Clayton County FY26 Q1 & Q2 Performance Review - January 13, 2026
Clayton County Performance Review (CPR) – January 13, 2026
On January 13, 2026, starting at 2:15 PM, the Clayton County Board of Commissioners held a performance review meeting for the first two quarters of Fiscal Year 2026. Department heads presented on their missions, key performance indicators, challenges, and future initiatives. The meeting featured nine presentations covering transportation, IT, procurement, extension services, senior services, elections, tax assessment, corrections, and human resources. No public comments or consent calendar items were included; the session was focused on internal reporting and planning.
Discussion Items
Transportation Development (Director Jeff Mitarco)
- Major project: Mount Zion Boulevard/Power Creek Road widening – behind schedule due to utility company delays, ~2 years from completion.
- Comprehensive Transportation Plan (CTP) initiated to align with ARC and improve grant competitiveness.
- Record Sidewalk project completed.
- Staffing: 30% vacancy for 8 years; proposed salary enhancements to retain talent.
- Challenges: utility delays and workforce shortages; solutions include constant communication and legal agreement enhancements.
Information Technology (Interim CIO Matthew Hutchison)
- Serve 80 staff managing end-user support, training center, cybersecurity, and county digital platforms.
- Launched One Meeting platform; received mixed feedback; committed to ADA compliance later this year.
- Emphasized the department's role in supporting all county operations and security.
Central Services (Jalise Williams on behalf of Chief Procurement Officer Carol Rogers)
- Mission: ethical procurement, supplier relationships, small/local business support (SLBE program).
- Achieved 5th consecutive Achievement of Excellence in Procurement (AEP) award.
- Processed ~4,000 purchase orders with average cycle time under 10 days.
- Implemented online defensive driving course and vendor evaluation system.
- Surplus property sales returned $1 million to county.
- Challenges: staff retention; proposed tier levels and certification incentives.
Extension Services (Quanzaria Dupree for interim director Rebecca Aka)
- Goal: 50 programs and 1,500 participants per quarter; missed due to understaffing and interim leadership.
- Focused on health, food systems, youth development, and family well-being.
- Strengthened volunteer recruitment and cross-training; partnering with county departments and community organizations.
Senior Services (Interim Director Melissa Mars Bristol)
- Exceeded goals: 41 positive aging activities (802% of annual target), 83 staff trainings (71% participation).
- Enrollment surged from 5,805 in Q1 to 19,979 in Q2, driven by partnerships with National Council on Aging, ARC, and Access Benefits.
- Facility challenges at Frank Bailey and J. Cheerley Griswell senior centers; SPLOST-funded upgrades underway.
- Selected for ARC video highlighting program impact.
Board of Registration and Elections (Director Shauna Dozier)
- Multiple elections held (July PSC runoff, November general/municipal).
- Voter wait times reduced (23 sec in July, 44 sec in November) and voter satisfaction at 4.88–4.9 out of 5.
- Two managers hold national Certified Elections/Registration Administrator (CERA) certification; deputy director published in national journal.
- Future initiative: multilingual ballot access; attended workshops to prepare.
Tax Assessors (Chief Appraiser Emmett George)
- Assessed 6,800+ appeals (down from 8,300 previous year) with only 272 remaining; processed to Board of Equalization.
- Sales ratio study: 39.1% (within state target of 36-44%); coefficient of dispersion 4.29 (lowest in 13 years); price-related differential 1.0008 (near perfect).
- Challenges: rising travel costs for appraiser testing (state exams now in Savannah/North Georgia).
- Implemented mobile field project and online business return filing via Q Public platform.
- 99% of appeals resolved in-house, minimizing court costs.
Corrections (Interim Warden Ray Amy)
- Operates county prison (max 256 inmates) housing only low-risk inmates for county work crews; staff 100+ inmates daily saving $4 million/year.
- Code Enforcement and Refuge Control divisions handle landscaping, trash pickup, and ordinance compliance.
- Staffing shortages due to salary disparities; cross-training and ongoing recruitment.
- Future consolidation of code enforcement divisions and launch of dedicated code enforcement court to speed adjudication.
- Goal: end landscape contracts by regaining in-house capacity.
Human Resources (Director Pam Ambles)
- Serve 3,537 employees; HR ratio 66% (industry ideal 100%).
- Offered 41 professional development classes with 95% attendance; annual career fair attracted 1,000+ attendees, resulting in 4 confirmed hires and 10 pending.
- Health care: $380,000 wellness budget established with MMA; wellness initiatives (One Step Closer program).
- Challenges: time/resources; exploring AI and process improvements.
- Succession planning emphasis: cross-training, giving staff autonomy; working on policy updates (civil service rules, sexual harassment prevention).
Key Outcomes
- Departments reported mixed progress: many exceeded targets in education/engagement (Senior Services, HR, Elections) while facing staffing and utility delays (Transportation, Corrections).
- No formal votes were held; the meeting served as a progress review.
- Next session scheduled for January 14, 2026, at 9:00 AM.
- Citizens encouraged to submit questions via CPRquestions@ClaytonCountyGA.gov.
- Overall, the county aims to improve service delivery, address workforce shortages, and leverage technology and community partnerships.
Meeting Transcript
Hey good morning, everyone. Greetings and salutations. Good morning, everyone. My name is Dietrich Stanford. I serve as the Chief Operating Officer for the Clayton County Board of Commissioners. We uh like to welcome everybody again to our CPRs, which is the Clayton County performance reviews. We're really looking forward to this 2026 as we continue to endeavor to try to provide the best services to our citizens here in Clayton County. Again, the CPRs as an overview is an opportunity to hear from our collective leadership about goals and objectives and the missions that they're pushing forth in their respective departments. It is our goal is that through these interactions, you have a better understanding of how we go about doing the work in Clayton County, and hopefully you feel that we're providing the services that are needed to our citizens throughout. If you have any questions, we encourage you to go to CPR questions at Clayton County GA.gov. That gives you an opportunity to interact with the respective departments, and more importantly, give us better insight about things that we can continue to do better here in Clayton County. So with no further delay, we'll start with our CPRs and we'll have our first leader come forth. Good morning. My name is Jeff Mitarco. I am your transportation development director for the county. Uh to get us started, first thing you're going to notice is a little different in this CPR is this one covers two performance review periods, quarter one and quarter two of fiscal year 26. Also of note, if you've seen any of our previous CPRs, these are going to be slightly different because we've been asked to include a couple of additional items in the presentation. As you can see from the slide, um, I've listed our mission statement for our department, um, key services and functions, staff overview, and our strategic pillar alignment. Um the thing I would like to mention or point out to you is we provide services on a couple of different areas. Transportation related services is our main focus, and we also govern the landfill and our fleet operations. We are currently divided into six divisions to deliver the services to the citizens, and we have a hundred and fifty-four full-time positions and five part-time positions. We indirectly touch every strategic pillar in the county, uh, but I've highlighted quality of life. That is our main one our transportation projects address every day of the week. So for our departmental performance management, I wanted to give a a overview of how our goals align to the strategic pillars. You can see our our goals are highlighted in the darker color. We have pedestrian safety initiatives, road improvements, uh, transportation planning, staff hiring and retention, staff training, and waste disposal with the strategic pillar it aligns to adjacent to it. There are several different ways we um judge our performance. Um as you can see under, for example, pedestrian safety initiatives, we have eight data points, essentially eight projects that we are reporting on, our progress and how we are delivering these services to the citizens. Operationally, um I'm gonna highlight three projects this review period. The first one is the biggest and most expensive one the county's ever undertaken from a construction standpoint, our Mount Zion Boulevard Power Creek Road Widening Project. As you can see from the graph, um it's progressing on. Um it's been in the works for quite a few many years, and we're looking at about two years away from what we believe is going to be the construction completion. Um this is a quality of life project which will enhance the east-west mobility in the central part of the county. Um as you can see from the status screen, we are behind schedule, and that's uh directly related to utility companies from the private sector, and I'll get more into that later in the presentation. The next project I want to highlight is our comprehensive transportation plan. This this project just got started the last couple of quarters. It's a quality of life project. It's one that is vital to our operation of our department and the county in identifying the future needs of transportation related and mobility-related projects in the county. It directly ties into the Atlanta Regional Commission, and it is vital to have an active plan in order to be competitive for federal and state grant opportunities. And I'll touch a little bit more on the what we call our CTP later on in the presentation. The last project I'm going to hire highlight is our Record Sidewalk project. This project is complete. This is why we are working every day to deliver projects, and this one has been delivered, so this is kind of like the post-cyon R. You are never hear about this project again because it is completed. But this is what we're striving for. So challenges and proposed solutions. You're here throughout the CPRs. There's a lot of challenges and a lot of creative ideas that the department directors have. In our department, the first challenge we have is for over eight years now, we've been 30% vacant of staff. That leads to inability obviously to perform some of our functions.
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