On August 12, 2026, starting at 9:00 AM, the Clayton County Board of Commissioners held Day 1 of its Clayton Performance Reviews (CPRs). Chief Operating Officer Dietrich Stanford opened the meeting, saying department leaders would report on third- and fourth-quarter fiscal year performance (January–June 2026), including successes and challenges. No formal board votes were recorded during this performance-review session. Citizens were invited to email questions to CPRquestions@ClaytonCountyGA.gov, and the remaining departments were scheduled to present on Day 2.
Greetings and salutations to our citizens. We again we thank you for participating and being a part of our CPRs, effectionally known as our Clayton Performance Reviews. This is an opportunity that we give to our leadership to provide you an update about the respective progress they're making in their departments via their operational plans. What should we hear from each other respective leaders? They will give you an overview of things that they are working towards within their respective departments. They'll talk specifically about the successes and possibly even some of the challenges that they're encountering throughout our respective county. Primary thing that we want you to take away is that one of the reflective components in space is that you will see a report that gives you the third and fourth quarter of our previous fiscal year, which runs from January through June of this year. They'll give a look back period, provide you better insight, and give you a perspective that hopefully will give you a sense of that the county is moving in the right direction, and we set forth a success path that's reflective for all that we do in the county. Um again, uh we thank you for participating. Um I'm Dietrich Stanford. I'm the chief operating officer for the Clayton County Board of Commissioners. And again, we just thank you for participating over the next two days. If you have any questions, we ask that you go and provide your questions to CPR questions at Clayton CountyGA.gov. Again, that's CPR questions at Clayton County GA.gov. That gives you an opportunity to pose any of your questions and we'll be timely at responding to your questions as need be. So with that, we'll get into our presentations for the morning. So good morning, everyone. My name is Tim Sweat, and I have the honor of serving as your fire chief and EMS director, and I will be presenting our fiscal year 26 Q3, Q4 performance review. So quick department overview. So our mission statement. Clayton County Fire and Emergency Services delivers innovative emergency response, comprehensive all-hazard mitigation, and impactful public safety education. Through consistency, clear communication, and strong collaboration, we are committed to ensuring our community is a safe place to live, work, and play. And once again, our mission statement was updated on December 1st of last year as part of the rewrite of our strategic plan for the next five years, which was just recently approved by the Board of Commissioners in July. Some key services and functions. Clayton County Fire and Emergency Services provides comprehensive emergency response through fire suppression, advanced life support EMS, rescue operations, and special operations to protect life, property, and the community infrastructure. The department emphasizes prevention and preparedness through fire code enforcement, community risk reduction, training, and an interagency coordination with advanced patient care through initiatives such as our whole blood program in partnership with Southern Regional Medical Center. Supported by strong administrative services and in focus on employee wellness and organizational resilience, CCFES remains committed to operational excellence, innovation, and community trust. We are staffed with 400 personnel operating under six separate divisions. Of those 487 personnel, 417 of those are 85.6% are assigned to the 17 fire stations. Those men and women work a 24-owned forty eight off schedule. The remaining 70 of our personnel or the remaining 14.4% are assigned to our administrative offices and work Monday through Friday. Quick high-level overview or organizational chart. Once again, the fire chief EMS director sits at the top. I have two assistants that work with me. First goal I want to report out on is our maintaining our vacancy rate at 6% or below, which aligns with the BOC Pillar of Professional Growth Management. As you'll see in crew in Q3, we wound up with a 9.0% vacancy rate. That dropped a tad bit to 7.29 in Q4. So how we are addressing our vacancies is the development through our local workforce by increasing our high school pathway student enrollment. I spoke about our high school pathway and many other CPRs. So we are looking at uh school year 26-27. We'll have 23 estimated seniors returning for their senior year. We are also looking at the potential for 48 juniors, which will be onboarded this school year that will become part of our two-year program. Um solutions we've implemented to try to address retention and attrition. A lot of our attrition is related to initial education and the minimum state requirements that those initial recruits must pass. So we implemented a remediation program several years ago. So during Q3 and Q4, after multiple remediation attempts, we had first 15 personnel who were ultimately successful with our final AMT testing and became civil service protected. We have recruit class 2601 that began on April 25th. So there's currently 30 recruits on our training grounds going through our training program. Recruit class 2602 will start next Monday morning and we'll have 35 additional recruits. Next goal is reducing our fire response times by evaluating our deployment strategies.