... day's agenda. Does anyone wish to address the council? No one has signed up to my knowledge, so we'll proceed. We have a docket to approve. I'm advised by the clerk that, um, there are a couple of ordinances, numbers, uh, 10 and 11, that we need to, uh, determine whether we wish to have a public hearing on those items. What's the pleasure of the council? Mayor. Council Member Stennet. Move to place number 10 on the, uh, docket without a hearing. Second. I have a motion and second to place item 10 on the docket without a hearing. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Oppose no? Motion carries. And Number 11, Mayor. Move to place on the docket without a hearing. Second. Motion by Council Member Stennet, second by Council Member Ellinger to put Number 11 on the docket without a hearing. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All oppose no? The motion carries. Is there a motion now- Mayor. ... to approve- Over here. ... the docket? Council Member, uh, James. I, Mayor, I had a question about an item on the docket, and I'd asked someone from, um, planning to be here, and it looks like they are here. I don't know if this is the appropriate time or not, but it has to do with number nine of the ordinance. All right. If I can have Chris King step to the mic, please. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Um, um, I, the email I sent to you was just to maybe just... This looked like something really important, um, and I didn't want to... Sometimes between getting it on the docket and the council, and the actual council meeting, we don't really have a lot of time to, to get clarification. So I just wondered if you would give us just a briefing, um, to the council members and anybody watching about what's happening with the ordinance number nine? Certainly. Um, the regulation change that we're talking about is a subdivision regulation change. It was prompted by efforts to work on the consent decree. Uh, we were at a meeting last summer involving the urban county government's team that talked about, um, as part of the commitments, uh, to look at an, alternative designs in terms of infrastructure for stormwater management. Uh, it was explained that the long term, there will be new standards and specific standards created over time as part of that process. But at the very front end, at the early end, there was a commitment to demonstrate to FEMA that... Pardon me, not FEMA, to the EPA, that, that the urban county government was open and receptive to alternative designs that utilized low impact development t-techniques in dealing with storm water. So, um, we decided to go ahead and the way to address that was to proactively create a section of the land subdivision regulations to note that we will accept that, and that we do encourage developers to put those kinds of ideas on the table, and they will be reviewed by our people and, uh, implemented if appropriate. Okay. Can you give just a brief definition of low impact- Sure. ... development? Low impact development are techniques, uh, dealing with, uh, storm water infrastructure that, um, tend to work with the natural environment rather than the kinds of things that we've seen in the past, um, using rain gardens instead of detention basins, bioswales instead of concrete swales, things of that nature. Just some simple examples. Okay. Well, thank you for that. And I think this is, um, uh, council members, I think this is a great step in the right direction for, not just in response to the EPA, but as a green element of heading us, um, getting us where I think we need to be as far as being a green city. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you. Uh, Council Member Martin. Thank you. Uh, Mr. King, uh, help me understand how this fits in with the development requirements. Right now, um, you know, you have the engineering manuals that lay out all the requirements and standards and specifications. Um, what this would do, would let developers propose alternatives to that, that then would be reviewed. But, uh, those would be the kinds of techniques and alternative techniques which, uh, will allow them to put those kinds of things on the table in a parallel track with the government doing the larger project to amend the manuals, create new, um, standards and requirements along those lines. So this gives folks more options as far as satisfying existing requirements? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Any further discussion? Do I hear a motion to approve the docket? Move approval. Have a motion from, uh, Council Member Gordon, a second from Council Member Martin to prove the docket. Any further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Oppose no? The motion carries. Item three on the agenda is the approval of the summary from the, uh, December 8th, uh, work session. Move approval. Do I hear a second? Have a motion by Council Member Gordon, second by Council Member McCord to approve the summary. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Oppose no? The motion carries. We have a few budget amendments. Is there a motion to approve? Second. Council Member Beard has moved the approval of the budget amendments. Council Member McCord has seconded that motion. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Oppose no? Motion carries. We have a number of items of new business after the break. My understanding is that, uh, we would like to withdraw item number A and, um, so a motion to approve the new business items B through EE would be in order. Move approval. Have a motion by Council Member Gordon and a second by Council Member Beard to approve new business items B through EE. Any discussion? All in favor, please say, "Aye." Aye. Oppose, "No." Motion carries. That takes us down to our presentations for the day, and Council Member Stennet is first with the Budget and Finance Committee. All right, Council Member James, do you- Yeah, it may be too late. I don't... I'm sorry. I missed the whole discussion of new business item. I was gonna ask about items K and Z, but I'll talk to Rama after the meeting. All right. Thanks. Okay. Council Member Stennet. Thank you, Mayor. It's always good to start the new year off with a financial report from October, but, uh, we'll go ahead and give some stale numbers, uh, from the budget and finance report again. This is just through, actually through November of last year. Excuse me. Um, we start off the meeting again discussing our economic trends. Through October, unemployment was steady at 7.8%. Foreclosures were actually up from 42 to 69 in November, and building permits were level for the month of November going forward. Um, October revenues, uh, again just in the big four revenue streams, uh, employee withholdings, net profit, insurance, and franchise fees, we were down 19.51% as compared to budget. November though, we were up 5.37% in the big four. So cumulative year to date through November, uh, employee withholdings were down 1.8 million or 2.86%. Net profit was down $162,441 or 2.43%. Insurance was down 384,000 or 3.64%, and franchise fees were down 163,000 or 2.3% for a year-to-date total revenue, uh, decrease of 2.8% or $2.53 million. Uh, again, that's through November. I know we have some new numbers. December coming up, we'll have our budget and finance meeting two weeks from today with, uh, mid- midway numbers through December, so that'll be in two weeks. Also, on the agenda, uh, at the last meeting was the internal audit for the division of revenue. That's for, that's in your packet as well for information only. Also, we discussed our links update. Um, the general service link gave updates on recommendations from the last budget link process last, uh, spring, and those recommendations are moving forward from the council recommendations. And then, the last item on the agenda was the budget cuts from the council office, uh, which hopefully, uh, Vice Mayor, we will take up next Tuesday and finalize at the committee at the whole meetings so that every council member can have an opportunity to, um, give their final weigh in on the budget cuts for the council office. Otherwise, we can keep it on the agenda for budget and finance two weeks from now, but I think it may be more important to get to it a little faster. So, if we can have that at the COW meeting next Tuesday, we can finish the budget cuts. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Stennet, you may have said it, I just, uh, failed to pick up on it. I believe we're supposed to have a presentation on our expense reductions at your next, uh, Budget and Finance Committee meeting. That's at the pleasure of the council. We can keep it in budget and finance and have that presentation for the details of the plan that you presented last week, or we can do it at the committee of the whole meeting. We may not have enough time on our agenda to do both, um, but we can do it either way, because every council member, uh, is invited to any committee, standing committee meeting, of course. Um, so we can do it at either meeting. May- Either, either way is fine with you? Yeah. Either way is fine with me. I'll be happy to do it then. All right. Thank you, Mayor. All right. On page 76 of your packet, and page 77 as well, there is the, uh, monthly report regarding the Lyric Theater. That is for information purposes only. Is there, uh, a question from anyone? If you have one later, just let us know. And that takes us down to item C, the, uh, economic outlook. Professor Troeske is here with us today. We're delighted to have you, and thank you for your assistance in the past and your presence today. I'm, uh, happy to be here today, um, and, uh, I will see whether you're happy I came after, at the end of the presentation, um, 'cause I can assure you it's not gonna be a real, real cheery one. Uh, I wanted to talk a little bit about, give you a brief overview of at least my view of what the economic, uh, outlook of, uh, um, the nation, the state, and the city is gonna be. Um, start off and, start off by maybe reviewing a little bit about where we've come, um, so what 2009 looked like. And as I'm sure you all know, it was a pretty rocky year for the US economy. Um, start of the year, we were talking about whether we were gonna enter another depression. Um, most people sort of expected that we were gonna bottom out about the second quarter of the year, which turned it, turned out we did with a negative, with a contraction in the economy of about 6.4%. By the third quarter, we expanded 2.2%. Of course, we started off thinking we were expanding 3.5%, but we revised that down to 2.2. Expect that that w- is gonna continue in the fourth quarter, um, but perhaps less than the 2.2% we saw in the third quarter. And as we're gonna see, unemployment rate ro- rose fairly steadily over the years, now over 10% in the nation. Um, for Kentucky, we probably, if anything, suffered a little more than the rest of the, uh, uh, country. We certainly have a higher unemployment rate, uh, around 11%. Uh, the state, uh, I think the only way to describe the state economy is we've about hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs since, um, the start of this recession. We've lost almost 50,000 manufacturing jobs. At one point, manufacturing was the third-largest indus- uh, employment industry in the state in terms of employment. It's now down to the fourth-largest, uh, industry in terms of employment. So, and that's had a significant impact on the, uh, th- the economy. Um, we've seen some positive signs for the national economy recently, but, uh, there's still an open question about how sustainable, uh- ... uh, the, the growth that we've seen has been since there's some concern that it's been driven primarily by increases in government spending that are likely to end, um, and certainly not, don't seem to be sustainable. I want to, I'm, uh, in this presentation, I'm gonna spend a little time talking about the housing market and particularly the housing market in the country, because e- every recession seems to have its own unique, um, aspects to it. This one, this recession seemed to have emanated out of the housing market, um, which then affected financial markets, which then affected consumer spending, um, as, as both the decline in the housing and financial markets affected consumer confidence. Um, so since that's where all the problems seemed to start, it's likely that the economy's not gonna continue to s- see sustainable growth until we see, uh, sustainability return into the housing market, or the housing market get back into what I would call equilibrium. And I'm gonna try to convince you that we're a ways from that point, which, uh, suggests that we're a ways from, uh, seeing rapid expansion of the economy anytime soon. It's important to note that I think that the, um, the problems in the housing market, um, have centered in other places. So in terms of ki- in Kentucky and Lexington in particular, we haven't seen the problems in the housing market that they've seen in Phoenix and Miami and Las Vegas and California and Seattle and many other cities I could mention. Um, the problem is, of course, that, you know, the Kentucky economy in general and the Lexington economy specifically is very closely tied to the, the growth of the rest of the country. So it's hard for our ec- economic growth in Lexington to be s- significant when the rest of the country is, is suffering. So the problems that we've seen, that we see in housing in, in other parts of the country are gonna continue to have a drag on economic growth in, in Lexington, and, and we are only gonna return to growth that we've s- seen in the past once, once those problems in the rest of the country are fixed. So in some sense, there's not a lot we can do about that, but, um, other than prepare for it and, and be aware that it's coming. So part of what I wanna do is talk a little bit about that, that interaction and talk about some recent changes, try to convince you that's why it's important to understand what's going on in the rest of the country when thinking about the budget, you know, in Lexington. It actually is important to understand what's going on in, in the housing market in, in Miami and Las Vegas and Phoenix and, and Naples, Florida, as we'll see. Um, and so I wanna focus on those sections of the national economy that I think are gonna have an impact on both the state and local economies, particular housing, financial and manufacturing sectors. I'm gonna talk a little bit about, uh, the economic performance recently of, when I, and when I refer to Lexington, Louisville and Northern Kentucky, I'm gonna be talking about m- the metropolitan statistical area. So I'm gonna have data that incorporates the larger Lexington MSA, which includes many of the surrounding counties. Although for the most part, um, many of the comments are gonna refer to more specifically to just Fayette County. Um, and I'll talk a little bit where I think we are going. So here's a graph of recent changes, quarterly changes in US gross domestic product. And you can see that, um, I guess you're gonna see up here, the third quarter of, or excuse me, second quarter of 2009 is when we sort of reached the, the nadir or the, the, the depths of, of this current recession. Third quarter, we saw some positive growth. Um, when I first made this slide, that positive growth was up there. Now it's back down to about 2.2%. Hopefully they don't revise it downwards anymore. Um, and when I mentioned that, that, that the Kentucky economy seems to have suffered worse than the, the US economy, this is kind of what generates those comments. As you can see, traditionally, the Kentucky economy grows somewhat slower than the US economy or the economic growth in Kentucky lags behind economic growth in the typical state for a variety of reasons. And that's certainly been the case in this current recession. So, um, when we look across the state and particularly at the metropolitan statistical areas, um, if it's, you know, I know it's a small comfort, but, um, it, you should thank, uh, you should thank your stars that you're not trying to make the budget in, in Louisville as opposed to, to Lexington 'cause obviously that you would have many more problems. And Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky has also, has, uh, experienced some significant problems. Lexington, uh, in contrast has seen some fairly rapid growth over the, uh, last several years. Um, certainly declining growth in 2007 and 2008, but even in 2008, the latest numbers that are available, we've still seen some positive growth. I would expect in 2000... when the numbers come out in 2009, um, which of course won't be till September, uh, we will continue to see positive growth in, in Lexington, although albeit probably on the order of magnitude of about a half a percent for the year. Unemployment, um, unemployment in the, in Kentucky and the rest of the country started rising quite dramatically in about the middle of January '08. Um, reached a peak for Kentucky of about 11, y- 11%, saw a little bit of decline. We've seen some, some leveling off in unemployment. When we look at the metropolitan statistical areas, one of the things I think is notable is what you're gonna see, uh, in a lot of these slides is the economic downturn, particular in this area, um, in the Lexington metropolitan area, occurred just a little later than the rest of the country. So when you were thinking about this year's budget on, on about, you know, the end of last year, the fiscal year budget, things were looking like they were getting a little bad, but not that, not all that substantial. Whoops, excuse me. But then starting in about January, unemployment rate really took off in this area. Um, in November, we saw a slight decline in the unemployment rate, um, in, in Lexi- in the Lexington MSA. But like I said, the, the problem seemed to hit starting in January, um, and moving forward and have continued throughout much of this, this year. ... touched briefly on inflation. It doesn't seem to be much of a problem. I don't think it's gonna become a problem this year, probably not next year. In the future, all bets are off, um, given the spending that, that the federal government has done. So, I want, again, I wanna look at some key parts of the economy, and I wanna spend a bit of time talking about the housing market, because I think it's important to understand the problems that ex- uh, occurred in the housing market and the problems that, uh, that still exist in the housing market, um, when understanding, when trying to form expectations about what we think growth is going to be in the future. Um, as, as you all know, pr- uh, prices in, uh, particularly in the US have declined fairly dramatically over the, uh, last several years, peaking, you know, somewhere around the end of 2006, early 2007, depending on the index you use. Um, the index that gets a lot of press in the paper is what's known as the Case-Shiller Index. The Case-Shiller Index is a housing price index that focuses on the 20 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, um, and those are the ones that have s- experienced the greatest decline in housing prices. So using the Case-Shiller Index, you'd find a decline in housing prices of about 30%. I'm using an alternative index that is more, uh, uh, representative nationally, and also, I can get this housing price index from the Federal Housing Finance Authority for, uh, Lexington, Louisville, and Northern Kentucky, and so that's why I like that one. Although it shows a somewhat smaller decline in housing prices, you still see a fairly prominent decline in the country, which what you don't see is, or what you also see is housing prices in Kentucky have been fairly flat, as they have been in the local, um, metropolitan areas. Certainly, Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky has seen some decline in their housing prices. Louisville's flattened out and may have had, experienced some declines. Lexington housing prices have been fairly stable. I've looked at this in more detail, and if you break it out by various parts of the, the distribution, we have seen some decline in housing prices at the top end of the distribution, so the most expensive houses in Lexington have experienced some declining, uh, falling housing prices, but for most of the houses to, most of the houses in the area, we haven't seen the decline. Um, the other thing that's I think quite notable is housing prices in, in Lexington have actually risen somewhat faster than they have in the other major metropolitan areas. I think reflecting the overall strength of the local economy, at least relative to the other parts of the state over the recent time period. I put this, uh, this up just to sort of give you an indication of what a housing bubble looks like. So, here are housing prices in the nine metropolitan areas in, in Kentucky, and here are housing prices in Naples, Florida. And, um, just so you know, you know, obviously if you bought a house here in Naples, Florida and sold it here, you'd be really happy. But if the converse was true, you'd be quite disappointed. So, certainly relative to places where, where we saw some significant bubbles, we largely escaped those in Lexington. Um, talk a little bit about foreclosures as well. Traditionally, Kentucky's had foreclosure rates that have averaged above the, um, the foreclosure rates in most of the rest of the country. Um, that stopped being true in about 2008. Again, given the problems that we've seen in the housing market in the, in other parts of the country, we have not seen the big increases in foreclosure rates. We've certainly seen an increase in foreclosure rates, and I don't wanna trivialize it, but certainly not the increases that we've seen, that they- they've seen in other parts of the country. The problem with this is we don't see any decline in this, and I'm gonna try to convince you I don't see a, a big decline in foreclosure rates and actually expect foreclosure rates to, to increase in the near future. And why is that? Well, a couple of things. First, this is, this graph I have put on the board right now is the home ownership vacancy rate for the United States. That's the percentage of all homes that are standing empty currently. Traditionally, the home ownership vacancy rate for back to the earl- um, early 1980s is about 1.6%. Starting in 2004, we've seen that, uh, home ownership vacancy rate skyrocket from about 1.6% to about 2.8%. It may have come down a little, but not much. That percentage, a little about percentage to a percentage and a half point, uh, e- vacancy rate, increase in the vacancy rate means there are about one and a half million extra homes that are standing vacant in this country currently. That's about a couple of trillion dollars' worth of homes. The other, uh, other, um, graph that, that should give you pause is the home ownership rate in the United States. If you go back to the 1960s, home ownership in the United States, if I extended it all the way back as far as I could, it stood about 63, 64%. Starting in 1995, there were a lot of policies that were adopted, actions taken in both the public and private sector to pump the home ownership rate up, um, w- i- by an amount that can only be described as perhaps incredible and unsustainable. Um, home ownership rates peaked at about 69%, um, and have been declining since then. There is no evidence to suggest that home ownership rates should be anything at 69%. We just haven't seen the growth in wealth in this country that would sustain a home ownership rate up here. Home ownership rates probably should be around the 65% rate, which means a lot of people have to lose their homes before we get back to something close to an equilibrium. Um, and, and which should convince us that, that these efforts to push people into homes, um, just have caused more problems than, than they possibly solved. So, we've got a surplus of housing. Um, that surplus is probably going to only increase in recent p- in, in the next several years. It's gonna take time for us to work out the, that surplus in the housing market, which means that for a l- the foreseeable future, the housing market is gonna remain very weak with low, low housing starts, um, prices that, uh, if anything, will continue to fall, um, which means that w- ... people are going to have, continue to cut, um, we certainly aren't gonna see a growth in consumer spending in any time soon. At least in my, that's my expectation. Um, certainly that problems in, in Lexington and Kentucky have been much less severe and actually f- um, in, in many ways, um, the housing market in Lexington looks fairly strong. Um, but again, it's the problems in these other parts of the country that are going to continue to impact the economy in the country and therefore impact the economy in the local area. Um, financial sector, y- as you, I'm sure you're all aware, we reached a peak in about July of '07. Market came down quite dramatically, about 30%. We've seen a fairly significant rise. If you took all, if you pulled all of your wealth out in July '07 and dumped it back in in about March '09, you'd be very happy right now. Um, the market went up about 40% between March and the end of the year last year, um, but we still have a long way to go before we get back to levels we saw before. Um, touch really briefly on, uh, manufacturing employment. Um, again, we've seen just a, in Kentucky, the, uh, bottom's fallen out of the manufactur- uh, manufacturing employment in the state, which is the reason we have higher than average unemployment rates. Lexington is actually kinda interesting. The metropolitan area, again, fairly stable employment in manufacturing till about January when it just went south fairly quickly. Um, and so... Sorta end up, I, I wanna end up on, I do wanna end up on something of a, of a bright note. Um, I've been fairly, uh, pessimistic. This shows how the Kentucky economy has changed over this recession, and I think this is important to keep in mind when looking forward. Um, what this go- it, it plots employment by sector, and the... Keep doing this. The government sector remains the largest, actually, remains the largest sector in the state, followed by retail, although retail has declined. Here is manufacturing, and you can see the d- the precipitous decline in manufacturing employment as a share of overall employment in the state. This line below here is health and education, two big sectors in the Lexington area that has actually grown and, and passed the manufacturing, uh, sector as the third-largest sector of, in terms of employment in the state. The other big sector that's growing is professional and financial services. So from those two, those two growths are, are growth that, that would serve the, uh, Lexington area well and suggest that, you know, much of the growth that is occurring in the state in terms of employment is certainly occurring in this area, um, and, and I expect that to continue in the future. We've seen big productivity increases in manufacturing, so I don't expect manufacturing employment to, to bounce back any time soon. So let me leave you with some thoughts about what we're gonna see in the future. Um, I expect that in next year in the US economy we're gonna continue, we're going to have positive growth of around 2%, but persistently high unemployment rates. Um, I expect the same thing, um, for Kentucky. I expect positive growth in the Kentucky economy, although on the order of magnitude of around a half a percent, um, eh, but uh, continually high unemployment in, um... Excuse me, for Kentucky about 1%, but continuing high unemployment in Kentucky as well. For the lo- for the local community, again, I would expect Lexington to continue to have growth that exceeds that in most metropolitan areas, although certainly well below the growth we saw in '06 and '07. Um, and I do expect unemployment again will remain relatively low in Lexington relative to the rest of the community, but certainly at levels that exceed the levels we've s- we've seen recently. I expect unemployment in Kentucky to probably remain fairly flat at around the 7 to 7 1/2% range. I got through all of that in a half an hour. Thank you. Or for 15 minutes, excuse me. Thank you very much, uh, Professor. And any questions? Any questions? Council Member Jayne. Thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Professor Trosky. Mm-hmm. Um, i- can you tell me a little bit about, uh, your assumptions for the prediction of unemployment? There obviously were some things you took into account, and that was- Mm-hmm. ... assuming that Kentucky headed down particular routes- Mm-hmm. ... um, for increasing employment opportunities. What, what were you thinking there? Well, I mean, so one of the, one of the things that leaves me fairly pessimistic about unemployment growth is we've seen substantial increases in productivity, um, in, uh, over this, over this, uh, recession actually. Somewhat unusual. Um, so if you, uh, so we've had a r- we've gone through a recessionary period that's similar to the recessions we saw in the s- back in the '75 recession and the '82 recession. Um, those were recessions in which, um, big d- declines in employment similar to what we see now, but pretty substantial increases as we moved out of the recessions. But we didn't see big produc- changes in productivity, and by productivity I mean the amount of goods and services that an individual can produce. The early 2000s recession, we did see some large increases in productivity. Coming out of that recession, which was a fairly mild recession admittedly, but coming out of that recession, we didn't see big grows in em- growth in employment because of those productivity increases. We have seen similar increases in productivity in this current recession, which basically means that businesses can continue to expand and, um, and, uh, expand demand to meet any growing demand without hiring more workers. So that's one thing that I... And that's one of the big factors that I think, um, particularly in manufacturing, and we are primarily, I mean, traditionally we have been a manufacturing state, and the ability to sort of shift gears very quickly is difficult. Um, and so, large chunks of our employment that we have lost in Kentucky, um, and even in the, in the local area when you expand it, you know, in Toyota and some of the other, and the support that goes into those manufacturers, um, I just don't see them expanding employment dramatically. The other things that are going on, I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty right now with a variety of activities that are going on. I think healthcare makes, um, and, and prospective changes in healthcare makes businesses very reluctant to increase employment at this point. So I think there's a lot of things that have to change before businesses gain confidence to first, to hire employees, um, and I think that, um, again with the productivity increases we've seen, they just don't have to hire employees to be able to met- meet the demand. So do you have -- do you have any insight for, um, anyone watching that's interested in helping the unemployment number not look so bleak, um, towards retraining or reemploying those folks that worked in manufacturing? Any ideas of what industries do we need to be focusing on right now? Um, well, I mean, I certainly... F- so a couple of things. I, I mean, I've personally, if, if you ask me what are going to be the growth sectors, particularly for this region, I would say that, um, health, education, professional financial services, those are gonna be growth sectors, okay? Now, taking manufacturing workers and workers who have developed a set of skills and, um, and retraining for, for some, some other sector, that's actually a fairly difficult, uh, activity to undertake. I've recently completed a, a report, or like December of 2008, I completed a report for the Department of Labor along with a couple of other, uh, colleagues of mine, looking at the effectiveness of, of retraining. And, and I will tell you that, um, basically retraining in this country takes place, there's, there's economically ... Folks that are economically disadvantaged, so p- people that have had a history of ha- struggling to find a job and training seems to be very effective for th- those types of workers. For workers that lose their job, so, um, the, um, displaced workers, it is ... Um, training programs struggle to provide, um, measurable benefits for that, those types of workers. So I think in terms of retraining workers who have lost high-paying manufacturing jobs, um, that offer- that's a si- that offers a significant challenge. And I think an issue that we really, in this country, don't completely understand the best way to provide those training and I, certainly I don't either based on the work that I've done in that area, and I've done a fair amount. Um, and so in terms of people who've lost ... Had high paying manufacturing jobs, lost them, I think it's gonna ... There's gonna be a struggle for a long time for those people to find alternative work. Okay. And the unemployment number, uh, percentage that you used, those are folks that, um, actually counted. So they're receiving- Those are ... That is the county, county un- unemployment. Benefits. Now, there's been a lot of discussion of the d- you know, the, the broader discouraged workers- Yes. ... and the workers who leave the labor market. Um- Or underemployed. Underemployed. All of those numbers. Now, we have always measured those two numbers, um, and so if you wanna look historically, you always wanna use the same number. If you'd like to use the un- the underemployed number, we could use that number as well. The conclusions wouldn't be that ... Much different. It's higher, certainly, but it's not historically higher. It looks like it did in the '82 or '75 recessions. So the numbers that we've seen in terms of the underemployed, um, uh, go up in recessions. They always have. I don't think that they're ... You know, just like the unemployment rate has gone up. So I don't think we, we, we draw different conclusions from looking at the ... Specifically at the unemployment rate, the ones that are specifically counted as unemployed versus the underemployed. We could look at either one of them, but you need to be consistent in which one you look at over time. Okay. My last question is- Mm-hmm. ... do you, do you ... Is it, um, a true statement that you would have to use a different tactic for the underemployed or those folks that just can't seem to, to get their foot in the door, in the work because it is different if you're laid-off worker versus haven't been able to find a job concept. I'm, I- And so is that a number we should be looking at so that we're not using the same percentage and the same pool of workers every time we go through an economic recession? And, um, I, I, I actually think looking at the unemployed, unemployment rate as a reasonable number to look at and, and a reasonable number to understand the significant, um, you know. And, and I guess it depends on the, the, um, the ... What you're trying, you know, what you're trying to get at. Are you trying to, you know- I'm trying to increase the ... I'm trying to cl- increase the pool. You're trying, you, you- I'm trying to increase the pool of folks. So if we're always using the same pool of folks, we're gonna, we're gonna be affected more if you're increasing the opportunity to get payroll, rather than- Yeah. And, and so, um, both numbers decline when we see, um, an expansion. So as the economy picks up and businesses start hiring again, um, you will see the underemployed number decline and you will see the unemployment rate decline. Both numbers will ... Are g- gonna decline. So if what you're looking for is, "I want ... Um, I'm trying to figure out how to get businesses to hire more," um, I think you could focus on either number and you would, you would be just, just as well served if, you know, if you saw a certain percentage decline in the underemployment number or a certain percentage decline in the unemployed number, um, both of those are gonna, uh, serve you well. The, the time series process is gonna be a little different. Often, what happens is, particularly people that leave the labor market come in as unemployed, so that will sometimes bounce the unemployment number up. So, I mean, it ... There is no single good number. If you wanted one number, I would say look at two. And so I would say look at several numbers. I think the numbers you wanna look at are the unemployment rate. I think the labor force participation rate's an important number to look at. And, and we've seen a decline in the labor force participation rate in this current recession. Um, and so that's the number of people that are, that are in the labor force, that haven't left the labor force. You know, I think you look at changes in employment. So I think there's several numbers that I look at when I'm trying to decide whether things are getting better or not. So ... Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. Council Member Lane, and we'll, um, try to get the timer going so we'll, uh, be able to observe the five-minute rule here. Council Member Lane. Uh, thank you, Mayor. Uh, how you doing, Dr. Troskey? Oh, pretty good. How about yourself? Thanks for coming in. Yeah, no problem. Uh, Toyota up in Georgetown is now at full employment. And I wondered if you could just comment on their increase in auto production and what impact it might have on other manufacturing in the Central Kentucky area. Well, I mean, obviously as Toyota expands, um, Toyota buys parts from various other companies. And so as Toyota expands, um, and increases more, uh, it's not simply their employment that goes up, it's the, you know, there are lots of companies in the area that supply parts to Toyota. And so I think much of what we've seen in terms of the decline in, in manufacturing employment has been at those subsidiary companies and not necessarily at Toyota per se. Um, Toyota has cut back on their, um, you know, what they call their temporary workforce, and so that's another thing. But I think primarily the effect has been on the subsidiary employ- employment, the folks that make parts. Okay. And, and there's another followup question on that. UK Center for Applied Research just received 11 million, uh, stimulus grant to expand the research on batteries and all that. Could you sort of give us a long-term outlook on that and what impac- effect that might have on our local economy too? I mean, uh, so clearly I think one of the things that, that Kentucky has traditionally struggled with is, um, w- in terms of having innovation that occurs in the state. And so as we transit to, you know, uh, we've traditionally been a, a state that's produced goods, but hasn't been very innovative. I mean, obviously efforts like this, um, help us be more innovative, attract people that are innovative. Um, so in the long run, obviously the, you know, landing things such as, such as, um, this $11 million grant that allows us to expand the Center for Applied Energy Research and perhaps bring in more innovation and, um, and entrepreneurs, that certainly can... helps the economy in the long run. Um, in the short run, yeah, it's gonna take several years for things to get built and that to get up and running. But the more, you know, the more we can try to move our economy to being, um, uh, you know, one in which innovation does occur in Kentucky, um, I think is, is positive. Okay. Um, and then my, uh, last question is the state has made some funds available for existing manufacturing companies so that they could get incentives to upgrade their manufacturing to, for higher productivity and, uh, for the new products that are out there. Could you just touch on that for a second? Um, well, I mean, as I... there's a couple of things. Uh, so first off, again, I mean, one of the things I think is if, if you are looking forward in terms of the, um, the employment situation in Kentucky, um, I think the sectors that have traditionally been large employers probably aren't going to be in the future. Um, and so I think manufacturing, um, is probably gonna struggle, particularly the types of manufactu- the heavy manufacturing that we've had traditionally. High tech manufacturing, great. Um, and other types of sectors, I think we need to focus on. I mean, I think the Lexington economy is a fine example of the role that health is going to play in, in the future growth, the health sector's gonna play in the future growth of Kentucky. So, um, I, I think at the state level, and, and I will m- mention that I'm, uh, appearing at a symposium tomorrow on taxes, um, and in Kentucky tax structure that's being, uh, hosted down in Frankfurt. Um, and one of the points I'm gonna make is, you know, we have to sort of start thinking about what the s- taxes and incentives we want for the bus- the types of businesses we think are gonna succeed in Kentucky in the future, not necessarily the ones that we think have succeeded in the past. And so, while incentives I don't think are necessarily a bad thing and, and can help, I actually think the, the future of, uh, the Kentucky economy is going to be more in the high tech manufacturing area, health, education and professional financial services. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you Professor Trotsky. In following up on council member, uh, your responses to Council Member Lane's, uh, questions and, and your suggestions that, that, that taxes and incentives need to, uh, at the state level to promote innovation, high tech and so forth, what do we do about coal? Uh, uh, it, we, uh, we give this industry immense tax breaks. Uh, it's the lowest line on your, uh, employment by sector, somewhere around, what, 1%. Uh, mountaintop removal is destroying our environment, Commerce Lexington is promoting coal. So, maybe you could give us some guidance here on this question. Who invited me? Oh, um. Sorry. You'll notice that I'm the William B. Sturgill Professor of Economics, and, and I'm sure many of you know who Mr. Sturgill is. Uh, um, I believe he's still alive as a matter of fact. I think. Certainly for a majority of the state, um, the specific mi- um, coal is a small percentage of overall employment in the state. It is less than 1%. Um, it is a slightly larger percentage of earnings in the state, maybe on the order of magnitude of 2%, and it accounts for about 3% of the gross domestic product produced in, in Kentucky. So for much of the state, um, coal probably doesn't play a significant component in, in the, in the thinking in the economy, um, other than we do get a benefit, particularly we tend to have low energy prices, and that helps. Certainly low nationwide, um, al- although energy prices, industrial energy prices that I think are competitive with our surrounding areas, such as Tennessee and things like that. We certainly have low residential energy prices as well. Um, so that certainly benefits people. Um, a- and so, you know, the, the... But again, in terms of thinking about where economic growth is going to come in terms of employment for most of the state in the future, it's unlikely that coal is going to play a significant role in increasing employment in this state. Having said that, if you look at the second line on that graph, agriculture doesn't play a major role in our state either. Um, and so, I mean, to be fair, yes, we give tax breaks on coal. We give tax breaks on agricultural sales too. Um, and so certainly some agricultural industries are highly identified with this state, seem to be a significant matter of discussion, and I know I'm just sort of getting myself into deeper and deeper trouble, but, um, I mean, I think you gotta look, you wanna take an overall look at the economy of the state and think about where we think growth is going to be coming from and what sort of, um, structure we want. You talk about taxes, um, and, and one of the points I'm going to make tomorrow is that we are heavily reliant on income tax in this state. We tax people's income and we can call it whatever we want in the, in the Lexington area, but for people living in Lexington, about eight and a half percent of your income is taxed. That means we impose high taxes on people that earn a lot, lot of money. We have very low property taxes. We impose very low taxes on people that hold a lot of their wealth in property, very high taxes on people that hold a lot of their wealth in human capital. So we encourage older property-rich people to live here, and we discourage young, highly-educated people and the types of businesses that employ them to live here. Um, and so it makes it hard to attract high-tech businesses to locate to the state when their workers are gonna be paying much higher income taxes than they do in, say, Tennessee and other states. So, I mean, I think in terms of, you know, not a lot of people working coal, that's certainly the case, you know, in terms of mountaintop removal, um, we are going to continue to mine coal. I think we need to think about how to do that in a, in a responsible fashion. I will say that, um, when thinking about mountaintop removal, the other thing you have to think about too is the safety issue. You wanna get coal out of the ground, you can dig a hole and send somebody down in the hole to dig the coal out. The chances are they get hurt or die. You can blow the top of a mountain off and scoop the coal out and fewer people die that way. Those are trade-offs that people have to, that we, we, that I think we need to think about making. But obviously blowing the top of a mountain off to pick the coal up causes some significant environmental damages that maybe we don't wanna, um, uh, put up, uh, that we don't, that we don't like those environmental damages. So I think those are very complicated issues. Certainly in certain parts of the state, they are, um, they're more serious than others. Um, for most of the state, we do not employ a large percentage of our economy in terms of, um, mining. But then again, it's not a significant portion of the economy. So when you talk about tax breaks, that's probably not gonna fix the financial difficulties we're having at the state level, 'cause again, we mine about four billion dollars' worth of coal. Um, we produce a lot more manufactured goods, um, in this state. We export much more than that from this state in terms of, in terms of goods. So, um, uh, I, I find, um, to be perfectly honest, I find that fixation with the coal industry more interesting than anything else, 'cause it just doesn't seem like it should occupy the amount of attention that it does. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council member Stinnett. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Dr. Trosti for coming. Did I say you were gonna, or did you say tomorrow you're gonna help us change our tax structure in the state of Kentucky and- I, I'm, I said tomorrow I'm going to discuss the tax structure, um- And help local government have more options? ... I, um, I am not going to advise that. I am going to point out that local governments don't have a lot of options, which pushes them into making choices that have some profound implications that we need to think about. Well, we appreciate everything you can do on our efforts, um, to help us here on a local level. You know, and, and, and no effort to discount your, your future economic predictions. We've had a lot of people in our economy make a lot of predictions over the year. Thought, thought I would share with some of my council members some of the predictions that ha- that have been made and, and how they've come to fruition over the last 12 months. President Obama, last March, March 3rd, actually, 2009, made a prediction that, and I'll quote him, "Profits and earning ra- ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective." Since then, stocks have increased over 40%. You can call him Barack Buffett or whatever you wanna say, but that, that was a good prediction. Unemployment, jobless rate. We talked about unemployment today. The Federal Reserve, three years ago, in November of 2007, did their first-ever unemployment forecast. They said in 2009, over the next three years, the unemployment will average between 4.8 and 4.9%. We finished last year at 10%. That's our Federal Reserve said that. Let's talk about energy. I know Council Member Ehlinger's interested in this one. The Department of Energy said that in January of last year, a year ago, that oil would remain at $43 a barrel. It ended December 31st at $73, or $79.36 a barrel. So again, these are economic predictions by some of our, our well-known agencies out there. Mortgages said they would never go below 5% nationwide. They finished last year at an average of 4.71%, nationwide average, 30-year mortgage. That's unbelievable. And then last, I'll just leave this one, the last one with you. Forecasters at the 1893 World's Fair said, "By year 2010, the average American will only work three year, three hours a day." That was 117 years, or a hundred and, 127 years ago, I understand, but that was a prediction. So- ... not, again, not to discount everything you said today, but we've had a lotta things done over the last 12 months to three years. There always is a positive spin on, on everything and going forward and hopefully we've got back to, to basic money management, money management I know we have here in the government in terms of our operation levels. We've trimmed down a lot of the fat. Hopefully going forward, with your help in, in, in looking at our tax structure, uh, we can make some, uh, headway and then we can learn a lot from this as, as a lot of our citizens have learned to manage their own budgets. Thank you, Mayor. I just thought I'd throw up, um, so as part of my forecast, I always sort of try to do what I forecasted the year before. And so you can see my 2009 forecast and what we expect at this point the, um, outcome to be. Um, I, I certainly underestimated the growth in unemployment. I wasn't alone in that. I predicted the US unemployment rate would be 8., 8%. It's probably gonna average about 9.3% for the year. But my expectation about growth, G, GDP growth was negative .5%. I think negative g, or growth for the, for 2009's gonna be about negative .6%. So, um, you're right. It's difficult to make forecasts and you shoul- and any forecast you should take with a grain of salt, but I just thought I'd kinda throw that out there. Council member Peter. Just to suggest where, where, how successful I've been in the past. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, Professor Troskey, thank you for coming and, um, maybe a compound question. We keep hearing that growth in post-secondary education is, is rampant and it's on everybody's horizon is, uh, including this, uh, institution up the road here. Um, and then secondary education, are they doing what is necessary or are there mechanisms for them doing what is necessary in a changing economy that, uh, actually doesn't look like it can reinvent itself as we're used to it? So, um, I will say I think and, and I, I have looked at sort of issues in terms of graduation rates from secondary, um, from high, high school graduation rates and, and I think one of the things that's not well appreciated is that, um, Kentucky now has, uh, a graduation rate that exceeds the national average. Um, so we graduate more kids from high school than the typical state in the, in the country and we have for the last several years. Um, in terms of the percentage of our kids that graduate that are going on to college, we're actually doing quite well. We've exceeded national averages for several years and, and the latest year of the data, we were equal to the national averages. So we're doing a real good job about getting kids outta high school and getting them into college. We are what only can be described in this state as abysmal in terms of getting them out of college. So our, um, f- three year completion rate at two-year colleges is 23%. It averages 35% for the rest of the country. Our, uh, six-year completion rate in, at four-year institutions in this state is on the order of magnitude of 45%. It's closer to 60% for the rest of the country. Uh, UK has a little better completion rate, um, but certainly, uh, o- one of the ones, um, that, but is below what we would like, um, and is an issue that, that we grapple with, um, at the University of Kentucky and, and one that we are, we're trying to deal with. I mean, I think that that, it was, if there's one issue that I think in terms of... And you can look in terms of the impact that this has on, you know, one of the goals in terms of adopting th- the economy is increasing the number of college graduates and, you know, doubling by 2020 I think was the goal. I wasn't here when it was created, but I think that's the number you hear. What we, we are flat in terms of the percentage of adults with a college degree in this state simply because kids are not getting out of, um, out of college. So I think that's a fundamental issue that we need to start tackling, um, at, at high school levels, um, you know, and, and the community colleges and at four, and at, you know, universities and, um, and four-year colleges. Um, and an issue that I think is until we start dealing with that, how are we gonna get more kids? How are we gonna make sure they're coming out of school prepared to get a college degree? How are we gonna provide them with the services that they need at, at a university level to get a college degree? I think those are some sign- significant issues that we're struggling with. And, and in difficult and tight financial times, it makes it very difficult to, to, uh, to deal with that because, of course, we're not hiring faculty and so it makes it harder to get through in four or five and six years, um, because we can't, we don't, can't offer the classes. Um, and so there are a lot of issues that I think are, are, are problematic, but, you know, I think that's one of the serious issues that still confronts this state is how do we make sure we're getting enough kids out of, with a college degree? Because going forward, you know, if you look at healthcare and you look at education and you look at professional financial services, sectors that I think are gonna be the growth sectors for the future of the economy, that's where these are people with college degrees. I guess what I'm saying though is, uh, do they have degrees in what they need to have degrees in? I do know that, for instance, uh, Lafayette High School, uh, offers dress designing as opposed to Algebra 2 or, um, s- something that, uh, has got some meat to it. Um, if you ever watch Jay Leno and his, uh, jaywalking, there are people walking the streets who are college graduates and definitely high school graduates, but couldn't find their way out of a, this room, from a... Well, it's, it's somewhat frustrating to see young folks who, uh, when you ask them where California is, they say, "Is that on the Atlantic or, uh, is that, uh, a country in, uh, Africa or whatever?" It's, it just blows my mind to tell you the truth. Well, as someone with a f-, uh, who's, uh, has a son who just completed his first semester at Lafayette High School in the pre-engineering program, um, I, you know, I, I'm pretty happy with Lafayette. I mean, I, you know, you can pick classes, um, I mean, I think there's a fundamental issue, but traditionally in this country, we founded... ... uh, advantageous and have promoted growth by, uh, allowing individuals to choose the, the course that they thought was best suited for their, uh, skills and preferences and tastes. Um, and, and then we get people going into things that perhaps they, they, um, enjoy as opposed to a, a, a, a education system such as the one that they have in Germany in which students are highly tracked. And these are choices that we've made at, at various points throughout our history and think those choices have served us well. I think they continue to serve us well. I mean, I, again, if you look at the Kentucky economy, I mean, one of the things that I think w- we don't wanna forget when looking at Kentucky is some of our strengths do... are in non-traditional sectors. We have some amazing artists and writers and, uh, musicians and I... you know, I think that that's a very positive thing for the state. So I, I, I, I agree that certainly there are classes that... and you can pick classes at UK and you can pick classes at Yale that you would question based on the title what, what they're doing at Yale or Harvard offering these classes. Um, but I think one of the things we do need to ensure is that kids are getting edu- an education that allows them to continue to be productive. I don't think every kid who, you know, goes through high school needs to go to college. I think we need to get a more... What, what I think, what I find problematic is we have a lot of kids trying to go to college and not succeeding, and that's what I think is a, is a big, big issue. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Dr. Croskey. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Dr. Croskey, thank you so much for coming today. Uh, I'm gonna sorta ask a multi-part question and if you just sort of answer together, we'll see how that goes. Um, is a manufacturing dollar different than like a services dollar? Because the manufacturing dollar comes from out of state. Another way of asking this is, what are the primary sources of revenue that we, or income that we can generate here in Lexington that's gonna raise our per capita income? What can we, uh, what can Lexington do to bring more capital to Lexington, either in the form of investment or in the form of manufacturing or selling goods and services? I guess, how can we make the pie bigger here? I mean, uh, so to start with, you know, I... No, I don't necessarily think a, a, a services dol- or a manufacturing dollar is different than a services dollar. Services certainly can come from out of state. I mean, we've, we've seen that in the growth of economies such as India and, and China and, and the provision of, of some services there, call centers and things like that. Those are services. So, I mean, it's certainly... and I think you see plenty of, um, you know, traditionally very s- you know, what, what I think, uh, health sectors that Kentucky would like to achieve, sort of the Cleveland Clinic or the Mayo Clinic or places like that, those are places that are drawing people from around the world to receive treatment. So obviously, you can design services, um, and get people to come here um, and so I think, you know, one of the things we need to do is you, you need to play to your strength and you need to play to the, the, um, the resources that you have. And I think one of the things you need to do is you need to sit down and evaluate the resources that are here, what are our strengths, and, and then let's promote those strengths. Obviously, setting... if you want businesses to locate in, in an area, um, designing a good business con- um, environment is, is key. Um, you know. And I will say, in, in work that, uh, my colleague Bill Hoyt and, uh, and Paul, and my friend Paul Coombs have done, um, as many of you know, is an economist at the University of Louisville. In looking at where businesses choose to locate, most people seem to think businesses fixate on business taxes. That's actually not the case. Businesses are... Most businesses are run by business owners who, and they care about how much income taxes they pay. So when you, when they have a choice on a border, businesses choose to live... business owners choose to live and locate in places that have low income taxes. So, you know, you design a tax structure that's gonna track the types of industries that you like and, and moving forward. But you have limitations on how, how, you know, how well you can do that. Limitations that are set at various levels. You have to be competitive and you have to provide the amenities that individuals want, um- So you're encouraging Kentucky to, to go toward more like a Tennessee or Texas with that income tax? I, I am cer- I am not advocating a 0% income tax rate, by any stretch of the imagination. I am simply pointing out that Kentucky has much higher income tax rates than their surrounding communities. Wealthy people are mobile and respond to those incentives. So we have to dec- you know, it's not... You guys have to decide, um, sort of what you think. Um, you know, regulations on businesses make it more difficult for... more expensive for businesses to, uh, to do business and, and they, they take that into account. Um, and, you know. So, but sometimes people feel that regulations are appropriate to limit the, the behavior of businesses and if that's what you wanna do, you've got to understand the impacts that those have. Thanks, Mayor Gray. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, Ken, thanks for joining us today. Uh, one question that I've got, actually it's, it's a technical question. On your, um, on your employment data numbers for Kentucky, for Lexington, did you use... are you using the MSD or Fayette County? I'm using the MSA. The MSA. Throughout that, I'm always using the MSA. MSA, okay. 'Cause those are the ones that are most readily available. So then you've got, you've got for example Toyota in there and you've got- I do. ... Winchester and Richmond. I do. I do. Right. Okay. I mean, yes, and so if I wanted... if I was... you know, obviously I could narrow it down more specifically. Those data aren't u- usually available nationally and aren't... not always comparable and that's one of the things I wanted to try to do. But yes, that's important to keep in mind. So you actually don't have Fayette County then, right? No, I have... No, I do not. I do not have Fayette County. Could we sort... Can we sort by Fayette County? Um, there are certainly data available f- by Fayette County- Yeah, okay. ... and I could get data by Fayette County and produce similar, similar- Okay. And, and obviously, I think your finance folks have some of those data for Fayette County. Okay. Well, I was just curious because I think it's... you know, it is meaningful data and it's within the context of... ... where we are today. I will say parenthetically, I'm glad that we found you fully equipped for this work and yet I still regret that we didn't find you equipped for evaluating the water line, uh, three years ago. And the reason that I'm saying that, it's not to, not to cause tension, but the reason I'm saying that is that the numbers that we deal with, it's kind of like what Council Member Stennet was saying, the numbers that we deal with today are largely crystal ball. But what we decide three years ago affects today. What we decide today affects three years, five years hence from today. And what we see today with manufacturing in Kentucky, in our own MSA, is a declining number. And that's not something that's just occurred through this recession. Those are numbers that have been a sustainable trend. The reason I say that, you speak from a- an academic loft, I speak from on the ground, and our company is on- among the top ten in manufacturing building annually. Now, the only relevance of that is that I know this experientially, that Kentucky is not competitive today the way it was 20 years ago. Toyota was an inflection point. It was an inflection point that affected everything in the state, and especially right around here, okay? That influenced demand for things like water. The demand that we are today anticipating from our new water plant is, with these numbers, not going to be utilized. All right, now that was a three year ago issue, but today we've got issues on what it is we're gonna be doing going forward. And the reason I think this is relevant to us and this council is, your presentation today and digging into these numbers is very relevant, and I appreciate the mayor inviting you here, is because on Thursday, the council is going to be taking up the introduction or doing a study, first one we've done in ten years, on what Lexington ought to be chasing in terms of economic development strategy. So I appreciate you being here, and I hope that we really carefully listen to this and the relevance of what it has to do with the decisions we're making today for the next three, five and ten years. Just a couple of comments on that and, and getting back to, um, what Council Member Stennet mentioned as well, I mean, you're right, um, manufacturing in particular in this state has, has been declining for an extended period of time, as it has in the whole country. The decline in the state was somewhat slower. Um, the late- latest rece- we, we saw a dramatic decline in the latest recession, uh, to the levels that have very few people, I think, would have predicted. Um, and it is... but you're right, you're making... you're trying to make decisions about, you know, what we want to do going three years hence. I will say that it's very difficult to know what the economy, um, w- is going to look like three years hence, other than in broad terms. And so when making those decisions, you want to set up parameters and, and make decisions that are flexible enough to en- encompass, you know, maybe that hospital goes out of business, maybe it, you know, maybe it expands and is a significat- um, um, becomes a world-class hospital. Lots of things could happen, lots of different companies could decide to locate here. The, the structure of the economy could change dramatically. There are other businesses in, in, uh, Lexington that, that, you know, may change over the next three years. And so, you know, I think you set up parameters so that, um, you en- encourage all types of businesses, any... to, to locate here. And let me make one other comment about your meeting on Thursday. Um, uh, my son is an, uh, a Boy Scout and is ch- um, trying to get his Eagle Scout as a number of, uh, his, um, fellow Scout mates, and so they're working on their citizenship and the community badge and they have to come to a meeting. So you're going to have a lot of Boy Scouts in your meeting on Thursday. And they want to see a contentious discussion because they have to take sides, and, and so I'm hoping you will have a contentious discussion, so, to help my son in his, his Scout troop, so, um, if you could, please. We often have a lot of scouts and we'll welcome, uh, your sons to- Good. Yeah, there, there will probably be four, five, six, maybe. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Dr. Trotsky, for coming. And, and, you know, it's interesting over the, the break, I, I was putting pen to paper on, you know, kind of what this year looks like, uh, for me, for my business, for this city and so forth, and you made a, a couple of really interesting points and I, I, I just want to highlight a couple of those things. Um, let me just start out by saying I, I, I firmly believe that 2010 is, is Lexington's year, that we've really kind of positioned ourselves well to go from where we've been to ultimately where we're going to go, uh, as a city. And this is a year that is unlike many, uh, transition-wise for us, and we, we have some opportunities that, uh, that are once in a lifetime. And those need to certainly be, uh, to be, uh, fully taken advantage of. You know, and I said it the other night when we were in here, I, I'd rather be in Lexington, Kentucky dealing with some of these issues than anywhere in the United States, especially Naples, Florida after you showed what a, what a, uh, a bubble looks like. Um, you know, you... we do have a very strong healthcare, we have a s- a, a stabilized housing market, albeit affected by these larger things, and you have the World coming here later this year. So there's so much positive, uh, and I don't want to lose sight of that, um, with the reality that we have. What's interesting to me is, is that, that citizens need to understand that, um, this local government only has some limited tools that we can actually deliver services or, or, uh, help with, with problems that we've got. And I, I again would encourage you tomorrow or your discussion to, to really say that you are with the Lexington City Council and various council members were telling you, "Please..." ... let Frankfurt know that-- that we are very hamstrung, we are very, um, uh, tax centric state and-- and local governments don't have much to work with. We have payroll, property, and-- and dedicated funds here in Lexington. But something you said is-- is really, um, is really key. And I-- I would like more information that you can send to me later, um, about, we talk about we wanna chase, uh, young professionals and-- and high wage type jobs and-- and how those, um, pyramids, so many other type service jobs, and yet when you have a payroll tax as your main form of-- of taking money in, uh, when your state has a high income tax, you're-- you're really s- stunting that-- that growth, that ability to do that. And I think that that's a point that shouldn't be lost in-- in anything else that we're discussing today is that, in a lot of ways, Lexington's set up wrong and we're set up to fail. And-- and there really needs to be a look at that core issue of where do we derive our money and how stable is it. Um, and if we're really serious about getting these type of high wage jobs and these types of folks, we really need to take in, uh, heed with what Dr. Trotsky just said, uh, because it is, uh, it's-- it's not, it doesn't work that way. It's-- it's a little bit of oil and water. So, um, again, I-- I appreciate you coming in and-- and being, uh, as pessimistic but yet having a-- a-- a note of optimism. Um, but that's the pragmatic place we are, and anything that you can do to-- to give this council any, uh, anything that you're seeing, uh, we... It doesn't have to be from that mic. I would welcome you sending us stuff and I-- I do appreciate it. I will make one comment though that, uh, you know, three years ago, four years ago, this city was divided on an issue that was just brought up, and it's probably pretty good given the economic climate that, uh, that things went the way they went because we'd have a hard time paying for some of those, uh, those decisions. So, uh, again, it's one of those things you don't have a crystal ball. And decisions are made and some of them are good and some of them are bad, but what we do today going forward, uh, is-- is critical and I am so encouraged to live in Lexington, Kentucky and I thank you for taking some time to be with us today. Um, I, uh, you know, I-- I don't want to be too pessimistic either. I mean, I think, you know, I think Lexington is-- is certainly, uh, growth in Lexington is down, but-- but it's still positive and-- and I think relative to other parts of the country, we're actually doing quite well. Um, ah, uh, regarding your, I mean, I... Speaking personally, I've come, you know, I moved to-- to Lexington about five years ago. Um, one of the things that I have been amazed at is the structure of government and the structure of taxes in this state and-- and the centralization of government in Frankfurt and-- and the tax structure that we adopt and the limits that-- that-- that, um, lo- the local governments, uh, suffer under. Um, I am surprised that there's no local sales tax option. Um, I would... And I guess the other thing though I will say as a personal, personally as a citizen is, I mean, I think this is a unique opportunity for-- for leaders in-- in a variety of, um, municipalities and-- and this may be going on and I'm just not aware of it, but, you know, I'm surprised that when the local representative offers, um, uh, you know, when, in, offers a tax reform bill that local sales tax option isn't part of that or that isn't... That that has not come to the, to the forefront. I'm surprised that the-- the limit on property taxes, which we have extraordinary low property taxes in this state, hasn't been mentioned at all. Um, these are all issues that I would have thought that is part of a general discussion of tax base and tax policy. Um, I would like to see and it's one of the things I'm going to try to throw out on the table. We'll see how receptive, um, state government is to that. Um, but-- but I'm at least gonna wave it in front of somebody's face. I appreciate that immensely. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anything further for Mr. Trotsky? We appreciate you being here. I will see you on Thursday. We're now ready for council reports. If you would, uh, care to make a report, again, subject to the five-minute rule, please indicate. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I just need approval of the NDF fund. I have a motion by Council Member Beard and a second by Council Member Ellinger to approve the NDF. Any discussion? Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. I have two walk-ons. First is a $500- Excuse me, uh, p- pardon me. I- I was recognizing you for discussion on Council Member Beard's motion to approve the NDF. So if you'll hold on for just a second, uh, we'll-- we'll get to you in just a second. Any discussion on the motion to approve the NDF? These are walk-ons for NDF. I'm sorry. I-- I misunderstood you. That would be in order. So I apologize. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, I guess I move to-- to amend the NDF to add, uh, $500 for, uh, uh, uh, trash receptacles, uh, on the Beaumont walking trails, uh, near the, uh, um, Heritage Hill Park where they come together. They've been having some trouble with that. And then also- That's out of your personal fund? I'm sorry? This is out of my personal NDF. And this, and the second is for, uh, $1000 for the, uh, Southland Association, uh, for their, uh, jamboree that's gonna be next, uh, th- this summer as well. Second. I have a motion to amend the NDF as specified by Council Member Martin, second by Council Member Gordon. Any discussion on the amendment? All in favor of the amendment, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no? Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. Now we're ready to discuss the NDF as now amended. Any further discussion? All then in favor of approving the NDF as amended, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no? Motion carries. Anything further, Council Member Beard? All right. Council Member James. Thank you, Mayor. Um, first of all, I'd like to thank the mayor, um, for last week. We had a virtual tour of the first district. Um, because of the weather, we had to, um, sit in office, but that's okay. Uh, I think we got a lot done and I appreciate you listening to, uh, my concerns, concerns of my constituents and look forward to, um, completing our two-page list together. Thank you. It's a good list. Thanks. Um, I'd also like to just mention a few things going on. Um, tonight is the Martin Luther King Neighborhood Association, um, meeting at the Living Arts and Science Center, beginning at 7 o'clock. Um, it looks like a really cool agenda tonight as they set their mission for 2010 and what their vision is. It's a really exciting neighborhood. If you've not attended that Martin Luther King Neighborhood Association meeting, um, you should, you should really do it. They're doing some good things, um, related to green, um,, eh, community gardening and all kinds of cool stuff. So, um, be sure to check out their... And they, they would like anyone to come that lives in that area or beyond, you know, anybody that has an interest in that Martin Luther King area, it's a good meeting to attend. Also, the tree, the Tree Board is meeting tomorrow, that's Wednesday the 13th, at 10:30. We meet up on the fifth floor conference room. So if you're interested in trees and want to learn about that, that is a public meeting open to everybody and we'd love to have more input, um, there. On Monday is the, um, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and there are so many events going on. Of course, the standard march and, um, the, the ceremon- the ceremony, the celebration that they have, um, downtown. But there's also just this huge m- movement of Service Day, um, recognition that has happened. It's probably, I think it's about the third year I've been involved with it and if it's gone before that, um, it was on a smaller scale, but they really have ramped it up this year. And I just wanted to mention just a few things that are forthcoming on Monday that you might be interested in and feel free to call my office at 258-3216 if you, if you miss some things that I'm saying, you want to learn more. Um, but there'll be, um, Transylvania, eh, Transylvania University has a community garden and they're gonna be building tomato cages and bean trellises for their local community garden, which is a really cool project. Um, for more information on that, contact Danny Woolams at 233-8182. Just gonna mention a few things in the First District that are going on. At Transylvania also, they're gonna be doing, uh, the Herby conversion, so for any local community gardens, we know we can convert the used, um, kind of damaged Herbys into compost bins. I've got one of those at my house and they're really cool to use. Um, so they're gonna be doing the conversion, which is pretty much is a use of a power drill, just drilling through those Herbys. You've got to be at least 18 to participate with that, but call Lauren at 266-1572 if you're interested in that. Um, there's this really cool, um, program that I, uh, one of my constituents, um, does the Build-A-Bed project and she, i- in conjunction with the Build-A-Bread pro- Build-A-Bed project, they're doing a quilting bee. Um, so if you're interested in, in doing a quilting square or like if your neighborhood wants to do one, or if your family wants to do a quilt that they'll contribute along with the Build-A-Bed, they're gonna be working on those quilts. For more information on that, call Angela at 816-6830. Those are just a few of the things going on. I've got many more, and if you Google online, um, any of the Martin Luther King, um, Service Day, um, projects, you can find it online, but call me if you need me for anything. Thanks. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Mayor. Um, just real quickly, the Historic South Hill Neighborhood Association will be meeting at the First United Methodist Church at 6:00 PM this evening. Um, and there are a whole list of, um, great Martin Luther King Day service projects out there, and I hope you'll, um, take time to find one that suits you and show up. Thank you. Council Member Meyers. Thank you, Mayor. I guess I'm gonna start, if I could ask, uh, Mr. Williams to come up. I have a couple questions about the snow removal plan. You guys did a fantastic job this year. We appreciate that. Um, at what point do you guys cease and desist on... You have a tiered approach in terms of priority streets, correct? Yes, we have, uh, we have four priorities, uh, listed in our, our snow plan and, uh, once, uh, once we have those clear, we, we go into a, uh, a stage where we respond to our emergency, uh, uh, the Lexington-Fayette County Government Emergency Uh, Services and also our, uh, um, solid waste folks, uh, support their efforts and look at, uh, uh, and that's, that's the, the mode we get into until we get out of the, out of the emergency or out of the, when it thaws up enough that it melts. Right. Can you go over those four areas for us? What? The, the four areas, the four tiers. I thought you said you had four. Yeah, they're, uh, basically they, they respond to, uh, uh, uh, priorities of, uh, folks being able to traverse the community, uh, the main, the main thoroughfares, uh, and, um, then it goes on down to the point, there, where we support the, uh, the needs of the school system and that's the basic, basic, uh, uh, levels of, uh, of the priorities. Yes, sir. Okay. How are cul-de-sacs handled? We, we have not gone into cul-de-sacs. Uh, I've, uh, researched with some of our folks that, uh, have been around for a good while, uh, have Albert Miller here with us, uh, deputy director, and he and I have discussed it along with the commissioner. Uh, the history there, uh, Councilman Meyers, probably goes back to, uh, it's a safety and a logistic situation. Most of the, uh, cul-de-sacs, of course, dead-end streets, uh, fit in that category. Uh- ...uh, we have parking along those and, and, uh, you know, our equipment that we, we use is fairly good size. And you know, our blades are, you know, uh, probably 11, 12 feet wide and, and we can get into situations, particularly as we, as we work in, in nighttime conditions, where we would end up doing damage to, uh, uh, public vehicles or privately owned vehicles. And also, uh, the, the thing that, one thing that concerns us is, is getting down one of those... whether it be, uh, getting down in one of those areas and, and having an accident and, and tying up our assets there for an extended period while we, while we clear the scene. So that's, uh, from what I gather, that's the reason that no cul-de-sacs and/or dead-end streets were included in the s-, in the snow plan. Wh- what's the difference between having an accident on a through street and having an accident on a cul-de-sac? Well, I think, uh, it, it, it is harder to, uh, to, uh, get past that accident scene in, in case folks need to get around it, whereas through streets are, uh, connected or, or, uh, logistically just, uh, more, uh, in a, in a, in a manner to, that allow us to do the, uh, do the removal. Okay. Th- where, where I'm going with this is, I, as you know- Uh-huh. ... I've got a couple of cul-de-sacs in my district, and I'm sure everybody else around the Horseshoe has the same in their district at some point- Yeah. ... that are either at the top of the hill or at the bottom of the hill. Yes, sir. I, I understand that. And we responded to a few of those, one in particular today off of Armstrong Mill and, and, uh, actually, uh, uh, my driver, I was talking to him as h- of us going down in there and actually had to back the, uh, the truck down there because of the fact that he was concerned about doing damages to, to automobiles and then getting in there and not being able to get out. So we can accommodate those on, at a, at a request, you know, that... like from, from public safety or whatever. But we have to be very prudent when we, we do those, uh, uh, work those areas. Well, let's, let's continue a little further. When you talked about the priorities, the four priorities- Yes, sir. ... when you end those priorities, then how do you go back and address... do you just cease and desist? Same as- No. We... just like, just like we said before, we, we, uh, we support the, uh, uh, the city emergency, uh, folks and, uh, and, and garbage and, and, uh, other, other, uh, c- services the city provides. Uh, we, we continue to service those. Matter of fact, we have, uh, uh, even, even when we're not in a, a snow emergency, uh, when we have, uh, subzero temperatures, or sub, uh, freezing temperatures, we, uh, even support, uh, water line breaks and, and, uh, of course, when, uh, when the fire responds to a structure fire, uh, water can end up in the, in the streets and we have folks on call to, to, uh, apply deicing in those situations also. Okay. Um, I guess here's part of my concern is, we've got these two cul-de-sacs in particular and every year we have this same issue. Mm-hmm. And, and they call the office and actually last year during the ice storm, I drove. I made the mistake of driving down one of 'em to see, "Well, let's see how difficult it is to get out of here." And it took about an hour and a half to get my car back out of there and probably lost about 3,000 miles on my back tires- ... doing it. Um, I finally was able to back down somebody's driveway partway and after, you know, a number of times, got enough running to start to get out of there. But, um, I guess I wanna know when... w- we're several days out from the, from the crisis, from the event, but still couldn't get someone to go in- Mm-hmm. ... and salt those streets. And I think one of the streets you did come out and do, I think, the bottom of the hill? Mm-hmm. What I wanna do is... Your master plan is brought to the council, but not approved by the council. Is that correct? That's correct. We take input from the council each, each fall and, and, and incorporate, uh, the, uh, areas that, that, uh, that are justified. Yes, sir. What I'd like to see is that criteria for not dealing with or dealing with cul-de-sacs addressed. So what I'd like to do is put that in committee. I, I do understand the danger of having that 12-foot wide blade on the truck. Yeah. I'm not sure how much different that is than a, than a solid waste truck that, that goes down and I live on a cul-de-sac, and actually, they back down my cul-de-sac. And I think it's probably because it's easier for them to turn around, even if there's no cars parked on the street. But, y- you know, even if we had to, to, to make a policy for the city that said that you couldn't park on a street, on a cul-de-sac when we've got certain snow events predicted by the weather people, and that way, you wouldn't have that issue to address coming in and out, I... there's gotta be a way to address these cul-de-sacs in situations, whether they're on top of hills, or at the bottom of the hill, where citizens either wake up in the morning and they've got ice to go down and run out in the street when they get to the bottom of it, or they simply can't get out. Uh, and I, I think, uh, that's, that's very reasonable. If, if we can, uh, uh, get those, uh, specific, uh, uh, streets and, and get them before our, uh, you know, our, uh, uh, criteria in the, in the fall and, and look at them, uh, I, I think it, uh, it's, it's very feasible that, uh, that we could, uh, include, uh, some and, and, but we would have to look at th- the issues before, like getting down and, and, and, like the traffic flow for our equipment to get down and back and that sort of thing. So I think we could, we can look at those on a case-by-case basis. And with your, with, uh, with your, uh, needs from your district, that's something that, that can be evaluated and looked at and, and, and potentially incorporated as, as we go forward. Council Member Myers, your time has expired. Did I understand- Yeah. Did I hear a motion to refer this to a committee? Is that what you're interested in doing? Yes. I'd like to put the, uh, snow removal plan into committee. I, my time's up, so I can't- ... and that's why I want you to yield -- yield me some time. Well, we'll entertain a motion to refer it to the Services Committee. Is that the appropriate committee? That's fine. Second. Have a second by Council Member McCord. Any further discussion on the motion to refer? All in favor, then, of referring the snow removal plan to the Services Committee, please indicate by saying, "Aye." Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor, I -- I had one other motion I was gonna make, I wanted to speak a little bit, but could I just make the motion since I don't have time? All right. Uh, if there's no objection. All right. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council, for -- for hearing me. Um, without a bunch of commentary, I'll just move to put the library, Lexington Fay- uh, the Lexington Public Library's budget into your Budget and Finance Committee. So moved. Have a motion by Council Member McCord, uh, excuse me, Council Member Myers, and a second by Council Member McCord to put the, um, uh, discussion of the Lexington Public Library's budget into the Budget and Finance Committee. Is there any discussion? Council Member Gordon. I just have a question. Um, the purpose being just to discuss their budget, or is there a different purpose? That ... just to discuss their budget. Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion? Those then in favor of referring that item to the S- um, Budget and Finance Committee, please indicate by saying, "Aye." Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. One announcement, and that is that the Meadowtop Neighborhood Association will meet tonight at 7:00 PM at the Community Center in, uh, In the Park. Uh, tonight is election of officers night, so I hope there'll be a good turnout, a good discussion, and a good clean vote. Thank you much, and we'll s- see all the neighbors tonight at 7:00. Thank you. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. I, um, I had a quick question for Sam Williams, if he could ... Sam, would you mind coming back up just for a second? Yes, ma'am. Do you clear streets that have speed humps? No. Okay. Is there any way a neighborhood that might have some particular parts of it that, to me, is treacherous maybe for a school bus- Mm-hmm. ... I understand that school buses do not travel the streets that have speed, um, hump seats. They do in this subdivision. Do they? For real, they ... I mean, I know that they do. Yeah. Uh, we'll just have t- have to look at ... I don't know what, the, if the street- I'll call you about it. Of course, you call me. I know some of the streets were on, on our, uh, on our snow plan prior to the speed humps being installed, uh, so just give me a holler and we'll, we'll see what's what and look at your particulars. I appreciate that. Okay. Thanks. I've got a couple other things. I wanted to make a motion to, um, put in the Services Committee, um, the review of the leaf collection program. Have, have a motion by Council Member Henson and a second by Council Member Crosby to refer the leaf collection program to the Services Committee. Mayor. A- any discussion? Council Member Ellinger. And what, what topic do you want, uh, us to discuss? Well, I thought while it's fresh in our mind. But that, we don't have to be in a hurry. Thank goodness it only happens once a year. But, um, I just wanted to go ahead and do this so that we could take a real good look at it before the leaves start- Just want a comprehensive review of the ... ... a comprehensive review of the leaf collection, or is there any specifics in general or ... I just, I think we should review the entire program, how it's done, um, if, if it's a wastewater issue ... Okay. ... so forth. Well, I'm just trying to find out what kind of information you want us to present, and I guess- That'll work. ... we can maybe have them come bring a presentation to the Service Committee, and then we can go from there on what they're doing, and then we can follow up. All right. And, what do you say? Motion on the floor is to refer the leaf collection program to the Services Committee for comprehensive review. Council- Council Member Blues. Uh, uh, is there a particular issue? How was it finished? We, we're still discussing the motion to refer. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Council Member Blues. But m- my question is whether there's, whether there is particular issue. We, we do have a program. It's announced every, uh, every year. I know there's gonna be, uh ... I know that several council members have had issues this year. But what are the issues? The ... one issue was, uh, whether or not, um, we've gotten some mixed messages about proper, streets that have private haulers as opposed to LFUCG pick up, the user fee, plus, you know, I've had street- I've personally had streets that have been picked up for several years. And now, they're saying, no, they're not supposed to get picked up, even though they are on the, the l- website, their, the street is listed on the website. The neighbors tell me they have received leaf collection for a number of years, and I just think it really needs to be looked at. If we're gonna do it, we need to do it right and, or not do it at all. And that's my opinion. Okay. Thank you. Motion on the floor is to refer the leaf collection program to the Services Committee. Is there any further discussion? Then all in favor of making that referral, please indicate by saying, "Aye." Opposed, "No." Motion carries. Council Member Henson. And I just had one other thing real quickly. I wanted to, um, sa- I wanted to send my congratulations to the fire recruits that are graduating on Friday. And my schedule's very hectic, but I'd really hope to be there, but, uh, it doesn't look like I'm gonna make it. But, um, I would like to congratulate them and welcome them aboard and hopefully some of the other council members can go. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Just a, a couple quick things. One, I wanted to, uh, thank all the LFUCG employees that, uh, worked the, the severe weather event last week while we were out. And, uh, you know, there's so many divisions of government to thank, but especially Streets and Roads, and, and while you guys are here, um, you know, it was, it was really well done. And I know there were, you know, a lot of accidents and things like that, uh, but boy, it could have been a whole lot worse, and you guys did a phenomenal job. Please pass along, uh, that you, those guys are very appreciated. And I know it was kind of an all night, uh, to the next day type thing, so, uh, thank you guys very much. And thank all LFUCG employees that, uh, that helped through that. Um, and I just wanted to make a, a motion to put on the docket for Thursday night, the four-way stop, uh, at the corner of Clements Drive and Twain Ridge. So moved. I have a motion to add the matter of the four-way stop at which intersection, Council Member McCord? Uh, Twain Ridge and Clemens Drive. Uh, to the docket for this Thursday evening. Any discussion? Uh, let's see, we, we had a second from Council Member Blues. I'm sorry, who seconded the motion? It was Myers. Thank you. Council Member Myers. May I ask a question? Uh, yes. Uh, Council Member Ellinger, the floor is yours. Um, has this gone through traffic engineering or? Yeah, it had gone through traffic engineering. Yeah. I thought. Okay, thanks. Anything further on that matter? Then those in favor of amending the docket to add that item to the agenda, please indicate by saying, "Aye." Opposed, "No." Motion carries. Council Member Crosby. Uh, thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to clarify something we discussed a little earlier, and it was left co- open ended. I think, uh, regarding the budget reduction plan, on whether or not we were gonna do this in Committee of the Whole or wait till Budget and Finance. Um, we, we didn't make a determination when we were gonna do it, and I think it's important that we go ahead and decide when we're gonna do it. Uh, I mean, I'd prefer a Committee of the Whole so that the whole council... Um, although Council Member Senate said anybody can attend a committee meeting, I think we're all on the Committee of the Whole, so that seems to make the most sense. It, it affects everybody. We got one ... Tuesday, the 19th. Tuesday the 19th? And then- 4:30 or something. 4:00. So should I make a motion, or do, can we just do it? Do it. You want me to make a motion? I make a, I make a motion that we discuss the, uh, mayor's budget reduction plan on Tuesday, January 19th in the Committee of the Whole meeting. So moved. Second. I have a motion and second to take up the matter of the expense reduction plan at the Council of the Whole meeting on the 19th. Is that correct? Yes. All right. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. I'd like to make an amendment asking that we, if possible, could receive from the administration more detail about what the reductions are gonna be and line items. That was actually my next question. So, um. If you ha- if you have spec- Well, you're welcome to make the motion. I would just tell you that if you have specific questions, um, that you'd like for us to address, if you could direct those to Commissioner Romke. I, uh, I don't feel like I have enough information to ask specific questions, and I wanna be a partner and part of the solution. But if I don't know what's being put out there, I can't very well add to the conversation. So for me to have it before the Committee of the Whole so I can go through it and review it, that would be very helpful. Thank you. All right. I think Commissioner Romeski- Romke has a, uh, packet of information that will be available early part of the week anyway. Perhaps you can come to the microphone and tell us what's available. And I'm probably gonna need more time since this is according to my time, if that's okay. I'll talk fast. Um, we have, uh, some level of detail that's already ready to go. I think that, um, particularly on, um, public safety parks, or excuse me, uh, general services and public works, um, I had already gotten a few questions where you've wanted to dive deeper, and we can get that. What, what our, um, plan was, because we weren't sure which committee was going to be hearing that, it's gonna take me a couple extra days to try to get the additional detail in a format that would be usable for everyone here. So Mayor, I'm thinking, you know, Thursday, early Friday morning, we would be able to get it for the long weekend. Does that work for everyone? All right. And then we can answer additional questions beyond that. H- happy to do that. All right. Motion. The motion on the floor right now is to, uh, refer the item of the expense reduction plan to the Council of the Whole Committee, the Council of the Whole, the Committee of the Whole meeting on Tuesday. Any further discussion? Council, Council Member Clear. Th- this COW meeting was initially, uh, to discuss economic development, is that correct? No? Just a -- oh, okay. Are we gonna be able to d -- be able to have a meaningful conversation about this reduction in an hour? We can do it in two. Okay. Oh. I didn't -- I didn't get all the memos. It's your request. Your question? All right. We can, yes, if necessary. And what is it? That we get the information, the detailed information, prior to ... yeah, prior to the weekend, so we'll be able to go through it line item -- Okay. ... by line item. Thank you. The motion is to amend the motion to include a provision that the council be given detailed information prior to the weekend. And was there a second, Council Member Crosby? I'll accept that as a friendly amendment, as long as they can get it done. But, I mean, what I'm hearing you say is it might take you till Friday. Maybe we could just say by Monday. It's a holiday. Oh, Monday's a holiday. Monday's a holiday, so that's why we would try to get it to you by the weekend. On a Friday. We can do that. Mm-hmm. And then if there's any additional information beyond that, I'm happy to, you can call me. All right. We'll take that by way of a friendly amendment. Any further discussion? All then in favor of referring that item to the Committee of the Whole meeting on Tuesday, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Council Member Crosby. And then, um, back to this meeting that we're gonna have, are we going to be able to hold this in the council chambers or can we, or does it have to be in the fifth floor? I think we should try and have it here if we can. Because there may be a lot of people who possibly want to... Excuse me? Council Can we cancel the call? Yeah. Uh, that's up to you all. I mean- I don't know if one of the chairpersons available that's when it hits. All right. Anything further? Um, yeah. And then, b-... Yeah, actually, yes. Um, just going back to, to the plan. Um, the only comment I have is when I was re- reviewing, I don't know who prepared this, but the reduction plan development, um, as far as the timeline goes, uh, the council members were given notice to provide input on January 30th. I mean, excuse me, December 30th. I think most people know that the 31st is New Year's Eve. The 1st is a holiday. That also fell over a weekend. Um, it came to our home addresses and many people travel during their break time. And it was requested that we get back by January 4th. And you know, obviously, I think if we were gonna be given the opportunity to provide input as it was suggested, that perhaps we could have the timeline. I don't know if Budget and Finance determined this or not, but, um, it started a while back and that maybe we could have been given a little bit more notice. That's the only comment I have on that. Also, I wanted to... I'm gonna put in everybody's mailbox, as we saw as part of the reduction plan and we discussed this a little bit over the holidays when we had a special meeting regarding the brownouts of fire stations. I'm gonna provide everybody with an article. Um, it's out of Lo- Louisville. It was on WHAS. It was posted January 11th. And, um, many of you all know perhaps about the family where the two grandchildren, uh, were asleep on, uh, Christmas Eve and then Christmas morning there was a fire and, um, those children unfortunately did not make it out of the fire. And, um, the closest fire station was not open. The next one was 10 minutes away. So, um, their fire department, it's not really comparing apples to apples. They do run a little differently than we do. But as we all know, a minute doubles, uh, or increases the fire, um, by double. So I think that we just all need to keep this type of stuff into consideration when we're making, um, these types of decisions. So I'll provide you all with that. You can look forward in your mailbox. Thank you. Council Member Crosby, on December 17th, I responded to an email from Council Member, uh, James and copied all the members of the council in which I invited them to submit suggestions about how to reduce the budget. And then I followed up two weeks later with the letter that you referred to a moment ago. So there was a- I'm sorry. I, I guess maybe I was confused because it was regarding the fire station brownouts. I'll have to go back through my email. Um- There's an email from Council Member James. I understand that. I also have that documented here that you responded to that email. I guess, um, my point is that we probably could have had a little bit more notice than January or December 30th and- My point- Uh, thank you. My point is, you did. On December 17th, I responded to you- I don't have that email in front of me, so I'll look at it again and see exactly what it says. It was my understanding that was in response to the, to the brownout, so... That was the primary point of discussion. But in that email, I specifically asked for any feedback from the council. Not having received any at that point, I sent the follow-up letter on the 30th, uh, to which you referred. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, I also want to say a word of appreciation for the folks in Streets and Roads. They did a great job over the, uh, the recent winter event. Um, we had, uh, you know, a, a street that, that needed special attention because of it was on a steep incline. And, uh, they got... You know, Sam went out personally to take a look at it. And Sam, I really appreciate you, you taking time out of your day to look at that. Um, I did have one question for you, just as a, as a general thing. I should have asked Kevin Wente about this this morning, but I didn't think about it. Uh, are, are, are all the school bus routes supposed to be on a priority list? Uh, Councilman Martin, I understand that, uh, the school bus r-route input for the snow plan goes back to the days when Fayette County had like a plan B and a plan A and that sort of thing. And I, and I think that we, uh, we, uh, incorporated the, their plan B. I don't rememb-- I don't recall the specifics, I was not involved with that. But, but that was, uh, a little bit of the history that I have understood is, is, and also in our planning for each, each year, we always have, uh, staff from the school board that meet with us to, for their input each year. S- so I guess, uh, so when some- when I have a constituent call me and say, "Hey, my street's on a school bus route, but we're not getting snow removal," should they be getting snow remov- removal or that just depends? That, that depends on, on what the input we have, we have gotten from the Fayette County School Board. I appreciate it. Yeah. I didn't want to get into this, but it came up earlier and so I wanted to ask about that. The Beaumont Neighborhood Association's meeting tonight at 6:30 at the, uh, clubhouse at Beaumont Farm Apartments and all residents are welcome. Also, there will be a public meeting at the Alika Shrine Temple at 7 PM on Tuesday, January 19th to discuss the proposed redevelopment of Turflint Mall. Representatives of the owners of Turflint Mall, Rubloff Development Group, uh, and from the LFUCG Planning Department, uh, will be on hand to talk about the project and answer questions. Um, also, uh, uh, Mayor, I have been receiving a number of, of calls and, and comments from neighborhoods about the condition of some of the asphalt in the, in the particularly the Tenth District, uh, in my neighborhoods, and, uh, and, and I guess, based on some discussions, I understand that the repaving funds may sort of be on hold because we can't get consensus among the council about how to divide the funds up and I was wondering if we might be able to get that put on a discussion item, a presentation item for the next work session, uh, so that we could talk about maybe getting the council on, uh, on board on as far as getting those, those funds released. I think that will depend primarily on the folks in Streets, Roads, and Forestry being in a position to pull that information together and if we can do it within the next week. 'Cause I think they probably just need some marching orders about it. Right. So. And, and I guess, Sam, I'm interested in learning- I, uh, the commissioner was, uh, tied up there. Uh, to be honest with you, uh, Councilman Martin, we have, uh, a list of the streets in the city that do not, you know, our priority system, you know, 65 and less, we have developed a list of those, uh, and, um, that, uh, document wi- will be available, hopefully within the next few days. Uh, the, uh, initial, uh, tally of the cost of, of doing that may exceed what we, what we have allocated from the general fund in that account. So that's, that's something that's, that needs to be massaged in, in that, so we, we, we are very much aware of that, and I think we're still on track of getting that li- that list and, and the needs defined and, and get it bid so that we can, uh, start on the, on that work, uh, when the, when the asphalt plants start operation, uh, in, in the spring. It, it, based on what I heard you say, it may be helpful still to have a presentation on that, whether it's next week or week after. Yes. Okay. Uh, it may be, may be helpful to have an outline. Councilmember Martin, I, I apologize, I think you were probably talking about something that I needed to respond to and I had another cur- councilperson speaking to me. If you wouldn't mind repeating that. No, I, I was just trying to, to see if we could get the council to, to agree on how we might get the fu- the, the, the road funds allocated so that we might get them into use. Right. And, uh, middle of last year, I put together a, a spreadsheet, uh, actually was looking at how dollars were, have been distributed for repaving in the past and comparing that to our percentage of wo- uh, roads that were in poor condition by council district. Uh, without doing a big presentation, I can, I can bring that in and show the council what I think is happening with, uh, with our roads and why some of our council districts are getting a higher percentage of, of poorer roads, because of how our distribution's been made. Uh, I, I could do that next- Yeah. Could you do that next week or soon? I can do that next week and if, if, if, uh, the schedule's very tight, I can get with Artie and get it scheduled just as quick as possible, but right now, uh, we're in a pretty good shape 'cause we won't be doing any resurfacing for a little while. And, and thank you very much, 'cause I think that'd be helpful 'cause then we can also sort of assess what's needed to keep our roads up to, uh, up to, up to, uh, specs and whether or not we've allocated from, as a council, enough funds to, to, to do that. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mike. Councilmember McCord. Just let me speak to that for a moment. Uh, it, it's, uh, you know, up until about three or four years ago, this council, the city government didn't put a dime of local tax money to, to roads. Uh, we relied strictly upon the, uh, the federal monies that come down through the state and each council district would get about $150,000 to pave streets and, uh, and a couple of years ago, when we sat down with, uh, with Leo McMillan at the time, we assessed that there's about a $30 million repave need and so over the last three or four years, uh, Councilmember Stennet has, has led an effort to put three, uh, three million dollars apiece- ... uh, $3 million each year, uh, for road resurfacing, and we weren't able to bond that this year, so, uh, it's, it's not a matter of the council deciding that we need to go do this. Uh, we- we've had to put those bonds on hold, but for the last number of years, we've been able to put local money, uh, into these streets, and the reason why there's so much crack seal and everything is, when you're not paving new roads, the only way you hold them together is with crack seal. Um, and so the state, under the Fletcher administration, pumped tens of, of millions of dollars and paved a whole lot in, in Fayette County, but, uh, I would welcome that, that discussion 'cause I don't think a lot of folks understand, uh, where that money comes from and how it works. Thanks. Crack seal would look good at this point. Thank you, Ma'am. Council Member James. Yeah. I for ... I forgot two things. Um, I was going to ask, I ... Since I missed that new business item discussion, since there wasn't any, um, items K and Z that dealt with Chief Information Officer and Enterprise Solutions, I was gonna ask Mayor that on Tuesday, since I guess on Thursday these will receive first reading, on Tuesday, could we hear from Rama, um, regarding kinda just the state of what's going on right now with information, um, with the Chief Information Office and the Enterprise Solutions to sup- just to give us some detailed information before we get second reading? Thank you. All right. And the second thing, um, which I'm not sure how to handle this, I really wanted to do something in support of House Bill 1, which I don't even know what the state of it is right now in Frankfurt. Um, this is, um, what's known as Amanda's Bill, and I wanted to do something in support of Amanda's Bill and Law put together a draft resolution for me, but knowing that they're, uh, dealing with this issue today, I don't know if anybody has an update at this moment, I wondered, you know, if council had any ideas of how we could show our support for anyone that wanted to show support of this. A resolution at this time would, would really not ... would be too late to bring forward. Um, but I, I do have a draft resolution. I mean, this is something I guess I could pass around to council members and do first and second reading on Thursday. It would ... It may not be timely, but I guess it would just kind of be a moral support, um, that we can send after the fact. I don't think that legislation has cleared the House yet and if it has- Okay. ... I'm, I'm confident it still is subject to Senate consideration, so I think Tue- uh, Thursday night would be timely. Okay. I'll get a copy of the draft resolution to council members in your box, if you'll refer to that, and I'll be asking to, to walk that on on Thursday. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Crosby. Yeah. I, I ... My intention is not to be content- contentious, but, um, I did get a copy of my email and dated, uh, December 17th and we did get one, and I just wanted to clarify that it was regarding fire department staffing and you did say that, um, if we have suggestions for reducing operating expenses, and I, I just want to clarify, I guess, probably, um, I thought it was regarding, uh, the fire department staffing issues, which we determined that we were having a special meeting. Um, there was no deadline on here f- uh, to make suggestions to you for input or anything. So, um, a- a- again, I have seen that it was on email, but it, it didn't really clarify overall. It just looked like it was regarding the dep- fire department staffing issues, so I just wanted to clarify. Thank you. Thanks. Any other council member wish to report? Um, just a couple of things. We have, um, uh, some recommendations for boards and commissions. A motion to approve those would be in order. Move approval. Second. I have a motion by Council Member Gordon, seconded by Council Member, um, Blues. Is there any discussion? All in favor of approving those, please indicate by saying, "Aye." Opposed, "No." Motion carries. Uh, we do have a, um, disciplinary hearing involving a police officer. Mr. Horn, if you could give us a little bit of an update about that and let us know what action we need to take? As you know, you had scheduled a hearing for a police officer this past Monday. We've had contact with council for ... That police officer was Tom Miller, who couldn't hang around any longer, and we agreed to continue from Monday, so we need to find a new date for a hearing for that police officer. What are the time parameters? Uh, w- we are not really operating under one now, although I wouldn't say set it off for a year. Right. My recommendation would be we can either look at ... And Mr. Miller left me some dates as well. The first week of February, if we can do it the Thursday or Friday, or, because of witness problems for me, we need to push it into the week of March 22nd. Now, according to Mr. Miller's calendar, that week of March 22nd, he is available any day that week for the hearing. So if I understand correctly, we need to identify a date during the week of March 22nd during which we could, uh, conduct a hearing. And do we have any, any marked ballpark idea about the approximate time is- that's anticipated? If we have an opportunity to sit down and perhaps reach some stipulations and whatnot, the best I can tell you is probably three to six hours. I know that's a fairly broad time estimate, but I promise I will keep it as short as I can. Mr. Mayor, can I speak to that? Y- Yes, your Mr.... Mr. I intend to, since I will be an extension of the council in this situation as I have in the past, it would be my intention to get both parties together, the attorneys for both parties, and try to, uh, narrow the issues and make it, uh, a- as expedient a hearing as we possibly can. And that would be my, my purpose. I, I would also ask that, uh, you give some consideration to whether or not some time limits would be appropriate. Um, you know- ... hour for each side or something like that. I, I don't wanna impinge on anybody's due process rights, but in light of that, uh, I'd like, like for you to give some consideration whether or not that would be a possibility. Well, for the moment, at the risk of being wildly optimistic, um, maybe we could plan on a, like a four-hour hearing. And I don't know whether that's something we'd like to try to do, um, before or after another meeting. And Council Member, uh, Gordon? Mayor, this one that we had scheduled was on a Monday afternoon at three o'clock. Could we do it Monday afternoon March 22nd or four o'clock? Three. Sooner the better. Either one would work for me. I don't know what works. March, do it March 22nd at three o'clock. Anybody have any, any objection to that time? All right. Council Member Lane? Yeah. I, I just was curious why is the... I missed the part about the delay. Why, why is there a delay? Just- There, I think the Civil Service rules require us to set it within three days and- Initially, when you file this type, the police hearing, it requires that a hearing be set within three days. But the... Are you talking about the delay now or? Uh, yes, sir, going into March from today or this month. If we can't do it that, by that week of February, I've got a witness that's gonna be out for six weeks and so I need to push it- Okay. ... to that date. All right. That's, that's a good reason. Thank you. All right. Then I think, uh, if there's... If I don't hear any objection, March 22nd, three o'clock. And the last thing, um, I, I have is just complimentary reward to all the folks in Streets, Roads and Forestry. They worked hard, got great results. We appreciate it very much and keep up the great work for the balance of the, of the winter. Now, that's all I have. Is there any public comment on issues not on the agenda? First, thank you for your time. Could, for clarity's sake, can some... Could they make a motion to approve a special meeting on the 22nd- Yes, that would be appropriate. ... for the police disciplinary hearing? So moved. Second. Council Member Lane has moved to have a special meeting on March 22nd at 3:00 PM for purposes of the disciplinary hearing. Council Member Gordon has seconded. Uh, if there's no discussion, we'll proceed to vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Oppose, no. The motion carries. I see no one wishing to address the council. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? Mayor. Mayor. Oh, oh, mayor, you have a mayor's report. I'm sorry, council. Um, before we leave, I am... I just heard that the House did pass Amanda's bill and it's in the Senate right now. Um, my aide is preparing a letter. If you'd like to sign that in support, um, it'll just be a letter of support instead of the resolution. If you wanna head upstairs and she's preparing that letter and we'll get a signature page for council members, if they're interested. Thank you. And I'll move approval- Okay. ... of the mayor's report. Did you... You had a... Oh, okay. I think we, we already approved it. You had... Oh, we did? Yes. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Uh, if there's nothing further, I heard a motion to adjourn. I don't know who made it. Second. Council Member Blues moved to, moved to adjourn, Council Member Beard seconded. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Oppose, no. The motion carries. Thank you.