Remarks by Bob Ellis
208 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 7 of 9
- Play at 2:21:13
“What we do, that when we have budget presentations by just as we have always had, right, whether it's in the prior process or the other process, you know, any commissioners or staff are welcome to sit in there and listen to the presentations, those budget presentations by those individual departments.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:21:36
“By the open meetings law is what I'm saying. They were not set up as open meetings, you know, last year.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:21:43
“It would be the same process in terms of the budgetary. The manager staff would decide, you know, the cadence for bringing in individual departments, do their budget presentations, that sort of stuff, just as they have done. I don't think we advertised those particular sessions as open meetings because we did not have a quorum of the Board of Commissioners there, and we do not have a quorum of the Board of Commissioners sitting at these either.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:22:33
“The group has no formal ability to adopt a budget. I mean, they're just coming back and assimilating a proposed budget back to this body. We will adopt it.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:23:44
“Well, if it's interpreted that when we do meet that there need to be notice and have open meetings, we'll do that.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:24:02
“Well, we can have them run it down. I mean, I've been doing this for 12 years, and I don't think we noticed those meetings when we had individual budget hearings before.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:24:13
“We did. Well, we did. No, I know. We've had formalized budget commissions. We've had budget ordinance. We've had budget commissions. We've had a budget commission where the commissioner said no.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:36:57
“Yeah, I'll just close by saying, look, whether you're on the Board of Commissioners, you're going to have an equal role in development of a budget. You can have as much influence on it as you choose to. And, you know, that really involves you kind of rolling up your sleeves, talking to your other commissioners, helping to build consensus around things, you know, all of that stuff that takes place, right? I've been on this commission for a while, and believe it or not, once upon a time, I was a new commissioner, and I spent a lot of time going in, actually, in that first budget cycle I was…”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:48:15
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think there is that the Amazon meta references are more just like the types of companies, right, and then the line 15 gets into more of the definitional piece of it, but, you know, If you want to add a specific one in there, that's fine, right? A reference to it. Yeah, I mean, at least open AI.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:48:40
“And, you know. And then urging to all development authorities. Urging to all development authorities throughout Fulton County. Yeah, that sounds good.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:50:57
“I'm just. This is really a definition of the hyperscaler data centers, which are the ones that have been brought into question, was where that language came from.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:53:53
“Chair, I mean, if you would all permit me, there's a discussion item related to data centers that I'd take probably like five minutes on. It might be informational just to share that right now, if we could adjust the agenda to bring that forward.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:54:16
“On page 12. 260466. It's just a quick thing on growth and assessed value for data centers.”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 2:54:51
“There's been some discussion about commercial assessments and that sort of stuff. But these are real numbers and real results. You can't translate them necessarily into tax dollars right now because things could be subject to appeal and so forth. But there are two slides real quick to show in terms of just the magnitude and the importance of these things and getting them right from an assessment standpoint and then ensuring that they're not abated, et cetera. This will show you that we had, I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing this is clearly from a dollar number, but probably from a…”
Board of Commissioners · Aug 5, 2026
- Play at 1:12:38
“I think I was looking for, so these are the accurate numbers, is that correct? Correct.”
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026
- Play at 1:12:47
“Okay, question on, well are they or are they not? We still have a TBD noted in that July separation bucket. That's correct.”
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026
- Play at 1:13:06
“Okay, but below, okay, all right, okay. So the net new we have is, our goal is 200, correct? Correct. It's July 9th, and we're at 25. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you for providing the average days of hiring. Those, just so I understand it, those are for folks, average hiring time for folks who are specifically doing this type of work, right? Not in the sheriff's office.”
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026
- Play at 1:13:44
“Okay. It might be interesting to also understand... what those measurements are for, in the Sheriff's Department, outside of these jail detention rules. Can we determine that?”
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026
- Play at 1:14:07
“And then do one with and without. I'm specifically interested in this sort of non-detention population to see if... see if the sort of same issue exists, you know, maybe indicative of two different screening practices for different types of individuals or not. So things like, you know, I guess in that reasons why somebody would be disqualified would be things like They have existing criminal indictments against them, that kind of thing?”
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026
- Play at 1:14:44
“Okay. All right. Just curious on that. All right. All right. Thank you.”
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026
- Play at 1:36:19
“Yeah, just a couple points. We contracted with a group who was able to get how many people hired and brought into the jail in a very expedient amount of time? How many people? That are working in the jail with the allied contract? Oh, allied.”
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026
- Play at 1:36:40
“It's about 100 FTEs. 100 FTEs, right. And that got stood up in fairly rapid order. I believe when we ran the job analysis and so forth and the study and so forth, and I think this was confirmed in the monitor's report, that the sheriff's office is actually top-heavy and has hired... more people in non-officer administrative positions, is that correct? That was a finding in our staffing report that was completed. I think the monitor did acknowledge that in the report. I cannot recall. But anyway, it's acknowledged somewhere in one report, one way or the other. And the reason I say that is…”
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026
- Play at 1:49:54
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026
- Play at 1:51:15
“So was it, for it to occur, was it contingent upon state funding or would there be some sort of option for us to fund that independent of state funding?”
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026
- Play at 1:51:45
“It shouldn't be, but I just remember, I thought I remembered some discussion at that time, which would be odd.”
Board of Commissioners · Jul 15, 2026