Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

No, the whole thing is not for me.

Just put it between us.

Just leave it there when I need something, I'll get it. Do not put it close to me.

Yes. Not my night, but just a little bit I

Right, right, yeah Yep

Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Yeah.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Commissioner Williams, Commissioner Smith, my Rockville County employees and citizens of Rockville County. Good morning to everyone.

Yes.

Let's start over process. I was coming in this morning and I was having a breakfast with my wife and she said, you look a little tense while having a cup of tea. And I said, well, I'm doing presentation. She said, don't start with your jokes. Well, that was a good one. They are not funny at all. So with that said... So with that said, let's start. Thank you to everyone for joining us as we begin Rockville County's fiscal year 2027 annual budget work sessions. One can ask, what is our annual budget fiscal year is? And our fiscal year is the same as our calendar year, January to December. With that said, over the next three days, we will hear presentation from all county departments and elected offices. They are going to be here looking at what they are looking ahead for, planned priorities, and what they are asking for so that they can deliver excellent services to our citizens. This process is one of the most important opportunities we have each year to demonstrate our commitment to transparency. With that said, my first thing is this. I want to thank you, my team, led by budget manager reporting, senior budget manager and reporting manager William Wong, also known as Bill, and also the budget analyst, Saninthia Boyd, and also the deputy CFO, Narendra Bhatwaj. With that said, we are going to start with this. They coordinated all throughout the county excellently to put this budget binder together, put this presentation together, but most importantly, having a cooperation from each and every department and elected offices has just been so excellent. Very fortunate that we have such a great team, not only with my team, but also the team with Rockdale County all together.

having said that let's look at what we have and if any questions you can always stop me okay thank you for our preview of today at this time we'd like to call the meeting officially to order and welcome everyone to our budget hearings that will be going through um next three days and so we hope citizens and business owners will appreciate the fact that we're very transparent in this process and that it will provide them information to better understand where their tax dollars are best being used and so thank you for the hard work of the finance department putting this together today

Well, I appreciate my team. You don't want me to start all over again, right?

No, no. Your preview was great, and we'll use that officially.

Thank you very much. With that said, let me just go through what we're going to be dealing with for the next three days, our calendar, and also the agenda we have. For budget calendar, as we know, it was started in June that we opened up the budget. And June 3rd, it was everything was due back to us. All trickled in, and we have numbers right now still working together. But where we are today is these budget work sessions, August 4 to 6. We're going to go forward with that with October 20 is our public hearing at 6 PM. November 10 will be our first budget ordinance reading at 10 AM. December 8 will be our second budget ordinance reading at 10 AM and adoption of our budget for next year coming. So we'll start that on January 1. agenda for today is that I'm going to start. We'll have Director Bartley follow me, which is a good thing. And then from there on, we will have at noon lunch, then the break at 3. And from there on, we'll continue our budget work sessions. And we will end, hopefully, with me again talking about the finance.

Very good. And for the record, Madam Clerk, can you talk about the requirements legally for the budget and the millage rate?

Yes. So the millage rate runs a little bit behind the budget process. So today what we're doing is going through the proposed 2027 budget. The millage rate process will happen. In fact, today I just sent out the legal ad to run in the Rockdale citizen. to set the millage rate, which will pay for the current budget that you're in right now, 2026. And so since the board has decided to accept the rollback rate that the state has put together, you don't have to go through the public hearing process. You'll have to have a called meeting to set the millage rate. um the rate that is run is the a little bit shy of the rollback rate but you can elect to set a lower rate if you would like so that will address the 2026 budget so today what we're going to go through are all the budgets and departments that have requests for the 2027 budget so you will listen to all those requests for the next three days And then the chair works with the CFO to put together a proposed budget and present that to the board of commissioners, not unlike the president would do with Congress. And then you'll work over the next couple of months with this schedule that was on the previous slide to come together and get a budget together to vote on for December 11th. I believe no December 8th for the 2nd reading so at the October 20th public hearing you will take that budget that's been presented and go over it and then the 3 of you will work on a proposed balanced budget on the state of Georgia. You do have to vote on a balanced budget, which means your revenues have to match what it is that your expenditures are so that is what we will be doing for the last quarter of this year.

Thank you.

I hope.

Should I continue, Madam Chair?

Say it again?

Should I continue?

Yes, please.

So we were on August 5th, tomorrow. We're going to start with our public safety, the sheriff's presentation, and then from the fire rescue. And then onward, we will again have a lunch, noon to 1, break at 2.30. And then we will continue these sessions tomorrow again. Then again, on Thursday morning, we will start at 10 again, mostly filled with our court system, except for the one department director, our RDOT, which is the Department of Transportation, is going to be coming in in between them. And we'll wrap up at noon on Thursday, hopefully, and hopefully everything goes as planned. Where we are right now is this, that we looked at all these requests coming in and they are at this time is about $147 million, little over $147 million. This is excluding the new position. If we add those new position as requested, we're talking about 150 plus little bit million dollar. One can ask, what does that mean? Well, what that means is this. We are still projecting our revenues for next year. Right now, our revenue is about $127 million. So by looking at this, even without adding any positions, we have a challenge to face to balance this budget to cut from all these requests at least $20 million. Having said that, if any question, I'll be right here. Otherwise, we'll start with our first presenter if everybody is okay with that.

That'd be good. Thank you very much.

I appreciate that. Thank you. And Director Barkley, you're on.

I can assure you I wasn't talking that low.

These are considered real property.

You know what I'm going to let you go ahead and start OK and then once they get the video ready will move forward sounds good. Thank you good morning. Madam commissioner fellow commissions good morning to you as well. My name is Will Barkley. I'm your chief appraiser. My primary responsibility is to value all property within the county for tax purposes. So I have to also commend my staff as well. I couldn't get things done without their assistance and not their support. A lot of what we do requires being out in the cold, being out in the heat, doing times of the year where it's very uncomfortable. So I commend my staff for withstanding all of that and getting through and getting the job done. So let's talk a little bit about the The vision that we have as for the Board of Assessors, our office strives to be a steward of public trust, ensuring compliance as well as equity and transparency while enhancing the quality within the community. We also have a mission statement which we reworked several years ago to ensure all properties within Rockdale County are assessed according to fair market value as mandated by the Georgia Department of Revenue. and to provide excellent customer service through strategic activities which inform, educate, and connect with the citizens of Rockdale. The values are service, fairness, integrity, and educate. So we want to treat all customers with respect. We want to be impartial as far as when we're establishing these valuations. We're going to always try to do the right thing when it comes to being open as far as about the valuation. And we want to continue to educate, be in the public as far as making people aware of what we do. So we have quite a few successes from this past year and also there is a lot of opportunities and some of the challenges that we are faced with each year. So over the past year we received a perfect sales ratio analysis from the Department of Revenue which means that All of the properties that we value within the county was right on the money as far as what the prices were selling for. We couldn't get every property correct, so they're looking at the average of all of those. So in the state of Georgia, we're required to assess properties at 40% of its fair market value. So having a ratio of 40 indicates that we are valuing properties exactly what they're selling for. So that's a... I guess that's an outstanding accomplishment from a state level whereas last year I think we were one of 14 different counties that were receiving 40% ratio so with this year we just got that in the other day so it's slightly higher than what we were the previous year so we're still right at that point where we're valuing properties currently as far as what they're selling for so we're not on the market or on the radar to be fine for not valuing properties within the sales ratio analysis range, which is 0.36 to 0.40. So we're well within that range. Some of the other successes we've had, we physically reviewed and resolved over 3,000 appeals last year, which was quite a number of appeals. So we dealt with quite a bit. 40% of the 41% of the homestead applications were completed online so throughout Q public website 57% of the appeals were also utilized through the appeal module which is online to keep public that created we got a lot of those at the very last minute so that was very Towson so one of the key things that we did and no matter chairs is probably happy about this we work with True Roll last year, which is a company to do a homestead audit. They discovered roughly 225 homestead that needed to be removed from our role. And I guess the question is, what does that mean in tax dollars? So that can mean anywhere between $300,000 to $500,000 that we're going to save or we're going to have as part of our revenue for this coming year. So that's a great accomplishment. They also confirmed that the audit generated roughly 17,000, I guess, reviews as far as whether or not they were confirmed to be homestead eligible. They reiterated the fact that what we were doing was correct. So we're happy about that. The opportunities, as I stated before, is to educate and promote the assessment process throughout the county. Every opportunity that we have, we still encourage homeowners associations, civic organizations to allow us to come out and speak to them. We will be happy to share what's going on in that particular neighborhood compared to another neighborhood. And we want to continue to enhance the tools that we're utilizing as far as to be able to stay abreast of what's going on in the market. There are a lot of things that are being done with AI. There's also drones. We wanna be on the cutting edge as far as with things like that. We're working with the county attorney to see if there's a policy as far as what we can do from a drone perspective because sometimes we're not able to access certain properties that are far out or is a gated. We don't have access to see if there's any new construction that's been done, if there's any additions and things of that nature. So we want to make sure that we are catching everything that we're supposed to catch and making sure that everybody pays their fair share. The challenge is each year is dealing with a real estate market that changes a lot based on the economy, based on different things that happen that has an effect on the real estate market, which changes whether or not properties are selling, whether they're selling for more than list price, less than list price, or whatever the conditions are. So those are challenges that we face each year trying to value every piece of property within the county at its correct fair market value. So some of the things that we talked about as far as goals and initiatives, we want to continue to regularly attend HOA meetings and community events. We strongly want to educate because we know that that's the key to getting the message out and making sure that everyone understands the process. You'll be surprised how many people that I encounter that have no idea about how the process works. And they may not like it, but they don't understand it. So we take every opportunity to try to be able to educate. We want to maintain equity amongst all properties within the county. We want to create some sense of innovation by enhancing acute public website to be able to provide information that's going to be informative. One of the things that we did this year, if you guys are familiar with Senate Bill 566, which changed the actual assessment notice. This was not a decision by our board. rendered from the state. So that changed the notice of assessment. And one of the things that were removed from the notice was the detailed list of all of the taxes that someone potentially could have to pay. So we listened to the community and we adjusted our website to include that information, even though legally we could not put it on the assessment notice. So now that information is available on the website for taxpayers to be able to see what the exposure would look like as far as potential taxes. So operating expenses is going up slightly from what it was the previous year. So some of the services that we're utilizing, which would be considered Q public, which is our website, The addition of some additional modules, adding things to that site is gonna generate an increase as far as in the cost for that. Coastal, one of the softwares that our commercial and industrial appraisals utilize to be able to look at what's going on in the actual market within the region. So we look at what's happening from the commercial perspective. We don't always have the sales that is gonna support an adjustment of value just in Rockdale. We also have to look at Newton County, Walton County, as well as DeKalb, all of the surrounding counties when it comes to commercial. So that's one of the softwares that we use as well. The price of those are going up as well, so we're having a slight increase from those. And the main thing that we're also gonna do as far as with the Board of Assessors, we're gonna have to have some additional training for new members that are coming on to the board. So that's gonna be a cost that's gonna attribute towards the increase from $14,000 that's gonna be changed. And the personnel and benefits, that's a number that we receive from HR. So I guess that would attribute to that. I can't really elaborate too much on that. So we didn't make any operating requests of any large numbers because most of the changes that we saw were not over $5,000. And I think before we had talked about not having just a whole bunch of little small number changes on there. So a lot of those were just small percentages that were going up. So the entire budget is going up roughly $14,000. So we didn't have anything for that. So our organizational chart, let me tell you a little bit about that. Me being the chief appraiser, I'm responsible for the office. There's a deputy chief appraiser as well as an administrative manager and a general manager. The deputy chief appraiser handles all of the residential properties. He has six appraisers that works under him. The administrative manager has three administrative staff that handles all of the homestead applications, all of the deed transfers, all of those things whenever there's a sale. And the general manager handles all of the commercial, industrial, personal property, as well as mobile homes. So those things are handled through two appraisers that are working with her. Our organizational chart for 2027 is not projected to change. So we're going to keep things as they are. There are not any changes from that perspective. So we get to the 5 year capital improvement. I see a P. We have made a request for see a peak. That request is actually considered a countywide reevaluation. I know yes, what is a countywide reevaluation. Every now and then, a county needs to go through and reevaluate every piece of property within the county. The state requires that we review properties at least once every three years. However, that doesn't always do enough justice as far as understanding where the market is and adjusting values and schedules to the market. So I think it's important, and I can't recall the last time that we've done it. It's been quite a few years since we've done it. However, I wanted to share just a little information with you guys as far as in why is it important to do a county-wide reval. It's going to adjust, I guess, the values from the standpoint of if there's not uniformity within the values. Because sometimes what happens is that we value things based on a neighborhood. and one neighborhood may go up another neighborhood may not go so that could be create some inequities as far as in the valuation from so having a rebound and having someone come in and look at every single piece of property within the county and also look at our schedules I think what that does is promote uniformity and make sure that everyone is paying their fair share no one is paying more than what they should pay and also it creates a sense of importance for the taxpayers to know that they're being taxed properly. So, you know, there's been times where there's not been understanding and also trust as far as what we do as assessors. So we want to be able to generate that and create a sense of understanding and trust. And I do have a little handout for you guys for that, if y'all would like that.

Thank you.

So that's a little information about why we do a countywide revalve and also on the back side of it, it talks a little bit about when should it be done and why it's being done. So I think that's helpful information just to be added to the background of that. And that's pretty much all that I have from that perspective. I think they're ready for the video. Any questions before we move to that? No. Taja, I can help you all make up some time. We're back on schedule.

Hello, I'm Will Barton.

I'm the chief appraiser of the rest of the board of assessors. Let me tell you what we use our votes for.

Our goal is to ensure all properties within Rockdale County are assessed according to fair market dining as mandated by the Georgia Department of Revenue. We want to provide excellent customer service through to strategic activities which inform, educate, and connect with the citizens of Rockdale County. One of the first things we do is that we appraise all 38,000 parcels within Rockdale County. These are considered real property. We also evaluate and audit all of the business personal property accounts within Rockdale County. That's roughly 37,000 accounts. Our responsibility also entails the administration of homestead and other statutory exemptions. We review and process property tax appeals. While doing this, we maintain accurate ownership and partial records. We're required to conduct field inspections and property reviews. Part of this helps us to prepare and certify the county's annual tax digest for submission to the Georgia Department of Revenue. The majority of our budget supports the personnel technology necessary to produce an accurate and equitable tax digest. Primarily, these expenditures include personnel, employee benefits, appraisal software, as well as GIS technology. We also have a need for field vehicles and equipment in order to do the field inspections. We look at property data collections and aerial images to be able to analyze all of the properties within the county. We also have to send out an annual notice of assessment. The mailing and printing of that takes up a good portion of our budget as well. How is our budget used? So the majority of our budget supports the personnel technology necessary to produce an accurate and equitable tax digest. That means that we need employees as well as technology in order to be able to go out in the field and review properties and place an appropriate assessment on each piece of property within the county. That means that we have to have personnel as well as vehicles and technology in order to be able to go out in the field and evaluate each piece of property within Rockdale County. Having an accurate tax digest is critical for the financial health of Rockdale County. Our work provides tax base that funds the Rockdale County Board of Commissioners as well as the Board of Education and the City of Congress. We promote fairness by ensuring taxpayers pay only their equitable share. This maintains compliance with the Georgia Department of Revenue standards as well as reduce litigation through consistent and uniform valuations. In summary, I wanted to remind you that the Tax Assessor's Office wants to ensure that each piece of property is assessed at its current fair market value, and also that we remain in compliance with the Georgia Department of Equity. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We have Extension Service that's next.

Good morning.

Good morning. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Philip Hensley. For those who haven't met me yet, here and abroad, I'm the County Extension Coordinator and Department Director for the Cooperative Extension Service in Rockdale County. Cooperative Extension is a nationwide system that operates in all 50 states. In Georgia, it's a partnership between state and local governments administered through land grant universities. In our case in Georgia, it's the University of Georgia, as well as Fort Valley State in South Georgia. And it's supported by city and county governments, such as Rockdale County, by providing space and staffing for our local extension offices. That's right. Thank you so much. Cooperative Extension provides research-based education and programs addressing topics in agriculture and natural resources, food safety and security, family health and well-being, as well as 4-H youth development. Our mission in Cooperative Extension is to translate the science of everyday living for farmers, families, and communities that we serve to help foster a healthy and prosperous Georgia. Cooperative Extension is an unbiased, resource-driven organization that utilizes a statewide network of specialists, agents, as well as volunteer groups that work to improve the lives of citizens in Rockdale County, strengthen connections to those essential services and resources that are available to them, and foster economic growth and education in Rockdale. had a lot of challenges, successes, and opportunities over the last year. I ran out of space to keep listing things, so I tried to condense it down there. But for our 4-H program, we wanted to highlight that our fourth, fifth, and sixth grade youth that participated in our DPA, which is District Project Achievement, it's a public speaking emphasis uh project they do it at the county level within the school systems that our staff goes into to each classroom in fifth grade uh typically uh and that's their first introduction a lot of times for most of the students to the 4-h program but they they get to choose a topic uh that interests them learn how to create the thesis sentences and and it works in conjunction with the state standards and language arts uh as well as with science but we had 60 of those participants that that chose if they're selected at the county level to participate in the district-wide level, which is made up of 39 different counties in the state. in the northwest part of the state those students that elect to do that 60 of those participants finished second first second or third so that's that's a very high placement on average between between the county breakdown there we also offered after school programming it was an emphasis in professionalism so they worked on resume creation workforce readiness timeliness, proper dress, time management skills, things like that. Had a presence in 10 schools this year. I know some of the schools had changed. They were doing different security processes and things. And so we weren't able to get into as many schools as we'd had before just to get the clearances and things in time for the school season to start there. But for the 25-26 school year, again, we had an emphasis on public speaking and really just building confidence within those students. It's always fascinating to see the beginning of the year to the end of the school year how much those children change and how much they really can come out of their shells, especially when they go on to these districts and even some that get selected to go to a state competitive level for their public speaking projects. Our family and consumer science program collaborated with our county HR team to provide lunch and learns. They also did programs at the senior center doing cooking demonstrations as well as several different types of overall health and wellness classes. And then they continued the Rockdale Eats a Rainbow program this year. And they stated that they had 80 attendees complete all six of the programs. if they weren't able to come or if they'd missed a session, they, they would come and make it up and still get their, their produce and get kind of a one-on-one in that sense too. So really high, I guess, completion percentage in that sense as well. Um, our agriculture and natural resources program, we have our, our planter row garden that's managed by the master gardener volunteers, as well as extension staff. Uh, they continue to, to grow produce this year, uh, and donate that to, uh, Rockdale emergency relief, uh, organization that the, the new wellness garden component that was, that was added this year. We've already started having several classes out there, some different components that we've added. We've got several partners that are... Actually, we've got some visits coming up next week that are coming out to look at the space and see what they might be able to add or look at the facilities that we've had completed there to see what other components maybe they can... Hey, you've got space for this. Or how about a vertical garden? How about some hydroponic components? Things like that. So it's going to be a fantastic... outreach space, add some new components to it. That garden space kind of in general had become a good workspace, but we kind of lost sight over the years of the outreach and the education component, inviting folks in and trying not to burn out our volunteer groups and things like that from working in the sun and pulling weeds and watering and harvesting all day. So we want to teach folks how to do that themselves as well, instead of just rely on us bringing produce and things like that. So that's going to be a big emphasis for this this coming year is to add those teaching components and really kind of redesign and rethink the other half of the garden as well to kind of complement the new wellness components. And then overall in the office, there was a big emphasis from the university system to kind of rework a lot of our ADA accommodations, really kind of recertify that we're doing what we should and double check that I think one of the weaker areas that the university system as a whole identified was there was a component for blind individuals that a lot of our resources online and things like that weren't. friendly to to the e-readers and things like that so it would be kind of jumbled up and we didn't really get a good idea that until we tried to experiment without ourselves and we go to our website and and try to have it read it back to us and read the links oh it was it was i could understand it would be very confusing um so that was a big emphasis for myself over the last year in my my admin staff uh to get to get those kind of kinks worked out and to make everything truly accessible for folks It's changed how we can market some things. So we can't really do like AI flyers and anything that's really busy and really active and super colorful. It has to be translatable to everyone. So that's been a learning curve for us kind of in the challenging category there on how we are able to market through the university system with that. But then at the bottom there, it mentions that our vacancies that we had last year have been filled, which is exciting. So we've got 10 employees in our department. and half of them are new as of within the last year. So as that getting them up to speed and folks kind of learning their new roles and responsibilities and getting them introduced to the community and engaging with the public as well. Again, several opportunities there. We're still working to expand our marketing and our promotional Our website again has been retooled a bit, redesigned. We've got new blogs, newsletters, things like that that'll be rolling out now that we have to go through the approval process and check all those boxes that everything is accessible and compliant. We've gotten the green light on those, so those will be rolling out quickly here. We're broadening our collaborations with groups like Global Growers, the Historic Westside Garden, Food Well Alliance that's looking to donate maybe some fruit plants and things that we can add to our garden spaces, as well as working with the Center for Urban Agriculture and all those specialists that are housed in there for everything from water quality and erosion concerns, greenscaping, including the different gardening practices, ornamental practices, things like that. and working with Rockdale Soil and Water Conservation Districts as well and those representatives. We want to create a program development team, basically to help us with our need assessment goals, find out if what we're doing is really what we need to be focusing on and what we need to do based off of our community needs and interests there. So that'll be us reaching out to different folks within the county, whether it be through different county departments or just some other movers and shakers, folks that know folks and can kind of help us guide through, you know, you need to talk to this guy or this gal to really make sure we're reaching folks where they are is really kind of the big emphasis there. So we'll be creating that program development team this year. Again, I mentioned expanding our ADA accessibility. I also wanted to carry that out into our outdoor spaces, our other program areas. So we've got spaces over at the Big Haines Nature Center that we've got volunteers that help out there, as well as our arboretum. If folks didn't know that we have a very nice arboretum space in Rockdale County out there near the International Horse Park, our Master Gardeners help maintain that as well. And then again at the wellness garden and the community garden spaces, we're already working with some groups to make sure that that entire space, not just the new part that has some nice sidewalks and things, but we want to also make the other side as we kind of redesign and re-focus on what we're doing there, to make sure folks can access that as well and really have full access to the entire space. And as well as adding some new program components, again, we've got the wellness platform that was added out there at the garden. So things like the tai chi's and yoga's, that's things outside my wheelhouse, but I'm excited to participate in those. When those get to happen, we'll have some hydroponic classes, again, the waterscaping, water smart classes. We've had no shortage of folks that have heard about the space and that we've been reaching out to. My assistants have been fantastic about this partner and that partner, and then kind of as they network through finding different avenues of opportunities, whether it be through monetary support or actually physical volunteering or even helping us include new structures and things like that. Lots of possibilities. Again, as we as we kind of renovate that other space on the other half of the garden out there, including invasive species classes, working with a couple partners to actually do some identification reporting and then physical removal of a lot of invasive species around the county as we identify some some really in need spots and things like that and hopefully can work with our parks and rec department as well as maybe identifying some spaces that maybe they haven't been able to get to that they'd like to help with some remediation as well. And adding raised beds and things like that as well. And then 4-H mentioned that they're hoping to start a garden club so we can have some beds that the 4-H youth will be able to maintain and also kind of train the trainer, so to speak, is the way we like to have the students actually teach. And again, that confidence building, that public speaking, that public engagement so that they can maybe be future extension agents. That would be the hope for me there. And then challenges, of course, price increases on everything, fuels more, travels more, supplies is more. So trying to find ways to kind of be more efficient with the tools that we have instead of begging everybody for more money. Trying to figure out ways that we can cut costs and we've identified a lot of paper that we don't have to print. Being a little more diligent with how we distribute supplies for programming and things like that. little tiny bits but they all add up at the end of the day struggle continues for for federal and state opportunities for funding programs and things like that as things get cut or money gets kind of redistributed really kind of causes myself and my staff to kind of think about the need for donations or really even fund more fundraising efforts so we try to don't really like to charge a lot of money to participate in the things that we do. I just feel like that's another barrier for folks to really access our knowledge and for them to learn new things. So we're really gonna emphasize some more fundraising effort, but that takes us away from doing the fun stuff a lot of times too. So we're trying to figure out how we can roll some of those in, reaching out to some other county extension services and things like any other states and how they've kind of gotten creative with how they can get engagement through that as well. And again, the last thing really, again, we've got lots of new staff. They're doing great. Everybody's getting up to speed. And then through the last one in there, I think at the moment I was creating this about adapting to the AI world. It's been a challenge, especially with so many different components that we have to consider, whether it be at the county level or state level, federal level, university level. Everybody's got their own little tidbits that they do and don't want added into things. So trying to navigate that's been exciting. For our 2027 focuses and our initiatives there, we, again, if folks weren't aware, we do offer soil, water, and forage quality testing. I was just out at a couple pastures yesterday speaking to a fellow who just moved here from Las Vegas, and his daughter's obsessed with horses, so he bought some land and he's adding some horses. But he admitted to me, he's like, I don't know anything about horses, and I certainly don't know why they're not eating all this grass. So we had to troubleshoot that. and figure out how to get stuff in there that he didn't want to grow. So we do that kind of on-site visits and diagnostics for folks. I do plant disease insect diagnostics for folks that walk in the door with a bag of who knows what and wants things identified and how to how to treat things properly and you don't always need chemicals to control stuff and all that kind of stuff. So a lot of education that happens one-on-one constantly day to day. But consulting with homeowners, growers, as well as commercial businesses as well on a daily and weekly basis for sure. And most of those services are offered at minimal or no cost. Folks can walk in the door and get answers for free essentially as far as we go. We also offer ServSafe certifications through our family and consumer sciences. program area, which is required for, you know, restaurant management and things like that, food safety, food, you know, proper health procedures, employee safety in the kitchen, things like that. And then we also offer in the agriculture program the Georgia Department of Agriculture requires, you know, pesticide licenses and CEUs, continuing education credits for folks that that handle pesticide chemicals and to use them wisely so we offer programs along that line as well and again expansion of the community wellness garden is just going to be that's that's an excitement factor for me that offers a whole lot more outside time for our staff as well but we'll be able to do a lot more hands-on experiences and really kind of highlight Everything, I guess it's not just growing vegetables, it's not just keeping your grass green, things like that. Adding sensory garden components, maybe a youth area in one of the corners out there. Again, and adding more raised beds that'll give us more planting spaces and things like that for more people to participate. We also have our inclusive youth engagement through Georgia 4-H. They have monthly meetings for K through 12th grade provided at no cost. Those meetings go over current program offerings, engage interest of the youth. What do they find interesting? What do they want to do? Not just what we think is cool, but what will actually get them to come back and participate and continue in 4-H as well. Diverse programming, again, heavy public speaking and confidence building emphasis. We work through the school systems to meet their STEAM guidelines, offer competitive judging teams, multiple community service projects, volunteer opportunities. Mentioned the wellness garden, again, promoting food safety and gardening techniques. We plan on holding some cooking demonstrations and harvesting demonstrations out there, as well as starting from seed and all the way to the end to when you prepare a meal kind of thing. The STEM and engineering clubs, they started those last year and they'll expand them this year for our 4-H program to, again, really expand the interest in technology from a lot of the youth. Everybody's got a phone and everything, that's nothing new. But again, even going into the AI world of trying to navigate that and help Youth also navigate what you can and can't do, or maybe should and shouldn't do with those tools as well. And then the creation of student-led clubs. Again, the idea of letting the older students, the senior age students, those high schoolers, be able to mentor and teach the younger students as well that participate there. And the last thing I mentioned about controlling invasive species and hopefully being able to work with some partners to where we can actually go into some spaces and actually make a difference and remove and educate about how to properly do that while not causing harm to the stuff you do want. For our operating budget, it stayed pretty much flat. We moved some different line items around, looking at where we could We saved costs here, and maybe we can put a little more over here, but that stayed relatively flat. The personnel services, again, with the turnover we had, we lost some experienced folks that, when I say lost, they got promoted. So it was a good loss for them, in a sense. I'm happy they found some other places there. But bringing in new folks, so that just kind of naturally lowers the cost there, and then some overtime, obviously, through those transitions that we won't have this next year. Organizational wise that's our current breakdown there with our myself as the director We've got the three folks for each agent fax agent and my admin assistant that are also state staff and then all the assistant positions Along the bottom there. Those are all County funded positions So kind of mirroring what other folks have said as well without all those that the county staff that we have at our disposal as well It would not be possible to do the work that we do and have the reach that we have as well and for 2027 no foreseeing changes to that. We've got the vacancies filled and we'll be surging forward. If you have any questions or anything, I'll be happy to answer anything for y'all.

Thank you very much. Well done. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And on time. I know.

That's usually my struggle.

But you met the challenge today. That is good. That's great.

The red light didn't have to come on. No, I'm just kidding.

Thank you all so much. On task. Very good. All right.

Good morning. My name is Andrew Hammer. I'm the Director of General Services. For the most part, General Services deals with internal customers, so we're the support department for all the other county departments and all the other elected officials. I have four main divisions that fall under my purview. The Capital Projects Division, the Building Maintenance Division, the Recycling Center and Fleet Services. The recycling center is the only division that deals directly with the public. The other three divisions support county staff who then in turn deal directly with the public. So for the most part, we work in the background. We work behind the scenes in order to make sure that the facilities and the staff are able to do their job to better serve the taxpayers of the county. We have 41 full-time employees and 12 part-time employees that are housed across six different locations in the county, serving everyone from the courts, to the sheriff, to water, storm water, to parks and recreation. Starting with the capital projects, that team is responsible for all of the construction, the renovations, and any other requests from county staff or county departments. For instance, if an office requires painting or if something happens where they need new carpet or they need to have some renovation of some sort, They'll put in a capital request, that'll go to the capital projects team, they'll prepare the estimates, they'll bid out the projects, and then they'll perform the construction or the renovation that's appropriate for that. They'll work with each department's schedule to make sure that there's no interruption in service to the staff and the citizens, and then they'll complete the project and close that out. The second division is the building maintenance division. The building maintenance department is responsible for all of the cleaning and the maintenance of every county facility. This entails around 80 plus buildings throughout the county, and this includes all of the elected officials, all the county departments, sheriff's office, courthouses, and water resources. The recycling center intakes all of the recycling and solid waste for the county. They have a group of items that they take in at no charge to the public. Those are all the recycling items, so it's glass, metal cans, aluminum cans, cardboard, paper products, and tires. The county does not charge for those items since those are recycled. However, there are a few items that the county has to pay to dispose of. The recycling center is better named a transfer center. All the items that come into the recycling center by law have to go back out. They have to either be recycled or they're taken to a landfill. So as the county incurs a large cost for that, they offset that cost by charging items for individual fees or a new tag system that we implemented last year. Fleet Services ensures that all of the government vehicles are compliant with regulations and safe for operation on the road. For information on General Services, feel free to call 770 278-7282 again that's 770-278-7282 i'm andrew hammer thank you for watching rockdale 23. good morning good morning i i think public relations did a fantastic job i was so nervous when i had to do that and i think i said um about 10 million times and they cut out at least half of them so Thanks. Very good. Deputy Director Mike, you did a great job. Do I do the clicker today? Is that how it's working? All right. Excellent.

You're in control of your own.

I'm in control. And down. There we go. All right. I think what I'd like to do is I'm going to skim over the first couple ones because I'm sure the board probably wants to get to lunch. And I'm sure that you've seen kind of the same things from a lot of different departments. If I were to summarize my presentation, it would be inflation, growth, and the Judicial Administrative Center. Those would be the three things that I'd want to concentrate on. And that explains a lot. That's what's to come. The vision, the mission, the values are up on the screen. I think the one that I would highlight there is the values, excellence, efficiency, and compliance. And compliance is a very large part of what we do. with our fleet services, with our building maintenance, complying with ADA requirements, complying with EPA regulations, fuels. There's a lot of items that we are required by law. The county is not exempt from being in compliant with those. The opportunities and challenges, I'm not going to go through the list here, but just want to highlight you know the successes what we do like we said in the video is we're we're more inward facing than outward facing where the support services for every department every court every elected official in the county so when you look at those most of what we do is not for general services itself but general services serves all the other departments such as the fire department completing fire station 5. the wheeler park those wonderful improvements over there partnering with the parks and recreation Uh, the first sensory playground in the county over at Johnson park. Um, and then, uh, we're very happy with our new tag system at the recycling center, the transfer center. Uh, that's been a good success. We're still rearranging some things out there. So, um, I know there was some comments about where things are placed and we're going to continue to improve those as we, as we go forward.

Um, and I do appreciate your support with that. I knew that was a painful time to make that big change initially. i think we've found success with it and i appreciate the you know reviewing the layout and how we can make it even better and more efficient for those that are just dropping off recyclables that's right and it's a constant process improvement as the county grows we get more out there we rearrange things to try to make it as efficient as possible so thank you opportunities that we have

And the challenge is one of our opportunities is the emergency vehicle repair training. We have our second technician. We have one person, a full-time staff. He repairs the fire engine. You have to be certified. There's 10 different certifications that are required in order to be EVT certified. And we have one out there. We have a second one that is undergoing training. I think he's attending training next month to start that process. It's about a year long that it takes to do that. And then under the challenges, one of our large challenges this year will be moving everyone, every department in the administration building into the new building and then turning right around three months later and moving all the courts and rearranging those. It's sort of a shell game. Sometimes you put people in one area and then you move them around and there's a lot of movement. So that's been a challenge. But our staff has really risen to the occasion and they're doing a fantastic job.

Very good.

Goals and initiatives again. I'll just hit a couple of these the the JC obviously is a large one We are beginning design for a Southside senior citizens annex They were doing the Southside senior satellite and I just couldn't pronounce that so we're gonna change too many asses I think and again So we're we're still narrowing down the the exact scope of it but The senior center currently there's one senior center that serves the entire county It's located over on Dogwood Drive right off of West Ave So there are meals on wheels and their programs and everything Everyone in the county has to either go to there or they have to reach out to everywhere in the county There's a large portion a large density of the county that's on the south side as you're going down 20 and you know going down towards the Honey Creek area and then down into Newton County So the senior centers identified that area as a growth area that they want to provide a satellite. Another senior center probably wouldn't have the same level of programs or management as the main one, but they would be able to operate programs. They would be able to deliver meals on wheels faster by using that area down on the south side and hitting that density. So that's what we're looking at. OK. Again, that compliance comes up on the complying with ADA standards is a large part of what we do, working with Parks and Recreation. We manage the SPLOST funding as well as the impact fees. We're looking at some innovative things. It's World Cup year, and so we're looking at partnering with FIFA, depending on how you want to pronounce it. I get corrected all the time on that, depending on which country you're from, I think. So we've enjoyed that and so we're looking at trying to increase soccer in our community as well Working with Parks and Recreation to have some mini pitches Put in in the county These are small little fields to generate interest at a at a youth level and that can generate interest for the high school and Hopefully we can do a little better in the next World Cup And then last but not least we're looking at again another innovative. We do have pickleball courts in the county but we're looking at doing a larger complex and that enables parks and recreation to hold tournaments, that draws people, and of course, that's good for economic development as well. And last but not least, we're looking at swapping out slowly. We believe in being on the cutting edge of technology, but not the bleeding edge of technology, because that can cost a lot of money. So we're looking at swapping out some of our older vehicles with hybrids or electric vehicles, because that cuts down on our gas consumption considerably. okay and so now the punch line unfortunately um and that's where i go back to the inflation the growth and and the jac and now i'll spend a little time on the next couple slides um what we're requesting in our operating budget For the most part, our personnel services is staying flat, not flat, but we're asking for additional people, and I'll go over that in a minute. Most of that is just due to the increase in the salaries and insurance and the regular things from HR. But our operating expenses, we are requesting the $1,134,138 additional. And so I'll hit that on the next couple slides. And I know that seems like a large amount. If you want to split it up we're bringing the judicial administrative complex online so it's a 250,000 square feet that we're adding to the county's. Building list currently general services maintains 80 buildings, 80 plus buildings and we manage well over 600 vehicles equipment, hundreds of pieces of equipment, things like that. So not only we're bringing that the JC online, but we're also experiencing the inflation and the increased cost that everybody else is for parts, materials, supplies, fuel, filter, oil. I mean, you name it. Everything that we purchase is more expensive and it gets more expensive. So that's the breakdown. And I'll go over line by line as quick as I can. And if you have questions or want to stop me, please do the repair and maintenance. The first section, I broke it down by division. The Capital Projects Division is going to maintain current levels however there was a lot of projects that we deferred as we moved from the administration building into the JAC this year and my staff devoted a lot of time or a lot of time on the tail end of this year we're going to be moving everybody and that takes a lot of effort a lot of move time so next year once we've moved everybody in now it'll be they can get back to all the projects so we kind of have a back load of projects from every department um especially those that aren't affected by the jac so we're asking to go back to the the previous levels from what was cut last year the next grouping here is for the building maintenance and most of this is like i said if you look down through there the repair and maintenance we do have a small increase for the critical environment Um, and additional facilities and inflation. And what that is, is, um, I'm, I would say that's where I'm putting down to the growth of the county as the county grows. Uh, and as we change and as the staffing changes in the world, uh, the, the, in previous years, and we've talked about this before in previous years, every fireman was also a roofer, an electrician, a plumber, whatever, uh, the sheriff's deputies, they also did things on the side. And the parks and recreation people, they did things on the side and they maintain their own areas. But as we grow and as staffing changes, they become more specialized. So the fire, uh, uh, firefighters, um, they're trained and they do a lot more training, which is fantastic. It makes them better at fighting fires, but it also means that someone also has to take care of the roofs and the, the painting and the maintenance and everything else. And that's falling more and more onto general services. Um, that's what our staff does and that's what our specialty is. So it does make sense. but there is a shift there. Same thing with the sheriff's office. We're managing a lot more of their items, the systems, the air conditioning, the plumbing, the generators, things like that, that are more highly specialized things. And we can't expect the law enforcement personnel to also be generator maintenance people. So that falls on us. And the same thing, even for water resources as well, we're ended up doing a lot of more maintenance for them. So Because of that, there's additional burden that it puts on our department. The education and the training, one of the other things is to be able to operate on HVAC equipment, heating, venting, and air conditioning equipment. There are certifications that are required for the technicians to be able to operate on that. So we have a technician. We've identified some in our internal staff that we're able to train and so that we have a small increase in our training budget. The general supplies and materials that's mainly used for custodial supplies. So we put that that's because we're adding the judicial administrative complex and because we're straddling multiple buildings as we build and as we move and we move departments, we're not removing any square footage from our inventory this year or the next year. In future years, we may, and so we may be able to back down on some of this. But in the next year, we have to maintain all these facilities. And then there's the normal. There are increase in rates for water and sewer, the natural gas, the electricity has gone up slightly, and the stormwater fees as well. The county, our buildings have to be compliant. We have to pay the power companies just like everybody else does. And so bringing the new building, bringing 250,000 square feet online. There's a cost to that. We have to pay that electric bill. And we've worked with finance to identify those and to project what our need would be for the next year. And then last but not least is our fleet division. There's a couple things there. We do have one or two initiatives. A lot of the cars utilize cleaning. services, and so we're proposing that we consolidate those vehicle cleaning charges under a fleet program where we can get one of the best rates by having a volume. So that's the first item. The repair and maintenance, this is, we've established about two years ago, I believe, a fund that would capture and project vehicle accidents. And so if we have a vehicle accident and it's outside a third party's fault if the someone hits one of our vehicles we do get a replacement or an insurance for that however if the vehicle is 5 or 10 years old and the vehicle's value everybody who's who's hit a car and we all curse the insurance companies for that unfortunately so your car might be worth $5,000 but to replace it cost $20,000 so even though you might get a check from the insurance company it doesn't cover the replacement so the county still has a deputy or an employee who still needs the car needs to needs to drive that so we work to finance a few years ago can set up a an account where that would be sort of a floating account so when we have accidents whether there are fault and we're paying the deductible or if it's another. Outside parties fault and then we have to replace that vehicle there would be a fund for that otherwise or We have staff that can't accommodate what they need or we have to continue to make emergency requests. We're trying to normalize that. The largest one up there is really just for the increase in the cost for parts and materials. It represents about a 20% increase. That's what we're seeing around the industry just for all the different for wiper blades and oil and gaskets and everything that they use to repair on the vehicles. And so that's what we're requesting. The other supplies, one of our initiatives to do the electric vehicles, it does reduce our fuel consumption, so it's offset, but we would need to have various electric vehicle chargers at the buildings when we purchase those hybrids or those EVs to put it to places. And then last but not least, just the capital leased interest. As we continue with the enterprise lease program, finance has a category for the leased. It's not an actual asset. So it doesn't go into the capital portion. It goes under a separate account. So that's what that is for. Any questions before I? No. OK. The organizational chart. I think the video covered most of that as far as the four categories, capital projects, building maintenance, fleet, and the recycling center. So I'm not going to go over that. We are requesting four additional positions, two building maintenance technicians and two part-time custodians. Our request for that is in part due to the opening of the additional 250,000 square feet that has to be maintained. It has to be cleaned. Um, uh, we have to replace air filters and fix sinks and all the rest of that. Um, uh, and, uh, in addition to that, we're taking on more of the other facilities. Like I mentioned earlier, we're helping the fire department, the sheriff's office, water stormwater, the elected officials, all the rest of those a little bit more than we used to. And so that's our, um, that's our request to add. Two full-time and then two part-time that would work at night in order to clean the additional buildings Same thing The capital improvement plan that's always a fun one because it looks like we're asking for 49 million dollars and of course that's skewed What we're required to do is put down all the different funding sources that the county uses lost impact fees bonds as well as equipment, lease purchases, grants, things like that, that, that we know about in the next five years. So this is the, um, it's skewed a little bit at the bottom with the new buildings, because that represents the completion of the judicial administrative complex. Uh, it should be completed in 2028, but typically billing oftentimes lags slightly behind. So we spread that out on our plan. Um, and at the top of it is the, um, enterprise replacement program for our vehicles to maintain a newer fleet, um, to reduce the, um, fuel consumption, safety, things like that. And then sort of the items in the middle or represent various different items, uh, mostly for other buildings. We have a consolidated list that we do, uh, for, to help, uh, uh, animal control, uh, the animal shelter roof needs to be replaced or Covington. needs to have some repairs, life safety improvements to bring them up to code, things like that. And that's representative of that.

It needs a new roof animal control?

The old portion of the animal shelter. When we did the addition, the old roof hadn't reached its life cycle, but it's getting close to that. And that's it. Any questions?

No, thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

So we have a little bit of a space right now because Commissioner Smart Washington's not scheduled to be here till 1140.

So do we have someone else or to go next? Yeah. Okay.

Somebody just put a hand up, so.

Yeah.

All right. So we have Director Holmes, who's next. Thank you for volunteering to be tribute.

Hi, my name is Toni Holmes and I am your Human Resources Director for Rockdale County. I'm super excited to be here today to share with you some information about the 2027 budget. Every service Rockdale County provides to its citizens begins with people, and every investment we make in our workforce is an investment in better services and stronger leadership. Human Resources is much more than hiring employees. We are responsible for building, supporting, and sustaining the workforce that delivers every service our citizens rely on each day. From recruitment and retention to compensation, benefits, employee relations, organizational development, leadership training, compliance, wellness, and succession planning, Human Resources serves every department and every employee throughout their career with the county. Our vision is to cultivate a high performing, ethical workforce that delivers exceptional service to our community through trust, transparency, accountability, and the responsible stewardship of public resources. This philosophy has guided our work throughout this past year. We have strengthened our workforce through initiatives including the updated personnel action request process, concierge services for health care, the workforce investment plan, total rewards enhancements, updated performance evaluations, employee engagement efforts, mental health first aid certification, and again this year, the bail seal recognition, implementation of a new benefit structure and broker transition, policy updates, speed hiring initiatives that reduce barriers to employment, software implementation, and securing another year of the ACCG Workforce Development Grant. As we look ahead, two of our most significant workforce investment initiatives are the STEP Program and ASCEND, which is an acronym that focuses on succession. The STEP Program represents our continued commitment to investing in our employees through a structured and sustainable approach to compensation. It provides a framework that supports employee growth while ensuring compensation remains equitable, competitive, fiscally responsible, and aligned with the organizational goals. By investing strategically in compensation, we strengthen our ability to attract, retain, and reward a high-performing workforce. At the same time, Ascend focuses on succession planning by preparing today's employees for tomorrow's leadership opportunities. Using workforce analytics, current workforce trends, competency assessments, and career readiness strategies, Ascend will help us identify future leaders, preserve institutional knowledge, and create intentional career pathways across the organization. As we continue this work, we also recognize opportunities to leverage technology, strengthen onboarding, expand employee wellness, improve retirement planning resources and better understand the needs of our multi-generational workforce through targeted engagement ultimately human resources is not simply a support department we are a strategic partner in achieving the county's mission every department's ability to serve our community begins with having the right people in the right positions equipped with the right tools and opportunities to succeed in summary our budget reflects an investment in our greatest asset our people when we invest in people we strengthen every service the county provides thank you so much for your continued support and thank you for watching is it morning time now since i'm in the morning and not the afternoon good morning all right we'll go ahead and get started oh i have a clicker down okay this very first slide talks about our vision our mission and our values so i did not update this from last year as a matter of fact i thought it was still relevant and applicable to what we're doing this year in terms of our serve model making sure that we're strategic in workforce planning we just talked about that ethical in every interaction that we have resourceful making sure that we're a resource for our employees that we're valued as trusted partners within the organization and that we are efficient as well as being fiscally responsible so those were the values that we updated last year and we maintain those um that mission and that value those values for this year All right, as we get into our opportunities and challenges, some of our successes, we just talked about the workforce investment plan. We have strategically changed that terminology within the county and a lot of people do. We use an acronym, we say WIP, but it's like, what does that mean? It's about an investment in our people. One of the other things that we're looking at is coming up with that total reward strategy, making sure that we're educating our employees on the contribution that the county makes. as well as what our employees are contributing to the county. We actually did a broker RFP, did open enrollment, I think in about 60 days last year. It was a very quick turnaround, so we definitely consider that a success. We worked with a lot of different Even community stakeholders were involved in that process, so we're excited about that. Our enhanced new employee orientation, we cut that in half. So in terms of having our employees spend an entire day with us, they do spend half a day, and then there's a lot of things that we do online right now. And we're going to be talking a little bit about what happens after they leave us as it returns to onboarding. the performance review modernization we reduced our performance review in half we actually put it online and instead of 12 questions we've been getting a lot of good feedback from that we cut that down to six but all of those things are still relevant and we spent a lot of time training and educating our leadership team in terms of writing performance reviews we hosted our first ever speed hiring event I actually talked about this at NACO. I did a presentation with NACO on a national platform, and it's all about removing barriers to hiring. Like, how do you move those things forward, and how do you do that in terms of generational candidates? We modernized HR technology, also Laserfiche. we are trying to go very very um paperless if you will and this has been one of the strategies that we've been focused on for a while so we went from a room with a bazillion file cabinets to now we have two so what does that mean we have placed all of our personnel files in the cloud we've secured them in the cloud and we're very very excited about that initiative The concierge services, we now provide that for our employees where they are able, through our wellness initiative, able to visit a doctor for those routine physical things that you need to have. If you have a cold, if you're sick, if you need a flu shot, if you need a B12 shot, those are being offered to our employees through a local doctor here and at a reduced rate for our employees. So excited about that. The farmer's market, we understand about inflation. So we do offer that for our employees as well, where they can get fruits and vegetables. Again, our annual benefits fair that we have. And this year, we actually did a health resources fair, which really focused also on a mental health component. So making sure that our employees were aware of all of the things that they had available for them. The know the cost benefits education program. That was a new program brought on by our new broker. And again, that's where our employees can go get those benefits. MRI scans, those things that would cost a different amount, but you know what you're going to be paying and you're able to pay those things up front. And again, through our wellness initiative, they're paying those things up front as opposed to doing them as a claim through our insurance provider. So that's also been a huge benefit for us. And then mental health first aid, this is something Commissioner Williams that you had introduced and even when we did the Bell Seal Award, I think this is our third year, Bianca, our third year receiving that award. So we remain compliant in terms of making sure that our employees have what they need. And again, this is multiple years that we've also received the ACCG grant award for the internship program. So we're excited about those successes. And then I'm going to go over here and some of those successes will overlap in terms of our opportunities. So I talked about us successfully going into a paperless world as far as our files are concerned, but it's still an opportunity for us. So making sure that we continue to look at technology. The BUILD program for us is a compensation and classification software application. that we've been working on, strategic recruitment, onboarding, turnover reduction. We did a class this year for our leadership team called The True Cost of Turnover. We talked about what it meant from training, from development, even looking at equipment. We actually handed out all of the turnover reports to all of our leadership team and now giving that to them on a quarterly basis. We talked about this again on a national platform. From a government perspective, turnover is about 25%. Rockdale County is right there with them on a national platform. So this is one of the things that we consider to be an opportunity for us. Employee retention, of course, goes with turnover. Ascend. Now, I told my team I was going to get up here and memorize this acronym because I love a good acronym. I did mention at the BOC that we changed it. It was called Rise and of course that's already there and we recognize the importance of that. So we changed our name to Ascend. It is that A stands for advancing, right? That S stands for successors. So this particular program is about succession planning for us. So advancing successors through collaboration, through education, through networking, making sure that our employees are talking to the right people, that they're being exposed. And then that D is for development. So that's what that S stands for, but is a leadership and succession planning program. platform of course learning and development making sure that we're reaching across the county to all of our partners continued compensation modernization so we are receiving requests daily and you guys can imagine you know I want to study on this position I want to study on that position what is the market saying so making sure that we're modernizing that program through software as well employee engagement this year we do exit interviews and we know that but how about doing a stay interview So we actually did this at NACO as well with all of the leaders that participated in the workshop. And these were county commissioners. These were elected officials. We had them actually complete a state interview there. And it was only four questions. So a very simple question. We want to ask why they leave, but a lot of times that's too late. So then why don't we go ahead and ask them why are they staying? So that's one of those things that we're looking at. Benefits Education and Wellness Initiatives, Rockdale University. We talked about this last year, strategic partnerships with our colleges and universities. We do have a Lunch and Learn coming up with Troy University. Multiple of those things that we have right now. Our Future Talent Development Program is our internship program as well. So right now, I believe we have six interns throughout the county and just excited about those opportunities that we do have. So let's talk about challenges. Change management, change management, change management. How do people deal with change? There's a lot of different things that are happening. I know Director Hammer just got up and spoke about people moving. We understand right now that people are even having anxiety as it pertains to the office move. That's real. We do understand that. So how do we help with that? So going around implementing those initiatives. change management strategies knowledge transfer succession readiness we just talked about that through our ascend program so that's going to be a challenging challenge for us recruitment and hiring efficiency how do we go after the passive candidate again that active candidate they're coming to us but what about talking to people that may not know and just sharing with them all of the wonderful things that are happening here in rockdale county and we already talked about our whip workforce investment and market competitiveness and then employee rewards the benefits, wellness, and additional resources, making sure that our employees know of all of the benefits. We talked to some leaders in the county and they're not even aware of all of the benefits. So again, sometimes if you go through new employee orientation, you hear it one time. And then what if you've been here for 10 years and then you've never gone through new employee orientation? You haven't changed your health insurance. How do you know what kind of benefits that we offer here at the county? So those are some of the things that we're going to be looking at.

The next slide for us is our goals and initiatives and all of these things I just talked about it.

So we call this HR Connect. It's our HR roadshow. It's making sure that we're increasing visibility. My team right now, the employee relations team, they're out, they're visiting departments, they're doing one-on-ones, but not just my employee relations team, that's your HR director as well. So me being out there, boots on the ground, walking into departments, I'm just there to say hi. I just want to see how everybody is doing. So I'm saying that out loud right now so everybody can hear that. But it is about making sure that they have access to us, that they know all of the service that we have. Increasing employee participation and benefits, as well as our financial wellness programs. That's a big deal as well, seminars for that. enhance onboarding beyond orientation so i just talked about that what happens after you leave hr what happens when you enter your department so we're going to be doing surveys with our leadership teams talking about how they do that coming up with some shared practices some best practices that we can share with all of the directors where we've seen that be a successful onboarding experience expand benefits education through year-round communication so that's what i just talked about not just open enrollment but year-round what are those things that we're doing also bringing our broker in our new broker to help with that and to assist with that and we also talked about total rewards sharing that information what are those things that the county is contributing increasing employee interviews we also talked about the stay interviews already an employee reward system So I'm going to be talking about that in a little bit second. I know in our employee engagement survey, they talked about acknowledgement and recognition, not just being that one time a year where we do the employee meeting, but how do we engage those employees that aren't sitting at their desk? How, you know, even they talked about this at NACO. I'll go back to this again. They talked about that text communication platform. Are we doing that? We have an ADP app. We have some other things that we have in place that we can reach those employees. So we go over here to equity, equity, Again, that's our county step compensation program. And a step compensation program, I talked about it in the video, but it is a fair and equitable way to move people along in career progression. It also helps with finance in terms of progressing, I'm sorry, forecasting from a benefits perspective, from a financial perspective, what that would cost for the county. Updating our compensation and classification policy. A lot of times people will come and say, where did this policy come from? And I'm like, well, we can change it. The board can change it. So if you guys want to advance and move some things up into 2026, we absolutely are looking at that. Continuing to do market analysis is going to be important for us, strengthening career development and improving retention. I just told spoke about the percentage for turnover. We want to take a look at those numbers on a quarterly basis and look at how we're moving the needle. Innovation. Continue HR modernization, expanding our Ascend program, leadership workforce and analytics, looking at numbers, looking at data. I am a numbers person, I'm in HR, but numbers tell a story. So making sure we always, you can even use that comparison, whatever gets measured gets done. It gets looked at, it gets reviewed, and then how do you make those changes? Implementing additional paperless processes and strengthening strategic partnerships and pursuing additional grant opportunities. So these are going to be the initiatives for fiscal year 2027. for your hr department as it pertains to our operating budget we are remaining flat this year so no changes to the operating budget even with personnel services in addition to workforce investment plan we were still able to come in at a lower a little bit lower um three thousand dollars less than what we were last year in terms of our personnel services and benefits for this year so no requests for operating One of the things I did want to point out is we did move some things around where we are moving $12,600 from our advertising line item to our technical services line item. I just talked a lot about an employee engagement software. I just talked about enhancing technology. So this is where we're going to be changing. And I'll go ahead and go to the next slide. our LinkedIn data analytics software. So I just mentioned before about being able to get to those passive candidates. So we're still going to be able to use LinkedIn. We still use it for posting jobs, but this is the portion where you can go in and look at it from Again, those passive candidates sourcing modules to reflect funding toward a higher value workforce analytics solution. So that's the portion of LinkedIn that we are going to put on hold for this year. We're also canceling have already canceled our pay factors pay scale. It was up for renewal. So we did not renew that this year as well. And that is a compensation and classification software. application. What we are putting in place of these two things to offset it would be HollyGov. HollyGov is also a compensation and classification software. HollyGov is specific to government entities. It provides real-time, real-life data for compensation and classification. Right now all of that information is gathered from my office via the Just FOIA. So we do an open records request. We go in, we speak to someone, we call, we establish those partnerships. What HollyGov will do is update that information on a quarterly basis for us. They also will put together a list of all of the markets that we want to look at. So any government entity, whether it's here locally in Georgia or if we wanted to look at another state, they would be able to do that real time. They'll also be able to pull up all of the job descriptions for any of those entities that are listed in our platform. So we tell them who we want to see, we can add it and change it, and they'll be refreshing that data for us on a quarterly basis. So super excited about that. But in order to do that, we did not renew PayScale, and then we removed the data analytics portion of LinkedIn, but still maintaining our access to LinkedIn for recruitment and posting.

I have a question right there. Yes, ma'am. With the Holly Gov, how do they get their information?

So guess what they're doing? What I just said.

What you were doing?

What we were doing, but faster, so they have a whole team of it, whereas I have one person. And I remember we were sitting in the meeting, and the chair asked Danielle at the time, like, well, how long does it take for you to do that? So in her particular case, depending if someone walks in, can you do an assessment for the tax appraisers? Can you do an assessment for the maintenance workers? So she starts over. That then takes about three to four weeks for her to be able to get all that data. And if we're looking at the Atlanta Regional Commission, which is 12, 11 counties plus cities, we look at the city of Conyers, we've been looking at Newton County, we'll look at Morgan County, we'll look at Walton County. So then she's manually doing all of that. We give them the list up front and then they refresh it for us quarterly with all of that data. So that's the difference.

I want to tell you that some exciting news. I am working on an AI tool that can be used for HR and streamline some of that process. Is it what you sent me? It's another one. Okay. Yeah.

And then you sent me Beam. What? Beam. Do you remember that one?

B-I-N-G?

B-E-A-M. It's a software. It's nice, too, though. We're looking at that one, too. But that one's more about capturing notes, real-life notes, and doing it from an AI perspective. So a lot of software, a lot of technology. So I put that down as one of our opportunities as well as challenges for us, but one of our initiatives as well that we're going to be striving for for 2027. Right. Very good.

So exciting.

All right, okay. As far as our organizational chart, this is your HR department. It's myself. I do have a deputy director, and I have them divided up based on the divisions that we oversee. I also have a general manager. So Deputy Director Red, she oversees recruitment, she oversees training, HRIS, as well as the office operations. So she has the recruitment and retention manager reports into her learning and development and recruitment. We added that to the title for administrator as well as a generalist. That's our HRS generalist and that's Miss Cynthia Matt. She's more of a senior generalist for us. And then we have an administrative coordinator for our office. In terms of general manager Bianca Mallory-Thompson, she oversees benefits, compensation, as well as employee relations. Also, workers' compensation would fall up under the general manager for benefits. So benefits and wellness administrator reports to her. We have employee relations manager as well as our Title VI coordinator. We do have a generalist for employee relations. And then that last generalist is our compensation analyst for the county. So that is your HR team. THAT'S 10 INDIVIDUALS AND MYSELF, THAT WOULD BE A TOTAL OF 11 FTEs. AND FOR 2027, WE'RE PROPOSING THAT IT REMAIN THE EXACT SAME. SO NO CHANGES OR REQUESTS IN TERMS OF OUR ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE. OKAY. NOW, AS WE GET INTO, I ONLY HAVE ONE MORE SLIDE, AND I DID ADD THIS IN HERE. I PUT IT IN YOUR BOOK LIST. THERE'S AN UPDATED SLIDE FOR YOU. SO IF YOU'RE LOOKING AT THE PRESENTATION. This is that employee engagement software that we talked about. How do we do targeted communication with our employees? So we've looked at a couple of companies. We're working with procurement right now, but we're estimating this number here was for a multi-year contract. So we cut that in half to look at if we did a one-year contract with a vendor we haven't selected just yet, a one-year contract with some options to renew. So that's where you see the change in what your presentation is. But this is an employee engagement software, worked with finance, worked with technology services on looking at it as well, being able to reach those employees, targeted promotions, targeted awareness, even doing our employee engagement survey would all be done now through this employee engagement survey. Right now we're doing it through SurveyMonkey, and then we're collecting that data. This would actually be real-time recognition for our employees as well. So some of those things we do, birthdays, anniversaries, celebrations, all of that would be coming through one streamlined platform for the county.

So that is the yeah That'll be interesting. I wonder if I don't know if you have any analytics for like ramp health and some of the other

We did look at RAMP Health. So the software that we're looking at all have to be integrated with ADP. So that's a big deal for us. Whereas RAMP Health will not do that part of it. But RAMP Health would only do it for wellness initiatives. So it has to be a wellness program if we're gonna use RAMP Health because they're funded via wellness. But the survey platform that we're looking at will be able to add some wellness components to that as well. But we looked at RAMP Health, we looked at another internal function that we have as well. But so we're looking at all of the different things like what's going to be the most efficient, what's going to be the most cost effective, and what's going to improve morale for our employees.

Besides the Sunshine Committee.

Besides the Sunshine Committee. Who's already doing a great job. They are doing an amazing job. They actually would be using this survey, this software. So the Sunshine Committee would actually be involved in this as well. So it also would be managers. Leadership team would be able to go in here and, again, pull it up on your phone. So that's going to be able to reach those individuals that are in the field as well. Beautiful. So, Madam Chair, Commissioners, that concludes my presentation.

All right, very good. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you.

And I think since we have time, I'd like to see if our finance department can present. OK, that would be great.

Perfect.

Hi, welcome to the finance department. My name is Javed Madhid. I'm the chief financial officer as well as the CFO for Rockville County. And we're going to talk about budgeting for finance. The finance department serves as a financial backbone for Rockville County, strategically partnering with 31 county departments, elected offices, and the court system to provide financial leadership, guidance, and support by ensuring sound financial stewardship and remaining fully accountable to the stakeholders. Each day we work to ensure the county resources are managed responsibly, transparently, and in a way to support the long-term financial stability for our community. Our team comprises with one vacancy right now, dedicated, knowledgeable, and experienced professionals committed to delivering accurate and timely financial information Through strong collaboration and commitment to exceptional customer service, we ensure the county's financial operations remain stable, efficient, and forward-looking. Our department is organized into several essential functional areas, including budgeting, accounting, accounts payable, grants, and fundraising. we uphold the highest standard of integrity, accuracy, and efficiency as we serve Rockville County with commitment and professionalism. As we prepare to submit our fiscal year 2027 budget, I want to acknowledge the reality that we continue to operate within limited resources. In recognition of these constraints, we are submitting a flat budget of $5.83 million consistent with our current fiscal year 2026 allocation. Looking ahead, we have several important goals and challenges that will shape our world in the upcoming year. Recruiting the controller with the CPA credentials, advancing the ERP implementation project, issuing and managing the auditor RFP, strengthening our indirect cost processes, completing the annual comprehensive financial report, as known as ACPR, and budget book, along with submitting for GFOA award. Continuing succession planning to ensure long-term organization stability. And lastly, leading the JSC project and establishing clear tracking mechanism. Thank you so much. And I hope you learn more about finance budget.

Good morning still. And you can tell we are not actors. Anyway, so finance, we have a very simple stuff. I think that the spotlight covered most of it. When we talk about our vision, I can truly believe in that we are strategically partnered with everybody in the county departments, whether it's the department or elected offices, we are there partnering with them to provide them the support they need. When we look into the automation, we look into the data-driven, we look into the innovation and the continuous improvement, excellence in customer service, these are our vision. When we talk about our mission, the mission of the finance department is to provide leadership. operational oversight, system coordination, and financial product and services for Rockdale County. Our values are integrity, accuracy, efficiency, and ensuring ethical practices, precise financial reporting, and streamlining operations. I think this was also given into our spotlight too. When we look into opportunities and challenges, we have some successes. We look into opportunity, we look into challenges. Over 2026 GFOA, we submitted the budget book in a timely manner. Not only that, we also completed our order on a timely basis this year for 2025 with no findings for 25 or 26 budget recommendations and passage of it over ordinance issuing audit RFP that we are right into the process of it right now and indirect cost and study process that we are going through it. This is the first time we are going through the indirect cost for the Rockdale County. Opportunities, we have very knowledgeable, tenured staff work towards more innovation and efficiency. And when we look into the challenges, the first challenge coming to play is that our software that we have for a great plain software is going to be coming to an end of life. So that is a huge challenge for the finance department to take over. Well, the next challenge is that we have tenured employees, and that also gives us the succession planning to be in place, navigating economic uncertainty. This is basically keeping our financial health in place so that we can face if there are any economic opportunities coming along. When we look into the next one, that what we are looking for over a goals initiative, reporting obviously is the first that we are keep on going gonna do the reporting that we do on a monthly basis to board of commission preparation for 27 budget that's what we are doing right now compliance for hopefully we will get a clean order for 2026 and also submission to the gfoa automation and technology we mentioned about that we are also promoting that we will do more automated clearinghouse meaning the electronic fund transfer for our vendors we are also modifying as needed for one meeting software acquisition of new accounting software we already talked about that next uh one of the goals that i have is this to focus more on to the grant opportunities for over our county so that we can more rely on having those upper grants to apply for it and gain some funding from outside rather than relying on our general fund okay Operating budget, as we are in finance, we basically will be a flat budget. We have a minor increase in personnel. This is basically in all of the county budget you will see. There's a compensation adjustment happening in 2026 carried over into the 2027. Less than 1% increase in our finance budget. Not less than, I'm sorry, close to 1%, I would say, a little over 1% increase in our finance budget. No changes into that. Our organization chart, hard to read, I know. We are 20 people all together. One vacancy, which is the controller position we are trying to hire from last few months. And our focus is that we will get some CPA-certified accountant on board to help us not only just to implement the ERP software, but also to help us in areas that is where I call it well-needed attention area that we have.

Purchasing is one of them.

no changes from 26 to 27 on this organization chart over a five-year capital improvement plan cip we are continuing our request for the software for erp system for 2027 this is not a new request this is carrying over the request we already have in 2026 so we will just be moving it forward hopefully we'll get that in 2027 and this will be a quarter achievement if we can do that so we didn't spend any of the money we haven't spent any money yet and what number is that i can't what number does it say it's uh 1.5 million in last year it was 1.2 i'm sorry funding for this already budgeted it is budgeted for 26 for 26. Yes. So we're just carrying forward that funding from 26 to 27.

I think it was also funded 2025, if I remember correct?

Yes. Well, that's all we got. If any question, I'd be here. Otherwise, what we can, I will suggest is this. We can take an early lunch break and come back. Or I'm sorry, Madam Chair.

I think we had one more presentation that could be before 12 maybe.

Yes, so we have, we could proceed with either the BOC, maybe PR since we're here today. But we were waiting to see about the tax commissioner and making sure she was scheduled next.

We'll go ahead and proceed with the other.

Is anybody else ready for today? The B.O.C. Right.

Are you coming in? I'm going to do it. Okay, perfect. Turn my time over to me.

Public relations then.

I'm only prepped for tomorrow, but I'm doing it mentally.

Sue, do you want to go? I can go. We'll let you go. Chief Sanders, go. Yeah.

You don't have it? I was going to bring it again. I was ready for it.

I wish now Amy was here. I wish now Amy down here. Okay. She's here and we can move them up. Or you could email it to me. Because then we can move up planning and development into where human resources is. Okay. Okay.

So it's a public relations or no?

You can go ahead and give it over if you want.

Yeah, they got my video ready to go.

See, now you don't have to wear a shirt and tie tomorrow.

That's true. I was going to rehearse. I was going to rehearse. Yeah, that's it. The rehearsal becomes the real thing. If they'll pull up the video, we'll run the PR intro video. We don't have the PR intro video? Okay, we don't have it. Because it was ready for tomorrow. Right. Yeah. So here we go. Yeah. So the rehearsal becomes the actual show. So here we go. So here we go for the 2027 operating and the five-year CRP budget presentation. Let's see. There we go. The vision, mission, and values. Vision to elevate Rockdale County through transparent, ethical communication that builds trust, engages the community, and expands its visibility locally and nationwide. The mission, increase public awareness of all county policies, programs, and actions through open communication and citizen engagement. That's a big one because we want as much citizen engagement as we can get. Our three core values are quality communication, community engagement, and meaningful storytelling. So what are the opportunities and challenges as we go through the next year? Well, our successes will start there. We've increased community engagement across all social media platforms, which we are thrilled about. We've increased awareness of town halls and commission meetings. Attendance has gone up. Downloads of the RockGA app have increased. Awareness of the app has also gone up in number. We are getting ready to launch a text message system for non-emergency purposes to reach a high number of citizens. We believe that's going to create some big engagement. The debut of a county-focused community magazine. In fact, that delivery came on Friday, but we're holding it until our launch party. which is going to be coming up next month. We're really thrilled about that. And we have increased the awareness of achievements of the other departments across Rockdale County. So what opportunities do we have going into next year? Well, we want consistent communication across all platforms. That includes newsletters, text alerts, the Rock G app, social media. We'll even throw logos in there probably too. Consistent branding across everything. Use analytics and resident feedback to create more targeted effective messaging. That's something we want to do. Continued growth across all social platforms with a quality plus quantity approach. and utilize the talent of our AV team to maximize creative flow with new series campaigns, similar to what we were doing here with the budget presentations. We want more new series campaigns going forward. What are the challenges? Well, the department is in need of a social media specialist to manage and monitor all the multiple platforms, allowing the department leadership and other team members to focus on the other higher priority strategic initiatives. Having someone that can take those reigns is necessary. Staffing gaps have created overlapping responsibilities, highlighting the need for clearer role alignment and a defined leadership structure. Organizational priorities, transitional roles, and varied branding approaches can make it difficult to maintain that clear, unified identity for Rockdale County government that we're shooting for. So as we continue goals and initiatives for fiscal year 2027, Access, equity and innovation. So for access we want to expand reach and improve service delivery. Crisis communication plan refresher course. That's something that we want to do going forward. I'm happy that I have a certification in crisis communication I achieved a few months ago and we want to be able to lead that campaign in a plan refresh with all the other departments. Continued promotion of the Rock GA app. We've made significant strides in downloads, but we want to continue that moving forward. Launch of the TextMyGov system. I had my first training last week, another one scheduled for after budget hearings. So we're going to have that implemented and in place before the fall. Very excited about the possibilities with that. We also want to bring back a Meet the Media initiative to connect with internal and external stakeholders. Equity, building relationships with the media outlets while ensuring diverse communities' voices and perspectives are represented fairly and included in the outreach. We want to make sure no one in the county feels disenfranchised. We want everybody to be able to get all of our messaging. We want accessibility in messaging. We want to be ADA compliant. We want those formats across all communication tools. Our community education and connectivity campaign, Citizens Academy. We've increased it from once a year to twice a year. The new one begins at the end of this month. I'm excited about hitting the ground running with that. I know we've had a lot of applications and Looking forward to letting those citizens know which ones were accepted. Innovation. The Rockdale County rebrand. We want to have consistent logos for everything. We have, last I counted, I think 1,100 different logos. So we need to be able to try to get those down. Realistically, I think it's about 20, 25, but it's a lot. And we really need to try to get those down. We're going to continue the We Are All PR collaboration model. And we're going to have the tourism-focused marketing strategy with the launch of the magazine. We think that's going to help us considerably in being able to get tourism to increase. The operating budget summary, we are actually going to have a slight little decrease of about $5,500 from fiscal year 26 to fiscal year 27, going from $895,771 to $892,020. As we move forward, Here is the operating budget request from fiscal year 26 to 27. Now professional services, we're increasing that by $15,000. Technical services, we're increasing that by eight. Communications, we're reducing by eight to offset the cost of technical. And then advertising, we're jumping that up by 18. So I want to explain the reason why we have the jumps in there. The TextMyGov text messaging system, The county magazine, website management, Solia Media will all come out of the public relations budget. And I believe that a lot of those costs will be offset, if I'm correct, Chief Sanders, in the BOC budget for next year. So that is the reason why PR has the increases is because my department's going to be managing all of those accounts. And we're going to be the ones paying the bills for that. Now, I've also taken the task of trying to sell sponsorships for the magazine to offset the cost. And that, thankfully, we have a lot of advertisers locked in for a year. So that's going to mean we've already got a head start going into the January issue of the magazine. But the more sponsors we get over time, the less we're actually having to spend on the printing costs for the magazine. So the goal is over time, we're not really spending that money. So that's the game plan going forward. Operating budget request justification, and I was just talking about that. Professional services increasing that to cover the account for TextMyGov, their annual fee. Technical services increased to account for PR website management, Solia Media. Funding previously came from tech services, but that fund's no longer in service. It was transferred to PR in 2025. Communications were dropping that eight to decrease to account for a decrease in phone line usage. Our audio visual coordinators do not have county cell phones. Right now it's just myself and Janetta Owens. So we would decrease that. Advertising to increase to cover the cost of the Rockdale County Community Magazine. And so that's why we upped that by 18. This is the current organizational chart. director followed by deputy director and then that proceeds to the following five positions from fiscal year of this year programs manager public relations specialist audio and three audio visual coordinator positions those are your photographers and editors all the people that put together these videos that's their job we currently have two vacancies PR specialist and director position didn't you say you have a general manager No, ma'am. We have a programs manager. That's Jeanetta's position. Okay, okay. Yes.

Thank you.

And then going forward into next year, the big change is that we want public relations specialists reclassified to social media specialists. So that vacancy would switch to a new position and they would still have the same duties as public relations specialists, but they would really have a focus on managing all of the social media. Getting out the press releases, that would be their job. And someone that can hit the ground running, memorize the algorithms, know what's going to get a lot of traction, that's going to be their responsibility. And as far as the social media specialist position, salary plus 40% benefits, that comes to $59,703.28. This position creates a designated role that will manage social media across several channels Consistently upload content and manage comments and reply to messages With having this dedicated staff members social media can be better placed as a priority and a more effective tool to engage with the public our public relations specialist resigned back in January and the role of that position has been split between myself and the program's manager so we have been essentially doing that job. And I've been the acting department head since taking over the role. So it's certainly been a lot of different shuffling going on with the job, but we're making it work and getting it done.

Just wanted to clarify on that, that that amount, that is already budgeted. So the reclass is really just a title change. That funding is already in the budget. It's not an additional $50,000.

Thank you, Chief Sanders. Yes, yes. So it is a reclass. And we worked on that with the human resources department. So the five year capital improvement plan. So we have requested a total of $76,000 over five years. For 2027, we've asked for 48,000. 30 for a new public relations vehicle. 18 for technology programs and improvements. This will include new editing equipment for the audio-visual coordinators, and we've allocated 28 for that going into 2028. The objective is to try to keep the hardware updated on a five-year cycle. Some of the computers are dated 2019 models, and so they could use an update. And I know for our editors, they have really wanted some new PC equipment. They operate on Macs now and they really want PC hardware and that's something that we would certainly request and appreciate having. I know the AVs have certainly come to me numerous times saying that they would want their computers and systems updated. We've had tech services have to come out several times for crashes and things like that. So we really think having new hardware will help as far as the automotive equipment that we're asking for. I know last year there was plans in the budget for a third vehicle and it didn't happen. We're simply asking for that again just because there have been situations where I've had to be at a state of the county. We have one AV going to one event and then there's another event at the same time and we don't have a third vehicle. So having a third vehicle would certainly be appreciative for our department. And it actually is a replacement of one that we had a long time ago. We had a Ford Excursion. The transmission went out in that vehicle. The cost of replacing the transmission was just too high. So the plan was to swap that with a different vehicle. And that didn't happen this past year, but we're hoping that it will happen in 2027. And that's it.

Thank you. Any questions or anything?

Yeah, any questions or anything?

Good.

OK. We'll do the real one tomorrow.

You didn't do a video?

Just a dry rehearsal.

You don't have a video? See, it was supposed to air tomorrow, so they hadn't finished it. So all the ones that were supposed to be today, they were put in the last few tweaks on.

But we'll play it tomorrow, since you did that. Right. All right. So Commissioner Washington, we'd love to hear from you. And your team?

Send it to me and I'll put it on a flash drive.

Hmm. Hmm.

Good. Is it still morning? Good morning.

Good morning. How are you? Did you get it? Yes. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Good.

Okay, thanks. Hey.

It's the twenty to a seven budget.

Yes. Oh, the clicker. OK, thank you. That's fine.

Madam, while we wait, can we get all services up to the 120 timeframe? So let me go back up. OK. Oh, oh, that's weird. You popped up on my phone. Oh, did I? I guess it's really funny. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. OK. Yes.

I mean, are you coordinating this for other people? Oh.

The CFO. I was asking if we could move Naomi, no Amy Hayes, and animal services up to the 1.20 time frame, if possible.

Yes, since human resources already presented, so yes.

Just keep our date flowing. Yeah, keep going. And it's likely Director Peek will be done within an hour, so... Just have plenty here a little early. Okay, Commissioner, thank you for being here today.

Oh, thank you for inviting me. Am I standing between everyone and lunch? So I'll make sure. That's okay.

You have important information to share, and we're glad to see you.

OK. Good morning. Good morning, commissioners. Good morning, chairwoman. Thank you for the opportunity to present our budget request for 2027. I am your tax commissioner, Tisa Smart Washington. Damn.

Thank you.

OK. All right, so our vision, mission, and values in the tax commissioner's office, our vision is to steward the government experience where trust is built, service begins, and community partnership is made. Our goal is to act as the welcome center of the county. Most people will only go to the courthouse if something bad has happened. They will hopefully they would never have to visit the sheriff's office, but everyone in the community comes to the tax commissioner's office. And because of that, it's an opportunity for us to set the standard of what government is in Rockdale County and in Georgia. And we take that responsibility seriously. We want our office and operations in our office to be people-centered, forward-thinking, accessible, and respectful for everyone we serve. Our mission in the tax commissioner's office is to serve as a value partner in building community. We understand that every dollar we collect supports our schools, our neighborhoods, and the essential services that help our community thrive. We are committed to making the tax process simple, fair, and respectful. And we are guided by our tenants, which in the tax commissioner's office, we say we like to work smarter, and we focus on service, mission and metrics, accessibility, accountability, and accuracy, responsiveness, and we utilize technology, and we We prioritize transparency, and we do all of this under the umbrella. That's our ER, where we prioritize education and respect in everything that we do. All right for 2027, our goals and initiatives. We are focusing on five areas in 2027. First, we want to expand access to government services that falls in line with our accessibility tenet. It is my desire that any way a citizen or a stakeholder wants to engage with our community, they should be able to do so. Now, I feel that if you idealistically I feel that if you want to come to my office at two o'clock in the morning you should be able to do so practically that is not something that we can offer but we do offer a website that allows you to take care of all of the transactions whenever they whatever transaction you want to complete with our office in a time that's convenient to you so that's what I mean when I say I desire our office to be 100% accessible Whichever way a citizen wants to engage with us. They should be able to do it in that manner in that manner. So our first goal is to expand access to county services. Our second to improve operational efficiency through technology. One of the things that we've heard in our community meetings is that it takes a little bit of time for things to process through our office, especially when it comes to processing appeals and then getting refunds out to citizens. And it is because in our office, a lot of the processes are still manual. We mail out 40,000 tax bills, around 40,000 tax bills every year. And the majority of those payments that come in, they are It's not a machine. It's not AI. We actually have individuals in my office processing those individual payments. And so being able to utilize technology to speed up that process not only helps the employees in my office, but it also helps citizens to, again, receive those refunds if they're owed a refund. get those payments applied to their accounts if that's what they need done in a way that is faster than is being done now. Three, our goal is to develop a high performing workforce. One of the things that we have noticed is that our office at one time was a training ground for other offices. If you've ever been in a tax commissioner's office, you know that it is not the type of office where you can go to your local staffing agency and immediately put somebody on the line. There's a certain level of knowledge, there's a certain level of legislative understanding, education, that our employees develop. working in our office. And so we train them very well in the tax commissioner's office here in Rockdale County. And because the system is the same system that's used across the state, they can then go to DeKalb, Gwinnett, you know, our neighboring counties, and they're already trained and they can be paid more than what we pay them in my office. And so it is very important to me that we have the opportunity to not only train our workforce, but retain that workforce once they're trained. Because it just takes a lot. It takes about, what is it, Chief Deputy Todd, about 18 months for, they say, for someone to be fully trained in our office. And when you invest that amount of time and energy into developing an employee, you want to make sure that you're able to retain that employee. Four, to increase public education and taxpayer education. We know that the last couple of years tax relief has been the number one concern and priority for citizens and we are right at that intersection in my office and I think that the amount of time and energy and resources that we put into making sure that the public is educated that they understand the tax process, that they understand how these tax programs impact them and their individual household is important. The thing about what we've seen in the last couple of years is um you know legislation down at the the gold dome there may be 15 20 bills at one time that are being um discussed uh debated or passed and then we are charged with you know implementing those those changes whether they are there are some contradictions on um As far as the current process is concerned, some of the bills have contradictions within them. And I know our legislators mean well, but we are where the rubber hits the road. And so, you know, it is important to me that we're able to educate the public in an intentional way so that if they have any questions that we have people that can sit down with them, that we have opportunities for them to understand the tax process and that they understand how all of these changes impact them at their kitchen tables. Five, deliver accountable and data-driven government. One of the adages that I've heard lately is that you can't measure, you can't manage what you can't measure. And it is important to me that we're not making decisions in my office just based on how people feel or what they see, but that we are really looking at the data as a way to make sure that the changes that we're making, the policies that we're putting in place, the processes that we're developing have the impact that we're expecting. And we're doing all of this because we are guided by those tenets of service, mission and metrics, accountability, accessibility, accuracy, responsiveness, technology, and transparency. There's no way for us to know how well we're hitting that goal if we don't know what the goal is and we don't have the data to back that up. I was going to say, next slide please, and it's me. So our successes in 2026, or 2020 in the past year, we just expanded access to motor vehicle and property tax services. And that's just a continuation of the work that we're already doing. One of the highlights of Rockdale County is that we are the only county, actually, in the state of Georgia that has an emission station with a kiosk where where taxpayers can renew their registrations on their vehicles. They love it. I hear people that come into my office often and they're very excited about not having to come and see us. I don't know why that is, but anything that we can do to make them meet that tax obligation and get done what they need to get done as quickly and as efficiently as possible is something that we want to, that we're very proud of. So we're able to offer multiple ways for people to engage with our office. Enhanced organizational efficiency. This year we've gone through a restructuring in our office just to make sure that we're utilizing the human resources that we have available to us in the best possible way. And so we've asked for this year, or last year, we got two additional positions and this year you'll see in the budget we're asking for two additional positions. so that we can continue to maximize the organizational efficiency in our office. Increased taxpayer support, those two go hand in hand, and I'll get to that in just a second. We've strengthened public understanding. We've developed our SWAT team, and in the next couple of months, we hope to roll out our first class, and that's bringing citizens in and bringing stakeholders in so that they can learn tax administration and love it as much as I do. And it's not just talking heads, like we're sitting down and making sure that our stakeholders are educated about the process because it is my belief that every citizen should be able to sit at their kitchen table, do the same math that I get, and get the same numbers that I get. And if they don't, it may be a gap in education. It may be a gap in technology. It may be a mistake that we made on our part. But we want to make sure that we're strengthening those partnerships and that we are providing additional opportunities for the public to be as engaged with our office as they as they would like. And we built a future ready organization, again, that goes along with adding additional staff, making sure that our staff is cross trained, and investing a lot in training and development for our staff. Retention has been an issue in our office in the past, and we just want to make sure that when we find good people, we're able to keep good people. The opportunities that we see, we have opportunities to modernize our service delivery through technology, so we're looking to bring on new softwares and change out the software so that we can, again, process those transactions faster for you, get those refunds out quicker, and be a partner where we're able to provide, if you need assistance from our office, we're able to provide that in a timely manner. expand access to government services again we want to make sure that any way a citizen wants to engage with us that they are able to do that so looking at new opportunities for for us to do that or new partnerships we're looking at maybe developing some remote locations so that individuals don't necessarily have to come downtown to engage with our office But we're not looking to create a full-fledged satellite office that we can use technology to kind of bridge that gap there. Strengthen public education and trust. Again, I've already talked about our SWAT team, and we want to do more around that initiative. Inform better public policy through operational insights. One of the things that I understand as a tax commissioner, I'm on the administrative side. I do not write policy. But because I see the impact of that policy, I think that my office is one of the offices that's best positioned to act as a liaison between policy and administration. And a lot of times, I'll get a call or a request to translate legislation. So the legislators will say, this is what we want to do. And I'll say, well, if that is actually what you're trying to do, what you have written here won't get you there. But this is how we can get there. And so to serve as that liaison more in my office. And again, to build a future-ready organization, we want to continue building our staff. The challenges that we see, navigating a rapidly evolving tax environment. Again, every legislative session, amongst tax commissioners, we don't see this trend changing at all. But every legislative session, we see more and more legislation around tax administration. And we also want to make sure that we're advocating for our citizens as well as the entities that we represent because sometimes what is touted as tax relief. has an unintended consequence for our board of commissioners, for our school, for our city council. And I'm not in position to make that decision, but I am in position to make sure that you are fully informed, that you are fully aware of the implications of this type of legislation. And so that is a challenge, keeping up with all the changes that happened down at the Gold Dome. Bridging the gap between policy and public, again, being that liaison between our legislators and our citizens. Meeting rising customer expectation. We live in a world of technology. We live in a world of tap and go. And that is what our citizens expect from us. One of the big changes that we see coming down the pike is our mobile digital driver's license. So the legislation has already been approved by our state that an individual can choose to have a mobile driver's license or they can keep their physical driver's license. Well, in order to accept that mobile driver's license, you have to have technology in place that is costly at this time. In order to accept it, June of 2027, June of 2027, law enforcement is required to accept it. And so because we see that coming down the pike, next year we need to be in a position where our office is able to accommodate those citizens that have chosen to utilize that technology.

That'll be interesting because a lot of places scan the back of your license too, and I'm sure software accommodates for that, but.

Well, the difference between the mobile driver's license and what we see now is that the mobile driver's license actually verifies the information that's in the Department of Driver Services database, which is different than just, you know, if you have somebody that's really good at Photoshop, then they're able to create those documents with the mobile driver's license as a level of security, right? That is not available right now, but we have to be in position to accept that.

And what is the ballpark cost that you depend on?

We've met with a number of companies, and we're looking at about $250 a month per license.

Wait, what?

Yeah. Yes. It's very costly right now.

You sure you didn't miss a decimal?

No.

No. That's so expensive. It is very. How is that even cost justified? That does not make sense.

You know, everybody's going to this software as a service model. So you kind of just pay the subscription costs. And that's how they, I guess, recoup their costs from developing the technology. The issue, though, is that, and where I can't justify it right now, is that while adoption is growing, adoption is not to the point where a majority of people are coming in with a mobile driver's license. Of course, we're seeing younger people coming in with just that mobile driver's license. But I can't justify $250 a month when we're seeing two or three people with this mobile driver's license. In 2027, when the law mandates that it has to be accepted by law enforcement, I think that we'll see an increase. And even the Department of Driver Services, they've said that... You know, kind of the conundrum that they're in right now is that a lot of people won't use it because it's not accepted. It's not widely accepted, but it's not going to be widely accepted until a lot of people start using it.

So let's go back because I think I might have misheard you. So you said it's 250 a month per license. per license that you scan no no no no not not the per license okay okay yeah so if you have four people at the at the front counter yeah then that would be oh okay that makes more sense yeah i was thinking literally the license and i was like that that doesn't make any sense okay i understand thank you very much okay my apologies it's for per user license okay yeah that makes a lot more sense yeah but then we also can't have just one window right so it's let's go over this one more time it's 250 dollars per person that's licensed to use it yes and any other costs oh per month yeah that's the that's the so it'd be like mine would be 250 a month

Yours would be $250,000?

If you're working there. If you're operating the software. If you're working there. Right, if you're part of the tax machine. So for every window, not individual.

Oh, okay. Not individual employee, every window. But we have six windows. Yeah. Yeah. So we would have to have at least six licenses. Okay. And maybe a little more because when the lobby gets... crowded then we have people that come from the back and then they're able to process transactions as well.

But you know like many things that start out to be a great idea sometimes it's good to do that trial run like many programs that we've seen whether it's DocuSign or whatever there have been things that we've had to work out along the way. And I wonder if it's any different than like grocery stores that now have cash only, card only, that kind of thing. So there's a little bit more focus on where that person goes in the queue.

And really one of the things that we're seeing now is that Everyone is new to the space because mobile driver's license just came on board. We were at the meeting with the Department of Driver Services.

Was that last year? It was last year.

Last year. So it's just coming online in the state of Georgia. So we don't have a lot of vendors that already have a product that is ready to go.

Got it.

So they're doing the development on the back end just for us, and that's why the cost is as high as it is.

I see.

I think that we've met how many service providers have you been with?

I think we met all of them that were at the session that we attended.

I think it might follow the process like Real ID has done where you'll see several different lines where if you've still got your driver's license and then you've got your Real ID that you've gone through because when you do go get your mobile driver's license, you know, you have to go through this little process with driver services and then they finally upload it. Like mine's in my Apple wallet. Yeah. And but you're right, some places aren't accepting it, but it looks like it'll probably be like a phased in approach is what I'm hearing.

Same thing that right now, right now is is mostly accepted is accepted at the airport. And at State Farm, that's where people are using it the most.

So you can have a mobile license and still have your physical car?

Yes, but the law says that you can choose to have one or the other, and that's where the issue is coming in. Because as an individual, my daughter went out the other day, and she left her driver's license at home, and she was able to download the app on her phone and have access to her driver's license. And so I see young people adopting it quicker. I'm not as young. But because the law gives them the option to get rid of the physical driver's license, there is no way that we're able to turn them away if they do not have that physical driver's license. That's my concern. So we have to be able to accommodate them at some point. challenges developing and retaining knowledgeable workforce and balancing service demands with available resources we know the laws of economics are that there we have unlimited wants and limited resources and just like every other office and department in the county we are balancing how we serve citizens with the resources that we utilize to do so. To get as much, to be as efficient as possible.

Okay.

All right, so our operating budget for 2026 is $1.7 million. We are asking for an increase of $172,353 from fiscal year 2026 to fiscal year 2027. We're asking for a $52,000 increase to our operating expenses, and we're asking for those two positions which equate to $120,000 in benefits and salary. I like to think that it's a modest increase. Is that a way I can label that? The areas where we're asking for more than a $5,000 increase in our budget is in our communication line item. This is where we have our software and our services. Currently, we have allocated $52,928, and we're asking for an increase of $7,500. seven seven thousand six hundred dollars to that line item what we're doing here currently in our communication on our commit communication line item is where we take printing mailings for our renewal notices as well for our property tax bills there are two software expenditures that we don't have currently budgeted for that account for this $60,000 in our 2027 budget The first is our phone line. We share the cost of the phone with the Water Department, and that was actually not included in the budget, and we're coming back and asking for that as a part of our 2027 budget. That is a current contract between us, the Water Department, and Dialpad. And this is the service that we pay for outside of the county's regular phone service. It is a call center. that we're able to better serve citizens. And so we're asking for an increase in our budget to accommodate that. We are also asking for money in our budget that is currently allocated to our IT department. They pay for our property tax software. And through discussions, we thought that it made more sense for that to come out of our budget. And so although it will be an increase to our budget, it's not an increase in funding because that funding is already available to us in IT's budget. For our printing and binding, by law, we have two mail tax bills. And because of that, We are at the mercy of the United States Postal Service, so as they increase postage, we have no choice but to increase our budget requests there. So that printing and mailing includes the printing of our tax bill, the printing of renewal notices for your car registration, envelopes that we use to mail excuse me, the envelopes used to mail out those bills as well as the return envelopes that citizens use to mail those payments back to us. So that's all included in our printing and mailing. Right now we don't have that separated in our budget, and that's why our budget is going from $0,000 to $75,000. But we're just moving that funding from communication to that new line item.

Just a question. Are we obligated or mandated to provide those return envelopes as well?

Yes. All right. The two positions that we're asking for are both delinquent officer positions. We're asking that the salary and benefits equates to about $120,000 for two positions. One of the places that we have been understaffed in my office is in our delinquent collections. And for as much as people hear delinquent and it sounds a little punitive to them, this is really the staff that is charged with making sure that folks don't get to tax sale. So really having people in our office where we're able to make calls, that we're able to sit down with citizens, work out payment plans. I'm one of a few tax commissioners in the state of Georgia that offers payment plans to all stakeholders in our community. very few that offer payment plans to to just about anybody as long as you you've made good on payment plans in my office then you're able to utilize that every year because it is my goal to get you to pay the taxes not to take you to tax sale or take your property or anything like that we actually because I was running a little behind this morning we had a tax sale this morning and we started with about 300 plus properties and we took

How many to tax sale this morning?

18. And I always say that is a, I'm very proud of my staff because they work diligently to make sure that citizens are aware that they have options that are available to them that will prevent them from going to tax sale. And so we want to make sure that we have a dedicated staff that is able to concentrate on that.

Can you tell us about how much revenue you, let's just say today, were able to recover?

Well, when we sat down yesterday, we had about 38,000 parcels. I'm sorry, 38 parcels. Yesterday afternoon, we had 38 parcels that were still on tax sale, and that equated to about $60,000 in revenue. that we were able to recover all 60,000 between yesterday afternoon and today.

Is this still going on now?

No, it's over.

Okay. So what happened to those final 18?

All of the properties sold at tax sale this morning. Yeah, yeah. And so we have on the back end that we have, there's work on the back end that we have to do to make sure that those citizens are also informed that they have an opportunity to redeem that property for another year if they choose so, so.

So if they lost the property, they can buy it back in one year and pay a 10% premium?

It's a 20% premium, but also if there are any excess funds that resulted from the tax sale this morning, they are eligible to claim those excess funds to help them redeem that property.

Can you walk us through an example?

So if we have a property that's on the tax sale where the taxes due are $10,000, if it went to bid and the winning bid was $100,000, we're only able, by law, to take the $10,000 in taxes that was due. The other $90,000 is what we consider excess funds, and we hold on to those funds, and anybody who has an interest in the property can claim those funds at any time. Okay. So that they can, but not, they have to have a financial interest, let me say that, not just interested in the property. They have to either have a lien, they have to be an owner, they have to have a financial, a mortgage company that holds title.

Like a legal interest, like you have a document in hand that says, you know, like you're saying that I have leaned this property for services or I was part of the deed and it was sold, not just your...

Yeah, so not just interested in the property.

That's a legal interest, yes.

And it's usually going to be an heir. Yes, it's usually going to be an heir or someone who's a business owner or a partner in that business. Those are the type of people that have a legal interest in the property.

Actually, your department could do the work for a family member by selling it. And they can take those $90,000 in proceeds in theory and fix up the house, live in it. Is that how that works?

Well, we can't say what they can do with it, but usually what happens is that they'll take the $90,000 and they'll use that as a part of the recovery for the person that bought it at tax sale. So they would still have to come up with the additional $10,000, the original taxes that were due. They would have to come up with that outside of the $90,000.

Yeah, but they pay the $10,000.

If they pay the $100,000 plus the 20% premium, then they're able to redeem that property. And they have at least a year and a day to do that. So we work with them, make sure that they are in contact with the buyers, that they fill out the proper paperwork. Sometimes we do have to turn it over to the courts, but that's all a part of our after-sale process.

I know you do payment plans for business taxes as well. We do.

We do.

Yep.

Again, my goal is not to sell any property. It is always, and I tell my staff all the time, it is always my goal to get to the tax sale and we have zero properties. That is always the goal. Zero is always the goal.

And that is all for me. Okay.

Any questions? Do you have any questions? Okay. Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. So I think it's a lunch break now and next will be Parks and Recreation at 1 o'clock.

So if we want, we could move them back a little bit to 1.15 if that would make it better since we have a little space in the schedule. Yeah, that's fine. So 1.15? Do you want to go back up?

So like 30 minutes for lunch and then we'll pick back up at 1.15?

Yes, I think that would work. And then I think we'll have time to still move up animal services somewhere so they might want to.

Yes, they will be here earlier. All right, 115. Okay.