# Council Committee of the Whole - May 25, 2010 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Council · May 25, 2010 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/1388 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/1388?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2010-05-25 - **Body**: Council - **Last revised**: June 18, 2026 - **Length**: 17,994 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Budget Committee of the Whole convened on May 25, 2010, at 1:00 PM, with the Vice Mayor presiding over the session. The meeting focused exclusively on informational link reports covering three key areas of city operations: Public Safety, Public Works and Environmental Quality, and General Government. All three agenda items were presented as informational reports, providing the committee with an overview of budget-related matters across these departments. The meeting included 1 vote and featured no public comments. A total of 3 agenda items were addressed, all of which were informational in nature rather than action items requiring formal approval. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the Council meeting on May 25, 2010: - Council Member Ellinger - Council Member Henson - Council Member Stinnett - Paul Schoninger - Jerry Southers - Commissioner Rumpke - Elizabeth McGee - Shannon Settles - Marian Zeitlin No members were recorded as absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions The Council took one recorded vote during the May 25, 2010 meeting. - **Motion to Reconsider EMS Collections Figure:** Council Member Stennett moved to reconsider the EMS collections amount for FY2011 and adopt the same figure used in FY2010. The motion passed on a voice vote. [timestamp: 40:31] No roll call vote was recorded for this item, so individual member positions are not available. No additional motions, resolutions, or other formal decisions were recorded for this meeting. ## Budget and Financial Actions The Council addressed one financial item during the May 25, 2010 meeting involving emergency medical services revenue. - **EMS Collections Appropriation (FY2011):** The Council considered an appropriation of **$5,872,000** in EMS collections for fiscal year 2011. This item reflects projected revenue from emergency medical services billing to be appropriated for the upcoming fiscal year. No vendor, recipient, or resolution number was recorded in association with this item. No additional budget amendments, transfers, or financial resolutions were acted upon at this meeting. ## Contested Items Two items generated notable disagreement during the May 25, 2010 Council meeting. **Council Office Budget Reductions** The committee was divided over how to approach budget reductions for the council office. The disagreement centered on where cuts should be made, with some members suggesting reductions to training and dues as a potential area for savings. The vote on this item was split, though the available data does not specify the final outcome or identify the individual members on each side of the debate. **Citizens Advocate Position** A split vote also occurred over a proposal to allocate $50,000 for the Citizens Advocate position. Opposition arose among some members who objected to the approach of reducing funds from the internal audit to cover this allocation. As with the council office budget item, the specific members involved and the final resolution of the vote are not detailed in the available record. Both contested items were part of broader budget deliberations, with disagreements reflecting differing priorities among council members regarding where reductions should fall and how limited funds should be directed. ## Public Safety Link Report [timestamp: 10:03] Council Member Ellinger presented the Public Safety Link report to the Council. The report covered budget allocations across several public safety divisions, including police, fire, and emergency services. The presentation was informational in nature, and no vote or formal action was taken on the item. No additional details regarding specific budget figures, concerns raised, or debate among Council members are available from the meeting record. ## Public Works and Environmental Quality Link Report [timestamp: 49:52] Council Member Crosby presented the Public Works and Environmental Quality Link Report, offering recommendations related to the department's budget. Key points from the presentation included: - **Enterprise Fund Standardization:** Council Member Crosby recommended standardizing processes related to enterprise funds within the Public Works and Environmental Quality department. - **Valley View Ferry Contract:** Council Member Crosby suggested that the Valley View Ferry contract be reevaluated, indicating a need to revisit the terms or continuation of that agreement. The presentation was informational in nature, with no formal vote or binding decision resulting from the discussion. The recommendations put forward by Council Member Crosby were intended to guide further budget deliberations for the department. ## General Government Link Report [timestamp: 1:26:41] Council Member Lane presented the General Government Link report to the Council. The report covered budget recommendations related to several areas under the General Government umbrella, specifically addressing the council office, the citizens advocate, and the council clerk. The presentation was informational in nature, with Council Member Lane serving as the primary speaker on the item. No vote or formal action was taken as a result of the discussion. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Reconsider the EMS collections for FY2011 and adopt the same number as FY2010 --- ## Full transcript the one that we see today. So psychologically, historically, and culturally, it has been the heart of Lexington. And I think in terms of the downtown, it will continue to be that into the future. It's not to say that there won't be other great projects, but when you look at the concentration of great historic building stock, you look at the great uses that are occurring at street level, it's a natural to assume that it's going to continue to be that way into the future. Downtown Lexington has always been a special place. I was born and raised here, and I can remember as a child coming downtown to see my grandfather who worked downtown. You would go to lunch, and it would take you two hours to go to lunch because the streets were just so packed with people. Everybody knew everybody, and it was just a nice gathering place. With the work that's being done with this park, the streetscape program that's going on, and the other redevelopment downtown, hopefully we'll get back to that state. This is a great night to be in downtown Lexington. We're here tonight to cut a ribbon and open the Fifth Third Bank Pavilion, but more significantly, we're here tonight to open the future of downtown Lexington. It's been a long time coming, not only for the market and for the city, and it's been a perfect melding of our dream to find a permanent home downtown, and also a place where the city could put a lot of vested interest in the heart of downtown. So these communal interests coming together, we certainly look to represent our market in a positive light and all the products that come here. We appreciate your support, hope you'll come out and continue to value what our farmers do, the food that they grow, and the center of community around the table. And we'll see you all here tomorrow morning, and we thank you very much once again. This is perhaps one of the community's best examples of collaboration between the public sector and the private sector. Not only was Fifth Third involved, but we have a number of other private sector partners in this endeavor. Let me recognize some of them. Bill Hinkle and Gordon Denmark with Hinkle Denmark, who have provided and will be providing great landscaping here. Thank you all so much for your contribution. Yeah. Paul Lauritsen with Big Ass Fans. Their fans are going to help keep the pavilion cool. Thank you very much. We appreciate you being here. Robert Sanders with Environmental Landscape, which donated the huge willow oak tree over here close to Main Street. We really appreciate your all's help. So now it's about time. If everybody will come up to the ribbon, we will get it cut, and then we will get our party started. We have a quorum, so I will call the meeting to order. This is a committee of the whole meeting to continue addressing the budget. In order to bring us up to date, give us a picture of where we're going, it's always worthwhile and healthy to have our budget analyst, Mr. Jerry Southers, make a little presentation. Jerry, why don't you tell us, take us through the schedule for today, and any suggestions that might be helpful. Thank you. Well, today, as you see on the agenda, we have a very aggressive schedule. We have the four remaining council links to report out, hopefully before 3 o'clock. So I'd like to just kind of put that first sheet up. Well, it's not showing. I just want to take you back to 2010, and I just want to kind of make a recommendation about the process. But at this point, if I could just recommend that as the links report outs are occurring, and this is what worked pretty good last year, if you can keep your questions related to the recommendations of the council link, kind of keep in mind that at some point in the near future at the meetings, council will be talking about the specific items. And if you see, this is kind of the schedule we used last year that had the recommendation, and it had what was in the mayor's proposed budget, what the council link was recommending and any changes. And also, council voted each item up and down. So it would be after we collect all of your recommendations that you can get in more into the nuts and bolts about the recommendation. But as much as we've got to do, if I may just recommend that if you have a question related to the recommendation, then maybe that should be what you focus on to kind of keep the process moving. So that's basically all I have. Okay. All right, Jerry, we may need you. So you'll be here for assist when we need you. All right. Okay. It does look like it's an ambitious schedule. We have today on the agenda four link report outs. We got through one, I believe, at the last meeting. And we had discussion at the last Committee of the Whole meeting about recessing after the work session today, reconvening, well, recessing the Committee of the Whole, depending on how far we get with the links reports, recessing, and then reconvening after the work session. So we'll take that up as we go through the day. All right. Any discussion on that now? Pardon? It's okay. We'll take that up then at close to 3 o'clock. We'll see where we are, calibrate where we are at 3, and decide on when we're picking up if we need to after the work session today. All right. First on the agenda is the public safety link report out, and that will be Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I want to thank my Councilmembers that serve on the link with me, Councilmember Henson and Stinnett. And Councilmember Stinnett and I tried to address accordingly, so you know who's on this. We didn't know that was going to be the case, but it ended up being pretty true here. Also, I want to thank Shannon and Miriam with our legislative aides and all the LFUG staff who helped compile this information to help attend these meetings. Just to give a little background, and I think this should be in your all's packet here, there's 57 pages here, but the general fund has $274 million, public safety has 56%, or $154.4 million. There's no salary increase in the budget except for those regulated by collective bargaining, about $5 million, $31 million contribution to public safety pension fund. There's no layoffs in public safety. There's going to be three new recruit classes, two for fire, one in September, one in January this year, and one for police in January 11. Personnel takes in for all of the fiscal year budget is $188 million, over 68% in the general services, and then changes for personnel due mainly to continuation of the step pay system for sworn personnel and police, fire, community corrections, inclusion of other items negotiated by collective bargaining. In addition, step increase to police and fire pay per position will increase about 3%. Public safety, the actual expenditures in fiscal year 2009 was $148 million. The adopted budget in fiscal year 2010 was $150.7 million. The mayor's proposed budget is $154.4 million, so that's a difference of about $3.7 million or a 2.5% change. So those are just some highlights. We've got eight different divisions to go through here. The first one was in the commissioner's office. And if you look through your packet here, the commissioner's budget for 2010 was $4.37 million, the request was $4.2 million, and the mayor's proposed budget is $4.0 million. When we met with them, they said they have, the office has three personnel and operating money, $19,000 for professional development focused on required recertifications. Overall, the operating accounts are reduced back to fiscal year 2010 with adopted amounts. Police and fire pension administration is reduced by $132,000. The account is reflected by commissioner's office budget, administered by finance. This was the cost of health insurance for retirees. And then also one of the big issues, and we're going to be bringing two recommendations. One of them is going to be dealing with animal control, and we'll be doing that at the end. And that was reduced by $143,000. The next one, there's no, I'll keep going as long as there's no questions. On page 5 through 19 of the public safety packet was the division of police. The budget was 56, for fiscal year 10 was $56.5 million. The request for 2011 was $56.7, and the mayor's proposed budget is $56.56. It's a flat budget compared to fiscal year 10, as the $638,000 reduction in January 2010. There's 5.3 increased built in contractual costs, and there's four basic categories that are increased, contractual obligated personnel costs, fleet services has changed how they account for vehicle maintenance, House Bill 413 with the transfer amount in fiscal year 10 received transfer of $363,000, and fiscal year 11 there's no amount entered at this time, and also projected increases in utility costs. Police has 595 authorized strengths currently, have 30 vacancies, 26 vacancies will be held over again this year. In the bonding, 2010 bonding items, there's $250,000 for vests and $200,000 for mobile data computers. The vest replacement will be split over two years. Based on being fiscally conservative with their overtime they said this year, they may ask to roll over to next year for use during the World Equestrian Games. I see there's a question here from Council Member James. Thank you. Sorry I said that loud. What's House Bill 413? I think we'll have Commissioner Bennett. House Bill 413 was passed I think back about 2004. It's a source of additional funding for local law enforcement and corrections agencies. It's funded through an additional service fee I think on some of the court case filings. There was an over budgeting in that account in a prior year. What budgeting is doing right now is letting the budget catch back up until it gets to zero before they transfer any additional funds. So there may be some available later in the fiscal year, but going into the year they tried to be conservative on the revenue forecast and not budget any of those transfers this year. Okay, thanks. And as I said earlier, they plan on having one police class and that's going to be January. The next issue is the emergency management. That is on page 20 of the packet. And Pat Duggar came and said they received what they requested and didn't request all that was needed. The operating costs were covered by emergency management grant 47,510, which if you'd like to see how that's broken down, I have a page that they sent us that's told all the breakdown. And they said their overtime was going to increase from 4,500 to 5,000. But they could live within the budget. And most everybody who met with us said they could live within the budget that they were working with. The next one will be E911, met with David Lucas. Personnel is their biggest increase. The way that it's funded is two different sources. Thirty-seven percent comes from 911 funds and 63 percent come from the general fund. 15.6 vacancies. 2010 overtime cost was 550,000. Expects to hire more employees by the end of the year, so overtime should increase by 260,000. There's 60 employees who run effectively. They have full staffing at 74 employees. E911 funds have a 4.5 automatic increase each year. July it's 42 cents for cell phones and $2.92 for landlines. We have an issue that I think we'd like to ask Mr. Lucas if you would come forward, because I know Mr. Stennett might have some questions here on the calculations of the overtime and the vacancy credits. And I know there's been some other issues about council members have talked about potential outing of the department. So I think, Mr. Stennett, would you like to ask your questions? Well, I know we went through some of this during the link, but maybe Commissioner Rumke, is there anyone here from budgeting? Oh, well, I'm sorry. I was looking at this. I didn't mean to do that. But I think there's a big question as to why in two of our public safety departments we are giving personnel lapse credits, and in E911 on one of their budgets we are and the other one we're not. Because to me it's sort of a shell game or a placeholder, so to speak, in terms of what their actual vacancy credit will be on the income. In E911 27, the budget, in one of the budgets you've got a $208,000 payroll or vacancy credit. In the other budget, the big budget, your maintenance hours are paid out of, you've got zero planned. And I'm still trying to figure out how you've ran your department on $3.1 million last year. You asked for $2.6 million, you got $2.5 million, and overtime went down $90,000. And we're still going to be able to avoid overtime increases and still be able to give everyone vacation time. Well, I can answer those questions on the ones on the vacancy credit. I'll leave it for them. The biggest way we were able to decrease the general fund budget was, as you mentioned, 9-1-1 covers 37% of the personnel cost. The vacancies, the overtime we've decreased, it was only a decrease of $10,000 in the budget. But once again, we use the same proportion, so the 9-1-1 fund absorbed 4% of that. So our budget, overall budget for overtime is within $10,000. Okay, so you have it listed, broken out under the E911 income in the budget, because on page 127, it's about $90,000 lower than what it was last year adopted. Yes, that's because the 9-1-1 fund, which isn't listed on here, is larger. So the total budget for overtime is within $10,000 of last year. I guess my point is we're trying to track overtime, and it's very difficult to track it on a year-by-year basis if this budget doesn't accurately reflect what the real number is. It's not under 9-1-1, but we need to figure out a way. It's not your issue, but with budgeting, how we can accurately reflect what real overtime costs are, because that's not going to give us a real number. I understand. I track the total year-by-year, and I have to grab it from several different locations. So you're comfortable with what you've been given. It's more like overtime costs than what we had last year. That's correct. As of yesterday, when I did it for this current fiscal year, we're going to be $60,000 below budget in overtime and temp services between the two. And so I took $10,000 off. So hopefully, based on how we're being successful this year, we'll be successful next year. Next question. Can you repeat the question about the vacancy credit? In the administrative budget, we're using a placeholder number for the vacancy credit plan, but in the main budget, we're not using one. I know we're counting them in general, but all of government's. The targets given by the divisions themselves as targets that they are projecting to meet as part of their reduction plan to meet their reductions. The other divisions didn't offer up those sort of strategic reduction vacancy dollars over and above what they were already giving up. Well, but E911, there's a number in here of $1.3 million. Did that not come from David Lucas? Those are. Which page is that? 127 of the budget. I'm sorry. The $84,000 right above it. As you can see in column one where they requested, that is, and it doesn't follow through to the mayor's budget. That's where we took it out and allocated it into their actual personnel dollars. You see the personnel dollars in column two are a little bit different because we've taken in that $84,000 vacancy into the actual dollars. Those positions that will be held vacant that they specifically said, this administrative specialist will be vacant for two months while we try to hire it are reflected in that second column. Right, but you said that divisions aren't requesting a vacancy credit. What FHIR and those divisions where you actually see a vacancy credit number in the second column, those are over and above any specific position. What we're capturing in that second column in the civil service and non-civil and sworn salaries are, these are positions that are vacant today or we know position that's going to retire. So those are specific people. Outside of police and FHIR, what's the overall general fund government vacancy credit plan? I can get that number for you. I don't have it right here. And I've seen council office, this office, a number of other offices are all built up in there. I can look at it and get it for you. So if we have general specific vacancies for a position that may be vacant today, we also know we'll have turnover and we're going to use that turnover to make our budget work. So then why did we include on page 126 in his same budget a vacancy credit plan? Because I believe they're one of the divisions that offered that up. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I see there's some more questions on here. Yeah. Vice Mayor, if you don't mind, I'll just go ahead. I'll just yield the chair to the links chair for questions. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Lucas, I have a couple of questions. Yes, sir. Could you just indicate the entry level pay for a 9-11 employee and then after they've had experience and been on board what the pay is at a later date? And could you also describe, you're 24-7, so do the newer employees get on the late shift or how do you allocate shifts? Yes, we have obviously a range of different positions, but the entry level position, our telecommunicator is minimum salary of $14 an hour. I do have some employees up to $25 an hour depending on obviously their experience or if they moved up to a dispatcher, which is one step above the telecommunicator. New employees, once they become solo or have been trained through their training process, they get to choose from schedules, and we do have schedules starting almost every two hours from 2 in the morning up to 10 p.m. So it depends on availability. I will tell you that most people migrate to the day shift or the midnight shift, and the hardest shift to fill is the second shift, 3 to 11 p.m., and that shift actually usually goes to the newer people because of seniority. And for someone to be qualified for 911 work, do they have to go through a training process? Could you mention that? There's actually requirements by the state that they have to pass before we even hire them, being high school education, pass a drug test, a polygraph, a background check, a psychological suitability study. So once they pass through all those, we can hire them, and then we have an additional four to six months training, and that includes four and a half weeks enrichment at the academy that is required by the state as well. And so right now you have 15 jobs open? We have roughly 16 vacancies now, and we actually have ten people we've already interviewed that we're kind of moving along in the process. Okay. Well, I just thought I'd ask about that because there are some people looking for jobs, so this is going to be a good opportunity. I've had several calls since last Sunday. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. It's my understanding that just recently you all went to a mandatory 50-hour week for each employee? At the police location we did, yes. So would that not bump up your overtime pay quite a bit? It's increased as much as we spent on overtime, but not more than what's budgeted. And the second question that just came up, you were asked by Council Member Lane about the staffing and seniority, and you said staffing is pretty much based on seniority. Is that based on seniority or pretty much based on seniority? The shift selection is pretty much. We have what we call anchor employees who have several years' experience, and we like to spread and make sure we have an anchor available on every shift so we have an experienced group. And so those people actually get higher selection order than everyone else. So I don't think that, I didn't understand that answer. So if someone's been working there 25 years, do they get to pick their shifts, day, time, weekend, night, whatever, before somebody who, say, has been working there 15 years? There is a possibility that someone there with 15 years will get a higher selection over someone who's been there 25. It's not 100% seniority based. Well, I'd be interested in hearing how it is based and what the written policy is. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Crosby. Yes. Actually, I have a question going back, if I can, to the police real quick, and I'm not sure if Commissioner Bennett is the most appropriate or I see. My question is, maybe you can determine after I ask it. You all mentioned that you're hiring a class for police and also for fire. I'm just curious, how many do you intend on being in this class for police? At this point we don't know because we don't know how many people are going to resign, retire, between now and when the class will be hired in January. We currently have about 30, 31 total vacancies. Twenty-six of those in the current year were not funded and proposed for fiscal 11 are not funded. So that leaves somewhere in the four to five range. We anticipate more departures between now and January, and then the big time for retirements is the first week of January. So we really won't know until we get to that point how many. So right now the class would be four to five. That's the funded vacancies we have at the moment, yes. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. But you're not going to evaluate that until after December 31st? Correct. We're going to initiate and continue the recruiting process, so we have an eligibility list established that we can hire from, but we won't know how many until we get to after the retirement time in the early part of January. So when does the class start? We're looking probably mid-January to mid to late January of 11. And the first of January is usually when you get? When we get the retirements, yes. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Any further questions? I'll continue. Code enforcement. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Lucas. I had a correction noted on the sheet that was handed out. The fee for starting in July is $2.28, not the $2.92 that's quoted. Okay. Thank you. I'll note that. The next one is code enforcement. That's on page 29 of the packet. Their budget is $1.74 for 2010. Their fiscal year 2011 request is $1.65. And the mayor's proposed budget is $1.67. Current level of staffing maintained for fiscal year 2011, they had two vacancies, one code enforcement and one nuisance control officer. They converted to two nuisance officers because it was a better use of their resources. One of the big cuts was in sidewalk reimbursement, which was cut in half. They said cost to administer was not worth it. From $67,500 to $30,000, a cut of $37,000. Approximately $7,000 left on the abatement funds, which they say run out every year. We have a resolution, but it's not in order to keep up to $20,000 in that fund for them. But we have not made that into an ordinance. They're going to start issuing civil penalties in June. They plan to revisit civil penalty use in December after the World Questioning Games. They're fully staffed at 24, filled one position with a layoff from risk management. Any questions on code enforcement? The next one is community corrections, and that's on page 34. Budget for 2010 is $30,000,786. The request for 2011 was $32.6 million. The Mayor's proposed budget is $31.49 million. A new position, eligibility counselor position, will coordinate the day reporting case load, keeping low-level offenders in the community in the beds and secure detention available for high-risk offenders. It's a grant-funded position. Professional service increased due to the juvenile per diem increase to $95 per day. Increases in phone revenue accounts, subsidies now added to the general fund per audit recommendation. Other changes in the division included in the Mayor's proposed budget was, number one, the division requested an increase in overtime funding. The division has not requested an increase in overtime dollars since 2003. In 2004, the division volunteered to reduce the requested overtime funding from $1.2 million to the current funding level. They are currently funding overtime for fiscal year 2011 at fiscal year 2005 funding levels with 33 unfunded officer sergeant positions. The average overtime wage in fiscal year 2005 was $22 per hour. They are projecting the average overtime wage for 2011 will be $25 an hour. They are offering a flat budget for overtime in 2011 with 33 unfunded officers and sergeant positions, which is increased usage of the federal medical leave by staff and an increase in workers' compensation. And the second area was assistant directors. One of the questions that we were concerned about and have been is with turnover in 2009, turnover rate was 22 percent, which is coming down from 2002 turnover rate, which was 40 percent. They say they have better screens on the front end, which is helping this. But there are pay equity issues. They'll have their next class in July. Their last class was September with 30 in their class. The average daily population was 12,530. The state reimbursement is $56 and federal reimbursement is from $80 to $100. Any questions for community corrections? I'm sorry, Mr. Lane. Thank you, Chairman. Mr. Bishop. Since I took the question to 9-1-1 about the open positions, could you describe what the open positions are you have now and what the requirements are for that and what kind of training is required and sort of a general range of pay from starting position moving up? Right. Our vacancies right now kind of run the gamut almost from entry level officers all the way up through captains. The figures that Council Member Ellinger gave you I think were a reflection, as he said, of officers and sergeants. About 33 total. We're going to be holding 52 positions open this year. Our starting salary for an officer is $14.31. And to the question of training, our officers will go through ten weeks of training. Eight weeks of that is actually classroom and inside the jail, and there's about two weeks where they are with what we call a floor training officer where they are actually working, but they're working with a veteran peer officer who can assist them kind of make that final transition. And you're also a 24-7 operation too. So how are shifts allocated? Is that on a seniority or how does that work? Yes. Straight seniority? Straight seniority. Okay. That's all I had. Hopefully maybe somebody will hear this. Since there are people looking for work, this is a good time to hire, I think. It is. It is that. Mr. Beard? Thank you, Chair. Is there a shift differential? Yes, there is. And what is it for each shift? Fifty cents for second and a dollar for third. Okay. Thank you. Any further questions? The next one is police and fire emergency services. The budget for 2010 was 54.4. The 2011 request is 56.4, and the mayor's proposed budget was 54.9. The overtime request reduced to reflect no funding for a paramedic class that saves $400,000 per class of 25 and removal of any buffer, $500,000 for a backfill overtime cost in the event projection or past history proven accurate. There's no purchase of apparatus, and this is one recommendation that Lincoln would like to move forward to the council. We'd like to recommend a new engine on the capital project. The engine right now that they'd like to replace is a 1986 engine. I think if Chief Hendricks, if you could come forward, you might give us a little more information. In the budget, it would be $500,000. We recommend bonding to purchase the new engine. The cost would be approximately $500,000, and if you look in from Commissioner Rumpke, it would be at 4.2% rate at 10 years. The $500,000 would be annual payment of $62,260. Annual payment is $622,607. If you could just give us a little more information. Sure. In reference to the pumper, the pumper is the bread and butter of what it is that we do. A triple combination pumper carries a pump hose and water. And we have purchased only one in the last five years. As you know, we operate 23 of those front line and have several in reserve as well. And with those kinds of operations, the mileage that we put on them, the number of runs that they make, it is critical that we replace those on a regular basis. Thank you. And I'll be making a motion to move that forward. And then the authorized strength for fire is 545. Personnel, 375 firefighters. They're down from 21. They're planning on two hiring classes, one September and one January. The second class to cover end of 2010 retires and move fire to January hiring cycle, which better serves trends and ability to control overtime. They're presently negotiating with the WEG for payment of overtime. Bonded fire suits tower repair to Station 4. Station 6 tower is 40 years old, does not meet the modern training needs and safety design standards. Such bad repair, they'll probably stop using it in 2011. They have a five-year lifespan on fire suits. Rolling replacement schedule is $1,700 for coats, pants and tanks. The cost was built in for the new recruits. The management audit recommended reducing two ECUs to two people. They have 3,800 to 4,100 runs per ECU annually. We did not recommend this. There are 17 active buggies, or I'm sorry, nine active buggies, 17 total units not fully equipped. 5.6 ambulance fee goes to the general fund. $2.7 million of the hydrant expense is tied to the fire budget. And the last issue that we dealt with was the Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement changes. And I think Council Member Henson, you had some questions on this. Do you want to make any comment on that? Okay. Do I have any questions now from Council Members? Council Member Stennant. I was just going to add on two things, actually. One, on the EMS collections, Commissioner Rumke, we had asked if the $5.8 million that was adopted last year in the Mayor's proposed budget, you recommended a decrease of 4.6% in that fund. But if I'm not mistaken, the correspondence we've had the last couple of weeks recommended keeping it flat instead of a decrease. So I just wanted to verify that, and I think that the link would recommend make a motion to Council to change our revenue projections on EMS collections given what's happened January through April of this year. Director, I was going to say Commissioner O'Mara. Director O'Mara did research on that. There was no rate increase for EMS for calendar year 10 or reflected in the FY11 budget. The ordinance has an escalator each January based on the annual Medicare reimbursement rate that Council Member Henson had asked about. That increase was 0% in January of 2010, so no increase was projected for 2011 in January. A new rate structure was adopted in July of 2008. The higher rate base is reflected in higher collections experienced in FY10. And so the FY11 EMS revenue was based on the assumption that the higher average collections had reached their new level, and the December year-to-date collections were annualized from that. Okay. I know that's confusing. Are you all still in line with the decrease in EMS collections at 4.6%? Well, what we're in line for is that the 5.8 is a reasonable number. So, yes. That's what I was trying to get to. That is where we are. But I wanted to make sure you understood why we got where we got. So, yes. The answer is yes. Mr. O'Mara, you walked up and then walked back. Did you want to? Okay, you were happy. We're going to make that motion to change our revenue projection for EMS collections and keep it flat based on the FY2010 adopted number of 5.872 million. So moved. Second. Motion and a second. I'll take the chair back. Do you repeat the motion? Yes, sir. I would like to make a motion to reconsider the EMS collections for FY2011 and adopt the same number we adopted in FY2010 at the 5.872 million, which would keep it flat. Okay. So there's a motion and a second on the floor. Let me just, for clarification, what we had talked about in the procedure today was that we would go through the LINC recommendations and not make and try to avoid at least motions today, but we would accumulate all recommendations. So this is, Council Member Ellinger, you were talking about this. We have two recommendations that we're going to be bringing forward, and this would be the third one. And if you want to, we can wait until we hear all the council links, and then I think Jerry Southers is going to be putting together all the recommendations, and then we can, I guess, then make motions at that point. This just has to do with our LINC, because this is where we discovered the discrepancy in the numbers when we did the Medicare. Okay. So this is the protocol that would. I'm just saying this is where we found it was in the LINC work. Okay. All right. There's a motion and a second to correct the number, according to Council Member Stenitz's motion. I'm showing Council Member Feigl and then Council Member James. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to be sure that that was a recommendation coming forward from the entire LINC's committee to keep that revenue flat, or was that, that's the recommendation from the LINC? And that is opposed to the number that was being projected lower than last year? That is correct, and when we went back and did the research to assist the LINC, in fact the $5.8 million is what we should have brought forth, Council Member Feigl. All right. Thank you. Okay, I guess you're given. Ms. James. Thank you. Council Member James. My question is just typically in the past when it's found that there was a mistake or something, an incidental, it comes as a late item from the administration and not voted on by this body. So because of what we said that we were going to save things to the end, I either think we need to save that so we have a holistic view of revenue for Council to consider, or we need to allow the administration to bring that in as a late item, late discovery, or an incidental or accident. So I won't support that. I think it needs to come from the administration because it changes the budget from what's presented to us, not any reductions or anything that we're doing to Council. Thanks. Council Member Henson and Council Member Lane. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm just curious, I'm not sure if this is a question for the Chief or for Commissioner Rumpke about the collections for EMS. I know many times, Chief, you probably make runs that we don't collect anything for, correct? Yes, ma'am, that's correct. So is that calculated and is that how you came up with that assumption? Obviously there's a much greater number than that 5.8 million that is billed for, but the actual 5.8 is predictive of what is expected to be collected. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Lane. My first question, coming back to you, Chief, is for Council Member Sennett. Just for the audience watching this, what is the difference in the revenue that we generate if we take the new budget number for EMS? It would be $272,864, which would keep it as a flat. That would be more revenue? Correct. All right, good. Just for clarification. I just had a question on the LYNX report. It said there are nine buggies that are active and 17 total units are not fully equipped. Could you explain what that means? Yes, sir. And actually the 17 is actually supposed to be 19. There are nine units that are staffed every day, solely stand-alone units that respond to emergencies throughout the county. It brings us up to 12 total that are equipped and stationed in a paramedic engine company station, so that if the need for ambulances becomes in greater excess than the need for our engines at a given point in time, one, two, three of those units additional could be pressed into service. So those are actually 12 units that are on duty and ready to go. An additional unit is at our training center. We primarily use it for training because it is an elderly unit, if you will. It's, I believe, in excess of 10 years of age. But it is still a licensed ambulance and is equipped. So there again is a fourth. So there are 13. The remaining are used purely to keep these other units' crews on the road. There's our aging fleet. Some of our ambulances are in excess of 10 years old. The newest one is at least two years old. And so that bulk in between there has quite a bit of maintenance on it. So the remaining four, excuse me, I guess it would be the remaining six units, are those that are used either for detail purposes or to replace the other units as a backup. So if I restate that, you're basically saying you have nine buggies that are running daily, they're scheduled daily but in an emergency situation you could activate? Three more, but that would take three fire companies out of service. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. All right. Anybody else ready for a vote then? All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Council Member Ellinger. Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And the final part of the link was the ammo control. Did you talk about the engine yet? Yeah. We talked about the $500,000 for the engine. I couldn't remember. Yes, sir. And that will be one that we'll bring forward that Jerry will be one of our recommendations. It's going to be on the summary list. Right. And that will cost us, I think, $62,000 and change for the bond this year. The last one was the animal care and control. The 2010 budget was $1,035,000. The request for fiscal year 11 was $1,047,000. The mayor's proposed budget was $904,000. There's a $143,000 cut. They currently fill ten officers. They went from five to ten when we increased it a couple years ago. Their annual pay for an officer is $27,000. This cut would dissolve the funding necessary to support the additional position and compromise their ability to meet community demands. The request for $101.03 million for animal control services and $12,000 for vehicle maintenance necessary to meet current contractual obligations. And since we have gone from five to ten, the barking dog complaints and bite reports have reduced through their education and their help. And we make a recommendation that we'll be passing on for the council for $143,000 to continue the link recommended funding at fiscal year 2010 level, which will allow the same level of service to continue their purchase of service agreement, which would be $143,000. And then also, Kevin, does that include the $12,000, or do we need to add that other $12,000 also? $12,000 is already in there. That would be part of that, right? Right. So it would be $143,000 total, and we'll make that as a recommendation too. And with that, that ends our report, and I'll take questions at this point. Any questions for Council Member Ellinger as chair of the Public Safety Link? Seeing none, we can move on. Thank you. Thanks so much for the work you all did on this. The next link report will be Public Works and Environmental Quality, and in order to make it more convenient for the administration and the commissioners, we have set up this table up front. So is whoever may be, Mike Webb. Is Mike here? Yeah, Mike, this will be available for you. Susan. And if you all have got anybody else that needs to be, she's here. I just asked for her. Council Member Crosby is chair of the Public Works and Environmental Quality. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Before I get started, I first would like to thank my link committee. It was all females, Diane Lawless and Council Member Gorton. We got through this, and I also want to make sure that I thank all of our commissioners and our directors. They were very cooperative. We had a rather quick turnaround time with asking for information from them, and they were wonderful with getting back to us. So I appreciate all of that. Lastly, I also want to thank my aide, Brent Burchett, for putting all this together. Hopefully it is clear and concise and you all will be able to understand it. We're going to start off. That's just our first slide. If we could go ahead and go to the second one. We're going to get right into our recommendations. We figured we'd just give our overall recommendations, and I'm going to highlight some things from some of the different divisions. As you can see, our first recommendation is to institute government-wide standard process for divisions to budget personnel costs related to enterprise funds. Just a little background on why we're making this recommendation. We found during our linked discussions that we had various divisions. A few of these funds are new to us this year, and the availability of utilizing those funds to cover costs as they are related to those funds have not been established. We found throughout our discussions with many of the division directors that there wasn't any standard procedure that they were using to be able to document exactly, for example, I'm just going to plot streets and roads. For example, if somebody was spending 50% of their time versus the other half working on something else and 50% of it was towards stormwater work, well then 50% of that salary would come from that enterprise fund. But we found that it was very inconsistent across different divisions on how they calculated this. So we would recommend that we come up with a standardized way for each division if they're going to be utilizing enterprise funds to be able to document exactly why they need those funds and the percentage of work that's being done. Second, we're recommending that an external audit for all enterprise funds be conducted except for the water quality management fee. The reason why we took that out as an exception is because it was built in when we passed that fee to the ordinance that this would be done. We believe that it should just be consistent across the board with all enterprise funds. Number three, we are not recommending bonding for loan a box, dumpster refuse carts, pitching containers, Rosie refuse carts, Lenny yard waste carts, and Herbie refuse carts. Our last recommendation is that, and this actually came from Commissioner Webb, is that we have a contract with the Valley View Ferry, and we're just recommending that we don't get out of that contract right now, but that we maybe reevaluate that contract because from what Commissioner Webb described to us is that it is a lot of upkeep and maintenance, and it might be something that we might want to look into. So we are making those four recommendations. If we could go to the next page, we've just broken down, and I'm not going to read through this because I think everybody can pretty much read the budget and has reviewed these things. The only thing that I really want to bring to your attention is the total for the department under environmental quality. This year there's a new section in the budget. $79,186,190 is not what you would see under the mayor's FY11 proposed budget. You actually would see it an additional $36,540 for new and expanded services, and it's in the budget book, but we just wanted to let you all be aware that we added that in for purposes of our report out. But in your budget book it's not reflected in the 2011 budget, if that makes sense. But if you look further down the line, it's a new addition to the mayor's proposed budget. You can just see the number of employees within the division. If we can go to the next slide, please. And then if we can go ahead and move on to the public works again. They had the same thing in their budget for new and expanded service, but what you see in the $22,496,882 is consistent with what's in the mayor's proposed budget. They did not get any new or expanded service, any funds for that. So you all can pretty much see that. And the next slide is just the total number of employees. And the other thing that we just wanted to mention as a link, we're not making any recommendations because it's already part of the mayor's proposed budget, but we did want to make sure that everybody knew, and I believe this was discussed last week, that we already know what our match for PDR is going to be. And I'm not sure I don't see Mr. Van Pelt. Oh, there he is. I'm sorry. But we just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that we already know what our federal match is going to be. So oftentimes when we approve the budget, we don't have that number yet. So we already have that number, and the mayor's budget has reflected that match. The other thing that came up last week, and I don't know if I have any more. Okay. If you all want to go ahead to your handouts then, one thing that came up last week was the municipal aid program, the MAP funds. And, again, you can read pretty much. I don't want to have to sit here and read to you all every little thing that's in here. But what we did find out was that the transfer category captures the funds transferred to the general fund to offset personnel expenses that are MAP eligible. And then this transfer was not done in 2006 to increase the street resurfacing program. We know that we've had some council members who are very interested in being able to utilize some funds for street resurfacing. And we have a recommendation that perhaps we might ask Ms. McGee if she could look into this and evaluate if there's anything we could do to possibly put some towards or more towards the street resurfacing from this. You don't have to answer us now. We'll just ask you if you could do that. And then you have all the background information. It just shows you all the yes. Did you all ask about the fund balance in that MAP fund? Is that what you're talking about? Yes, we did. And I think because last week we had questions on it. If you want Ms. McGee just to come up because I asked her just to be prepared to discuss this. Yeah, if you don't mind right now while we're talking. Yeah, that's fine. What are your questions? Well, one, the fund balance of $4.4 million in the MAP fund, in lieu of using it on roads, which is what we should be using it on, what's the need to keep a fund balance in there? I had discussed with Jerry this morning about it, and I think that in doing some research on the MAP fund, it doesn't look like Streets and Roads made a request for capital funds. So probably, in my estimation, some of that money should have been for them, but they didn't make a request, so we didn't put any budget in because we didn't see that ask. So we could probably identify some projects working with them to fund that. Typically, in the MAP fund, it's a fund that can obviously only be used for that purpose, so we take any money left over from a year and roll it to the next year until we have a significant enough money to really do a good project. So that's some of what you see in that fund. But it looks like they didn't make a request having a new director. So probably we didn't get that communicated with them and follow through as much as we normally would. And I guess keeping consistent with our terminology, it's the $4.4 million unrestricted fund balance. Well, it's projected unrestricted, yes. Then what about the labor cost? It's restricted for MAP, but we could use it on any MAP appropriate. Right, I just meant for road resurfacing. What about for labor costs on engineering and streets, roads, and forestry? Those two numbers, you know, they jumped up pretty big from last year. They are different. Do we have what they were last year and the year before? Do we have those numbers? We can get those for you. I mean, you can see in the transfer prior to, I think in my e-mail to Casey, prior to last year it was only streets and roads, and now we've added in engineering, I think is what I said. So that $880,000 in prior years was always streets and roads. And now the difference between that is what's going for engineering, I believe. I mean, we're spending double what we're putting on the ground in personnel costs out of the road tax money. And, you know, that's a big issue. I would like to know why the labor costs are jumping up so high. I mean, I don't know if Commissioner Webb can answer that. I think those two departments are falling under his. I feel like we're using money that should be going on the pavement for labor costs. Well, and we certainly have made that strategic change. have made that strategic change, I don't know. I would say that the personnel costs are certainly MAP eligible, you know, they certainly are within our ability of the MAP funds and what MAP funds can be used for, but if it's our decision as a city we want to, you know, target more of those to, you know, the capital expenses, the operating expenses, that just has implications on the personnel side, you know, then perhaps we don't have the people to do those jobs. We may have all the capital in the world, but no personnel dollars to pay for them. I know that's not a question to you, I just think we need to address it. Yeah, I mean it's something that we need to definitely consider. Especially when we're putting $600,000 towards salt, which it could come out of this money as well, since it's maintaining roads in the wintertime, while we're using the salt money, salt barn money, is in the budget. But we're not sure that that's MAP eligible. Well, my point is you're using streets, roads, and forestry labor on our roads. I guarantee you some of that labor is being used to clear it during the winter months, etc. So to me we're stretching using these labor type numbers for this money, when it needs to be going down on pavement. I'd like to know where the increases are coming from. Yeah, we can certainly get you the increased personal information to you. May I ask a follow-up question? You mentioned that Streets and Roads just didn't request it this year. Have they requested it? This is the first time I have chaired this link and served on this link. Did they request it in years past, do you recall? There have been requests. I don't know that it has been every year. In between the time I did the research for you, I haven't had time to touch base with them and get an answer back as to whether it's a purposeful non-request. Can we ask that you look back to say 2006, just because that's the year? Well, I think the information is in what I sent you, because we broke out the capital expenses by division. But I can certainly look at that again and find out. You sent all that from 2006? I just wanted to make sure, because we have a lot of council members very interested in that, and I will just say to sort of tail on to what Council Member Stenitz said, that is one concern we really had within our link and why we made the recommendation for there to be a standard type of reporting procedure within all of our different enterprise funds, because we found, for example, we had one division where 16 positions are now going to be funded under the mayor's proposed budget out of our Division of Water Quality, and they very well may be doing these jobs, but there was not an exact, we couldn't really get an exact grip on or comfort level with how these calculations were being done to justify those numbers being in the budget. And so that's why we have asked that this be done for the next year. I mean, it's all new, so of course it's difficult for everybody to be consistent this year, because it is new, but from here forward there just definitely needs to be a standardized process across government, because as a link we were not very comfortable with the fact that 16 positions that were in our general fund were not being covered by our water quality fee, and then where's that money from the general fund going? That was probably a question that we're going to have to look at, because a lot of these personnel costs are being covered by our fees, and they're no longer in our general fund, so where's that money? The general fund, if we're so low on that and making a bunch of cuts, then where is that money? Because it's now not being utilized for these positions. I hope I'm clear on that. I wanted to go back real quick. I'm sorry, I skipped a page that I just wanted to bring to your attention. Under, you'll see it, it's the budget printout from the Department of Environmental Quality. I just wanted to, I mentioned that we added in the 36,540 on our PowerPoint. In here you'll see it's reflected in Mayor's 2009, or excuse me, Mayor's 2011, just the 79,000, or 79 million one hundred forty nine thousand six hundred fifty dollars. You'll see that what was requested and what was given are, there's a significant difference in those numbers, and also if you look under water quality, there was a huge reduction for what was requested and what was actually given in the Mayor's proposed budget. And after talking with Charlie Martin, we added on, and you'll see that there are some projects that the Division of Water Quality just won't be able to do, and I don't know if Charlie wants to comment, but many of these, if I understand it correctly, many of these projects are done in stages, and his comfort level was fine with the reductions in his budget. Yeah, if you have any more to comment on that. Was it sure if you were inviting me to or not? If you wanted to, I think I got it. I'm fine with that. There were three specific projects that are ongoing that we deferred some of the cost. When we put together the CIP, we put it together under a cash flow perspective, which I think is the right way to do things rather than tying money up. Sometimes that comes back to trip us up, because when we come to you with a blue sheet for the full amount for it, if it's not fully reflected as fully funded in the budget, it gets held up, even though from a cash flow perspective that we're going to be able to afford that. I'm not so sure we've completely skinned that cat yet, but in this case what we have done is that we have deferred our SCADA allocation for this year. The CIP called for that being a $16 million project, but all that $16 million isn't going to leave in one year. We all know that, and so we had staged it such. The project's a little bit behind schedule, so we're deferring the $7.7 million that was originally in the CIP for 2011, asking to push that off of 2012. No sense budgeting money or going and borrowing money that we know realistically we are not going to spend. Likewise, with remedial measures, the CIP that was approved as part of the sewer user fee increase in 2008 called for $4.8 million in FY11. We're not going to spend that much. We're going to spend more like $2 million, so we're deferring the $2.8. And then lastly, as I mentioned in the in the oversight committee meeting today, we originally had 2.1 budgeted for a new administration facility. We're deferring that as well, because under General Services recommendation is that we're going to look to lease as the government as a whole develops its process as far as a new government center. So all three of those deferrals we're comfortable with, provided that when we come and are ready to enter into a contract that we don't get into a problem that the funding is going to be based on cash flow, but we have, on a budget standpoint, have to have all the money right there when it's not going to leave. Does that make sense? Does anybody have any further questions for Mr. Martin or for the link? Oh, I'm sorry. This is just a general question regarding anything about... Yeah, we have everybody here. We're wrapped up. On your recommendations that are on the, I guess, the first page of our handout, the slide, one of the things you mentioned was external audit for the enterprise funds. Will one of your recommendations be funding to cover that external audit? No. I believe that we discussed in our link, and my fellow link members can correct me if I'm wrong, but most of our enterprise funds do have surpluses, and we would recommend that they probably would come from those funds, but we don't have a recommendation specifically for this funding. So we would, yes. I just want to let you all know, all of our enterprise funds are already included as part of our audit, and if you look in your CAFR, you'll see that, you know, when they issue the opinion, they issue it on every fund of the government. So I guess my question back would be with the water quality management fee. Yes. Is that included in the financial audit that Mount Joy does? Yes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. We weren't, I guess... I was going to say, that was not our understanding, so... And there's lots of heads up here shaking no. I would love to hear from some of the folks that are saying that's not true. I don't know the CAFR well enough to know what we'd be looking for from an external audit that would not be included in the CAFR or how we could give particular criteria from counsel as far as what it is that you're looking for, especially from the link. What is it? What's the expectation? And did you have specific things that you were going to target besides the expenditure of percentage of funds to different divisions? Well, I can tell you that our reasoning behind it was just the fact that we had, when we instituted the water quality management fee, that that was built in there and the link believed that we should be consistent with all these funds and make sure that this is done. And I'm going to go ahead and... That was our reasoning for why we made the recommendation, because it seemed a little silly that we were doing one but not the others. Again, just to create consistency and make sure, again, that financial audit is done to ensure that the money that the taxpayers are paying into these funds are being spent appropriately. That was, I think, our reasoning. Do you have an answer to what Mr. Martin provided? Well, all I can tell you is that all the funds are audited. I have not actually seen or don't recall the specifics in the ordinance that Mr. Martin was just talking about. I'll have to get with Bill, because he was the acting commissioner at that time, just to confirm that what we do have meets those requirements. If I could try to make a clarification. I think the clause or the section of the ordinance with the water quality fee is not in the same context as what you're talking about auditing funds. But my recollection, which I haven't read for a while, but my recollection in the discussion in the ordinance was that after it was three years, I believe, that a total review would be made of all of the expenses so that an evaluation on the rate that was being paid could be done. So that's kind of a rate analysis. We, and I apologize, the original rate is $4.32. Thank you. And so the discussion was around should there be a CPI automatic increase every year or should there be a periodic review to determine what the fee rate should be. And that's what was being talked about with that three-year review. That's totally different from a financial review that does testing to see that the debits and credits were recorded properly in the right accounts and presented fairly and accurately in the financial statements of the government. So I think we were talking about two different things. Well, we have lots of comments from council members. So we may determine that we need to revise that recommendation. Our intent is for a financial audit, but I guess there are some of us up here who may feel like it needs to be a little bit more specific. But I will go ahead and turn it over to Council Member Gordon. Well, can I finish asking my questions? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know. Yeah, I'm sorry. Also, when you talked about no bonding for the loan-a-box and all the other waste management things there, were you saying no bonding for it and your intention is to use their actual funds for that? Yes. So was there discussion about the dollar amounts that would be needed and making sure that those, you're going to make those recommendations as part of your link report out, that those things be purchased? As I recall, all of those things and someone in the budget or someplace might remember, it's about $800,000 plus for those items was built in. Does anybody remember? If you add them all up, it's like 800 and some thousand, I believe. So there would be a motion coming out of your link that will recommend that money out of that fund, or are we just going to say the money's there and wait on administration to bring the request forward? I'm sorry, you want me to answer that? I think our recommendation is that we not bond it, and then if they want to bring it forward, they can. We were not going to make a recommendation that they have to spend their surplus funds on these items. If they need them, then they can bring them forward and spend them out of the funds available. But it was not our intent to bring forward that, well, we're going to ask them to spend that $800,000. They may be able to stagger them in some way, but that was not going to be our recommendation. Okay. And my last question is, on the re-evaluation of the Valley View Ferry, are you going to be bringing forward a motion to put the service agreement into a committee? We can do it either way. This was just a recommendation through our link, but I think Commissioner Webb indicated to us during our link committee that this was something we spent a lot of money on with maintenance, and our people are doing it. Yes, ma'am. What we have is a situation where we are providing funds for fuel to the ferry, and then we have another category where we provide the maintenance. The maintenance budget is in the Commissioner's Office of Public Works. I'm sorry to interrupt. I didn't really want to get into the details of it. My only question was, out of the link, is that going to be put into a committee for the Council to review, or is that going to be an administrative process of them reviewing that agreement? I believe that it would be probably appropriate for the Council to review it. Our recommendation is to re-evaluate it. When we go through and do all the different recommendations, we can put it into committee. Okay. And the same thing with number one? Yes. Same thing with the standard process? You're going to bring forward that recommendation? Yes. Thank you. Thanks. Sorry, Andrea. Council Member Gordon. Thank you. I just wanted to go back to the audit of the enterprise funds. I think that one of the things that came out in our link was the fact that it is not transparent to the public where their money goes, because they are enterprise funds. The idea of following the funds from when they're collected with Kentucky American to when they get back to the divisions would be a good thing. And we did have some pretty in-depth conversation about that. Mr. O'Mara, I'm not sure that the ordinance about the water quality fee avoids the word audit. I think the word audit is in there. I mean, just remembering back, I know that we wanted to be sure and gather information about whether the amount of the fee is still appropriate, which is what we're doing. About whether the amount of the fee is still appropriate, which is what you were discussing. But we also, in the audit, I believe, asked, I mean, in the ordinance, asked for an audit. And I think this recommendation came because there was not clarity on all of the enterprise funds and following the money, if that makes sense. Thank you, Council Member Stennett. Just want to follow up on a couple of things. One, follow up on what Council Member Gordon was saying. They are two very different types of audit. I think the audit in the stormwater fee was to analyze the system, the service, the rate, all those kind of things, not just a CAFR type audit. So it was a little bit more in-depth. I think that would be great for all the enterprise funds. And I think that's what you're recommending, right? That is correct. More in-depth, not just a CAFR type audit. That is correct. The other thing is on the refuge, not bonding, are you all recommending not bonding just those things you listed? The loaner box, the dumpsters, the pitch-in, the Rosie, the Lenny's, and the Herbie's? That is it. We felt very comfortable with everything else. Just those items. Everything else we felt comfortable with. Bonding. Yes. So that's about $200,000, roughly, based on what we were handed at the last meeting and the estimated debt service in the budget. I'm talking about debt service. I'm talking, yeah, I don't care about the bond number. I want to know the dollars, as Council Member James asked. So it's about $200,000 general fund dollars, what we would save or from that fund. So thank you. I just want to clarify just those things, because there's a lot of computer equipment in there as well. So we're going to still recommend that. We were going to recommend that, but that's obviously up for discussion when we go through recommendations. I can say that, and you all know through the questioning that we've had over these projects, last week I believe that there was some discomfort with us doing any type of bonding for items within this division, because they do have the funds available to pay cash. I think the administration and Commissioner Remke have given us every reason why we can do it. So I guess we felt like there was some comfort level with some of those things, but maybe not others. But as a link, I think that we believe that if we could, we wouldn't do any of it. We were trying to do some compromising, and those were the things that we felt the most comfortable with as far as their needs and the community needs. And in turn, with some of the other recommendations we're making, I think next year we'll have a better picture of what comes in and what's going out with these expenditures. My last question was to Commissioner Remke. On the solid waste bonds, did we ever get the number that was in the budget that was placed in the Mayor's proposed budget amount for debt service for the solid waste portion? Have we found that yet? Not yet. Okay. Thank you. And if you could just follow up with us on that when you find it. Thank you. Ms. Wallace. Thank you. I just want to piggyback on what Councilmember Crosby and Councilmember Gordon said, and I think you kind of alluded to. When we were looking at how some of the water quality and solid or urban services funds were being allocated for administration and different positions, it wasn't clear to us, and we didn't get clarity as to how those numbers were derived. I think our recommendation is not just for financial debits are correct and credits are correct, but an overall review of the process of figuring those percentages and of those enterprise funds that are put toward different divisions, not to say that they're not doing the work, but to say that we want to know exactly, not just a guess. Thank you. And that would also make it more transparent to the taxpayers as to what actually is being done with their money, I think. So, Ms. James. Thank you. Just a little bit more follow-up on the waste management stuff. The fees that are paid for the loan-a-box, does that money go back into the enterprise fund or does that go to the general fund? Do you know? That goes back to the, excuse me? Enterprise. It goes back to the enterprise fund. And Steve, you may know this, on the Rosie refuse carts, and I'm guessing that we've bonded these items before. The items that are listed on here that were proposed, like the dumpster refuse carts, the pitch-in, the Rosies, the Lenny yard waste, and the Herbies, those have previously been bonded. I can't recall in my tenure that they have been bonded. They've never been bonded. People behind you are not. I think it may have been done many, many years ago, but not in the last several years. So, we've been paying cash for them. And what's the lifespan? What are, what's the, what are we, about five years that we think we need to replace them? Typically, eight, nine, ten years, somewhere in there. Eight, nine, or ten years? Okay. And have you all talked about the fact, did you know that this recommendation was going to be to not bond them? Have you all had a discussion about what your alternative will be? No. Okay. All right. I'd be interested in hearing what your alternative will be to that before we report, before we do our final budget report out. Thank you. Thank you, Casey. Yes, Ms. Wallace. I'm sorry, one more thing, and I don't think that we ever got it. But it was Commissioner Taylor's last day when she met with our link, and she had indicated that you all had come up with an investment or a recommendation of purchasing investments. I may not be using the correct word. Council Member Gordon, do you, an investment, proposal, long range? Are you talking just about like our cash management policy? And we talked a little bit about that at Water Resource this morning. But just to expand it across the urban county government, Council Member Lawless, what we what we are looking at is how we have funds, our cash invested. And it's Commissioner Bush and I have had a discussion over the last week or so talking about timing the dollars that they need to have versus how we have our cash invested. Is that what you were referring to? So that we can earn more off of the fund balances? No. Oh, sorry. I believe you're referring to the investment strategy we had for new projects and expanded. Oh, sorry about that. And I don't think we ever got that. We can send it again. We did. We did send it. Okay. And I may have gotten it and read it. So thank you. I don't see anybody else for questions. So I'll wrap it up. I know we have a lot of links to get through today, but I appreciate everybody. And if we have any further questions, please feel free to direct them towards the link or the administration. Obviously, you direct them towards the administration, if you could copy us on them. So when we are making our final recommendations for budget and voting on them, that we can at least be aware of them. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member Crosby. And thank you, Acting Commissioner and Commissioner for sitting up here, for joining us up here today. It doesn't appear that the questions are going to be as they have the quantity of questions that are going to need for the commissioners to sit up front. So we'll just go ahead and do it in the normal way. Thank you all for allowing us to test it out, though. Thank you for being courteous and thoughtful. Can I recommend that we have budget and finance for it? It seems like we're having more questions for Commissioner Rumke, Elizabeth, and I think they can sit right where they are right now. Let's go ahead with the way we are. All right. Council Member Lane is up next with the general government. Thank you, Vice Mayor. We have an overhead on this. And I'd also like to suggest maybe Commissioner Kemmerer-Cole be on standby if a question comes up for her. I notice she's not in the meeting right now. Okay. Our format on this, this is a summary. We covered a lot of areas in the, basically in the mayor's office and general government and some of the outside agencies. And we'll go to the next sheet, please. All right. The first item on there is the council office recommendations. I might add that Council Member Blues and Capitalist Member James, myself, were the three members of the links. And we met on May 17, 18, 20, and we've had several conference calls since then. Okay. If we go to the bottom first, it says refer to the CalFIT for further discussion. There was a request for substantial reduction in our expenses in the council office. I think it's going to be very difficult, and that was the conclusion of the links, to make the cuts that were requested. But we did want to recommend a few cuts. One was an account number 74102 for conferences and training to reduce that from $2,500 to $500. And with regard to dues, we are recommending that the dues for the National League of Cities and ICMA be transferred over to the mayor's office and not allocated to the council office. That would be a reduction of approximately $12,750 in our budget. And then the mayor had suggested a $1,515 reduction in the council member's cost center. And we had agreed this last calendar year, or fiscal year rather, to reduce our expenses by a total of $5,000. So we're suggesting that we, as council members, agree to additionally reduce our expenses by another $3,500 by the end of fiscal year 11. But because this is an issue really for the council to discuss, we feel like this needs to be referred. But those are our initial suggestions on that. And I'm going to keep going unless there is a question. You could just interrupt me. I yield the chair again to the LYNX chair. So you do have some questions over here, it looks like. All right. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Lane. So on the NLC dues, would that be, that would be by a line item so that if the mayor decided not to pursue that membership, that money would not be spent? That would be the way I would suggest we handle it. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Stennett. Yes, sir, chair. Did you all ask about the differences in all the council office budgets? Some were half and some were full budgets. You know, I don't know that we discussed that at our LYNX. Well, I mean, it's going to make a big difference to whoever. I mean, it's not in my budget, but there's some of you in here are only getting half of what everybody else is getting in the mayor's proposed budget. If we look at pages 34 through 36. Well, that's the reason that we suggested that Ms. Polley should go to a Cal meeting where we can discuss this in more detail, because there are a lot of issues in our council office budget. And much of our expense, as a matter of fact, is personnel. And we don't really have a lot of flexibility in budgeting. Well, I think we need clarity on that for either budgeting or Mr. Shethers may have some clarity because some council districts are only have 5,000 for NDF funds. Others have 10. Yeah, it can be. We all should be equal at the beginning. So if we approve your recommendation number three, some people are really going to get cut. For the district. For the districts that are less than they're counting for the council members that will be running for office if they have opposition. Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all because this is a yearly budget. Whatever we put in there as of July 1 will take effect until June 30th of next year. So regardless of who wins that election, a new councilor can get in there on January 1 and won't have anything left. What we've done in the past. We've never done it that way. We've done it every year like that. No, we haven't. We've never started off as a placeholder. Because if someone spends the money down, then there will be none left for that council member. Even if somebody wins their proposal. That's why we leave half. That's why we leave half. Well, how can you leave half of 5,000? You're going to leave 2,500 then. That doesn't make sense. Everyone should start the same. Well, in your budget book on page 36, beside each one of it shows the second six months. And it's only for the council members that have opposition. Well, this is a problem we've had. Every council office should have the same budget, period. Well, they do. We'll make the amendment. We all need to have the same budget numbers. Well, you do. No, we don't. Because district 10, district 7, all have less numbers. And for accounting purposes, it makes it very difficult to manage our own budget when we're not all reflected in the same. What we've typically done in these situations where a district has opposition is after the election is over, we take that second six months funding that's been held in reserve just so that it can't be spent down and put it back into their budget. So when the new person or the same person comes in at the second six months, they have just as much money available to them as they would have had. Then how are you going to manage the third recommendation? We would apply that cut in both budgets. That's the way we've handled that historically. There's nothing different about this plan than there has been in prior year budgets. The way we're showing it is different. So I disagree with that. The second thing I was going to ask was, Council Member Lane, on the dues, you mean the KLC dues? And you said NLC. Those are for actually the local, right, Kentucky? Right. The KLC dues, as I understand, have already been transferred out if you look at the budget. Okay. Thank you. So that eliminates the national. That should be NCL. That's a typo in there, national. I guess that's corrected on that one. Thank you. Anybody else have a question on that? My understanding is you're suggesting we do this in a CAL meeting so we can kind of, if we have any other questions, we can talk about it. I just felt that it affects every member of the Council and it would be better to discuss it in more detail. Okay. We move over to Citizens Advocate, page three, please. Thank you. Okay. And there are two recommendations here. The Lane Committee recommended the appointment of the Citizens Advocate Committee as provided in Section 4-11 of the Charter with a report to the Council with recommendations on staffing no later than October 15, 2010. And then the links, this was a split vote, I might add. I voted to add $50,000 for a six-month salary and benefits for the Citizens Advocate position beginning January 1, 2010. And the recommendation was to take $25,000 from the Division of Enterprise Solutions rent account, and that was unanimously agreed to, and $25,000 from the internal audit account number 71-202, which was for software to do a computerized audit of our payroll and our checks that are issued by the government. We're going to go to those other two areas. My thought is we really can't do much until we have a recommendation from the Citizens Advocate Committee and also a vote by the Council. And Mr. Vice Mayor, you want to comment on that too? Citizens Advocate Work Group has a meeting scheduled with at-large Council members on June the 8th. Okay, thank you very much. All right, we'll go to the next area, Council Clerk recommendations. I'm sorry, excuse me, Ms. Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Lane. So on this second bullet, you would add in six months' salary and benefits for the Citizens Advocate, and you would cut the Division of Enterprise Solutions and cut the internal audit account. That's where you would find the money? Is that what you're saying? Yes, ma'am. And we will be coming up to cover those two reductions, but that's the proposal. Okay. So they weren't linked in any way. That's just where you would make cuts? No, they weren't linked. It's just where we have a savings of $25,000 in rent in the PIO office because they're moving some of the people from a rented area into the building, so there's no rent. And then the other $25,000 was just a deduction that was recommended out of the professional services line item for internal audit. So are you going to get to what that $25,000 represents exactly when you do internal audit, or is now the time to what that professional services is? I tell you what we could do is we could jump over to internal audit if you'd like to. Let's just go through the line item. We can come back to this if you have a question. Is that all you have, Ms. Gordon? Mr. Myers? Thank you, Council Member Lane. I guess on the Citizens Advocate link, as the Vice Mayor said, we have a meeting two weeks from today. I'm sure that our recommendation is going to be that we go ahead and fill that position being that the charter requires it to be filled. So I guess my question is, is that, and I could agree that it's probably going to take six months by the time we fulfill the charter requirements in order to fill that position. But is that $50,000 that you have for the salary and benefits for that position based on historical data in terms of the salary and the benefits for that position, or how did you come up with that number? Okay, that is based on historical data. That would be based on one half year's pay and benefits for the Citizen Advocate and retaining the current administrative person in that department. I think the question is, and I was just looking at a memorandum here, there were 56, I guess, phone calls that came in to the Citizens Advocate office over the first quarter of this year. And if you look at the cost for handling that, the question would be, do we want to have two people in that office, do we want to have one person in that office, do we want to have a half person, do we want to reassign part of those duties to somebody else? I mean, that's not my decision. That's going to probably be up to the committee that's going to be reviewing this. But we felt, and I might say that I did vote against taking money out of internal audit because I felt like that was not necessarily the best place to take the money out. But anyway, I was voted down on that. The point being, though, is that we're going to have to do a lot of work to make sure that I think we need to evaluate how much staffing we need in that department, and then we appropriately staff it, and that we comply with the charter. And I think there's enough money here. There may be extra money depending on how we do the staffing. Okay. And then I guess I can save the question with respect to the $25,000 out of internal auditing account for when you get to internal audit. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. I know you're on the audit committee. So you know that concerns me. Thank you. Okay. Ms. James. Thank you. Our chair reported out correctly of the votes. It wasn't split. It was really two to one. But the one thing that we really wanted to take in mind of was the work of the citizen advocate group. And we did talk about that that would be half a year for the citizen's advocate. And I deterred the chair from mentioning a call number because we know that with citizen's advocate, it's not really based on the quantity of calls. It's about the amount of work that goes in for each one of those calls. It's not like a Lex call, pick up the phone, and you've rerouted that call or typed something in. Or it's not a systematic kind of thing like that. It's a lot of research that goes into it. So I will yield to the citizen's advocate work group for their recommendations. But we wanted to be able to be sure to have the money in there for this charter required position. So we thought that was, we had discussion that that was important. Thanks. Thank you, Council Member. I would like maybe to add just one more thought to Council Member James' thought, is that this office was an original charter. It's been recommended on several occasions to be eliminated as a functioning office of government. Part of that reason is that each council member has an aide. And we, I think, strongly advocate for the constituents in our districts. Secondly, we did not have GTV3. We didn't have video streaming. We didn't have a website. And all the modern technology that makes everything transparent and available to constituents. So I think, you know, in assessing, we're in a very tight budget situation. I think we have to assess the best way to spend the taxpayers' money and maybe reducing or reformatting how we're doing this service would be appropriate. Okay, we go to the next item, please. Council Clark recommendations. And we are recommending acceptance of the Mayor's proposed budget and the issue regarding a blue sheet tracking software. We are suggesting that we defer that until we have looked at the new rules and procedures for the council meetings and the number of regular scheduled annual meetings that have been finalized by the council. And I wanted to add it in here that the current proposal increases, this is for the annual meetings, increases the number of council meetings from 120 to 144. So you have to keep in mind that that's tracking. There may be dockets for that. There may be web streaming. There may be TV coverage. All these issues would increase our costs for the council, Clark, and for communications. Mr. Myers, you got a question? Thank you, Councilman Lane. I guess my first question would be if you could articulate to us how you arrived at that number of 120 to 144 because it's grossly overstated. Okay. Currently we have 48 committee meetings a year, 48 work sessions a year, 24 council meetings a year. That's 120. If you do 96 committees a year, 24 work sessions and 24 council meetings, that's 144. So there are 24 additional meetings that would be required. Did you take into consideration that we have a couple of recesses so we actually don't have meetings every week of the year? Well, that may be true, but I didn't take consideration in the calculation of the 120. So they would be reduced appropriately too. So it's still going to be an increase of probably 24 additional meetings. Depends on how you want to. That is arbitrary because you can, you know, when we have our meetings, we set the meetings we sometimes set to eliminate meetings. Okay. I have a memo that I just passed. I had Joe pass it around. Do we have an extra one for the overhead? And I guess, I guess really what I'll say is we don't need to belabor this right now, but that information up there on the overhead is incorrect. And we've got the actual numbers of how many meetings we had last year and how many meetings are proposed in the calendar for next year. And if we can put that up over on the overhead, I don't want to belabor this, but long story short, the recommendation that you're making here to defer this software, the numbers that you have there do not accurately impact what that software would have to manage. So you guys can go ahead and make a recommendation either yay or nay on that software because the numbers that you have are completely wrong. So, and I don't know this, I guess if people want to ask questions about this, everybody has a memo in front of them. They can read it. I don't want to read this big long memo and go through this whole thing, but if people have questions, I'm more than happy to answer them. If you want to slide that, can you slide that sheet up to the bottom? It shows the number of current annual meetings per council member, and it's 77 at the least and 116 at the top end. If you look at the proposed budget or the proposed calendar that we have with the proposed resolution that we have on the table, it's going to make it 75 meetings per council member. So you're going to see a net reduction all the way down that right-hand column. So the net number of meetings per council member is going to be 75, and that 120 to the 140 is incorrect. So, you know, I don't know what you want to do with that, but. Well, the point of what I was making is it doesn't matter how many meetings the council member goes to, it's how many meetings the clerk goes to, how many meetings have to be docketed and reported, how many of them have to be web streamed, how many employees need to run the cameras and operate communications for the government. Those are the expenses I'm referring to. That has nothing to do with how many times the council members go to the meeting. If you could slide that sheet back down to the top, then we'll show that number. The total number of work sessions is going to be 36 currently. The proposal will be 24, so actually that number decreases. If you look at council meetings, it's 24. That will stay the same because that's by law, by charter. Budget and finance committee is going to go from 10 meetings to 9. Planning is going to go and stay at 9. Look down at services. The real difference here is going to be that... Council Member McMaher, let me intervene just as chair of the committee as a whole. I think if we're going to drill into this, can we set it aside? You've done a lot of impressive work to develop the memo and the numbers, and I suspect that we'll need to all take it and digest it and then bring it back up. Will that work? That works. I just want to put out there that the accurate number is represented there rather than what's that 20 to 40. So we'll have a chance then to take yours, and I'm sure it'll come back up. Okay. Council Member Lane. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all for that good discussion just now. I'm looking forward to a 25% reduction in meetings. So that's the proposal. A couple things. One, Council Member Lane, is the advertising for the Herald-Later in the council clerk's budget? Yes, it is. I think there's a small reduction in there because it was uncertainty about how much would be required. Was that under the operating supply line item? I'm not sure which line item it was under. It may not be appropriate to answer that specifically because I don't know for sure. Does anybody on the links committee remember? It sounded like it was a $30,000 deduction. So you think it's already reflected in their budget? Yes, sir, I do. Okay, because we just got an opinion on it yesterday or a couple days ago from law. So I just was curious. This was issued in April. If that reflected that or not? Right. I mean, I think it's possible that it could be more, but that would be dependent upon the rules changes. And what's happening at the Herald-Later. But our legal advertising is paid from the council clerk's budget, not law's budget. That's my understanding. Does anybody know or confirm that? Budget people? You're just looking for the advertising for the Herald? Is that your question? Yeah, the question was, did we make an adjustment in the amount spent for the Herald-Later? Yes. On page 38 of your big book of the clerk's office is where their budget is, and it's in their operating supplies budget, and it has been reduced. And what's the reduction in that line? There are other reductions, I believe, in there. It's a little about $100,000, but there are reductions above just the Herald-Later expenses coming out of there. But we could talk to the clerk and get the amount that she estimates would be Herald-Later advertising specific. Okay. Thank you. So, Elizabeth, 100% of the Herald-Later or the legal notice budget is in the clerk's? All of the ordinance Herald-Later budgets are there. There are budgets in HR to advertise for positions. I can't think of any other places where there would be other sorts of advertisements, but HR definitely does have a portion as well. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Blues. Thank you, Chair. Just to go back to the point about the Blue Sheet tracking software, the link committee in the discussion of this issue was not focusing on the number of meetings there would be, although that's not been settled as of yet. What our rationale was is that we really don't want to budget for a software program until we know what we need. And our thinking was that for the first six months, we can operate on the same basis without that software, see what the clerk might need, and then for FY12 budget, come to some conclusions about what the clerk might need for computer software. So that was our rationale. The issue wasn't a question of X number of meetings would mandate a particular software program. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Lawless. Ms. Lawless has stepped out of the room. Mr. Beard. Thank you. Rama, if you don't mind. On the question of this Blue Sheet tracking software, have you analyzed the complexity of that software for anybody in your area? We have. We actually have a couple of RFPs we're evaluating right now. So I think we'll put it on hold. I mean, you just don't stick it in one day and run with it the next, I don't believe. I mean, that hasn't been the way it's happened. You're right about that. It's going to be a 12 to 16-week implementation with we have to figure out what committees are going to be there, how many processes are going to be there, and we've got to put all that in place. So there'll be some work that goes into it. I would imagine so. And I think we need to be cognizant of that fact when we're making a decision on whether we do this or not. And the timing of your people, and their people, and the timing of your people, and the timing of your people. There are plenty of other software projects sitting out there right now that have to be done, and you might not be able to get to it or be able to assign somebody to get to it. Sure. We're working with the clerk's office right now. We need to move into a new content management system, and that has to be in place before we can do this. And once you finalize which direction you're going in, I think we'll be glad to accommodate that. By the end of June of next year? Whatever time frame you decide the committee structure is going to be in place, I would think right after that for us to put the requirements in place would be an appropriate time. Well, it's not a 100 percent necessity to have the software in place, even though we might change the committee structure. That's correct. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lane. Mr. Byers. Thank you, Councilman Lane. Rama, can you come up for a second? We serve on the committee together that's looking at the two RFP responses. That's correct. And I know that it's going to take us some time to finally nail down what our committee structure is going to look like. We don't anticipate implementation of that change, if any, until January of next year. But would you think that where we are in the process, it would be a good idea? Because this says to defer the decision. I'm not sure how long they plan to defer it, but would you not think it's a good idea to put some number in the budget based on what our RFP responses have been, even if it's a half of that number, so that we can actually start? We're going to know pretty shortly if we're going to do this change in terms of the Council Committees, even though it's not going to go in effect until January. But we can use that downtime between the time we make the decision on what we're going to do and implementation of the change to start on the software development. And then it may fit right in line with your scheduling for getting the rest of the things done. So would you not think that we should put some kind of placeholder in the budget so that we can start that process down the road? Well, sure. I mean, currently it's not funded. It's not funded for the next year either. But we have an RFP in place that we're looking at. So I think it's decision time if we want to pursue this option or not. I mean, if we do, then we need to put some money somewhere. So that's – so if we don't put it this year, then you're looking at FY12. Right. Okay. So I would – thank you. So I would ask the Committee, when we look at this, I'm not sure if they're going to bring the motion later on or if they're going to make the motion today. But that we consider at least putting some placeholder dollar amount in the budget so that we can continue to work so that once we make the changes, if we make them in January, this can be on a parallel track to roll this thing out at the appropriate time instead of just deferring indefinitely. So I just want to get that point out. Thank you. Ms. James. Thank you, Council Member Lane. Thank you, Council Member Lane. I did, Council Member Myers, want to point out to you and the Council that there was no – there was no request for funding either for this. So we – that, I think, is pivotal because if, you know, if people are in need of something, they need to ask for something, and we didn't even – the proposal wasn't there. There wasn't – it wasn't that the link removed any money from it. We actually entered the discussion during our links meeting about the software, but until that point, it had not – it was not recommended. It wasn't being brought forward as a proposed request. So I think that's vital because it means we need to have everybody at the table to make sure we're all on the same page because as much as we want it, somebody's going to have to implement it. Can I respond to that? Thank you, Council Member. If you could put – Can I respond to that? I beg your pardon? Can I respond to that? Okay. I – that's an excellent point. I think that what happened is the administration didn't want to put it – you know, the mayor didn't recommend it in his budget. That's why he didn't have a number. But obviously, you know, the Council has said we're going to move in that direction. That's why the RFP was started. So I realize that there wasn't a number for the link to look at, but the Council has already spoken in that it wants to go in this direction. And so until the RFPs – we've got the responses from the two companies that submitted an RFP. Now we have to look at what system we want built before they can give us a dollar amount. So that's why you didn't have a dollar amount twofold. One, the mayor didn't put it in his budget. And two, we don't have a number because we haven't – we don't have the system nailed down to what we're going to build. We've got an idea what the number is going to be, but we don't have a set number. And that's why I was asking for a placeholder number that we know won't be total, but will help that process move forward. Thank you. Council Member Lane, let me just – as a timekeeper here, looking at the clock, we're going to be up against the work session beginning – scheduled to begin at 3 o'clock. So in four or five minutes, I'll entertain a motion that we recess until after the work session. All right. Council Member Lane. You ready to go? All right. Are you where we're on – you've finished up with – yeah. Council Clerk. All right. I'll accept a motion to recess until after the work session. I'll accept – there's a motion by Council Member Myers. Is there a second? There's a second by Council Member Gordon. Is there any discussion? Yes, sir. Hearing none. Council Member Stennett. Well, I'd like to make an end time of 6 o'clock because some of – several of us have neighborhood meetings already scheduled tonight, and it wouldn't be fair of us to miss the link meeting. So if we can make an end time at no later than 6 o'clock, we'll end. Hard stop. Hard stop. Right. Got you. All right. We have a motion and a second. And for no further discussion, all in favor of recess. Mayor. Vice Mayor. Council Member – Council Member Crosby. We're still on discussion. Hold on a second. I was just going to ask if we have the alternative date to finish – there's no way we're going to finish – We'll talk about it. Yeah, when we get – so we'll spend 20 minutes of our time. We have five minutes now. Why don't we look at our calendars? And there's no way – there's no way we're going to get through this. I know that, right. But we'll take that up. We have another meeting Thursday at 5. Right. Already planned. We'll talk about that as soon as we reconvene. All right. All in favor of adjourning, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. We are adjourned.