This meeting, held on April 27, 2026, was the second round of public budget meetings for Fiscal Year 2027. The session was dedicated to departmental presentations; no public comments were taken, but a dedicated public hearing will be scheduled in the coming weeks.
All right, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the second round of the public budget meetings for fiscal year 2027. I just want to remind the public that while comments will not be taken during these sessions. We wanted to be clear that your input is important. There will be a dedicated public hearing schedule in the coming weeks. Where residents will have the opportunity to share comments, ask questions, and provide feedback on the proposed budget. Okay, first up, we have juvenile court. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here. Hello. Thank you. I am the presiding judge in juvenile court. My name is Leslie Miller Terry, and I'm here with our court administrator, Colin Slay, who basically handles the day-to-day operations. Here we go. As far as the budget is concerned, and the administration of the office. So let's begin, Mr. Slay. And before you move forward, I just want to uh give the public um uh explanation of what they see on their screen. So what we have on the visual is um from our accounting software MUNIS. So this is basically our budget in electronic format. And so starting from my left, you have the a full account number, the object class number, as well as the description of the account line item. You also have the 2027 department uh amount which was submitted. Uh you also have the 2026 2027 recommended amount as well as the revised budget amount for fiscal year 2026 and the actual for fiscal year 2026 as well. All right. Would you like me to go line by line? Or should we just jump into what we had prepared was to start with the three top items on our budget? Sure. That we are asking uh for as and these are increases from last year. Okay. So we wanted to start there because the most important as far as we're concerned as far as increase. Uh last year, uh excuse me, Judge Milletier, because they're recording. Can you speak closer to the microphone to make sure they hear it back in the back? All right. Well, let's start. We want to start with the indigent defense budget. All right, that would be if we can scroll up or scroll down to item, I believe it's 11. Well, can't see that on your screen. There it is. All righty. All right. Now the fiscal year 2026, the amended budget was 305,000. This year we're asking for an increase to 495,000. Now the reason for that increase, we're asking for three full-time parent attorneys as well as three full-time children attorneys, which is recommended, or not recommended, required by our statute. The section OCGA 1511 103 requires the appointment of attorneys uh to parties in dependency cases. These cases involve the children and families. These are the child welfare cases. Most people don't realize juvenile court handles the bulk of these cases. Um I'll give you an example. You all, something that was in the media.