# Inter Governmental Committee - January 12, 2010 > Auto-transcribed civic record · January 12, 2010 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/1166 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/1166?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2010-01-12 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 12,361 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Inter-Governmental Committee met on January 12, 2010, at 1:00 p.m., presided over by Madam Chair. The committee addressed two agenda items during the session: a presentation on E911 Call Center Management, which was informational in nature, and an update on committee items, which was deferred to a future meeting. The committee took two motions to a vote and heard five public comments during the meeting. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on January 12, 2010: * James * Crosbie * Myers * Gray * Blues * Beard * Henson * Feigel * Lawless * Martin No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions **Motion to Remove Compensation System from Agenda** Councilman Baird moved to remove the proposed new compensation system from the agenda, contingent upon consultation with Council Member Gordon. [timestamp: 01:18:16] The motion was decided by voice vote and was postponed. **Motion to Adjourn** A motion to adjourn the meeting was passed by voice vote. [timestamp: 01:19:17] ## Public Comment Several council members raised concerns and offered suggestions regarding the 911 call center's operations and management structure. **Support for Staff Wellness** Council Member Lawless offered to volunteer her expertise in managing high-stress crisis line workers to help address burnout and improve employee support systems at the 911 center. [timestamp: 01:01:23] **Public Perception and Department Reputation** Council Member Henson expressed concern that the public may hold the police department responsible for 911 call handling due to confusion about the role of non-sworn dispatchers. [timestamp: 01:33:44] **Staffing Sustainability and Turnover** Council Member Stennett raised questions about the long-term sustainability of the current staffing model and the need for systemic management improvements given the high turnover rate. [timestamp: 01:39:36] **Organizational Structure and Management** Council Member Beard requested a graphic representation of the 911 department's organizational structure to improve clarity and understanding. [timestamp: 01:13:52] Vice Mayor Gray asked for clarification on the organizational structure and span of control, suggesting that the high turnover rate may reflect deeper management issues. [timestamp: 01:50:21] ## Contested Items **High Turnover and Management Challenges at 911 Center** A heated discussion took place regarding significant operational challenges at the 911 center, specifically centered on personnel retention and management effectiveness. The primary concern was the 32% turnover rate at the facility, which participants noted is double the national average for similar operations. The discussion revealed deep concerns about the sustainability of operations given this elevated turnover rate. Questions were raised about the effectiveness of current management practices, including the span of control exercised by supervisory staff and the adequacy of employee retention strategies in place. The high rate of staff departures raised broader questions about workplace conditions, management oversight, and organizational stability at the center. No specific outcome or resolution was documented in the available meeting materials. ## E911 Call Center Management David Lucas presented on operational challenges facing the E911 call center [timestamp: 00:05:32]. The presentation focused on staffing difficulties and their impact on service delivery. **Key Issues Presented:** - High staff turnover rate of 32% - Difficulty recruiting and hiring qualified personnel - Significant reliance on temporary staff to maintain operations - Operational constraints affecting call center performance **Topics Discussed:** Lucas addressed national standards for E911 operations and reviewed current call response times. He outlined proposed solutions aimed at improving the situation, including: - Enhanced retention strategies to reduce turnover - Improved recruitment approaches to attract qualified candidates **Outcome:** This agenda item was presented as informational, providing the meeting participants with an overview of the E911 call center's staffing challenges and management's proposed approach to addressing them. ## Update on Committee items [timestamp: 01:15:03] The committee discussed several outstanding items during this portion of the meeting. **Grievance Subcommittee** The committee addressed the grievance subcommittee, with members volunteering to serve on this body. **UK Smoke-Free Ban** The status of the UK smoke-free ban was reviewed. The committee established a plan to follow up with Anthony Beatty regarding this matter. **Proposed Compensation System** Discussion of a proposed new compensation system took place. However, action on this item was postponed pending consultation with Council Member Gordon. **Speakers and Outcome** Council Member Baird, Council Member Blues, and Vice Mayor Gray participated in these discussions. The overall outcome of this agenda item was deferred, with follow-up actions to be taken on the matters discussed. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — postponed: Motion to remove the proposed new compensation system from the agenda with contingency to consult with Council Member Gordon - **Motion** — passed: Motion to adjourn the meeting --- ## Full transcript You can clearly see that the landscaping alone was $840,000 and some change. The sidewalks alone are $919,000 and some change. If you had any specific questions, I'd be happy to address them. You know what the hours are at Fort Knox? We need to go over there and do the robbery. No, sir. Okay, we're running short on time. So anything, any questions that you might have on these last two projects, if you would bring them next month. Thank you. So is there a motion to adjourn? A motion and a second to adjourn. All in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. Since for our first intergovernmental committee meeting of January 12th, we have one item on the agenda. Unless there's any motions to change the agenda or add anything new at this point, we'll have that one item, which was brought forward by Councilmember Lawless, which has to do with the E-911 call center management. and I was going to have her do a little bit of background about it and it looks like David Lucas is here. Oh, there she is. It looks like we've got David Lucas in the audience and Commissioner Bennett I see in the back. But Council Member Lawless, do you want to just remind us, refresh our memory? It's been a year or been since last year when we talked about this and this item got brought forward. I believe it's been or maybe it was this year. The issue came up about the lack of 911 operators to take vacation time, and they were requesting for the fourth year in a row a carryover, and I suggested that it was a four years in a row. It seems to me a management issue and was hoping we could get some idea of what the problem is and what the remedies might be. Okay. Thank you. And, Paul, I'm guessing you put together the packet a little bit on this, or what are we looking at when we look at the packet? The first two pages have been submitted by the E911 office. They're spreadsheets. One looks at the – David can probably better – David Lucas can probably better explain this, but the first spreadsheet looks at the number of calls that the center is receiving and the response time or the time that those calls are picked up in 10-minute segments. And the second page is our 11 employees. And, David, I don't know if they're the only 11 employees that we're going to lose time, but what David has done, or what somebody has done at least, is provide how many hours they would lose, but also how many hours they've been able to take during, I believe it's the calendar year or the fiscal year. Okay. And the rest of the information? The rest of the information, I was just trying to give the committee some idea of what other communities are grappling with. What the problem is here in Lexington is not unique to Lexington. Okay. And there's also some systematic ways that people, that communities have looked at how to staff at the 9-11 Center, and I was just providing that. I will tell you some of it's dated. Okay. But that's the information. Okay. Thanks for that research. David Lucas, do you want to step forward, and we'll hear from you. Thank you very much. We'll kind of do a brief overview, and then we'll go through those two documents I did put in the packet. Plus, I'll have some other references that I'll have available if need be. Can I ask you to hold just a moment? Yes, ma'am. For the GTV3 personnel, is there any way to have this on the screen at this point? It looks like, is there something going on? Are we able to view this document at all as he's discussing it? A copy? Vicki, do you have a copy there? Do you have an extra copy, Paul, of the packet? Okay. We've got Paul bringing one around. it's just dealing so much with numbers and charts that I'd like to have it showing as we're discussing it's a little bit easier to follow anybody watching thank you thank you very much okay sorry David no problem at all actually I gave him a color copy so it might actually show up a little better okay once we get to those here in Lexington as many of you know we actually have two 911 centers. We have one located at the police department and one at the fire department. I inherited and taken over the operation of those two almost three and a half years ago, and the data I have here today is based on those three and a half years. At our two locations, we do have minimum requirements. These are requirements set by fire, national studies, and by minimum standards that we are required to have. For example, at the fire location, we are required to have three people at all times, 24-7. So that's the floor in our staffing levels at that location. At the police location, we actually have a floor of eight people. We cannot have less than eight people and still operate no matter what the volume of calls are. So that is the floor of the minimum number of people we need to have on staff. In addition to that, we've done volume studies, taking 18 months' worth of data and reviewing them, figuring out when our high and low times are of the year, when our high and low times of the week and of the day are, so we can do staffing based on volume as well. So we combine those two components to determine what our staffing level requirements are. Sometimes the floor is higher than what we need for volume, but we always have those minimum number of people on staff. The national standards, the one that I do have in your packet, which he has up there now, is 95% of all calls must be answered within 15 seconds. That's a national standard, and as you can see, we compile these actually monthly, and you're looking at last year's figures. but we actually answer 97% of the calls in 10 seconds or less. So actually we are meeting that standard. Now, saying that, 97% is a nice level. That leaves 3% that are not. And when you answer over 350,000 calls a year, the numbers can get unacceptable. As you can see, we answer maybe 400, 300 calls in the next 10-second interval and further on. We also have standards we want to keep below a 5% abandonment rate that are a number of people who call and hang up before we actually get to them. Originally, we were around 5.5%. We were down to 3.1% in that category. And the third is the number of complaints. There is no national standard for level complaints you want to keep to, but we did get surveys from national companies and other places, and the percentage of complaint rate is usually less than 1%. Here in Lexington, our number of complaints to calls is .01%, which is roughly one call, and every 10,000 we actually get a complaint. And those are for bad service or slow service, and we investigate every one of them, and many of them are legit, and we follow through on each one of those. And actually, we encourage people, if they have a problem with 911, let us know. We do not have a full quality control system up where we review calls constantly. So when we get complaints, we review those, but we do randomly select calls every month and review those for our personnel as well. The reason I give you that background, those are the standards we use to try to get our staffing available. So staffing is, if you ask any PSAP in the nation, it will always be in the top two problems of running a 911 center, staffing. It's a very stressful job. It's 24-7. The hours are terrible. Until you move up in seniority, do you actually get something that is considered a normal work hours? Here in Lexington, we are very flexible with our employees. we let them choose a 10-, 12-, or 8-hour day at the police headquarters because we have a number of people we can rotate. We used to do that at the fire location, but with just 15 or 16 people on staff, it became unyielding, so we moved back to 12-hour shifts at that location. The next sheet that is in your packet, the second one, kind of outlines 11 employees, essential employees that were unable to use all of their leave from last year. That would be – one second. Okay. This is very similar to the chart I believe you had last month, except we updated it through the end of the year. There was additional holidays taken, and some people moved off the list, and some people moved on. I believe this is a list of everyone. Maybe one person is not on there. They're not essential staff. What you see as you go across there is you actually see the first four columns are in 2009. You see the number of holiday hours used, vacation hours, a total. And you can see a total. I moved into weeks. It's a little, you don't have to do the hard math, is the number of weeks that each of these people received off in 2009. We extrapolated that out for this coming year, 2010, to see if we could get a better handle on getting people off so we wouldn't be returning next year with balances. And as you can see in the next row, we have the number of hours that have been rolled over, the ones that would have expired in 2009, but because of the extension, we'll be moving over to this year. add in vacation hours that they'll earn, holiday balances that they will earn, and the carryover holiday, and you'll get the total hours available for them to take off in 2010, which is a combination of vacation and holiday time. When you get to the far right, those last two columns is representing the total vacation or holiday hours that must be used before the end of 2010 so they will not lose any accrued time. And as you can see, it ranges from 4.7 to almost 11 weeks of time that we will need to get these employees off so they will not have time expire. I will say that the top five on there are management position supervisors. They are exempt from overtime, so they cannot get overtime nor cannot pay them each other overtime to cover each other's shifts. So they do accumulate time quicker than others. Additionally, they cannot be paid for holiday. The employees, the non-exempt employees, I'm sorry, the ones that can earn overtime, are paid for their holiday. They work a holiday, they get their regular time, and they get their holiday time. So that is not available for supervisors. So they accumulate holiday time at a much quicker rate. Roughly, if they work a 10- or 12-hour shift, they get 10 hours a holiday. That's 130 hours a year. To answer one of the questions that came up, how do we try to get our staffing up to levels where we have enough cushion or enough flexibility to get everybody off almost a week, a month? When I started in July 2006, we had 67 FTEs total. We've hired 32 people since that time. We've had four promotions, roughly 36. We've lost 36. We're about net even. We have a 32% turnover rate. That's higher than the national average. The national average is 19%. That's high if you look across the board in industries. It's higher than nurses. It's higher than teachers. It's a stressful job, and we go through a lot of people. If we get them to stay three years, we've got them because there's people who enjoy the work. You're very informed on what's going on in the public. You get to save lives. It's a very sedentary job. Health concerns become a problem. Ten percent of my staff is on FMLA every month. So that's an additional burden that we have to put into our staffing matrix, and we try to calculate that as well. Hiring people is not a quick process. It takes us three to four months from the time we interview someone to get them in. And the reason is for that, there are state requirements. We have some – Kentucky has some of the strictest requirements for telecommunicators. You have to be 18, have to have a high school diploma, have to pass a drug test, have to pass a psych suitability test, have to pass a lie detector test. We have to go through all five of those with any candidate that we recommend. And we do some of that testing in-house. Some of that testing is done down in Richmond, down at the Department of Criminal Justice training. So that is a three- to four-month process. once we have to actually have them on board, it takes another four to six months before they can go solo. So just because we have bodies doesn't mean we have people answering the phone or dispatching. And I've got a chart to kind of help show that. I'm sorry this is not in your packet. We just kind of wrapped this up when I was working on this presentation. What this shows is our staffing levels for the last three and a half years. The dark color on the bottom are the number of people we have available. as in they are solo, they can answer a call, they can dispatch, they are 100%. The yellow is actually additional personnel that are still on probation. They're not quite to the level where we let them be solo. And there's actually a dark red area right through here, and that is because at the beginning of this year we actually started using a temporary agency and hiring temps. These temps have to meet the same five qualifications I mentioned earlier, and most of them we get from neighboring PSAP centers who we pay more than they do, so they might want to work additional hours. Or there are employees who used to be full-time with us and now are going back to school and only can work part-time, so they're still certified and able to work but not full 40 hours. So we put them through the temp agency as a part-time status. So between those two items, we stay above the 60 minimum full-time equivalents that we need to stay in operational, 75 being the optimal number that we would like to reach someday. Hiring is a continuing process. We're always advertising. We're always looking. We're doing interviews next week. We probably have another ad out next week for our telecommunicator, the call takers. It's an entry-level position. We do 100% of the training. I'll advertise in February. We'll close in March. I'll have a list that will last a year. We'll go through that whole list. That's the information I have for you today. I wasn't really sure what questions you might have or where you might want to go with inquiries, so I'm just kind of open to that. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. Appreciate that. Any committee members that would care to ask questions or have comments, please be sure to hit your button to request to speak. I know it's been a while since we've been here. Maybe you forgot what the procedure is. So I just want to remind you. And we have Council Member Feigl first and then Council Member Lawless. Thank you for being here today. This is very informative. On the one hand, I almost feel like this is a personnel issue, and I'm not real sure why we're looking at it other than if it has implications for some of our policies. Secondly, I would ask, did the hiring freeze have any impact on you at all? No, it did not. During the hiring freeze, we were already in an advertising mode and we already had an active list, so we continued with that list hiring when we could as we went through that process. So it did not affect us in our hiring process. Okay, so basically your biggest problem is finding the folks who are willing to do this job? Find qualified candidates. We will go through a list of 10, let's say, and I can hire seven. We might not find seven that we think are high enough quality, so we will not just get bodies to get bodies. We actually were at a point in time, you can see on that chart, we had nine or eight people on probation. We were kind of getting some numbers. It doesn't pay off at the end. You have to get quality people, and we've got a higher orientation program name, longer, so we're getting a better retention rate. So finding quality people is difficult. Are you satisfied with the quality that you get from a temp agency? Yes. Actually, the temp agency, because they have to meet the fire requirements, they've already been a 911 operator somewhere. So they have experience and they know the good and the bad. And so actually with those, those are the people. We've had three temps that we've hired full time, and that's worked out well. And the other four temps we've had were people who left us and were easing back into another career in nursing or something else. So it's been very helpful to us. It works out better than having part-time positions. And do you see using temps as a solution to long-term problems, or is that just a temporary solution? I think we should keep it long-term because it helps ease people in and ease people out. If I wasn't able to, I'd be short three more people because they would quit and just go full-time, you know, back to school. Or they retire, and I'll never see them again. I've got two retirees who came back after seven months and worked 20 hours a week. That 20 hours is really helpful for the people I need to get off. So it's a long-term solution. I mean, I wouldn't fill my center with temporaries. As long as we can keep them certified, it's very helpful. Do you have a problem finding the temps? I have. We've averaged around three temps since we started doing this. Now we've cycled through some we've hired. But having more than four or five probably isn't feasible. And, I mean, I see this as really a long-term problem because as our city continues to grow, there will be more and more demand on 911 services. So I guess my next question would be, is there any kind of a training program out there in vocational schools or anywhere to try and help address the need for these specific qualifications? No, there isn't. There is, however, a five-week academy in Richmond that every new person must pass to remain certified. We've had only two hires or two new people who did not complete that, And that is a state requirement. So I would say most of the people we get, we actually steal from other communities. The ones that are successful, we get them from a smaller community or they move from Ohio or from another state and they've done this. So usually we're more successful with people who have done the job elsewhere because they understand it. The ones that we get brand new, we've spent more time training them and ramping them up, and that's been more successful as well. Now, as other centers consolidate in the area, or if the telephone company changes their call center stuff and they let people go, we absorb them, and they've been very good candidates as well. There might be some opportunities for you right now. I've heard that. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. What's the pay scale? Did you? I think the pay scale starts at $13.95. We don't pay anyone below $14.40 at this moment, and that's for the entry-level position. So $13.95 and the top is how much? I think the range goes up to around $23 before you get to the supervisory level. Okay. Okay. It seems to me when you talk about the requirements, high school education, going through the training process, drug test, and I think there was one other one. Polygraph and psychological suitability study. Okay. And in this economy, with so many people out of work, that it wouldn't be hard to fill these positions. Is there anything else getting in your way of filling the positions? Because obviously you're understaffed if people can't take vacations. Oh, I understand. And that is true. We find that when the economy goes south, we get a larger quantity of applications, not necessarily a larger quality or a better quality. And the only thing that stands in the way, I would say, is once we have an active list, it's active for a year. And as you go down, if they rank them one to 100, once you get past 30, you're at the bottom of the application pool. It would be nice if we could circulate that a little quicker. Is there anything keeping you from circulating that? We have to keep the list for one year, unless I exhaust the list. And have you considered recruiting from places like nursing or social work, psychology departments at UK or Transylvania? We have recruited hospitals. Hospitals are a good place. We do have people who have worked in hospitals because they're used to the hours. They understand the stress. A lot of them return back to that environment. They did not stay with us. We find people with great customer skills and patients are the best. And ironically, that kind of goes into waiters and food service. It has a high success rate. Very good at multitasking as well. Because we have a lot of times we're very, very busy, and a lot of times we're very, very slow. And it takes a unique personality to be able to handle those ups and downs. We do a lot of recruiting against our other counties. We do a lot of recruiting down at the Justice Department. Everyone is required to have training. We put up a billboard. You're trained, come to us. We pay second best in the state. And that helped as well. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. Council Member Henson is next. Thank you, Chair. I had some questions about your turnover rate, which I think is what Council Member Lawless was addressing. And it sounds like to me you're doing the very best you can because it is a very stressful job. But I was just curious, have you compared your turnover rate to other 911 centers or call centers? Yes. As I said, the national average is around 19%. I'm more close with people in Kentucky, and I've talked to them about their rates. Louisville had a very high turnover rate until they consolidated, and they just finished that last year. They had several 911 centers, and they pulled them all into one, and they decreased their turnover rate because a larger center has a lower churn rate because you can diversify the responsibilities. The smaller centers, like the one at our fire location or Jesmond County or Garrett County, that type size of less than 20, their turnover rate is on the higher end because it's more stressful. They don't have the flexibility if someone got sick for a week or two. Guess what? Everyone else is working overtime. there's no absorption rate should I say so I want to say we're a little high and I think the reason is is we're very we got a high volume outside of Louisville we're the busiest and they'd rather work in Jesmond County where they don't get as many calls than work here except for we do have better benefits we do have better pay come with that is more stress and more hours so is that do you do exit interviews? Yes, we do. And is that typically one of the reasons that folks are leaving the position? Yeah, of the roughly 36 I've had leave, seven of them retired, two transferred to police or elsewhere in government. We've had seven we dismissed and the others resigned. Of the ones resigned, about a third of them went to other, two of them went to nursing schools. They went out of the profession. They didn't transfer to Jesmond County or to another 9-1-1 center, they got out of the business altogether. And that's what we see, is they get out of the 9-1-1 business before they retire. So like I said, once we get past that three or four years, we kind of got them in the business. It's in their blood. What's your maximum? I don't know if you said this or not, but I missed it. Your maximum staffing level? What's your target? 75. And where are you now? 61, I believe. And tell me how a person, do you apply online? Yes, actually we just closed, we have two positions. We have call takers, which is our entry level position we call telecommunicator. Then we have dispatchers, which are the ones that actually work with the fire and police directly. Telecommunicator seniors, it's a stair step. The telecommunicator senior, we just closed. We just advertised it for the month for almost four weeks through December, half of January. And the telecommunicator, excuse me, will be advertising in February because my current list will be deactivated at that time. And, yes, you can apply online at lexinky.gov and put your application there. and if they want to go through the staffing agency, what staffing agency are you using? The staffing agency is People Plus. They're actually out in Hamburg, and they actually recruit a lot from other locations. But to be through the temporary agency, you actually already be certified at one point in your career. So you would have been already a dispatcher previously? Yes, previously or currently, and you need more hours. It might be other cities are cutting back. We're here available to fill in 10, 20 hours a week. So is that like an emergency dispatcher? Yes. Correct. So they do medical, fire, or police elsewhere. Because I think that's good to know when Lexington has a 10% or whatever unemployment rate that, you know, there may be some qualified applicants out there for you. Yes, we're very optimistic that we will get a good pool here in February. And we've been advertising. We knew it was coming up that we could advertise again in February, so we've been spreading the word to dismay some of my peers throughout the state. They accuse me of recruiting, but they understand it. And we met several of your staff members, and I think, you know, they're great people. But under a stressful situation, I am concerned about the reputation of our police department. So I think we have one of the finest, personally. And you're the first contact that citizens have with the police department. So I think it would be a good idea for us to take this very seriously. and do what we can to make the job as easy for them as we possibly can. I agree. Even though it's a tough job. Thank you. Thanks, Council Member Henson. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Madam Chairperson. David, how many lines do you have available, and are they fluid? Does the system give you as many lines as you need, or is it fixed? It used to be fixed. We've changed our infrastructure. It's now much more fluid. But, I mean, how many calls can we take at one time? Actually, it's limited by the number of people we have. We have more lines than we do people. Over 60% of our calls come from wireless phones now, which take longer to handle, you know, to get the information for them than a landline. But we changed as the community changed and started using wireless more. So we don't have a fixed number. We can take over 25 calls at one time. We never have that many people. But if we do have an accident where there's an influx of calls, all of our calls now are answered at the police headquarters. If we don't have enough people there, it automatically rolls to the fire headquarters for those personnel, and then it rolls back. And sequencing? Obviously, these statistics, you have to track them at some level. Does the system do that? Actually, we track every call before it even gets picked up. As soon as it gets connected on the 911 system into our network over at the police headquarters, we start tracking as soon as we receive it, which is actually before the call takers even hear it ring. That's how we know how long it takes. So we track the call from the time we grab it until we answer it, until we handle it. either we transfer it to fire or EMS or we handle it internally and then we dispatch it. That whole life cycle we track and we record it as well. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. You're welcome. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, David, for your presentation. Can you please tell us when somebody calls the initial call to E911, how does the responder answer the phone? What do they say? Well, if they call 911, they'll either say Division of Police, because a lot of my people have been here since the Division of Police, and I'll have it. Others will say, where is your emergency? We're training new people as where is your emergency, because that's the most important thing, not who you're looking for, but where you are. So we'll ask where the emergency is. Now, we also answer, obviously, calls for the Division of Police and the Division of Fire. Those come in in administrative lines, and they will answer those, Division of Police or Division of Fire, depending on which location they're at. Okay. One of the biggest issues or complaints that I get from the community is that very comment you made is because I think when people call, they don't understand that they're not talking to a police officer necessarily or a firefighter, that they're talking to somebody who's been trained to answer the phone. And so if something happens during that call, they're holding a public safety department, police or fire, responsible. And they're saying, well, the police officer I talked to, and the public doesn't understand that they're talking to a trained professional versus an actual sworn officer with either department. So I'm just going to say publicly, I wish that you all would train somehow where you could just answer E911, 911, what's your emergency? Or just like you said, because I think there's a big misconception out there, and I get several complaints on that. People just don't know, and they're complaining about an actual, you know, the police or the fire, and they just don't understand that they're being funneled through somebody first that's not even police or fire. They're E-911, and I think they should say who they are versus representing that they're with a specific division. My other question is, do we have sworn police or fire people who answer the phone lines? I'll go with your first one, question. And you're right. Many of the complaints, when they get to my desk, they're saying, I talked to officer so-and-so. They didn't realize they talked to a non-sworn officer. And that is a very common complaint. We answer those Division of Police or Division of Fire per the direction of the chiefs. That's how they prefer those lines be answered. We'll talk to them at the next 911 board meeting and review that with them. But that is the way they requested it, so we follow their directive on that. It is very confusing. It's confusing here and it's confusing elsewhere in the state where the same instance happens. We do not have sworn officers answering police or fire location. They're not certified. And we could lose our accreditation for having non-certified personnel answer 911 calls. Did they at one point? Yes, they did. And when did that change? I mean, has it always been that way, or is that a recent change? I changed that in July of 2006. Based on national accreditations? We were about ready to lose our accreditation for a 911 center. One was our training and using personnel that were not certified. Okay. And also, can you provide to us when the next E911 board meeting is? Just you can e-mail it to us. That way then if anybody feels inclined, they can email the chiefs and give them their input. Thank you. Thanks, Council Member Crosby. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Chair. David, you know you and I have wrestled over this issue the last probably six years since I've been on council about better ways and some of the headaches you've had when they created this new department. How long ago was this department created? Three and a half years ago. Longer than that. It was before I was on council. How long ago did we take it from police and fire and form U911? 42 months ago. Officially? Yep. Okay, because I thought we did a six years. It seems like six years. Yeah, it does. A couple of the issues, one, Councilman Crosby touched on it, but I think it goes one step further in how are we, the folks that are answering the calls, are they also prioritizing the calls in terms of how our police are responding, how our fire folks are responding, or are we letting the experts prioritize how quickly or what type of call they handle first? Both. The experts are the call takers. They are the ones who actually do prioritize the calls based on the criteria, the same criteria when they were within the Division of Fire or the Division of Police. At Division of Fire, they're all priority one. They go full lights on everything. At Police, we do prioritize one through seven. First, priority one and two are immediate. Three, four, and five are not as immediate. And how do you determine your list of priorities to train your staff? We use the SOPs developed by the Division of Police. And so they are given their input? Do you constantly update that? Do we see trends? Will we change that around? Yes, we do. We've updated it over the last three years for noise was a big issue. So we changed how we handle noise complaints, barking dog complaints, animal control complaints. We've changed how we've done those. But the basics, priority one and twos, threat of property or person have not changed, three, four, and five. We have shuffled those over time. And when we change the SOP, actually police changes theirs, and then it ripples effect and changes ours. Okay. And so you all do update that and meet with the police, Division of Police, and Division of Fire to change those priorities and examine complaints and issues? That is correct. Quarterly? Is that right? Well, on those, I meet with fire and police monthly. The 9-1 board meets quarterly. And you mentioned complaints earlier. Can you go back to that topic? How many complaints have you seen the complaint level drop, decrease, increase over the last 12 months to three years? Early on there was a lot of issues internally and externally. We had a lot the first 12 months, I would say, both internally and externally, and we ran all those down. This past year we've had less than the previous. We average around 2.5, around 30 a year now. It was higher than that earlier. It was probably about twice that the first 18 months or so. Say that again. You average how many? 30 a year. Complaints? Yes. Citizens? And these are citizens' complaints or call complaints? Any complaint. If I get it from the horseshoe, if I get it from a citizen, wherever I get it, that we track down. And in handling discipline of those complaints, if you do determine, I assume you handle that as manager and it is noted in their files, et cetera, for the employees? That is correct. Has anyone been dismissed because of actions and answering the phone? Not immediately. Okay. But they have been? Yes. Okay. And going forward, are we still planning on keeping the two divisions separate in terms of fire in their own location, and policing their own location in spite of not building a new PSOC? Yes. Since the PSOC is not moving forward at this time, obviously they won't be going to a new building. Since we are not doing a radial upgrade, we will not be moving them into one location either. So they will be staying at their current locations until one of those two actions comes forward. And have we looked at staffing those empty positions with sworn officers? No, we have not. Can we? They're not certified. If they were certified, we could actually use them. We don't have any fire folks that are certified to take the calls? No, they are not. And actually they cost twice as much as a call taker or dispatcher as well. I'm just trying to fill your gaps while you're so many employees short. So the folks that used to do it, because you've only, again, 42 months been in operation, it seems a lot longer. I think we decided in 2005, maybe that's what I'm thinking, or 2004. But it seems like you would have an opportunity to take those folks who used to answer the phones, and they would still be somewhat certified and just probably need to brush up. If they get certified through Richmond, the state accreditation, I have no problem using it. Is that a yearly certification for all your employees? We can get that at any time. Do you have to get recertified on a yearly basis? Yes, they're in service every year, 16 hours. And do we pay for that? Actually, the state pays for that. Okay. We have to pay for travel, but the course is actually covered by state revenues. All right. Very good. Thank you, David. Thanks, Council Member Stenick. Council Member Blues is next. Thank you. David, is it your impression that the callers and the staff are on the same page when it comes to understanding priorities? No. And the reason is experience. The callers are usually first-time, second-time callers at the most. And to them, that call is the most important and should get the highest priority. However, they don't know the full landscape of what other instances might be going on. And we have changed, and we have actually gotten our call takers now to don't promise that we will get to you next. If it's realistic and it's a wreck, non-injury, and we're very full, tell them it could be hours before someone gets there. So we don't want them to realize we're going to teleport someone or have someone there instantly. We're trying to get a better range of when to expect personnel to arrive. But to say the caller and the call taker have the same level of expectation what a priority a call is, you're right. It is not the same. That really was my next question, and I appreciate that answer, that if the call taker could do more to, in however short a time might be available, to explain what the circumstances are, what the likelihood of a response is, and how long it might take, I think that would be very helpful, because you're absolutely right, when people call in, they don't think of themselves as being fifth or sixth on the priority list. That is true, and that's something we've changed over the last few months. I actually put into the policy that the call takers have that leeway, and we encourage them to give a reasonable timetable instead of leaving it open-ended. I will say during a snow event or a bad weather, everybody is very understandable. Actually, everyone works much better during an event like that than your day-to-day grind of an issue. And one other question, and I hope you won't think that this is sort of a stupid question, but what I'm wondering, what are the sources of stress? I mean, obviously long hours, you have to have some good skills in prioritizing. There are those responsibilities. But are there other sources of stress that it would be helpful for us to know about on this job? There's three sources of stress that most people don't realize. One I kind of already mentioned, and that is the ups and downs. You're really busy or you're really slow. It's a roller coaster. It's not a steady Eddie. Another one is very irritable callers. They can be very belligerent. They can be very dismissive of the call takers. And they have to handle those. They have to have excellent customer service and take a beating and keep on ticking. And they have to handle that. The other stress that happens, thank God, not a lot, but it does happen, is they do get life-threatening emergencies. They do have babies dying. They do have wrecks. They do have people at their worst moments. And they have to handle it. And they remain calm. And they have to get the people to them. And all they're getting is the screaming. and, you know, they have to be the calm in the storm. And once it's done and the first responders, the police and fire, get there, guess what? The police and fire get to wrap it up in a bow and take care of it and see the end. The call takers, the dispatchers don't know what happened. Was it resolved? Was the baby saved? You know, they don't get conclusion on a lot of their stuff. A lot of them will track down, you know, the police and fire at a later date and come and wrap it up. But a lot of them, they don't get the good ending at the end. It's not always a good ending, but they don't know what the end is. And that is very stressful. Well, I can understand that. And the call takers are to be applauded for having to bear up. And I applaud your efforts to have call takers explain what the situation is in terms of response time, nature response, and so on. I think that can be very helpful to the person on the phone feeling completely at the mercy of the call taker. So thank you. You're welcome. Just before I go to Vice Mayor, I did want to say that some of the questions to Mr. Lucas are getting off of the original intention, I think, of this issue. It's probably related, and we have no other agenda item. So I'm allowing the conversation to go forward, and there's no one objecting. but we were the original what Councilmember Lawless described was not necessarily customer service and the feedback from our constituents and such. But I have no problem with it as the chair of the committee. I have no problem with it as long as everybody's good to go with it. But I did want to, just in fairness to David Lucas, just state that this came in based on talking about time, over time and such. We could draw connections if we want to from the questions we're asking. As long as everybody's good, I'm good with it. Vice Mayor Gray. Thank you, Chair. I've got a couple of, I guess, technical questions, Dave, and then I'd like to put a couple of questions in the context of the overall system. You earlier mentioned the turnover, the attrition rates. And you said I believe that the current attrition rate for this division is? 32%. 32% over the last three and a half years. Right, and the national average is 19. That's correct. Okay. How have you examined that within your own department? How do you go about addressing those numbers just on a regular basis? Well, after the first, when we got, I'll say, valid data, probably about 18 months into it, we kind of see where we were going. Originally, we knew we needed to get more bodies, and we did that originally. And then we started reviewing our retention rate once we saw, I'm going to say outside of retirements, because retirements are just a cycle. I can almost predict when those are going to happen. But people leaving to go to another industry are leaving for other reasons. During the exit interviews, we asked them why, and a lot of it came back to stress, unflexibility of the schedule, working holidays, missing their family, things we can understand. And we try to address those with the schedules that we have now, which is not a traditional shift. They choose 8, 10, or 12, and we kind of work in. They have preference forms. And then we extended just our last cycle of hires, which was early of 2009. We extended our orientation program from two days to six days to get them better prepared before they went off for their training in Richmond for five and a half weeks to try to shorten that training period but make it more concentrated. And we're actually going to expand it to two weeks with our next cycle and hopefully get everyone better prepared. And after the first year when we saw a lot of people we newly hired who didn't retain, we changed our interviewing process so we could get better candidates, and that did work. So of that 32 percent, it kind of was up and we're kind of getting it down. But the average is 32 over the 42-month period. Well, I appreciate your frankness about that because, you know, those are pretty significant numbers, and being able to describe it honestly and frankly is a tribute to you. And I guess part of that, then, you're saying is a function of a startup, in a sense, a startup enterprise, right? That's correct. Okay. Can you describe your current organization, the structure? In other words, you're the senior most authority figure as the director? Correct. And then you've got? I'm the director. There is 11 supervisors. 11 out of 61. 11 positions. We only have nine, or one retired last month, so we have eight filled, eight supervisors who all report to me directly. We have a PSAP manager who recently has changed responsibilities, actually helping me with administration now. And under those eight supervisors, we have the call takers and dispatchers. If you're at fire location, you have a supervisor who has three people who report to them. That's the shift, those core four people. So we've got four shifts of four. Are there any benchmarks for that at the national? Yeah, the standard, we have to have at least three at all times. These supervisors? Three telecommunicators. Okay. Okay. With those three, we have a supervisor. So the span of control then would be three to one? Correct. At the police location, with their much larger numbers, each supervisor, there's four of them, and they have roughly 12 people under each one of them. Why don't you do that again? Four supervisors at police, roughly 12 people report to each supervisor. So it's a 12 to 1 ratio. That's correct. Span of control. And we have a support staff of me and an administrator. That's in. Okay, I'm not quite sure that I'm understanding. Is everybody else understanding? And is it just me? If you can, David, go back and clarify, because I think you said in the beginning there were 11 supervisor spots, but eight were filled. I think that's where the confusion is coming in. And then you started talking about the differences between fire and police. That is true. So I have eight supervisors who report to me directly. Okay. Four are located at the fire. And there's 61 employees. That's correct. All right. So that eight is to 61, that's what I'm looking for is that span of control number. That would be roughly, if it was 10 to 1, it would be 6, so it would be 7, roughly. 7? Yeah, average of 7. Do you know any benchmarks for that on a national level? No, I do not. Okay. I'd never looked at it at that angle before. Okay, the reason that I'm, and I said I was going to get to context, because I think these are some of the management questions that, at least in my view, would be being examined. When the attrition rate is at the level it is, double the national level, these are the sorts of questions that I believe responsible management would be asking. And don't misunderstand me. I realize you've been at it three years. and that really can be viewed as a startup exercise, startup enterprise. But in the three years that I've been on council, what I've observed is that questions and issues don't rise to the level of the council unless the tension and the distress has risen to a level that it is not being managed internally, effectively. There can be really good reasons for that, perhaps, or there are reasons. But nevertheless, it doesn't get to this level unless there are issues. And I think we've seen that with fire and the overtime. So the real question is, in my view, the systemic question is, What is the current management organization? That's why the question of span of control. Supervisor, the reliability and the competencies of supervisors to deal with the questions or the issues that exist. And then how is the management addressing or remedying those issues on a day-to-day basis? and on a strategic basis. Because I would think with this level of turnover, for example, it would be a permanent hiring process. Maybe you said that, but I sort of heard that you're doing it at a particular time of the year, that you're now doing interviews. And really I don't, I mean, is that yes or no? No, we are hiring continually. Continuously. I just know I have a hiring cycle coming up next month. Okay, when you said hiring cycle, that made me think that it was an episode or an iterative. Once we advertise, we get a list of employees, and we have to keep that list active for a year. So to me, the cycle is I've got a list for a year, and we're coming up, and I get new people. Well, and the other thing is, you know, I think you can consider, you know, this exercise as a bit of a problem-solving exercise for management. But I don't know that we as a body have the expertise or the experience, or I certainly wouldn't presume to have it, at a technical level. But I do see the symptoms at the management level. And so I'm really wondering where we go from here as a body, as a committee. Any suggestions on that? Thanks, Vice Mayor. We have a few more speakers, and maybe somebody will have an answer to that. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have expertise in this, having managed a 24-hour crisis line with very stressful calls, the training and burnout and looking for ways to keep that from happening. And something that triggered a thought when you said the caller doesn't know what happened. You know, did the baby die? Did the house burn? Did the person die of a heart attack? And that kind of feedback seems like it would be important to get to them and would be easily gotten to them. There are also, I think, ways in which you can manage burnout, and certainly we worked very hard to give support to our crisis line workers, and we used predominantly volunteers. Volunteers answered our crisis lines after office hours and on weekends. They were very carefully screened and very highly trained. And so I would suggest looking into supportive services, ways to let them have some feedback about what happened after the call, and, you know, ways to decompress and fun things, team-building exercises. There are a lot of things you can do to help with that kind of stress. And I know this may be a bit off topic, but I think that is about management. And clearly there is a management problem with this. And maybe it would be helpful to do a survey of the people you have who are answering the 911 calls, doing maybe a 360 evaluation of their supervisors anonymously, if need be, so they aren't fearful of losing their job, and take that feedback very seriously. And one other quick comment, if anybody out there listening is looking for a job, sounds like there's some openings. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Council Member Crosby is the last one on my list. I just had a follow-up regarding the supervisors and their training. Is it mandatory with accreditation? I know you said that some of them are promoted and they don't necessarily, or maybe I should ask, maybe I misunderstood you. Did you say they get promoted from a call taker usually, or can you just randomly bring in somebody to be a supervisor? We advertise throughout inside and outside. We did at one point have someone come in as a supervisor who was supervising actually in Louisville. It did not work out well. We haven't done it since. But we do have people. I mentioned we've had four promotions. Those were people who went from call taker to dispatcher in that span of time. And they're all still here. All the people who we've promoted have stayed. And so we're really encouraging the people who came in on the entry level, especially the ones we've hired in the last 24 months, if they're ready to move on up, because it is a nice stepping stone. The supervisors we have now all came internally. Okay, so they've all been through the training, Ed. That is correct. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? I had a couple of clarifying things from some of the responses that you've given. You talked about the temp labor that's being used. Yes. Is that being used out of a temp line item in the budget, or is that coming out of the regular personnel budget? Coming out of professional services. Professional services, okay. Did you know, you don't know what that balance is right now, do you? No, I do not. Okay, budget balance. But you were, in the beginning of the budget year, you were predicting you were going to use that for temp. That is correct. This is the full second fiscal year we've done that. The first year we weren't really sure, and so this year we budgeted based on the previous year. Okay. And how many positions will be posted in February that you mentioned? I have nine vacancies. And all will be posted at once? That is correct. Okay. Do you feel hopeful that you'll have the responses that you need to fill all of those positions? I know I'll get enough applicants. I don't know if we'll have enough quality applicants, but last time we had seven vacancies, we got four. So I'm confident we'll get at least five good new people out of that group. I've heard some things in the news. I might actually get more. We've had some 911 consolidations in the county south of us, which is encouraging for us because those are trained personnel who, when they consolidated, half their staff did not move forward. So we'll be looking at those very closely. and I hear there's a private business locally who is downsizing, and we'll probably get some of those applicants who have gotten in the past from the same company that have worked out very well. Okay. And what's the order of operations for that? You mentioned the five-step process. Initially, you have to apply if you can't apply. That sounds elementary, but a lot of people come up after the fact, I want to apply. You have to get in the process. To get in the process, you have to get on our website or contact HR and get your application in and the supporting documentation. Once they close it, which is probably about three weeks after advertising, we leave it open three to four weeks, then they start scrubbing them, and there's actually, they'll be called in for testing. We have it called critical testing where we test how a multifunctioning listening and typing at the same time. Okay. That's done here? That is done here. Okay. We do that internally, and we use that to rank them, one through 100 or how many we have. Okay. And then they take the top ones and give me a list. We interview them. If we believe they should move forward, then we do the expensive testing of drug tests and background and site suitability, et cetera. Okay. And that is that three-month process to get those people through that. Okay. So we can expect that once this is posted, it may be June before these folks actually start working. And I have them on board by July before you guys go on break to have those people scheduled to start their day one. Okay. Now, that is our new group. I've got a group we're interviewing this week who would be obviously two months ahead of that schedule. So almost every two months we have a cycle of one position or another coming through. Okay. And the minimum floor base? $13.95. Okay. I'm sorry. I wasn't saying salary. The minimum floor, like how many people are on the phones or available to answer phones? At the fire location, we have to have three, and at the police, we need eight. And is that based on calls or population? Neither. If you went by call volume, it would be less than that at certain times. The three is actually set by the Fire Association minimum standards. The police has a like accreditation process, and we use their number as well. Okay. And is E911 funded only by the general fund? No, it isn't. We are funded by three sources. Your wireless fee on your phone, $0.70, goes to the state, and we get a proportional cut of that. We get roughly $0.48 for every cell phone in the county. There's a landline fee on all of your phones at home of $2.19. We get funded by that, and that comes to us directly. Okay. The third is general fund because 911 funds based on KRS can only be spent for people who dial those three numbers 911, and 60% of our calls are administrative calls. So we have to use general fund to – we cannot spend 911 funds on non-911 funds. Got to appropriate correctly. So those are the three sources that we use. Okay. And do you notice of the different shift choices, is there one shift that grows more accrual than another with the vacation and leave time? Yes. Rush hour. Rush hour. Second shift. Second shift. People love third shift. People love first shift. Second shift, it's right in the middle of the day. It's a hard one to fill. And second shift, does it matter whether it's the 8, 10, or 12 hour? Yeah, it doesn't matter. Working between 2 p.m. and midnight is just not a popular time. Well, it's a really popular time. That's what you're saying, right? You're saying it is a popular time. It is not popular. That's why we've got people trying to get off of it. Oh, it's not popular for work. Okay. Yeah, okay. And which statute? You mentioned that there was something that allows for holiday accrual but not for use for the non-exempt employees? Yes, that's in our ordinance. As someone, myself, for example, I do not get overtime as a supervisor. So on a holiday, I either bank the hours or I use them. I cannot be paid for those hours on that holiday, even if I came in and worked on July 4th. And that's an ordinance that council passed at some point? Yes. Okay. However, for the non-exempt, the ones who do earn overtime, non-management, they are allowed to get paid for the holiday. So if they work on July 4th, they get their hours, plus they get their holiday hours and money at that time. Okay. And is your scheduling computerized or on paper as far as your employees? Yes, it's both. Both. We generate it via computer based on volume, and then after that we put in a hard copy, and then we distribute it, and then they sign up for overtime off of that. Okay. I see a couple of, I thought some of those questions would trigger some responses from committee members, so I have Council Member Gray and then Council Member Feigl. I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Gray. Thank you, Chair. Earlier I had asked a question about perhaps what might be the next action steps. And after hearing Council Member Lawless's comments, it struck me that maybe we can ask, and we ought to respect the chain of command with the commissioner, that perhaps, David, you could go back and you all could powwow on what this meeting has contributed to helpfully, worthwhile. any ideas that have emerged from this meeting that you could examine, like the 360-degree review process, the span of control benchmarks with other cities, how to address the stress and tension among the employees, and then perhaps some report back to us in an established period of time. Would that, Chair? I'm sure. Would that work, maybe? I think, you know, much of this seems like an administrative issue. So I think, yeah, to make any suggestions that we have or to offer suggestions and to see if that's something the administration would like to respond to, I think, is appropriate. I don't have a problem with that. Councilman Feigl, did you say something, too? Just one quick follow-up question, I think. If you lose two people tomorrow, what would you do? Because that's going to put you below your minimum requirement. More overtime. More overtime. Yep. I will say, and you met many of my employees, they're very dedicated. They're very passionate. I never have a problem with filling to make our minimums because they want to make sure that we have proper coverage. That means a lot of them work overtime. We have mandatory overtime built in, but a lot of them volunteer for overtime. And if I lost two, depending on where they fall in that hierarchy, we offer overtime, and a lot of our supervisors will work it if no one volunteers for it or mandates it, which is why some of their balances are so high, because they will rather make sure we had coverage than be off. And that contributes to this extra time that they are. Yes, I mean, if they're always working, you know, they're building their crew in these balances, and getting them off becomes difficult, and it's a juggling act. And we actually, of the 11 here, nine of them are at the fire location, the smaller location. We've done some changes there already, and we're already planning out. I mean, ironically, I can't make people take vacation. I can only strongly encourage it. And so, I mean, the supervisors already told them, plan on taking a week off per month. Let me know, because we've got to plan ahead, because there's four weeks in September, no one's getting off. So let's carve around that and work on it. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. I'll make this brief. Commissioner Bennett, and thank you all for being here. I would be more than happy to volunteer to consult with you all on methods used in many different situations, and my experience and my training to help with this, if you would like that, and I will be more than happy to do it as a volunteer rather than a high-paid consultant. Councilmember Beard. Thank you, Madam Chair. David, and I guess an add-on to Vice Mayor Gray's comments, a graphic representation of your area department. Okay. You know, we're all visual. So am I. An orange chart type would be her. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. You're welcome. Is there anything else to talk with David Lucas about? David, thank you for being here, and we look forward to hearing back from you. If you just want to let Paul or myself know whenever you're ready to come back, we'd like to have you back soon. All right. Thank you. Thank you. At this time, we'll look at the committee items that are pending. If anyone has any comments, suggestions, questions regarding anything on that list, which is on page 35 of our packet, speak now, forever hold your peace. I actually did have for the, I needed clarification on who's on the grievance subcommittee. Does anybody know who's on that committee? The grievance procedure subcommittee? Okay. Well, then I'll have to work on, anybody want to volunteer for that? Okay. We've got Vice Mayor and Council Member Beard. Anyone else? Okay. All right. You too? Okay. So we've got a few volunteers for that. I'll make a mention, I'll make a note. Vice Mayor, Council Member Beard, Council Member Lawless, and Council Member Crosby. And I will get with you on what the intention of that subcommittee is. Anyone else have comments? Councilman Blues. Are we finished with the U.K. smoke-free ban? What's the status of the U.K. smoke-free ban? Is there anything else we need to follow up on that? I'm trying to get a hold of Anthony Beatty today, but been in meetings. so I'm hoping to get in touch with him today or tomorrow about bringing that forward and discussing it. Okay. So maybe your hope is maybe next month or next meeting we'll be able to deal with that or at least get an update? Yes. Okay. All right. Does that satisfy you? Is that okay? Okay. Anything else? Yes. Councilman Baird. In four days we will have the fifth anniversary of the proposed new compensation system. And the way things look, and with some budget constraints being thrown in on top of that, it may be another five years. I would suggest we take it off and then put it back on when it's a little closer in. We'll have people retired and gone and who knows what time we get around to doing this. Is that a motion? That is a motion. Okay. There's a motion to remove the proposed new compensation system. Is there a second? A motion and a second. Any discussion? The only discussion that I would have at this point is I believe there might be a new person in human resources, maybe, that's dealing with this. And so that would be dealing with the new compensation system. Wally Barker is maybe no longer with us. I don't remember. No, he's gone. So that would be the only thing that I would, as a chair of the committee, I may follow up with that new person just to see if there's anything we need to know as far as when Wally was out, Wally's gone, and now this new person's here. Maybe there's some new information that we don't know. I've got no problem with that. I'm just looking at it's delayed because of finance and human resources. and obviously IT is involved heavily. I understand. So even though we have a new person, his hands may be tied also, but you can kind of dig that out. Yeah, I understand. I respect that. My only question is prioritization. Sure. So where is that on that new person's list so that we don't drop the ball? Be fine. Sure. More discussion? Well, we might also check with Council Member Gordon. Okay. Who put that on. I don't know, just in case she has a mind bringing it forward. Okay. So would you propose to not have the motion to pull it off, or go ahead and would you support the motion to pull it off at this time and just reintroduce it if necessary? It's just a motion to get it back on. Let me just amend it to say, you know, contingent upon consultation with Council Member Gordon. You accept that amendment? I accept that. Okay. Any more discussion on that motion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That is removed with contingency. Any other questions on items or any motions? Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn in a second. All in favor, aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I need somebody. Everybody needs somebody. I need somebody. Hey, what about you? Everybody needs somebody. And you're out on the front line And you're watching them fall Doesn't take long to realize Ain't what you're fighting for I thought I saw the mongoners We walked in the room We rise through like diamonds And they can't ride through They can't ride through I need somebody Somebody like you Everybody needs somebody Oh yeah I need somebody Hey, what about you? We all need somebody Another night, another last one It's the distance that keeps us safe When the silence leads to sorrow We'll do it all again All again I need somebody Somebody like you Girl, I need somebody I need somebody All about you Girl, I need somebody I need somebody. Somebody like you. Everybody needs somebody. I need somebody. I need somebody. Yeah, what about you? We all need somebody. I need somebody. Everybody needs somebody. I need somebody If I need somebody Thank you. They say, Brandy, fetch another round. She serves them whiskey and wine. They'll say, they'll say, Brandy, you're a fine girl. What a good wife you would be. Such a fine guy. Yeah, you guys could steal a sailor from the sea. Brandy, where's a braided chain? Made of finest silver from the north of Spain A locket that bears the name of a man that Brandy loved He came on a summer's day Bringing gifts from far away But he made it clear he couldn't stay No horror was his home I said, I said, Brandon, you're a fine girl. What a good life you would be. But my life, my lover, my lady is the same. Yeah, Brandon used to watch his eyes when he told his sailor story. She could feel the ocean falling lies. She saw its rage and glory But he had always told the truth Not he was an honest man And Brandy does her best Understanding At night when the bars close down Brandy walks through a silent town And loves a man who's not around She still can't hear him say She hears him say, Brandy, you're a fine girl What a good wife you would be But my life, my love and my lady Is the same, is the same Brandy, you're a fine girl What a good wife you would be Thank you. Not shy. You get around. You wanna fly. Don't want your feet on the ground to stay up. You won't come down. You wanna live. You wanna move to the sound. Got fire in your veins. Burning hot. But you don't feel the same. Your desire is insane. You can't stop until you do it again Sometimes I wonder as I look in your eyes Maybe you're thinking of some other guy But I know, cause I know how to treat you right That's why you call me in the middle of the night You say it's urgent So urgent So urgent, urgent, urgent Just wait and see how urgent My love can be, it's urgent, urgent, urgent You play tricks on my mind You're everywhere But you're so hard to find You're not warm or sentimental. You're so extreme. You can be so temperamental. But I'm not looking for love at last. I know what I need and I need it best. Yeah, there's one thing in common that we don't care. There's a thing for each other anytime. Anywhere, it gets urgent. So urgent You know it's urgent I wanna tell you it's a slave of me So urgent, urgent, urgent Just you wait and see How urgent our love can be It's urgent, urgent, urgent