DeKalb County committee seeks five‑year roadmap to prioritize roughly $245M in CIP requests

The Finance, Audit and Budget Committee, chaired by Commissioner Ted Terry, on an agenda item reviewed a county capital improvement planning update and asked staff to produce a prioritized five‑year financing and sequencing plan.

Budget director Seagler told the committee the county defines a capital improvement project as “a project or activity that improves, replaces, repairs, maintains or creates a fixed asset with a total value of $25,000 or greater and an estimated useful life of five years or greater.” He said departments submitted roughly 117 general‑fund projects totaling about $141.6 million and that, across tax and non‑tax funds, requests total — depending on the slide referenced — in the range of $244 million to $269 million. Seagler said funding comes from annual tax‑fund contributions, SPLOST, bond issuances and other sources such as hotel/boating taxes.

The director noted a large, one‑time contribution of about $51.3 million in 2023 was funded from excess operating fund balance under the prior administration; more recent annual CIP contributions have been closer to $23–24 million. Seagler described the 2026 budget as holding a much smaller CIP appropriation because the county delayed consideration of several projects to allow the CIP committee to reassess priorities.

Commissioners asked several procedural and fiscal questions. Commissioner Michelle Longspear asked why the FY26 CIP contribution showed a drop to $1.5 million; Seagler clarified that figure reflects 'delayed consideration' in the recommended operating budget and that the lists shown are department requests, not staff recommendations. Commissioners asked that the administration provide a ranking, rationale and timeline for how projects would be sequenced and how items would be routed to committee(s) of jurisdiction for additional review. Seagler said the CIP group — appointed by the CEO and typically made up of directors or deputy directors — will make recommendations to the CEO and the board can decide how and where to review them.

Seagler said staff plans to bring a recommendation for funding out of this year’s budget before the end of the month and aims to return with a five‑year recommendation in the summer, informed by a facilities assessment (including a jail study) and a recently completed facilities master plan.

The committee did not take a final vote on CIP project adoption; members requested additional materials, including a consolidated list of board requests and updated cost estimates (for example, a requested update to the Atlanta DeKalb Senior Center estimate), and asked staff to share the CIP scoring/ranking matrices used in prior cycles. The committee will continue CIP discussion in future meetings as staff prepares the prioritized recommendation.

The meeting also approved the minutes for the previous meeting (agenda item ending in 0672) by voice vote earlier in the session.