City staff told the council the decision to bring many contracted services in‑house has yielded larger savings than originally projected and said staff will continue to refine the city’s service‑delivery strategy.

The city manager reviewed the history of the public‑private partnership model used at incorporation and the later rebidding and insourcing exercises. Staff presented a five‑year comparison showing an expected savings of about $13.5 million from insourcing; the actual net savings, including added staff costs and benefits, was described at nearly $26 million over the same comparison period.

The manager also highlighted a series of operational accomplishments since incorporation: roughly 640,000 call‑center responses since 2015; more than 60,000 IT help‑desk tickets; nearly 30,000 open‑records requests closed between 2018 and 2024; 11 new city parks totaling about 95 acres; investment of about $483 million in capital projects (excluding City Springs) since incorporation; and creation of new public safety and recreation programs. Staff noted the city still relies on a large number of service contracts—88 primary service contracts were cited—and that those contracts continue to be a part of the delivery mix.

Keith McMillan, the city’s director of data strategy, analytics and AI implementation, presented a comparative analysis of general‑fund dollars per full‑time equivalent (FTE) across several peer cities. McMillan said Sandy Springs was an outlier on that metric, breaking the $300,000 mark and sitting roughly 2.97 standard deviations above the peer mean, a sign that the city’s budget per FTE is substantially higher than typical peers. "We're doing that well," McMillan said, describing the result as a measure of the city's scale and investment in staffed services.

Council members asked staff to continue refining the service‑delivery strategy, to inventory contracts and assigned fund balances, and to present options for capital priorities that balance pay‑as‑you‑go funding and potential debt. Staff agreed to supply more detailed breakouts of assigned fund‑balance line items and contract expenditures for council review.