Note: The agenda and transcript date this session as October 8, 2024, but the provided meeting metadata says February 12, 2026; this summary uses the metadata date and notes the discrepancy.
The Clayton County Board of Commissioners held a work session to review preliminary items for the October 15, 2024 regular business meeting (per agenda), receive departmental updates, and discuss courthouse/bailiff compensation, a proposed blight tax, parks and recreation, and the 2025 Anthem self-funded medical renewal. The agenda also included an FY 2024 unaudited financial update and a Game Changer Nation report, but the transcript excerpt does not capture the former and shows the latter was skipped or not presented. No formal votes were taken.
At the five, we still say, do you still want to deliberate or you want to go home? So it always gives an opportunity to go home. I think they missed something about uh there was something mentioned about a jury being out to midnight and all those type things. Well, that's happened once in my eight years. It happened in my courtroom. Uh the jury got the case at 5 30. Of course, this was the Thursday before Good Friday. And they said, Well, Judge Maggie, can we stay? I said, Well, yeah, we'll check back on you. And they stayed and about seven o'clock, we just checked on them again and said, Look, Judge, tomorrow's good Friday. We ain't going to work. We ain't planning on coming back here tomorrow. So we're going to finish this case. No matter how long it takes, we're gonna stay. And so they stayed, wouldn't leave, and they stayed to 1215, came back with a verdict. But that's the only time that's ever happened uh in the eight years I've been here, and another judge had gone that late. So it's not a routine thing that happens. They always get an opportunity, they decide if they want to stay late. Okay, so I want to make sure that y'all understood that that is not the norm. That was an exception, but anytime it's after five, it's because the jurors themselves said we want to stay late, we want to finish this case because we don't want to come back tomorrow. Okay. Now, with regards to the bailiffs, the uh I think there was something about $15 an hour, uh, I would ask you not to do that. Right now, our bailiffs work part-time. And we got enough of them right now to work part-time. And what we do is the way it's set up right now, they get $80 per diem. And they usually we can make sure they just work 20 hours because it's part-time. And so they get the $80 per diem. So if they're there, say for example, 20 hours, we might get them four hours a day, and so they get $80 per day. Okay, so if you gave them, you better try to give them $15 an hour, it'd be a cut in their pay, and we would lose all of our bailiffs. Okay. Now, I do think when it comes to the grand juror bailiff, uh, they're usually there, I would say probably at least six hours a day. But it's only one day. They're there on a Wednesday, and that's it. The other bailiffs that are there, they're there pretty much 20 hours a week. And the only ones that I am concerned about are the ones who are there for the jury. Like, for example, that one that stayed to midnight, those two had to stay to midnight because the jury was there till midnight. But when we have jury trials, we might need to look at doing something with those bailiffs because they are working as long as we're this. They're not working 20 hours a week. They may work 40 hours that particularly week when we have a jury trial. And we need to come up with some kind of way to compensate them uh because they're working, make it make working 40 hours, 30 to 40 hours rather than 20 hours a week. And what I would recommend uh for those would be like maybe maybe instead of $80 per diem per day, is to give me give them $100, which is $20, you know, extra per day for those jury trials. And so $100 per diem for those who have jury trials, it's only doing jury trials, which are done probably once once a week. I mean, excuse me, once a month normally by each judge. And so we can just compensate those type bailiffs who are working 35 to 40 hours a week when they're doing jury trials, that would be appreciated. But don't give them $15 an hour, just leave it like it is, just figure out a way to compensate those that are working 35 to 40 hours as opposed to 20 hours. So let me clarify something for my own edification. Uh you have jury trial. There's what five in you. Yes. And you each of you have a jury trial.