening the number of people in the jail, I think, you know, we can't forget about the people who are victims and I think it's really critical that we um are doing and and look, Marcy's law is law. So, we have to provide those services and you know, as as solicitor Gamage pointed out, if if they don't have the budget to do it with a separate staff members, they're going to have to juggle other people around, which slows down the process. So, I think we really need to consider that 413 or rather yeah, 413,000 for that. Um, as well as the um there's a a $2 million uh in total request from the DA's office for the family justice center that they are uh working on. It's partly um it's broken down I think into two uh separate dollar amounts. One is sort of for the actual buildout I think um and the other is for uh operations. It's and I think you know look they're getting a lot of funding for this from federal grants. They're getting a lot of

uh help from APS even I believe is giving them at empty school building to use for the facility. So they're being very resourceful and there's a lot of community partners involved uh in the family justice center which for anybody who doesn't know what that is high level is just uh a way to sort of put all the services for victims in one building because victims are struggling to move all around the county to get these resources. So this is an effort and these are these are uh this is a standard practice. There are these family justice centers in other uh municipalities and so uh and areas across the country. So I think it's a it's a really worthy endeavor and I think you know we should be participating in that and helping to support that um with these supplementary funds. So that's 2 million. Um I also want to mention on the victims uh front the uh Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation AVLF has their safe and stable families project which operates out of the Fulton County Courthouse. Uh it is specifically for survivors of uh intimate partner abuse and um they are funded through um philanthropy and but mostly through federal and other grants. And unfortunately the total uh cost to operate their uh safe and stable families project in Fulton is 2.02 million I believe. U I have the information if anybody needs it. and um they've lost about a million in grant funding. So, I think it it's really imperative that we continue to support um survivors of domestic abuse uh and domestic violence with this service. Uh so, I'd like us to include the million dollars for that as well. Um, so I think there might be I'm trying to I did not have this in grouped together by I had it grouped together by department and and because we had this

whole other conversation, my notes are a little disjointed, but um I really think that anything we have in here, I think some of the other departments uh in the justice side may have had some other victims programs that were unfunded and uh staff positions and such, but I really think we need to look at a comprehensive package for the victims of crime in this county and and you know these these are the pe people who we did not keep safe and who aren't and who feel very unsafe now and still may be depending on when people get out of jail or um and that kind of thing. So I think um very important that we protect those folks in in Fulton. So, uh, in addition to that, um, we heard from, uh, a lot of the, you know, solicitor general, um, public defender and such already, but, um, we didn't hear from the marshall, and I think the marshall walked in. So, um, I do want to say that I know the marshall desperately needs a a technical person. It was one of her enhancement requests was for a technology position. Um, I would like to uh make sure that she gets that uh in her office and um a as well as you know I want to just make a broad statement here because we talk a lot and since I've gotten here and every year we've talked about how there are all these positions that are not filled and we have um sort of let that kind of be out there as the fault of the department for not being able to fill positions. But I think based on what I heard at the budget hearings, I don't know if you heard the same thing, Commissioner Ivory, when when you were there, but I heard many, many, many department heads in those meetings talk about the struggle to retain employees. So, it's not entirely that they can't hire. Sometimes they often, I think, can hire, but they can't retain. And some of that, not all, but some of that is due to the salaries and what we are spending. And so and you know we know in the sheriff's

office it may be due to not only the salaries but the benefits package and some other incentives and some other things. So I think we need to be realistic about um supporting these departments giving them you know positions at salary ranges that they can't hire um the best people or can't retain the best people or those kinds of things I think remains problematic. So, um, while I don't have specific numbers around retention, um, I do think we really, if we want to improve, again, just sticking with the justice agencies for the moment, if we really do want to improve, um, our ability to retain folks in all of the offices, I know I I believe, Marshall McGee, you told me you lost several people this year. Um, and I think so, it's happening across all of our justice agencies, I think, not just the sheriff's office. and and and so I think this is something we need to really be looking at and putting it off another year or or whatever. I mean, I still think we're under a consent decree for a reason. And part of it is underst staffing in the jail, but it's also impacted by understaffing in the courts um and in some of the other various agencies. So, not all of them, but I think it's worth looking at. Um the DA's office in the same way asked for quite a large number of positions. Um I don't know what the right number is to balance out what we need um from that office in terms of reducing the population in the jail and moving through people through the system faster. But I certainly don't believe the answer is nothing. So, I think the number of positions that uh the DA asked for was about I 40 assistant DAs and 20 investigators. Um I threw together numbers for half of that, which is uh 2.4 million for the assistant DAs and 800,000 for the investigators. I don't it, you know, I don't, for me, this is not a an all or nothing or my number,

their number thing. I think they if they don't want zero. If we can give them one more of each, great. If we can give them two more of each, great. Like, I'd like to see them get as many as they need, but we should at least be trying to help improve that throughput as well. Um, the magistrate uh court asked for three additional judicial assistant positions. Uh, I would say the same is true there. Relatively small ask altogether, 278,000. Um, and then you know on some just general purpose uh items um by the way the full ask I believe from the marshall's office was uh around a million. So I don't know what we can do there but I'd like to see her get as much of that as we can possibly squeeze out of this budget. Um last but not least I have a couple of things outside of the justice agencies. Um, you know, we are now facing a lot more people in this county who are who have lost healthcare, who have not been able to afford insurance um because of the cuts to the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act to Obamacare. And so, you know, I proposed and it's still on the agenda um a women's health uh healthy women healthy families grant program for a million dollars. Um you know, I I think at the time, Mr. Chairman, you said um some of these things were more worthy of consideration in the budget versus as standalone. So, you know, again, I'd like to, you know, put this up for part of the budget discussion to put a million dollars towards uh this healthy women, healthy families grant program. Um, not that I don't want men to be healthy as well. I do, of course. Um, but there are many, um, single parent households led by women. Um, and that is why we called it healthy women, healthy families. And I really would like to see us try to step into the gap. Even though a million dollars is a tiny tiny amount compared

to what the need is, it's at least us doing something trying to stand in the gap for um, for women. So, I'd like to see us talk about think about that. Um, I still I'm going to say it one more time this year. I still would like to see us do the federally qualified health centers pilot program uh for a million dollars. Um, for the same reason people have lost health care, it's going to get even worse. um and the paying the helping to pay the co-pays for folks at the federally qualified health centers I think will go a long way to addressing um some of these chronic conditions that send people to the hospital. Um and then um I know we've got an agenda item today on the veterans money and um we had been talking about a million for veterans. Um I'm still asking for that. I know the agenda item is 750,000, but I would like to see us honor our veterans and ensure that they are not only um getting some funding to help with a whole host of needs uh as determined by their commission, but also um the awareness factor um sort of splitting it into these separate roles out of coming out of arts and coming out of community services are great, but I I really would like to see the awareness um us, you know, help to beef that up because that's half the battle for veterans is they're they're they're just not seen and we need to help them be seen. Um last but not least, uh we have a real opportunity I think with um and we and we don't we often overlook the work we're doing. This is a complete shift in gears here, but um with um affordable housing and we work already with the Metro Atlanta Land Bank. We have we do fund them, but we have been underfunding. We underfunded them last year and so they once again have an ask for about $186,700 and some dollars and I'd like to see that happen. I think it's a tool we can

use to improve affordable housing in the county and we should uh consider doing that. So those are at least for today my my requests. Commissioner Thorne

um I'll be brief. Um Ellis touched because everyone's kind of touched on a lot of the same things I would address, but Ellis touched on technology efficiencies and uh the marshall, she needs a technology person, which I'm sure she's probably not the only person um in Fulton County. So, um I talked with you Kevin and some ideas you had to assist um departments maybe get some dedicated staff that works primarily with um people like the Marshall's department. I don't know if you would like to share your thoughts on that.

No, happy to do so. Uh Commissioner Thorne, good afternoon uh board members. So, I would say that you know we have a shared services model. We want to provide services and IT support to all of our county departments and agencies. Uh just like every department, we have our own challenges with filling positions, keeping them filled. Uh but we are working on specifically for law enforcement and courts carving off really separating the two. Our justice partners in our law enforcement agencies of course are both very large and need more dedicated resources to meet their support needs from an IT perspective. And so we have uh a vertical that we're establishing for law enforcement that will have some staff to help with their application stack. And we do have dedicated desktop support and user support teams that can take on those responsibilities. Um typically we have a technical liaison within the department or agency that would work with us to coordinate anything that's more um immediate or top of mind, but we do have a ticketing system to fulfill you know smaller requests or needs. Um, I will say we have seen challenges with embedding an IT resource in a given department. If it's just a one or two person team that limits their their growth or mobility um and then they have challenges if they if that resource is to move on to another organization then filling that gap tends to fall back to a centralized IT organization. So oftent times there's that pendulum swing. Resourcers get dedicated then they flow back. They get dedicated they flow back. I've lived through this through many organizations in my career. So, I just I want to bring that awareness to the conversation to say what is the best model that provides the support they need and if it's more hands-on day-to-day, how do we address that? But longer term support, I think tends to be more successful when you have a centralized organized IT um support model.

Thank you for that. Um, as well with the uh marshall's office, um, there was some conversations about moving. Um, we had someone from the public defenders office come down and give public comment about moving them and I know we've had to relocate to accommodate these new state court judges. So, we have made moves. Um but the efficiency for some of the departments to operate now has maybe uh made them less efficient. Uh Marshall McKe had expressed that now the magistrate court is split into two locations which is causing her office to have to serve two different locations. Um and then the public defenders as he said they are practically moved to Mapleton. So I don't know if you someone from you guys can address that and what your thought process was around that.

The um yeah I think the the comments from the public defenders were uh premature at best. Uh there is a uh facility that's available now that DeFax has moved out on Fairburn Road not too far from where we all visited when we uh when we went out for the uh disability training center. Um, it has a lot of potential because of its size and scope and free parking and it's a 15inute drive to downtown. We in initiated discussions with Maurice Kenner, who's the public defender, to see if it was suitable. He rejected it at first, then he came back and wanted to go further. Nothing's been decided, nor is that in any way linked to the creation of the two courtrooms. So that's independent but something that's you know I think has some value for consideration under the notion of we would be better as much as we can and you initiated this is to move to own space versus lease space. Well who are the primary lease space documents? The public defender, the DA and the tax assessor. So to somewhat to some degree it's a non-starter to say the public defender shouldn't even be considered in that equation. Now, should it be there or potentially could it be simply across the street which is now also vacant at the corner of Peach Tree and and MLK? So, that's a another alternative. And then last, which we're asking Seismore, right, is the name of the firm, our space planning firm, is to look at really all vacant space that exists in the courthouse because one thing that we learned as we were going through the process of identifying the two courtrooms and then the movements to be made to accommodate that was we have more than significant more than ample I should say maybe uh vacant space in the courthouse. So that hasn't been optimized.

Neither is now this, you know, opportunity across the street nor this facility uh where DeFax is located. The facility where DeFax is located is where the accountability court has decided to go. So there is actually some synergy potentially accountability court services between public defender and accountability court. So for all of those reasons, that comment to me was premature. And from his perspective, I'll say it that way. Um, on the courtrooms, it was, you know, a tremendous amount of work with a very short period of time to optimize the two courtrooms that were needed and then the movement of the magistrate to accommodate that. We had I don't know how many meetings, but it was a weekly meeting for about 3 months and a forced march to get both the courtrooms identified, the agreements in place with all of the parties um and coverage from a security perspective and um courtroom flow and the like uh put in place. So, as you heard heard Judge Taylor said, that was done with a team effort. if that requires you know some more marshall coverage or something different that was also considered during that whole process but in the end that as was said you know was done with a speed as a absolute requirement and very little investment in terms of new buildout or things of that nature. So I I'm actually pleased with that aspect of of that part of the of the plan. And then just briefly since we were talking about it, I think first of all kudos I think to all of our justice partners for coming down. I think clearly we can reallocate within what we have to satisfy the aspects of that proposal that need to be satisfied. But I think as Commissioner Arrington was going through his questioning, you got it right to

where we got what is the difference between the wheat and the shaft. In other words, it's very clear when you said two and two. Really not an argument and we started low. Less clear when you start talking about past sins of how we divided up the clerical staff with the MA. This is going back way in time through magistrate, superior, and state. less clear when you start talking about grants that go away because our policy, not finances policy, the policy has been that we don't backfill every grant because you can think of how that would be a slippery slope of we get grants, the grants go away and then we're going to fund it from the general fund. Now, I'm not suggesting that victims advocates don't shouldn't have a higher calling, but that has been the policy. Therefore, as those grants go down, we look to try to find other ways to either fund or or address that. Um, and then when you get all the way down to the level of what was being discussed by the public defenders representative, she's talking about boiling the ocean. In other words, she really is talking about the whole system is underfunded. Well, is that, you know, is this addressing trying to address that issue or is it addressing the two courtrooms? So I think though we can go back and you know clearly we got the direction today to do that and close that gap but it's you know somewhat the difference between the bid and the ask and that's the reason there's a difference between the bid and the ask if that all that makes sense.

Thank you for that clarification. Sure. That's all I have right now. All right, Commissioner Ivory.

Um thank you so much. Um um as I said before, I want to say thank you to the finance team and to the county manager's um office for the work that went into preparing this revised proposal. And I did have a very thorough document asking of seven pages of questions which I'm going to and the chairman is happy to hear this going to hold because we now have the opportunity to have conversation about in the next two weeks before we vote. And also many of the questions that I have have come up from Commissioner Barrett, Commissioner Arringtonen, um Commissioner Ellis and Commissioner Thorne who have been present in this conversation. So I thank them for asking those questions so that we can sort of comprehensively have a conversation. I want to say that um 72 people are sleeping on the floor of the jail today. That is a current number. Um, which continues to highlight that we are in a state of emergency. And we, meaning my team and the county manager's office had a really productive conversation several weeks ago about what the budget would look like if we could actually fully fund um the services that departments are asking for. And we went um many hours painstakingly going through what we thought were the items. it came to about six or seven that we thought would achieve that and that ended up with a uh mill rate that was uh around or about if I'm think remembering correctly 10.28 and in there we had a discussion um county manager that you actually proposed which um I found to be so um interesting and informative um about the concept of declaring a state of emergency. Uh we went back and had a conversation about what happened during the pandemic and about how the county declared a state of emergency which then allowed for certain things to happen, the freeing of certain funds or the ability to use certain funds. And we

discussed that we are in a state of emergency. And you raised another um great um uh sort of name for something that we could do which was to provide orcalite funding something like what we did to fund the justice partners during the pandemic but we would do it again and sort of call we would I don't know if that was going to be the name of it but we used it as sort of a placeholder that if we gave we assigned 25 million if we gave an orcalyte infusion again to our justice partners we might get the same result we got during the last state of emergency was that the case load went down very sharply and so did the population in the jail. So I want to ask you to revisit that conversation in the next two weeks and I understand that we are in a um in a fiscal pickle. I I understand that money doesn't just fall from trees and what we're asking of our constituents is a lot. But what we must do is correct what we haven't done in the past, which is to deal with our grossly underfunding our departments on every level. And I think you've heard that today from the just that particular department which are here. There could be many many more that come the next time. And I hope and invite them to do that because I think it's important for people to hear from the departments um for us to hear from the departments. Um, and so I hope that in the next two weeks we can sit down again and go back to that concept of we are in a state of emergency, not just with our jail, but with our justice partners. If we don't properly fund the jail, if we don't properly fund the justice, the courts that feed into that direct correlation, we're going to continue to be at a deficit. We're going to continue to put lives at stake. So, I look forward to

coming back in again. And I'm actually completely relieved in this meeting to know that we are not going to rush. I know how hard it is to go through this process. Um, but receiving it last night at 8:11 p.m. was not enough adequate time for me to be able to fully understand the decisions that were being ma were being made. So I thank I thank all the commissioners that have participated in this conversation for bringing up the idea of let's take the next two weeks to really talk about the things that we have to talk about. One item that I'm particularly concerned about is the um permanent supportive housing dollars that are in the um behavioral health budget for the agreement we have with the city of Atlanta to provide those permanent um supportive housing services. and I sit on the board of um Partners for Home and I've had several conversations um with Katherine Vassel about the impact that this could have to the homeless population or to the continuous um um outlay of affordable units and permanent supporting housing units in the city of Atlanta, of course, our biggest city and where most of my district lies. And I know that was about $1.4 million for the 2026 year. and I do not see it allocated in the proposed budget. So, can you just give me a little bit of a a conversation about how we might handle that or if that's another thing that we're going to need to talk about?

Uh, thank you, Commissioner. So, for 2026, there are 302 permanent supportive housing units that are in operation. Those came online over the years and the last of that 302 came online the fourth quarter of 2025. The proposal for 2026 is to fund all 302 permanent supportive housing units through three funding sources. One is the $500,000 that we receive from the state annually. That's 500,000. 800,000 from a contract that was previously in the department of behavioral health that we are no longer providing that service. It is re-entry services and those are being handled through another mechanism. The third opportunity is to redirect funds from an an existing contract that we expect to go out to bid later in the year and we will not need all of those resources for 2026. Specifically, that contract is the child and adolescent service contract at Oakhill. We've had some issues with the performance of that contract and we plan to present an RFP to the community and will in the interim use those resources for 2026. That only handles 2026. So moving forward as additional supportive housing units come online, we currently do not have a funding strategy. What we have proposed to partners for home is that we work together in a couple of ways. One is to go to the state to enhance the 500,000 that we currently receive.

Number two is to look at whether or not there are any tax allocation district dollars that can be directed to permanent supportive housing units that are in those districts. and we look forward to working with Partners for Home in that effort. Number three is to ask the city of Atlanta if they how are they using their opioid dollars. Many of the constituents that are in these permanent supportive housing units also experience substance abuse disorders and we believe that the opioid dollars may be another funding mechanism. So again, of the 550 units today, 302 are in operation. We have figured out a funding strategy for 2026 and we'll need to look for resources to fully fund the 550 units.

Okay. So thank you so much Dr. Rochelle for u Madame COO for uh that. But I just I want to be clear that there are and when I said 1.4 it's actually 1.8 million that they are actually in need of and 207 more units are going to come um online and so you're saying that we do not currently have the funding for those 207 units that are coming online. Yes ma'am.

Okay. So then I am then I am saying um after that that we need to find a way to resolve that. Um if there was ever a crisis in Atlanta or in Fulton County because if you live in Atlanta, you live in Fulton County. We are talking about the same residents, the same homeless population, the same people that need the same services. And while I am definitely in um agreement that we need to speak to the city of Atlanta about how they can bring resources to the table as well, what we agreed to do, we need to do and we need to stay in compliance with that uh intergovernmental agreement that we signed and we need to we need to figure out in this most important space homelessness, permanent supporting supportive housing services, which is our job to do to figure out how to do this. So if it means as a part of of our complete analysis of what is the amount of money it takes to effectively run the services that we are supposed to provide in Fulton County, if that 1.8 million is a part of that, then I would ask that we figure out how to find that 1.8 million. Um, and not just because I sit on the board of of Partners for Home, because I care and I drive by homeless people every day coming to work as a commissioner and I live off of a street where when I drive near the Hill Street Bridge near Grady Hospital, it is filled again with homeless people under that bridge. We have to deal with this problem. It is not Atlanta's problem alone. It is also Fulton County's problem. So, I look forward to being able to talk some more about how we might be able to find some um resolution to that. Thank you,

Commissioner Arrington.

You just briefly um want to echo the request um and I guess the general sentiment with the budget from um Commissioner Barrett and Commissioner Ivory. Um, county manager, you know, I've been saying for years that we do not uh fund our budget properly and that we really need to see what our expenses are. Now, it doesn't mean that we can fund all of that stuff, right? I mean, you know, but we do need to have a real idea of what it would take and and again, the reason these positions have been open for 10 years is because we're not offering enough salary and enough benefits. Um, and it doesn't mean again that we'll be able to settle or resolve all of that this year with our 2026 budget, right? But somehow we've got to be thinking about what are the actual costs to run. Uh because again, you know, the first 10 years I was here, there was a 5% budget cut on everyone's budget. and and we hear today from our solicitor and from our public defender that people are not only overworked but underpaid and stressed out and working 24 hours a day, right? So, um hopefully we can get a better idea of what it really takes. You know, I almost want to see a not that it would be our 2026 budget, but I would love to see the budget with everyone's request. And then obviously, and you guys have done a great job of going through that and sifting through that and cutting back, but you know, somehow that's got to be the baseline number. The baseline number has got to be at what the requests are. And then, hey, we can't afford that this year or next year or whatever year we can't afford it. But I think we need to have

an idea of what those numbers are rather than just asking people to make do or get by with the amount of money that they made do or got by with for the last 10 years. Um, you know, the thing that I would submit to you, you know, we got we got basically a billion dollar operating budget with half of that money going to justice and public safety. I would submit to you if we spent more money on health and human services and on the arts on the front end, we wouldn't have to spend so much on justice and public safety on the back end. So, I'm also going to be asking for the $500,000 for the summer youth job program to be uh put back into the budget. We've done we did that for 10 years. This is the first year we haven't done it. You know, if if we don't help keep these young people busy and employed during the summer, they're likely to get into trouble, wind up in our criminal justice system. Uh, and so providing jobs for young people and youth during the summer, uh, worked out well for us for 10 years. I don't know why we all of a sudden took that out of the budget this year. Um but uh again if we invest more in people in health and human services uh I guarantee you that the amount of money that we're spending on justice and public safety will go down on the back end. We just have to make the investment on the front end.

Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. Um I wanted to I got back in the queue specifically when u Mr. Carrian was talking about the technology um and the tech support essentially for the departments. Uh and then I realized there were a few things other that I also didn't didn't say when I when I was at BAT before. But um on the technology side I think you know I you know I've said before I think we we have sort of underfunded on technology for a number of years as well. And I'm glad that we're doing the ERP system. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of efficiencies get built in when that comes online. But I think when it gets to technical um support staff for the departments, you know, the the reason I specifically asked for um the position for for the marshall's office is because, you know, from what I understand in particular on off hours um on weekends and nights and things like that when or they're trying to do their work um but even just when they're out in the field during the day um there are problems getting quick turnaround from tech support and there so They're using a current staff member, I believe, and the Marshall's here if we want to get more detail on that. But I I think that's the problem. So I the reason I'm getting sort of back in the queue to ask about it is because I'm I I get you on the shared model, but if if we don't have a comprehensive shared model and we can't offer a really fast turnaround in particular for any the of the law enforcement agencies who need quick turnaround, if something's not working um and they can't get a warrant up on their screens or they can't, they need that quickly. you know, some of the other departments may not have quite the urgency. So, I guess my ask would be if we if either we need to continue to sort of put these positions in the field um or we need a really comprehensive plan um which would be more money into your budget to address to address a shared model. But one way or the other,

I think we we have to have a better way of getting especially for the law enforcement agencies a quick turnaround. It would be great to have it for all departments, but certainly for the law enforcement agencies. So, um, so I guess the question I have is, do you have any numbers around what you would need to sort of improve that response time? I mean, I'm looking at you. I don't know if you're the right person to ask, but

Commissioner Barrett, uh, I don't have numbers right in front of me, but I will say that, you know, a number of items we have brought to the board recently, especially, um, the Axon item, which I think touches a lot of what law enforcement is doing when we talk about body cameras and other equipment, part of that agreement is more managed services from that vendor to provide more timely response. That's so that's one way we're taking on improving that um, immediate need for equipment. So, you know, we do also offer, you know, on call services, but we actually had conversations internally with my team about how we need to be more effective in that space to address those 24/7 operations with the sheriff, with the marshall, you know, FCPD as well. And so, I think there are ways that we can look at improving that model. And I think it does include um some managed service offerings because one person can't do that, right? So, even if we added one person, right, they can't work 247. they can't support us you know across um that time frame. So what is a managed services model for those vendors that can support us around those immediate needs and I'd say we are moving in that direction with the axon piece but then where is that additional need so looking at our um the tough books that are used in the field as well for those law enforcement agencies looking at a model that would provide faster turnaround times for any issues with tough books which are now going to be a part of our PDC refresh programming they were not initially and now we're bringing them into the fold which will also include that. So I think part of that though is now looking at where can we add additional support to um that vendor relationship which would bring you know more support for those uh devices and for those you know law enforcement agencies as well. So, I think there's a lot of things that are in the works and moving to create a better support model that I think we'd want to come back with a more cons comprehensive plan around internal support, the external support we're receiving, and then talk with leadership

in these law enforcement agencies to say, well, where are there still gaps that we're not considering to make sure we're holistically taking care of all of their needs. Um, Madam CFO, are there I I did not have a chance to pull this um because it's really just sort of bubbling up as we're having this conversation, but um are there a variety of departments that had enhancement requests for technical staff that weren't met? Do we know? Because I I know the marshall had it, but I don't know who else had that request. There may have may have been one or two others. Most of the requests that were technology were for devices um or software,

PCs, PCs in particular. Um but I will certainly go back through um my notes from the hearings and through the enhancement list to specifically look for um a technical like an actual technical position. Um off the top of my head, there isn't anything that's that's bubbling up. I just I just keep hearing that we need um we need PCs, we need our laptops, we need our devices. Um thank you. I I think um I would be for me to be more comfortable that that for example, the marshall doesn't need a person. I would need to feel more comfortable that this is that there's a plan. Yes. Thank you, Commissioner Thornne. Yeah. that there's a that that this is like the money's in the budget to either put the person directly in her department so she has what she needs to to deal with the way things are today or that you have a plan to make things so that she doesn't need a person. But either way, I think I'd like to and I and I feel like we really have to have that before we agree on this budget because this we can't let her hang for a year without true technical support. That's not okay. So I think and and I'm saying her because I specifically talked to her about this role, but I that's why I asked um you madam CFO if there were others because I think while we're looking at that for the Marshall, we should just be making sure that we're there are no other gaps like that. Um because you know that's pretty critical and you know for for those of us who don't have emergency tech needs, it's frustrating when you can't get a fair a quick turnaround, but it's one thing to be frustrated and it's another thing to be at somebody's door and not have the information you need, you know. um in law enforcement. So um if if it's at all possible, I would encourage you all to sort of put something on paper and and come back with asurances that either she's going to get that role or you're going to cover that so that she has the response that she needs.

Oh, sorry, I forgot. I don't want to forget my other things. So um on the underruns that you when you went through the presentation, Madam CFO, you were talking um predominantly about the difference between the mid-year projection and today. Um but I just wanted to clarify coming into the mid-year projection, we were we we had that $69 million number. Some of it was revenue and some of it was um underrun. And if I just correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe the underrun portion of coming into the at the midyear projection wasif was it 56 million something like that 56.4 something 54 I don't remember. It was 54 million.

54 I knew it was somewhere in there. Okay. And so we had 54 million in underruns at by that we knew about at midyear and then now we've added another 20 million in underruns. Okay. Okay. So, the reason I'm bringing that up is because that that's 70 million in underruns. And you did you did lay out um at least to some extent, I think, well, you laid out to be fair in your presentation what those were made up of in the in the 20 million. And I'm sure you told us at the time of the 54 million what what it was then, but I don't have that whole entire comprehensive list in front of me. I think my question is, and I know Commissioner Arrington brings this up every time we talk about underruns, that we have a significant uh amount of underruns like that um every year. I mean, this is 74ish million in underruns. And you know, I want to make sure that we are I mean, I don't think we should I don't expect us to budget down to the zero, right, where we have no underruns. That's unrealistic. Or we don't plan for um less revenue, more I mean, I get that there's got to be some wiggle room there for sure, but you know, when we're talking about whether or not we're going to give $184,000 to uh the Metro Atlanta Land Bank and we're have 70 million in underruns, that just feels bad that we sat on that money that we budgeted and we weren't able to fund some of these smaller things, a million dollars for federally qualified health centers or a million dollars for women or whatever, when we had 70 million that we didn't spend. Um, so I just wanna I guess my question is can you point to a consistent pattern of where those underruns are hitting um, year over year over year because I know some of it is being unable to hire people and it's empty positions. We already talked about that in terms of retention and that may be part of that reason.

what other categories are there that that are continually happening um that are leading to this level of underrun um and is there any way to sort of get a little closer to the bone on that so that you know I don't know if that's look you know I always bring up non- agency um it's a big big part of our budget like over 26% of our budget I think is in non- agency 80 million of it is listed as other um there's lots of different contingency funds Um, like this year I think there's a $10 million you have $10 million in there for debt service on the jail as an example. Um, but in our conversations yesterday, we probably are not going to use 5 million of that because we would be making a a payment right now in the first half of the year which we know we're not doing. So I think there's 5 million there that can be rep prioritized for some of these other things. Um, and there are some older things that are sitting in non- agency and I I mean I did not have time to comb through it line by line by line, but we talked about one of the small ones, the there's a statutory gender um equality initiative of it's like less than $100,000, but it's sitting there um not getting used and that's more than half of what Metro Atlanta Land Bank needs, right? So like it wasn't used at all last year. Do we really need to be saving that, putting that aside or can we have a different policy? I mean, if we have to write a resolution to undo that or whatever, then let's do it. I mean, let's look at some of the things that we've been putting aside and not spending um in particular last year to this year, but certainly if it's more than a year, and are there some ways to just instead of saying, "Well, that's statutory and and putting the money aside and never using it." Can we look through with more of a um you know a microscope and find some of these things a million here, five million there, 100, 200, 800,000 here and there that will add up for us. And I think, you know, we need to be doing that in this moment. So, um I just want to bring that up because I I think you know just in in a

short amount of time we identified yesterday uh a couple of places um where there's there's a I think like a what is it a a million tucked away for commissioner budgets that are not where they need to be. Like do we really need to do that or can we get our budgets right? There's two million um tucked away for compensated absences. Do we really spend that every year? Do we need to like are there ways that we can sort of and that again this was just like I sort of cherrypicked a few that just stood out to me and I'm not the expert on this. You are but that would be my question. I know we're looking so hard to cut from everywhere. Are there some places like that that we can do some surgery? Um just making sure I before I say I'm done I want to make sure I checked all my notes. Um, oh, I do want to say on the permanent support of housing issue that Commissioner Ivory brought up, um, I do think that is mission critical, too. I mean, we know this is a huge huge problem right now. Um, and I I'm appreciative that we're at least going to do our best to fund the existing units, but it it would be um really unfortunate if we can't continue to move forward with that, which would mean continuing to fund the new units as they come online. So, whatever we can do to address that, I think the, you know, it's so top of mind for citizens right now, affordability and supportive housing and all of those things. And so, and there again, that's just a thing that can help, you know, as Arrington was, Commissioner Arington was pointing out, you know, everything we're doing to help people who need help is is helping people stay out of, uh, the criminal universe. So, um, we should be doing that. So, I think that was it for now.

All right. 1251. Commissioner, Vice, Commissioner Ellis, you have the floor. Yeah, just

thanks, Mr. Chair. I'll be really brief. Um, just a couple Well, I'm not going to be necessarily really brief. Maybe briefer than I was earlier. Um, couple points. As I listened to a lot of the dialogue today, I would have sworn that we had cut our budget about 15%. And that nobody was getting any more money. when the reality is what's being proposed here is $235 million more than we spent in 2023 and it's 16.7% higher than what we spent in the prior year. Um so the notion that we're somehow just starving ourselves is is not factually borne out. We've made a lot of significant investments in a lot of things. I mean, and I'll there's a lot of stuff you you have to be careful about by not responding and just reacting to anecdotes. Uh we've made significant amount of increases in funding for salaries, correct? Over the past several years and in fact, if you look at some of these areas, we are retaining people at record rates where we made those salary adjustments. So the notion that somehow our salaries are not competitive is not also borne out in many of these numbers that we see because we have taken action and they have been addressed and in many cases we're higher than the market than our competitor than our than our peer governments are. So I just want to just put a put a little bit of just sort of cautionary note on this for the public. Um, and also is to say you're the ones that are funding all of this stuff and we know that you have a limited purse yourselves and that you are struggling.

And you know, I my my objective as we work through not only this budget but throughout the course of this year is to not ask you to do any more than you're already doing. And I think that that's what we should all be striving for up here. Thank you, Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, uh, Mr. Chairman. Sorry. I just have to say like with all due respect, if we were paying somebody $2 and now we're paying them $3, it's still not enough when they should be making 20. Like, it the fact that we increased by a certain percent is is not really relevant. if the if the numbers were significantly low and they're still they're just a little better now we haven't solved the problem and I think you know in any other arena whether it's investing whether it's business everybody knows you got to spend money to make money in the corporate world in our case we have to spend money to ultimately save money and save lives we are spending millions of dollars this year on consent decree not not just the fixes we have to make for the consent decree, but the monitor's team, the technical advice, like we're spending millions on that that we would not have to spend if we had spent the money properly earlier. So to say, yes, we've gone up in an increase, but we but we held back for year after year after year after year leading up to this. So, you know, when are we going to start to really address the problems and fund people? We, you know, one of my pet peeves in not just here in Fulton County, but across the country is that we have accepted and made it okay that police officers and sworn officers have to work a second job to pay their bills. Like, why is that okay in this country? These are the people who are putting themselves in harm's way and we expect them to not only work 40hour jobs but 80 hours because they got to go do a second job somewhere. That's insane. So like

we don't want to give them double overtime to stay here. We don't want to pay them more to work a good job. We would hire way more people if they didn't have to work two jobs. And again, that's not all us. That's a that's a nationwide systemic problem with how we treat law enforcement and teachers and many other public servants who are doing the hardest work in the country. So I'm just saying we we should not be accepting those things. We should be trying to make them better. Um, so all that to say, I did forget one other thing, which is I didn't bring up the sheriff's office at all, but um, and I did that in part because we had talked about the consent decree numerous times, but I do think we I am pretty sure, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but did we include I guess I'll just ask it. Did we include double overtime um, for the sheriff's office for this year? because we had that resolution that ran out at the end of last year. But what are we doing for double overtime for the sheriff's sworn officers this year? The consent fund has the same amount of resources that the board approved last year for overtime um included in it. It's a little more than $5 million.

Okay. Why did you air quote? because because it was approved for overtime as the the general classification of of use. So currently since the double overtime pay authorization expired at the end of um uh the year 1231, then we just revert back to um regular overtime pay, which would be time and a half um pay. I was just I was just saying that there is a bucket of resources that has been placed into that fund designated for overtime. Um,

okay. So, let this brings up my last uh point about the sheriff's office and the consent decree and all of that, which is that if there's a bucket of money under a madeup new fund that we have called consent decree unit, whatever we're calling it now, why are we putting the sheriff's budget in a bucket that is not the sheriff's office? I mean, I'm sorry, but overtime is operational money for the sheriff. Why is that not in the sheriff's budget? I do not understand this model of putting everything in a this non- agency holding bucket to be meated out and parsed out when we already know what these expenses are. In many cases, in my opinion, there are the expenses laid out in the that are that are accounted for in the consent decree unit or whatever we're calling it should be put into the departments they belong in. Whether it's the sheriff's department for sheriff's operational needs or it for technology needs or dream for maintenance needs th that money should be in the departments it belongs in. I mean how else are we're not the consent decree is not a department. It is not an expense category. We are under a judicial consent decree. It is a legal mechanism. It is not an expense category. So we should put the expenses where they belong because in many of these cases they are going to be some of them are non-recurring, some of them are recurring, but they should be in the departments where they belong and should be spent that way instead of having the accounting um and finance be a roadblock or red tape in the middle of the process of these departments actually spending that money. So I would really like to see that happen. I suspect that it won't, but I would really like to see that happen um before we finalize this budget in particular with the expenses we 100% already know about. If it's

staff, it belongs in the department's in. If it's systems, it belongs in, you know, Mr. Carrian's department, etc. Thank you, Commissioner Arrington.

So, one of the things I think that we that we really got to do and one of the reasons we have I guess kind of these budget back and forths. You know, again, we need to provide the resources that the departments are asking for. The rub comes in because no one wants to tax the taxpayers. And so, one of the things that we've got to do, Mr. manager is look at diversifying our streams of revenue so that we're not 80% reliant on personal property taxes for funding, right? And and we've got to really work with the commercial appraisers on assessment of the commercial properties because you know if if if we had a magic wand and the money could just appear, we give everybody everything they wanted, right? In order so that they could operate. But the the the again the rub is the increase on the millage rate and the property taxes. And so what we've got to do is diversify our streams of revenue. And it it's so telling that you said earlier what you said earlier. Our reserve fund balance has doubled since the time that you that you started. Right. and and and we went from a $69 million budget surplus. Now we learned there's another $20 million from actuals on the end of the year. I don't know if that's 74. I count that as $89 million budget surplus plus the $235 that's in reserves, right? Or 170 that's in reserves. Um and so that's a lot of money. That is a lot of money. I mean, there's got to be a way to borrow against it, right? We can't borrow against that

reserve fund money, right? Um, we can't look at aligning our, and I've said this before as well, we need to align our fiscal year with the time that our taxes come in so we don't have to borrow money until it comes in. That'll save money right there. How much money will we save if we don't have to go get all these tax anticipation notes? because we've already got the money in and our budget is aligned with our fiscal year. We we've got to think out the box. We can't just keep doing the same things that we've been doing because those are the things that we've been doing. We have to think intelligently. We have to work smarter, not harder, right? And so thankful again for everyone and everything that everyone has done. But we cannot we cannot keep doing the same things and expecting different outcomes. We do the same thing and we're expecting different outcomes, but we get the same outcomes because we're not doing anything differently. And so we definitely got to work with our uh assessor and the commercial appraisers on assessing those commercial properties, but we've also got to look uh at other ways that we can diversify our streams of revenue um and align our our our fiscal year with our tax year. There there there are plenty of things that we can do to be in a better position to provide our departments with the resources that they need with w without going to our taxpayers, right? I mean, because therein lies the rub, right? We got people up here that want to give as many resources to everybody as they can. We got people up here that don't want to

tax themselves or their constituents anymore. So, so how do we look at that with fresh eyes? How do we look at that with a new with with a new vision to say, "Hey, we can provide more resources without putting the impact on the taxpayers of Fulton County." Thank you, Commissioner Thorne. 104. Sorry about that. No, take your time. Go ahead.

I don't know if someone could comment on the reserve fund balance. I know when you came in at 2017, was that balance underfunded? And what is keeping that reserve in our credit rating and how that helps us? I don't know if someone would like to comment. Well, the rule of thumb in public finance is you try to have two months operating uh in your reserve and that's one of the reasons why we have a trip AA bond rating. Go ahead. Uh Madame U CFO.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That's that's what I was going to say. Um um I I it may have been 2016 when we changed the fund balance reserve requirement. Um it used to be um one month um and we we increased it to two months and and the chairman is correct that that is a um a certainly an industry national rec you know recommendation that you keep at least um that as a reserve. We use it for liquidity purposes. Um it is you know whatever we have in reserve at the end of the year um is what we from a liquidity meaning cash cash on hand perspective is what we start the new year with spending um and then along with the revenue that we do collect on a monthly basis until we um get to a point where we have to do a short-term borrowing which we borrow against future tax receipts. That's what the tax anticipation note is. Um and then as we get to the end of the year and we've received our tax revenue, we pay that note back. Um and then we roll on into um into the into the next year. Um but the reserve requirement at one point was just one month and then um in 2016 I think it was 2016 it was bumped to um the two months and we have um you know worked diligently to be able to maintain that with each um you know with each with each budget cycle without having had to dip into it with the exception of the year that we had the um tax reset. Um, other than that, we've been we've been we've been pretty good.

Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. And then one other clarification I want to make. Um, there were some comments made that our police officers aren't making a living wage. Um, you know, as someone who who has an office that's very familiar with the police. Um, and we were presented a marshall's deputy just out of school with benefits makes over a hundred grand a year. Um, the reason they take second jobs is because they're offered second jobs. Uh, and it's a great way to enhance your salary if you choose to do so. But that's a choice. Um, I don't want it the public to think that we don't pay our officers um, a wage that they can live off of and are forced to work a second job. And that's it. Thank you,

Vice Chair Abdul Rakman.

Thank you, Chairman. Um, first I wasn't going to weigh in on this conversation because we go through this every year, but I would be remiss if I didn't remind uh the listening audience this is not our money. This is taxpayers money. I think about when my eldest child was in college and we would go to lunch and when I would tell her to pick where we would go, she would find the highest place to go. Oh, let's go here. Let's go there. Because she knew I was paying for it. When she graduated from college and we went to lunch and she was having to pay for it, then it was McDonald's because she had to pay her own money. And so what I say is to the listening audience because we have this conversation every year. Do we tell our veterans no? Do we tell our marshall no? Who do we tell no? Who do we tell yes to? We don't have a printing press. We're not going to put it on the taxpayer backs. And it's disingenuous to give the listening audience the perception that anybody in Fulton County at one time made $2 and now they making three. That's not That's not true. That is not true. Could we have a higher uh rate of pay for some people? Yes, we could. But there are employees here that will tell you the entire package even if they're not making ideally what they would like to make, what they have in insurance and other benefits are in a lot of cases better than other places. Even the private sector government can't do it all. I've said it once, I'll say it again. Nonprofit, the private section sector and government have to work together. We do not have a printing press where we can just print out money and tell everybody, "Yes, that's the reality." We have to

make decisions that sometimes may not be popular for the commissioner that's sitting up here, but it's best for the taxpaying citizen of Fulton County. And I can only speak for myself when I say that my first duty from a fidiciary standpoint is to protect the taxpaying citizens of Fullton County and make sure that we are spending their dollars well and with accountability. That is all. Commissioner Arrington, excuse me, Commissioner Arrington.

Yeah. I I just want us to um I want us to be accurate. Um and I and I I I don't remember, Madame CFO, if it was 2015 or 2016. I do remember it was one of the first resolutions that Commissioner Ellis passed. I think it may have been 2015. Uh as far as the reserve amount, maybe Commissioner Ellis can his memory is better since he was the one that did it. Um but we didn't get that AAA bond rating until last year. And I told y'all that then it took we did that and it took 10 years for us to get that AAA bond rating. So we're not going to put that on there cuz we had that reserve for two months reserve resolution that was sponsored by commissioner Ellis for 10 maybe 11 years before we got the AAA bond rating. So we're not I'm just not gonna let y'all put that on there. I'm not going to let you all put the AAA bond rating on that resolution cuz that resolution was in place for 10 or 11 years before we got the AAA bond rating. All right. So, look, we're going we're going to be clear. Every time y'all say that, I'm going to bring it up and let you know that that's not accurate.

Any other comments at this time?

Mr. Chairman, can I just uh both respond to a very good thought and then ask for some additional guidance. When Commissioner Ericen brought up the notion of diverse revenue, I think that is a great challenge. I would just remind you that each time we come to one of these stops on the train to diverse revenue, whether it's lost negotiations that we make some progress on, of course, that's sales tax that would not affect the property taxpayer directly. Uh we make some progress but not substantial. Jay lost was an idea championed by some of you that we went to the legislature that was going to be for the jail a dedicated sales tax that got no traction at the legislature. Um, Tesplast was an early victory 10 years or so ago which acrews about and it's coming up again next year that will be or this year, I'm sorry, in 2026 hopefully for approval by the uh by the voters. That's hundreds of millions of dollars that go to transportation improvements that do benefit Fulton County citizens, but not probably seen as from Fulton County. Even though without our leadership and our agreement and lobbying the legislature, Teslas would have never happened because it had never happened before. Why? Because that penny was going to martyr and still goes to MARTA. That's another hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue collected in a different way to to your point of a diverse revenue stream that we don't have to take advantage of. And then the you know the single most significant one that has a huge amount of political u issues associated with it are exiting the TADS. I mean it's 2.5 billion into the future if we don't uh continue to participate in the TADS as they currently are constructed. So I just,

you know, help us help you. In other words, in terms of both these revenue opportunities when they come up and when they come up again andor if we should revisit some of these or take seriously the implications of passing on opportunities because that's what creates an enormous amount of pressure is walking by these revenue uh re revenue opportunities. And then lastly, Mr. Chairman, we will uh and I you could take this up after lunch, but we would benefit from some guidance. In other words, do we leave here with any limitation on the upper bound in terms of revenue? Do we assume that everything that's been mentioned today should be included because there's a you know there's a great gap between what we now have brought forward versus where this discussion has led. And I don't want to I don't want to lead anybody to believe that I'm making a decision independent of getting the direction from the board. So the more clear you can be with your direction, the more satisfied you'll be with whatever we bring back in two weeks um for consideration.

Well, you you touched on what I wanted to say before. I haven't said anything yet uh before we break recess for for lunch that you've heard a lot today and you're going to hear a lot more uh two weeks from today. But everything that we talked about has a price tag and in order to fund everything that has been requested and we use this term enhancement. All of these these enhancements to fund all of them will require raising property taxes. So my ask is for you to give us the millage rate that some of us want that will be required to raise taxes to fund everything that has been requested. That's number one. So you pay for all this by raising the millage rate, raising taxes or cutting. And there's no in between. It's one of those two extremes. And you've heard uh anything from 10.28 up to all kinds of of of numbers. I mean, if you add them all up, it's probably uh 12 or 13% uh millage rate. And if that's what we want to do, we can vote it up or vote it down at the next meeting.

I don't think the millage rate vote comes up to August, Mr. Chair. That would be the uh direction. Start with everything that's been asked for. what that would be and then come down. All right, Commissioner Ivory and County Manager, with all of the respect that I know it takes to do what the chairman just asked, if we could please have it um a little in a a you know, in a timely manner to review it prior to the next meeting um rather than the night before, I would really appreciate that.

Yes, ma'am. We will commit to no commit on behalf of our team. What always happens at the end of the year is this close out. So it's almost, you know, it's a flawed process that produces what it's designed to produce, which is a fire drill for the first meeting. Now, for the second meeting, I think we can commit ourselves a week in advance, which means in the next week, we need to develop Yes. No.

I thought I just need to be clear that I understand what you're asking us to do. Are you asking us to bring back a fully built out budget with the detailed schedules by department that have the amount that every department requested full amount that they requested from their enhancements plus anything else that we may have. Okay. because I'm seeing some are saying some heads are going up and down and some are going side to side. So, or or are you simply asking the question if we funded everything that was requested, what would the mill rate be? Because that's two different levels of work.

Well, what I suggested was that you you give us a millage rate on what would be required to fund everything that was requested by the department. Some support that, but we'll see where that support is when it comes to voting yes or no. And then there have been u items requested today. Uh just give us give us some options. Okay,

Commissioner Ivory. Yeah, I think um I'm I'm not going to interpret what the chairman is asking for, but I know that in the exercise that we have done before, I asked simply what would the budget look like if we were given all of the things that if we were given the priority items that are needed to effectively run the um county. And we had deduced down to six things that were really super important, which many of them were talked about today. And so for me, I want to see that, but I also don't have any objection to seeing anything else that you or he or any commissioners think should be in there. So I don't think it's the 200 million of enhancements, but it's what you have already deduced and what we kind of talked about today.

And I'm assum whatever those six are that y'all have been discussing. what the millage rate what the what the millage rate would be required to fund those six things that y'all have discussed. I'm not privy to that, but that's that's two two scenarios right there. And I'm assuming that's not I'm not assuming detailed schedules. I'm assuming a directional deck that would outline broad options. Yeah.

And I think if you went back and you sort of looked at the minutes of this uh meeting, I think it would be easy to figure that Commissioner Arrington asked just one of the things he asked for was restoring of the youth budget, right? Something Commissioner Barrett asked for was, you know, in the area of healthcare. What I asked for was the Orcalite. I mean, I think you could sort of I got three pages worth of notes. Plus, I I think you're right. I think

first of all, we can meet with any of you that we that would like to meet with us to make sure that we understand. Secondly, I think I'm sure they've got even more notes than I do. Uh, and we can go back and look at explicitly what was said, but I think we can do a allin what was discussed, what was proposed at at a minimum. Okay, M. Commissioner Mayor, you want to be heard?

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, personally, I will have I have all the things I asked for and some others that I didn't bring up today in a spreadsheet. I will share that with you so you don't have to guess and try to remember what I said because I was very out of order with my comments today. But I will send you that spreadsheet um you know later this afternoon. Um I personally don't I mean you do what whatever you want to do based on what the chairman's saying, but I don't think there's anybody sitting up here that thinks we should be funding all of the enhancement requests that the departments made. And to be fair to us, I don't think we ever got an actual complete and accurate list of all the enhancement requests because some of the there was a dup some of them were duplicative. So we never got a clean a fully clean list of the tranches where things that had already been included in the budget were taken out. So I don't even really know what that fully looks like. Um and I but I don't I don't it's not that important to me to have that at this point. I think it's more important. I just don't think anybody I just would hate for you to spend a ton of time on on the the everything model when I don't actually think there's anybody here that is trying to have that happen. So that's just my opinion.

Vice Chair, thank you. Chairman, do we still have the budget committee process? We don't commission. Okay.

All righty. Um, my concern first and foremost is the overt taxing of the executive staff because we can easily have a scenario with seven different ideas of what the budget should look like. And to me, my personal opinion, I believe in staying in one's lane. If you all are going to make the money that you all make, then I'm going to ask you to do your job. But I am not going to try to do my job and your job too. That is my opinion. I stand on it. However, I believe that uh looking at what was asked and what we can work within the millage rate that we have cuz I'm not going to support a millage rate increase. I'm not under any circumstances in 2026 where people are lo losing jobs and and and have so many other burdens. I'm not going to give them an extra one. And so I would not ask you in good conscious to come back with something that is going to require a military increase. Now, I'm only one commissioner, but I want to go on record saying I'm not going to ask you to do that because I'm not going to vote for that. For one, for two, I have a problem with putting too much on you all's plate. We have one more meeting to deal with this. And so, it is in my opinion, chairman, with all due respect, that we be crystal clear, county manager, on what we're asking you all to do. because I'm sitting here hearing two different messages and I know if I hear two different messages, you all are hearing

two different messages. So, are we going to be crystal clear on what as a board because all of us sitting here can meet with the county staff and get the numbers and get what they need and speak to it as eloquently as they have. However, as someone who is respectful of the Fulton County taxpaying citizens dollars, how do I ask you all to spend 24 hours, 7 days doing everything? Well, maybe this scenario, maybe that scenario, maybe a scenario that's in 2033. is not fair. It's not conducive financially or fidiciary for the taxpaying citizens. Now, all of us can ask you, we have a right as sitting commissioners to ask you for any information we need, but what I'm concerned about, you have seven seven different people up here that may have seven different ideas of what a budget should look like. And so, do we put that burden and overt tax the county senior staff or are we clear in the direction knowing that we have the power to get the information that we need at any time other than when the cam cameras are running uh on both the BLC days, my opinion. And so as someone who understands understands taxpaying citizens of Fton County are watching us. I don't want to see anything that's going to require a millage rate. I don't I can only speak for me. I would like to

see if the requests that have been brought to today can be fulfilled whether it means reallocation or otherwise. I'm not getting in that lane because that's your all's lane. But what I'm not going to do is overt tax the senior staff. I'm not going to do it. And more importantly, I'm not going to be silent when I look and see that it's being done. End the story. Okay. 125. Chris Arrington.

Yeah. I just want I want us to be crystal clear because I believe that we are conflating issues. Right now we are tasked with the budget in January. Right now we are tasked with adopting the budget. We adopt a millage rate in August. So I don't know why we keep hearing all this talk about millage rate. The budget as proposed today in this document that we just went through, can you go to page nine, please? The budget as proposed today by the senior staff and the county manager anticipates a a an increase or a 9.26 26 millillage rate based upon the recommendation as is without any reallocation or without any additional budgets. But we don't have to decide the millage rate. A few years ago, we assumed a higher millage rate for purposes of the budget and then when we got to the midyear review, we didn't need to adopt a higher millage rate. We assumed a higher millage rate for budget purposes, but when we got to the midyear review, we had enough revenue to come in and we had enough expenses that were uh or I guess not enough expenses in in order that we did not actually have to increase the millage rate. So colleagues, I want us to I want to ask us to focus in on the budget. We will have time to have a millage rate discussion in August. Right now the

discussion is about the budget and we know that we can assume for purposes of the budget a higher millage rate and not actually have to adopt that millage rate at a later time because we may have fewer expenses and we and we typically we we typically do have fewer expenses and we typically do have more revenue. We we just found on August 19 or the first meeting in August of 2025, we learned that there was a $69 million budget surplus. Today, after we found the actuals, we learned that there's an additional $20 million surplus. That's $89 million surplus from 2025. So, let's focus on the budget and adopting a budget. And let's talk about the millage rate when we get to the millage rate in August because that is when we vote on the millage rate. You don't want to be heard. All right. 129. Anything else? Nothing else. to entertain a motion to recess for lunch where we may discuss items of real estate litigation and personnel. Motion to do so by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Commissioner Barrett.

And the vote is open.

And the motion passes unanimously.

All right, Madam Clerk. Bottom of page five, commission commissioner's action items. Well, no, wait a minute. Items from executive session. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, just one item for action and voting. Um, is there a motion to approve the request for representation in item three of the executive session agenda?

All right. Motion to approve by Commissioner Barrett, seconded by Commissioner, Vice Chair Abdu Rakman. And a vote is open. And the motion passes unanimously. And there are no further action items from executive session. Bottom of page five, commissioner's action items. 25895, request approval resolution of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners amending policies limiting the use of Fulton County staff for certain events by members of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners and for other purposes. Sponsored by Commissioners Ellis and Thorne.

All right. Motion to approve by Commissioner Ellis. Is there a second? Seconded by Commissioner Thorne. Uh Commissioner Ivory, you have the floor. Um, this has come up several times about limiting the way that we uh do town hall meetings. And I just want to um reiterate that commissioners need flexibility to meet constituents where where and when when and where they are. Um, oneizefits-all restrictions undermine public engagement. Um, this is I don't even understand the the necessity for this resolution, but it limits opportunities for residents to meet with their commissioners by restricting timing, locations, and total number of events. It shrinks windows for public participation and weakens the connection between community and government. And we heard from a lot of constituents that they did not want a limit on any information, a town hall, a meeting that a commissioner would have with their constituents. We shouldn't be hiding from our constituents. Um this is about limiting accountability, restricting access uh to commissioners and controlling where events can occur builds walls, not trust. Um, residents deserve the ability to ga engage in spaces that are convenient, familiar, and accessible to them. So, Fulton County exists to serve all constituents, and county support should not be restricted when it is necessary to reach them where they are. If this passes, I think we all know that residents lose dialogue, access, and connection. they lose the chance to meet their commissioner in ways that foster understanding, trust, and effective governments. And that is why I will not be voting for this.

Commissioner Arrington,

uh yes, this uh I I do not understand the need for this resolution either. Again, this is my 12th year as a commissioner. I was elected in 2014, took office January of 2015, and every year uh since that time, I have had held multiple town halls and invited the staff out uh to speak because they are the experts. So, I host a home state exemption town hall. I need the staff from the assessor's office there to address the residents and answer their specific questions. Um, when I hold a town hall for uh the tax bills when they come out, we have the tax commissioners and the tax assessors staff people there to answer their questions. when I host budget town halls, I have the staff from finance there uh in order to answer the questions, the specific questions that the public has about the budget. Um, not only does this resolution limit the staff, but it also uh limits or I guess it limits the number of times you can use staff. So, you can only use staff three times a year. Well, every time I hold a town hall, I host at least three, if not four town halls. When when I was first elected, I represented East Atlanta. And there was no way I was going to ask the people from Grant Park or Summer Hill to come over to the Wolf Creek Library for a town hall. So, I host my town halls around my district and take the information to the people and I've done

that for 11 years without any interruption, without any fanfare, nor without any complaints. Uh, and so I am befuddled as to why there uh is a need for this resolution at this time. Um, you know, we I my office, we we submit our dates for 2026 last year. They already printed in my newsletter. All of my 2026 town hall dates already printed in my newsletter. We work with the county manager staff and uh in order to have people there. So, everybody already knows my stuff a year in advance. But this is a restriction uh on getting information to the people. Uh and the residents have found it very helpful. They bring their tax bills to the town halls. Staff is there to answer the questions about their bills and assist them. Um and so uh I I will not be supporting uh this either. Um, I don't know. May maybe there's someone that's abusing it. Maybe there was some abuse going on that is the reason uh for this, but uh it just doesn't make any sense to me to limit uh I guess maybe it makes sense to have some limits, right? But, you know, I've been hosting these town halls again for 11 years. This is my 12th year. And um we never had any complaints, nothing but uh applause for taking the

information to the people, right? Um not asking people from East Point to come over to Summer Hill or not asking people from Wolf Creek uh or the city of South Fulton uh to come over to Grant Park for a town hall because I can only host one town hall. No, I like taking the information to the people and I I'll still be doing that. Um, and you know, we just have to find a way to make it work.

Uh, Commissioner Ellis,

just to be real brief, um, you know, past two comments by the previous two commissioners have mischaracterized this resolution. I'll read part part six. There are no limitations on the number of town halls, county staff, parenthetical other than external affairs, FGTV, DR dream and it closed parenthetical may participate in but such participation is subject to the discretion of the department head and not required. Department heads may involve county staff supplies, materials, and equipment for town halls subject to their individual discretion and alignment with departmental goals. Department heads are not obligated to support a commissioner's town hall events when it should interfere with their normal operations and departmental goals. Paragraph seven, events other than town halls shall be conducted solely by individual commissioners and their staff, which we have plenty as well as budget, including funding, setup, and promotion. Commissioners should not expect county staff to attend or provide supplies, materials, and equipment to such events. So, you know, you're free to I took the comments that were made. I I built these into the into the resolution to clarify what my intent was and I think this is a reasonable thing which also provides um you know a reasonable amount of um um guidance for our for certain numbers of our support staff where you know they're they're not overly taxed or overly overly required to do something that's outside of their general scope of duties. and I hope we'll be supportive of it today. Commissioner Barrett,

I just think that every commission district has different needs and that the various commissioners elected by the people in their districts should be able to serve their district in the way that best suits that particular part of town. And I think both uh well frankly I think all of the commissioners up here have had a variety of different events that have been appropriate to their parts of town and you know what you know what commissioner Arrington is talking about having done for 11 years is worthy of respect not curtailing um and I think this is a solution looking for a problem there is no problem here that needs to be solved it's extraneous and unnecessary. Commissioner Ivory,

thank you um Commissioner Barrett. I 100% agree with that and thank you uh Commissioner Ellis for um giving that explanation as to the clarity of your resolution which has no bearing on me changing my mind at all because it is language that I don't find to be useful at all or serving any purpose. Um, I don't know if this is in response to some isolated incident that you heard about or um or a complaint that came specifically to you. Um, I wish that you might have rather addressed whatever commissioner um that was that maybe you received some isolated incident about, but I have only had um absolutely positive responses from staff um and from anybody uh in the building when I've asked, hey, would you mind coming to my town hall meeting? And even had the response, I I would love to. I haven't done one in a while and I would love to do that. that was actually um the uh tax commissioner who came to my very first one when I first was inaugurated last year. So I think this is um I think I think this is um unnecessary. Um and I'm not really sure why you did it, but I can't support it. I'm sure you already have the support for it. You wouldn't have put it on here if you didn't. Um that's sort of the way it goes. And so we will pass it, but I don't think it will have any change or effect to anything. Commissioner Thorne.

Um I I personally hold town halls. Um I think they're great. It's great way to engage, have dialogue, access, connection. Um but I do I try to pass a similar resolution a couple years ago because there was some abuse of use of county staff going on. Uh they were asked to come to MPU meetings. They were asked to bring stages, sound equipment, all of that for the setup, which kind of it was more of an MPU meeting than it was truly a commissioner event town hall. So, there has been some abuse in the past. We need to be respective. our external affairs department uh when they have to have these staff allocations doing it on weekends, you know, they have to allocate. Okay, you're going to be working Saturday, so maybe you can't come in and help me with the normal stuff on Monday because you're setting up for this. So, I think having some limitations in place, especially as we're entering in the campaign season, sometimes that line gets blurry. Is this a town hall or is this a campaign event? It would just make us make sure we want to use our four times to use external affairs um FGTV dream and it for those select four. I think day and ages have changed. You know we've all done some virtual town halls which is a great way of engaging uh your residents who particularly don't want to go drive to an event or it's too far for them to go. Um, I think that's a great way to maybe encourage some more virtual events. I've talked with my staff because, um, after the, uh, mill rate hearings, um, I had so many questions and so many emails and so many I ended up holding backtoback virtual town halls. Um, but my staff kind of got

familiar with how they could run it and not have to use external affairs to run it. So, I think it would force us to utilize our staff better. Um, and I think it's a good thing to keep uh the strain off those departments who are having to utilize staff off hours in random locations that they're maybe not familiar with. And uh be respectful of using the county staff on a limited basis. Commissioner Arrington.

So, um, for commissioners that don't represent parts of the city of Atlanta, they may not understand the importance of attendance at MPU meetings, but MPU meetings are where the residents are. That's where the people are. That's where the decisions are being made. And it is a great opportunity. Um I remember back when the county manager first came, we were having the uh external affairs held some town halls on something that was going on and no one attended. There was no one there. And I said, "Well, why aren't we doing these at the MPU meetings where the people already are?" Right? So, um, it just really shows a lack of understanding, a lack of comprehension, uh, and a lack of the dynamics, uh, of the different districts.

All right, any other comments? The motion on the floor is to approve and the vote is open.

And the motion passes. Four yays, three nays. Next item, page six, 25935. requests approval of a resolution to affirm the reproductive rights of human rights to condemn the criminalization of abortion and related services to urge the Georgia state legislature to repeal the six-week abortion ban that endangers lives and for other purposes. Sponsored by Commissioner Barrett. Motion to approve by Commissioner Barrett, seconded by Commissioner Ivory. Any comments? All right, let's vote. Motion is to approve and the vote is open. And the motion fails. Three yays, three nays, one abstension.

Next item. 25936 requests approval resolution to establish a Fulton County Women's Commission to advise the board of commissioners on policy, strategies, and community partnerships that advance gender equity and address the systemic barriers impacting women and for other purposes. Excuse me. Motion to approve by Commissioner Barrett, seconded by Commissioner Ivory. Let's vote. And the vote is open.

And the M motion fails. Three days, one nay, two abstensions. Next item, 25937 requests approval of a resolution to establish a healthy women healthy families grant program in Fulton County to provide $1 million in annual funding for the grant program to fund organizations focused on improving women's health outcomes and ensuring access to quality care and for other purposes. Motion to approve by Commissioner Barrett, seconded by Commissioner Eritt. Eric Ivory. Let's vote, please. And this is one of the ones you've asked him to add in them. And the vote is open.

And the motion fails. Three yays, one nay, two abstensions. Next item. 2500939 requests approval of a resolution by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners supporting its ability to govern local affairs and urging the Georgia General Assembly to preserve the Board of Commissioners involvement in matters affecting Fulton County residents. Sponsored by Commissioner Ivory. Motion to approve by Commissioner Ivory, seconded by Commissioner Arrington. Uh Commissioner Ivory, you have the floor.

Thank you. U Mr. Mr. Chairman, I spoke about this last meeting and I want to bring it up again because it is important. Uh, this resolution is about keeping county decisions for county functions in the hand of in the hands of this commission. Local control is not just a principle. It's practical. If it involves Fulton County, Fulton County leadership should be making the decisions. I hope we can pass this resolution to keep the power in the hands of this commission where it belongs. Thank you. All right. The motion on the floor is to adopt. Madam clerk, and the vote is open

and the motion fails. Three A's, two naysay, one abstension. Next item

25993 requests approval of a resolution to amend resolution 220644 and resolution 2110282 that created and established the Fulton County Veterans Empowerment Commission by revising its purpose and to establish funding for specific programming for veterans through existing Fulton County programs and other purposes. Sponsored by Commissioners Ellis and Abdul Rakman. Motion to approve by Commissioner Ellis, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rakman, Commissioner Arrington, Comm Vice Chair Commissioner Ellis, Commissioner Ivory, Commissioner Arrington. um as the commissioner that uh led the effort to start the Veterans Empowerment Commission and secure the initial money, the million dollars uh that was allocated for the first three years of this program. Um it is disheartening to see uh someone else come and try to change the mission the program uh and then take money from other existing programs to fund the program that was already funded. A program which the county manager said he could find a million dollars for to include the money directly for the veterans. Um, and so, uh, you know, I'm I I might support this, but I I I don't support the way that it was done, right? I'm I'm not going to ever deny giving our veterans resources. Um, I think we should prioritize our veterans, show them that they are a

priority, and allocate the $1 million a year that we have previously allocated. We just found out today we thought we before today we thought we had a $69 million budget surplus. We found out today we actually had a $89 million surplus and we've got another $176 million in uh a reserve fund and we won't allocate $1 million towards veterans so that we know that they are so that they know that they are a priority in Fulton County. It's a shame. Commissioner Ellis.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Um, the commissioner to my left can mischaracterize things all he wants to um in terms of a budgetary framework. We're sitting here and we got a budget that's presented to us right now that involves a military increase. So, we're not sitting on some significant surplus. Just to clarify that. Um, the resolution is put forward. Um, I think we were all in support of veterans, everybody up here. We established this thing with one purpose. They came back and they said they couldn't do that. We modified it again. This thing was established in 2022. Um, we modified it and then in that entirety of this time, we've got an advisory board which has never provided us with advice on anything uh related to veterans. And I think there are a lot of variet variety of reasons why that may have occurred or not occurred. Uh but we've not moved the ball forward in terms of how veterans are how we work in a way in a fashion whether it's through money or other means within the context of Fulton County to improve life for for veterans within Fulton County. And that's what this resolution seeks to do is to bring a focus to that and the utilization of this commission to work with different units of our existing government in programs that we have right now and to piggyback off of those and then build and for enforce this focus on the veterans community that we all desire and hope everybody will be in support of that today.

Commissioner Ivory.

Uh thank you uh chairman. This policy mimics ideas I've brought forward in the past. For example, I proposed a senior property tax relief fund that would create a nonprofit bucket to fund immediate displacement assistance for seniors. At that time, several people on this board said a nonprofit under our umbrella wasn't realistic. Now, the restructure of the Veterans Empower Commission is essentially creating that kind of nonprofit structure to receive grant funding. That said, the current proposal lacks several key facets. It only funds veteran housing programs and arts programming. While I fully support funding veterans programs, this is a narrow focus. Some of these arts programs have previously raised concerns among commissioners. For example, ceremonial items like painted pianos. But now, all of a sudden, programs like this are deemed important. My bottom line is I will always vote to fund veterans programs, but we should focus on strategic community-based solutions that maximize impact and ensure taxpayer dollars are efficiently used. But let's recollect the record as a reminder. The same people agreed strongly against this structure before standards shouldn't change based on the day or the person who is sponsoring the legislations the legislation. All of these quotes that I'm about to read are from when we try when I proposed a nonprofit for a senior property tax relief fund. On 123, Commissioner Ellis said, "I do not think the function of government is to develop nonprofits, but today it is." Commissioner Thorne on that same day said, "I encourage working with a nonprofit instead of starting a government nonprofit that we have to manage different depending on what she says or votes today. We can't just set up a fund and say you can donate to the fund. Nonprofits are wonderful, but they are not a government organized nonprofit and that is completely different and it doesn't make sense at all. So, I will

vote for anything that helps veterans and that is the conundrum that three on this board um that are not part of the four majority are always faced with. We come up with good ideas. We bring them to this commission. They are voted down. They are copied and pasted and repurposed for a vote a vote of the four. And like you will see right now, what will happen is it will pass because the four decided before we got here today that it would pass even if it's contradictory or hypocritical to words they've said in the past. Then it leaves the three to decide. Can I vote for would I vote against something that I had already put in play earlier? maybe three times earlier. And that of course is not something that three in the minority meaning Commissioner Arrington, Commissioner Barrett or I ever will do. Not to the arts community, not to seniors, not to veterans. So here we have again what I like to call the cut and paste um happening again on something that had already been set forward. So, we'll move forward and I will vote for it because I will never take something or delay purposely for credit something that is important to our constituents like veterans, seniors, arts community, women, or anybody else. Thank you,

Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, I concur with Commissioner Arrington and Commissioner Ivory. Um, and I I said in my in my budget request notes that I I do strongly believe that we can manage a million dollars for our veterans um and that the framework in which they have been working on that grant program works. you went down, I know, and spent some time with them at their last meeting. Um, or maybe I don't know if it was two meetings ago, but I think, you know, with guidance, uh, they can get where they need to go. They have some new members now. I think they have the potential to, um, they they already successfully did the the million-dollar grant program one time. I think we ended up with 750,000 spent or something like that. But, uh, it was the first time we had had the money specifically under their umbrella. Uh, I think we should continue to move forward in that way. Um, and I think we, you know, as I said, I think there's a um there's an awareness around um veterans issues that gets lost sometimes in the shuffle. And I think empowering the commission that we have not only to advise us as I and I hear you uh uh Commissioner Ellis that they have not come back with any advisory um reports so far, but I think we we should work with them to make sure that happens. Um and and um and and I think we should give them uh the ability to and I understand that your revised version of the resolution um says that they will work with the grants committee, but it it feels much cleaner to me if they are allotted the money um directly so that the what they are considering is apples to apples versus the arts committee trying to craft some small section of that 200,000 of their budget. uh for the arts grants to be veteran related. It just doesn't feel as

as um effective to me. So, I'm gonna support it because I won't I'm not going to vote against our veterans. And if this is good for that, you know, if this is the best we can do with the board we have today, then so be it. But I do think it's not the best move for our veterans. Commissioner Ellis.

Yeah, just to correct the record again. Um, and from the commissioner to my right, uh, this does not create a nonprofit entity. In fact, it was a nonprofit entity and it didn't work and it got disbanded, right? So therefore, this idea that you came up with, we had evidence that maybe they don't work. This is just to utilize them just to seek out grand opportunities just like we would in any other area of government. So it's not duplicative. It's very specific and it's focused and it's designed to get this commission to work with us in county government to further benefit veteran our veterans community. It has some specific focuses to start with the hopefully we can build upon and get somewhere with something and just assigning money does not equal results. And that's what we've seen that's what we've seen to date with this. And I want to I want to make it something different and hope we'll be supportive of this today and begin that work of moving forward in the work of unity which the chair of this commission called for this morning.

Commissioner Thorne.

Uh yes, I was just going to reiterate the point of the falsehood. Um, line four of the resolution, board of commissioners, and shall abandon being established as a nonprofit corporate entity and can no longer apply for grant grant funding as a nonprofit corporation. So, it's exactly opposite what uh my fellow commissioner implied. Um, I work closely with the veterans in my area, John's Creek Veterans Association, as well as a lot of nonprofits in my area. um they see the need for them to come together better again. They try to gather the whole county to see where services are lacking, where they have abundance of services, how they can help veterans, no matter where they are in the county. Um I think this is a great stepping stone. Perhaps in the future we can raise it back up to the million but keep it starting small and then gradually getting back up there. And we're threequarters of the way there so it's not that much more. So anyway, I support this resolution. I do not think it's hypocritical. I don't think we should be starting nonprofits. As Commissioner Ellis said, this is one that failed um and does not work. So that's why I uh fully support this resolution.

All right. Vice Chair A Rockman.

Thank you, Chairman. Uh I won't belabor the issue, but I do want to make this statement for the listening audience. I take issue with anyone that want to mischaracterize me and give their own version of what's important to me when they haven't had a conversation with me. I'm a Navy mom. am the daughter of the late James Frank Jackson as well as Victoria Travis Jackson. We have a history of veterans in our family and so you will never mischaracterize or give somebody the opinion which is truly your opinion of about how I feel about veterans. I support this. I supported the way that is being done because the other way did not work. Now having said that, I will go back to what I said when we had the conversation about arts and culture. A lie will hurt you over and over and over again. The truth may hurt you once, but the truth stands alone. This will work for the veterans. This will make sure that we get the traction that we need instead of doing props and photo opportunities for the media. I support our veterans. I'm a Navy mom and I come from a proud lineage of all of the branches of the uh uh armed services. take issue with that, but at the end of the day, let the chip fall where it may, and we'll see a year from now. Thank you, chairman.

All right, madame uh clerk, and vote is open and the motion passes unanimously. 2500994 requests approval of a resolution to establish a Fulton County Tax Allocation District Advisory Committee to advise the board of commissioners on policies, strategies, and community partnerships that advance Fulton County's redevelopment plans pursuant to the redevelopment powers law and for other purposes. Sponsored by Commissioner Ivory.

We have a motion to approve by Commissioner Ivory, seconded by Commissioner Arrington. Commissioner Ivory, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um the re the reason that I did this is that obviously for proactive leadership on our side being one of the partners in the TADS. Atlanta has already begun these discussions. Fulton County should not wait as a board to have these discussions. We need to shape how TADs are used in the county. Um it's a strategic investment and being involved now ensures TAD funds are allocated effectively to support redevelopment that benefits communities equitably. Um, establishing a committee will allow the county to monitor TAD performance and make informed decisions about whether to continue or to adjust them in the future. Leading on this ensures that residents voices and needs are considered, preserving dignity and promoting balanced growth. Um, Fulton County, we need to set the standard that Fulton County has historically set the pace on social and economic initiatives. Taking a leadership role in TAD oversight reinforces that reputation. So the purpose is to establish the Fontton County Tax Allocation District Advisory Committee to advise the board of commissioners on policy strategies and partnerships that support redevelopment efforts under the redevelopment powers law. It ensures redevelopment is equitable, preserves residents dignity, and involves most importantly community input. The membership would be 14 members total, two members appointed by each commissioner and they would make recommendations to the board on issuance, allocation and distribution of TAD bond proceeds. Um, this must the operations will establish bylaws within 60 days of the first meeting and so on. We know we have created advisory committees in the past. We know how that goes. In short, this resolution creates a 14 member advisory committee to provide expertise, guidance, and community input on Fulton Countyy's redevelopment projects funded through the TADS, ensuring transparency, equity,

and strategic planning. It's real important for us to stay at the same pace that the city of Atlanta and APS are, who are the other two partners in the TADS, uh, who have formed committees, uh, in order to analyze their increment and everybody else's. I don't think this is conversations that should happen um in a vacuum where some are invited, some are not, some know that a meeting happened, some don't know a meeting happened. It's important as the mayor has built this entire uh neighborhood redevelopment plan around TAD increments and I would like for us at Fulton County to be as transparent about our participation in that as we can be. And that is my reason for trying to uh implement this this advisory committee. Thank you.

All right, the vote's open. Mo, I'm sorry. Uh Commissioner Barry, before we vote,

sorry, I I hesitated there. Um I just um have a couple questions and thoughts. Um first of all, there's been a lot of discussion um lately, I think, around some potential new um TADs in North Fulton. I've heard of a I've heard like some conversation about a couple of different things. Um so I guess my ask is would this could this be restructured to include the discussion for TADS in all 15 cities because like there's not NPUs in all 15 cities. So some of the language may not quite exactly work um across all 15 cities. Um, so that's on on the plus side if we're going to do something like this, which is not, you know, I I see pros and cons. Um, but I I would think we'd want to be talking holistically about how we're going to work um on TADS across the board. So like if there's if we're looking at and and you know, my personal opinion is that there's a there's a happy medium between no TADs and all TADs for 30 years, no questions asked, uh, for City of Atlanta. Um, but I also think there probably is some merit to some of the other cities that have had TADs in the past or would want to have TADS in the future. So, um, I'm not I don't I think there may need to be a broader discussion than we generally have here on the Deis. So, I I can be supportive for that reason. The only thing I want to be cautious about is there um in terms of community input, always want community input, but in in terms of the projects themselves, um that community engagement is happening through the uh Invest Atlanta um meetings and the TAD committee there. Um so I just want to make sure we're not being duplicative and having one set of decisions in this advisory committee and another set in each of the other, you know, if Roswell ends up having their own advisory committee or what have you. So I I think I mean my take is something makes sense. It's fine with me to support this with the knowledge that as we bring it together it may structurally need to be changed.

Sure. Well when I say falling county I don't mean Atlanta. Yeah. It's just that languages. Yeah. Sure. And we can um absolutely whatever tweak to language that would be more um explicit that it includes all of Fulton County, but it doesn't in this language mean just Atlanta at all. That's not written that way. Um so yes it in it is for all of Flynn County including the tag conversations that are h going to happen uh for the north side.

Okay. And then the only other thing I would say and um you know I think you and I have talked about this Mr. County manager um knowing um you know you you mentioned even today in your remarks about the budget that we um uh if we took you know if we had all the increment from the TADS we would have however many millions a year in our budget. Um, but I think we had talked about and I don't know if you still had plans to put together some kind of um suggestions around middle grounds, what what that might look like if we renegotiate for a certain period of time on different TADs, one may be needed for another five years, what have you. But I think without some of that guidance on what that money looks like for Fulton County, any advisory committee would be sort of flying blind. So, uh, I would just want that to be a part of the discussion. Thank you,

Commissioner Thorne. Uh yes, that was my initial impression was I I don't feel like it was very well thought out. It was more thought as Atlantic centric. Um so there are 12 total TADs countywide. Eight of them are in Atlanta. The other four are Hateville, College Park, Union City, and East Point. Alpharetta just approved a TAD. We don't know the we haven't been informed. They haven't come to us for our ask yet. Roswell has been forming a tad as well. Um I just kind of wonder because when it comes to I follow the Fulton Development Authority meetings and so I try to understand what's going on in each TAD on my own. Um we do have appointees on a beltline TAD that just inform us of what's happening in the beltline TAD. my appointee on there is always telling me about public comment and how everybody's against TADs and it's a very long public comment. It's a very lengthy meeting. Um, Invest Atlanta, your role is to come and inform us of the eight TADs that they manage. So, I don't know if this is just another overlay of having more people involved in a process that's just going to complicate things more because I don't know how my appointees in North Fulton are really going to understand the true nature of what's going on in South Fulton and meeting on a quarterly basis. I don't think they're going to be kept up to date enough. I don't know who will help manage this committee because they'll need some department here that will come kind of help manage them, get them the information, that type of stuff. So, for me, I just it sounds like a a good idea because TAD seemed to be the buzzword in Atlanta up in my area as well. Um, but I don't think it's quite

thought out how it's actually going to work. and I feel like it might be an overlay that's just going to complicate things um and they're not going to be very informed. All right, Commissioner Ellis.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Um I think for several of the reasons that Commissioner Thorne noted and and for a few others, I'm not a support of this particular approach. Uh we've got existing TADs, TADs that have governance structures. um committees, advisory committees subject to, you know, things that go through invest invest Atlanta and other groups. Um so those processes are already in place. Um the best I can recollect the first TAD that would be due for expiration is 2031. It's 2026 right now. Um so you know there is no need for us to rush to any sort of discussion around around this just because somebody else may be you know promulgating or pushing for some sort of early decision on something. uh we also have our own sort of uh discussions we've had related to our own sort of budgetary planning which has taken place but most importantly when it come comes matter to comes when it comes around to property tax dollars and spending that money and figuring out how it's going to be utilized I'm not in favor of advocating that responsibility to committees I think that rests with us as elected officials and I think we need to design our own processes around monitoring the effectiveness of these, the way the money is being spent, and when they ultimately will sunset. Because that's ultimately what these are about is generating something that's going to deliver a future large tax base in the future. And um that's my position on these. And while I won't be supporting this resolution today,

Commissioner Barrett Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to I it's likely this is not going to pass, but I would say it might be worthwhile to revisit something more broad. Um, and that maybe is less about trying to make have the community make a decision about a project. Um, but I think to have a policy for how we interact with TAZ, evaluate whether to move forward with some negotiation strategy, etc. because we don't we don't really we end up sort of talking about them as one-offs here as opposed to an overall TAD policy philosophy strategy what have you. So I would just I'm going to support this because I think it's a good start. Um it may not be the exact framework but I also I understand it probably will not pass and I would just encourage everyone to sort of let's talk offline maybe and and try to come up with something that we can do to have a more holistic strategy here.

Commissioner Ivory.

Yeah. First, let me address uh Commissioner Ellis's comments. This is not about abdicating the commissioner's responsibilities to uh deal with the issue of the TADS at all. It's uh it's not just about informing what is happening with the TADS or approving a project list. This is clearly a broader discussion about the county's use of TA use of TAD funds. So, TADs we all know are used as a negotiating tool. We should not be behind in that discussion. we should be a part of what our the others that participate in the TAD are already doing which is thinking about how the long-term effect of TADS will will have for our county for our school system for uh the city of Atlanta and all of the other 14 cities in Fulton. So we it is not about they don't expire until a certain amount of time. People are discussing it right now and we don't need to be behind in that discussion. So yes, we can tweak the ways that people report. We can, but I have talked to the various representatives of TAD um appointees and they are not in the conversation in the way that we as a a a funer would be if we were having our own internal conversations. And too often on this commission those conversations happen in silos only between certain people which does not give the benefit of other commissioners understanding what is also going on. So when a commissioner is able to appoint two people to a committee and have their exact interests represented. I think that is very important and that is why I brought this forward. So I still stand by it. I know it's not going to pass because of our four vote majority that already decided it's not going to pass, but I will continue to try to move forward in order to have these discussions become wider and more accessible to all commissioners.

Commissioner Arrington,

uh, Commissioner Ira, I was wondering if you might be willing to hold this so that it could be refined. I know the city of South Fulton is also looking u do some tags and I wonder perhaps it could be refined um not that it still would get the four votes but perhaps it could be refined to be more inclusive of North Fton and South Fulton uh and perhaps maybe it will get the four votes. I I I I I don't have any objection to holding something to add in logical comments that uh commissioners have made here, but those logical comments could be included in it right now if it passed even as we are putting together the bylaws and all of it. I do not think it will pass no matter whether we hold or not. Um, so I think it's important not to just hold for the exercise of holding when I'm not going to get the support from the majority of four anyway. So I'd rather go for a vote and um vote it down. And that speaks volumes as to how we feel about, you know, analyzing um our ability to start preparing for something as big as dads right now. Commissioner Thorne,

I just wanted to bring up that we do have a review process. Personally on this commission, I haven't had to approve a new TAD, but in the past, uh 2017, I think, was the last TAD that was approved. We do have an internal review process in the county that should be taken in. You know, we have community development, public works, trying to see if the infrastructure is there. We have the tax assessor at the table. We have the tax commissioner at the table. We have finance and we have the county attorney. So, those are all different departments. And then for them to have to answer and give a report to us after they review a TAD and answer to 14 other people who may or may not be as informed as we are as they are as we are collectively uh with the ins and outs and the workings of the the county. So that's why I think it might be just a layer that might be just adding a complication layer to the whole process. Um, every TAD is very very individual, different goals, different properties as we all know. Um, and I think each TAD is so unique that I don't know if this 14 person board could possibly get all the information from all the different entities that you need to review a TAD. So, that's kind of another an added concern that I have. And I haven't talked to anybody. I haven't talked to anybody on the board about this. I actually had to leave which I apologize having to leave early last meeting and that's why it was held. Um, and I meant to talk to people, talk to you about it even but the holidays came. So happy to have more discussion in the future, but right now I'm just can't approve it.

Commissioner Ivory, thank you. I appreciate um that response. uh Commissioner Thorne and again this is not for the purpose of um analyzing the creation of new TADs. This is all areas of TADS. This is whether it's the creation of new TADs, the extending of TADS, the performance of TADS, all of the things that are related to the TADS and not just necessarily how we begin TADS and what um offices participate in that. But thank you for those comments and it's going to fail. um um 195% sure of that and so it'll come back again and perhaps we could have that discussion then.

All right, Madame Clerk, the votes open and the vote is open and the motion fails. Three A's, four Naz. Next item on page seven, commissioners full board appointments. 2500995 development authority of Fulton County. The Fulton County Board of Education has appointed Ingred Huff for a full board appointment to a term ending May 31st, 2029. All right. The motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdur Rakman, seconded by Commissioner Arrington,

and the vote is open. and the motion

on page seven. And the motion passes unanimously. 25996 Development Authority of Fulton County. The Atlanta Board of Education has appointed Dr. Byron Johnson for a full board appointment to a term ending May 31st, 2029. We have a motion to approve by Commissioner Arrington, seconded by Commissioner Barrett. Votes open. Please vote.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes unanimously. On page eight, 260013, external affairs presentation, Fulton County preparation for 2026 World Cup.

Good afternoon and happy new year, commissioners. Um just today is a really high level overview of some of the um plans and preparations that are underway um as we are uh just about six months out from the world which will be taking place here in Fulton County. Um next slide please. I know this has been a long day, so I'm going to try to um go through this pretty quickly, but um just as uh to remind you, Atlanta is one of about 11 US cities that are hosting the World Cup. Um it will also be hosted in Mexico and Canada. Next slide. We now have the match schedule and we know the countries that will be coming here. Um, I'm not going to read them all for fear of um, messing up one of them, but we have, we're very excited to be welcoming the world here to Fulton County. Not all of the teams have been finalized. There are still some um, playoff games happening in Europe that will determine the final lineup. Um but did want to note as we go through this, one of the operational considerations um that we're looking at is as you see from this schedule, there are a number of matches that will happen um about half a mile away from this building in the middle of a workday um afternoon. And so we've had some preliminary discussion, for example, um with our partners in the courts and with some of our facility team about whether we need to consider any operational adjustments during those days that parking and traffic may be very heavy downtown. Um but very excited to welcome um these amazing players and teams um from all

over the world here to our community. Next slide, please. uh just about 300,000 visitors are expected um from all over the world. Uh Atlanta because of our airport will be a hub for you saw the map in that first slide for visitors traveling to other US cities. Um so we will we're expecting um pass through traffic as well as visitors who are here for the games. The statewide economic impact estimate is about $500 million about 70 million plus um specifically for lodging um hotels, Airbnbs, short-term rentals um so restaurant, hospitality community um our arts organizations. So there's very s significant economic impact expected. Next slide please. Just wanted to note um many of our partners here who are listed are this is the uh World Cup host committee. Fulton County is not part of the host committee. Um but we have had a lot of um discussion and we'll talk more about the coordination in just a moment. Next slide. So our role at Fulton County is really in a couple of key areas. One is public safety coordination. Um we're going to talk a little bit about that but for security reasons we cannot go into great detail. Um our assets so our facilities I just mentioned some of the operational impact community engagement especially with the non-host cities. Um and then promoting Fulton County as a destination while we have those 300 mill 300,000 visitors coming through our community. Um as well as creating opportunity for the people who live here already. Next slide, please. Um, so Fulton County Police Department,

um, Sheriff's Office, Aphimma, the Board of Health, and others are participating in regional coordination. Um, we have applied, Congress approved federal dollars last year for public safety for the World Cup cities. Uh Fulton County has applied for those dollars um there um for a portion of dollars that would cover things like overtime for police officers um and some of the other public safety costs. Um we have um emergency management is working very closely with the urban area security initiative on coordination exercises. emergency planning. Um our emergency operations center which is activated for any major events in the city will be activated and we'll be hosting um some of our public safety partners here in the facility just as they do for um the Peach Tree Road Race, the Publix Marathon, any major events um our EOC is activated. So uh we are very excited about that. Chief Yates is here. Um, but again, can't go into all of those safety planning details here, but wanted to let you know that we are part of that process. Uh, we have not received um word of what funds have will be approved, but wanted to let you know that we have applied for those. Next slide. Um, we are also looking at, as I said, parking, street closures, um, any match day impacts on our operations. So, that's part of an ongoing discussion. Did want to note that your one meeting in July is a match day. It's actually the semi-final match day. Um, so that's something that we may want to look at um, as well. It the match is at 3:00 in the afternoon that day. Next slide, please.

Um also wanted to just mention that the Fulton County Airport is a major factor um sponsors um visitors. It is a general aviation airport so non-commercial flights but uh Coca-Cola for example is a world sponsor of of FIFA in the World Cup. Their hanger is at um FTY. So, we're expecting to see very high volume just as we do for um Super Bowls and SEC championships and any major event we see very high volume because of the number of international flights. Um customs coordination is a very important consideration. Um so we are in those discussions now. Um but that will be part of our ongoing planning um process. Next slide please. U also want to let you know that we as I mentioned um Atlanta of course is is the host city but the 14 other cities in Fulton County are also planning um their engagement. So they're having viewing party plans and other uh coordination. We have had um some preliminary conversation and are having ongoing discussion with those cities about what their plans are. Um we've also talked uh David Emanuel and I have been in discussion about and are starting that process with our arts um contracts for services partners to say what activities are you having so while visitors are here we have an opportunity for joint promotion of all of the wonderful things that people can do while they're visiting Fulton County. Um part of that will be creation of a mobile friendly event calendar specifically focused on Fulton County cities and partners. So again our very rich arts community, our

city events that will be part of this uh coordinated calendar. Next slide please. Um also since um today you've heard from a number of departments, we also did make a a funding request. So I wanted to share with you some of the creative um some of these things would be funding dependent and that is part of the enhancement request that you have but we're also going to identify um everything we can do within our existing resources. So I just wanted to share a little bit of that creative with you um and we'll over the next couple slides. Next slide please. Um so this is our request was for 1 million for a paid advertising campaign. I'm sorry, some of the fonts did not translate over. Next slide, please. Um, so this is an example of what that creative would look like. This is a paid spot um within the Atlanta airport. Next slide, please. And again, these are conceptual um so various looks and feels that could be again promoting the cultural um assets and visitor opportunities that we have here across our county. Next slide. Um including things like um transitoriented advertising um bus wraps and intransit center ads as well. Next, please. Uh this is an example on a taxi. Next slide. Um looking at um vehicle or mobile billboards. Next please. Um signage here at the government center because we are in such close proximity. Um these again are very conceptual but um looking at really activating the space here at the government center for

visitors who are in the downtown area. Next slide. And this is another side of the building. Um that's from Mitchell Street. Next slide, please. Our beautiful bridge. Um next slide, please. And then um also working through our PR partners on just promoting all of those opportunities like I mentioned that coordinated um events calendar that is Fulton County specifically focused. I know Dicab and Gwynette and other counties around us are going to also be activating, but we want to keep visitors as much as possible within Fulton County while they're here. Um, many of our smaller cities um have convention and visitors rears of their own, so working with those staff as well. Next slide. I think I think that's the end. Um, so with that, commissioners, I can take any questions. All right. Commissioner, excuse me, Commissioner Arrington.

Madame CFO, is this million dollars in the budget. It is not currently. Okay. Thank you.

I I don't know. So, I'm I'm supportive in general, but I don't know how advertising Fulton County to people that are already here in Fulton County on martyr buses and the side of the building generates anything for us. I mean, typically when you're doing this type of advertising, you do it outside of Fulton County because you're trying to bring people in. They're already spending the money to bring everybody here. Um, so I I don't know. Yeah, we may need to talk about that and look at it some. I mean, we're just going to be advertising Fulton to Fulton. Obviously, there'll be the 300,000 plus people here, right? But but they're already here. So, I I just

Yeah, I think it's to generate the impression. It's the one-time opportunity with 300,000 visitors over a multi-week period to generate an impression. Now will that lead to business investment and you know other positive attributes that's always a question around advertising but I think we wanted to bring something forward because we had not here to for presented even conceptually what we could do. So we've been on a you know a fairly short string here to develop some ideas. I think these are good ideas. Now it's not doesn't come without a cost. So, I I understand your question, but if I I wouldn't let this opportunity pass without doing something.

Well, my other question is why are we not on the host committee? We're go back to them slides. We're doing we're doing coordinating, supporting, and AFCMA and all that. How much is all of that costing us to provide all those services? I don't have that number off top of my head. Now, we've applied for grants for that, but uh we were not invited to be on the host committee.

Well, I when I spoke to the mayor, he said, "How much money do y'all have? We put that million dollars up, we might be we'd be invited on the host committee." I mean, like we're going to spend it outside of what's going on. It doesn't make sense. It makes more sense to spend it and be on the host committee and be a part of everything. that that I mean that's what makes sense to me. But um yeah, I I I don't know. Um we're going to get Martyr some money. We're going to get some taxi cabs some money. We're going to get the airport some money for these ads. And somebody going to get print some banners and the banner company's going to get some money. Um I don't know, Mr. Manager. Um, unless unless you can get us on this host committee, I don't I I don't see how this makes sense. Uh, especially what we're doing, do we know how much we applied for in federal grants?

I think it's between um in the neighborhood of 1.5 million. Um, and again, it's it's these are federal dollars are specifically for public safety purposes only. Um so they would cover um some of those expenses including um the board of health as part of our application. Um so for example popup restaurant inspections there are very considerable um public safety uh expenses that could come along with that. I mean, I guess if we're getting 1.5 million in grants, not that we will actually get it, but to the extent that we've applied for 1.5 million in grants, probably makes it it might make sense to spend a million dollars because then we're really gaining, you know, a half a million dollars, right? Um but um thankful uh thank you for I mean yes I we we probably need to do something but um I I would rather do it as part of the overall effort than just doing something off on our own.

Uh Commissioner Thorne.

Thank you. Um, I think the purpose is having 300,000 visitors who think they're coming to Atlanta, that there's other cities outside Atlanta and to draw them to not only visit Atlanta, but perhaps go to South Fulton to the Bear Creek Nature Center or go hiking somewhere or, you know, go up north explore because I think a majority of people will come in and they probably will just stay in Atlanta and Fulton County has a lot more to offer than just Atlanta. Um, but with that being said, it's kind of hard to dedicate a million dollars towards this when we have so many other things that other needs as well in the county. Um, the $600 million in grants, I don't know if you went to Niko this year. I know Commissioner Ivory, you were there. We got to go to a FIFA thing and basically all they wanted us to do is to advocate for that 600 million plus federal dollars they wanted for public safety and security. They really didn't want us at the table I felt like but they want us to go and lobby our representative to get that funding which they now got the funding and it can only be used towards public safety issu uh grants can only be used towards public safety. So if we spend a million, we'll be spending federal dollars to provide a service and we won't get anything tangible back except that we provided our police force, our buildings, our emergency management system people to work during the FIFA World Cup. So I don't really see that correlation. If we spend a million, we get 1.5 back. Um I don't think that would be there. So tough tough ask especially this time around but it's also a a great opportunity to launch your experience Fulton I did have a question like

sure why were we doing um in Spanish I know we have Spain here but

that I one of the things we that was a mockup commissioner and we we did look at um the countries that are visiting and so partially for digital communications um primarily we would look at having um some translation services to the extent that some of our visitors are coming from um you know Spain, from um Saudi Arabia, from Morocco, like from South Africa, many you know many countries the PE visitors do speak English and they'll be very comfortable with that. But for visitors who come um particularly for digital ads, we would want to have um embedded translation services. We chose that as a mockup just to kind of give you an idea of what that could look like if we wanted. Um, Spain has two matches. So, that's one country that we know will be um we'll have a number of visitors and they um Spain has a particularly strong um following for their team. So, that was one of the other reasons that that was just pulled out.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. And with AI translation services, it's so much easier to try. Anybody who travels from those countries is probably familiar with translation uh Google translate and all of that and the currency translations as well. And I I just want to mention there's like one typo. It's Wednesday, June 24th and 25th on the slide. That's 100% uh Jessica. And I don't think we have voted for our calendar yet. I'm not aware of voting for our calendar for this year, which we usually do at the beginning of the year. So maybe we can alter that date. Um, Madame Clerk, is that something? I thought that we received it already, but I may have been mistaken.

Yes, that was voted on in October. Was it voted on? Okay. So maybe we can still change the date if need be, but it's a late afternoon match, so maybe we can still accommodate our current workday. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Commissioner Ivory,

this is Thank you for that presentation and I know we have all heard so much about World Cup. This was one of those topics that uh the county manager and I discussed about should we include this million dollars in the budget in the budget that I asked him to do for me that came to 10.28 to it. It was included in that because of our decision that there is this is just one of those once in a-lifetime opportunities that in our generation may never come again. Um and that if we had the money in a in a sort of dream world, we would want to give to this million. Um I do sit on the Showcase Atlanta um board um which is uh the entity in the city of Atlanta that's uh you know sort of doing all the things and um to Commissioner Arrington's comments about we it would seem better to use it in a more effective way that might be in partnership with one of the sponsors and doing something. I do think that that's worth if it comes to pass that we that this board would agree to include that in the budget. If we moved on from there, I think that the leverage of that million dollars should be used in a way um that gives us the maximum benefit that we can get from it. And I can only imagine that as we get nearer to the dates of these things happening, people are going to fall short of budget dollars that they needed to do things, whether that's a very big, you know, private sponsored event or if it's a meeting with all of the sponsors, things that I think would benefit our economic development if we were if the chairman was in the room talking about the great things about Fulton or if we, you know, I don't know what the event would be, but I'm thinking if we were um able to come in as a part of financial partner at a time when I'm sure um the the Showcase

Atlanta or the city of Atlanta will be looking for additional dollars to support our activation. That might be the moment where we could actually utilize these dollars to mean something that is a real return on our investment for us because we would be in a place where we would actually be talking to some of those 300,000 visitors that need exposure to Fulton County and can bring economic opportunities back. So maybe it's not taxis and maybe it's not, you know, things up on the Fulton County wall cuz how many are coming? But I think we could think more um exact about how the best use of that money if we if this commission voted on it.

Commissioner Ivory, thank you for that. And just a couple of quick um I guess comments on that. So one, um Showcase Atlanta has been a great partner. they have worked with us to um talk with um Showcase Atlanta as well as um the mayor's office have talked with us or worked with us to talk with some of our smaller cities who um don't have necessarily all as much information or resources. Um every city in Fulton County I think has a youth soccer program for example. So some of our cities are very excited about really um activating you know young people making them feel part I the Olympics were held here the year after I graduated from Emory. I was very excited to be you know 22 23 and be part of that um and going to events. So, just thinking about young people who are here um whether they're college students or young adults or um who may not be able to afford tickets and creating some opportunity for them and again making sure that every city in Fulton County gets to be part of um the excitement for for you know kids in South Fton or Roswell or wherever they are um to be part of it. So um they've been a great partner with that. I agree that um some of the dollars could be some dollars period could be very well spent both in partnership um with the host committee as well as with our cities who are trying to do things who are not part of the host committee. The one final thing I would say is that um the metro Atlanta chamber is part of the host committee. Um there are many small convention and visitors bureaus across Fulton County. Of course, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau does an amazing job. There is no one except Fulton County government whose role is promoting Fulton County. And so, I think

that is one of the unique opportunities we have. There is no Fulton County Chamber of Commerce. There is no Fulton County Convention and Visitors Bureau. We are the only ones promoting Fulton County. So, I think that is one opportunity that we need to think about whether it's a million dollars or some other resources. I just wanted to call that out. I I'll just be real brief and I and I I get that point you made, but I also don't know that a million dollars is going to be particularly impactful in terms of that promotion and what really net benefit that gets to the taxpayers when a lot of the taxpayer funded money is coming through and going to these other entities. Right.

Sure. Many of these are getting their funds through sales taxes, hotel, motel taxes, whatever that are coming back into this, right? That's true.

Um, so, you know, I'm I'm I'm skeptical of just what that what that benefit is. And I'm also sort of skeptical of just throwing your name on there and throwing, you know, 30,000 bucks in there for some sponsoring some event. You're one of 25 on there. I think that's a private entity doing that. um and should be that domain. I one thing I would say from this related to the World Cup and related to other stuff when it comes to wanting to use some forms of advertising, we should have a discussion with Martya about them giving us access to bus stops this to advertise our services for free given the amount of tag Fulton County. we are one of the four you know contractors on that you know so we should open up a discussion with that and you know and seeing if we could have some you know whether it's for this purpose or or other purposes um I I think that should be there given the amount of

fing county residence and investment in martyr so um that just I just want for why out there that just sort of triggered me so thank you anything else well Marta needs something from us now. So, it's a good time. All right. Thank you very much, commissioners. Anything else, commissioners? Madame Clerk, no further items.

No further items to come before us today. We are adjourned. For a written transcript of this meeting, or if you need reasonable accommodations, including this communication, in an alternative format due to disability, please contact the clerk to the commission's office at 404-6128232.