Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the committee of the whole.

Today is May 5th, 2026.

I am presiding officer and District 4 Commissioner Shakira Johnson.

We will get started with our committee reports.

Commissioner Ted Terry will go first with his FAB report.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

Um the finance audit budget committee last met on Tuesday, April 28th.

Uh we were joined by myself, Commissioner Shakira Johnson, Commissioner Michelle Long Spears, and Commissioner Robert Patrick.

Uh we went over briefly the condominium complex water billing debt and uh spoke with CEO Williams and County Attorney Phillips on uh continuing that discussion in the FAB meeting um and uh the county uh law department will provide a timeline on their strategy to address the uh condo complex water billing um issues and so it sounds like we got some ideas in mind, so that's positive, and we just want to keep that at the top of the agenda for the FAB committee.

We also went over or we deferred item 1525 um to the meeting this afternoon, madam chair.

So we'll talk about the uh water customer bill of rights.

Um Zach, we did ask um if y'all would review the the resolution and come back to the committee with any feedback you might have.

Um I believe we're doing most of the things in the resolution, but uh let's just you know go through that if we can today.

And then I did present on the uh item 0158, uh, which is the resolution to establish a fiscal policy called the for the people AI Tech Dividend Fund.

And so I provided uh printouts and handouts.

I believe we did email the presentation uh to all the commissioners.

Um I know at the last meeting there were some questions uh from the floor about what this resolution is and does, and I think if you go back and watch the committee meeting or you know, review the PowerPoint, uh those those answers will be very uh very uh present.

And we concluded the meeting a little bit early.

At 257 p.m.

Yield back, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner Terry.

Commissioner Masaya for the PECS report.

Thank you so much, Madam PO.

Good morning to all.

Thank you, Madam PO.

I'm the Commissioner Nicole Messiah, and I have the honor to serve as the PECS Chair, Planning, Economic Development, and Community Services, along with committee members Commissioner Robert Patrick, District 1, and Commissioner Long Spears from District 2.

Our last regularly scheduled meeting was April 29th, and those in attendance were myself, Commissioner Patrick, Commissioner Long Spears, and Commissioner Terry joined along with there were 10 printed items on the agenda, five of which were recommended for approval.

Five items were um recommended for deferral.

All due back to the Board of Commissioners on 512, 2026.

We also present uh had a presentation by Director Alan Mitchell from community development.

Um his item was approved out of committee, and I wanted to ensure uh well highlight excuse me that the DeCAP CARES Pumbling program funding is available to our residents.

Um that amount is 9.9 million dollars.

And so um residents of uh of the CAP County, please do take care take that and look into so you can take advantage of that, excuse me.

Um we uh know in our account uh we had our CAUT evening meeting on uh 6-2.

We'll have even more engaging dialogue uh around the agenda items related to data centers.

We also uh continue those discussion in PECS, and we uh will uh continue to address the text amendment and make certain that the concerns that are shared by our constituents are reflected and we have the necessary protections in place.

That ends our um our committee meeting, our next PECS meeting is Tuesday, May 12th at 3 30.

And I yield back to you, Madam P.O.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Massaia.

Next we'll go to Commissioner Bolton for the ERPS committee report.

Good morning, everyone.

I am Ladina Bolton, Super District 7 Commissioner and Deputy Presiding Officer, but I also chair ERPS committee, which is employee relations and public safety.

At our last meeting on April 21st in attendance, we did have committee members, uh Commissioner Davis Johnson and Commissioner Messiah, but also joining us.

We had Commissioner Patrick Spears and Terry.

During that meeting, we had a few agenda items.

It wasn't too many on there, but 2026 0532.

This was a request for fire stations 5, 16, and 27, 26 million dollars or just over 26 million dollars.

It was deferred.

We had not had that item come back from audit as of yet, so we look forward to hearing more about that at the next meeting.

Under police services, there are a couple of items 2026 0592.

That of course was approved because this was uh an amendment to the fiscal year 2026 Metro Atlanta multi-jurisdictional DUI task force.

This was a grant in the amount of $30,000 or just over $30,000.

So we were proud that our public safety or police department was able to receive that.

Item 20260635 was also approved for the police department.

And this was to obtain a subscription to leads online power plus investigations.

This is to help them search for and identify stolen items, potential suspects, and criminal activity patterns.

So we're always in support of tools and resources to help them be more effective and efficient in their duties.

A few items proposed by District 2 in particular 2026 0728.

This was an ordinance to amend the code of DeCap County to regulate the sale of dogs, cats, and rabbits in pet shops.

This was deferred as the proposer was not quite ready to have that conversation yet.

So we look forward to having that in future committee meetings.

Under district one, of course, you guys are familiar with the resolution to address egregious littering and illegal dumping of tires.

Again, that one was deferred because a little bit more conversation was requested.

And the ordinance to regulate the restraint and transportation of animals and for other purposes was also deferred, which was a district two item.

But something for you guys to look forward to.

We did have a discussion on open enrollment.

Mr.

Jacobs was here to share with us that they will be coming to several departments to make sure you guys are well informed and are supported in enrolling.

So if you need benefits, go ahead and start preparing yourself so that we don't wait until the last day.

And with that, I yield back.

Thank you, Commissioner Bolton.

Commissioner Marita Davis Johnson for the ops report.

Good morning, everyone.

I am Marita Davis Johnson, and I chair the county operations committee, also known as the OPS Committee.

My colleagues who sat on that committee with me, uh Commissioner Robert Patrick and Commissioner Ladina Bolton.

The EPS committee met on Tuesday, April the 21st.

Where committee members were joined by Commissioner Ted Terry and Commissioner Lone Spears during that meeting.

The special call meeting of October the 14th.

The UPS meeting.

That was four new agenda items.

Um this meeting.

We continued our discussion on the Board of Commissioners.

We discuss the change to the commissioners.

Uh speaking time, and we're glad to make it an effective at the following commission meeting and ensuring that it will always it will also be included in the procedure rules.

The committee moved on to discuss the charter review.

Um we briefly discussed section six of the chatter review regarding vacancies.

Um section nine powers and duties of the commission.

Um the ops committee will meet again this afternoon at 1 p.m.

So be sure to turn in live or on DC TV.

So thank you.

And with that, I yield back.

Thank you, Commissioner Davis Johnson.

Commissioner Robert Patrick for the PWI report.

Uh thank you, Madam Presiding Officer.

Good morning, everybody.

I'm Commissioner Robert Patrick, Chairman of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, also known as PWI.

I also uh am joined by Commissioner and Presiding Officer Shakira Johnson, as well as Commissioner Ted Terry.

Uh at our last meeting, we had a total of 13 items that we voted on, six of which were held.

Uh, and that worked out to be about uh just north of fifty million dollars worth of items that are under review uh through our audit team right now.

Uh we went on and approved seven additional items.

We had two presentations, and some of the presentations are one of the presentations was the CIP, that's the capital improvement plan update.

Uh, and we went into discussions uh with uh public works um excuse me with uh uh watershed management talking about uh anticipated projects that are coming up with watershed management.

Another uh interesting item I think we had uh conversation about was the KB advisory report.

This report is something that uh my office had funded, and the idea was to find out what are some alternative ways to pay for mass rapid uh bus rapid transit or mass transit within the county.

We came up with a variety of different ideas.

Uh some may take a little more approval and understanding from the legislature, but we're certainly willing to work in that direction uh if uh if the opportunity arises.

Our meeting starts today at 3 30.

We're looking forward to seeing you then, and uh thank you very much about a presiding officer.

Thank you, Commissioner Patrick.

Um Comer Long Spears is not chair of committee, but I'll give her a few moments to give some remarks on some committee.

Thank you very much.

Um good morning, everyone.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful spring thus far.

A couple of updates on the women's commission.

Proud to announce that we're having our very first meeting of the DeCap County Women's Commission on Wednesday, May 20th, from 6 until 7 30 p.m.

here, 178 Sam Street.

Um thank you, Commissioners that have made your appointments and those that have not made them yet.

If you have any questions or further concerns, feel free to reach out.

Um I am also working in partnership with our BOC chief of staff, Mr.

Lee May, as well as uh Dion McKenzie, who's always in the background making sure we do it right on um reaching out to the folks that have not made their appointment yet.

Um commissioners, I did send you a formal email providing the information for the first meeting, and by the end of this week, we will have the agenda for you as well.

If you will be in attendance, please let me know, and then I can put you on the agenda to say a few words.

All right, and then um to respond to a comment made by Commissioner Bolton with the ERPS committee.

Um the law department just responded back to us this morning.

They the hold up is the law review for both tethering and the retail sales.

And um Laura did respond back that she'll try to have a review by the end of the week.

So that would be sufficient for the May 21st ERPS meeting.

That'll give us a little bit of wiggle rib.

All righty, thank you so much, and I yield back.

Thank you, Commissioner Long Spears.

And just wanted to note that yesterday we had our joint BOC, BOE meeting hosted by the Board of Education.

I be I believe that was a really productive meeting.

Um we broke out into our work groups, had really robust discussion.

Um I'm really proud of the of our two entities working together and continuing what we started last year.

Um so look forward to um chief of staff.

May we send out some follow-up notes from our meeting yesterday, as well as starting to plan for the next meeting in late fall, probably late October.

So look forward to more information on that.

And thank you for everyone who was able to participate in person or sending a representative.

So this time we will start the review of the proposed executive agenda.

Good morning, Mr.

Williams.

Good morning, madam presiding officer, good morning, members of the board.

I'd like to begin the review of the proposed executive agenda for May 12th, uh with the first public hearing item under transportation 0795.

Resolution order and declaration of taking required temporary easement for Constitution Road Freight Corridor Improvement.

Cost of the county is two thousand two hundred and five dollars.

That's a public hearing item under proposed preliminary items.

We have the two under CEO's office.

The first um a FAB item to amend the uh fiscal year 2026 annual budget and appropriate capital funding for various items.

So that's a capital uh program request.

Okay.

Uh next item would be a PECS item, an amendment to agenda item changing the CAB County Day Center venue from Peace Baptist Church to New Life Community Alliance.

We have that in PECS.

Next under public safety is uh an ERPS item if if you choose, uh Madam Chair.

Uh fiscal year 2026 FIFA World Cup grant program, an amount not to exceed 1 million four hundred eighty-seven thousand thirty-seven dollars.

Yes, sir.

ERPS.

Excellent.

Next under public works and drainage uh for item 0587, uh PWI item proposed stormwater utility fee increase.

Uh PWI.

Thank you, sir.

Next under Transportation Public Works.

Uh the first item, 0589, allocate $8 million of SPLOSS to funding.

Line item B3 for South Peachtreek Creek Trail Extension from Metlock Park to Lula Hills Development.

PWI.

Stokes Drive.

The lighting financial impact on transportation bridge division is three thousand six hundred and sixty dollars.

Next item is a little bit more.

Um good morning again.

Can I get a motion to reconvene out of recess?

So moved.

Second.

All in favor?

I thank you all.

All right, Mr.

Williams, we may continue.

Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer.

We were at the top of page three with items zero seven nine eight lighting agreement.

State Road.

Financial impact on the transportation division budget will be six thousand one hundred and sixty-eight dollars sixty cents annually.

So that was consent as well.

Yeah, again, because these items are so small low dollar.

Let's go ahead and put them on consent.

Excellent.

The next item is zero eight one three.

Acceptance and appropriation thousand dollars from the Atlanta regional transit.

Acceptance and appropriate 500,000 by the regional commission.

PWI?

Yes.

Well next we have the items that are assigned the purchasing items assigned to the respective committees.

ERPS committee, are you good with your purchasing items?

We're good.

Next we have ops.

One item for ops.

Opposite.

Next we have PEX, one item for PECS.

PEX is good.

Next we have PWI.

Looks like five items for PWI.

Yep.

PWI is good.

Madam Presiding Officer, I have no further items.

Thank you, Mr.

Williams.

Mr.

May, are you up?

Yeah.

Good morning, sir.

Good morning.

Good morning, Commissioners.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

How are you?

I'm doing good, doing good.

All right.

Let's go start with our recap from the administration.

Um starting uh with uh item uh 2026 0795.

Uh was that consent?

Public hearing.

Public hearing.

Okay.

All right, proposed preliminary items from the CEO's office.

Um item 2026 0860.

Uh that will head to Fab.

Item 2026 0862 of going to PEX.

Item 2026 0808 going to ERPS.

Item 2026 0587 going to PWI.

Um public works, we have uh items 2026-0589 uh going to PWI.

We have items uh 2026 0793 and 0797 and 0798, all for consent.

Items still under uh PWI items uh 2026 0813, going to PWI and 0814, PWI as well.

I think okay uh for perch under purchasing and contracting, these are all items uh for the ERPS committee, items 2026 0438, uh item 0476, item 0525, 0650, 0673, 0674, and 0682, all going to the ERPS Committee.

All right, all um uh items going to the ops committee.

Um 02026 0634 um going to the ops committee.

Okay for our PECS uh purchasing uh and contracting item.

We have one item 0614 the purchasing and contracting to PWI committee.

We have uh hold on.

I think there was a question.

Okay.

Okay, I got it.

I got it.

0614 is PECS.

Okay, okay, we're good.

All right, um let's see.

Where do we end up at PECS?

That item 0614 going to the PECTS committee.

Good with that, yes.

Um purchasing and contracting to PWI committee.

We have one two three four five items 0232, 0477, 0655, 0677, and 0678.

All of those items going to the PWI committee.

Okay, uh now we have uh under items for the BOC agenda.

Uh we have appointments not requiring board action, but for information only.

We have uh for the board of commissioners uh items 2026 0841, Commission District, all commission districts, uh recording the appointment of Sheriff Quarter Mayor.

Hope I'm saying that right to the DeCab County Women's Commissioner as the City of Decatur appointee.

Under District 4, uh we have uh an item 2026083.

Record the appointment of Dennis Allen to the DeCab United Sports Commission as a standing member with voting privileges to the DeCab United Sports Commission as the district.

We'll clean that up.

Yes.

Under district four, it should read, correct?

Correct.

Under District 4 representative.

Under district, super district six.

Uh we have item 2026 0807.

That will we are updating that item to reflect you all should have it here to reflect the same language as was previously written.

So I'll read it as it should read there.

Record the appointment of Eric Carlton to the DeCab United Sports Commission as a standing member with voting privileges to the DeCab United Sports Commission as the district super district six representative.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Under Super District 7, we have item 2026 0789.

Um record the appointment of Amarillus Alexander.

I said that correctly.

To the district seven community council.

The appointment will continue at the pleasure of Commissioner Bolton.

And it says for because she's in she's the district seven appointee, but I'm appointing her to district four.

To district four.

Okay.

Super skid appointments in each of the districts.

Yes.

That's correct.

Thank you for that.

So let me correct it to the district four community council.

All right.

Uh appointments, uh Board of Commissioners, District 7, Super District 7, item 2026, 0754.

Appoint David Garcia to the post seven of the recreation parts and cultural affairs board.

Oh sorry, I mean this.

And we have under preliminary for the next item.

Okay.

Item 2026 081.

Uh this is to amend the board of commissioners standing procedural rules to establish limits on commissioner speaking time during business meetings while considering agenda items.

And I believe this is the item that from the law department that was updated.

Yes.

Okay.

So no need to walk the walk it on.

It was already on there.

You asked the note appointment if it's the same.

Attorney Phillips.

Confirm.

The item is on the agenda.

What was prepared by the law department is a substitute, just tweaking the language.

It's a sub, yes.

So sub no need to walk on an additional.

Right.

Then I have something.

Commissioner Bolton had a question.

On the agenda just before this last preliminary one, the last two items are out of district seven, both appointments, but the last one is separated by uh denotation of appointments.

Was is that an error or what was what is that for?

Well I understood the first appointment from your district, Dr.

Bolton is just to be recorded.

And the second appointment actually requires a vote.

So that is the distinction in the sections that you see them appear.

Uh district appointments don't require votes.

It it depends on the type of appointment that you're making.

We can look at it and speak to you offline if there's difference of opinion about that, but that's what I understood from staff.

Okay.

Yeah, this is the only yeah, I believe we had to vote on them.

Understood.

Thank you.

All right.

Any additional questions?

I did have an additional question on that agenda item 0801.

Um, Attorney Phillips.

So I know we have it on the agenda.

We would vote on it, but do should we take an action?

Well, that's pretty early.

I just wanted to make sure we're covered for the entire meeting, voting meeting to have the shortened um speaking times.

Well, that was going to have to be read twice.

So you won't be voting on that one until not the next one.

Not the 12th.

That'll be the first reading.

It'll be the subsequent reading two weeks later when you'll actually vote on that.

Okay, so commissioners on the 12th.

If it is the desire of the body at the beginning of the meeting, we could make a motion to set those as our speaking limits for all the agenda items for that day, because this would not be in effect.

So we can take care of that in that morning.

Thank you, Attorney Phillips.

The substitute would be on the agenda.

We're not voting on the substitute.

We need to do a reading on the 12th and then at the next BOC.

We would vote on the substitute.

Yes, Attorney Phillips.

After the second reading.

After the second reading.

Correct.

Yes.

So you will read it in the next meeting a week from now.

Three weeks from now, you will read it a second time, and after that second reading in that same meeting, you can take your vote.

Okay.

I appreciate that.

And that would be microphone.

What date would that be?

So that would be the second reading is what?

May 26.

No.

May 21st.

Thursday, May 21st would be a cow 26 would be the voting meeting.

We're good on that.

All right.

Okay.

Thank you.

You can continue, Mr.

May.

Okay.

Item 2026-0846.

Uh approval of all minutes for the May 5th, 2026 committee of the whole meeting.

Consent.

Consent.

All right.

District 2.

Uh items, three items 2026-0828.

Uh allocation of $9,000 from District 2 reserve for appropriation to Carl Vinson Institute to conduct a survey on residents' views on spay neuter policies.

Consent.

Consent.

Item 2026 0830.

Allocation of $10,000 from District 2 reserve for appropriation to support Globe Academy Summer Camp.

Consent.

Consent.

Item 20260836.

Allocation of $176,050 from District 2 Park Bond Accounts and District 2 Capital Reserves for Improvement of Pendergrass Park.

Consent.

All right.

Okay, you have 12345 items.

First item is 2026 0849 to appropriate an amount not to exceed $30,000 to Superior Court for the Law Clinic form the from the District 3 reserved for appropriation.

Consent.

Consent.

Item 2020 to allocate an amount not to exceed $10,000 to DCAB Pro Bono from the District 3 Reserved for Appropriation.

Consent.

Consent.

Item 20260851 to allocate an amount not to exceed 10,000 dollars to start me program East Lake Coalition from the District 3 Reserved for Appropriation.

Consent.

Consent.

Item 2026 0853 to allocate an amount not to exceed 10,000 dollars to the Office of DeCab County's District Attorney, Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault Unit from the District 3 Reserved for Appropriation.

Consent.

Consent.

And 2026 0855 to allocate an amount not to exceed 10,000 dollars to Atlanta Masjid Sisters United and Human Services Rights of UNTA program from the District 3 reserved for appropriation.

Consent.

Okay.

Exactly.

Um super district six, one item 2026 0769.

A resolution requesting the administration to establish independent civilian oversight and auditing for DeCab County's Digital Shield Initiatives and Sveillance Infrastructure.

ERPS.

Okay.

Um Super District 7.

We'll begin with item 0 2026 0772.

An item to allocate an amount not to exceed $3,000 of the reserve for appropriation contributed towards the Hank Stewart Foundation and Southwest DeCab Alumni 16th Annual Career Day Programming.

Consent.

Consent.

Item 2026 0780.

An item to allocate an amount not to exceed $35,000 of District 7 Reserve for appropriation contributed to Flat Rock Archive for Historical TA Bryant Senior House and Grounds Preservation.

Consent.

Item 2026 0782.

An item to allocate an amount not to exceed $2,100 of the District 7 reserved for appropriation funds to our Johnson community for the 29th annual county line Ellenwood Community Day parade.

Consent.

Consent.

Item 2026 0785.

An item to allocate an amount not to exceed $3,500 to the women's resource center and $3,500 to the International Women's House for Domestic Violence Survivors and Awareness.

Consent.

Consent.

Item 2026-0786.

An item to allocate an amount not to exceed $15,000 of the district seven reserve for appropriation funds.

To how big is your dream foundation for youth summer programming?

Consent.

Consent.

Item 0787, commission district an item to allocate an amount not to exceed $5,000 of the District 7 reserved for appropriation funds to Rainbow Park Baptist Church.

Harvest sponsorship for the Our Food Pantry and Closed Closet Ministry.

Consent.

Consent.

Item 2026 0788, an item to allocate an amount not to exceed 1,000 dollars of District 7 reserve for appropriation to planning and sustainability for World Planning Day 2026.

Consent.

I have a question for Zach.

Zach?

Mr.

Williams.

Thank you.

Just real quick.

Zach, um, we had discussed in previous meetings about um some of the commissioner items that are sort of smaller dollars having maybe kind of a uh a quicker uh bureaucratic process to make sure that the funds get out the door since they're very important community uh investments.

Um is this something that y'all can work on?

I don't know if it's like an update to the internal policy, um, because I know sometimes even a small like a thousand dollars might require like a contract, and you know, it takes sometimes months for them to kind of you know process.

But is there any options that we can look at that would I think make it a little more streamlined?

Right.

So without being able to address what the specific processes are, I do agree, and I think we all recognize that sometimes it's very cumbersome to let um a small dollar contract and it takes as long as it would as if it were a large dollar contract.

So um, yes, um, let's see what we can do to uh to streamline that process.

I think I see everyone's head nodding that uh we would all like to see it move faster, and there may be certain uh thresholds that the board can simply you know allocate uh maybe without coming through this process.

But uh yeah, we'll come back to you.

Okay, wonderful.

Um, and then Madam Chair, I did have actually have a substitute for 0769.

There was just a typo on the word oversight.

So I'd um I'll pass this out, but I just uh corrupted that one word.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

You can continue, Mr.

May.

All right, and the uh final item uh 2026 0696, clerk to the board of commissioners and CEO, approval of the minutes of the Board of Commissioners meeting of April 26, 2026.

Consent.

And that is consent.

Commissioners, that's all I have for you today for this review.

Thank you so much.

So this time we will have our quarterly update from Marta.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Good morning, Mr.

Hunt.

How are you doing?

Good morning.

Um hit your button for me, please.

There we go.

Good morning, madam presiding officer.

Thank you.

Good morning, members of the commission.

Thank you for having myself and Marta here today for our quarterly briefing.

Um, excited to bring you some news and updates over the last quarter.

I want to recognize uh board member Frierson who is here as well as the other DeCab board members, uh Hudson, Galizia, and Pollock, who are all uh working very hard on behalf of the county.

Our agenda today, I'm gonna take you through ridership initially proposed FY 2027 budget.

I'm gonna bring up our deputy CFO Greg Patterson.

Also have our CFO Kevin Hurley here as well, if there's more detailed questions, and then I'll pop back up to go through the balance of the agenda.

The board members first as to writers, if we can have your board members stand so we can see them and recognize them.

Board member Friarson.

Good morning, Mr.

Frierson.

I know he is always responsive when I send him email, so I appreciate that.

And you will see him again in my presentation as well.

Wouldn't it be uh as to ridership on our mobility ridership show continues to show year-over-year growth?

We are past pre-pandemic uh levels on delivery of that service, and we are excited about our our mobility patrons with respect to rail, whether it's streetcar or heavy rail, beginning in December of 2025.

We began to change the methodology in which we estimated the rides that are being taken.

Due to the delivery of our better breeze system, the fare gates going down, the closures as we convert over to a better breeze.

We obviously can't calculate every single tap, which is the way we were we were previously calculating that.

Now we gather that information on a statistically valid sample.

What's a statistically valid sample and how do you get it?

We do it in uh a multiple of ways.

One, we do manual step-ons and counts.

We look at video footage to get counts, as well as taps where the gates are working.

So as we jump into our rail car ridership streetcar, although lower did pop back up.

You'll see the dip most recently.

That was due to Georgia Power doing some intensive work they needed to do downtown, and it required us to shut down operations and operate on a shuttle service.

That's why our rail car ridership fell off.

We do expect that to come back up because it was back up to pre-pandemic levels and climbing prior to that work.

On rail ridership, you'll see a significant bump.

Again, that's the estimated numbers, but we do anticipate a climb because previously we weren't able to capture fare evasion, malfunctioning gates and the like.

And as we get a better breeze system in place, we anticipate those numbers to be higher than what was previously reported.

I'll go more detail into our bus service, which is our now next gen and reach service later in this presentation.

I want to go ahead and bring up uh deputy CFO Patterson to go through the proposed FY 2027 budget.

I will remain close by and uh but he is more than adept to answer some questions.

Mr.

Patterson.

All right.

Good morning, Mr.

Patterson.

Good morning, thank you, Mr.

Hunt.

Uh Madam Presiding Officer, members of the Commission.

Um I'm happy to present to you our proposed budget for 2027, and our own board will be voting to adopt this on May 14th, and will go into effect July 1.

Um the strategic priorities that govern the build of our budget, uh, of course, first and foremost was to enhance safety, improve cleanliness was our second highest priority, increasing reliability, and now we've added improving customer service as well and the customer experience.

And so when we were building our budget, every line item in the budget, everything in the capital and operating went through this lens to say is it contributing to this?

It is, it's in.

If it's not, it's not in.

And so that's how we built it out.

Uh taking a look at our projected operating revenues.

The total of that is protected at $679.9 million dollars.

Of that sales tax is the greatest contributor at 63.1%.

That's 428.7 million dollars.

Uh federal assistance is 101.7 million dollars.

That is up, uh, mainly because we are expecting uh two federal grants at about 11.3 million dollars, that is in support of the World Cup expenses that we are forecasting.

On the passenger revenues, that's our third highest category at 12.8% or 86.9 million dollars.

Uh, that is a large jump up from the current fiscal year.

That is because as we were rolling out the new fare gates, we expected a loss of revenue in the current fiscal year.

This reflects that our forecast is bringing it back up to what we would normally expect based on our ridership numbers that we are seeing.

Moving on to our proposed operating expenses, they total $663.1 million dollars.

Uh two-thirds of this is actually consumed in labor when you add salaries, wages, benefits, and overtime together.

Uh the next highest area is contractual services at 13.9%.

That includes our contracted paratransit mobility service, it includes uh IT expenditures, it includes secundus staff, uh, so that's all in there as well.

Um, and you add together our propulsion and fuel and our parts and supplies together, that uh represents around 11% of our proposed expenses.

On the capital side of the house, our total sources of capital revenue uh amounts to about 1.5 billion dollars, and our total planned uses is at 919.8 million dollars.

Uh, specific to the state of good repair, our sources are 738.6 million dollars, and our planned uses are 726.4 million dollars.

Uh notable on here is a pretty large debt issuance of 385 million dollars, which represents around a little more than 52 percent of the total revenues.

Uh the debt service is expected around 171.2 million.

I do want to mention that part of the reason why the debt issuance is so high, is because we're expecting really 40-year generational improvements that are starting to kick off.

It's been a very long time since we've upgraded all of our rail, our traction power stations, which power the third rail and move the train, a tremendous large number of investments that are kind of due all at once.

So we're doing a large wave of those over the next uh eight to ten years, and then you're going to see a lot of that taper off from that point in time.

But that's why you're going to see that when you look at our totals.

And with that, I'll uh hand it back.

We're going to dive right into our capital program.

I'm excited to talk about the Buford Highway project first.

We're at 30% design on this project.

We released a solicitation for final design.

Uh consultant expect to award this before the end of the third quarter.

Um, this is a preliminary uh scheduling.

We are advancing this project uh quickly, and uh this project is locally funded, meaning it comes out of MARTA's uh funds locally as opposed to uh additional federal funds.

On the Canler Road ART project, we released this solicitation for final design and expect to have an awardee for this contract by the end of Q3 of this year, and we anticipate construction beginning in 2028.

Additionally, this is also a locally funded project.

As to the South DeCab and Stone Crest Transit hubs, this project, when I'm first project I'm talking about is South DeCab Transit Hub.

This project's in our capital improvement program for FY 2027.

I am pleased to advise you all that we are working uh diligently and very closely with Madam CEO's office, and we are advancing this project to final design expeditiously.

On a positive note, this project has gotten a 25 million dollar federal funding for this project, which has been obligated, um, which decreases the chance of this project being uh any funds being clawed back, but we are moving forward expeditiously on this design as well as moving forward with construction thereafter.

On the Stone Crest project, we sit at 30% design, and we are uh zealously advocating to get additional federal and state funds to bring this project to fruition.

I will chat about some of that uh later in the presentation and uh our legislative initiatives, which happen to include my board member Frieson in a trip to DC most recently.

On station rehabilitation and uh TODs, I want to begin and turn our attention to the East Lake Station.

I'm happy to report that the South Pedestrian Bridge was installed and will be ready for use prior to the World Cup.

We're anticipating May 30th as an open and ribbon cutting date.

This milestone follows the reopening of the north entrance, which now includes a new elevator, upgraded flooring, and enhance the lighting.

The above image or the image that you see on your screen, rather, is shows the staging for the new pedestrian bridge as we did the lift overnight in partnership, obviously, with the cab county uh services, uh CSX, uh, and our own forces.

As to Kensington, our Kensington Master Point site includes the station and the surrounding parking lots.

As you all know, MARTA received a 10 million dollar ARC TIP award to help fund uh MARTA Public Parking Deck and Bays to open up space in the mixed-use project that will help replace the uh parking that's there, so we'll have parking for our patrons, but free up the land for housing, mixed use and retail to help mirror what we've already done in the partnership with HADC successively successfully at Kensington Station already.

We did re-release uh RFP for this master plan.

Unfortunately, that was unresponsive.

At present, we are working with Madam CEO's office and HADC on a creative way to bring about this uh a little quicker than a traditional RFP process.

Um, that's about as far as I I can go on that, but we are working uh together intimately on that project.

In other news, I wanted I mentioned previously that I would talk about our next gen bus network.

Well, we're to that point.

The next gen bus network launched on uh April 18th, but it's the result of five years of work.

We're already looking forward to what's next, and we're not standing pat on what we have.

So previously we would launch a network or make a change, and those would be tweaks here and there at the edges.

Now that we've launched the network, we're gonna let it season for six to twelve months.

We're going to go through all of the analysis, which I'm gonna get to on the next slide.

The weekend was historic for the authority for the first time in 40 years.

We redesigned our entire bus network.

Now there are 315 buses that operate daily across 81 routes.

We have triple the number of routes with headways of 15 minutes or better, and a third of the routes with headways of 20 minutes are better.

On that weekend, the 418 to 420 weekend, we launched the next gen bus network, the new Rapid A-line.

We also service two Cardi B concerts and Anna United game, a Hawks game, Atlanta Streets Alive, the Sweetwater 420 Festival, as well as a couple of other items as well, all without incident or crime.

We are very, very successful and very proud of our frontline staff as well as transit ambassadors, which is the image you see to the left on your screen in the yellow and blue outfits.

Some of the statistics from that weekend show how Team Martin stepped up and showed out to help our customers during this change.

We deployed over 900 transit ambassadors over that weekend and the system every day since the start and end of service.

So we were out there from 6 a.m.

to the wee hours of the night every single day to make sure that people knew where they were going, got to where they were, even if there was some confusion.

For the first three days of the next gen rollout, we delivered nearly 15,000 bus trips that carried almost a quarter million customers.

And during the first week of the next gen world rollout, we delivered over a million bus trips that carried just under 700,000 customers.

So we've already seen a robust response to the new network.

We've had a launch that has had its successes and its challenges.

It was not perfect, but as I stated before, we're going from good to great, not good to perfect.

But over the launch weekend and into the first weekday of service, the transit ambassadors, our frontline staff, and our support center were some of our busy biggest successes.

The same weekend, we rolled out, as I mentioned before, the Rapid A line service.

And as I mentioned previously, that was with the support of our frontline staff and 900 transit ambassadors to augment them.

I want to speak for a moment about some customers who have lost services or seen trips get longer or be altered.

I'm sure you've heard from some of these customers, we have as well.

And I know this is not an easy conversation to have, but we know that change isn't positive for every single individual.

Nevertheless, over the five years of community outreach and planning, this is the best network that came to the fore, the board approved, and we believe that ultimately this will be the best network for the region.

It brings a benefit to the majority of our customers with triple the number of people able to access that 15-minute headway that I mentioned previously on a seven-day-a-week basis all day.

So not just peak hours between rush hour times five days a week.

Those headways are from the start of service to end of service every single day of the week.

So what are the next steps for the next gen bus network?

From the moment the next gen rolled out, we began evaluating the performance of the network in three key areas.

First, with data, we are focusing on the ridership, on-time performance, and our service delivery.

With respect to our customers, we're reviewing complaints, comments, and the occasional pat on the back coming through our customer service office and conducting on-system surveying as well as customer reviews to see what the full rider population thinks of its experience of the network and making sure that we're matching our expectations to those.

As customers, existing customers, that is, learn the network.

We get them more places and get in surveys from them from more places as well.

We'll see an increase in existing customers who may want to ride with us, as well as attracting new customers, as well as making tweaks to the system where it doesn't seem to be fit or fitting or working for ourselves or for the customer base.

A nice rollout, nothing to write home about.

However, since the next gen launch on April 18th, average daily ridership is now over 850 passengers, 873 to be exact across all zones, which works out to be approximately 8,000 passengers per week, which is above what we estimated for this period.

In zone two in DeCab, for example, prior to the launch, I mean, prior to the next gen launch, so March 7th, we had weekday numbers of 13 passengers, Saturday around 28, and Sunday around 16.

Those jumped to 93, 55, and 45 respectively, just in zone 302.

So we're seeing adoption, and what gives uh our team and myself a lot of hope is the adoption rates are highest among the young, say that 12 to 17.

I don't yet have my driver's license, but I'm highly tech savvy.

And from the older population who may be putting down the keys but are still vibrant, ambulatory and want to get around and have a lot of things in the zone that's right around them, pharmacy, et cetera, that they connect with, they're also using the service quite a bit.

But we're tracking that every day.

Now I want to turn to a better breeze.

We launched Breader Breeze on March 28th.

Construction and installation of new fare equipment continues system wide, so do continue to bear with us.

New fare gates closed on May 2nd.

And what's that mean?

What does that mean?

Our old system, the old system that we had by the vendor, the current breeze, the gray card, is no longer usable on our system.

We've closed the gates and only at those stations where we have both ticket vending machines and fare gates so folks can buy a ticket and access our system.

At station where construction's ongoing and old fare gates remain, or you see the black construction barriers, you'll have an emergency gate or a way to access our system.

Open gates or emergency doors do not mean the system is free.

Please do tap.

Please do the right thing.

The gates may be closed on the back end.

So if you see somebody walk into an emergency gate and they exit at a station where the gates are closed and they tap to exit, we're still collecting that fare as long as they tap.

But we are, because this is a massive change, being as sensitive to our patrons as possible.

And as you heard from uh deputy CFO Patterson, we did budget this unfortunate revenue loss and this turnover in our budget uh for FY 2027.

Again, the old silver breeze cards do not work anymore.

Uh but the good news is that the better breeze cards are now available in your Google wallets and your Samsung wallet, so you don't need the breeze card, just tap and go.

If you want a breeze card, please do.

They're awesome, they look great, but you don't need them.

You can walk up and access and pay for a uh fly uh a trip on Marta the same way you do at the gas station, grocery store, pharmacy, or anywhere else, your watch or whatnot.

Now you're saying you did not mention Apple.

Apple uh an iPhone, an Apple Watch, those are coming.

Their launches later this month.

They're lagging behind just a little because they had their own app store update at the same time, which is why we couldn't get all three last week.

Um, with respect to this whole conversion, we thank you for your patience.

We ask for continued patience.

It has not been without some pain.

Currently, we have reduced fare customers who we are servicing.

On March 20, March 30th, excuse me, we started mailing out our reduced fare cards.

There's approximately 47,000 reduced fare customers in our system.

Um we stopped mailing those cards out on April 30th.

Why did you stop?

Well, we're convert we converted over on May 2nd, and we didn't want the gap between mailing them out and May 2nd to come and have a lot of uh cards in the mail.

So we've asked those folks who did not receive their cards in the mail to come into our offices.

The we also had about 3,500 cards returned due to address irregularities, folks who may have moved, and we have a lot of folks who are in a reduced fare program that may be housing challenged.

That does mean not mean they're unhoused, but they may be housing challenged and have to move around a lot.

Um so we started this on Friday.

On Friday, we had about 320 individuals come.

About 12% is what we're tracking, are folks from our messaging, getting out there in the press, sharing with you and your constituents.

About 12% are folks who are coming in for a new reduced fare card.

They weren't on a system before at all.

They've been awakened and they've asked.

Or they need to renew.

So your reduced fare card, there could be any number of timelines.

So if you just twist your ankle and you have a doctor's note and you can't get around for say two months, you may get a reduced fare card for two months.

After that two months, it goes away.

But if you're a standard reduced fare, consistent customer, it's a three-year period before you need to renew.

We ask you to come in every three years to renew.

We had a large portion of folks who, when we put out the messaging, said, Oh, I need to renew.

Well, when was your card last renewed?

Five years ago.

Okay.

So they're mixing in with the folks who are in our system.

Their information is up to date or just needs a tweak to update and causing our lines to be a little bit longer.

We noted that, and we're doing some process solutions.

So what have we done?

First, nobody who comes to headquarters is turned away.

If you're coming for a new card, a renewed card, or you're just trying to get the new black and white reduced fare card.

Everybody ends up with the card.

We are providing water juice.

We're seating as many people inside the headquarters as we can.

Um, but what you'll see likely on the news is a line outside.

But inside the building, there are plenty of other people in the heated and cooled environment.

We've extended the hours of our reduced fare offices as well as our customer service office to service everybody.

We've hired temporary staff, which occurred when we started mailing.

There was about 15 staff members there, and we've pulled in today 20 transit ambassadors, the same people you saw in the image in the yellow and blue.

So those are MARTA staff members that can are coming in and doing some of the uh more mundane back of house stuff while our experienced reduced fare workers interface with our customers directly.

And uh we've updated our processes today so that anybody's coming for a new, a renewal, lost and found, or any other service from that office are segregated from the folks who are just there to get a new uh their fare card updated and want to go on their way so we can minimize the amount of time and we can service more people in a day.

I now turn uh to some led legislative advocacy that we we've done over this last quarter.

We have been vigilant in this area.

I will say uh the yields with the state is going to be that we are coming to all of our uh partners for the update and amendment and updating of the rapid transit contract and assistance agreement, which is where all of our jurisdictions get a moment to look at their project list, make any tweaks to it.

Uh unfortunately, our bus camera enforcement uh did not pass.

We are working through some other initiatives with uh council at the legislature as well as with the city of Atlanta to do some sort of enforcement to help encourage people to stay out of the red painted lanes for BRT because it can't be rapid if everybody's parked and getting your Uber Eats and they're all dwelling in the lanes.

Uh in the initial for the launch, uh MPD was going through, and we've just been issuing warnings.

Hey, you're not supposed to park here because it's awareness.

We need to give people time.

This is the first bus rapid transit uh corridor in the state of Georgia, so we need to train the customers and the driving public.

Additionally, in early April, which is the image you see on the left, uh, myself, uh, board member Frierson, as well as uh Chief of Staff Parker and uh AGM of External Affairs, Arington, if the two of you would stand up and give a give a wave, as well as board member Frierson.

We all went up along with some additional board members, um, non-decap board members, but important nevertheless.

We're in DC for the American Public Transportation Association's uh annual legislative conference.

There we walked the halls of the Capitol in addition to presenting on issues around World Cup safety and items that were most important to uh MARTA.

We talked to a great majority of our legislators.

We advocated vigorously for projects like Candler Park ART to get additional funding, Beauford Highway to get additional funding, and Stonecrest uh transit hub to get additional funding.

Uh I know because I was in the room as well as Mr.

Frierson and uh additional members of the staff.

So we are zealously pushing forward for the the cab projects to get grants and funding.

On public safety, year over year overall crime uh on MARTA system is down 27%.

This is above the gains that we had in 2025 that I have previously reported.

As of April 15th, we had one homicide uh in comparison to the same time last year.

Uh aggravated assaults compared to uh last year was a 27% decrease there as well.

Four robberies compared to five last year, and all adding up to overall crime being down 27%.

I want to take a moment to talk uh extremely briefly about the one one homicide.

That was the first homicide that our system experienced in just over 15 months.

Unfortunately, it was a juvenile, it was a uh dispute between some juveniles and some young adults occurring um at Oakland City Station uh on April 27th.

Uh Marta police uh in partnership with other local authorities apprehended uh one of the alleged assailants immediately.

The other two alleged assailants turned themselves in uh immediately thereafter, one on the same day, one the day after.

Uh but what it shows is that MARTA is one of the safest transit systems in the country.

Uh we have strong partnerships here in DeCAB among county as well as local staff and our MPD, and that's why the crime red rates are going down.

It isn't just the MPD or a MARTA issue, it has been a joint policing issue across our entire region.

Previously I committed to uh getting our sworn officers to 250.

Uh last year we beat that goal by getting those numbers uh at 250, and right now we are hovering somewhere between 270 to 278.

I went to a graduation in Newton County last week for an additional set of sworn officers, and I believe there's another graduation coming up in a couple months for uh another nine sworn officers, one of our largest classes in the last five years, as well as continuing to recruit field protective specialists and folks who may have an issue with getting through uh our training because we do train folks before they even go to the academy and may not make it through the academy.

We do offer them jobs as field protective specialists and encourage them to go back to the academy when they think the time is right.

So the program has gone really, really well.

But the stats are great, but there's still a perception at times that MARTA isn't safe.

And so what are we doing around that?

Uh this article that's on the screen is about our MARTA Hope program, and it's one of our highlights at MARTA.

We include this our article in uh your monthly toolkit, but we wanted to make sure that you all are aware that we are addressing the needs of our non-destination riders, which include uh folks who are unhoused, may have mental health challenges or chemical dependency issues.

We also uh support 10 shelter beds, five men, five for women each night, and they are consistently used, they are always full.

And we are really really grateful to our remarkable caseworkers, and I've committed to increasing the funding to try to get additional caseworker help so we can have even greater impact.

And speaking of impact, community engagement is one of the greatest methods for us to have impact here in DeCab and throughout our entire service area.

We have consistent uh been consistent with our community outreach, as you can see in the upper right.

Those are some of the successful events that we've conducted.

Those are just some of the events in DeCab County.

I want to highlight a couple of events.

I will not take you through every single check mark, I promise.

The photo to the left is our AGM of external affairs, Ms.

Arrington, along with MARTA service planning staff and the project manager for our Buford Highway ART project, joined by Commissioner Spears, and thank you for her Buford Highway Walking Tour.

We also presented at the DeCAB Aging in Placers meeting.

Thank you to our former board member Rita Scott for connecting connecting and helping us and still remaining uh a MARTA champion and a DeCab champion.

On the bottom right, um Commissioner Davis Johnson in your district, our team presented at the Lou Walker Senior Center's Lunch and Learn.

And later, um excuse me, not later this week, tomorrow.

Tomorrow we'll be in Tucker with Mayor Lerner to discuss our next gen initiative and how MARTA can support economic uh development issues and initiatives in Tucker.

Additionally, we are in the process of hiring additional government affairs and community engagement professionals to both strengthen what we're already doing and have a greater impact throughout our entire region.

And I believe with that, that's and we'll open it up for questions, and we'll Mr.

Patterson will come up if we have any finance questions.

Thank you for that.

Great presentation, Mr.

Hunt.

I know Commissioner Long Spears had raised her hand.

Anyone else with questions?

Go ahead, Commissioner Loxby.

Thank you very much.

Madam PO.

Appreciate such a detailed presentation and hello to all of our MARTA folks back there.

Um I do have some questions, so I will go slide by slide.

There are not page numbers on them, so I'll just read out the title of the slide.

Okay.

Um the first one is on the MARTA Monthly Ridership by Mo, July 2019 to March 2026.

So it does appear that neither rail nor streetcar or um actually, yeah, just rail streetcar and bus are not back to pre-pandemic ridership numbers yet.

But it looks like it's moving in the right direction, so that's excellent.

What jumped out at me though was on under rail January 2026 at four million.

Um could you talk about that?

Because that was a pretty significant jump from October 2025.

Yeah, I will do it.

I I kind of went through it a little bit more technically, engineer planning method.

In short, our current our current or old system, not current, as of May 2nd, our old system, we had a lot of fair gates.

They had the swinging ones, some that are open.

When folks walk through, they're still riders.

Yep.

Umbers should be reported.

Understood.

But they don't tap.

So the way we tracked it was through taps.

When we have a system that was failing previously, we had a lot of ridership that was just not being tracked.

Uh the number and jump you're seeing is from us going out and doing manual counts as well as looking at video, and that's how we got to that figure.

We expect when the full better breeze system is completed, you'll see the number up and it'll stabilize.

But you're right, we are not back to our pre-pandemic levels, but across all our modes, we are trending in the right direction.

Do you believe that the rail ridership number will continue to increase now that you're putting a focus on properly tracking ridership, real ridership?

I think it's tracking ridership.

I think it's uh prevention of fare evasion and encouraging people.

I think it's the frictionless payment methodology now where you don't need a breeze card.

You need to you don't need to go to a uh ticket vending machine that may not be operating the best.

Um so those those incidents of convenience where you've seen two people go through, you're frustrated at the machine, and you just walk through even though you can afford and are willing to pay, those will go down.

Addition, all of the other items in terms of increasing reliability, uh bringing new trains on, uh adding the addition of our train patrol unit, putting officers on all the new trains as they come online.

I think all of those items together is where our why our ridership will go up.

So that's a long way around the barn to say yes.

Understood.

All right.

Um moving on.

The next question I have is on the Buford Highway ART slide.

And I will go ahead and merge that with the walk audit that we did.

So I do want to give a shout out to the MARTA folks and DOT.

Hello.

And so many other individuals that attended that walk audit.

Commissioners, I don't know if y'all have done a walk audit before, but it was really eye-opening to be on the road.

We were right there on Beauford Highway, walking along, and you'd be surprised what you observe when you're not in your car.

You will notice like cracks in the sidewalk.

Um, one of the bus stops definitely needed a little TLC, which they did note, and I appreciate you doing that.

But it was a really good experience, and I appreciate everyone who participated with that.

But with the Buford Highway ART, um, so you stated it's locally funded.

So thank you, Marta, very much for investing in this project.

And um the expected construction start date is mid-2028.

Um, when do you anticipate this being complete?

And forgive me if you said that and I just didn't note it.

I did not say that.

Okay.

I did not say that.

Purposefully on the imagination.

Um Beauford Highway is a state route.

It is our highest ridership route.

Um I hesitate to give you a completion date.

Okay.

Uh as we get through the uh final design process, that'll shape that a lot better.

What I will say is with ART, because some of you may have seen images or have uh your own experiences with BRT and those stations with the raised platforms, the delivery of it should be a little quicker.

Here's the mitigating factor.

This is a long stretch of very busy road.

Um, so that may cause us some delays from time to time because we there's a there's a huge number of people that are serviced here, not just from us, but decab residents and people who come through to CAB.

If there's ever an issue on 85, often folks jump on Beef Rid Highway as an alternate.

Yep.

So I I don't have a date for you now, but we will bring back our uh projected completion date, let us probably closer towards Q4 of this year, but we will have some early estimates.

Fantastic.

Thank you for that.

Um I am super excited about ART.

Maybe someday we can transition to BRT.

All right.

Um my next question relates to the evolution of the next gen bus network slide.

Um I understand it launched on April 18th, and as you vocalized, we did um get start getting some complaints from constituents about the Claremont route.

And I was delighted to learn that y'all are flexible and you will take input from constituents.

So we are collecting that any any email we receive or any verbal complaint we get.

Please send them.

We are channeling them over to you guys.

So when the I think you said six to twelve months, correct.

After people kind of settle in, you'll reconsider um bus service along Claremont.

And we're not doing that in a vacuum.

I mean, we will bring that to the community as well.

We can't do these redesigns without going before going back to our board anyway.

So I just wanted to be on your radar publicly that uh we are interested in expanding or like um revisiting the Claremont route.

I'll state it that way.

Okay.

All right.

Um my next question goes to the better breeze is coming slide, and it the very last bullet, customers may transfer balances until October 30th of 2026.

I just want to be clear on that one.

Um, does that include the MARTA app?

Do you have to reinstall the MARTA app?

So, what you have to transfer your balance, you have your existing old breeze card.

Uh-huh.

That's registered.

You get a new breeze card or go through the app and just you just have it in the app.

You have a card number and have that registered, and we will transfer from one to the other.

For those who are more comfortable with their phones and are tech savvy, they can do that from their phone themselves.

Uh, those who need a little bit more assistance can call our customer service line and get some assistance in walking through the process.

So, for those of us that currently have the MARTA app, yeah, and that's how we enter and exit the MARTA stations.

Is there anything I just literally received a text message on this while you were talking?

Yes, it's a new better breeze, it's an orange.

So you'll have to reinstall.

Yes, it'll it'll look different.

Yes.

Okay, that's all I needed to know, and I can respond to that question unless they're listening right now.

Um on the legislative advocacy slide.

Um, you did touch briefly on House Bill 297.

Could you talk a little bit more about that house bill?

I did um certainly did some research into it and had a conversation with your legislative affairs team on um the pat or prior to it passing.

But if you could talk a little bit about the agency consolidation, the extension through 2067 and why that was important to pass it this year, that would be helpful.

So um it became um as the legislature sometimes does.

We've never had any of our uh penny extensions pass cleanly on its own bill by itself without it being somehow moved to a different bill.

So it was attached to this bill that created the Georgia Transportation Efficiency Act, which I've been told they're calling themselves Georgia T.

That consolidates actually gets rid of a state agency, it consolidates uh ATL uh link and Greta together into a new agency when the bill signed.

The other portion of that bill is the penny extension for MARTA and the importance, it extends it for 10 years, and the importance of that is uh twofold in very broad strokes.

One, our bonding capacity and having a 30-year bonding window, as you heard from Mr.

Patterson and doing our capital improvement program and our long-range planning.

We need to show that we have a funding source for at least 30 years.

We would drop below that time period in 2027, and after that passes and is signed uh into law by the governor.

That's triggers what I mentioned, which is the amendment to the rapid transit contract and assistance agreement where all of our jurisdictions look at their projects, switch, think about their transit uh master planning within their areas and where they want Marta to plug in and those sorts of things.

Has the bill been signed by the governor yet?

Not that I am aware of not yet.

Okay.

The other uh portion um of it is funding.

Uh any transit agency with funding less than 30 years is considered to be risky by the FTA and makes us less competitive for large federal fund uh grant funds.

All right.

Well, congratulations for getting that across the finish line.

Um my time is up, so I will yield back to Madam PO.

Thank you.

I saw Commissioner Messiah next.

Thank you so much, Madam P.O.

Um first, thank you.

I've been seeing um some of the work that's been taking place uh more expeditiously as it relates to East Lake.

I drive by and see it all the time, so thank you.

Um seeing um the work that's being done, and it's very much appreciated.

I want to thank Commissioner Longspears for um bringing up HB 297, because I too had some questions in terms of the reorganization.

Um, but more importantly, my understanding it was a mass uh mass dash um for the extension um piece of that sales um tax.

Commissioner Massai wants to if I can get the clock going again, please.

Thank you.

To um to get that in in place, and so uh just so I'm clear, it is 10 years, because that's uh my understanding, and so um where there are um present conversations um going on um in terms of the extension of and the concerns being um project delivery now that all but eliminates um that piece of it because regardless, Marta will be um able to continue taxing, I think it's Clayton, Cobb, Fulton, um us decab, um Gwynnette for 10 years.

Not Gwyneth, not Gunnette and not Gunette.

Clayton, DeCab, Atlanta, and uh Fulton.

Um in the 10 years is from 2057 to 2067.

So the taxing would have even if this didn't pass, we would be continuing to tax, it would just impact our ability and it would potentially increase our interest rates on our bonds, which is just interest out the door and money that's delivered to bond trustee group instead of project money that goes into the ground.

Yeah, but uh uh wouldn't you agree that makes it a little bit more difficult for a county to then when we're having conversations with uh so you I would not agree because uh we have to renegotiate the rapid transit contract and assistance agreement, which is the agreement among all the entities, and in that amendment is where the the cab project list of projects is.

Correct.

And I would you are a very forceful and powerful county, and no, just because this passed is not going to diminish your ability to get whatever projects you want tweaked, changed, or advanced or expedited.

So respectfully, I didn't finish the statement than then secondly, um when you're negotiating any contract, particularly if you're talking about project delivery, and there is a monies that is associated with it and attached to it, removing that concern in terms of that funding, then arguably it will create a little bit of a challenge in terms of negotiation.

I could appreciate the um the good faith because we of course want to um continue that uh with Marta.

You guys are pivotal in you know, making sure that our residents get to and from all of the needs they have.

But I would argue it does make it um a little bit more of a challenge.

But um again, I've seen some um projects moving, and my hope is that it'll continue to do so.

Um as it relates to the next gen usage, uh I saw the data that was provided in aggravate um like the average and the totals.

Do you have data based on each of the particular zones?

So that you know we could understand what the ridership is and the participation is for particular zones that are specific to our um our areas and in our district.

Uh yes, Commissioner.

I gave 302 as an example, but we'll send to all the commissioners all the ridership numbers from all the decap zones.

Yes, that that would be um that would be helpful.

And then um, because of course um as a commissioner I want to know how many of my constituents, my residents are utilizing it in the areas and how helpful, particularly since they still there's still areas of my district that doesn't have access to public transportation but is still paying for the martyr sales tax and they'll now will do so for another 10 years without the option to do otherwise or our capacity to control that.

Um in terms of the breeze cars, thank you so much for uh mentioning the lines on the freeze cards.

Um did see that had a number of people that reached out, have a number of seniors um that are in my in my district, and they were having some challenges.

A lot of people, of course, um became more aware of it when they started seeing it on the news, and they had concerns for transportation going forward um through this week.

And I know that right now the it's being held um in terms of addressing that issue at the headquarters.

Had there been consideration by Marta to actually have an additional location where people can there resolve you know those issues?

We did look at that and we continue to look at it with our IT department.

We have to to verify that you are a reduced fare customer.

You've got to one obviously the the the ID, but then we cross-check that with our point of sale system and our CRM system, which are tied in at HQ.

We would have to be able to bring all of that on the road to do remote locations, and that's been the technological challenge on doing that.

I completely understand that.

Yeah, I mean I'm sure Mart is doing everything they can to um to meet the needs and those concerns.

So yeah, if there is a separate um additional location, particularly those of folks that are transportationally challenged, um, it may be helpful.

And I'm great, I'm glad to see that um the with the ridership um with the next gen that the usage is above what's expected.

I think you mentioned at 8,000 and several calls to um the customer care center over 4,000.

And so um maybe it it would be helpful again.

That's why the individual data is helpful um to see just how many people are in need of uh MARTA in our particular area so we can continue to serve the residents of DeCab County together.

With that, I yield back to you, Madame P.O.

Thank you so much, CEO Hunt.

Thank you, Commissioner.

I saw Commissioner Patrick next and then Commissioner Terry.

Uh thank you, Madam Presiding Officer.

Uh just one um question.

Um I had reached out to some staff of yours uh about uh concerns from Tucker Summit CID about bus service and just want to make sure that that's uh something on your radar.

Uh if not, please if you would look into it and after the meeting, I'd be happy to share the director's um contact information with you just to make sure that this item is uh taken care of for district one.

We will take that information.

I am they didn't make me aware, but uh we'll take the information better safe than sorry.

I appreciate it, Jonathan.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Patrick, Commissioner Terry.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um thank you, uh CEO Hunt for the briefing.

Thanks for being here as always.

Um I'll just go slide by slide just to keep it everything in order.

Uh can you go back to the original uh ridership graph?

And um put it on the screen, please.

Um and so for the Jane, so the four the four million number I think for Commissioner Terry, I think you would have to use the control to go back on the slide.

Okay.

Oh, I got it.

I got it.

Thank you.

Um so the four million number is that um January to March, or is that January on the chart on the graph?

Uh uh quarterly.

So it's uh as March, yeah.

As of March, okay, so January to March.

Um that's the time period.

Okay.

And in terms of the methodology for the manual counts, so onboard video footage.

Did someone literally watch video every single day in every single car and count people?

It's a sampling.

It's a statistically uh valid sampling.

So we manually count, we send out our research and data and analysis folks onto the system to manually count people.

We also verify that with video footage as well as taking uh the taps where people did tap.

Okay.

Do y'all use um AI in any of your video methodology or sampling?

We are bringing AI on very judiciously and carefully, not specifically of video footage today, but we have several internal pilots going.

We want to be very careful with that extremely useful uh tool, but powerful.

Okay.

All right, keep us posted on that.

I think it would be good to be transparent about any policies on AI.

Um but all you know, within that, I was kind of thinking more about sort of video surveillance and privacy.

Um there's been a lot of concern lately from residents um over like the flock camera system about its ability to be hacked or facial recognition to be sort of misused.

And so just want to keep that on y'all's radar because as we expand real-time crime centers across Metro Atlanta, unfortunately, not just us but around the country we're seeing the misuse of it.

Um sometimes by law enforcement, others apparently by the companies themselves.

And I want to be 100% transparent.

We do have a contract with Flock for some flock cameras.

Okay.

So I don't want that to go unsaid, Commissioner.

Yeah I I think everyone's really using Flock.

Apparently there's other technology out there or other companies.

So Flock doesn't have the sole ownership over license plate readers.

But I would really encourage y'all to uh just review what happened in Dunwoody recently and then we're seeing this in other jurisdictions about the vulnerability of those security systems.

So it's just something we gotta keep keep an eye on.

But on the ridership numbers the so I guess based on the estimates I mean just help me understand the because it almost looks like there was there was a million uh rides that were not counted because of uh the gates not working or fair evasion over I guess two quarters it looks like is that is that like what y'all think basically is happening a million rides okay and don't forget that's not just the old system and fair evasion we are also installing better breeze where we closed down gates and left emergency gates open.

So we're evasion okay and they were they were open for I guess days or weeks on ends yes there's still stations that are that are okay.

Okay.

So we so that's that could explain kind of the the big drop from 100% October to I guess January but I guess the increase is solely based on the the sampling estimate that's when we changed our methodology to be more accurate.

So moving forward so the next ridership report um have all of the fair gate and the Bree system have it all has that all been fixed or there still going to be some we're still under construction.

Okay so we should so we all we all continue just to do estimates for the next we'll combine that with the taps but as the new system takes over and is closer to completion it'll be more tap data than um doing estimates and manual counts.

Okay.

On the revenue projection slides I think the CFO had mentioned that y'all are projecting the passenger revenues for this year based on that four million rail ridership increase.

It's not just the ridership increase we're actually just taking a look at our standard ridership we've seen one of the things we did to stay conservative in that estimate is we didn't build in a lot in the way of uh expected additional revenue from a previously fair evading customers if we get that great that's gravy on top but our conservative estimate was hey once we have the Fairgates in place and we're collecting revenue at all stations and looking at our standard ridership forecast what would that yield and that's how we came up with that figure.

Okay.

So what is the estimated ridership forecast on average each quarter that gets us to that 86.9 million?

I would have to speak with our research and analysis team who actually put the number out for us I don't have it memorized I'm afraid okay all right well let's see let's get that just um just so we can kind of track it.

And then for the federal assistance 101 million, 15% of the revenue projections is that the last of the federal support funds?

No so most of that around 90 million of that is preventive maintenance and that's our formula funding that we get on an annual basis and the feds participate in helping us maintain our our vehicle fleet on a regular basis.

Gotcha okay so in terms of the pandemic era federal funds has that all been expended all but a small portion of capital expenditures of funding is still in our capital funding resource but the American Rescue Plan Act one I'm sorry the recovery act that was uh all expended down.

Gotcha.

Okay.

And then under uh the expense pie chart where what slice of that pie is your is the Georgia power bill?

Uh well it's it's actually combined.

So if you see the the fuel and propulsion there the propulsion part of that is the propulsion power for Georgia power.

That's for like the tran uh the the power substations that power the third rail it powers the street car.

And then there's a portion of it that's just in the other materials and supplies or other operating expenses that deals with the actual powering of the buildings and and and the facilities that's not necessarily part of the actual transit okay itself.

Okay.

But I believe y'all do use a lot of power.

We do.

And so the Georgia power bill is pretty large.

Yeah.

Compared I mean I think y'all cost about as a large user comparatively to other customers.

We are a very good customer of Georgia power.

Yeah.

So and I believe y'all had intervened at the public service commission in the past are y'all actively lobbying at the PSC like they have they have uh fuel cost recovery dockets happening uh today actually we we stay involved with the PSC through um our not lobbyist our uh outside council and others um depending on what they're talking about the issues either hit us directly or are more tangential but yeah we remain very close to the PSC.

We we stay involved with the PSC through um our law not lobbyist our uh outside council and others um depending on what they're talking about, the issues either hit us directly or are more tenential.

But yeah, we remain very close to the PSC.

Okay.

Understood.

Um on the Beauford Highway and Candler Road ART projects, you probably saw on the agenda, but we are accepting um upwards over a million dollars to update our transit master plan.

So can you help us understand how you view the CAB County wanting to update our transit master plan as some of these projects were in conceived under different versions of a transit master plan sometimes years ago?

Or are y'all in the pop position of just spending money and continuing forward with the previous plan while we update our plan, or is there any uh opportunity to maybe slow some of those things down because they might not uh make it into the next version of the transit master plan?

Commissioner, that's a great question and puts me in a nice little quandary.

So uh any of our jurisdictional partners to cab updating your master uh transit master plans are great.

We love it, but we are completely supportive of it.

Moving forward with these uh projects, I I looking at them and how impactful they will be.

I don't think that and and this is me speaking without any knowledge of who's gonna do your transit master plan or what the commission or the team uh under Madam CEO's leadership may have as a thought in terms of where they want transit to go within the county, but these are all very, very impactful projects that we intend on moving expeditiously on delivering.

Um we need to pick up the pace of our delivery, so we're gonna move forward uh quickly now.

If it's the will of the county to say, hey, listen, we want you to hold on and and wait till we get something completed.

Let us know, we can sit down and talk.

But um it's not I'm not saying any surprise that delivery has been a criticism that Marta has uh shouldered rightfully, and we are correcting that.

Okay.

Well, we need to get our plan straight first.

Um last follow-up, and I'll let you finish um whenever you want, but the Kensington station TOD, um, can y'all just give us kind of a more concurrent update?

You're updating the CEO's office.

Um, but really the commissioners who represent this area need to know what's going on.

100%.

The commission will be kept in the lower.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Terry.

Next we have Commissioner Bolton.

Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer.

I want to start, I only have about two questions, but I just want to start by commending you on the work.

We know you haven't been with us or with Marta very long.

I love that you guys are active with Marta Hope.

I think that's something most of the community members may not be aware of.

Those who need the services or refer folks to the services may be most familiar.

Um also you deserve kudos for increasing the number of officers that you guys have.

Uh I think that's very um actually that that's great that you are able to do that in such a short period of time, even though I know the team probably has been working on that for some time.

And just the fact that also even though the numbers are low with respect to crime when people see unhoused, there's that negative connotation, that association.

But you you guys are doing an exce exceptional job in that capacity, and I wanted to make sure first to acknowledge that.

But um one of the comments that you made, I just want to reiterate, which is a little bit concerning with respect to the penny extension that no penny extension by itself has ever passed, but only when it's placed into uh some other legislative piece that it will, which says to me that our legislators, uh the majority of our legislators do not support it, and it passes only by default.

Um which says that maybe we should reconsider what the goal or the objective is because if we're sliding it into other legislation to pass, that seems that it's only for MARTA's benefit as opposed to it being something supported as a standalone.

So maybe we should reconsider some things there.

That's not quite a win, but we understand the need.

Okay.

Okay.

And as far as my questions on you alluded to this, but I would like you to reiterate on the slide where it reads MARTA reach at the time.

The numbers are great how you compared initially, maybe the first couple days or first couple weeks.

Folks were just getting to understand and know how to use MARTA Reach, and that grew really quickly and very well.

Can you just describe how that compares to ridership on the network prior to the new MARTA reach program?

Are the numbers comparable as of yet, or it's still folks are still getting used to it?

I I would say since this is a new service for me to say it's comparable would that would be inaccurate.

Okay.

Um it would be great, but then we would need to look at our service and do we need to pull from other areas to make sure that we're servicing Marter Reach because there's such a great need there.

But that's a good problem to have.

But um in my current role, a little bit makes me a little nervous.

Understood.

But we're glad that folks are um increasing their participation in that program because I've been asked about it a little bit, but I haven't had an opportunity to use it.

So I could not speak from experience.

And then just one other question.

Most of the things I was concerned about were already addressed, but I do still get a lot of concern about the hubs, and I'd just like you to take a moment to describe to the community or whomever may be watching or may watch later the archived video, the purpose of the hubs, uh, whether it's just gonna bring more what was described is we don't want hubs that'll bring more buses and exhaust and pollution.

That's the visual that some folks get when they talk about it.

Uh and in addition to whether it's attached to any other economic viability that may help others, the community visualize the benefit of having the hubs.

So I'm gonna begin with the answer by I pulled up the Canler Road ART slide.

As if you look down at the toward the bottom of there, you'll see a canler um the South DeCab Transit Hub stop.

So it is a main stop um and a uh connection point for this ART project.

Then we move over to a rendering that is admittedly dated and not representative of what I think is going to be the transformative type of transit hub that's gonna be integrated into a larger um development that uh is within the cabs purview.

Uh I don't want to speak out of turn because it's not my real estate project, but we are going to integrate into that uh neatly to advance it, and I think the community is gonna be very, very excited with the total overall project when it's completed.

And in terms of um, you mentioned pollution, we use uh most of our fleet is CNG, compressed natural gas, so we shouldn't have that, and we are also bringing on uh more electric buses as that technology continues to prove out.

And would you say the hubs will bring more buses or streamline uh the buses that come in and out with respect to the routes that currently serve that area or a combination of both?

It's probably a combination, but it's more on the streamlining because with our next gen network, we went from over a hundred and thirteen or so routes down to eighty-one, so we're very much in streamlining and providing higher frequency so that folks can depend on that frequency no matter when they need to travel.

Understood.

Thank you for that.

And I I do have one more, and I think you may have alluded to this as well, but I'm gonna go ahead and ask so that you can reiterate.

But when do you think that you will be confident in tracking the ridership with the new system being installed?

Um, considering the big swing from January 26th, and when will you start tracking the numbers through the new system tap system?

We're we're tracking them now.

For example, when we first closed the gates at the airport on the very first day, we had 8,000 taps.

So we're we're already bringing that uh information in.

When is it gonna be completely cut over?

That will probably occur somewhere toward the end of June.

Um, but we are feverishly working right now.

Thank you, sir, and I yield back.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Bolton.

Next, Commissioner Davis Johnson.

Thank you.

Thank you, uh Mr.

Hunt, for a very uh detailed presentation.

I will agree that we had it from good to great.

Um I look forward to following the progress uh being made at South Decamp Mall and at Stone Crest.

I want to thank you also for your focus on safety.

Uh I would assume that safety uh definitely uh have an impact on ridership.

And especially since the World Cup is coming.

Uh are we getting out?

Um the um are we marketing the fact the safety fact with MARTA?

Yes, Commissioner, we are.

Um and I'd like to say that not only are we marketing that we had 12 different and we can bring uh back the next time I come the exact jurisdictions, local uh officers from local jurisdictions around the region who've committed some officers to help us during that time, as well as two transit agencies that have committed officers during that time.

So we are pushing safety at a very, very high high level.

Okay, yes.

Oh, that's good, because I know that people would prefer MARTA than cars.

Doing the World Cup.

Uh and so um I'm looking forward to um an update on South Indian Creek at your next briefing.

It wasn't in this briefing, but I think that uh we're headed in the right direction.

Uh I appreciate your leadership.

And of course, I would like to continue discussions on our focus, which is the cap.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Commissioner.

I believe we're gonna have a ribbon cutting on uh on a bridge project here pretty soon.

And then um we're working very closely with Madam CEO's office on TOD developments around Indian Creek, and I will have more to report on that next quarterly briefing.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Davis Johnson.

Commissioner Massar, you asked for a follow-up.

Thank you so much.

Um again, uh CEO or interim CEO Hunt for being here.

Um how many um I know there was a number of routes that were cut um in DeCAB, particularly South DeCAP.

Do we know uh the number of routes in DeCAB and then those in South Decap that were cut?

I do not know them off the top of my head.

Um we will get all that information to you.

I'm sorry I don't know them off the top of my head, but that is a a great question, and I will get those to you expeditiously.

I'm sorry I don't know them.

No worries, thank you so much if you can just get me that information and then um just going back to some of the projections that we have, financial projections, and I'm seeing the you know the revenues expended.

Um I think there was one additional uh operating expenses, yeah, uh capital sources.

Um, but I wanted to follow up with relationship to the uh revenues and you know.

How are the revenues tra how have they been tracking from year to year over the last five years?

I would have liked to see something related to that.

Can you speak to that?

Great.

Uh well, let me ask a more point of question.

Which specific are you looking for a specific revenue or just generally speaking in in trends?

Well, and there's none that were presented to us, so we can speak generally, but then I would like specific.

That would be great if that's something that needs to be followed up in more detail, but we don't have any presently.

Certainly.

I mean, we're happy to follow up with a delta that shows you the past five years of revenues from each category, and we can we can walk through that.

Uh the general trend is that we saw for a while a reduction in our um our ridership revenue.

Uh that was largely driven by the earlier fairgate issue that you heard Mr.

Hunt mention.

It was an oddity where our fair gates themselves were recording taps, but they were not communicating to the back office and not reconciling that.

Uh, we have since in recent years identified the fact that we had increased our stored value but weren't actually recognizing it as revenue because it wasn't recognizing the trip having taken.

We have done a few accounting transactions to reconcile that and have largely caught up in the last year on a lot of that missing revenue.

So it's now showing up, but it wouldn't have shown up as a trend line over time.

It shows like a decline and then a pop-up all of the sudden.

Um when it comes to federal revenue support, that has been a slight increase because we have been able to put additional parts of our fleet under uh that preventive maintenance, and so the feds are willing to participate in that as well.

And our sales tax, which is our largest revenue source, has been robust, it has been growing.

Um that is largely as a result of in the past several years because there's been a larger migration of people coming in and moving into the metro area spending money, which generates higher sales taxes for us.

Uh it is also sensitive to inflation, and so as inflation goes up, so too does the amount of sales tax revenue coming to MARTA.

So that's kind of the broader review of the revenues over time.

Right.

So that's a three-type and I am unfamiliar with the number of type of um revenues that uh MARTA actually has, but in general, so that just spoke to ridership fleet and sales tax.

But in general, if we were to accumulate all of the types of revenue not breaking them down in general, how's it tracking from year to year?

Uh year to year, it's it's been a it's been a gradual increase.

So it's been increasing.

And and that's where I would I was getting at, because that was my understanding.

So it's been steadily increasing from year to year.

Yes, ma'am.

All right.

Um the next question, I appreciate that.

There's been several changes in leadership and you know, also with service delivery.

So how about the budgetary resources?

How is that looking?

Or I'm sorry, um, reserves, budgetary reserves.

So um the the way we build our reserves, we have uh we have a MARTA Act required minimum level of reserve to cover our debt ratios.

We also have a board required, which is actually a little more stringent than that.

Um so right now, our our during the post-COVID period of time, our reserves are rather high because we had banked up quite a bit of the post uh well the the COVID revenues, knowing full well that ridership was going to suffer for a while rather than rushing out to spend that, we kept it there to help augment the loss of ridership revenue.

And so for several years we were dependent upon what you would have seen in previous budgets and operating carry-forward line, and that was actually a use of that reserve over time.

Uh the I'm happy to report that the projections for fiscal year 2027 no longer expect any use of that reserve.

So we're not planning for any use of reserve for our operations.

We still plan for the use of reserves for capital up to that that limit in the future where we say, okay, we can't go any further below that.

We also try to maintain, I think it's around 125 million.

I thought back to Kevin back there.

Roughly.

Uh it's to try to have 90 working days of capital any time in case we had some kind of disruption in revenues.

Uh so once you get to that line, that results in us issuing additional debt, which is why you saw in the sources on the the capital slide a higher issuance of debt because our anticipation is if we execute the capital program at the ambitious level that it's programmed, we would then have to issue that debt to be able to cover the full cash expenditures.

Okay, but um so the budget then that means that with the decrease in ridership or expectation for loss of revenue based on uh the expected the loss for ridership, though that means those funds that have not been expended could then go to the budgetary uh reserve then so that I can actually can go up even higher.

Anytimes there's a surplus, so the actual expenditures being less than what the the revenues are, it gets deposited in the general fund and possibly into the reserves themselves.

We have two areas.

We have the general fund, which is kind of the best way I could put it is your checking account, and the reserves is more of like a savings account.

So if we notice that our our balances are getting high in the checking account, that hasn't been a large problem recently, but uh then it would be shifted over to reserves to be managed there to try and create some additional interest revenue to then support the program.

Uh, so no, it does, and so it's safe to say that um just generally in summation of what you're saying, the reserves have increased and the budgetary well, the budgetary reserves have increased and the revenues have increased as well.

No, the reserves have been depleted.

So they have been getting depleted steadily since COVID because we weren't getting enough ridership revenue to maintain the system.

So we we've been depleting those down.

Uh and then, of course, our projections for 27 shows we're depleting them down to where we're not willing to take them any lower in the reserve.

And so that's why we are issuing debt to cover the difference.

All right, fantastic.

And and the axe will be, you know, um, in future presentation to the board, it'd be helpful to be able to see both the um you know some revenue tracking for the last five years, but also um the budgetary reserves.

And I appreciate you guys sharing that information um and sending it out, you know.

But in the future in the presentation, that would be helpful.

I yield back to you, Madam PL.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else with the follow-up?

All right, seeing none, I just had a couple things myself.

Um, I did want to thank the team for having an in-depth budget discussion um with our team a few weeks ago.

That was very helpful.

And I also want to thank uh Mr.

Frierson for attending community connection breakfast on April 18th.

He was not slated to present, but he was willing to get in the hot seat and answer questions for us.

So we appreciate him for that.

Um, so he didn't make that that list of events, but he was there.

Um, and I also wanted to mention the new route going through City of Stone Mountain right down Main Street.

I was driving down Main Street the other day, and I'm like, wait, why didn't the Martyr bus turn?

I'm like, oh wait, there's a new route.

And there's actually a new stop right outside the old depot and then the gazebo, which is really exciting because the city of Stone Mountain is pushing to reopen that as a welcome center.

So that is actually a really great location for what they're working on in the future.

Um, and I also requested some data on ridership in my district.

I did receive that information.

I'm still going through it, so I'll follow up um with the either email or request one-on-one to go through that.

But I appreciate you guys quickly getting that information to me as requested.

I also want to say and acknowledge that you guys did not shy away from the recent media coverage of the issue with the um reduced fare and the lines.

I think we also saw those news reports.

So when you're coming before us, I do appreciate the openness and the willingness to acknowledge when struggles are happening and that you guys are transparent and working on those items for us.

And I just one question I wanted to make sure I really understood what the MARTA reached to follow up on one of Commissioner Bolton's questions.

Um, where the level of ridership that the Martyr reach is at now.

Um, I know it's increased greatly, and which is a good thing, but is that still within what you guys were projecting, or is it kind of expanding faster than you projected?

Slightly faster than what we projected.

Okay, but it's still within the window of the statistical anomalies, so we're not staying up at night yet, but it's a slightly higher.

It's a good problem, though.

It is a great problem.

I'm really excited to see that people are taking advantage of it, and it's really helping to fill that gap.

That's all I have.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Commissioner.

We appreciate you.

We'll see you next quarter.

Thank you.

So at this time we are at comments from the board.

I started to my left for committee report, so I will start to my right for comments from the board.

Commissioner Patrick.

Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer.

Uh coming up May 13 will be the uh one of the final, if not the final presidential parkway in surrounding communities placemaking strategy meeting.

Um, May 13th from 6 p.m.

to 8 p.m.

Uh, it's gonna be at the district in Shambley.

That address is 2965 uh South Flowers Road.

Uh that's the one with the uh gather sign uh uh that's out there.

But this is gonna be an opportunity to hear sort of what the results are as well as give final comments, any suggestions or recommendations that you would like to see added into the final report.

Uh that'll be a great time to see that.

Um this would also be a QA uh opportunity.

And best of all, there's gonna be an ice cream social to go with that.

So uh come on down.

Don't worry about your diabetes.

Uh also want to acknowledge that uh this past weekend was uh Tucker Day, May 1st, uh pardon me, May 2nd.

Uh it was held this past Saturday with strong community turnout.

The parade was phenomenal.

Got to see uh, of course, uh Mayor Lerner and all the uh uh city council members and uh um uh city manager for the city of Tucker.

Great turnout, great engagement, uh great opportunity.

So hopefully for next year, y'all will come out and take a look at that.

Uh and then finally, just uh an acknowledgement that uh we had the ACCG annual legislative conference uh from April 22nd to 26th.

Uh had a great opportunity to continue on with the leadership track, uh, engage with county commissioners from around the state, uh, hear suggestions and offer solutions for our fellow council members uh community members.

Um it was a valuable experience for learning engagement, and uh that is sort of the benefit we come out here as elected officials uh and and uh we know what we know, but the opportunities to engage with the other colleagues that have been through similar problems or share our experiences to help our community members is is always a benefit.

So, with that, thank you very much.

Thank you, Commissioner Davis Johnson.

Good morning again, everyone.

Um last Monday, my uh communication specialist uh Jackson Gamble uh joined my colleagues along with the planning department for the cab uh comprehensive plan bus tour to spot those key areas throughout the count where housing is needed.

Um appreciative to Chief Housing uh Officer Dr.

Ferguson, as well as our planning department and Sycamore Consulting.

On Tuesday, following our BLC meeting, my director of constituent services, Demetrius uh Pinkett, attended the South Precinct's major uh majors night out at the Quick Trip on Flat Shows to further connect with constituents and our public safety enforcement.

And on Thursday, Must have attended the Women's Resource Center, uh Champions for Change event.

I'm proud to have been a sponsor for the 40th anniversary of the Women's Resource Center to end domestic violence.

This year's fundraiser raised over 700,000.

I'm proud to invest in spaces that protect and give a force to those who feel solid.

And on Friday, uh I attended the memorial services for Congressman uh David Scott at the state capital, also attended the funeral, uh his funeral on Saturday.

I attended the uh memorial services for Robert Brown, uh Robertell Brown on Friday evening.

Both were uh dear friends of mine.

So I want everyone to keep them and their prayers, their families and their prayers.

I know this is a difficult time for Barbara Brown, who's Robert's wife, and uh Frieda Scott, who is David Scott's wife.

As a reminder, your district five step and commissioners are available to you.

Please feel free uh to call us at 404 371-2159, should you have any questions?

And of course, uh you can also reach us on social media.

Uh and uh always feel free to go to uh website for information or any input uh comments that you may have.

So um with that, I yield back.

Thank you, Commissioner Davis Johnson.

Commissioner Bolton.

Oh, one other thing.

Go ahead.

Uh just wanted to remind everyone that early voting is uh taking place now through May the 20th.

15th.

I'm sorry, through May the 15th.

Election Day is the 19th through May the 15th.

And so I encourage everyone uh to go out to vote.

Uh I have voted, and so we need to exercise that precious right that is trying to be taken from us.

So do go out and vote.

These are crucial times.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Davis Johnson.

Commissioner Bolton has requested to be skipped at this moment.

We will come back to her.

So, Commissioner Messiah.

Thank you so much, Madam P.

The last few weeks have been extremely busy for us all.

You know, um, we've been on the move and it's uh been the less for district three.

I want to thank um thank you for the opportunity to serve as your commissioner.

Um you know, we will keep pressing forward for and to get uh vision for for progress.

I mean, we don't want a broken self-decap, we just want better, and we'll get it.

Um we're all we were also honored to participate as one of the grand marshals in the county line Ellenwood Community Day to celebrate 29 years of strong legacy and leadership.

I was honored to award the district three Dr.

Alice White Bussey Award Community Award to our former deputy director of parks and recreation, Mr.

Marvin Bills on that day for his outstanding service and dedication to District Three and to DeCab County.

He is still serving in the community, though he is uh retired, and I told him he could never retire.

There's too much work we got to get done.

We also uh participated in the with the Queen family for the unveiling of Arthur Jay Queen Drive, formerly East Side Drive, when Ms.

Queen reached out to our office in December 2025.

We were honored to support and made clear that it was a priority to ensure that we got the street renamed.

We engaged appropriately and make sure we got the departments that needed to be involved.

And in terms of sharing my remarks, I want to thank the Board of Commissioners for their unanimous support, Madam CEO, and uh Director Injuku, Deputy Director Rachel Bragg and our planning and sustainability team.

There we go, mouthpiece.

Um Director Peggy Allen and the roads and drainage staff as long as well as Stacey Greer and um with GILS for helping to get that done.

It was truly an honor to celebrate such a noble man whose legacy is etched in our minds for generations to come.

I also had opportunity to partner with J Fly in the How Big Is Your Dream Spring Camp.

I had the opportunity to speak to over 40 campers and to encourage them to challenge them to keep striving and to reaching their goals.

The only thing that can get in the way of their achievements is them.

Thanks to Park and Rec and Commissioner Davis Johnson for your continued support and investment in our students.

Of course, my chief of staff, uh LaShawn Atwaters joined them for the close out program, and the students were able to display their talents, artistic ability as they gleaned forward in just one week time.

Um they the student artists were exposed to practical ways to use AI as a creative tool for the music, for music videos, and we're just so thankful for their forward thinking when it comes to the arts and the entertainment industry.

Registration is open for the How Big Is Your Fly.

I mean, sorry, J Fly, How Big Is Your Dream Summer Camp, which will be a four-week program uh available to students.

I also had the opportunity to attend the Landon Masjid for Sisters United Girls program to give remarks for their 26th Rights of Unita closing ceremony graduating a beautiful bouquet of blossoming young ladies here in DeCab County.

It's been a labeler of love to um partner with them over the last few months to uh help in what they are doing and to support their work and in doing such appropriating 10,000 dollars to the organization to further the program and to develop their the young ladies.

Also partner with the superior court to launch our uh DeCab Civic Legal Clinic.

Um, some may know we have um a legal clinic, and um nothing continues without funding and resources, and there is certainly based on our pro se litigants in need of expansion.

So the objective is to make sure that there's increased legal information and resources for our underserved populations to provide legal guidance to help individuals navigate better through the court system when they're going in pro se particularly, and to reduce the strain on court staff by equipping the litigants with clearer direction.

And so um it'll also strengthen the engagement between the legal profession and the public.

We also um it was always already mentioned the joint BOE BLC meeting that was phenomenal in attending that.

Appreciate the Columbia Drive Corridor community, and big thanks to Madam CEO, COO, all of the departments that participated in that.

Um, it was very helpful to the community to address a lot of their concerns.

I also start meet pitch night.

I mean, it goes on and on and on, but just wanted to jump to the upcoming events, Mums in Bloom in partnership with United Barbadians in Georgia will be held Saturday, May 9th at Sugar Creek Golf Center and Tennis at 3 p.m.

Wadsworth Magnet Career Day is this Friday.

I will also be speaking at Columbia High School Senior Awards Night.

Thank you for Dr.

Pam Darton and the administration for the opportunity.

That's gonna take place Wednesday, May 13th, and I'll bring commencement address to Chapel Hill Middle School on May 22nd at 9:30.

With that, thank you so much for the time.

I yield back, Madam Pia.

Thank you so much.

Commissioner Bolton is not ready.

You have the floor.

All right.

So I'm just gonna talk about maybe four quick things to show the diversity of what we've been doing because Mike was iterated.

This is an extremely busy season for us.

I want to highlight the county line Ellenwood parade.

The um parade marshals were actually from District 37 and our uh new director of parks.

So that was exciting to see, and it shows how much the county supports Ellen Wood and how much more energy we're gonna put into that space.

Celebrating their 29 years.

This was, I think, the biggest of the celebrations that have been in the past, and we work with them to make sure we have vendors that will help with education support, career opportunities.

Some of our vendors came out, really proud of them, really proud of the work.

Reggie, Mr.

Reggie Johnson did an amazing job, him and his team.

So County Line Ellenwood, you are supported.

This month is also autism acceptance and awareness month.

So our District 7, we participated in quite a few programs in Stone Mountain, City of Stonecrest, partnering primarily with Horizon Over the Spectrum.

Amazing organization that is really bringing light to autism acceptance.

And we also attended the Good Human Awards Gala.

The first time I had ever done that.

Very exciting, really cool to see all the pooches come out and prance around and to hear the stories of folks who went to the shelters, saw the love of their life, and then eventually adopted.

So that was a really, really heartwarming experience.

And then I think it was Sunday.

They are really concentrating on gun violence awareness as well as uh drugs, uh something they're seeing more and more in students or young people in the community, whether it's in their community or communities around the Cab County.

So they're putting forth more effort to make sure that commissioners are engaged, their community members are engaged with respect to the awareness, resources, and ways to help transition their youth into better options for themselves.

I do want to make just one announcement.

Our District 7 beautification grant applications will be launching soon.

We've sent that communication out to community members.

This is something that we modeled after what we've seen out of D5.

They have a lot of great projects and initiatives, so we want to mirror some of that great work.

The beautification projects will allow community members to, whether it's landscaping, um, updating of signage.

I know a couple folks have asked us if their fence at the front of their subdivision is now starting to lean to the left a little bit.

Will that help support?

And yes, we're looking into doing all of those things with the maximum.

We don't have all the funds, but we have a few pennies to rub together.

And before I yield back, I just want to say thank you to my team.

We have been getting so many requests lately, much more than last year.

And it makes sense because folks are getting to know who we are, uh, what our vision is and wanting to partner with us, and they have been managing very well.

So thank you to Lavisa Zanders Johnson, Chief of Staff in District 7 office, and Nardo Sareru, who is our executive assistant.

And I yield back.

Thank you, Commissioner Bolton.

Commissioner Long Spirits.

Good morning.

My name is Michelle Longspears.

I serve as the District 2 Commissioner.

I also want to echo what Commissioner Bolton said and give a shout out to the District 2 team.

We have been super duper busy in Q1, and certainly as we're now in Q2 of the year.

Shout out to Destiny, Miss Destiny, raise your hand.

She is the newest member of the District 2 team.

She served as our constituent services and outreach outreach manager.

Very, very happy to have you.

She hit the ground running.

Also, shout out to Miss Rachel Bragg for being named Deputy Director of the Planning and Sustainability Department.

I'm very proud of you, and I think you're amazing.

And I always say that uh Rachel and Brandon White were very gracious with me as a new commissioner and answered all of my silly questions as I was learning about zoning.

So thank you very, very much for that.

Um, moving on.

I also want to um give a shout out to the hundred black men of DeCab County.

I partnered with them on the CAB Youth Explorers program to bring several high school students to Costa Rica for an environmental and conservation experience.

The trip was incredibly successful, and I was delighted to get to spend some time with the students when I was down there as well.

On April 1st, we hosted the third annual State of De Cab Animals Address.

It was an excellent event.

Um, thank you to the commissioners that were able to attend and those that sent a representative in your place.

We had approximately 160 folks and attendance at the Brookhaven City Center.

There was it was standing room only against the walls in the back.

It was really just an awesome event where we brought together elected officials, advocates, residents, and our partners around improving animal services in DeCab County, and I'm proud of the progress that we have made to date.

On April 16th, we hosted a women's commission webinar where we highlighted the district two appointee, Miss Phyllis Mitchell.

I'm so proud that she will be representing District 2 on the newly constituted women's commission.

On April 17th, I participated in the Buford Highway Walk Audit and was very proud to be in the MARTA presentation with my district two safety vest on.

Really amazing experience.

Shout out to Propel Atlanta for organizing the walk audit, and I was very grateful that Marta, DOT, the District 2 team, and several other folks were in attendance.

Moving on to DeCab Dancing with the Stars, I do want to applaud Commissioner Bolton and her chief of staff.

They were pretty spectacular, and I was really impressed with your skills and your excitement and you are a winner in my eyes.

Participated in several community events as well.

Madam CEO hosted the Black History Month celebration at the Brookhaven City Center.

It was a wonderful event, and she really knocked it out of the park this year.

Also attended the novel Lula Hills groundbreaking event on March 12th over in the Lula Hills area, right there off Lawrenceville Highway.

That project is moving along swiftly, and I was delighted to see that the parking garage was being constructed when I was out for a site visit last week.

We hosted a park summit for the District 2 park leaders and Friends of Parks groups on April 12th.

Shout out to Miss Beth Genga for organizing that for us.

It was very well attended.

A lot of really cool ideas were floated, and most importantly, it was an opportunity for our parks leaders to share what they were doing in their parks to discuss new programs, new initiatives, some of their needs, and we will be launching a parks fund this summer with 200,000 for our park groups to apply for for some of their technical or resource needs at the park itself.

We hosted two community town halls, one at Briar Lake Forest, the second one at Fraser Row Park at the town halls.

They were well attended, both of them.

And the purpose of it really was to walk through, talk through my end-of-term report.

And shout out to Ms.

Caroline Enlow and Miss Beth Genga and an awesome artist, actually, that were able to pull together a really nice end-of-term report.

We participated with the Cherry Blossom Festival March 28th.

It was a Saturday and Sunday.

We had a booth out there.

I believe around 60,000 people were in attendance.

We partnered with Lifeline and our booth was quite popular because we had lots of furry friends out there.

But it was a great experience to have the opportunity to really just articulate the successes we've had with animal services in the last few years, meet with constituents, and certainly continued to push adoption.

I'm proud to say that we did have an adoption that took place as a result of that event.

Also participated in the Sagamore Hills Legislative Town Hall on March 17th.

And we hosted a COCO with the commissioner earlier this year in Q1 that was successful.

As stated earlier today, the women's commission kickoff meeting is Wednesday, March 20th.

As we were meeting today, we received another nomination from the school board, and so they are slowly coming in.

I believe we're up to 18 right now out of 25.

And so we'll be circling back with those that have not made appointments yet, but we are getting there, and I'm excited about that.

At a the last business meeting, super duper happy, and thank you, Commissioners.

We were able to approve, we got it across the finish line, the unhoused plan resolution, and there are eight recommendations to be considered included in the overall comprehensive housing plan.

And thank you so much, Dr.

Ferguson and Director Mitchell for all of your support and help getting that across the finish line.

You noticed all of the unhoused and affordable housing advocates were in the room supporting it all in yellow shirts in the back.

And so thank you to all of those folks as well for continuing to champion our unhoused neighbors and our community.

Along with Commissioner Bolton, I did attend the Good Human Gala on April 25th, and I am in total agreement with her.

It was an awesome experience.

It was so well attended and a blast just to see just the excitement in the room over all of the folks who care about animals in Fulton County, City of Atlanta, and DeCab County.

I was honored to represent DeCab County at the summit.

Dr.

Ferguson was there, and Miss Rachel Bragg and several other DeCab folks who are in attendance.

The ARC has done a dynamic job with starting to discuss how to deal with the unhoused issues at the regional level.

And I look forward to continuing to engage with the ARC around that initiative.

We hosted last week the District 2 Library Transition Dream Session on April 30th.

And uh shout out to Roots Down for their work and their coordination of that.

We'll continue to solicit feedback around the library transition plan at both of the District 2 libraries that we're focused on, and I hope that we can get more input from our uh constituents and library patrons about how they like to see those two libraries transition.

And then the Linwood Park Community Parade, Miss Destiny and myself.

We both participated in it last Saturday.

It was awesome.

And then the City of Brookhaven hosted a ceremony and presentation, music, uh really great performances at the Linwood Park Rec Center afterwards.

And lastly, on Sunday, I was able to participate with the P Pea Ridge Park Neighborhood Party and Music Fest.

And we had a gentleman out there.

He brought his music students and they performed for us.

It was an awesome opportunity.

And second, um, the Victoria States Ice Cream Social.

Uh shout out to Victoria States from moving it from July and August to early May.

It was very hot last year, but it was super pleasant, well attended, and uh I really enjoyed just connecting with constituents.

As always, please feel free to reach out to my office.

You can find us online, Michelle Longspears.com, and we're happy to serve and support you in any way.

Thank you very much.

Yield back.

Thank you, Commissioner Terry.

Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer.

Um, first off, happy Cinco de Mayo to everyone.

Uh, that is Spanish for 5th of May.

If you don't speak Spanish.

Uh, this does commem commemorate commemorate the Mexican Army's unexpected victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5th, 1862.

It is not Mexican Independence Day, which is September 16th.

And it celebrates a symbolic win against foreign intervention.

It is very popular in the United States.

It's not a holiday in Mexico.

And while some uninformed gringos may use this as an excuse to get margaritas tonight, I would encourage everyone to visit Beavert Highway and go to Plaza Fiesta and spend some money to support our Mexican American business community.

A couple updates of what the District 6 team has been up to.

We are continuing to engage residents through art, sustainability, and civic dialogue, reaching a wide range of constituents and meeting people where they're at.

In the last few weeks, we partnered with uh Roots Down and some several other city leaders to host a native landscape workshop.

We went over regenerative land care and eco-economic benefits of using stormwater and green infrastructure in city and county landscaping programs.

So thanks to Councilmember Joe Seconder from Dunwoody for coming up with the idea and encouraging us to bring together municipalities to uh to spend a day in Avondale Estates going over this native landscaping workshop.

Um in the last uh week we uh brought a community uh the community together for another Shakespeare performance, a Midsummer's Night's Dream, creating a free fun space for families and neighbors to connect through the arts.

Our last performance will be Shakespeare's most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, on May 23rd.

So please join us for the final uh uh spring series.

Uh last Friday, my team spent the morning with Feed the Children and Boys and Girls Club of Metro Atlanta and Concord Enterprises distributing an estimated 150,000 dollars worth of food, personal care items, and children's books and other specialty projects to assist 400 families facing food insecurity in the DeCab County region, um, which does remind me we um we did approve the mobile food farmers market in this year's budget.

Last Friday, my team spent the morning with Feed the Children and Boys and Girls Club of Metro Atlanta and Concord Enterprises distributing an estimated 150,000 worth of food, personal care items, and children's books and other specialty projects to assist 400 families facing food insecurity in the DeCab County region, which does remind me we um we did approve the mobile food farmers market in this year's budget.

Um however the um the implementation has been delayed, and so we're hoping that the administration uh will finalize that contract um so that we can get those vital food uh security resources out to the community without delay.

My office partnered with Georgia Tech again this year, uh, this time through my aging in place initiative where we collaborated with master students at Georgia Tech and Architecture to creatively exploit explore retrofit um options that facilitate aging in place.

The aging and placers served as the students, clients uh for their class project through interviews with homeowners, actually visiting the the um the seniors' homes, design visualization and technical reviews, many elders in DeCab County received tangible plans, including some financing options they can pursue to stay in their communities that they've helped create and sustain.

We look forward to sharing the what will be about a hundred and eighty-seven-page report from all the students, as well as the video if folks would like to watch the actual presentations.

Uh, we'll share that with everyone here, of course.

Again, I want to thank Reverend uh uh Gerald Durley and everyone who came out for the Earth Day event to celebrate DeCAP's climate champions here at the Board of Commissioners on April 28th.

Uh last week we also, in honor of Earth Day and Earth Month, celebrated the screening of the tree economy at Porter Sanford and unveiled the latest uh as well as unveiling the latest sculpture installation, the lungs of Mother Earth, along the compassion corridor on the Stone Mountain Trail with the Parks and Rec team.

Uh, thank you, Director Bass, for attending and the entire Scotdale community that showed up.

Uh, we are working to make DeCab's parks and trails safer, more connected, and vibrant spaces.

Uh tomorrow, we will be hosting a town hall meeting to discuss sanitation services in DeCab County, excluding including my resolution expanding composting and my resolution proposing a 10 to 50% discount on the sanitation fees for residents that live directly within the immediate one to two mile radius of the landfill.

This will be at 6 30 p.m.

at Sugar Creek Golf Course and Tennis Center, and we have reached out to about 13,000 neighbors that live around the landfill, and so hopefully we'll have a good turnout to hear their um their feedback.

Um and then finally, I did want to um raise something that was uh brought up a little bit today by my uh questions with Marta and it relates to the use of AI in government services.

Um and I was made aware of an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning, actually, um, that questioned the use of AI in a press document that was sent after the aftermath of the fire arsons that happened around the Georgia State Clarkston campus and Halifort Stadium.

And uh first off, let me just say thank you to our first responders, Fire Police 911, for their quick response.

Um, you know, they from performed remarkably um at that moment to prevent that fire from turning into something worse.

Um however, I will note that about two years ago, myself and actually Commissioner Long Spears attended a NACO uh committee, the technology committee, um, and at that time they encouraged counties to develop AI policies.

Two years ago, AI hadn't really been integrated into government services.

However, it clearly is become uh fully integrated.

In fact, we heard Marta um saying that they're also testing it out.

The the NACO committee and and as well as the ACCG technology committee that I serve on has been very insistent that counties adopt AI policies.

Um earlier in the uh in last last year, um, there was the desire to implement and I'm sorry, introduce a policy here at the Board of Commissioners that looked at uh developing that AI policy framework.

At the time, we were told that the administration was already working on it and don't worry about it.

We got it.

And so we held off and didn't introduce it.

It is a year and a half later, and there is no AI policy to speak speak of that I can point to.

Um the thing that um is most concerning, however, in the incident related to the use of AI, and this was an AI map that was put out that in retrospect the um administration acknowledged was inaccurate.

However, when questioned about where the map came from, the response from the leaders in the county was we don't know.

We don't know where it came from.

And I really appreciated with um what presiding officer um Shekara Johnson um said to CEO Hunt at Marta just a few minutes ago about how sometimes when mistakes are made, you simply just own up to them, acknowledge them, and keep things moving.

You know, make let's not repeat the steps.

But the problem that we have sometimes in government is politicians don't want to admit they made a mistake.

And I don't know if that's for political reasons.

That's probably what the real reason is.

But if we can't acknowledge a mistake is made, then how are you going to expect that we're going to fix it in the future?

And so I would encourage all political leaders up here on the board, myself included, as well as the administration.

When a mistake is made, acknowledge it, own up to it.

Don't defer it, don't try to put it off on someone else.

Don't try to not answer it.

Own up to it.

Make sure it doesn't happen again and keep that honesty and transparency at the forefront of what we do here in DeCap County.

I operate simply as if one of my 350,000 constituents that I represent in Super District 6 was here in this room with me.

Because they cannot ask questions.

That is my role is to ask the questions and to seek the honesty and transparency that they would expect if they were up here in my position.

Just because I'm an elected leader does not mean I have all the answers, that I'm infallible.

The oath that we took, which is to represent the people of our districts, not a political party or another political leader, is to represent the people.

And I hope that we will continue to keep that in mind as we move forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I will have go pretty quickly because we still need to have a special call meeting to have executive session.

So some I know to discuss litigation.

So from updates from District 4, excuse me.

We had our committee connections meeting on April 18th, as was mentioned.

We had Director Scott from Damon Scott from Human Services.

He did a great job as our key speaker.

We've had Director Bass and McKinney and other department representatives were present as well as Major Harden.

This is a great opportunity for our constituents to engage not only with myself but with the department heads and ask questions, give feedback and learn a resources available.

We also are and have introduced a district four constituent survey for resources funding prioritization.

It is available on our social media platforms, and we are getting it up on our website.

And I will also note that our website is now ADA compliant.

Would love to give kudos again to the team for putting that on.

They did a really good job.

But they also um introduced a rebranding of themselves to InSafe Company.

So looking forward to seeing them completely roll that out and continue the great work that they are doing in the community.

Um we've mentioned the joint meeting between the BOE and BOC, and we look forward to planning the next meeting in late October.

Would like to thank community development for another recent demolition the other week at 666 Shepherd Road, and yes, that is the real address.

And it looked like the devil lived there.

So we have some pictures posted on our social media if you'd like to see.

Um it's been a blighted property in our community for years now, so really excited to see excuse me, these blighted properties being taken care of and improving our communities.

We do have a ribbon cutting coming.

I think it is scheduled for May 14th at CETA Park.

Um, excited to see that park project come to fruition and see the great community at Scotdale enjoy that amazing new park.

DeCAB Chamber of Commerce Um and Nickel Works through funding from our office have begun their assessment for the implementation of a CID or a B ID along Memorial Drive corridor, so we look forward to seeing that progress.

That is actually something my predecessor had started, and we're just now getting it off the ground, so you know, government takes time sometimes.

Um Chicago's cookout is underway this year.

It is STEAM related, and our our slogan is full steam ahead.

We are seeking sponsors and vendors to participate in hands-on activities for attendees.

Please contact my office if you're interested.

We're also going to be giving out STEM kits.

I'm really excited about that.

I mentioned our website is compliant, and then two more things.

Um, I will I also was able to attend the street renaming for Arthur Queen.

I appreciate my commissioners for letting me interlope into their district.

Um, and I really want to just shout out the team for getting the work done and getting that signage up as fast as they as they did.

And then also just once again, thank you to the Queen family.

I did not have the honor of actually meeting Mr.

Queen, but their family has been just so welcoming and so gracious that I had to attend.

I was honored to attend.

And then last but absolutely not least, I would like to wish Mr.

Hayden Clark from our team a very happy birthday today.

Happy birthday, Hayden.

And he is such a success story.

I should have brought this up at the BOE yesterday.

Um, you know, he graduated Miller Grove last year.

He was our summer intern through our workforce program.

He did such a great job that we've kept him on as a permanent part-time employee, and it's been really great seeing him blossom and grow, and we love having him on the team.

So happy birthday.

Happy birthday.

Second.

All in favor?

I.

I think as long as we set a potential litigation, we were good.

Okay, lunch is not here.

See y'all upstairs.

Okay, well, that I don't know.

I didn't have to put that in the middle.

So I never did another dinner.

Good afternoon, everybody.

If I can get a motion to reconvene.

So move.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

That is unanimous.

Thank you.

We do have one action to take out of executive session.

Gotta put his glasses on, everybody.

Hold on.

So old man glasses on, pardon me.

All right.

Uh, I move that the board of commissioners approve the following refund with respect to the taxpayers request for refund in conjunction with a pending tax refund action totaling two hundred and fifty-two thousand six hundred and seventy-two dollars and forty-six cents plus statutory interest specifically.

Item one, one hundred and thirty-five thousand one hundred thirty-six dollars forty cents plus statutory interest to be refunded with respect to two thousand eighteen taxes relating to tax partial identification number sixteen one seven zero zero one zero zero two.

Item two, uh thirty thousand three hundred and sixty-five dollars sixteen cents plus statutory interest to be refunded with respect to two thousand seventeen taxes relating to tax parcel identification number eighteen zero seven.

Excuse me, zero nine seven one zero five six.

Relating to tax partial identification number one eight one one nine zero eight zero two seven.

These tax refund payments with statutory interest are to be made promptly to the appropriate taxpayers by the DeCap County Tax Commissioner from tax payments collected by that office.

Commissioner David Johnson has her second.

All in favor.

Excuse me.

Who's second that motion?

Commissioner Davis Johnson.

Yes.

Um, six in favor.

We had one abstention.

Um, Commissioner Long Spears is not present to vote.

Can I get a motion to adjourn?

So move.

Second.

All in favor.

Thank you, everybody.