while we have the financial people here to ask some questions. The second part of this agenda deals with the report outs, and there will be two general services, and the chair is Council Member McCord, and public safety is Council Member Allinger. So that's what's on tap today. All right. Okay, Jerry, thanks very much. Okay. Mr. Barrett, Ryan, if you're going to take us through this, thank you for taking us through the presentation on bonding and capital improvement projects. Appreciate the opportunity to address Council today. Put together a few slides. I think this is kind of a capsule of a lot of material. We'll try to touch on it briefly. I'd like to accomplish two things. First of all, there's been a lot of terminology thrown around in terms of liquidity and total debt profile. So we wanted to kind of talk about some of the financial metrics that are key when we access the capital markets. The second thing is to throw the list of the mayor's proposed capital items and then put some debt service numbers to them. This is obviously policy decisions, so I think we're going to present some numbers that can help you work through those policy decisions. There's kind of four pillars in accessing the capital markets for municipal issuers. I think we're all familiar with kind of our credit score, at least some of the things that go into that. Length of time you've had a bank account open. Total debt. All those kind of things are more on a personal basis. Well, for municipal issuers such as ourselves, there's kind of four pillars. Economic strength, financial strength, management and governance, and kind of the debt profile. And as we go down that chart, the top are kind of rated more important. When we go out to purchases of our bonds and we go out to the rating agencies, economic strength kind of includes our size, our growth profiles, the type of economy we have, and the demographics within. Now, this one is not necessarily directly related to the actions that we make in this room. I think we can enhance those, but the ebbs and flow in the economy don't necessarily directly correlate into a downgrade of a rating. What I personally think combined financial strength and the management and governance, I think those are things that are directly made in this room, and I think they do directly correlate to how we trade in the market, what interest rate we pay, and what credit rating from Moody's or S&P we get. I highlighted liquidity. That's been talked about quite a bit in this room, and again, I think through each of these bullet points, we could probably, I could bore you to death, give you an hour presentation on each of these metrics, and quantify that. We'll try to do a little bit in terms of liquidity, because that has been talked about quite a bit. Also, operating flexibility. If you are lending money to an entity, you want to know that it has flexibility and kind of a history of performance. And closely related to our financial metrics are kind of the management and government aspects of it. They directly relate into the quantifiable stuff that we see under our financial strength category. So in terms of management and governance, when the capital markets look at your purchase of our bonds or rating agencies, they'll focus on that financial planning and the budgeting, which, you know, we're right in the middle of that cycle right now. The debt management and capital planning, I've heard that discussed about, Council Member Martin, I think you've said that a number of times in terms of this long-range capital planning and debt management. Also with the structure and disclosure, you know, are we transparent in stuff that we do? Certainly, and I think, you know, that is something we're probably very strong in. Then the debt profile, I've heard that talked about. Our overall debt burden, kind of the structure, do we have variable rate, do we have fixed rate debt? So again, they kind of, the market, when we go out, we focus on those four things. And we throw this up there today, is when you're kind of looking at individual projects or long-term capital planning, these are kind of the four pillars. How does this affect us in these four pillars? Okay, I had mentioned, I'm not going to go through all these today, obviously, but the one that has been talked about is liquidity. And from the investor standpoint, they look at liquidity, kind of three things that come to mind. It compacts our reaction time. If we have cash in the bank, we can, you know, expenses can vary overnight. I think Nashville is a good example of this. Their expenses have varied overnight. Now, if they have liquidity, they can solve those problems. Because in terms of solving those problems, your revenue, your adjustments to revenue, any type of adjustments you make, they don't happen overnight. So, you know, when the expense side does vary, the investor community likes to see that liquidity there as a cushion. So again, that's one factor when you go through the policy decisions of what we do fund and what we don't fund. You know, that is the implication of the market. That's what they see liquidity as a positive. It also fix problems. If we have a one-time unfunded pension liability or we have another issue that's a one-time expense, liquidity is an immediate solution. So the marketplace likes to see that cash in the bank. Now, Linda has mentioned many times that liquidity, you know, is one of those factors I just showed. But in terms of the credit rating, clearly the credit rating reports come out every day that tell you how the market, from the hat I used to wear, reports come out every day and tell you how the market's pricing. They directly price off of a credit rate. Just like no banker would ever lend any of us in this room money without looking at our credit score, the capital markets for municipal issuers is the same. So what I've tried to do, the upper echelon of credit ratings, the triple A, you know, there's a lot of entities that are. The U.S. government's obviously triple A, double A, which we're in. Now, there's subcategories that I won't bore you with in an A. And actually in our marketplace, in our peer group, the A category is the average. So that's a good reference point. We're in the double A category. So what I've tried to illustrate here is if we go to market today, based on current rates, we're at a 417, 20-year issue. Now, if we move through these ratings, you know, the decisions, we're not going to go to an A category overnight. There's a couple steps. Or if we improve, we wouldn't go to a triple A overnight. There's steps in between. But in terms of quantifying this, we're looking at a 48 basis points or 0.48% kind of increase in our rates. So take the 417 and add 48 basis points. Now, the B double A category is not one that, you know, I would see us falling into based on decisions that would be down the road. But in terms of an A, you know, obviously we lower our capital cost when we access the market. And if we fall down to an A category, we've increased. Now, in terms of there's a lot of information on the sheet, and I apologize for that, but we kind of wanted to illustrate two things. The top, we do an individual bond deal. And on the bottom, we're talking about annual bond deals. So let me work through that top up there. And I've highlighted the double A category, which, as I just stated, the one that we fall in. So if we access the market double A category based on kind of numbers that we're thinking about this year, we're thinking about a $21 million pension bond, and we're thinking about an $18.4 million GO bond. So we're about $50 million in paper that we need to sell this year. So we're going to access it at a 417. And our annual debt service number, as we've talked about before, is about $3.6 million. So, again, our long-term decisions, as we move down in the credit scale, potential impact from a double A to an A, which, again, is from where we're at in the high category to the average, we're going to add about $157,000. Now, whatever metric, in terms of personnel or whatever metric, that $157,000 will be the annual budget impact. One individual bond deal on one individual budget, $157,000 annually. Now, what we've done on the right, as we've talked about over time, we sell debt historically about 20 years. So as we move down the credit criteria, we can add roughly $3 million. So, again, policy decisions need to be made in terms of what we do fund and what we don't fund. We're just trying to present some of the analytics and highlight, when we access the capital markets, what these metrics we talked about in the beginning, how they impact. So, again, $157,000 annually and over $3.1 million over the life of that bond transaction. Now, let me switch gears. Yes. For the benefit of some of us, okay, I'll say some of us like myself who need to go through this at a pace that recognizes our familiarity with these issues. I want to put a hypothetical to you because I think it's important at this juncture. Yes, sir. I was talking to bond issuers on a deal recently, and they were talking about Evansville, Indiana. They said Evansville was at a BAA. And there's nothing between A and BAA, right? That's it? Actually, there's subcategories. Okay. Within each of these, there's subcategories. Because Evansville, I believe, is around a B. They said that they were selling at a little over 2%. Did our last one go for 2% and some change? Linda, what was it? So we're saying now that it's going to go from 2% to 4%? All right. $315,000 maybe. All right. Again, the reason I'm intervening at this point is because you're giving us a lot of data, and we're talking about a lot of budget for the next year during which we're trying to restart an economy. And the difference between their rating and ours represented 200 basis points. 200 basis points on $50 million, what is that, $100,000 a year? Well, I'd have to run the numbers exactly. Well, close. I mean, 200 basis points is 50 million. I mean, what I'm saying here on 50 million, 50 basis points annually is 157,000. Okay. So that's what you're trying to tell us is that if we remind us of what the headline is in this instruction. The headline is we've talked about key metrics. We've mentioned liquidity. We've mentioned total debt. So what I wanted to illustrate today is really four pillars. It's not just liquidity and total debt. It's four things we need to be cognizant of when this group makes policy decisions. I'm not saying we're going to go from a double A to an A, nor we're going to go from a double A to a triple A. Moody's and S&P, just like individual credit companies, they don't share their analytics. We're illustrating that we've been told that liquidity is the pressure point. So if we do not grade in those four categories out, this is the quantifying of us moving through the rating categories. Okay. I won't hold you up right now, but I've got questions about that or comments about that as well because we're balancing economic stimulus efforts with these bonded projects. Okay. Go ahead. Now, I kind of illustrated the individual bond transaction over time, annually and over time. So I'd like to move into the bottom of that slide and talk about kind of the cumulative effect. Obviously, $50 million, I think, is above historical norms fixing a pension problem. $20 million annually is more realistic. And what I've done there is we've taken the assumption. We've issued $20 million every time, every year, every year, every year. We're laying on $150,000 every year, every year, every year. So the cumulative effect. That was part of the presentation to make sure everyone was. So the cumulative effect of that $20 million every year with the 50 basis point hike, we're looking at 636,000. And then over 20 years. So just simply the numbers don't mean as much, but the illustration is the annual layering of that budget, of that implication. I've had many clients that would gnaw and claw over 5 to 10 basis points. But as you move through the credit categories, and again, we'll move subcategories until we get to the A category or vice versa if we go up. But there is at least, you know, some way to quantify the implications associated with those metrics. Getting more into the details, we've attempted to do here. Well, actually, what we have done here is we've listed the general fund portion. And on the next page you'll see the urban services fund portion of the $18.4 million in capital that has been presented before you before. The column that has the information that has been added that we hope facilitates some of the discussion on the policy side would be the far right where we list the estimated maximum debt service. What you can do is go down to an individual project. You can go across and see what was the request in 11. What was approved in 10 that's listed in the mayor's proposed budget. And then on the far right side you can see the annual debt service associated with that. So each project has a usable life and each project has an amount that needs to be put in the bank to do it. So that allows you to kind of go through and make decisions. Hey, is this something we want to do? Is this something we don't? Is this too much money at this point? Can we add some more? All those are policy decisions. So the second sheet, again, is the urban services fund. And what I think has been proposed a number of times is to use the geo security. I think a lot of times when clients ask me how do we secure this, I ask the question, are you going to pay your debt? If the answer is yes, then a lot of times they will decide, policy decision, but they will decide to use the best security they have. The best security that we have is geo. Our geo rating is a notch ahead of kind of the urban services or the revenue pledge. So using that geo pledge, what is on the table today was to pledge it all with geo, secure it by geo, but reimbursed. So the second sheet is all reimbursements back to the general fund. So the general fund is not bearing any of these project costs. However, they're just securing. It's similar to using a home equity loan to finance your car. It's a better security, assuming you're going to honor your, pay your debts, typically what I see in my experience. Oh, the interest rate running this assumption is what you saw on the previous pages, 417. So we assumed roughly 417. Now, there's some individual tweaking. If you pull some short-term projects out, you know, the overall number may change a little bit. So there's going to be some tweaking in this. But if we look at each project in a vacuum, this is the annual debt service associated with it. So you can think in terms of this is the budget impact. Council Member Stanton. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just a quick question on that then. On the solid waste numbers, if the general fund is going to be reimbursed 1.9 million, is that correct? Yes. So based on the Mayor's proposed budget, there's actually 1.9 million in excess in what we've been presented, revenue versus expenses. Some of that's before my time, so I would. Is the 1.9 already in the budget, Commissioner Remke? I believe it is. Yes. So, I mean, you're talking a big chunk of change to pull out of the general fund expenditures. You want to make sure those numbers are the exact numbers that are in the budget book as a portion of the debt service. Brian has run the numbers based on what we're just projecting. I'd have to go back in here. I apologize. I don't remember what interest rate we actually used in the Mayor's proposed budget. This was the most recent one we had based on our most recent experience in the market. So the other thing, and Brian was just referring to this, these debt service numbers are looking at these projects individually. We get some lift because of our ability to smooth the debt service, so it's not going to be this exact number. It's going to be something a little bit less than this. And I understand that. We just need a placeholder number that's going to be reimbursed from the general fund. Yes, I understand. As we pick, add, and subtract things from the budget, we need to know what that add and subtract number is. Right. And Elizabeth and I will get that for you while we're sitting here. And is that going to be a late item the administration is going to bring? I know there's some other items. Or are you just going to leave it up to council to remove that number? Procedurally, Elizabeth, I'm assuming it's a late item where we would, yeah. But we need it as soon as you get it. Okay. Part of the answer to the exact number would be related to what you decide to or not to fund. Because, again, smoothing effect, if you pull out short-term projects versus pulling out long-term projects or add. So, you know, we would certainly have that, but it would vary every time you add or subtract. And also you'd market fluctuations. I mean, I went today and sat on a Bloomberg terminal to kind of get the analysis, but probably do the same thing tomorrow. Rates change every day. But we'll work towards that. We just need an adequate placeholder number to put in the budget. Yes. Yes. Or take out in this case. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Vice Mayor. This question of liquidity, exactly how is that defined? What goes into the pool of liquidity and is it measured by a ratio against what? Great question. I enjoy to answer those types of questions. Liquidity is exactly what it is, liquid cash. So unreserved, undesignated cash in the general fund. And there are metrics. There's metrics for every single one. I mean, we could have spent quite a bit of time, as I alluded to. Your peer group. Again, I think the pressure point's been identified as liquidity for us. We're stronger than other ones. We're a little more fluent, less unemployment, all those kind of things. The metric for liquidity would be unreserved, undesignated cash fund balances as a percentage of revenue. Let me say that again. Liquid cash, stuff that's not designated for anything, we take that and we divide it by revenue. Now, the reason they do that is because how do they compare us 300,000 plus or minus people to 100,000 plus or minus community? All the credit and all that the market does is look at us, how do we compare against our peer group? So in our peer group, it's been my experience that that ratio is over 10% of unreserved, undesignated cash as a percentage of revenue. You know, would put us 27 million roughly over. I think when I looked at the ratio, we're about 6%. What about short-term investments? In the banking arena, any investments in material within 90 days can count against your liquidity ratios. Well, typically, if anything is not locked in long-term or subject to vast market variances, they will count it. It's more of a balance sheet calculation than looking at what you haven't invested in. So, you know, theoretically, we could have, and I'm sure we do in our economic contingency fund, I'm sure we have some longer-term investments. They wouldn't necessarily count that against us if we had longer-term investments subject to market fluctuations. Okay. Everything, to answer, I apologize, everything would be counted, irrespective of investments, unless it was something strange. Okay, thank you. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I appreciate your presentation, and I have some questions which might need to be answered by our folks because they're more specific to the list. So maybe Commissioner Rumpke or, okay, well, I'll ask them then. I pulled out my document, which you gave us at our May 6th meeting, which was fiscal year 11 operating capital, which included the 2011 bond fund, and it also then included, it had various lists of projects, and there are some distinct differences between what we were given on May 6th and what we're given today. So I guess, first of all, do you have your May 6th document? I'm looking for May 6th. Forgive me for shuffling. Bill has it on the, it looks like Mr. O'Mara put it on the overhead. If I could interject, I'm not sure your exact question, but one of the things I wanted, and the reason I brought this to project and remind everyone, there were three lists that we put out then, operating capital, bond fund, CIP capital, and which on that list is proposed to be bonded. They're not all the same. Okay. What is included in today's presentation is what is being proposed to be bonded. Okay. So there are more capital projects in the mayor's proposed budget than what are being proposed to be bonded. So this helps with my question. Okay. So, and you've also, I believe, maybe split it out differently because of the questions about solid waste bonded projects. So that was one of my questions is, is one of the differences that you went back and took the solid waste related bond projects and put them into the urban services fund to show them? Yes, ma'am, to show the reimbursement, correct. So from, I guess, I'm just maybe thinking out loud a little bit. From my way of thinking, we have a couple of things. We have to figure out whether we want to bond and then whether, in fact, the method for paying for the urban services fund bonded projects is what the council would like to do in terms of taking the debt service from the urban services fund to pay off general obligation bonds out of the general fund. That's correct. Okay. And so any projects, can you say with certainty that any projects that aren't on today's list are, and one I'm thinking of is the Accela software that is on this list today. Is that a different? It's in the sewer fund, the Accela. So that's all specifically to be used for sewer? Yes. Okay. All right. I think that will do it for right now. The only other question I had was about the TIF phase one utility design, which is on today's list. Right. That was in the mayor's proposed budget. Yes, ma'am. Yes, but is proposed to come out of the general fund, the debt service, is that correct? Yes, that is correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. And Vice Mayor, the question was, and forgive me, I can't remember, I think you asked what our last offering was. And we've been right at that 3.2 range. So the last couple of offerings we've actually had very good fortune in the market. So I wanted to bring that back to your attention. And the hypothetical that Ryan was using was four points and change? 4.17. Is there any reason for that, going up 100 basis points, other than just being conservative? Market fluctuations. And I would like to add, too, not only did I check today, Chip Southerland with Hilliard, one of your other FAs, he actually gave me that number I validated today. Okay. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You were talking about liquidity. And I think you brought up the economic contingency at one point because it's cash. Yes. If we balance this budget using, was it 5.8 million and change? And out of, what, 14 million, that's probably a 40% decrease in our contingency fund. Is that going to affect us? And I have to think, yes, it will, because that is about as liquid as you can have. And then with that, how much will that affect us? Will it affect us? Yes. I mean, you know, it's cash. It's undesignated cash that, you know, we have in terms of liquidity. Are our peers doing similar things? Yes. So, you know, whenever you lower, you know, one of those pillars that I showed on the first slide, any category underneath there, it affects you. Now, again, they don't look at one individual's thing and say, hey, that's, we're going to downgrade because of this. They look at the collective. The amount, I'd be very, very hard pressed to answer that. They, you know, their industry knowledge is statistical analysis, and they have vast models similar to the credit and experience. They don't share their logic behind it. So there's no way we could directly correlate and say, hey, $2 million here means we're going to get downgraded. That wouldn't happen. All we can say is we've been told that the pressure points to liquidity, so we need to be cognizant of that. And, you know, then give scenarios like I did that are aside to say if this happens, this is how much. If this happens, this is how much. But there's no direct linkage that I could come up with. But a 40% decrease in that, you don't think that's too dramatic that will? I mean, I'm sure I could find quite a few communities that have tapped in their liquidity more. Could you get that information for us? Do you have that opportunity, you think? I may be able to call in some favors and find information. I don't want to be favored, just be communities that are doing the same thing we're doing and just find out. Well, the challenge is, is that you don't know until budgets are passed. So, you know, a lot of people are on the same kind of fiscal year. So, yes, could I get that information, but I'd probably need budgets to be passed, published to be published. Well, I guess we haven't passed one here. We have proposed. and see if they're looking at doing the same thing that we're doing. That doesn't mean they're going to pass it, but it gives us a barometer of what other communities are doing and if this is the route we need to take. Because it scares me when we start dipping into the contingency fund. When we looked at trying to have 10% of our revenues, 27 million, and we got to 14, we got over 15%. Now we're going backwards on this 40%. That's a big reach, I think, into it. I think if I was a bonding agency, I'd be concerned. Yeah, we'll have some discussions about it, surely. But, again, you know, I'm sure some of our peers are doing similar type of things. I'll tell you what, I'll definitely explore that, and we'll see what we can come up with. Okay, well, you made the statement that you said they're doing it, so, yeah, I'd like to see it. Well, again, to me, for instance, you know, there's nothing's published, nothing's final. I'm just looking to propose, I'm not looking to final. Exactly. We'll make some calls and check into it. Sure. Just one other comment, because Ryan obviously wasn't on our last rating call, because it did come up. And what's interesting about these rating calls is the analysts will make statements like, we're concerned about your liquidity, but we're not telling you what to do. And so when Ryan says they're evasive, you know, they want us to know where the pressure points are, but they won't quantify to your question, you know, well, if we only use half of what we're proposing, you know, draw down in the contingency fund, is that going to keep us where we are? Or to your point, you know, if we use what we're proposing or more, are they going to downgrade us? They're extremely evasive and not transparent with respect to what's behind their thought process, or what their actual analysis is. They basically communicate to communities, and I think that's what Ryan was trying to explain. And I think he misunderstood. He can get the ‑‑ we can probably get the proposed budget, but the rating agencies do the same thing to them that they do to us. You know, they'll tell them, well, I'm worried about your liquidity, but they won't say that I'm going to downgrade you tomorrow because of this. So it's been, as a former banker, it's extremely frustrating to not get more clarity in those calls. But when they point out that they're concerned about liquidity, I have to think that, you know, as we look to balance our budget, that they're taking a hard, hard look at what we've got in the bank. I guess what would be further help is if we could look at, if we take it down the 5.8 million, how that compares to other communities, too, with what kind of liquidity we would have. Because I know our goal was to get 10 percent. It was going to be over time. And now I guess we're going to take it a couple steps back. How does that still put us in lockstep with other communities? Well, we do know that, because this came up last fall right when I joined the government. It was one of the first calls Bill and I were on together. And they, from a peer group standpoint, they have always made a passing comment to us that in that particular category in liquidity, we're lower than our peer group. So, yes, we should be able to get some information. I was hoping you were going to say we're higher. That makes me even more concerned when you say it's lower. Now we're taking a 40 percent bump. But to Ryan's point, it's the other pillars, and we're very, very strong in these other pillars, and that's why it's important for us to keep that balance. We just wanted to bring forth to you, as you're making these recommendations on spending across the budget, not just in the CIP, kind of all the balls we're trying to juggle. Thank you. Thank you. In terms of the actual budget's contingency liquidity that's being expensed this year, that was what I was alluding to. In terms of metrics, as I mentioned, the liquidity ratio, you had some information on that. EAA would be. Where would this take us? We would be in that particular metric. Again, there's a lot. There's 13, 16 of them. In that particular metric, we would be below the 10 percent. And that's what, rightfully so, rating agencies, credit markets have told us, you know, this is your pressure point. Now, other categories, we're above. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner Rumpke, I hate to go back to the solid waste bonding, but I think we all need to understand what I asked you, and I think there's some confusion. Is the solid waste debt service already, when the mayor's budget, is it built in here already? And here's, that's what Elizabeth and I were just talking about. Our debt service is built in, but I'll help the council remember that the first year of debt service would not be $1.9 million. We only would have, depending on when we went to market, we would only have an interest-only payment that first, in the FY11. So to answer your question, it's not going to be that $1.9 million, but debt service is built in to the general fund budget. And so if, in fact, we were going to do what we were proposing, which is reimburse from the other fund, we would have a placeholder there. But it's not going to be that $1.9 million. No, I'm not holding to that number. I just want to make sure we all know. It's already built in. The concept. If we pay for it from the solid waste fund, it needs to come out or be reimbursed. That's correct. Because some people were thinking that's what was already in the budget that was going to be reimbursed. But it wasn't. And you'll get that number, exact interest number. All right. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. So Ms. Rumke, or you maybe. So what we're seeing before us are a list of items that are in the mayor's budget, capital projects in the mayor's budget, but are not funded. And some of them go back to 2008, 2009, and 2010. So in a few of these I have a question about, for instance, budgeted in 2008, $2 million that's never been bonded or funded, even though it was in the 2008 budget. And another question I have is public works, streetscape, vine, Broadway, lime, $2,461,500. Can you, that was from 2010, it's on the last. Yes, I'm sorry, I just wanted to get on the same page with you here. The vine, Broadway, lime, 2010, the 20-year life. But this is right when I first came on, that was all included on streetscape. It's my mistake when I was preparing this for Jerry, I was going through and making sure the only things that were left on this were the unfunded. The streetscape was. So that's an error in this schedule. So it has been funded? Yes. And how much of that bond was for limestone? Well, I'd have to go to the bond. This was the list of what I was trying to give you a list of what wasn't bonded. I missed one line. There's one line extra on here that shouldn't be on there. Okay. So that $2,461,000 should not be on there. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. If you could join us again, sorry. So just a follow-up, Council Member Lawless. So these are projects that the council has voted to approve, but that we have not bonded yet. Is that right? That is correct. Last fall, we went through that process. And even though there was $104 million, I can't even remember, you all chose to bond X. And so what was left over is what's on that list, Council Member Martin. And then the other part of the presentation is what was brought forth in the mayor's proposed budget. There was a question the first time we presented, because we just brought the mayor's proposed budget information, and I can't remember which council member asked to see that list from the previous time. Because the only thing the mayor's proposed budget brought forward was the fire tower, the roof on Station 6. Help me. There was one other thing. I apologize. I can't remember right off the top of my head. There were just a couple small items. I hope that helps reconcile. It does. I have another question as well. So what's our current rainy day fund balance? It's 14.4 and change. And I guess what I understand is that our agencies are giving us sort of a wink that needs to be a lot larger. What should our rainy day balance be? Well, they wanted it 10% and change, so that would be 24 and change, roughly. So we're about $10 million shy before we make a withdrawal. So about $24 million. And, again, those are just kind of rough numbers. So this is a little prognosticating, but that's what we have to do, I think. And that's partly what you all do when we do projections and forecasting. So what's going to be the result of an extended period of declining revenues? What's going to be the result? We'll continue to have pressure on our ratings and our ability to borrow at the rates that we've been able to borrow at, in my personal opinion, and our ability to take on additional debt service if we have falling revenues. I guess my concern is that given the reaction in the markets yesterday and today and the difficulty in debt that's spreading through Europe, that we may be in this for a while. And I think that we should be very careful about taking anything on. Are we between a rock and a hard place now because we have to bond things that we wouldn't otherwise bond in order to create cash? I don't think that I would put it that way. I think we stepped back, and obviously we're not going to be able to have a structurally balanced budget unless this leadership group makes additional significant cuts. And we all knew that those cuts would be in the form of personnel because that's really the majority of our budget, and we've all looked at that. So we brought forward programs and efficiencies that we thought would help get us there. But beyond that, we needed to look at this contingency fund to be able to keep the operations going and do the minimal amount of bonding that we thought we were going to need to do. So whether the council decides to put streets and roads in or it's repairing the fire station versus having to maybe close it because the roof isn't repaired, I think those are the tough decisions we're dealing with right now. And in looking at what's critical, it's going to be extremely important for us to balance all that. Well, I think we're planning based on our best guess, and I understand the rationale for that. But I think we may want to also plan based on a worst-case scenario that could also be feasible, you know, something that might really happen. Because if this is so tight right now that if we were to have a significant downturn in revenues, which I think is still possible, we would be in some serious trouble. Is that safe to say? We would have a lot of pressure. Yes, sir. Thank you. You're welcome. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Barrow. You had indicated that liquidity seemed to be a thing of high interest to the bond underwriters, and I thought maybe I could get you to elaborate on that just a little bit. First, would you like to just define what liquidity is? Liquidity is just that liquid cash. It's unreserved, undesignated cash that we can do anything we want with it. We haven't earmarked it for anything, and, you know, it's not set aside or encumbered. So it's liquid cash. Economic contingency would fall under that, as well as the general fund cash balances. That, again, and the urban services would classify that general fund cash balances, anything that's specifically not earmarked. Okay. Are we keeping sight of a tabulation of what our running cash balances are at this time? Yes. I mean, when I ran just back in the envelope, I got, you know, this cash balances numbers, and, you know, you can draw them down from the CAFR and stuff like that, too. So if I read in between the lines, could I interpolate that if we had a choice of bonding $5 million over ten years or paying it all in cash, we would be better off to do the bonding so we have more liquidity if liquidity is a key issue for our government? Well, I want to be careful here because I'm never in the business of making policy decisions. However, if we have $14 million, let's just say economic contingency is all we got, and we're drawing out six, and this hypothetical scenario, we're drawing another five, it pretty much drains that fund. So in that particular instance, I'm not going to say whether or not the project is viable, but I would advise against drawing $5 million more of cash down. Now, if it's a number less, you know, it's in the area I wouldn't comment on, but $5 million would be a large number to draw additional cash out of. You know, we have 5.8 coming out of the economic contingency, $4 million in disposable assets that's on the table to sell. Another five on the top of that would be in the high range. We have cash in our solid waste fund and in our storm drainage funds and probably our new water fund. Do the raters, they look at that cash on hand, too, as they're looking at the total liquidity of the government? Yes, and that would be in the area of they won't tell us exactly how they calculate it. However, you know, the number I quoted, 6% before, that doesn't include the cash that's in the other funds. They give us credit somehow, some way, some form, some calculation. But yes, cash in other areas, you know, helps us mitigate the 6% in our general fund. And one of the reasons cash is key is because many other cities are very low on cash, and so that makes the bond raters look at cash even more intently in other cities. Some cities are having cash issues. So we should try to protect our cash as much as possible. Exactly. And that's not me stating that. That's what the credit markets have told us. The pressure point is cash. And again, on that second slide, you know, we talked about cash. It mitigates reaction time, mitigates one-time expenses, you know, solves problems on the short term. That's why the credit markets like to see cash in the bank. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member Crosby. Yes, I just wanted to follow up with a question on Council Member Lane's questioning to make sure I understand. So you said when cash in other funds, for example, the dedicated funds, when you have surplus funds, cash on hand, whatever, they give you credits for that, even though those funds cannot be used. Because when you were describing keeping cash that's not earmarked for liquidity, these funds would show liquidity, but yet you can't utilize those funds, even though they're not attached to any expenditures. You can't use the dedicated funds for just any expenditure. You have to use it for what they're dedicated to. That's a great question. I apologize to interrupt. No, that's okay. It's a great question because they are technically earmarked for dedicated services. I don't want to necessarily, I don't pretend to know the exact logic and how they count it. However, liquidity solves problems. So if the problem is in one of those dedicated funds, it would stand to reason that the general fund doesn't have to come to the aid of those specific funds. If you have different business lines that you do with different amounts of cash in them, you know, obviously if one of those has a major issue, I would assume that we wouldn't let that services, the central service stop. The general fund would support it for a period of time. So all those problems that can happen in those various funds, you know, would be mitigated by its liquidity as well. But you can't do the converse. You can't use the liquidity for covering in dedicated funds to cover general fund expenses. Yes, and that's why the numbers I've quoted have all been general fund ratios. You can't, it's my understanding, you can't transfer back. Then I guess I'm a little lost because we've been told that the reason why we're bonding certain things that should be in dedicated funds would be to keep liquidity, overall liquidity, but maybe I've just misunderstood something. No, you're absolutely correct, and it's one of those things that, you know, we kind of scratch our heads when we talk to the rating agencies, but they have made it very clear because we, in getting questions from you all, Bill and I, and obviously Ryan will be joining in the future, have asked these questions, and they have made it very clear that they do, they understand that those funds are earmarked for, you know, very specific uses, but they look at it, they look at us as an umbrella organization, and it's kind of the, what I would call the temperature of the overall health of the urban county government, and they give us credit for those other funds being healthy, and I guess that's just maybe a simplistic way to look at it. I'm frustrated as a banker. I like having metrics and being able to come up here and say A plus B equals C, so if we spend this much, this is what's going to happen, and in reality, they are very, they are not very transparent in telling us how they use it other than, to Ryan's point, and he's been on many other calls, obviously, with other municipalities, but they've made it clear that they do count it. And so I apologize that I can't be more specific because they haven't been specific with us. As I look down, certainly liquidity, they're going to look kind of at our general fund, and then they're going to look at each individual fund. Although we may not get credit for liquidity in those funds, the transfers over, maybe we do, but certainly four pillars, management and governance, if we have other funds that have proven through financial planning and budgeting that they're in good, healthy shape, we'll probably get credit in the management and governance kind of pillar, not necessarily in the financial strength pillar. If we've run deficits in funds, that tells me something a little different about the management than if we run surpluses. Would not liquidity then be more important in the general fund versus the dedicated funds, if they're looking at the overall health of the government, as you explained? Liquidity is important for every fund. But if I had to pick one that's more important, yes, general fund, because you can do whatever you want with, well, within reason. General fund monies have less restrictions on. So I guess the reason why we're spending out of our rainy day fund is because we can to cover expenses with our general fund or general fund expenses, but in using the liquidity for dedicated funds because we can't use those in general with our general fund. Does that make sense? I'm a little fuzzy. Can you rephrase that slightly? We're utilizing our rainy day fund. We're taking money from that to cover revenue shortfalls because we can. Because it goes to the, it's in the general fund. It goes to the general fund. We can't do that with our dedicated funds. So it's the only area where there's surplus that can cover general fund expenses. Yeah, I mean, the general fund is the issue. And, yes, the way I see it, structural imbalance, and there's a 5.8 draw on the unreserved, undesignated cash balances, yes. Okay, thank you. Council Member Feigl. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I'm going to kind of beat this one a little bit more. Earlier, one of your comments was that unreserved and undesignated funds is how you define liquidity. I think it was Council Member Blues asked that question and said that's how you define liquidity. Okay, but we are using reserved funds and designated funds. So my question is, when they evaluate you for your rating, do they give you actual points for liquidity from your general fund? And then possibly from these designated funds, that's more of a, do they see that as another source of revenue that could generate more money? I'm probably not making this sense, but rather than seeing the cash there and considering that toward our rating, do they look at that more as another source of income where we could, you know, we could increase the fees or just to generate more revenue rather than using that fund. Does that make sense? If I could make a clarification, because we as a group use the word designated and undesignated interchangeably, but in the context of this conversation, within each fund there are designated monies and undesignated monies. That's an accounting term on the general fund. It's also an accounting term in any other fund that you look at. So let me mix the metaphors together. In a designated fund, there is an undesignated fund balance. And that's what Ryan has been referring to, all undesignated fund balances. Within each fund, regardless of what type of fund it is, does that help? Because those words are kind of being used interchangeably and they have different meanings. A designated fund, but there are designated and undesignated fund balances, cash balances in each. Can you give me an example? In the landfill fund, we have a large fund balance. And a lot of it is reserved for closing of the landfill. And then there is an undesignated cash balance in that fund. But the whole fund is dedicated to landfill issues. So depending on your context, we're using that term interchangeably. Have I just messed you up completely? No, I understand what you're saying. It seems how did those unreserved funds get into that account if it is to, I know that the money is reserved to close the landfill. A certain amount of money is there. So you're saying there's some additional money there that is unreserved for closing the landfill. So is that like a contingency in case it's going to cost more? in case it's going to cost more to close the landfill. I mean, after you take all of your revenues, less all of your expenses, less all your reserves, do you have any money left over? That would be the undesignated. And I may not have used the right example, but it's one I could think of. This is my translation, if I can help. If a worst case condition, we need those funds, we can access those funds. That they are not restricted for use for, in that example, the landfill, if they are needed. And if the legislative or if the council confirms or makes that decision as far as an allocation of funds. And I believe that is the way. That's the way they interpret it. Another example which Elizabeth just gave me is we have a 27th payroll reserve that only happens every once in eight years. We reserve a little bit of it. We're talking about the unreserved. I think it's worthwhile to get a clear understanding of this. Because it seems like it is a recurring annual question. Council Member Stennett, you were saying something about this. That unreserved portion is not for general fund use. Well, we can use that in a general way, but we can't. It needs to be returned to taxpayers or spent on landfill. But is that how the rating agencies are interpreting it? No. Okay, that's a big deal it seems like. That was Council Member Crosby's point. Council Member Crosby is back up on, did you finish? You're done, okay. Council Member Crosby. Okay. Council Member Lane. We have surplus funds in several of our dedicated fund balances. And the benefit of that is that if we ran, if we didn't have those surpluses and we were running in a deficit in any of those accounts, then the general fund would have to bail those funds out. So when the bond people are evaluating the financial strength of our government, they look at the balances in those funds, and they have more confidence that we don't need, as the general fund, to put more cash into those accounts. So they're evaluating all the funds in a collective, holistic kind of way, and it makes them feel warmer and fuzzier than if we had no money and we pull all the cash out of those funds and paid everything for cash, didn't bond anything, we had no cash on hand. And then something happened to one of those funds, there was a shortfall, and we wouldn't have any cash readily available to use for that. So I think that's what you were trying to say earlier. I just tried to restate that. If that's not correct, please correct me. Great synopsis, appreciate it. Again, not every community has designated funds for process lines or services. So we so happen to have, you know, the way we've structured it. So health, cash, liquidity in those funds, you know, you're going to, as they rate us overall, you have surpluses, you're going to get a little extra in the management and governance. You know, you're not running deficits. It's an issue. And at the debt profile, the last line, and I didn't read this before, other long-term commitments and liabilities. If we have a liability in one of those funds, it puts pressure on the general fund. Hey, it's one issue of all these things to think about. Liquidity, health in those funds is a positive thing, and it's what we've been told is our pressure point. That's all. Thank you very much from my end over here. I'm not going to beat up much longer, but I am going to take a couple of whacks at it here. Just to make sure, when you make the statements, I think when Bill made that statement and started talking about the different funds, the general fund can bail them out, but they can't bail us out. And that's what we have to understand. And you did make a point, though, on one, that actually we do have money that we're setting aside. And I think that's what, every 13 years? Actually, that is one that we do put money aside for the 27th pay period that we accumulate over time. So we actually, that is something the general fund can, if we ever had to, could tap into and use. But the other ones we can't use. We just have to understand that. Even though they might look at it that way, that's not going to bail out the general fund. We can maybe bail out those funds, but they can't help us on that. And I think we have to understand that. Maybe the rating agencies look at that and give some kind of credibility to it. But I would hope if they did it, from my standpoint, if I was them, I wouldn't give too much, because they have to understand those are dedicated. And we can't use those funds to balance this budget. Council Member James. I really pretty much had the same kind of thing to say. And I wrote down, when you were defining liquidity, and I wrote it down word for word. And you did say, for the first time, you said unreserved, undedicated cash fund. But then you restated it and you said undesignated. And I think there needs to be some agreement between the council, budgeting, and the rating agencies of, are we defining it as undesignated or undedicated? And in the case specifically of, say, urban services fund, if something is going to be considered undesignated, then we need to make sure that we approve the projects within that fund to pay for the things that are needed. Because when I served on the LINC for two years for public works, we saw that there was a list of projects that were waiting for, I don't know, over ten years to be funded. And they were told to kind of sit on that money. And I hear about, Council Member Lane mentioned surplus. And I don't think we want to give the impression to, or draw anyone's assumption that we're allowing money to stack up and we have a surplus and we don't need it. Because surplus to me means you don't need it at this time. That's the definition of surplus to me. But if you look at waste management and some of the things that we're doing with recycling, it's obvious that those funds are needed in order for us to get to zero waste, which this council is committed to. So I just want to be, I think we need to get consistency in our language with moving forward. Because if it is the way that the council members around here said is dedicated funding, then we need to be using those things for those items. And we need to go ahead and find out what urban services wish list is, are there need lists, and start buying those things. If it means that we dwindle it down to zero, then that's what we've got. Because people are paying into that. So I'm having a difficult time. I need some help with figuring out how that would be okay for our citizens to think that we're paying into something we're supposed to be using. But that's okay, because we're going to bond it out of something where we're having to base debt service payment with jobs. So that puts it in a whole different category when you're comparing it to we don't have enough money to keep this program going, so we're going to have to eliminate this program when we could be paying the debt service out of those particular specified funds. So I don't know if you have a response for that or what we're doing. Well, first of all, I'm honored that I was quoted there, and I apologize for the switch in terminology. It's undesignated, and again, we're talking general fund as a percentage of revenues. That's the way we normalize it across our peer group. We divide it into revenues. Personally, you know, me as an individual, I like fiscal conservatism. I like, you know, using and being a hawk over, and that's why I think I fill this role in watching terminology. However, zero budgeting, we keep no cash reserves in those funds, would impact us when we access the credit markets. There is an optimal percentage. Too high is wrong. Too low is wrong. You know, in my experience, when you're dealing with money, people run lots of details, lots of analysis. So what they've done is they've done a statistical analysis across all their credits and said what causes people to fall, what causes people to go bankrupt, and the sheet are the factors. So when they look through these things, and again, if you have too much liquidity, you might get dinged in management and governance. You're piling up too much money. So in terms of zero cash lying around, undesignated, again, on my second sheet, that would pose a problem if we have an issue. Expenses vary overnight. Revenue does not. So if we have an issue in one of those funds, the credit markets have made the determination that an optimal amount of liquidity will solve those problems. In terms of accessing the credit markets. And again, you know, also stepping back and saying they've done the financial analysis that makes entities default adds a little credence to, you know, between those 10 and 20 percent. Because they have done the analysis and said, you know, this is the optimal range. And I have to be sure that I'm clear, because I wasn't talking about a general fund being at zero. I was talking about that if a person pays into a landfill fund, that we're doing things based on that. We would not have the creation of a landfill or urban services if we didn't have expenses that we need to pay out of that. So that I believe you can get down to a what do we need and how much money do we need to do that and try to equalize that, not how much money can we stack to be able to then reimburse the general fund for a debt that they've incurred because of the existence of the special division of government or whatever that specific need is. So I don't really know. I mean, I understand what you're saying. But I think if you can't look at liquidity only alone, I think you're right. This whole sheet is important. So when we, I think on page four, when it has it listed, and we've talked about this before, when you have debt and you're looking out of how much trouble or whatever our payments would be over the next upcoming years, it assumes current, it probably assumes pretty much a current or very conservative estimate on how much debt you're going to have. The revenue that will be generated, whether it's payroll tax or whatever, but we really need to look at all that size and growth, the type of economy, demographic workforce, and allow it to grow in balance based on that. And that might give a little bit more of a glimmer if we're looking at it holistically instead of only at the debt and the debt ratio. I don't know that we've been having that conversation thoroughly. I think it's important to look at each individual fund and do the ratios. Certainly, you'll probably, you have more flexibility. If you pile up your cash reserves in your general fund, instead of looking at it, undesignated cash in the general fund as a percentage of general fund revenue, you could go more of a policy and say, hey, let's do this ratio as a percentage of overall government functions. And then you do have cash and that ratio would be lower because I've quoted just general fund. So you may want to set some type of policy across government and say, hey, we'll put zero in these various funds. But, I mean, you do run into a lot of issues because then you're, for all those problems, you're going to have to be transferring money over to all those funds every single time. The norm that I've seen is traditionally each fund carries a cash fund balance and I think that's been the norm here. But the bottom line is what the credit markets are saying, you know, you do need to keep liquidity at some point, at some ratio. Councilman Myers. My question is kind of centered around the last two Councilmembers Ellinger and James's comments. And my concern was, and you've kind of clarified that, but I guess my question is, we're using different language here in this room, but do the credit markets understand the difference between our dedicated funds and what's not dedicated? So that, you know, we're starting to understand here and articulate to the citizens that we can bail out from the general fund these other funds, but it won't work the other direction. I will assure you, what did we issue, $70 million in bonds? If somebody's investing $70 million in our community, I will assure you that they understand everything about us. And so that goes to this question, and that is, today we're hearing this new pressure point is liquidity. But a month or so, a month and a half ago when the underwriters were here, they talked about that debt ratio crossing that 15% threshold. We've lost that in the argument. We don't talk about that anymore. All we're talking about is liquidity. So could you juxtapose the liquidity pressure point against what happens a year from now or two years from now when we cross over that 15% to 18% like that spreadsheet showed, which is more than likely going to change our bond rating? Bold. Three things that jumped out at me. The debt burden is exactly what you're talking about. Given the time constraints, that would have been my second point. I just had kind of heard, and we had heard as a team, a lot of should we cash, finance, should we bond. But yes, that is another pressure point in terms of overall debt. I don't have as many ratios. I think the 10% figure there is good as well. They look at debt two types. They look at it as a percentage of your community's assessed value. They look at it as a percentage of your expenses as well. And I think not so much assessed value, but we do have some pressure in the ratio when they look at it as our total expense profile. So I guess my last question will be, do you have any sense of, I know you talked at length about the fact that they don't share their matrix in terms of liquidity, at what point it triggers that change in our rating. But it would seem like that debt ratio is a more hard and fast, if you cross this threshold, it's going to change your bond rating more so than, there may be more fluctuation in the liquidity issue than there is in that debt ratio. Well, what I'm attempting to do here as you go down the chart, economic strength is the most important. I think it's 40, 30, 20, 10. Now, I think that to me those numbers are meaningless, because obviously if you have large amounts of debt, you have issues in management and governance. If you have zero dollars in cash lying around, you have issues in management and governance. I look at the economy, and I look at all three of the other ones. And all three of the other ones are intertwined. And again, when you drill down to the individual numbers, that is, to your point, that is one of the things they wouldn't share exactly how they factor that in. I think from my experience, in the 50 to 100 plus credits I've taken to them, they will notice outliers first, and then as long as you're in a certain range, you know, that's kind of how they'll rate you out. But if you have one outlier, so you're correct, if ours is the outlier and we don't exactly know where that threshold is, that would kick us down. But otherwise, they'll look at ranges and then rate you appropriately and price you appropriately. Okay. Thank you very much. The question was brought up talking about bonding versus paying cash. And I thought perhaps you could explain how you amortize an item based on its useful life, and then you tie in the debt service to be synchronized with that useful life and how you pay it off over the useful life of the item. What's a truck or a Herbie Kirby or whatever? Could you explain how that works? Exactly. You know, as you go through, and again, I know there's been some discussions about the Rosies and the Lennies. What you do for any capital asset in terms of bonding, you get a market you want to pay level debt service. You know, there's fluctuations, you can have it going up, going down, but traditionally everybody issues level debt service. Now, within that, you have a lot of projects with various useful lives. So if something has a five-year useful life, you're going to peg that to individual principles. And then you pay some principle and interest, just like you do on your own. However, we're funding a lot of various things. So you'll peg the shorter-term assets so that the five-year life of the asset, that that piece of the amortization schedule is paid off. So, for instance, if you're paying a million dollars in principle each year, you know, 250 of it might be those smaller-term projects. So that as each individual asset matures, you know, you've pegged it to a maturity. And then the amortization schedule kind of mirrors the life of the asset. And that's kind of what we've tried to do on the sheet. You know, we've looked at each individual deal in a vacuum. And, you know, the Herbies and Lennies, you know, are run on a five-year AM. And, you know, some of the other ones, you know, run on 20, 30-year AM that, you know, that we got from finance when we run these analysis. So that you're not paying, you know, you're 15, 20, you're not paying off an asset that you've already disposed of five, 10 years ago. If a taxpayer is paying for a service and they're going to pay us over five years, basically we're using the product to provide the service and we're being paid for that service over five years. We're depreciating over five years and we're paying the debt over five years so it all synchronizes together. And also to add to that, you know, debt, and I used to sell debt, but debt is a mechanism to allocate cost to the end user. If I'm 95 years old and we build a water treatment plant or a wastewater treatment plant that's got a 50-year usable life, if I'm at, you know, I might object to spending all cash on that. Because it's been cash you've taken from me for 30 years and on an asset that, you know, depending on my life expectancy, won't use for the 50. So not only exactly what you said, but it also allows you to pay it over time for the end users. If I leave the community tomorrow, you know, on any of those projects I paid cash for, I don't necessarily get to use that. It's just an allocation method of costing that you pay off over time. And that's a way to allocate costs associated with the product to people that will be here each year because they're paying for it each year. Thank you again, Mr. Barrow. Anyone else? Senator Lawless. Just so I'm clear, the mayor's proposed budget has requests in it that are not funded unless we bond them to the tune of $16,873,000 plus take about $5 million out of our rainy day fund. Is that correct? I didn't see the connection between the two. I think it's actually $18.4 that's proposed to be bonded. But then the draw to the cash account contingency fund is for budgeting purposes. So I didn't see the connection between the two. Well, basically the mayor's proposed budget has items in it that will require us to bond $18.4 million and draw $5 million out of the rainy day fund to fully fund the mayor's proposed budget. Is that correct? Yes, that's a great point. The $18.4 million is capital. For capital assets you can't borrow for operating. So when you take the market $18.4 in paper, it's about that's a little high. There will be a debt service number. That's all capital. The 5.8 drawn from the economic contingency fund is for operations. Well, I mean, there's some question about what's operating and what's capital. But regardless, I just wanted to be clear that that's what the mayor's proposed budget would include. To fully fund it would include $5.8 million out of the rainy day and bonding $18.4 million in bonds to fully fund the mayor's proposed budget. We're drawing out cash and we are bonding, but the federal tax law would prohibit any bonding for operations. That's a yes or no. Thank you. I think there's some question as to the $18.4 million. Where is that? We're making copies. Okay, so copies are being made of the document that illustrates. I see them slightly different. The general fund portion is the 9.4 and there's roughly 8.8 in urban services. So the 1.4 from FY210, that's part of that 18.4 that was approved last year's carrying forward, right? Okay. And then the 16.9 would be those items that is part of the mayor's proposed budget to be bonded for. But we still have to approve those items. The 1.4 have already been approved and will go forward, correct? Council Member Crosby, you did approve the project already, so what you would be approving if you decided to vote for that is funding it. Okay. Thank you. That was your question, right? Okay. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just want to make a comment and remind Council that we had about a $250 million unfunded liability in our police and firefighters pension fund and we bonded, we approved a $70 million bond to shore up the financing on that. That is one of the reasons that we're bonding very little this year and why our percentage of bonded and deadness related to our revenue has gone up this year is because of that commitment to take care of our police and firefighters and their pension funding. We didn't get into detail on that today, but I think we have to keep that in perspective to how much we're bonding, $18 million. This year's budget, that's really a minimal amount. We normally would bond a lot more than that. Thank you. All right. If there are no further questions or comments, we can move on to the next item. Okay. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just want to follow up if I can just to clarify. When we were with the sheet here that has the 18.3 and it has the approved for FY2010, that 1.4 we've approved but we have yet bonded those, that's correct? That's correct. Okay. I just want to make sure of that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Does anyone want to clarify that question? Is it necessary or not? No? All right. The next item on our agenda is the list of capital projects approved but not funded that are included on pages 8 and 9. Well, Jerry, I know we just looked at it, but I think the purpose of this is just to confirm that we know what we have looked at in the past and considered and approved but not funded. Are there any further questions or comments regarding that, Jerry? This was a listing that if you remember a couple of weeks ago we had included as an agenda item for the council planning meeting that was going to be on the fifth floor conference room. That meeting got counseled. So I wanted to make sure that you all had the opportunity to look at everything related to bonding and debt. And this is one area that you didn't have the opportunity to look at and ask questions. I thought it was important to put it on the agenda so you could spend a few moments and review it and if you had some questions. And like we say, although funding is tight, you still should be able to look at the individual projects and if you have some questions about it now would be the time to ask. Any questions? Thank you, Vice Mayor. Jerry? Under purchase of development rights, it says, I guess I don't understand the headings. One says budget for three million and the other says activity to date. And then comments portion already bonded. What portion is already bonded and what do those columns mean? Bill can answer that. Council Member James, this is the schedule that we used in presenting and deciding on the last bond issue when we had the over hundred million. So the headings are all from that work schedule that we met on in October, November, December and January. What I did was try to take out all the projects that were funded through that bond issue and I missed one. And then the question that was asked by council was there were some comments made in those meetings that if we were to come back and issue additional bonds this spring, what would be a priority? So I tried to under the comment section notate that as well as anything that was partially funded. So your question regarding the actual line item PDR 2010, the original approved budget was three million dollars. The amount that was actually bonded was two million dollars. Okay. Does that help? That does help. Thank you. Thanks, Vice Mayor. Council Member Hanson. Bill, I had another question. I just wanted, what was our federal, I think it's federal dollars that matched the PDR program? I think it's one to one. So in other words, we bonded two million and we had two million dollars that was matched either state or federal monies. Okay. Okay. Thanks. And we also found out, we report out on Tuesday, but we found out normally they don't find out their match, their before we do our budget. And evidently they've already found out their match. So we know exactly what they're getting. And we'll be prepared to report on that on Tuesday. Council Member Gordon. I have a couple of detailed questions, Bill. On this list of approved but not funded capital projects, two items I'm interested in right now. Down about the second to last category, public safety, on that page eight. The item for the regional EOC 2009, 20 years, and the item for the regional EOC 2009, 20 years. 6.5 million dollar budget activity to date, 3.8 million already bonded. How is that money being used and are we moving forward on that project? Or maybe you're not the person to ask. Maybe it's Commissioner Bennett. I can tell you the 3.8 was spent on design. All of it. Most of the 3.8, Council Member Gordon, was spent on design. A substantial piece of money, though, I think it was a little over 800,000, was spent on site acquisition for the site out of Cold Stream. But the rest of it is for expenses we had incurred up to the point where we pulled the plug for the construction manager, the systems integrator, and the design team. So that money has all been spent on those two items, design and site acquisition. Thank you. And then my other question, Bill, is on the general services, and maybe Commissioner Cole will also want to weigh in on this block up toward the top. The government-centered design 2010 item, 20-year bond, $4 million budgeted. A million dollar activity has already been bonded. Has that money been spent and for what? The answer is the same. It was for design. Because I think since we're discussing this list, it's a good idea to get these big items discussed. We have currently not spent any of that million dollars. It was bonded this spring and our task force is meeting tomorrow. Okay. And did that bond specify that that $1 million had to be spent on this specific project? Or is it not specified in the bond? I believe it is specified, but I'm not exactly sure how it is worded. Linda? In other words, could that be spent on another bonded project or not? The bond documents, depending on what the bond documents actually say, how specific we are, I think we might have talked about this one other time. If it says specifically we're bonding for design on this building, we would need to spend it on that. The other thing that factors in, and I know a few of you have asked me this question before, if it's a de minimis amount, if it was $10,000 or $20,000, we have the ability to move those kind of things around. This would not be considered a de minimis amount, so we would need to look at what the actual bond document says and we're happy to do that. And we can put that as a follow-up back to you. Okay. I appreciate that. And so that debt service, is that debt service then built into the budget already? Yes, that's correct. Okay. Thank you very much. One thing, we're going to report this out here in just a minute with the general services link. As we dug into that and asked that same question, Council Member Gorton, the phase one and phase two, which is what that million dollars was earmarked for or designated for, it looks to be that the best estimates are that that's going to run about $500,000 to $600,000, not the full million. So one of the things I was going to ask for you to come back with is, one, what can we do, what is the restriction around that particular bond, and specifically, if we spend $600,000, what can we do with the $400,000 if it's for something, can it be used for something else, or can we use it to pay down the bond, those types of things. So if you don't mind bringing that back as well. We'd be happy to do that. Mr. Stennett. Commissioner, and to add on to that real quick, the more important piece of all that is, what is the debt service amount for that bond in this budget? It's just the one million. So you can bring that with it. I'll put it with it. I mean, 3.4 percent, $34,000? All right. That would just be the interest portion. Okay. Councillor Gordon. The salt barn, 2009, 20-year bond for $2 million, and the portion that's already bonded is $174,000, $124,000. Now, how has that been spent, or has it? My understanding, it was spent, but I would have to get with Mike Webb to tell you the exact amount or the exact purpose. Okay. And if I recall, some other circumstances surrounding completing that whole project. So I would like very much to know if that's been spent and how it was spent. Okay. Anyone else? Councillor James. I have a question here that states about county attorney operation capital. Could somebody remind me of what that $7,200 was for? I don't remember. Was it something about a build out of an office space? I have those notes in my office, not here. I believe there was a proposal from the county clerk to build a separate climate control, which was put on hold. That's the one above that. Right. I think the county attorney may have been computer related, but I'd have to look at the notes to see. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Okay. Hearing none, we can move on then. Commissioner, can you come up for just a second? Last week, or the week before, I asked you a question about the things that we had already bonded and had already moved too far down the tracks to stop that from happening. So I guess let me ask in a different way. The projects here that we approved for funding, some of them have already been bonded and some of them haven't been, it looks like. The ones that have been bonded, for example, the million dollars on the government center. Part of that maybe has already been spent. But if it hadn't been spent, but it's already been bonded, what would happen if we decided not to do that now? That's what I was referring to when we were talking, Council Member Gordon asked the question. We would have to look at the specific bond document to see how specific it is. Then we have to assess is that a de minimis amount that would be second. If it wasn't then, I think, and Ryan, you may even have more on this than I do. It's been my understanding then is it going to be used for a generally like purpose is the next kind of litmus test. So I don't mean to not be more specific than that. My question is a little bit different than that. What if we just said we're not going to use it for this project and we don't want to use it for anything else and we just want to refund it. How does that work? I guess you have two options. You could transfer the money over to, if any of these projects you do elect to fund, you could apologize. Transfer the money over to a new project, assuming we do all our checks with the bond council. Clearly states these projects over here we could not transfer it over. Your only other option is to redeem bonds. I'm sorry, say that again. Redeem bonds. Your principal that matures every year, you go out and you grab some of those back. They don't want to pay us to buy our paper for 20 years. They don't want it paid off tomorrow. Typically 10 years. So the bonds were just issued, so we would take that million, stick it in the bank. We generate interest on that. That's secure, that we'd feel comfortable with. So we would have some negative arbitrage. I don't know what that number is, but it would cost us a little bit of money to back out a transaction, assuming we couldn't transfer it over to a different project. Okay. Is there a prepay penalty? There may be. I can't say for certain until we look at the bond documents. Okay. So on this deal, no. There's no prepayment penalty after 10 years. That's what Ryan said. So now I'm gathering that actually for any of the monies that aren't spent that have already been bonded, you're going to, Commissioner Rumpke is going to check on whether those can be transferred to another project. Now, it seems to me that I had this question. You said then we could look at transferring to another project. But I'm thinking that the purchase of development rights is a little different because they have matching money that's based on our expenditure. So in that case, do you see that as different since there's already approved matching money? Federal and state funds? It's not different from a bond perspective, but as a business decision, clearly different, yes. So if that weren't done, the matching money would have to be given back. Is that correct? Linda mentioned in that bond document there's specific language surrounding it. So I don't think we could pull back on that one. So that bond has to be spent on PDR and it has already pulled in the matching money? Yes. Council Member James. Thank you, Mayor. I'm not sure who my question goes to, but with the PDR matching money, the matching money, does that go towards paying off the debt, or does that go for the program and payment of property owners who are participating in the program? Okay. So my question was, does the matching money help to pay off the debt, or does the matching money only go to the property owners who participate with the program? The matching money goes directly to the property owners. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Vice Mayor. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I've had a couple of people ask this, and I'm not quite sure. I think when I looked in the budget book, this is the answer. But I'll ask you all, under the Public Works Administration, the TIF phase one utility design, the four million, the underground utilities, and he can obviously go through all the specifics, but we would be receiving collateral for putting the up front investment in this project in the form of a first mortgage lien on the property. Mr. Simpson, is this you? Can you follow up with that by chance? Thank you, Bruce. I didn't see you back there or I wouldn't have walked to the podium. He was ducking and weaving back there. I'm sorry. Not that I don't always pay attention to your questions, but I've got a zone change in Clark County in about 45 minutes. I'll keep it short. There were some questions about the Public Works Administration TIF phase one utility design, the four million. I thought that was what you're here about. Could you tell us what that takes into account? Sure. Of course you all approved the TIF, I think it was back in December of last year, in connection with the Angliana project, which had extensive review and economic forecast. At the time we applied for the TIF and went through everything and went through the initial reviews with financial institutions. I'm speaking now on behalf of my client who met with all these folks. Everything looked good to go in terms of his entire package. It's a $90 million project. And everything is good to go, except that when they got into reviewing where the utilities would have to be buried, the transmission lines and so forth, that's in a public right of way. And the banks would not lend money for that collateral since our client did not own that property, would not own the property. And it would have to be buried on the city's property. So that expenditure is what we had met with Mr. Kelly and the mayor on about bonding. And in exchange for bonding that money, we would give a first mortgage lien, superior lien on the property. And also all of the proceeds, the first proceeds from the TIF application once those monies came in. The project is set up right now so that it's expected that those funds would be generated and the government's investment would be paid off within five years, if not before. So our conclusion is, and John Ferris who did our economic study, and based upon the tenants that we have lined up to come in, that the government would be repaid that money with the interest within three to five years. And it is a secured loan in terms of a mortgage on the property. The initial design phase, it's about I think four to $500,000 would be something the government would come up with. But again, it's all secured by TIF monies. We would pledge an amended agreement with the state and with the local government so that the first monies that come in from the sales tax and other taxes generated from that site would go to this $4 million to pay it off. Thank you for the explanation. The Vice Mayor had to step out for a moment. So, council members, do you have any other questions on this? I would just ask on the council links on the bonds, if you all as a group of the link can talk about the bonds with your specific departments and if the link endorses it or don't endorse that bond, that would be helpful. As well, instead of going through each one maybe today, but the link process will hopefully clarify a lot of that, too. Thank you. Is there any other comment or question from council members? If not, we'll move on from capital. And the next item is the link report out general services. Do you want a five-minute break? But don't we have revenue discussion first? It's not on the agenda. Did you want to do the golf fees and is that what you're referring to? It should have been on there because we put it out for this meeting. So it's revenue specifically golf fees and aquatics fees, is that correct? It's only 2-1-1, yes. I think it's going to be part of Council Member McCord's presentation. My report out was going to be, there's a number of motions that are just more or less moving things into committees and asking for reports later and so forth like that. But I figured it would take the bulk of our time. Okay. Well, there is a motion on the floor to discuss the revenue piece that's remaining, the aquatics and golf fees. Is there any other comment on the motion? If not, and Council Member Lane seconded it. Could I make a comment, please? I just would ask if Council Member McCord feels like we need to wait and put it in context of the entire general services report out. It might fit better. Like I say, this will go very quickly as far as our report out. I think that I do agree, Council Member Feigl, that it probably will make a lot more sense in the context of that. And I would say, Council Member Gordon, that this will take probably ten minutes to report out. Let me ask this, Council Member Stennett, do you want to withdraw your motion or leave it on the table? Well, I'll withdraw for now. I mean, we can go through the link process, but we really need to solidify revenue before we start talking about expenses. Okay. So there's no motion, Vice Mayor, on the floor, and so we're ready to discuss the link report out. And let's proceed with the link report. Mr. McCord. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I think you made this a very smooth process, and again, I applaud you all's efforts as we went through this link process in looking at where we had opportunity and what we needed to save and what were some opportunities that we had that maybe this budget forced. And I think that's one of the lessons of this economic time is that when you're in a crisis, as we've said before, don't waste a crisis. I think that you're going to see there's a couple of things that come out of this link report that may not have ever surfaced under different circumstances. If we were flush with cash, we never would have looked at things maybe this creatively in some of these regards. So with that, I want to make sure everyone has this before I get started. I'm going to move the camera if you all want to move up to the front, because I imagine that we'll have questions for you, and we'll save some time having you close to the mic. Has that gotten past you? We started with building maintenance and fleet services in that area, and the bullet points are really what the recommendations of the council link are. And at the beginning you'll see that while this is under the general government side, not under general services side, our link strongly supports the support of the facility software that's under Rama Shop. We've already bought the software. We have lots and lots of properties that the government owns that we don't really know. We didn't really know what we owned until recently, and now we see that there's a lot of revenue that we may be missing. It could be in the tens of thousands or it could be in the hundreds of thousands. And so the council link wants to strongly support that when that comes forward from the CIO's budget and general government. But under our budget portion, there is a position of facilities planner that was put into the budget that we strongly support. We support that. It's already in the budget. It's not an add-on. But we want to point out that their job is to populate that software and to look for these types of savings and look for these types of efficiencies. Inside of our building structure, there's already $16 million worth of facilities needs to be fixed. Things that are broken that are kind of band-aided together. This $1.1 million is basically put in there so that if there's a band-aid that's needed, there's money that we have to put towards that. This bond also allows us the opportunity that if nothing breaks between now and the end of the year, we do have some revenue that we can use or some bonding capability we can use for some of the projects we may or may not be able to get to today. One of the other significant savings opportunities that does not impact this budget, but is something that this council needs to take up, is our fleet and our fleet sharing opportunities. We have at any given time, I think, Commissioner, we have 70 to 90 vehicles sitting in downtown. And there's some real inefficiencies with the way we do our fleet right now that we want to take a look at. that we want to take a look at and we want this Council to have some time to take a look at before the end of the year. So I'm going to make a motion right now that Commissioner Cole, Commissioner Rumke bring forward a presentation to the full Council, either at a Council of the Whole or a work session, after June 15th but before Council break, so in that month between June 15th and July 15th, to include but not be limited to the following. in the downtown area, take-home vehicles outside of any collective bargaining agreements, those are not what we're looking at but vehicles that are take-home vehicles right now outside of that, administrative vehicles and the types of vehicles in our fleet. And I think that what we'll see is that going into next year's budget, if we have an opportunity as a Council to look at this, we might have some huge efficiencies saved and there may be some dollars there that we don't even realize that we have. So I make a motion now for that to be brought forward in a presentation between June 15th and July 15th. So moved. There's a motion and a second. Is there discussion on the motion? Hearing none, Councilman Martin. Vice Mayor, I guess one of my questions is do we have a handle on, just for information purposes, how many vehicles are covered under the collective bargaining? Because your request is that those are outside and I don't really have a handle on how many. That's what the presentation is for, so that you'll actually know what numbers we have in our entire fleet, what's inside and outside, what we can do and what we can't do. Well, this motion says outside of any collective bargaining. I guess I would ask that we include collective bargaining just so we know what it is. That would be fine. Would that be a friendly amendment? I'd accept that, sure. Thank you. Is there any other discussion on the motion? Councilman Wallace. I have a question about the $4 million sale of property. We're not there yet. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, this motion is for just this presentation. I have a question then about the position of facility planner. We have a motion on the floor. There's a motion on the floor that relates to the fleet chair. Oh, I'm sorry. Never mind. Okay. Is there any other discussion? Can you repeat the motion? Yes, for Commissioner Cole and Commissioner Rumke to bring forward a presentation to the full council between June 15th and July 15th to include but not be limited to the following, an inventory and count of vehicles in the downtown area, take-home vehicles, now inside and outside of collective bargaining, administrative vehicles, and the types of vehicles in our fleet. So moved. All right. As amended by? As amended by Councilman Martin. Yes. Thank you. You got that. Okay. All right. Is there any further discussion? Yes. Councilman James. Thank you. Councilman McCord, could we also add or would it be appropriate, I'm not sure where we're really going with it, but it would be appropriate to include within the presentation the amount of expenditures for, like, gas reimbursement and such during this? Absolutely. That's why I say to include but not be limited to. So anything that you feel like is pertinent, I would ask that we'd send that to them. But, yes, thank you. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Vice Mayor. All right. Seeing no further discussion, we're ready for a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. The motion carries. Moving forward, I know Councilmember Lawless had a question about the facilities plan or position, so if you want to go ahead and ask that before we get into other things, that would be appropriate. I'd like to know if this is a new position, and will it also create the elimination of another position? It is a position that was funded in this year's budget but was held on to and was not filled due to budget constraints. Okay. And it doesn't eliminate any other position? It does not. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Moving forward to the next bullet, the Council met and discussed the issue that we took up I guess a week and a half ago now about the sale of property, the $4 million number, and we support that number. And let me just kind of explain a little bit. I know that we had a lengthy discussion both outside and inside of closed session regarding that, and right now there are 29 properties roughly, Commissioner Cole, that we're doing title searches on, pieces and parcels of property that could be sold, could be held on to. The $4 million is a placeholder number. It's a number that we feel like after our review that there's a number of ways that we could get there. It's a number that if the economy is not as dire or, you know, it doesn't stay stagnant, that we don't necessarily have to find that $4 million from the sale of property. But at the end of the day, the LINCS is supporting that number as a placeholder number, and with that I'll entertain whatever questions that we have or however further we want to go, because I know that's an issue that many council members want to talk about, Vice Mayor. And let me ask you a question. Did we pass that number last time we were together? So it's already been accepted by the council, so let's move on. Parliamentarian, I'll. What was the question? I was asking if that number was passed by the council as accepting that number in the budget. And I was not at that meeting. I had to leave during that portion, and I want to make sure that it was passed or not passed. Yeah, we voted, and there was three against, and the rest for nine to three, I think it was. Okay. So as a matter, again, as a matter of the LINCS, we support that number. It's already been voted on. Some of these things are kind of cart and horse since what we did over the last couple of weeks. The last thing on that page is the government-centered bond, which we discussed a little earlier. Council Member Gorton brought it up. We're going to have more information coming back from Commissioner Remke regarding that. Council Member James. Thank you. I have a question about you're strongly supporting. What does that mean, and how do we? Are you going to have resolutions stating that, or is that just you're just letting us know that you're good to go with it? We're good to go with it. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Vice Mayor. Moving on to the second page under Parks and Rec, one of the things that came out that I alluded to a little earlier that is probably an opportunity that would not have shown itself had we not been in this situation financially. When we started looking at where are the areas inside of parks that we might cut further, and we started looking under the Parks Land Acquisition Fund, that fund was established in the 80s. It was redone by a resolution, or by ordinance, excuse me, in 1995 and was tightened up. And basically the gist of that resolution, or ordinance, excuse me, is that it's an exaction fee from the developers in the expansion zone. That money goes in to buy new park land. And in that fund right now, there's about $1.3 million to buy land. And as we all know, and becoming more familiar with, our park system, we're a little bit land-rich, cash-poor. We own lots of land, and we can't maintain that land. We can't develop that land for some of the facilities that we want. And so one of the things that we wanted to do with this particular fund was to take a look at it further with law, the planning department, the development community, because they have to sign off. It is something that they structured to look at that and maybe change some of the language to Parks Land Acquisition and Development Fund. And so what I want to do is I want to make a motion at this point in time for a presentation and recommendations to the full council prior to July 15, 2010, for the council break. So moved. Motion and a second. Discussion on the motion. Council Member Gordon. Yes. I'm going to support the motion just for historic and only because it's a presentation. And just for historic purposes, we've done twice. We have, with the written agreement of the development community, gone back and used the parks acquisition money for operations and repairs and maintenance. And we did go to the developers to ask their permission and agreement with that. And so I would like in the presentation materials, which will be given to us ahead of time, to be sure that we have the ordinance which drives this and that we have full notification to the development community. Absolutely. All right. Is there any other discussion? Ready for a vote then. All in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. I think that it's significant to note that I placed a call to Todd Johnson just for that very reason, Council Member Gordon, that we do need to be very careful in what we're doing, but from a presentation standpoint, the bottom line is we have $1.3 million that we have in a parks fund that really for the last 15 years, that fund has done exactly what it set out to do, which was acquire land. And now that we see we've got opportunity to maybe put in flat surfaces on those lands for fields and some other things, that may provide monies that we don't necessarily have to go and find from somewhere else that we actually have it and can use it with just a change of some language. But it definitely needs to be fully vetted. I'm going to skip the next one, the fees increase in golf and pools, because we're going to come back to that at the very end. The golf courses and golf carts. The Council link supports the closure of Avon Golf Course. That's closure of that golf course nets out a savings of $70,000 from operational expenses and so forth. There's actually an additional savings because there's a bonding for golf carts total that's a little over $400,000 for golf carts across the city, and there's a portion of those that were going to be over at Avon, so actually there is an additional savings. There's also another opportunity in this to partner with the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs to maximize that acreage for recreational use that it can't in its current form. So with that, I want to make a motion that we close Avon Golf Course after the July 4th, 2010 weekend, so the closure would be effective July 5th, 2010. So moved. There's a motion and a second. All right. I have a question. And there is a discussion. All right. First, Council members, and then we have members of the audience who want to speak to this issue, so we'll yield to them as well. Council Member James. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member McCord, can you talk a little bit about the opportunity for partnership with the Department of Military Affairs and what conversations already existed and how Elmer County Government would be involved moving forward? Those properties, their property and ours adjoin. They have a number of, I guess, opportunities or things that they are entertaining as far as how could they be used better for maybe returning veterans, veterans maybe with disabilities coming back, war wounded, and so there's a number of things that they have ideas on. Certainly we all know that there's a great deal of need for flat land space for soccer and lacrosse and some other sports, flag football and things like that. So the conversations have been fairly preliminary at this part. I know Jerry has talked with them, and they have a real interest in doing something that, again, would kind of maximize that land, maybe in a form that it can't be used in a golf course. It may be that some of that golf course is used for a hole or two of handicapped golfing for those returning veterans with disabilities. But at this point in time, there's nothing hard and fast, but we do have an opportunity to potentially partner with them, use some of their resources to help us develop this so it's not just all on us. But that's what that meant. Was there a discussion about why this was maybe an underutilized golf course? I don't know if it's underutilized, but I'm guessing with the net savings of a closure it probably was. Was there a discussion about why that was? Jerry, do you want to speak to that? You probably can address that a little bit better than I can. Yes, counsel, we have six golf courses, as you know. Avon is a nine-hole golf course. We have a par three at Meadowbrook. There's a great deal of pressure on public golf across the country and in Fayette County and Kentucky as well. Golf is generally overbuilt today relative to what it was 20 years ago when you had to wait five hours to play a golf round at Lakeside. When we were doing 55,000 rounds a year there, now we're doing closer to 30. So it's our intention in parks to try and reduce our expenditures relative to our revenues in golf to ensure that we're being profitable, that we're not using public funds to support a business that has private sector competitors. Avon is simply an underutilized course relative to our capacity. We do, I think, 7,000 rounds out there a year. It's an opportunity for us to turn money into other recreation amenities. It's not that we don't like Avon and the folks that play there or what our folks have done. They've done a great job turning what used to be a cornfield when the military officers club left us with four-foot tall grass there and said, would you like it? Here's a golf course. We have not been able to make it profitable. We've tried. We believe that the demand for golf will continue to be solved for some time. So we see this as an opportunity to reallocate resources, quite honestly, into other endeavors and to put other recreational amenities there that the increasing employment strength of the bluegrass field out there, those folks can do other things. Not that some of them, many of them don't already currently enjoy golf, but we think we can put other things on the ground there that more people will use. It's simply a situation like we have in swimming pools, where there are some pools that folks over time have stopped going to. So we want to reallocate that land to other resources. Okay. And what is the nearest golf course from Avon if this were to close? Mike, do you want to answer that question? Lakeside golf course. How many miles is that, do you think? Mike, do you want to speak to that? Twelve miles. Okay. All right. Thanks, Jerry. Thanks, Vice Mayor. We have four council members that have indicated they want to speak. Okay. We have Council Member Blues and then Gordon. So you do want to. Okay. Council Member Blues, Council Member, hold on just a second. Council Member Crosby was up first. Then Gordon, then Council Member Beard, and then our two members of the audience, Mr. Williams and Mr. Logan. All right. Good. Sorry, Dr. Blues. When I talk, my name goes away. And when I don't want to talk, it appears. I've got the possessed screen today. Mr. Hancock, I have a few questions. First, I know at our last meeting, I believe, we mentioned, had we looked into any opportunities with private golf management companies to take over and maybe lease this course from us and run the golf course and keep it as a golf course? That's a conversation that I think Council Member McCord is going to put to the Services Committee. It's not a question that can be answered in a phone call or two. It's something that we will address and take a look at. It's not something that happens quickly. And then you mentioned something that I had not heard until you just talked about it, is that the intention with this golf course is to turn it into other uses to generate revenue? No. I don't know that there are revenue opportunities that are similar to what we've done at Avon. We've lost money at Avon, but we generated $140,000 a year, I believe it is, in revenue. I don't believe we can put walking paths and Frisbee golf and those kinds of passive activities that don't have dedicated commitments to civil service people and facilities and electric and all the rest of that. I don't believe in the short term we can replace the revenue. But at the same time, we're going to take out an even greater number that represents the expense. We're not going to turn Avon into a revenue-generating space, in my opinion, in the near term, if we close the golf course. Okay, I think that's all I have. Thank you. Council Member Bluth. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member McCord or Jerry, either one, what's the rationale for closing on July 5th? I gather that the golf course is open now. So if we're going to close it, why not close it now or next month or whatever? We wanted to, we were going to create a date certain and just gave some time for folks to know, so it wasn't just a today type thing. We just picked that because of the July 4th weekend seemed like kind of a last opportunity for golf and so forth, but it doesn't necessarily have to be July 5th. Quite honestly, Council Member Bluth, we recommended that it be closed June 30th. It's not a bad idea. There's a couple people from Avon here. They think that would be a great opportunity for them to use the course one more time. And in all candor, we'll actually make some money if we leave it open an extra week. We make money in June, July, and August. We lose money the rest of the year. If you're all feeling benevolent, we could keep it open through Labor Day. But keeping it open an extra week, our expenses will probably be $3,500 or so, and our revenue will be $4,500 or so. So we'll actually make some money and allow the community to use it a little bit longer. And, Dr. Bluth, we've already allocated money until June 30th in this budget, so the new budget wouldn't start until then. It just seemed like a logical time. Thank you. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Jerry, without getting into too many specifics, because I know that maybe public discussion of it isn't appropriate, although I have had fairly extensive conversation with Steve Collins, I wondered if you could illuminate for us this opportunity for partnership with the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs, and if we were to authorize closing July 4th, how soon that partnership would begin. They're very seriously interested in growing their number of employees out there. They would like to see us improve the non-golf amenities there. We have a screen house that's in serious disrepair. They've already committed to painting and re-roofing and screening it, making it a visitor center, allowing the spouses of employees go and visit and do employee cookouts and all that sort of business. We've got sand volleyball and tennis there. They'd like to see those things renovated so it becomes more of a space for their employees to recreate. Whether they'll be able, from a serious budgeting standpoint, to help invest in trails or those sorts of things remains to be seen. It's really a little early on their radar as well. But they're interested in making the entryway a more visitor-friendly, employee-friendly location. They also have a serious security need that was going to impinge on parts of the golf course as well. Their DOD contractor employees there are doing activities that require a greater security buffer. So they're going to already want to impinge on some of the land that the golf course uses. So I don't have a specific answer of what the 11 things are we might do with them, but they have a serious interest that goes all the way to the possibility of building a hotel there where they could bring in contractors and people from around the country to take week-long courses that assist in putting the infrastructure technology in place for the DOD activities that they're doing there. But they haven't been able to identify what those things are. They have expressed some concerns as well as some opportunities for us. The concerns are they're not interested in having large crowds of people there at any one time with binoculars and telescopes looking over the fence at what might be going on over there. On the other hand, the opportunities they've provided us are that they are no longer as concerned about, quote, disturbing the soil as they were several years ago when there was a soccer, serious soccer proposal put on the table ten years ago. The folks there said, no, we've got stuff in the ground. We really don't want you coming in and moving dirt around. That no longer is the case. They feel much more open about that. In fact, they're building roads and parking lots out there now. The partnership I think will grow, Councilman, but I don't know exactly what role it will take. But they're seriously interested in providing recreation to their employees and their families. It sounds like maybe in answer to the question they wouldn't necessarily be prepared to do something on July 5th. They're not going to write us a check on July 5th. They're going to work hand-in-hand with us and try and provide some immediate repair and maintenance services for us. And we're going to try and budget some things together. And so there would be some revenue, if you will, to the urban county government? You said writing a check. There might be some cost sharing involved. I don't see them writing a check. They'd like us to write a check. Steve is very revenue oriented out there. We do own the land. No. The state of Kentucky does. That was my next question. So the state of Kentucky would lease to them. Is that correct? The state of Kentucky has whatever relationship they have with the Department of Military Affairs, and they are crafting an agreement to us to provide recreation in perpetuity, which is part of the deed, I think is the right word, under which that parcel has been granted to us through the state. It came from the Department of Defense as part of base closure activities over the last 20 years. So it's required that it be used for recreational purposes. And is the net savings of $70,000 on an annual basis, or is that simply? Yes, ma'am. It's an annual number. Yes, ma'am. And then it seems to me recently, well, maybe within the last five years, you've done a study at Parks as to the usage of Avon golf course. And I seem to remember that a high percentage of the usage is from out-of-county folks. Am I remembering that correctly or not? We don't have a study that tells us that. That's anecdotal. Donnie Davis and Mike Fields, who are intimately involved in knowing our customers there, believe that about half the customers are from out-of-county. But we don't have data on that. We don't have in-and-out-of-county rates to know that. Okay, so that's not data specific. So, Jerry, how much of a burden would it be for this opportunity for partnership to progress if the council decided to keep the golf course open this summer until Labor Day? I don't think it would impact our relationship with the Department of Military Affairs at all. There's no urgency in their mind to convert it to something else. They want to continue to partner with us. And as far as loss of money or savings of money, if the council were to keep it open until Labor Day? I haven't run the numbers because, quite honestly, I hadn't seen the report out on this issue until today. But in our chatting in the back of the room, we expect we could break even or better in three months, June, July, and August, to provide, and even through September, to provide a golf opportunity. But I don't have a number to give you what that would be. But we believe we would not lose money. Well, given what you have told me, I move to amend the motion to close the golf course after Labor Day. Motion and a second to amend the motion to close the golf course after Labor Day. Is there discussion on that motion? Mr. McCord? Thank you, Council Member Gordon. You brought up something very interesting about, you know, who golfs there and how many are Fayette County and so forth like that, and there's not been any hard data. But council members have received a fax from a gentleman that is basically a petition saying, hey, don't close this. And I went through and highlighted all the ones that are from out of county. And if you look at that sheet, these sheets, they're pretty yellow. And I'll pass this around for council members to see. Certainly, I'm fine with leaving it open through the end of the season. That's not the issue. But I do think that the truth bears out that this is being used by a lot of folks from out of county. You know, what percentage and so forth. But the fact is that, you know, if you feel like we can break even, that's something that we can keep it open until then. I don't have a problem supporting that. Okay. There's continuing discussion on the motion. Council member, just show me a hand. Show of hands on this because the monitor has got others on it. For discussion on the motion. This is a discussion on the motion to amend. Okay. Council member Beard, then council member Stennett, council member Ellinger. As far as talking about the end of season, Labor Day is not the end of the golf season. Somebody did. That's what I said. Yeah. What about the fall, the early fall? Again, I didn't see this until today. So I had a chance to look at a month-by-month P&L. But certainly we do greater numbers of golf in the summer months than we do any other time of the year. You get an awful lot of good roll in September and October. We get some rain, too. I mean, I'm not arguing one way or the other. Just summer is obviously better than spring, fall, or winter. Okay. That's all I have. I have some other comment on the whole broad issue of golf. We'll go ahead and get this out of the way. Okay. Council member Stennett. Gary, what did you say the revenue numbers, we can break even for the summer months? What's the annual revenue? You said $140,000. Yeah. And what portion of that will we get? But we net out a negative $70,000 a year. I'm trying to get the savings. If we're making $140,000, is that gross? That's gross. So our net is a negative $70,000? Yes. And so the summer months, how do they play into that? Again, I can't stand here and give you a P&L on something that I wasn't prepared to take a look at. Are we confident we can break even for the summer? I think we'll make money in the summer, several thousand dollars. I don't think we'll lose any money in the summer at all. We'll make money. But I don't know what exactly that number is. We have a big budget. We're talking $70,000 here. But I think the bigger discussion is, well, are we going to privatize it? Are we going to keep it as golf? That's a long-term discussion. I'll just leave it at that, and we'll get through this motion first. Mr. Williams or Mr. Logan, we're going to get to you all in just a minute. All right? We're not voting on it right now. We're voting on just an amendment. Yeah. Mr. Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I was actually going to see if the gentleman had some insight that they could provide to us, that Mr. Hancock doesn't know about the revenues that come in. If they would, that would be helpful. If they don't, then that's fine. But if we're making money on it, I think it's kind of a no-brainer not to keep it open, at least until Labor Day, if you think that's the truth. We will not lose any money staying open June, July, and August. That I'm confident of. I can support that motion. Thank you. Vice Mayor, quick question. And this goes to the bonding of the golf carts. So if we're leaving it open until then, are we still taking that piece out of the equation because we're going to close it, I guess, camera? If we stay open three more months, those golf carts will survive. Okay. We wouldn't buy them in July anyway. Okay. All right. Does anybody else want to speak on the motion to amend? All right. Mr. Lane. Thank you. You know, I have had some hesitancy about, you know, closing parks. But in this particular case, there are several issues. I think when you look at the golf industry and a macro overview for our area, we do, we are over-golfed in the central Kentucky area. I've had a number of, you know, owners of golf courses saying that, number one, the urban county government is subsidizing golf. The rates that we charge are below the market rate, which impacts the privately owned golf courses here. And then the fact that many of the people that use this course are, you know, I did review the petition that came in. A lot of those people are from out of Fayette County. And, you know, I'd like to see it be used for something else. I mean, there's a huge demand for soccer fields, for example. Maybe there would be a possibility some soccer fields could go out there. But at the same time, I think if we're going to transition out of it, that it would be appropriate to go ahead and extend the termination date through September. That would allow the people that play golf out there to have a little bit more time before we did close it out. So I would support the amendment. Thank you. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Sorry. It's okay. I would also like to see us extend this because, as you said, I think it was Council Member Stinnett who mentioned that if we're going to look into possibly making it private, that would also give us time to put this in committee and get started on that work. So we would be able to, before making a decision to close something that we haven't had time to look at in committee, because we're rushed to approve the budget, I think seems a little backward. So I would support keeping it open and also being able to look at it within committee kind of at parallel times. And just regarding who it serves, I guess it doesn't really matter to me who plays golf where in our community. Just oftentimes when they're playing golf, when people come in, just like doing other activities, whether it's a soccer tournament or whatever, they eat in our restaurants and support our local economy. So I guess as long as it's making money overall and not losing money, we get the benefits of people also coming in and spending money in other places. Thank you. Council Member Feigl. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I don't recall if we had this discussion during the LYNX meeting, but it just occurred to me, do folks that live out of county pay a higher fee to play golf on our courses, or do they pay the same fee? Ten years ago in our original master plan it was recommended that we go to in and out of county rates, have a different rate for county residents than we would charge out of county residents. We still don't have an easy mechanism for doing that. We don't have connectivity on the golf courses to scan cards, for instance, or to issue cards and all that business. We also found that the consultant overestimated the percentage of people that played our in and out of county courses. Our in-town golf courses from outside the county. We had an awful experience ten years ago, and we've not been able to get back to that. It's a good idea. It's widely recommended. Technology today is much more inexpensive to allow us to do that. But at this time we do not have in and out of county rates. Okay. Thank you very much. Council Member Beard, you're up next. You already said what you wanted to say. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I was glad to hear you say you had some concern about the private golf courses. My understanding has been brought to my attention anyway that Kearney Hills has got a sale going on out there. There's coupons being issued to people to cut the price of a round of golf. Is that correct? No, sir. Yeah. Is that your question? The answer is no, that's not correct. Council Member Beard, the discussion is on the amendment on the date. Okay. I've already made my comment on that. Okay. We're still on the question of the amendment, and I'm showing Council Member James and Senate. Do you all want to speak on the date? Mine doesn't have to do with the amendment. It has to do with the original. Okay. All right. I was just going to ask on the amendment if we approve it. I know our budgeting folks are here. Do we still net out $70,000 savings? No, that would be less. Well, you said we make money, though, for the summer. We think, yes, that there would be some savings and some increased revenue. In fact, savings would change modestly. We'll leave it at $70,000. Okay. Thank you. All right. We're ready to vote on the amendment then. All in favor of the amendment, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? No. The motion carries. All right. We're back then to the original motion, Council Member Corn. And then as amended. As amended now would be that we make a motion to close Avon Golf Course on Labor Day, September, whatever that is. Whatever the day after Labor Day is. So excuse that. Now we want to listen to Mr. We have members of the public here to speak to this issue. Mr. Williams and Mr. Logan, I think, are the two. Is anybody else remaining? Either one of you. Who wants to speak to the? Yes, sir. And if you'll come up to the. Vice Mayor, while he's on the way up, can I ask for a clarification? Yes. On the last vote, was that a no vote or were you just telling anyone that was against it to vote no? The last time, were you with the majority? Yeah, I was with the yes. Okay. Thanks. That was a yes vote. Right. Can you please give us your name and address, Mr. Williams or Mr. Logan? My name is George Logan. Mr. Logan. 1944 Waverly Drive, Lexington, Kentucky. I formerly was on the planning commission here for 16 years. And I was vice chairman and chairman. I was a member of Avon Garcoys when they was part of the government before they closed and maybe we helped make the arrangement with the city so that they could use it. I want to say here that I'm greatly concerned about what is about to happen. I was really, I was trying to sit on my hands back there because you were so convinced that you were going to close it anyway and you didn't give us an opportunity to say something. Avon plays a valuable part in this community. I'm an older man. I love golf. I love golf. There's no doubt about it. But we do a lot of things with it. We play at Avon's most mornings or afternoons. And all of the elder people, because we don't have to dodge balls from going to Lakeside from the younger people knocking the balls so far on the green. And we get our exercise and laugh and enjoy and spend our money. And there are a lot of people in the nearby counties such as Winchester and Paris and Georgetown, they come over also. Because they like the atmosphere and we have a little club that we just combine and do. Now, as far as our money is concerned, I looked at some of the reports only in Fayette County, the way we looked at it, only Lakeside, Tate's Creek and Avon made any money. The others, they did not make their quota of money here in Fayette County. And yet, when the report comes out, we wind up losing $70,000 for some strange reason. Money, I noticed also that some of the employees that they have credit for Avon has been on Lakeside's salary ever since it's been in existence. But this year, for some strange reason, all of a sudden, some of those personnel are on Avon's salary and it's charged against them. So they come back as being in a hole. Now, Mr. Logan. Yes. Excuse me. I would like to make a motion, public comment, and that's expired. However, Mr. Martin, you want to? Mr. Chair, I'd like to make a motion and we extend the gentleman an additional three minutes. There's an extension and a second. Please continue. No, please, sir. You know this planning commission stuff. Yeah, I'm sorry. Excuse us just a minute. Mr. Logan, continue. You've got three more minutes. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, counsel. I'll try to end up quickly. I wanted to bring in another point quickly. As my fraternity, which is Omega Psi Phi, we have a golf tournament every year, and we take the proceedings from that golf tournament, and we give it as scholarships to young male or female after vocational school, because everybody's not able to go to college. And that occurs in June. If you keep raising the prices of your golf situation in Fayette County, that won't exist anymore for a lot of the different organizations, because times are hard. People, retails, don't like to, under this car dealers and so forth, don't like to put out money as charity when they're not selling cars. This year, if you continue to, last year, for instance, you raised the cart fee about $4 on us, and we wind up paying more having a tournament for charity than I would, if I go out to Lakeside and pay by myself, I get a cart, it would cost me about $32. But if I'm going to have a tournament and have people come in here from other cities, stay at the hotel, stay at the hotel, stay at the hotel. And play in our tournament, and all of a sudden it went up to $36 or $42 a round. Now, this year we're getting the same type of situation. And some of the surrounding counties are suggesting and even sending proposals. They want us to have the tournaments in Nicholasville, in Georgetown, and in Winchester, and they'll charge, the golf fee and the cart fee together would be $26. I'm thinking about a whole lot of it, because you want $44. And this is current. Mr. Logan, you've got about 20 seconds left. Thank you, sir. Thank you, and I appreciate y'all's kindness in allowing me to say something. But I was very disturbed a few minutes ago when you voted something without letting us have an opportunity to say something. All right. Mr. McCord. Is there someone else? Councilmember. All right, we're back then to the motion. I'm looking in the budget book at the Avon golf course section, and it looks like there's several employees that are paid. I'm guessing from what Mr. Logan says, they've been paid out of some other budget before, and now they're showing here. But how many employees will be affected, how many positions will be affected by the closure of the golf course? There's one civil service employee, and about a dozen or 15 seasonal or part-time people that work there on a regular basis throughout the year. And what's the plan for the civil service employee? Well, we're hoping to find an opportunity inside of government where that person can not only be qualified, but also be able to be employed. We've identified a position that might fit very well. We're working with HR to work out all of the steps to see what those approvals might be and how we go about that. I understand that on Tuesday there's going to be a motion at work session to advertise all available jobs internally. That's a step in that right direction. We've identified an opportunity. We hope we can make it available to this civil service person at Avon. Okay. And there wouldn't be a lapse then? It would be a rollover right from this current position? Yes. That would be our hope, that there wouldn't be a day without employment for that individual. Okay. Thank you. I'm guessing because of location, I can't visualize where Avon golf course is right off. I don't play golf and I don't really go to golf courses. But I'm guessing where it is, it probably is closer to the county line maybe. People are nodding. So for me, that would be, it's not outlandish that there are people from other counties. And just a statement, if we had other things that had a lot of out of county, I mean, we get a lot of people here. We praise visitors from other places and think how wonderful that is. And I don't really understand why this would be any different. And it's set up as an enterprise fund. And I asked Council Member Feigl before, and she said that maybe this can't happen. Maybe there's more opportunities at one particular golf course than another based on the amount of money that that golf course is bringing in. So if we, Jerry, my question into that is, after that is, was there a discussion about what just needs to happen at that golf course in order to pay for what the expenditures are to where you're not $70,000 in the hole? Let me step back if I can and remind everybody why we're here. We're here because in parks we initially started to look at reducing our budget by 14%. That number changed to 9% or so. We're looking to reduce things, and this is extraordinarily difficult. I don't think this is a question of trying to maximize the revenue at that golf course to break even. Although we do 7,000 rounds, we're $70,000 short. We're going to increase the cost to play there by $10 in order to break even. I don't think that's a good long-term solution. A better long-term solution is look at our golf assets and see if some of them need to be reallocated to other things. So, again, the issue here is how do we take money out of parks' budget, and we're all talking about different ways to do that. One of the ways we think fits in strategically with our golf asset allocation is to take one golf course, one golf course offline. So for us it isn't a question of how do we finagle to break even. And as the gentleman indicated, we've had the position of civil service that is unfortunately slated to be eliminated has been on the lakeside golf course budget since I got here 10 years ago. Inappropriately, it seems to me. And the fact that we're trying to mitigate that, which is under Avon, forces us to recognize that there's an annual, significant annual loss there, and we're trying to mitigate that. And just, thank you, just a point of reference, I don't ever need to be reminded while I'm here, because I'm very much aware of that from all of the budget meetings that I've been having, and I really don't need your reminder of that. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Jerry, I had a question, and maybe Council Member McCord discussed it in your link. Do I recall that Avon is classified as a rural activity center in the zoning law? Is there anybody here from planning? Avon is one of our rural activity centers, isn't it? And they're governed by different rules. And so did that discussion come up in the link at all about it being a rural activity center and what kinds of things go with rural? It did not. Okay. All right. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Council Member Martin. I enjoy working with you, and I appreciate you taking our questions. Will the delayed date of closing Avon allow us to give us time to sort of see the whole picture and maybe get a presentation of how the different courses are operating and what, for example, is the amount of activity in different courses and things so we can stand back and look at the big picture? I believe Council Member McCord's motion is going to speak to that issue of asking for such a presentation in the Services Committee. Okay. Thank you. I think we can't do that without putting the private courses out of business. And the pie has gotten smaller with this economy, and we've got to figure out how we can continue to serve the public without putting the other folks out of business because nobody wants the city to be the only golf provider in town. And so I look forward to that, and thank you. Jerry, we're going to go back to Kearney Hills. There's a pervasive rumor, maybe perpetuated by some of the private golf operations, but I've had several telephone calls wanting to know what's going on out there and why they would be cutting fees significantly then below what they're charging, the private operators are charging. And do you have any idea how this started, this rumor? I can speculate how the rumor started, but let me give you the facts that I do know. Let me invite up to the podium Mike Fields, our golf services manager, who is involved with this promotion that I think has started some of the questioning. Okay, fine. Just real quick, I think this is a little outside the bounds of the motion about Avon. I mean, we can get to this as soon as we vote on it, but I think we have a vote on the floor. We just voted on the amendment. So why don't we, if that's okay, let's hold this discussion for a minute. Hang on just a second, Mike. All right. Is there any further discussion on the motion? All right. Now the motion as amended is what we're voting on now. All right. Motion as amended is to close Avon Golf Course after Labor Day. September 7th. September 7th. We can, which would, this is not part of the motion, but it would give us, according to Council Member Martin's suggestion, it would give us time for a full understanding and examination of all the courses, the productivity, the numbers, the financials, and so forth. Right? Council Member Gordon. I'm so sorry. Then that leads me to another question. So is your thinking, Council Member Martin, that we would reevaluate this this summer? And if so, I mean, the motion is actually to close the golf course. So would we be better to have the motion say, and to keep the golf course open until at least Labor Day, if you're thinking of, I'm just wondering if you think the information might impact. I think that it would establish, I think, a presumption that we would close the course unless another budget amendment was undertaken, I believe. Is that correct? And so I just want to understand if that would give us time to look at this. And we could, I guess we could always sort of reverse this if it turned out that, gosh, this was the one we should keep and another one wasn't. But we're in a. But we're in a budget, this is a budget hearing, and so we have to make a budget decision in some way. And I think they need to know what those numbers are and we can always, I guess, my thought is we could come back and revisit this should it be determined with additional information and additional macro as Councilman Lane said, that we might want to adjust this a slightly different way. But I'm supporting the motion. So Jerry, if then you would be, if this motion passes, you would be gearing toward after Labor Day to, for personnel change, for other things. So how soon would you, if the Council really did want to reverse it, how soon would you need to know that? August? I'm just trying to get a feel for, you know, what we're doing here with. The civil service person that would be affected by closing Avon is in this room. He is thinking about his future and he is certainly going to make every opportunity available to himself to move to another position. It's our belief that Avon, as a golf course, doesn't fit in with our collection of other golf courses as nicely as it ought to and we need to, in my opinion, reduce the number of golf courses we have. And so it would be our opinion, as it was a couple of years ago with respect to Meadowbrook, that we not have six golf courses on a going forward basis. Our recommendation here is to close the course and allocate it to other uses. Thank you. All right. Councilmember Lawless. I think this is to the motion and wondered if Councilmember McChord, if this came up in the links process. Last year, I'm aware that in the general services link, it was recommended that a position would be a new staff costing approximately $95,000 would increase golf revenue by $230,000 a year and it didn't increase. In fact, it seems like it's gone down. I think that's outside the motion. So if we can pass this, we can kind of get to that, but yes. Right. And I was clarifying and then Councilmember Gordon added to that clarification. We are now prepared for a vote unless there's an objection, right? All in favor of the motion as amended, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries as amended. Councilmember McChord. Okay. There's a couple of things just here. If you go down from that, just there's an issue about whether we own carts or we lease carts. I'm going to pass around to you kind of the breakdown of that. This is something else that can be discussed when we put it into services committee. But obviously, there's a ton of things from what we're talking about with Kearney, what Councilmember Lawless is bringing up, that where golf really was on the radar during this budget process. And there's a lot of numbers and it's very hard to sort through what makes money, what doesn't, what you factor in, what you don't. And so with that, I want to make a motion that the management and golf operations and golf courses be placed into the services committee for greater analysis and specific recommendations made to the full council. So moved. Second. Okay. Motion by Councilmember McChord, seconded by Councilmember Beard for full examination of golf courses to be placed in services committee. Is there discussion on the motion? Councilmember Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember McChord, do we have a feeling for how soon this could be looked at? Because this is the budget cycle and I think we're under some time pressures to make decisions on this. And I guess, is it realistic to get it done in this budget year? I don't think it is. And what I see, Councilmember Martin, is that there's so many questions and so many different things that really need some time to analyze that will probably generate further questions. I want to move it into services as quickly as possible to get that discussion going and start drilling down. I do not believe that something is going to come out of there that's going to immediately impact this year's budget. But going forward, I think that we need a better handle on what we are going to do policy-wise. I think our parks and rec folks and our golf folks need to know the direction that we're going to go and so forth. So I don't think that it impacts this year's budget to your point about Avon where it may come up that, gosh, this is something we need to do. That may or may not. But that's the only thing that I see. I was sort of holding my comments because it wasn't really germane to the previous motion. But I, too, have had calls concerning the policy of the city. And this is the result of being in really difficult economic times. The number of green fees, the number of golf visits has, I guess, drastically decreased. And that's one thing I guess we'd look at. And I'm concerned that the city, with the amount of resources we have, is subsidizing both green fees but also mass media, both television and radio, that normal golf courses can't afford and therefore can't compete against. And so I'm concerned that our policies are in some way going to drive many privately owned courses out of business. And again, we want to balance, you know, the needs of providing, you know, wonderful golf experience for the general public without putting these sort of private operations out of business. And so I think I'm very concerned about this. I know folks out there are very concerned. I know some of these private courses are on the verge of going out of business. And so I think that this is a very important thing to look at on a timely basis. And so I encourage us all to sort of move on this. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Vice Mayor, I have Council Member Lane. I had the gentleman teed up. Oh, okay. Do you want to come back to the Council Member Lane and then we'll come right back to Council Member Beard for the question. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to add a comment on that, too. You know, there's a private golf course in my district and, you know, they pay taxes. You know, our golf courses, we don't pay taxes on our revenues. So we have that issue of private enterprise versus government. I think their green fees are higher than our green fees are. And if you look at the numbers, I think we're losing money on every person who plays a round on our course and they can't run at a deficit and stay in business. So I think we have to be sensitive. We have a lot of, you know, a lot of five golf courses. So we've, you know, got a lot of competition here in the marketplace. I just would like for us to be thinking about that. That's why a course like Avon, which is losing money, doesn't have that many plays, many of the people that play are from outside of Fayette County. You know, if we had to close one, that would be the one that I think we should close. And I would encourage us to promote the people that are playing there to come play on our other courses. So that was the first thing I wanted to say. The second thing was on this golf car lease versus purchase option. I think it would be more meaningful and helpful to the council if we would just look at the cost of one golf court for the purpose of the analysis for, you know, leasing and one for bonding, just to see what the cost would be on a one-unit basis. Because based on 160, it's hard really to analyze what the differential is. That's all. Thank you. All right. We're now discussion on the motion to place the examination of the golf courses into services committee. And is this what your fellow wants to come up for? That will be part of it after the fact, but we need to get that cleared first. We need to get this motion cleared first. The motion, right. Okay. So you're... Council Member Blues, you're speaking to the motion. Yes. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to underline Council Member Martin's point that while we need to be very concerned about the viability of the private courses, and I agree with Council Member Lane on this, but we also do, I think, have an obligation to provide a recreational service to the public and to that segment of the public who may not be able to afford private golf courses. Private golf courses don't simply cut away from... Let me start that sentence all over again. Public golf courses, I think, don't just compete against private golf courses. I think they have a real service to provide in introducing people to golf. And young people, in particular, playing on our golf courses are going to be playing on private golf courses if they stick with it. So I think this is an important motion and I hope we will keep that necessary balance between private enterprise and public service through recreational facilities in mind. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Does anyone else want to speak to the motion? Seeing none, yeah, just to the motion. Just to let you know that our next services committee is, I think, June 8th, so we can put that on that. So we can be working on it. We have two meetings before we go on breaks. We have a June and July, so I can go ahead and put that on. I was talking to Paul. We have, I think, two items, but we can put this on there with that. So we can address this as soon as June 8th, I think it is. And Council Member Ellinger, would it be appropriate for council members to send to you the types of questions that we want to address so that we have kind of got a running list to address that and categorize it since they are? Yeah, I think if you put it to me and Paul, then we will get that so we can get it on the June meeting. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Gordon. Thank you. Well, that then brings to mind a question. It sounds as if the motion, it asks for specific recommendations. So is there a proposal in the wings? Is there a group wanting to manage or what recommendations, I mean, what are you looking for in the motion? Are there recommendations that will come forward automatically? And that would be helpful for me to know that we want to go forth with it. I don't think it comes out of committee unless it's got some specific recommendations. That's the bottom line. You know, we can talk about this all day long and you can see how we just, we go around and around about this, but where we have an opportunity in the Services Committee, what I'd like to do is to not let it out of Services Committee until we start bringing forward very specific recommendations to the council to vote on. So Jerry, you would be bringing recommendations? This is not to ask private entities. We would be very happy to bring recommendations to the Services Committee with respect to golf. Well, that's what the motion says is someone is bringing recommendations. I think the Services Committee would like to see a summary of history, current conditions, a marketplace overview, how we operate, how we plan to operate in the future, and what our recommendations might be with respect to all that. We'd be happy to do that. Okay. Thank you. That would help to give us some guidance where you want to go with this. All right. Ready to vote? Motion. All in favor, please. Just briefly, just to Council Member Gordons, the way I read the motion is that the Services Committee would develop recommendations or not that they would bring to the full council. Well, I'm just reading the text of what's before us. And so I think That's exactly why I asked was to clarify who would be bringing the recommendations, whether they'd be generated by council or if someone else I'm sure we all can do it, so I can bring the recommendations from the services. I just kind of need to To report out I have to, when I report out, I just need to know kind of the guidance where you want to go so we can get the recommendations. All right. All right. All right. Ready to vote? All in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. All opposed. No. Motion carries. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Last thing, last two things very quickly to that is you'll see on the top of the next page one of those specific recommendations, Council Member Gordon, that I will put into Services Committee is, for example, for us to align our park system policy with the state park system as far as inclement weather. And so that's one of the things that, again, here's a very specific thing that would come out of services after it's been vetted that we would line up with the state park system and how they, when they aren't open and don't operate and so forth. The last thing you'll see on there is the pool closures, which we've already addressed and took care of a couple weeks ago. So Vice Mayor, that ends the report out. I know Council Member Beard wants to speak to golf and I know that we have to take up the fees and so forth like that. As far as the Council budget link, those are our recommendations from the budget process. All right. Council Member Beard. Well, once upon a time we were, Mike Fields was coming to the mic to explain a little bit about a promotion that they have and I'm eager to hear what that might be. Thank you. What we have going on is an L&M communications promotion that was done on radio. They came to me about a week ago looking to do a live golf broadcast before the TPC, the Players Championship, and what they wanted to do is crisscross with 1300 ESPN radio to go out to Kearney Hill and do a live broadcast. In order to do that, they wanted us to pay them, which we do not do. We do not have marketing dollars to do that. So what they suggested was is an online promotion where they would sell an $80 gift certificate for $40. So they sold $125 or 125 gift certificates online for Kearney Hill Golf Links, which gave us in return $14,000 in advertising over a two-week period. Was that being advertising for Kearney Hills or golf in general? That particular promotion was for Kearney Hill. We are slated. They want to do this for every major golf championship this year. So the next one is the U.S. Open, which will be at Lakeside Golf Course. The next one is the British Open, which is at Piccadome Golf Course, and the last one is the PGA Championship, which will be at Tate's Creek Golf Course. Yes, they did come to us. So in essence, we're getting 250 golfers on Kearney Hill Golf Links that they've sold. For half price? For half price. Monday is through the week and after 12 on weekends. And the best part of it... I understand what you've done, and it makes sense in one way. It still does have our private golf course operators have some concern about the mechanism of this, and it essentially steals rounds from them. This would be public play. I understand. Yes. Yeah. I mean, Greenbrier is public play. No, sir, it's private. I think you can go out there and play any time you want to. In this environment right now, I believe you can. I think that's what's happened. In fact, I've even heard that Lexington Country Club is hurting a little bit in their golf rounds. Lexington has always been a hotbed of golf from top to bottom. It drives everything that goes on at Lexington Country Club. There is some part of this that is not our fault and it isn't anybody's fault, but there was a flurry of activity in central Kentucky with Old Silo and Montgomery County and Houston Oaks and Bourbon County and there's one in... The Bull. The Bull in Madison County. There have been five or six golf courses that in the last ten years or so have surfaced, maybe 15, but at the same time, there's only so many golfers and so it got spread pretty thin and we're just a part of that in relationship to our pricing. So they stuck their necks out and it didn't really work out as well for them either. But at the same time, the telephone calls keep coming. Thank you very much. Okay. I appreciate it. Council Member James. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My question is for Council Member McCord. It's for Council Member McCord regarding the general services budget link. I know that my office received several calls regarding the Winburn Center and Dunbar Center situation and I wondered if your link had discussed that and specifically if you've talked to Fay County Public Schools about what their plans are for Winburn. We did not. Council Member Blues sat in on that meeting and Council Member Blues, if you don't mind maybe speaking to what we discussed that day because I know you had a number of specific questions that were answered that particular day. I think the particular concern on that issue was that the recreation after school program would become essentially an academic tutorial service and which I had some serious concerns about. However, at the link meeting it was explained to those of us who were there that this would not be the case, that there would still be a substantial recreational component, there would be some academic support service and that there would be a concerted effort to make it a more structured program and to bring more parental involvement into it. I think, Jerry, if I've left anything out or said anything in error, you might correct me, but I was persuaded at that meeting that the program would not, I shouldn't ever say would degenerate into an academic tutorial, there would be that study component, but it would still be essentially and predominantly a recreation program. Would there be a fee that goes along with that summer program? I do not think so. I don't know. Okay. And was it Faye County Public Schools that was there talking to you? Okay. Is that who's going to run the academic program or is it Parks? Jerry, do you want to speak to that? We're going to combine with the school system, first of all, this summer under the 21st Century grant to provide all of the structure and program delivery that the grant requested. We're going to be there throughout the summer. Beginning in the fall, we're going to include more ESP pieces. This won't become an ESP or an extended school site for us. It's not that. It's going to be a Parks and Rec Community Center. But we're going to put ESP staff in place to increase the academic quotient, try and improve the program, what's there. In effect, again, this is a look at an attempt to save money. We had a full-time position there, but we didn't have a full-time job. So we're going to use part-time ESP people at less cost to provide the structure, the management, and et cetera, to provide essentially the same services at less cost to us. Thank you. Thank you. That completes me on that. The next question Jerry had is for, I know the Parks Master Plan talks about summer programming out of some of the community centers was requested by citizens, and I think it was a recommendation from the consultant as well, yet I think in the budget, William Wells Brown is slated to close over the summer. So I'm wondering, was there any discussion or any attempt to try to get funding to have that to be a summer program at William Wells Brown instead of moving the director to another area? I don't know where the dollars would come from to do that, quite honestly. In effect, I think we long-term need fewer community centers that are nicer, where we wouldn't have so many substandard buildings in place that don't provide the uplifting that we'd all like to see happen. Given our need to reduce our budget, I can't identify where dollars would be to create a summer program at William Wells Brown this year. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Vice Mayor. Council Member Crosby. Yes, I have a question for Council Member McCord, just quickly. You mentioned on the top page of the third page about making a motion. Do you plan on doing that? I'm going to do that inside the Services Committee. Oh, you're going to wait until services? Okay. That was an example of what I saw as specific recommendations that would come out of services, but that will be done there. I think that's a very good recommendation, by the way. Thank you. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member McCord, I had a question regarding, I know one of the questions I asked in my link was, are there any positions being eliminated within the general services? And were those identified? That was in the Mayor's proposed budget announcement. Jerry, do you want to speak, or Kimber, maybe you want to speak to how many that was? I know it was a certain number of part-time and seasonal and so forth. In the Division of Parks and Recreation, there are two full-time civil service positions that have been recommended to be eliminated. There are a number of seasonal positions that we won't fill, but I can't tell you exactly how many that would be. Part of it was dictated by how many pools we were going to open, and you've solved that. We're going to open them all. We're going to close them a little earlier. But there are two full-time civil service positions in parks that are recommended to be eliminated. I just feel like we should make every effort we can to find other positions within the urban county government. I'm very concerned about eliminating the positions when I see ads in the paper for openings, and it just bothers me that we're contributing to an already unstable economy. I understand. I agree with you 100%. We think we've got a good lead on one of the two, an opportunity for one person. I don't have that same confidence at this moment for the second, but we're looking at it. I consider it a top priority of mine to try and do that. I appreciate that. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just a couple of things. I noticed one of the motions we passed asked for a presentation on the Parks Acquisition Fund prior to July 15th, but actually the final meetings of council are on July 6th. So would you be able to do it before that since we don't have any meetings after that and technically we go on break that week? Well, I think it's kind of a function of how much time we want to spend getting this right. I mean, we're talking about a million dollars. We'd all like to spend it tomorrow. On the other hand, we want to craft something that will stand the test of time for 10 years. I don't know if in four weeks we can go to the development community, take a look at six or eight different scenarios, and come back with a log-blast document for you. I honestly don't know that. To be honest, I don't know that we could spend the money quickly if we identified it. I would recommend that we wait until you come back to have that particular conversation. Well, I just brought it up since it was in the motion, and I think council members usually plan their break ahead, so it would be problematic to do it after the 6th for many. So if the date is not, I mean, we would want to give you enough time, I think. I think this is kind of a big deal that begs the question. I'm not hung up on the date. I just wanted to go ahead and get it so council could start to look at this as quickly as possible. Okay, good. And then, Vice Mayor, my other question is we still have not dealt with the revenue of gulf and aquatic fees, which were built into the budget, so I notice our time's going away, so I wondered what are your thoughts on that? And then if, I don't know if we have time for a full public safety link presentation, and Tuesday's quite full with three different links reporting out. Just kind of, so we need to flesh this out a little. What about moving Tuesday up to 11 instead of 1? We have a lot of resources at 9 o'clock. Partner agencies. But aren't they part of the budget now at this point? Aren't you reporting out your links on partner agencies? We've got some other things that we're doing as well, but what we're doing now doesn't pertain to the budget per se. For Tuesday, the 25th? Excuse me, is partner agency at 11 that day? We have partner agencies on the calendar. I didn't know if we have a full agenda or not. I know Commissioner Cole's been doing a lot of work for us. We've just kind of looked back and forth, and they're okay moving this back. What we're doing doesn't have anything to do with the budget per se this year, so if you want to do that, we can postpone our meeting and extend the time of this meeting since this is budget critical. Well, yeah. Mr. Mayor, some council members have other meetings already scheduled that we've set up in that time period, so I think it's a little problematic. Well, we're going to have to do it some way or another, and we have no one has said they wanted to truncate or abbreviate these discussions today, so we're going to have to find more time one way or another. So the suggestion is that we do it, what, public safety tonight? All right. All right, we've got the public hearing that must start at 7 o'clock. We've got the fees that we still need to discuss. My suggestion would be that we talk about the fees now and that we move public safety to next Tuesday at 11. All right, noon. How about noon? Well, everybody who can make it at noon. I apologize. I have other meetings scheduled, and I will not be able to be here, and I think it would be really awesome if we would find a time when council members could all be here, and one possibility would be after work session. After work session? I thought you were saying after tonight. You're saying after work session next Tuesday? All right, will that work? I see. All right, will that work for everybody? All right, well, we're going to have to come. Everybody's not going to be able to be here, then, it looks like. Vice Mayor, one option would be if the public hearing does not take more than three or four minutes to roll right into public safety. All right, let's play it by ear, then. Let's try that. Okay. As long as we don't, I mean, we need to ask Keith Warren, because this was a special meeting, and I don't know if you could continue it after the public hearing if we adjourn, since it wasn't advertised, but he needs to ask. Yeah, just make sure we handle it right. Right. All right. All right. Okay, Council Member Ellinger had a question. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I want to follow up, I think, what Ms. Henson said about the two employees. You said one of them, and why are we losing the employees, and what areas are those in? At the Avon Golf Course, we have an individual whose title is assistant golf course superintendent. At the Dunbar Community Center, again, we're recommending that we restructure how we deliver services at Winburn, where we have a recreation supervisor, I believe the title is. Is that right? Correct. Supervisor position that we've recommended be eliminated, but because of the human resource civil service rules for position elimination, there is a bumping process that occurs. Their advice to me is that the position at the Dunbar Community Center has less seniority in that classification, and as a result, that position would be eliminated. Person in the recreation supervisor position at Winburn would then be moved to Dunbar to fill that position. Those are the two individuals and their position types. And you said one of them that we have found potential employment for to move in, and we're working on the other one? Or where do we stand on that? Yes. The Avon position is similar to a public service supervisor position that's vacant and funded in parks maintenance, and so there might be a match there. I have not identified a position that's funded in parks that the recreation supervisor would obviously fit into. Most of our positions are unfunded. We have 35 vacant positions in parks, and I only have a couple that are funded. I'm sorry. I think it might be helpful for council, since we're asking this question, there are a couple things for you to be aware of as we look at the various position elimination and the impact. Every position that's currently available within government right now has been shared with potentially impacted employees. As new positions come up, we continue to call them personally to let them know that these positions are coming forth so that they can post for them. We're bringing forth a request next Tuesday, as Jerry indicated, that we would be able to post all positions internally first. That requires council action. We had talked about that. And then finally, we have been working to make sure that computer skill sets, those kinds of things, that we have classes and training opportunities that these individuals, again, that potentially would be impacted, can ramp up some of those skills to be prepared for these other positions that are opening. So just to file that away as you're looking across these report outs. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. We can now move into. Keith Horn is here to answer your other question about the reschedule. Keith, okay. I understand the question, Keith. All right. Since we have a special meeting, can we. If you recess this meeting, you can re-adjourn after your public, reconvene after your public hearing at 7. Is that what you're asking? Yes. As long as you recess and don't adjourn. All right. We're here. All right. We've got time out. Yeah. Let's just work with everybody. Let's try 15 minutes for discussion on the fees. Probably want to get finished with that. Just need to take a deep breath and relax on that. We've been here before in these budget meetings where we don't abbreviate them because there's important issues to discuss. My view of it, let's recess at quarter until 7 because we must reconvene for the public hearing at 7 and we need a little break before then. We've been here for three hours. Okay. So conversation, floor's open for conversation on the golf fees. Jared, do you want to lead us with that or does someone else want to lead on it? I'd be happy to if it's quite all right. Okay. I think this will take about five minutes for me and then we can discuss whatever it is that needs to be talked about. We have a hard stop at quarter until 7, so we'll take as many questions between now and then after your five minute as we can. I won't read to you. We're here to talk about proposed fee increases for aquatics, for our swimming pools and for our golf courses. These increases are in the mayor's proposed budget. Eliminating or reducing any of these increases would require either finding revenue elsewhere or reducing expenses elsewhere. On the second page, we're going to talk about swimming pool fees. We haven't raised them the last two years, but over the last two years we've had substantial minimum wage increases, both of which cost us about $50,000 a year. In 2009, our water bill went from $40,000 to $85,000. In the face of all this, though, we've reduced the number of our expenses. We've not filled a vacant civil service position. We've hired probably 20 fewer pool attendants and concession attendants. And running our pools, our nine pools, costs about $900,000 a year, and we get from gate receipts about $500,000 a year. So we're, citizens are paying about half the cost of operating our nine pools. The next chart shows our attendance overall at the last eight years. The box of those figures shows that on average the last several years we have about 200,000 visitors. I'm going to come back to that number and speak more. Turn the lights down, house lights. We do about 200,000 visits a year. Last year we did 165,000. It was a crummy year, as you may remember. Pool attendance is almost directly correlated with weather. Last year we had six days over 90 degrees. We had 17 inches of rain versus nine inches of rain. Lousy year, lousy pool attendance. Down at the bottom, our current proposed pool fees. At our aquatic centers we charge $4 for youth and $5 for adults over 16. At our smaller pools we charge $3 and $4. We're proposing increasing those fees by $1 to $5 at the aquatic centers for youth and $6 for adults, $4 at the smaller pools for kids, $5 for adults. It's difficult for us to raise rates any less than $1. It gets us all into the silver change business and it just turns into being a nightmare. So we'd like to keep our fees at round dollar amounts. On the next page I'm showing you the FY09 revenue budget, which is $570,000. Because our attendance was down, we actually had a revenue of about $550,000. The current revenue forecast for FY11 is $731,000. I got to that number by taking $550,000. I assume we're going to have about the same attendance that we had in 09. The weather certainly couldn't have been worse than last year. I'm asking to raise rates by $1 times 200,000 visits. That's about $200,000 more in revenue for pools. But because you've made the pool season a little bit shorter and some people will go less often because it's more expensive, I assume we're going to not make maybe $20,000 of that. So in answer to Kevin Stinnett's question last week, this is how I got to the $731,000 revenue forecast for pools. Our weather will almost certainly be better and hopefully we'll have greater attendance than we had in 09. Let me jump then to golf fees, which is on the next sheet. We've been raising fees on a regular basis intentionally since 2000, an effort to avoid large increases to make sure that we are competing fairly with private and other public courses in the middle of Kentucky to illustrate, frankly, the increasing quality of our course. I think, quite honestly, our golf experience is more positive and commands a higher rate than it did several years ago. And to make sure that we continue to break even on an operating basis, as I'm more than happy to share with you in the Services Committee, and as has been recommended in the management audit, which said we should decrease the subsidy for enterprise programs and increase recreation fees. And the master plan said we should adjust fees at all affected courses that help pay the debt service. There's still some debt service remaining on the Picket Home Golf Course. So on the next page, in summary form, we're asking to increase our weekend rate by $2 at the four big courses, increase the weekend rate by $1 at Meadowbrook from $12 to $13, increase cart rentals by $1, and increase the driving range fee for a bucket of balls from $6 to $7 at Lakeside, increase it 50 cents at Kearney. Kearney is not a course you go to to practice. You go and you buy a smaller bucket of balls to warm up, in effect. So that's why there's a smaller fee, smaller bucket of ball charge. It's important to point out that seniors, juniors, and ladies' fees will not be affected by these proposed fee increases. On the next page, I show you exactly what they are. It's hard to see what the increases are because I attempted to bold them. But here you can see the 18-hole rate is going from $20 to $22, from $30 to $32 at Kearney, $22 to $24 at Picket Home. And the twilight rate on weekends is going from $15 to $17, $22 to $24, $17 to $19. And the 9-hole rate in the same weekends is going from $15 to $17, $20 to $24, and $17 to $19. And the cart rental fee is going to go up a dollar at each of the courses. So we're recommending modest increases in order to keep us profitable, keep us competitive, and recognize the quality of the experience that we've created on our golf courses. On the next page, I show you a summary of what those increases would be by course. A total of $118,000 based on the actual rounds played in 09. We obviously don't have the FY10 numbers yet. We're still right in the middle of the season. But we believe we'll raise another $100,000 or so by these modest increases. We're also going to increase revenue on the golf courses by virtue of having taken over the food and beverage service. We used to contract this out. You recently gave us authorization to apply for a beer license at these two courses. So we expect taking the course revenues for food and beverage at Kearney and Piccadilly to increase our revenues $170,000. If we'll turn to the next page, our golf revenue forecast, our 09 revenue with reasonable weather was $3.549 million. We're going to lose revenue at Avon. This morning I thought we would lose it for the entire year. But half or some number of those people will come and play our other courses. Those people won't go home and not play golf. Some of them will play. So we believe we would lose at least half of the Avon revenue. So that comes out at $70,000 for a net of $3,480 million. I'm looking to increase fees revenue to us about $118,000 plus the revenue from food and beverage at $175,000 or our new revenue forecast of $3,773,000. The budgeting people will wince at this. There's some serious rounding going on here. It's really $3,776,000 or something. But I've rounded them up for purposes of illustration for you. Lastly, with respect to parks revenue, we have what budgeting calls recreation programs. We did $1,436,000 in 09. In most of the programs you see below, we intend, we expect to do about the same revenue as before. But you can see that the pool number has been increased to $731,000. Our recreation number is going to remain about the same. We're creating some new programs here that we think will generate about $65,000 so that this line item in your budget book that calls for parks program revenue is forecast to be $1,006,000 and it's made up of all of these numbers. So in summary on the last page, I'm asking for you to approve the golf and pool fee adjustments that I've just described. They were discussed by the Parks Advisory Board in April and a motion to recommend the approval of the proposed fee increases was approved at that meeting and to approve, secondly, the revenue projections for golf at $3,775,000 and parks and rec programs at $1,660,000. Any questions? Mr. Stennett, then Mr. Beard, then Mr. Martin, then we've got three minutes. I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve the golf fees as presented by Mr. Hancock or in the mayor's proposed budget, the golf fees only. Motion and a second. Is there discussion? Yes. Discussion on the motion? Yes. Those who've signed up, we might as well go on. You intended to speak to the motion? Well, it revolves around the motion. I've got a question about one item. Councilman Beard, then Councilman Martin, then Councilman Gordon. What are the difference in driving range charges between Kearney Hills and Lakeside? Lakeside has a great big bucket of balls and that's worth six bucks. At Kearney, we offer a smaller bag of balls because typically people don't want to hit as many balls. They don't go to Kearney to practice their driving. They go to Warm Up. It's the same price if they bought two buckets. Okay. Well, I just didn't. It looks curious, but that's the answer. That's fine. Thank you. Councilman Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess I'm going to be uncomfortable supporting this until I understand where our fees are vis-a-vis other courses. And that's kind of the thing that we were going to be looking at, I guess, in services. Do you know where Kearney, for example, stands versus the Marriott? You know what the Marriott? Let me ask Mike Fields to come up and speak to that. Is he still here? No. We believe we're fully competitive. They advertise a $75 rate or something, but they negotiate every day in order to fill their golf course. And we believe we're very near them, perhaps 95 percent of what they charge on a regular basis. We believe we're fully competitive with all the courses in the county. We are no longer the floor. We were the floor 10 years ago. That's no longer the case. Well, I mean, I'm not much of a golfer, but I've played the Marriott once or twice, and literally just once or twice. But it was always way higher than $30. And maybe I just don't have the right discount card or something like that. They're selling a different business. They're selling outings with room and food and beverage service and a much nicer experience, if you will, for large groups. So the daily fee business for them is not as important as the group rate business is. Well, Kearney is a pretty nice course. And I think the thing that concerns the one course that we have that is probably putting the most pressure on the private market is Kearney, I would guess. But I guess I would want to understand how our fees, I'm sure they're competitive, but are they comparable is what I'm asking. And, you know, we have Meadowbrook. But, for example, how does Meadowbrook compare with Connemara? I think that Meadowbrook's ambience is below Connemara's. We have a modest facility there with very modest restrooms and vending machines. I can't give you right now a full dollar-for-dollar comparison. But I can assure you that we come to you every year or so to raise golf fees in order to stay at the 80 to 90 percent quartile of our competitors in central Kentucky. Well, to me, Meadowbrook would be our core business. And that is my kind of course because that's about the only course I've ever played is Meadowbrook. But, I mean, not the only course, but it's certainly my style of course. And Kearney's way over my head, but that's a more professional course. It's much longer and more difficult. It's a longer, more difficult course. And I think that course particularly, you know, if we're below market on that, that's going to put a great deal of pressure on the private course. I don't think we are. And it's our intention not to be. We want to compete fairly. You said that the Marriott's at 75. Do we have any sort of study or chart or anything like that that tells us what other courses are charging? I don't have that with me today. I can send that to you. Yeah, I mean, that would be really helpful because that would sort of give us an understanding of the range of fees because, you know, just from a once-in-a-while golfer, the difference between the $75 that maybe that's why I'm not playing the Marriott very much because I'm not getting that group rate, but between the rate that I normally pay and the $30 at Kearney, I can tell you which is more palatable to play and if I could ever actually get through the $14. Excuse me just a second here. We said we were going to try to get. We did, Mayor, and I'll let you go. Thank you. Thanks, Vice Mayor. All right. There's a motion and a second. And we have it. We're in discussion now. Council Member Gordon. Quick point. All right. Quick point, Jerry. We received on May 6th your proposal for golf fees and your proposal for pool fees, but we, I do not believe, have seen this presentation. Can you get that to us? Sure. I wrote this yesterday, so you didn't see it earlier in the month. I would really appreciate having a copy of that. Okay. All right. Unless there's objection, we will recess until 7 o'clock, and we can take this motion up then after the public hearings. All right. Thank you. I want to ask one question. All right. Thank you. I'm not on a plane. I can see the red tail lights, and the passing yellow hand. I can see Daniel waving goodbye. God, he looks like Daniel. He gives me the clouds in my eyes. They say Spain is pretty. No, I've never been. Daniel says it's the best place I could ever see. He should know he's been there enough. Lord, I miss Daniel. Oh, I miss him so much. Oh, Daniel, my brother, you are older than me. Do you still feel the pain? Of the scars that won't heal, you rise and die. But you see more than I. Daniel, you're the star in the path of the sky. Oh, Daniel, my brother, you are older than me. Do you still feel the pain? Of the scars that won't heal, you rise and die. But you see more than I. Oh, Daniel, my brother, you are older than me. Do you still feel the pain?