All right, good afternoon.

Welcome back.

This is our finance audit and budget committee special call meeting Monday, July 6th.

Uh chaired by myself, Commissioner Ted Terry, joined here in person by committee member Commissioner Shakira Johnson and on the Zoom, Commissioner Michelle Long Spears.

And if anyone else joins, we'll welcome them as they come.

So uh commissioners, we have a a light agenda in terms of agenda items, but probably we'll um uh talk in length about on some of these issues a little bit longer than we maybe would like, but um I think it'll be a good opportunity for us to dive into some of these issues today.

Um so we do have a presentation from our youth commissioners.

Uh thank you so much for being here, guys.

Um so we'll recognize you here in just a minute.

And then we have the um Zach, you're gonna present on the water debt plan from the CEO's office, Diane's here, okay.

And then we will um then we'll tackle the uh ad velor on tax rates and budget revisions agenda item.

So with that, let's do our meeting minutes from May 26.

Uh there's no edits or changes.

I'll open the floor for a motion.

Move to approve item one zero two one.

Second.

All right, motion and second.

Seeing this further discussion, all in favor is your hand say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye.

Motion cares.

All right.

Um, so let's invite up our dignity on wheels team, uh, Jabare Olashao and Charley.

Y'all feel free just to come up to the um the little committee table mics over here.

And so we want to and actually, do you want to give a little primer on the what the youth commissioners have been working on with central staff?

Absolutely.

And you can just join us right there, Marcus, if you want.

All right, so I'm gonna introduce um Marcus Allen with Central Staff to talk about the youth commissioners, what they've been doing this summer, and that'll set the stage for this particular presentation.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Good afternoon, commissioners and uh all our esteemed uh colleagues, guests, and youth commissioners in the room today.

So uh our DeCab County Youth Commission has worked diligently over the last several months to develop a series of uh policy uh recommendations as well as projects that highlight key uh you know key um you know aspects that the county can consider when it comes to several different uh iterations of um just how we provide services in the county.

What you have in front of you is a great presentation from Charlotte Dennis as well as Jabari Burgess.

Uh Allah Shio is not here today, she's out of town, but she's a forthcoming um freshman at Northwestern University, and they're going to be presenting on the potential uh mobile showers program uh that could be offered with the CAB County.

Um they've had several conversations with uh relevant uh departments such as community development as well as uh members of our administration, and they've worked with central staff over the last several months to develop uh these recommendations, but more importantly, with your office in the summer.

Um, you know, your office and your your staff have been tremendous in this in this uh effort.

And in today's FAB committee, they're just presenting uh the potential uh program expansion that could be considered from you all.

There will also be another presentation at PWI tomorrow for a for a different uh sidewalks infrastructure plan.

But today, the potential mobile shower expansion.

Want to get your thoughts, your recommendations, your feedback, and go from there.

So I introduce um Charlet to introduce uh the team here.

Um I do want to uh appreciate that the uh the CEO's budget this year expanded the workforce development program for the youth, right Zach for the summer program.

So appreciate y'all being part of that program.

Um this is a paid internship.

Um we're not trying to get free work out of y'all.

Um so um the county's getting our money's worth, I think, um, and also hopefully an opportunity for y'all to get some great experience.

So with that, I'll introduce Charlay.

And if you want to eat introduce the rest of the team.

Okay.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

So we are the Super District Six Summer Interns and also former DeCab County Youth Commissioners, and we're pleased to be here today.

This is our mobile shower expansion initiative.

Oh, thanks.

Yeah, you've got to click around there.

All right.

And turn your mic on, Jabari.

There you go.

These are the members of our team, Charlotte Dennis and Ola Shah Agbula.

They're both incoming freshmen at Georgia State University and Northwestern University respectively.

I am Jabari.

I'm a rising junior at Decatur High School.

During our six weeks as interns, we learned more about how to flesh out our policy.

We created memorandums, cost benefit analyses, and logic models to really understand what our goal was with the policy and make it as simple as possible to present to you all.

Before we go into our policy, allow us to give you some background on this issue first.

As you can see, a myriad of studies have found that 50 per 56% of the unhoused population has no access to a shower.

27% cite lack of transport to hygiene services as the primary obstacle to this issue.

Your constituents agree as well.

During a survey we conducted, 85% of participants replied that they would be very affected if they couldn't maintain their personal hygiene anymore.

The American Journal of Infection Control states that inadequate access to hygiene facilities increases the risk of infectious diseases, skin conditions, and otherwise preventable skin issues.

During our tour of the Frontline Day Center, we were informed that 40% of people at Frontline do have jobs.

Without good hygiene, they could be at risk of losing those jobs.

Our first version of this policy came out of the 2025 through 2026 Youth Commission cohort.

The session was presented at our annual policy meeting.

Commissioners were able to hear our original resolution, and Commissioner Terry even supported moving it forward for ratification.

At that time, the focus was mainly focused on partnering with nonprofits to provide more mobile showering units for unhoused residents on a set schedule about three days a week along with basic hygiene kits.

After doing more research and actually getting into the community, we realized the issue is bigger than just providing showers.

So we shifted from creating a solution to expanding and properly funding something that already works for the county.

One organization we reached out to was a nonprofit called Flowing with Blessings.

They operate at the Grady Hospital and at Frontline in the CAB three days a week.

During our visit to Frontline, we were able to see the mobile shower and laundry buses as well as other services provided, such as the mobile barbershop.

One of the great things about them is that they've employed people from the shelter to drive these trailers, allowing for workforce development opportunities.

One of the key points made during the visit was the fact that people are using the mobile services because there's an already established sense of trust, which is why expanding the program is so important.

Flowing with blessings provided us an estimate of the costs needed to operate each day, varying from the amount of services.

To run the mobile showers for a pilot of six months, four days a week, it would cost approximately $96,000.

Running the mobile shower and laundry bus would cost 144,000.

Running the mobile shower, laundry bus, and mobile barbershop would cost 168,000.

Based on our conversations with key members of Flowing with Blessings, hygiene doesn't end at just showers.

The mobile barber trailer utilizes volunteer barbers to cut the hair of the homeless.

These areas already have higher population of unhoused residents and limited access to services.

Some of the key sites can include St.

Vincent and Chambly, Panachial Park and Dunwoody, and Harrison Crossing Crossing Library and Stone Mountain, along with other locations around Decatur and Lythonia.

For our four-day weekly schedule, we can rotate that fourth location so that services are spread more evenly across the county while still hitting the highest areas of need.

One person said, Definitely, North DeCab Shambley has no county sponsored services, nothing.

Don't forget to make services accessible for our disabled unhoused neighbors.

Their savory was sent out through community sites like Nextdoor all over the county.

We also went into Decatur and collected responses totaling in an estimated 60.

96% out of 55% of responses, 96% of people export export support expanding mobile hygiene services into CAB.

94% agreed that mobile showers would improve their community and is a good service to provide.

As a part of the 2027 budget, we're asking for support to run this program four days a week across these expansion sites.

We're not asking to solve homelessness overnight.

What we are asking for is a practical evidence-based step that restores dignity, improves public health, and connects people to services that already exist, but aren't always accessible.

We hope you'll support this initiative and help the Cab County continue leading with compassionate community-driven solutions.

Thank you so much, and we're open to any questions.

Wonderful.

Great.

Thank y'all so much for that presentation.

Let's first open it up to commissioners.

Commissioner Johnson, any questions, comments?

Um great presentation.

Really appreciate the hard work you guys put into that.

I think my only question would be if we do the six months in 2027 budget, and it's a huge success.

What are the opportunities to expand it?

Um, because I wouldn't want to start it for six months and then have to end it and leave people looking for how do they get those services.

So I'm looking at you, Mr.

Williams.

Yeah, go for it there.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chair.

And I and first of all, great great presentation.

Um, to your direct question, I would think that these funds uh would come from the housing um trust fund, housing fund.

Um this seems it's this would be wholly appropriate.

So I think a conversation with Dr.

Ferguson um in terms of if if we started this um whether this year, quite frankly, or in 27.

Um, but it wouldn't be very difficult, I wouldn't think to roll that forward into future years.

I'm putting you on the spot, Dr.

Ferguson, but do you agree?

Yeah, come on up here, Dr.

Ferguson.

You don't mind.

Because I know this is part of like a larger initiative, and this is one piece of the housing.

So um you need to be at a microphone grab a mic and just uh give us your thoughts.

Thank you.

Yeah, on the spot indeed.

So um great uh presentation, uh, by the way.

Uh yes, so it is a part of you know our ongoing plan to provide and expand the the services uh that we provide to the homeless.

And so you might uh I know you're all familiar with the road to home, safe space the cab, and as a part of that initiative.

Um we're including mobile showers and mobile laundry uh as a part of that, and we expect those services and you to continue going forward.

Wonderful.

Awesome.

Okay, great.

Good.

And then I think my only other question, I like the idea of the locations you guys presented.

I I definitely can see where we could look at expanding it in the future, different um locations, something along Memorial Drive, I think would be really helpful.

So just throwing that out there for future consideration as well.

But um again, great job, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I also thoughts on that.

Mm-hmm.

I also wanted to add that when we spoke with Floing Flowing with Blessings and Frontline, they um were talking about their proposal to expand to a Memorial Drive location, which would be the site for all women and families, but the site that's on Gresham would um become just all men so they could like really work in understood.

Thank you for that clarification.

Okay, great.

That's great information to get.

Uh Commissioner Long Spears, do you have any questions or comments?

Um, yes, sir.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Great job on your presentation.

I am sorry I'm not with y'all today.

I would have been traveling, but that was really excellent and certainly very timely.

I concur with Commissioner Johnson on the time frame and term of a pilot project, if you will.

I think that six months is believe it or not, while y'all are young, it's the blink of an eye that it passes.

So if we could extend that to 12 months next year, I certainly think that would be um an advantage to our unhoused community.

And second, if it's not the will of the board to do that initially, then we do still have the opportunity during the 2027 mid-year budget cycle as well to extend that program if we find out that it's working.

Could you talk to me a little bit more about some of the input and feedback that you receive from the unhoused community, how it would make them feel better or um I guess have a positive impact if we're able to um engage with excuse me, is it showers for blessings?

Am I saying that right?

Flowing with blessings.

Flowing with blessings, yes.

If you wouldn't mind responding to that, thank you.

Okay.

So some of the feedback that we receive from Flowing with Blessings is that some I'm gonna start with this.

The unhoused people at the frontline center, they prefer they actually prefer using the outside showers that's on the bus rather than the showers that's inside the building that come with like their showers are kind of like the gym showers.

You have the counter, the toilets, and then behind that is showers.

But they told us that they actually like the outdoor showers better because it's more compact and they feel like they have their own space.

Excellent.

So is it also a safety issue as well, do you believe?

Um I don't I do believe it's a safety issue, but they didn't raise any concerns as far as safety when we spoke with Floing with blessings.

They did say they have security at frontline all night long.

Um so that's that's probably their only source of security.

One of the reasons I'm asking this question specifically is we are looking at a second day center in North to Cab in partnership with St.

Vincent DePaul.

My understanding is that they have several shower stalls, um, I believe that they've worked into the plans.

And I'm wondering, and this might be for Dr.

Ferguson, what is the environment of those showers?

Are they independent stalls?

I think this is really good intel at what uh we need to look to do with that North to Cab day Center.

Yes, they will be independent stalls.

Understand that currently at their facility, they don't have those uh types of shower facilities, and so those are uh facilities that are going to be built uh on the premises.

Wonderful.

All righty.

Well, again, excellent presentation.

Thank you all so much for bringing this to the Fab Committee, and I am certainly in support of this project.

Thank you, and I yield back, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner.

And just a couple of thoughts.

Uh, those are great questions and comments from everyone, and it it did get me thinking um for Zach and uh Dr.

Ferguson.

Is there an opportunity between now and when the Shambley St.

Vincent DePaul Day Center will open later this year to have some of those shower services with because they're still serving individuals anyways, and so I'm just curious in terms of the on-site that's currently going on that's there now, and then I know the expansion is coming, but is there an opportunity to fill some of that gap with the um you know one of the proposals here with potential bubble the mobile, yeah, for now.

I think it's something that we can definitely um you know look at visited.

There's uh CEO Williams and I we have to come together on a list of items that you can imagine, um, for the remainder of this year.

And so I think to the extent we can accommodate those that's a request we will.

Okay.

And I imagine, you know, Zach usually says, well, you know, if it's in the budget, then I guess we could make that happen.

And this is so happens to be the Fab Committee, which is the budget committee.

So um so I mean, and Zach, it sounded like you were all ready to get this thing, you know, going to the next level.

So just you know, in recognition of a couple things.

One, our youth commissioners did bring this, you know, to the to our attention last year at the policy presentation, which is why it was so important that we worked with them to kind of actually capture something very specific that the board of commissioners could act upon, because we really wanted to be that um sounding board for the youth.

And when they brought really good ideas to the table, um, show them that we can you know that we can do big things, um, but also like that through their leadership and vision, they can encourage us to do things as well.

So it sounds like everyone's really in alignment with the the goal of having these services.

So, Zach, I mean I know that those are sort of like high-level numbers, but um if if the fab committee were to make a recommendation for uh you know the the budget that we're getting ready to vote on, I guess tomorrow potentially is right in this next agenda item.

Yes, could we factor in a temporary expansion for this budget year so that the other sites, you know, depending Shambly or even East of Cab could be covered?

Right.

So what what I would propose, Mr.

Chair, is if um the the Fab committee um kind of encourage or request us to explore um you know uh bringing on other vendors.

We we don't have to name any specific for the purpose of providing um showers and laundry service to the unhoused.

But I think simply an endorsement of this as a concept and requesting that we uh incorporate this concept into the housing strategy that uh Dr.

Ferguson is is working on implementing.

I think that gets us there.

Okay, very good.

All right.

Well, that sounds like it could be a motion, committee members.

I'll open the floor.

Some moved.

That's always the easy way to do it.

Uh-huh.

That's right.

Commissioner Longspears.

Absolutely.

Apologies.

I was on mute.

Second.

Okay, great.

All right.

Motion is second.

All right.

All in favor is the hand say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye.

Motion carries.

All right, congratulations to you, Commissioners.

Yeah, your first budget amendment.

Wonderful.

Well, again, thank you all so much for um I think this wraps up your summer internship rights.

So um thanks for again for being here this summer, and we look forward to working with you in the future and supporting you and definitely will have you come back um to see the progress on what y'all help make happen.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Charlie.

Thank you, Jabari.

Yeah, appreciate it.

Wonderful.

Um I'm sure y'all you'll hang around afterwards so we get pictures of everybody.

Um, okay, great.

Um, so Zach, do you want to uh present on the water debt plan next?

You're good to go on that?

Yes, that thank you, Mr.

Chairman so I'll call up uh CFO McNabb to come on up.

And uh as you know, there's been a lot of conversation uh over the past really number of years, but in earnest with the adoption of the 10 by 10 um in terms of what programs can the county implement that shows quite frankly that we're sensitive to the um the impact of increasing uh the water cost as well as how can we help those who are often um find themselves in difficult and challenging situations with their outstanding water bills.

And so Ms.

McNabb and her team have been working diligently over the past number of months and have come up with a strategy that we think um shows the county's compassion, um but at the same time it will ideally get people back into the rhythm of paying their bills on time.

So um Ms.

McNabb?

Sure.

Just go up to the grab the mic there.

Thank you.

Going over the qualification requirements.

We're trying to keep this simpler than the discount program, and it's going to be simpler than the discount program.

Household income must be less than 60 percent of AMI, which is the same qualification as the RAP discount program.

Okay.

Um, but you don't have to be able to qualify for the RAP discount to get the debt forgiveness.

Okay.

And what and the note up here is um we have uh currently 831 RAP applicants that would qualify, these are just applicants that would qualify for the forgiveness based on income.

Uh now what they will need to do is come in and sign up for an installment payment agreement.

And then once qualified at the one-year anniversary date of qualification, the customers will receive a forgiveness credit equal to all the payments they made on their IPA that year.

So basically it's a buy one get one.

Okay.

Okay, so you make one dollar payment, you get your one dollar credited plus an additional dollar credited.

Okay.

And that will occur on the anniversary date each year, and then the customers have to re-qualify again for that upcoming year, which is true for the wrap discount as well.

They can contact the Urban League either at that email address or the phone number.

Um and I think it's a there's also a website address that that they have.

Um but that's it.

Yep, and and Mr.

Chair, what we'll ensure we do is um get all the collateral information to each of the commissioners so that you can share that with your various uh email groups and and other constituents.

Um something we're we're quite proud of.

And they've done a masterful job, and we're anticipating a start date or 8-1.

Yes.

August 1st.

August 1st, okay.

Yeah.

And um we've got the Urban League um has already done developed the uh SOP that goes along with this.

Okay.

It's about a six-page SOP.

Okay that helps us uh deliver the program.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Before I uh turn it over to commissioners for questions, just a quick um question for uh I guess high level.

Do y'all have what's like the fiscal impact or what do you project would be the you know likelihood of more people, I guess, signing up for this, but then also the I guess the ultimate forgiveness, you know, debiting of that equal amount.

Do you have any projections?

We don't have any projections at this point because this is all brand new.

Okay.

Okay.

So this is really a pilot to see if we can get folks back on the payment plan, but that the incentive here is they if they pay do a year of uninterrupted payments.

Well, and it doesn't even have to be uninterrupted.

Okay.

So just once it equals 12 months?

It no, however much they pay during that 12 month period.

Now, they're only protected, again, shut off for two months.

Okay.

But if, for example, they get they don't make their payments and they get shut off, they can come in at the end of that year and pay $500 and they'll get a thousand dollar credit.

Okay.

Okay.

We're not going to penalize them.

A $500 credit.

It's one to one.

Yes.

Yep.

They get total.

They get their regular credit.

Yeah.

It's really hard to articulate that clearly.

Um it's not a buy one get two free.

No, exactly.

That's why I keep going back to buy one, get one.

To me, that's much easier to understand than to state one's a credit and one's a payment.

Uh so um so they will get that credit regardless of whether they've paid on time.

Okay.

All right.

Uh Commissioner Johnson.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

So I am interested also in when we get the program going, knowing what that fiscal impact would be.

And then also if there's any way we can get projections on if we think within a year, how many of our customers will be able to like eliminate or greatly pay down that debt?

Or if we think, you know, this is going to take multi-years for some of the debts to get paid down.

Oh, it'll definitely take multiple years.

Okay.

Because they're they're accruing additional debt, so to speak, or they're supposed to be they have to make all their payments current.

They have to stay current.

Yeah, to stay current.

On all their other balances.

So I I know you probably don't have that information currently, but if we can get um some updates as this goes along, and maybe with some of that more concrete information on how's it working, who's it helping, and what those numbers are looking like.

Sure.

I think that'd be great.

Sure.

Thank you.

I know that um without disconnection, a significant portion of our installment payment plans were defaulting.

Okay.

Almost 90 percent.

Without disconnection.

So without disconnection.

In other words, if we don't disconnect after two after two months, they don't continue on the plan.

Unfortunately, they may need that threat of disconnection to keep them honest on making the payments.

Honestly, that's true of a lot of people, even folks that are not financially disadvantaged.

We get all kinds of comments about, well, you know, I didn't pay my bill because y'all didn't disconnect me.

We get that a lot.

Okay.

Understand.

Understood.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh Commissioner Long Spears.

Thank you so much.

Um, Mr.

Chair, appreciate your presentation, Director McNabb.

Um, I see today is just simply a discussion on this item.

Are is there board action going to be required?

I don't bel uh Zach, can you speak to that?

I don't think it's board action required, right?

No, it doesn't require any specific board action in the board uh with the adoption of the 10 by 10, and I think another incident has stated uh the desire to see this type of thing.

So we we don't believe we need any additional board action.

Okay.

Um Director McNabb, thank you again for the slide deck.

If you could send that to all of us, or at least me, I don't know if the other committee member members require it, but I would appreciate it.

And any additional information that you have would be excellent.

And with that, I yield back.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um so just maybe a couple of things as the program uh begins on August 1st and we're sort of like you said, Director McNabb piloting out to see what the response rate is.

Um would y'all be open in the future to expanding it to as high as 80 percent AMI?

Not at this point.

Okay.

Um do we have any do we have any data on our customer base in terms of where they sit in terms of AMI?

Do we have any any knowledge about that?

Okay.

There's countywide knowledge.

That's all.

So would it be safe to say that one goal of this program could be at the very least to get everyone who does have debt to apply?

Because at least then they know where they stand.

Are they at the 60 percent?

Are they at the 80 percent?

And I think the main thing I'm getting at here is that if you have a a middle class household, right, and I know that's a moving target, but in theory, you know, 80 percent AMI might be two middle class parents, right?

And like those bills are also you know, high for them as well, right?

And if they have a very a very high debt in the tens of thousands, you know, what is the incentive, you know, do we is the is this incentive also you know, uh a way to basically get them to pay as well?

No, I think the disconnection incentive is the best way to get people to pay.

Okay.

Well, you but y'all are doing that anyways, though.

I mean the disconnection is you're giving folks two months before disconnection.

If they if they're not in the not in the protected group.

Right.

If they're not in the protected group, they get 50 days.

It's almost two months.

Okay.

And and Commissioners, I think it's important to note we really haven't, although there are disconnections.

We have not pursued disconnections in earnest.

With programs like this, I think we're more and more positioned to really start focusing on um those persons who have not contacted us, um, have not been responsive and are not paying.

So we're going to need to increase disconnections.

Okay, understood.

And that'll start by the by August 1st.

We'll be we'll be ramping up between now and August 1st on getting back to normal disconnections for this system run between three and five hundred a day.

Okay.

Oh, n when we're when we're just doing the normal.

Normal operating business procedures.

Okay.

Um I think so I think it would be helpful just to like figure out what those numbers look like.

Um which ones exactly?

Uh well, one, who who would apply for like who actually ends up being a applicable for the 60 percent and below.

Right.

Just like understanding how that looks.

And well, we've gotten of um about 1,100 applications that we've received, 830 qualify.

Okay.

That was through RAP.

That no, the RAP the people who applied through RAP.

Right.

800 of them were income qualified for the forgiveness program.

So what we could do.

Okay.

Um But they've got to apply.

Yeah.

Towards the end of the year we can do a here's how it's going.

Just an update at the end of the yeah.

At the end of uh, you know, before the last meeting of the year, we'll just give an update to FAAP.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And the disconnections honestly is gonna what gonna be what gets everybody to actually come in and sign up for the IPAs.

Right.

I understand.

That's that will that will get folks coming in and signing up for them and making the payments and moving forward.

But I mean, let's face it, we've let them sit there for years now.

Yep, understand.

So they're gonna need some motivation.

Yeah, I understand.

I think um, Zach, my only concern that's I feel like is a narrow slice of this universe is individuals where their water bill is below that four percent of their income, but when you add their debt payment plan, then it goes above four percent.

And so that's I'm trying to be sensitive to the We allow them to choose whether they want to add whether they want their IPA payment to be above the four and a half percent or not.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Because of course the more they pay, the more buy one, get one.

Right.

So it's a deal for them to go ahead and pay.

Okay.

And all right, last question, just to clarify, turn back over to Commissioner Johnson for a follow-up.

But um, will we be able to basically show customers, like if you do the year just base level, here's what you get.

Like so, in other words, give them a projection of if you paid a little bit of a amortization scale.

Well, yeah, just something that shows here's how you actually can get rid of all your debt.

Like you can do that.

That's what Urban League does.

Okay.

So they're going to work with them to figure out what might be a good thing.

They work with they work with them on their income and what their income is versus what their pay outgo payments are and what they think they can afford.

It that they go into all of that with them.

Okay.

All right.

I'm going to get to the last other incentive that I think would really bring this program on home, is at some point the real incentive is to forgive all the all the debt.

And maybe there's a threshold, maybe it's, you know, after three years and you've taken a big chunk out.

Um but I think I think we really got to give someone a light at the end of the tunnel for the to really be incentivized.

And to me that's just a way to massage the numbers and create some incentives within the payment program.

And I think this one-to-one is a great incentive.

The only question I would have is if they feel like if someone psychologically feels they're never going to pay it back, is are we really even going to get them to sign up in the first place if they think it's it's pointless?

If it's so high and they think it's going to take 20 years to pay something back, do they just check out and hit the road?

Um and then I guess whoever's left just has to figure it out.

Yep.

So maybe this time next year, once we've had a chance to really implement this program and Urban League will have had a number of conversations and we'll see, you know, if if that is the case, we'll be able to revisit.

But we want to give this just shot.

We we feel pretty good.

I mean, the you know, to do the you know, half off essentially is what we're offering.

Okay.

Yeah, buy one get one free.

I don't think it half off.

I think that's the wrong way to phrase it.

But I like buy one get one free.

Well, whoever gets them to make the payment.

Which everyone gets them in to make the payments.

Um thank you, Mr.

Chair.

So the conversation about disconnection maybe remember an email we've gotten into my office um last week.

Um once someone is disconnected, how long to uh and they make payment, how long to re-establish the service?

We try to, if they make the payment before noon, we try to make it that day.

If it's afternoon, we try to make it the next day.

Our SLA, however, is three days.

One to three days.

Yeah.

Because it depends on how many people have been call at the same time and uh those kinds of issues.

But our SLA is that we'll do it within 72 hours.

And then reconnection fees.

I think that's 45 or 50 dollars.

And is there any way um if they get into one of these programs, can that reconnection fee go towards forgiveness or some type of credit as well?

We can look at that.

We could look at it.

We haven't considered it.

Yeah.

Because what we're what we're effectively paying for is that we had to have we had to send somebody out to cut them off, and we got to send somebody else out to cut them back on again.

Yeah, and that was kind of one of the questions in the email I received from a resident was she was upset about the reconnection fee, but every utility, if you actually get disconnected, there is a reconnection fee.

So you got to be drawn.

Right.

It would be good if there is a way to add it back, maybe half a credit or you know, some other incentive to make sure people are doing what they need to do and continue to make their payments.

And go ahead.

No, go ahead.

I was just gonna say uh one of the things that we have to look at is how much of additional manual process that puts into play.

So but we will continue to look at that.

Perfect, thank you.

And then curious, are we going to roll out like a press conference?

How are we rolling this out so people are aware?

There'll definitely be a a roll out.

Um I'll get with the CEO and see if uh she anticipates a press conference.

I'm sure there will be the press releases and that type of thing, though, for sure.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Commissioner Johnson.

Um I do think it would be good, you know, we're presenting this now in in Fab, but um, if the other commissioners could just get um individually, I think briefed on this Dak, I think that would be great.

And I really would like, I mean, if it's if this I mean it sounds like this plan is rolling out.

Um I think a lot of it had to do with what we all agree to back in, you know, I guess March of last year.

So if we could coordinate with all the commissioners to and click, I think this is a very big announcement, and I think it would be important for us to show that we're united, but also that we want people to know about it so we can get as many people to apply, because this I think is an opportunity for us to address a lot of issues in a fair way.

Got it.

Um hopefully before the maybe before the we all go out on the break for July 14th.

So maybe how about how about next Monday?

There you go.

Commissioner is called uh Okay, very good.

Um, last thing I wanted to ask you about, Diane, just because we were talking about the other day, the um adding like into the um, what is it called, like a roundup button online bills, is that something that we will be able to roll out?

We've been we've been working on it again.

That's another manual process that has to be put into place.

Um I'll check and see exactly where that is on that.

Um but we're trying to be very c manual processes cause mistakes.

Okay.

And a significant amount of additional time.

Um so we're trying to see how much of it can be incorporated into the system.

We've been pretty disappointed in our system.

Okay.

And their ability to do that.

Okay.

But I mean, you know, having to go in and I think that right now the the way this the payment portal works, they've got to make two different payments in order to make a contribution, and that's not effective.

That's just that's not effective.

So as I said, we've been pretty disappointed in our system, but that's one of the things we're working toward.

Uh I just hate paying thousands of dollars to add a feature.

Okay.

Thousands and thousands of dollars to add a feature.

Yeah.

Um Zach, could we make so I the only reason I bring this up is because I um just basically heard the other water water authorities and I'll honestly like utilities do this as sort of a kind of a standard kind of like a Georgia Power does something like that.

We're a so much smaller.

I know, but this is 2026 and it's there's so I guess the question is I would love for you to talk to ourselves.

What does it cost uh for the plug-in for Inquesta to have a roundup button that's one step, not two steps.

And then, you know, I mean if it's a thousand dollars, do we think that we can get more than double that in the middle of the year?

Oh, if it were just a thousand dollars, I would do it immediately.

Okay, so hopefully we just get like if there really is a a huge cost, let's just like just like let us know.

I mean, I'll I'll I'll drop it if it's like a hundred thousand dollars to you know plug that in.

Um but I do think that we could raise tens of thousands of dollars in donations.

That's kind of just the back of the envelope research I've seen from like other utility authorities that do this.

So just trying to add a little extra, Diane, to the pot.

I'm I'm good with that.

Like I said, I'm just we're just trying to be cognizant of manual processes that somebody is gonna physically have to sit down and pull manually and add.

Yep, yep, I understand.

We'll get AI to do that eventually, I guess.

Yes.

Um thank you, Director McNabb for the presentation.

Here, Kerry, before you wrap up, yes, good discussion.

I have a follow-up.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

Um would it be possible, Commissioner Terry, to have um Ms.

McNabb and the other folks come back and deliver a status update, the first Fab meeting in November, because that would get us through the first three months.

I'm hopeful this is going to be a benefit and have a positive impact on our community, but it would be also helpful to me and I would think to the other committee members, just to check in on see how things are going.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's on good Zach.

Yeah, it would yes, we we could report on that and we'll do a wrap update at that time too.

Okay, a wrap update.

Combine the two.

Okay, great.

All right, so we'll stab in November is what I'm asking for.

Yes.

Yeah, but actually.

Yeah, August first is starting the start time, right?

September, October.

Okay.

Well, so we'll look for a three-month update, and it might be November, December, depending on that.

But um, but y'all, all right.

So we're gonna get together on our announcement.

Uh-huh.

Yep.

Get the word out, and then August 1st.

You ready for August 1st?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, we're it's you're ready.

It's it doesn't happen for a year, basically.

The credits don't happen for a year.

So you'll work out that manual process.

Right, but that does that should not diminish the way Urban League has to be ready to go on August 1st.

And yes, you we've all been working on making sure that they've got the information that they need and their SOP is complete.

Okay.

And so they know exactly what they've got to do on August 1st.

Okay.

Zach, is the Urban League contract that's still fully funded?

Are we going to update that?

Because I we've got to do that.

That'll be coming soon.

Um, but in August, for sure.

Okay.

All right.

And that's still all watershed enterprise funded.

Oh, yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

That that will remain funded from Maryham.

Okay.

All right, very good.

Um well, thank you all so much.

Appreciate the the discussion and presentation.

All right, Commissioners, let's do our one agenda item.

This is item 1045, uh the 2026 ad valorum tax millage rates and budget revisions.

And Director Siegler is here, back from the beach, I think, maybe.

Oh, I wish.

Me too.

I was on a farm in Nebraska.

So you must have a farmer's hand under that suit, I'm sure.

Probably so.

All right, we'll uh pull up the presentation there on the screen.

Okay.

All right.

Well, uh good afternoon.

So uh we have a presentation today.

Some of this will be information that you've seen before, but we've also provided some additional uh information to kind of break down uh you know where the changes in the millet rates are coming from and what it's paying for.

So uh the first several slides are uh information you've seen before, just what was approved through the 2026 budget.

Uh I'll try to just hit the high notes on that.

So um the largest investment is in housing, which is 12 million dollars.

Uh that is for housing investment bonds as well as unhoused assistance and other programs.

Uh under non-departmental, we have a number of items.

One is a million dollars for the arts council, uh $500,000 for food security, 1.9 million for uh expanded work source workforce development programs, uh 1.4 million for med Cure Health, 1.5 million for Mosaic Health, and a million dollars for the tire recycling program.

Um to elections, there's a million dollars for voter education and outreach.

Uh fire, we had quite a few items that were uh related to improving their compensation to uh recruit and retain more uh firefighters.

So the total cost is $3.2 million from the fire fund and $155,000 from the general fund.

Um not on the slide, but also um the fire uh general fund budget increase this year due to the AMR contract.

That was a $7.5 million increase this year.

Uh there's additional $780,000 in animal services for the lifeline contract to provide additional services.

Um then the other item to mention is the increase of the minimum wage to $90 an hour, which that's a cost of about $2 million across all budgets.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh slide four is just the millage rates as proposed.

You can see uh across the top, that's the unincorporated rate.

So the total is 21.31, which is a half mil increase from last year.

Okay, uh this is a breakdown on slide five.

So this is something new we added here to compare the millage rates for FY26 to both FY25 as well as the averages from FY 2015 through 25.

Uh so one thing that I think gets lost sometimes when you're comparing year to year is that you'll see a difference and you'll wonder, you know, you know, it'll look uh a lot uh larger than what it really is when you take a sort of longer view.

Uh so 2025 was an outlier in a lot of ways, um particularly with the e-host reserve.

Um so that changed the numbers quite a bit.

Um but if you look at uh that last column, which compares FY26 versus the average for those years, you'll see for that county wide operational rate, so that's the one that EOS applies to.

The change is 1.323 mills 26 2026 versus the average.

Uh if you go down through fire, that's a slight decrease this year.

Um for unincorporated um tax service, that's a slight decrease this year.

Uh countwide debt service, we don't have millage rate for that any longer.

The unincorporated parks millage rate is a decrease compared to the average as well as a decrease from last year.

Uh the roads millage rate is a decrease both from the average and from last year.

And then where you see some of the increases is in police.

So there's a 0.576 increase compared to last year, which is a 0.981 increase compared to the um average, and that's for police basic services.

And police non-basic services also increases by 0.055 mills for this year, although it's slightly down from where it's been uh over that 11-year period.

Let's uh stay on that slide.

Okay.

Uh commissioners, do you I think TJ, I think this is why I asked you to do this spreadsheet just to kind of help us understand it.

I might be more confused though.

Um, but let's see, Commissioner, do you have any questions or just any clarifying points that on what TJ presented there?

Does this does this track or do you want to digest it some more?

I think I'm good for it.

Okay, commission.

I don't have any questions at the moment, um, but I will need to study this a little bit more.

It's very small on my screen.

Okay.

Um TJ, so just um on the police basic.

So if you so the thing we're really the thing that you were doing with the averages makes sense.

Um the FY26 versus FY2025.

That is the just the straight year to year comparison.

So that's correct.

So basically police basic is up by 0.576.

That's correct.

Okay.

Um and I know that year to year the millage rates in the different millage rate funds will fluctuate depending on what's what's happening.

Um, it is it is it fair to say that just globally speaking, the half mil increase.

I mean, I I might read it as the half mil increase is really factoring in the fact that we have to um pay more for police because we have more officers and we're doing more there.

And so you've adjusted other places down, and we're able to fund a big housing program.

So this is actually seems like a a good exercise and budget maneuvers.

Uh you know, I know it changes year to year.

So just help me understand like where police went up and others went down, I guess to kind of balance that out.

So just speaking of police specifically, uh that's one of the areas where we are increasing the budget at mid-year.

So there's a nine million dollar increase there, and that's really in response to the additional hiring as well as some uh additional cost for overtime.

So um one of the things we had done in the past few years was the triple overtime to help support staffing and police when um you know they were down so many officers.

Uh now that they are making increases there, we've rolled that back, or it's been rolled back, I believe, starting this month.

Um but there was a cost for that in the first six months of the year, so that's part of what that increase is for is to cover that.

Um then there's also um trying to shore up their fund balance a little bit as well for the police fund.

Okay.

Um but right, I I think one reason this gets confusing, excuse me, is we talk in aggregate a lot of the times about the 20.81 versus the 21.31 mills.

But really, when we're doing the millage rates, we're looking at each fund individually and determining what it needs to be to cover the operations as well as the uh any needs as far as their fund balance.

And so that's why things look different year to year and why you see some of the variation here.

Um thing I'll also point out with police, uh one of the differences if you look at their average versus what's being proposed this year.

Um there's been some changes with how we handle the uh insurance premium taxes, where those were previously um partially used for police services, and most of that's been used now for our parks and our roads, just because those are the areas that are um primarily uh funded through the unincorporated fund or through unincorporated taxes, I should say.

Okay.

Um but I don't know if that helps the No, that's great.

I appreciate that.

And um I think I shall also want to highlight the hospital tax increase, and that's part of something that's a multi-year contract, Zach.

So this was something we were already planning for.

But I think one thing that's important to note is that the federal government has cut health care spending.

Right.

So what we're talking about here really, and I mean, they've cut a lot of spending on housing, homelessness services, clean energy.

And so to me, what this budget is really showcasing is the you know, we're talking about health care, housing, and public safety.

And, you know, and because we've prioritized those investments, we've had to be a little more prudent in other aspects of the government, but that's just, you know, when you were faced with times of prioritization and where people are really hurting the most, those three categories really is where we we need to put those dollars.

So, you know, and I know like I think the way that we are explaining this might need to go towards that direction versus it's just half mil for housing.

Because I think what we're what you're really doing, TJ, is you're masterfully rem moving some things around to make sure that we're prioritizing the really crucial investments that DeCAP residents need right now.

Is that is that fair to say, Zach?

No, you're you're accurate.

Um housing, we we're leading with the housing discussion simply because that's probably the largest single chunk.

Uh and we're it is new and new initiatives.

But you hit the nail on the head when you talk about the health care because not only is our contribution to Grady uh it increased last year, but it is an increased com an increased commitment and allocation.

But the three million dollars that are being provided to MedCura and Mosaic are 1.5 million each, um those you know should definitely be uh accounted for quite frankly, as the increased contribution to AMR.

Right.

The ambulance kind of police fire and right.

And so that EMS health care, you know, it's all kind of part of one similar issue uh that we're addressing, and then even the contributions to things like food insecurity.

So at the local level, we are doing what local governments are often tasked to do, addressing those issues that the state or federal government has simply chosen not to do, but we don't have an option not to provide these services.

Yep, absolutely.

Commissioner Johnson.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I think that's a really valid point, uh, CEO Williams.

We have increased our budget to make up those differences that we're seeing coming down from the Federal Government.

So we were just talking about Mosaic and MedCura.

Can we get an update on how those programs are going and at some point?

I know that was I know we've given to both of those institutions in the past, but this was a much bigger investment.

Right.

Right.

And yes, is a simple answer.

Maybe and what we're thinking of, and it's coming back kind of for a mid-year conversation in the August time frame, and there may be some adjustments and sweeping more and allocating.

But with as it relates to MedCure and Mosaic, um, I I had the privilege, I guess, of convening a discussion with Claritel, MedCura, Mosaic, and the Department of Health to talk about resource sharing and such.

And um I I'm sure that's going to bear fruit.

Uh one of the things, I'm gonna digress only for a minute, but uh that Mosaic has come up with, and I I titled it CMT, which is community uh medical uh responsive, well, whatever.

Um it's like EMT, but for the community.

So they're going to be sending um essentially nurses to people's homes to assist with with issues.

I mean, I was just fascinated that they're doing things like that.

Save a lot of money doing that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so that again is is but for our funding, that would not be an available program.

Um MedCura will be buying a van to go out and provide uh mobile medical assistance.

So along those lines, I was attending a Juneteenth event at the Villages of Stone Mountain, which is a senior facility at Rockbridge and South Stone Mountain, or whatever the world's called at that point.

And they were uh one one of the um chairs or vice chairs of the of the organization I was talking to was mentioning that they are finding a lot of the residents having a lot of health e needs because of the cuts.

And I was wondering if it's possible to get a med cure to get mosaic to come to the facility like that, and then you know, you could help more people, even if it's just to give them information on their services and how they can help.

Absolutely, as well as the Department of Public Health.

Because they also, if you recall a number of years ago, the county purchased a number of vans for them and they're using them, but they also have a proposal to enhance uh some of the utilization of those vehicles.

Uh so yeah.

We we are literally creating our own local network.

Uh, and and it's gonna be exciting to keep building them.

And finding ways to connect the community to it so they know how to get access to the case.

Absolutely.

I yield, thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Commissioner Johnson.

Yeah, and Zach, let's um definitely give us um when you're ready to kind of present that plan.

I think the idea of all of the health care serving agencies, departments, as well as our nonprofit partners in that kind of strategic health care plan will be really great to see.

So whenever you're ready to um, I know we've been pushing all commissioners have been pushing all of them together, and then we've said Zach, can you help us figure it out?

Yeah, yeah.

We're excited.

That's why they pay you the big bucks CO.

Is that it?

Yeah, you can manage the manage the ships.

Um, but really important because that's a lot of different partners and agencies, but I mean there's so many so many synergies between the state um, you know, health, Claritel, and then our own departments and gravity.

Okay, very good.

Um TJ, I'll let you continue on.

And there's anything else you want to say on this slide?

No, I I think we've covered it here.

Okay.

All right, keep on going.

Uh the next slide uh you've seen before, so this is just the comparison of what was originally in the proposed budget that was adopted versus what's being uh proposed for um currently, and you can see some of the shifts in the millage rates there.

Okay.

All right.

Um so this is a new slide, although it's similar to what we've had before.

So what we did here is there's really two things that are changing this year.

One is the the increase in the millage rate, the other is the change in e-host.

So this is showing what the change in the millage rate really does, trying to isolate that.

So this is the tax comparison before EHOS.

So when you see these numbers in the the net tax, um don't get startled, that's before the EHO's credit is applied.

But what you can see here is for a $364,000 home in unincorporated to CAB, that's highlighted in blue there.

Um that's the average value of a homestead property.

The increase in the millage rate is approximately $69 a year, uh, which works out to 20 cents a day or about less than six dollars a month.

And then the 450, that is for an average homestead uh property countywide.

Um so you'll see the the change there is about 86.

Okay.

And then this slide we've shown before, and this shows kind of the combined effect of both.

But as I mentioned, 2025 was an outlier because we were able to use roughly 30 million dollars in our e-host reserves to provide additional tax credits last year.

So that's showing a larger increase this year, but that's really independent of the millage rate discussion.

So that's not uh determined by what the millage rates are.

It's just uh uh really a math problem based on how much tax revenue we have from e-hos versus what's being um billed for property taxes.

Okay, and then is it it's higher, is it higher than 2026 than last year was higher a lot.

It was higher, right?

There was a lot more e-host you know, tax credits that were able to provide last year due to that additional 30 million dollars compared to this year.

Right.

Okay.

Okay, and so that's so basically the the key change.

So in other words, 2025 is kind of an anomaly because before we were sort of staggering it instead you kind of made up for a lot of things.

We had mass we had amassed a lot of money.

Right.

Okay.

And part of that too was sales tax was growing faster than property taxes for a while.

And now it's it's kind of changed.

So now property tax or sales tax has been relatively flat for the last three years, where property tax, the digest has been growing faster than the sales tax.

Right.

Gotcha.

And the um is the so is the in this distribution of e-host, is that completely in the reserves on e-host?

Right.

That's the final so basically in 2027 we should expect the e-host number to go down.

Well, it'll probably remain relatively steady.

So I believe last year without that e-host reserve, it would have been about an 86% credit, and I believe this year is 85%.

So it's it's it's um hopefully it'll be pretty stable at that level.

Gotcha.

Okay.

All right.

Uh all right, keep going.

Okay.

Uh another question we got was what are other jurisdictions doing, or what have they done with their millage rates?

Um I'll I'll preface this though.

Um, these are what I was able to find using Google.

So I have asked the tax commissioner to provide the final numbers, but um just if there are any errors here, we will correct that once we have the official numbers.

But uh the first column is is 2025 compared to 2026.

And you'll see that heard me, um, Director Siegler, it's Commissioner Spears.

I'm on Zoom.

Uh Commissioner Carey, I I'm not able to see the presentation on my end.

Okay, we'll see if DCTV turn that.

Please make sure that's loaded.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right, let me know.

DC TVDL.

You got that?

Okay.

Can you see it, Commissioner Long Spears?

Green light.

Okay, all right, go ahead, TJ.

Okay.

Um, and so this is all the cities in DeCab with the exception of uh Atlanta, because they don't adopt their millage rates until later in the year.

Um you'll see that Avondale actually has a slight decrease, but um a lot of the other cities either held theirs flat or increased slightly.

Um and so if you look at the percentages, which is that fourth column, um, you'll see somewhat, you know, for Brookhaven it was a 40.5% increase on their um just nominal uh millage rate.

Shambley was 16 percent, Clarkston was 19 percent, Decatur had a slight point four percent increase, uh Lythonia was 11.4 percent, Pine Lakes 22.8 percent, uh Stone Mountain was 5.8, and then Tucker was flat.

And so if you compare that to the unincorporated, and this is M and O, so that's maintenance and operations.

And the reason it's broken out that way is that's what the the millage rate or excuse me, the rollback rate is calculated on.

Um the increase is 1.9 percent, just in nominal terms.

And then uh if you look at what that is for fire police and designated, it's 7.2 percent.

For general and hospitals actually a 2.2 percent decrease from last year's rates.

Um and then the final two columns.

And that's mostly because the GEN military.

Right, the general hospital.

The county operations um went down compared to last year.

All right, and then the uh final two columns are looking at the rollback rate.

So one thing too is so a lot of these um cities might have had different changes in their digest than we did, especially for unincorporated.

So when you view it that way, um, even you know, really everyone went up above the rollback rate.

Um so for even Avondale that cut their millage rate, they're 7.24% above the rollback rate.

Um you compare that to unincorporated, we're at 2.6 above the rollback rate.

So um, you know, some of it is a function of just what our our tax digest is, but um, you know, I think what you're seeing across the board is that it is becoming more expensive for governments to provide service and they're having to adjust um their millage rate structure to uh address that.

Okay.

So um bottom line here, if we were gonna just kind of compare municipal services, the core maintenance and operations from the county to the city, we're looking at the unincorporated M and O versus the cities in essence.

Uh like one-to-one comparison.

But it might be a better comparison, the fire police and designated because those are the services.

Although it gets a little bit blurred there as well because fire is provided in most of the cities except for Decatur and Atlanta.

So there's really not a great way to do an apples to apples comparison.

Yeah.

Okay.

But the goal of this slide is to show that everyone is um dealing with the increased cost of fuel, labor, materials, health insurance.

Services that are the basic services that people expect.

Okay.

All right, Commissioners, any questions on that slide?

Okay.

All right, good, TJ.

Okay.

Um the other thing we uh mentioned or alluded to it earlier, was uh the change in the fund balance.

So going into the start of the year, we thought we'd have roughly 130 million dollars in starting fund balance.

And that um after some of the audit adjustments that have been done, we're at 118 million.

So it was 11 million dollar decrease there.

And you'll see that a large portion of that, I mean, some of them went up, um, but police took a the bore the brunt of that.

Um so that's part of the reason why their millage rate is higher is to adjust for that.

Okay.

So is that that's basically we're we're probably gonna have to continue dealing with that situation because you we increased the police fund and we dipped into reserves to cover what the operational cost of police services is.

Well, where we're trying to replenish the reserves because this is the starting fund balance.

So in a in a couple of slides, I will show the ending fund balance where we will be able to get that number up, maybe not as high as we had thought it would be, but higher than the the 10.7.

Okay.

So that's this slide.

So you'll see there that where we're at currently in the proposed budget is 1.4 months of fund balance.

So that's 119 million.

So we're we're relatively flat in the total.

Um, but this is addressing uh some of the decreases that we saw in some of the funds and trying to get us closer to the you know our goal, uh, eventual goal of having four months of fund balance.

And that's four months across all funds?

Or just across all the tax funds.

I think some of the other uh funds we might have different and typically too, we do keep um the hospital and the unincorporated bonds slightly lower just because we know what the um expenses will be in those, so there's not as much variability.

Uh but one thing we did notice last year is uh you know some of the variability variability came in through the uh revenue collections, and since they're you know very heavily dependent on property tax revenue that we did want to increase those slightly from where we had them last year, just to account for that.

Okay.

And which are any of these funds the street light fund?

No, that that's that's a different one.

You're right.

That's uh Okay, that's totally separate.

All right.

And you don't have any of the enterprise funds on here, because that's not right, those aren't millage-based.

Okay.

Um what is and Zach, this is for you as well.

What is the So if we're down to one month for police?

Are we will it be realistic to we're trying to get the four months?

Is that what you said?

Okay.

What is that?

I mean, what would be the what's the possibility of getting this to four months and I guess four years?

Oh, I guess in three years now.

Well, we feel pretty good.

I mean, you know, at least we if we don't get there, we'll get close.

Um what we found with police, quite frankly, is we have been successful.

More successful than we had I don't want to say than we had anticipated.

We we've been as successful as we had hoped.

Um so for the first time um we're literally going into reserves to make things uh balance.

But moving forward, uh we recognize that the increased hiring does not necessitate us continuing with the triple overtime because triple overtime is a recruitment and retention tool.

And so we will maintain the other recruitment and retention tools, but uh you know, hiring is is working well.

Um the triple overtime expenditure has gone down a lot this year.

It will.

It has it it has not.

I mean, thus far, and that that's you know, it is been significant.

We are going to um phase that out uh starting now.

Okay.

Okay.

I think we'll go back to double overtime.

I don't want to send any alarm to they're still they're still gonna do just fine.

But uh you know the Yeah, there's there are always might be need for has changed extra work, okay.

Um TJ, anything else on this slide?

No.

Unless there are questions.

Okay.

No questions?

All right.

Um so you know, as uh the chair mentioned before, we are going to distribute the remainder of the e host reserves this year, which is a total of 10.8 million.

Um, and this is just how that'll be spread between Unincorporated and all the cities.

And so that's based on their percentage of gross homestead digest.

And uh that was a formula that we worked out uh when we were doing the IGAs when eHOS was uh was first implemented.

And that's how we're able to actually provide an equal amount of tax relief across jurisdictions.

Gotcha.

Okay, so that's all right.

This is I think like this is the first time I've seen it put this way.

But um, thanks for explaining that, TJ.

So this really is just this is a good also a good snapshot of the homestead properties and percentages across the different jurisdictions.

Of course, decad being the largest, unincorporated.

Right.

So that's uh so it's four point Okay.

So it's 10 million total.

Correct.

Okay, gotcha.

And I will mention that the 4.8 million that's for unincorporated, that will be applied to the police services millager, so that will provide a little bit of relief there this year as well for well you didn't taxpayers.

You buried the lead on that one.

That's important.

Well, it is built into the the numbers with the the previous charts.

But okay, all right.

Well that's important.

Thanks for mentioning that.

All right.

All right, and then the last few slides, I I'll try to move through them fairly quickly and just uh hit on any of the the large ones.

But one of the ways that we were able to sort of uh bridge the gap in where we wanted to be and where we were in the original budget was looking at um savings that we've we've accumulated through May, really, a lot of them salary savings.

So looking at what we had funded as far as positions versus what was filled in those months.

Um so on this slide alone, you'll see that that's pretty much all these adjustments except for at the bottom, that's superior court, and that's um an additional 100,000 for onboarding of a new judge for district six.

Um if it's not sort of that salary savings, it's going to be um kind of cleanup items from the original budget.

Um for example, the State Court A, um, this is where they've funded some new positions for um really the administration of the court, so their court administrator and some other positions.

And those had been in the unincorporated fund, but since they are managing the entire operations of state court, then we're moving them to the general fund, and then there will be some cost allocation between the unincorporated fund and the general fund um to account for that.

But um then child advocate, that's uh also salary surplus.

Uh probate court, this is some um funding that they had requested was inadvertently left out of their their budget.

Um annual services, there is some salary surplus, but we're also transferring some expenses from police, which is their old cost center to the their current cost center.

Um before you move on, TJ, the child the child advocate.

So would that so that's just they haven't they were intending to hire someone or hiring for that code and they just haven't done it yet?

So for most departments, we budget them for 100 percent for the full year.

And so what it was is they had some vacancies through the first five months of the year.

So based on what it would have cost to fill those positions for those five months and what they actually spent, that's the the delta there.

Okay.

And Zach, what's your what's your conversation with the child advocate about I might argue you know, they might say, well, we're not filling this position because the salary is not high enough.

And if you take this out of their budget, could they realistically fill the is it the is the position not getting filled because no one's applying for it?

And I specifically, and remembering of the district attorney did ask commissioners to go visit with the child advocate that's at the police headquarters, I believe.

Um and they do a lot of the juvenile court.

Oh, is this with the juvenile courts?

No, that's where they're located.

Okay.

This might be the other program.

There's several programs.

You're thinking of the DA's program, I think.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So this is with the juvenile court.

Okay.

So is there I mean, are we getting communication from them on the stay, I mean, with each of the department heads, we stay in close communication.

And a few years back, I believe we did an adjustment because the child advocate, I believe they're mainly attorneys providing that uh work.

And I think we did an adjustment across the board.

But if if and when they have difficulty hiring, I mean, we you know, my door is always open and we meet every other Friday.

So I guess um why don't we just reach out to them just to make sure we're not missing anything?

Because I I don't want to um you know hamstring them if they have other plans, but if it truly is they just haven't been able to hire someone and you'll see each of the things that I might expand the positions anyways.

Each of the departments that are listed are those under the CEO.

We don't we didn't remove salary savings from the courts and others.

Oh, the child advocates under the CEO's office?

Yeah.

So I think you're thinking of a DA program, not the child advocate.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well I thought the I mean the courts are funded through the courts, right?

Yeah, yeah.

They just happen to be housed at the juvenile court.

Okay.

So the child advocate is a we'll bring her in.

Uh okay.

We'll bring her in from you.

So we have a child advocate that works with with you.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

This is great news.

Wow.

Okay.

After six years.

I have a question?

Yes.

And they they were a result of the old there was a Kenny A lawsuit about 15.

A lawsuit that we got sued?

Well, I think Fulton and DeCab were part of a child care thing through DFACS and stuff, but we'll bring her in.

Okay.

All right, but we're not cutting child advocacy services.

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

Okay, let's hear more about that later.

Commissioner Johnson.

So just circling back to um these reductions or savings because of vacancies in the departments.

Is there a way we can get an idea of how many positions are vacant?

And how many we still need to fill in like and a law is down a a number of positions.

So if we can get that number, and then how can we help them fill those vacancies?

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and no one no one's losing any positions.

This is just money that we've left on the absolutely.

We we will have we can do it here or in herbs where we can have um Jadia come in and kind of do an update on attrition overall.

That'd be helpful.

And I think that also ties into the what you're saying, Commissioner Terry, about are we offering higher enough salaries or more incentive packages?

Like what do we need to do to get people to take these positions?

To your point, I think and hopefully not too long after we come back from break, we will have completed the salary study.

Oh, good.

Yeah, that would be helpful.

So maybe a conversation that would tie a nice thing with that.

Um the attrition rate overall and the um this the pay in class study.

Okay.

I yield, thank you.

All right, thank you, Commissioner.

Um, go ahead, TJ.

All right.

Um for police, that's a big reduction, but what that primarily is, this is the police general fund, is there was some funding that we uh found had carried over from prior years that wasn't needed for um I believe that was for a capital lease payment for some new radios.

So that was just kind of a cleanup item.

But it did help us uh uh in terms of being able to find some reductions there.

Um the rest, all the way down to human services are for um salary surplus, then human services, uh they have some salary surplus, but we're also um increasing the funding.

There was an error when they were putting in their budget request.

Uh this is funding for uh nonprofits, $650,000.

Okay.

All right.

So the bottom line on those two slides are that these departments had positions that were funded in this year's budget, but as of May, they have not hired them.

That's correct.

And so presumably they can still hire.

But the budget impact is just whenever they start.

Correct.

So the goal, so they're still trying to fill these positions.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, just make sure I got that.

All right, go ahead, TJ.

And also um, same with the general fund.

Uh there's some salary surplus from Citizen Help Center.

Um contributions is a big area.

So we had just actually had this approved uh via an agenda item, but we what we did is we went back through old capital accounts to find any unused balances.

So we're gonna continue to do that, especially as we bring forward the five-year CIP.

But for those amounts that were funded this year, which was $7.32 million, um, we're going to sweep that from um other old capital accounts that are no longer needed.

Okay.

And um can would you um just resend all of those old accounts?

How old are they?

So I mean some of them are are you know 20 years old, if not older.

So I mean there's we'll we'll have uh the full breakdown of the thing.

All right, well, let me talk to a commissioner from 20 years ago and see what figure out what was going on there.

Um but we already voted on that.

So we've already reallocated it or is this is it where we relocating it here?

You would reallocate it here.

We would what we did is we present what we in retrospect if we would have done the sweep sixty days ago before we brought the jail item and stuff, that's how we would have just showed the funding.

But we didn't.

So we we've gone back and you know, just a lot of cleanup projects get completed and there's money left over or whatever.

Okay, so basically you most of those old no longer needed accounts are now zeroed out with this amendment.

A good chunk of them, yes.

Okay, we're still looking to make sure that there's not more by August.

Anything that's out there that's not needed will be brought to the board and swept or reallocated.

That's our goal.

Okay.

All right.

Um just um so the commissioners had access to it.

Can you just send over, I guess, all of the capital fund, whatever you know about them, I guess.

I mean, if they're 20 years old, I might know it know it.

Right.

But if you have any information on what they are just for information purposes.

Definitely.

All right, thank you.

And then uh the last item under general fund, this was another duplicate where we had funded um in the original budget uh money for the the TANS for the interest.

And then when we did the TAN agenda item, we also uh included funding there as well.

So it's just cleaning that up.

Okay.

All right.

Uh fire and rescue, so they add uh salary surplus through the first five months of 1.1 million.

Uh designated services fund, there was about 70,000 in salary surplus for transportation and 243,000 for roads and drainage.

Parks was about 184,000.

And then we also reduced the uh reserve for contingencies for non-departmental by uh 250,000.

Uh I might have skipped over that for the general fund.

So um there was a reduction in the reserve for contingencies there of 1.5 million.

Okay.

So we still have a million dollars uh in the reserve for contingencies for non-departmental and general fund.

Um we just feel that we haven't used that so far this year, so we're comfortable leaving it at the one million level.

Okay.

Which is typically what we've done in past years.

We had an increase that this year.

All right.

Um unincorporated fund.

Uh again, the big change there is the State Court B.

So that's just the funding, those positions that were funded there that are moving to the general fund under State Court A.

Okay.

And then planning had some salary surplus uh as well as beautification, uh code compliance, and then we also reduce the reserve for contingencies and non-departmental uh for the unincorporated fund.

And then the the big item uh increasing there is the police fund, that nine million dollars, and that's for uh increased hiring as well as overtime.

So to account for both of those, um both the additional costs of the triple overtime and first half of the year as well as the uh additional uh officers that they've been able to fill.

Okay.

So that's the uh full rundown of the revisions to the operating budget.

So I think that closes out the presentation.

But uh happy to take any questions.

Okay.

All right.

Um Commissioner Johnson, any questions?

No additional questions.

Okay.

Commissioner Long Spears.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Chair.

Um TJ, if you wouldn't mind sending over that presentation, that would be helpful.

I wasn't able to track as easily how small the numbers appeared on the screen.

So if you can do that, and I'll follow up with any other questions that I might have.

Okay.

Definitely.

All right.

Thank you, sir.

I appreciate it.

Yield back.

All right, thank you, Commissioner Long Spears.

All right.

Um so Zach, just um just to close the loop on what we were talking about earlier with the um the shower services.

And I think Dr.

Perkerson sort of indicated that upon approval of this budget amendment, millage rate, then like the the housing plan is off to the races.

Whenever we can start um expanding some of those services um, you know, after you re reviewed and figured out like the best, you know, partnerships, locations, city, you know, communication.

Um but do y'all feel confident that we'll be able to um act on that suggestion?

I think so.

By like August, September.

What do you think is a good time frame?

Because the the North Center.

Okay, but September.

Yeah, yeah.

I think so.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, very good.

Um great.

And then I think you indicated that you wanted a little more time to sort of scour the budget for any additional savings.

Um so I think our posture will be to come back to FAB in September for any potential last budget cleanups or amendments.

Um, like holiday items that I think some commissioners might want to, you know, figure out if we can make happen this year just to kind of you know support our um engagement as well as you know, other programs for the holidays.

Yeah, we can make the commitment to come back, um pick whichever fab meeting in September, and we will have you know evaluated um what's left in capital or any other, you know, salary savings, all that, and you know, have a what could be kind of construed as a mid year, but I don't want to you know call it like that, but whatever items, uh one-time items that we may be able to look at, we can have that conversation then.

Okay.

All right, so we'll let y'all um work on that uh through August, and then um I think it you could give us kind of a heads up of what you know you think you think is doable, and then we'll meet with all the commissioners and confirm any other additional priorities for the end of the year.

Um then for the the CIP plan, do you want to plan to look at that in October?

What's y'all's timeline on your work on that?

I believe we're gonna try to wrap that up as far as our committee recommendations the summer, and then that'll be actually reviewed by the CEO, and I don't know if that'll be forwarded prior to the 2027 budget or or you know, as part of that.

I I think that will depend on the CEO wishes.

Okay.

All right.

That sounds good.

Um and then I think um we did uh commissioners, uh Jessica and Lee and I went over the committee goals.

And so one of the other goals we had set for ourselves is to start the 2027 budget process a month earlier.

Well, that is a goal for me as well.

Okay.

Trying to get that kicked off.

Or we're gonna hit off that goal.

Well, I appreciate any help I can get.

So I think it's a great question.

We'll just go ahead and put it on the uh on the agenda.

Well, and we've started I think we're requesting certain information from the department, not not financial information, but uh mission, you know, uh goals related information.

So I think that will help.

That's kind of going to be the precursor for us beginning our budget discussions.

Okay.

Chair Terry, this is Commissioner Spears.

Thank you so much.

Um my hope is that we begin those budget discussions in October.

So that would give us October, November, and December to invite constitutionals and other departments to present.

So we're not squished into such a short time frame like we have in previous years.

My second comment is um, could we plan our Q2 financials presentation by Director McNabb at the next FAB meeting?

I believe we agreed to quarterly.

Yes, next the next meeting, uh the special call meeting on Monday is our next meeting.

The third one after that.

Um at the special call.

Yeah, we could do it either next meeting or in August.

Fantastic.

Okay, great.

All right, yield back.

Thanks so much.

Can I just co-sign um what Commissioner Long Spears was saying about trying to get the constitutionals in sooner?

Sooner rather than later, and not feeling like we're rushing them at the end of the budget approval cycle.

Yes, ma'am.

High-fiving you, yes.

Yeah, not yeah, totally agree.

Um so Zach, is that something would y'all be willing to have your conversations with the constitutionals earlier as well?

I think that's typically I think we've kind of waited for the CEO to have those discussions, and then we kind of so if we could maybe try to do a parallel track where we kind of come together uh this year on the constitutionals.

Yes, we can certainly meet with them and kind of discuss things ultimately, you know, that the CEO I would imagine will will submit the budget on December 15th.

But you know, we we can definitely talk with constitutionals and get a feel for what they need and what we may or may not be able to, you know, recommend what's a non-starter and that type of thing.

That that may be helpful.

Yeah.

Um Mr.

Williams, I apologize if I misunderstood you.

Did you say that the CEO is going to submit her budget on September 15th?

No.

Oh, okay.

I was like, whoa, whoa.

Did you hear that?

No, but possible.

December 15th, right?

Yeah, I agree.

Yes, December 15th is what's required.

So I would imagine that's the date.

Okay, thank you.

Kindly put that clear motion.

All right, Commissioner Johnson.

So just to add to that part of the conversation quickly, I think even if we could meet with the constitutionals to get an idea of what they're asking for total in general.

Right.

Knowing that there still could be edits coming, at least we would be kind of ahead of already knowing what they're wanting to do, and then we can go from there once we see the proposed budget from the CEO's office.

But just help form our conversations and discussions.

Okay.

Great.

All right.

So what we'll plan to do is probably starting in September, October, we'll start to ask the constitutionals to come in and start giving us their uh their pitches and their ideas for next year.

Um that will inform the ultimately the CEO's presentation of the budget on December 15th.

Um Jessica, was there another goal that I'm forgetting that we said we were going to look at?

I know the CIP was the other was a big one.

Uh Master, the Pleasendale Park, Master Plan.

Oh, yeah, that will, yeah.

So for so Zach, I think we've um you know asked the commissioners in terms of like the top top CIP priority for them so that y'all know our top tops.

Um and I know there's probably some overlap in priorities, but um I know at least five commissioners have said here are the things that we would like to see in that five-year CIP.

So I think y'all might already have that, but we'll go and just that last year.

Well, we'll we'll we'll we'll bump it with what we've got as those parties.

You know, in large part I'm thinking well during the break, we're gonna be having a lot of capital conversations.

Okay.

Well, I I think all of these are either like shovel ready or have plans, they're just sitting on the shelf ready to be funded.

So that was kind of the nature of our request.

Is if there's something that's has a a master plan that's ready to go and just need the funding, then that's what we're looking for.

So that's what you'll get.

Um I guess um Lee and Jessica, let's just confirm that with all the commissioners, and then we can send it over to Zach before um the recess.

Perfect.

Okay.

All right.

Okay, great.

Um sorry.

I just uh in reference to the agenda item, there will be a substitute tomorrow.

Okay.

And the only changes is it will have the school board's millage resolution attached, as well as there was a typo in our resolution.

It was just a decimal that was missing, and that'll be added.

Okay.

Okay.

Ready for a motion?

Yes, I'll open the floor for a motion on item 1045.

Move to a move to approve the substitute for 1045.

Second.

Okay, motion and second, seeing no further discussion.

All in favor is your hand say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye.

Motion carries.

All right.

That is the end of our agenda.

I'll open the floor for a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn.

Second.

All right, all in favor.

Aye.

Meeting adjourned.

Thank you all so much.

See you tomorrow.

Thanks, guys.

Have a great day, everybody.