The Clayton County Board of Commissioners held a work session on February 12, 2026, to receive staff and consultant presentations on MARTA’s quarterly update, the Medical Examiner’s Office long-term plan, CCWA grants, library hours, curbside waste collection, retiree health benefits, local incentive policy, and economic development. The agenda packet lists the meeting as September 10, 2024, at 5:30 PM; the meeting date provided for this summary is February 12, 2026. No formal votes were taken at the work session.
All right, here and now we can go into our presentations. First one is our Martha Q3 quarterly update. Mr. Greenwood, how are you, sir? Good, thank you, sir. How are you? Going well, thank you. All right, well, good evening, everyone. Um, Chairman Turner, members of the board of commissioners, glad to be joined uh by uh remotely by our Marta board members, Chair Kathleen Powers and Valencia Williamson. I'm also um happy to meet uh Miss Alina Reeves, our new uh board member or commissioner, and happy to have your expertise as well. She's uh Commissioner Alana. Am I messing it up too? Or did he say that? Oh, I'm the one saying it in properly. I can call anything. Okay, all right. I apologize, Mr. Quite Alright. Thank you, right. All right. So, you know, we've got uh a number of uh accomplishments that we'd love to report on this evening, uh, from completing our bus shelter amenity program on time as promised to submitting our CIG grant application for South Lake, hosting a lot of community engagement this past quarter, and uh even winning um the the country's uh transit agency of the year award. We've had a very productive third quarter, and I'd like to just jump. Congratulations on that. Thank you. Thank you. Uh we'll share these updates along with some capital expansion progress and other interesting news. So the first thing operationally is to just you know the continuous um watch on our ridership year over year improvement. We can see that um our mobility and our streetcar modes have almost made it back to pre-pandemic levels, and we can see that bus and rail continue to make I won't say struggle, but they are they are gradually making their way back to pre-pandemic levels. Um we continue to do the things that we need to do to clear the way and clear the path, and we're encouraged by some solid indicators like increased off-peak ridership, increased weekend ridership, and increased special events ridership. So the elasticity is there, the customers know we're there, it's just a matter of getting their habits back, and we're we're very positive that that this will happen. I mentioned the five-year bus amenity program, so there it is. We we can safely now say that um 70% of people in Clayton County that are waiting for a bus are waiting where they are being served by an amenity. And so a hundred and fifty of this um 1,000 amenity program uh happened right here in Clayton County. And we're not resting on our laurels. We're now talking about phase two. We're recognizing that we want to get some canopies in there, some micro shelters, some LED lighting, and continue that conversation. So I want to step back and thank you and the community for constantly engaging with us and giving giving us ideas about where these amenities needed to be placed. It's not just in the high uh ridership locations. There are some some specific locations that you all pointed out to us, and we look forward to that kind of um uh collaboration in phase two. And of course, one more time. Here's a picture of what that means. These are not just words, but um there it is. A picture is worth a thousand words. Everything's new, everything's different, everything says that we care about the customer. Um, down to you know, concrete pad underneath, so you're not standing in water. There's a bench there so you can have a seat. There's shade over top, there's information inside the shelter. There's even information um embedded inside of that new modern bus stop there. So it's got the QR code that you can tell uh using a cell phone when your next vehicle is coming, and it also lists the routes that are serving that spot. So uh a lot of improvement in this program.