Виктор Королёв Виктор Королёв Let's go ahead and call the work session to order. I understand we have a motion by Council Member Myers to consider on the front end. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Welcome back, everybody, off of break. And I have been sued in my official capacity as the chair of the Special Investigative Committee, and I don't believe that the Council gave the authority to the committee to go to court on that issue. So I want to bring that before the full Council and make the Council aware of it and let the Council vote to do what they want to do. So I'm asking just to put this on the agenda someplace, wherever you want, appropriate, but I didn't want to wait until the end of the meeting at Council report. Thank you. We can take it up, I suppose, at whatever point you'd like. New business or in Council reports, either one? I prefer to do new business. All right. Is there any public comment on issues that are on today's agenda? I have one person who's indicated a desire to speak, Mr. Leach. As you step to the podium, you'll have three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Council. I presume that everyone received what I understand and I admit is a rather lengthy letter from us today, but I wanted to say thank you for the time that you all have provided us to look into this issue regarding the Lexington Distillery District Project. As you all know, we represent E-8 partners. And the reason for the length is to show the amount of authority that informs the QBS process. You all recognize this is an important project, and it's the first time that the Council has used the QBS selection process, so it should be done right. Unfortunately, what is shown by the record and shown from the authority is that this was a deficient process in this case. And therefore, it can be a learning experience to do it right, subject to a rebid, which is what E-8 partners would ask for. The reason why it was deficient is I've only just now been able to flip through the presentation that I understand is going to be provided by the Division of Purchasing. But what you don't see in that is any written documentation that justifies why the votes were made the way they were and why a certain bidder was ranked higher than another bidder. And that's because there is no written documentation. The account is that this was done by a hand vote in open forum. This is contrary to what the Transportation Cabinet's own policy manual that the RFP reference says is the process to be filed. The process to be filed is to weight the evaluation criteria, have individual voting, and then do secret balloting. Not a hand vote in open forum. But that's what happened. And we quote from a federal case where because of the lack of written documentation, the QBS selection was reversed, in which the Waddell case says these judgments must be documented in sufficient detail to show that they are not arbitrary. And that's the only way to show that they are not arbitrary. Not after the fact justifications or assurances, but the score sheets, which you can find in our exhibits at Exhibit 2, which is readily available from the Kentucky School Design Project. Exhibit 3 is Indiana's counterpart in their QBS that has a score sheet. You're not going to see any of that because there simply is no written documentation to make this a non-arbitrary process. Further, this process is to achieve a fair and reasonable price. By any standard, this price is not fair and reasonable. The Transportation Cabinet has a 10% cap on design fees per the construction costs. This is in excess of that. The federal government has a 6% cap, and so, of course, it's in excess of that. So by any standard, it's not fair and reasonable. It's excessive. The slide represents that there's indicated Transportation Cabinet approval, but we have that as an exhibit at Exhibit 6, and look carefully at what is approved. Simply the RFP. It goes on to say this is not a blanket approval of the QBS process, and it could not have been because the process didn't follow the scoring process, it didn't have a conflict of interest certification or an ex parte certification, and so it couldn't be approved under how Transportation Cabinet expects these to be done. The feasibility study should not be awarded because it's fruit of the poisonous tree. It's the result of this flawed process, and therefore, we would ask for this to be re-bid. Thank you. Mr. Leach, does anyone else wish to address matters that are on today's agenda? All right. Seeing none, we'll move ahead. We have a docket to approve, and I understand there are a couple of zoning matters there. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. I move to place on the docket without a public hearing number three under first rate of ordinances. Second. I have a motion by Council Member Stennett and a second, I think, by Council Member McCord to place item three on the docket without a public hearing. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. And, Mayor, on number four, after discussing with the Neighborhood Association, there are conditions on this zone change which they do accept, so I move to place number four on the docket without a public hearing. Second. I have a motion by Council Member Stennett and a second by Council Member Ellinger to place item four on the docket without a public hearing. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. Is there a motion now to approve the docket? Move approval. Let's see. Council Member Gordon has moved to approve the docket. Council Member Blue seconded that motion. There's no discussion. We'll proceed to vote. Those in favor of approving the docket, please indicate by saying aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. The summary for July 6th is included in the packet for your review and approval. Do I hear a motion? I have a motion by Council Member Beard to approve the summary. A second is made by Council Member Myers. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. Budget amendments are next. Is there a motion? Move approval. Second. A motion by Council Member Gordon, a second by Council Member Beard. Any discussion? Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. One comment and then one question. I would just like to point out, mainly for the public, that page 17 on the budget amendments is to accept match grant funds from the Federal Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program for fiscal year 11 PDR conservation easement acquisition. This is a grant that Urban County Government is receiving of $2,127,770, which is a wonderful large grant from this Federal program. And then my other question is the budget amendment on page 21, and I don't know if, I guess we'll address this now. It's about new business items, but it's a budget amendment. Could someone from Public Safety, maybe the Commissioner, or perhaps I think this is Public Safety, the Fund 1101, which is the general fund, $26,310. Can you please connect that for me to the new business item? None of them exactly match that number from what I could tell, so I couldn't tell what that was for from the general. There's only one in the general fund. I'm not sure it's Public Safety. Elizabeth, you'll tell me. That is related to a new business item, so the budget amendments that you're approving at this point don't include that item, but it is part of new business where they're abolishing a vacant position in police and replacing it with a lower graded position, so there's a savings. Okay. I appreciate that information. Thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion on the budget amendments? All in favor of approving them, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. We're now to new business items. Is there a motion to approve? Move approval. I have a motion by Council Member Gorton and a second by Council Member Henson to approve the new business items. Any discussion? Council Member Gorton. Thank you, Mayor. On page 6, I don't see Commissioner Rahma here. This is item U, and this is about hiring the consultant to assist us going through our open enrollment for employee benefits, and the amount is $105,709.60. Thank you, Rahma. Can you tell me, in the past, have we had a consultant, or is this unusual to have a consultant helping us with open enrollment? It's not unusual. You've had different consultants helping you in different ways, whether it is on the IT side or implementation of it. For open enrollment. That's right. Are we going to need to do this every year, or is this do you sort of need this? Usually in years that you're going to have what's called an active enrollment, and this year the plan is to have an active enrollment. In case it's a passive enrollment, that would simply mean only the folks who are wanting to change what they currently have would go through an enrollment process. So in years you have active enrollments, that means you are going to change the insurance plan. In that event, you will need help to reconfigure the systems. Okay. Is there any way to, I guess, is it specialized enough that we cannot train our own employees to do it? We have trained our employees. It's just that you need a bigger team, and it's unproductive to have ten people on staff just to do that. Okay. We have two folks who can do it. That makes sense. Do we know when it is, open enrollment? I mean, I'll have to ask HR. The project timeline for me is to start September 15th. Okay. I believe open enrollment is in December. I don't have the dates. Okay. Thank you very much. And then I was curious about item V on page 7. This is the acceptance of property on Childsburg Road to become a parkland. Welcome. And one of the reasons I'm asking these questions about this particular item is that I serve on the Parks Advisory Board, and I know that many years ago we were given the Heisel property for a park, and now we're struggling a lot to fund even basic maintenance and beginning of trails and that sort of thing. And so each time we accept parkland, it comes with a future price of maintenance. And so my first question is, who decides what property to accept? I've been briefed about this. Good. I've actually seen the agreement, and I don't actually know the answer to that question. But ultimately, obviously it's this council. Now, my understanding about this piece of property is it's adjacent to Jacobson Park, and it's a six- or seven-acre site adjacent to Jacobson Park. Okay. I was going to ask how large it is. So it's six or seven acres. And has there been any projection of maintenance cost for the future? If so, I would assume it would be with parks. And I don't know the answer to that question. Okay. I don't know if there's anyone from parks. Oh, Chris King. Let's see what Chris King knows. I can't help you with the parks maintenance costs or anything like that, but I know it was thoroughly discussed. This property was part of what was designated as park land in the expansion area master plan. It would be the community park. It's part of the system by expanding Jacobson Park and extending it over to Walnut Hill, Childsburg Road. As such, the cost of this has been built into the exaction program, the cost of acquiring it, and fees have been paid. So just so you know, it's been planned as part of that for a long time. It's not just a straight piece of property that's come. And since it's adjacent to Jacobson Park, I would presume it could just be vacant land for a long time, given that Jacobson Park has lots of empty space. My understanding is there is a house on it, but it's going to be coming down. Now do we? Okay. Will that be demolished by urban county government or pre before we take it? The fire department is going to use it for one of those controlled burns. Oh, okay. That's excellent. And then the other question I had, I wanted to be sure. I know in the detail of this it said it does have potential environmental hazards on it and that in our agreement to accept it, we're not going to accept it until the environmental hazards are cleaned up. Is that correct? That's correct. And then we help with that by hauling away whatever it is. That's correct. Okay. But not until they certify that it can go into the landfill. Okay. And so they'll have some kind of legal documentation that it is cleaned up? Yes. It will be certified. There will be, my understanding, environmental testing to make sure that everything is clean before we actually accept the property. Well, so then why are we voting on it today if it's not cleaned up yet? You're voting on to sign the agreement to get all of this stuff in place and done so that then we can accept the property. Okay. That makes sense. And if everything falls in line as it should, then you will have already approved accepting the property as well. Okay. But if there's an issue, then the property will not be accepted. Okay. That makes sense. All right. Thank you very much. And then my last question is on page 74, and it relates to the item II, which is a declaration of surplus real property, which Urban County Government owns and which will be offered for sale. And is this Commissioner Cole or who? Oh, John Sheed. I had a question about the three properties. There's a list of properties here. And toward the bottom of the list on page 74, the 4951 Tates Creek Road property is .891 acres. That's correct. And the 1974 Alice Drive is .85 acres. And 1970 Alice Drive is 1.587 acres. And my question is, did we consider these are plenty large parcels. The others are very small parcels, it seems. Could we not, rather than sell those, could we not donate those to the land bank for affordable housing? Was that ever considered? Yes. We looked at different options that might be available for this. Obviously this is our first go-around with trying to get rid of some of these surplus properties. We're currently looking at two or three more options. Should these go for sale and no takers? And those type of options are currently under discussion. So we're talking about potentially maybe a long-term, very low cost lease, if the neighborhood associations are considering utilizing it for a neighborhood garden, and obviously for low-income housing might be an option. I believe zoning might be also an issue. For example, with the Tates Creek Road one, which is a pretty decent area. Far out. Yes. That one sort of a combination of different issues. One is going back to the easement that city wanted to keep in regard to accessing the property in the back of farm. And also part of the land is right behind the point of entry into the subdivision there. We felt like there might be some interest in actually from the neighborhood association to take on the maintenance portion. Also the other section of it, probably there's an adjacent property that's already have placed some fencing into part of the land that we own. And we felt like that might be also an option. There might be some interest into purchasing that piece of land and utilizing it primarily for pastures or green space. What about the two Alice Drive properties? Are they in neighborhoods? One is 0.85 acres and one is 1.5 acres. Yeah. Pulled off 2.347 acres. It is a zone as AU. And we were looking at, you got some easements from Kentucky utilities, the cable company and Kentucky American water that have to be conveyed irregardless of what we do over there. Also I can take a look. All right. Are those actually in a built up neighborhood? They're on the backside. The access would be of an issue. And you've got creeks and other water issues that you got over there. So these are the land that we've looked at. These are the ones that are all parcels without any structures on them. And for one reason or another, the city had purchased a bid for water quality or storm water issues or any other code issues, flooding. And everyone that has been identified in here, we consider not suitable for construction for one reason or the other. So pretty much defeats the purpose of when the city purchased this. Currently we're trying to find a mean that we would convey those restrictions as part of the deed. So we had a discussion this afternoon, as a matter of fact, with the law and air and water quality, as well as community development on how we may be able to create a system by which the city has some control. So if somebody would purchase any of these properties with easement restrictions, they can't just go simply and get a building permit and build on it. And so we'd be in the same situation as we were before. But all of these were purchased just because they're not suited for having any structures on them for one reason or the other. So when you look at these, as you're going through looking at vacant properties, and I'm glad you're doing that because there is built into our budget $4 million sale of properties. So do you, at the very beginning or somewhere in the process consistently ask, could this be used for affordable housing? Absolutely. And I mean, there may be some difference of opinion. We're not talking about low income housing. We're talking about affordable housing, which we've talked about for quite a while now, and we're trying to find mechanisms to do that. So the issue that we have, if you look at a lot and there's quite a few of them out there, this is sort of what we call the low hanging fruit. These are very plain cut. These are the reasons. A lot of these parcels that we own right now in the process of evaluating a lot of them were purchased and they had some sort of a structure on them that had been raised simply because of the flooding issue or easement issues of a purchase for water quality issues. Obviously every one of them that we look at, that was the first thing, can it be utilized for any other purpose that can provide a service? There might be a couple of parcels that we're looking at that might have had some improvements done to them in terms of minimizing chance of flooding and so forth. If you identify any that would be of use, we definitely make sure that it would be tagged for such. And then if they don't sell, if there's no bid on them, is it possible that some of these are pretty small? Is it possible that we could look at one of the programs such as was recently highlighted about community gardens on the very small ones if they're in neighborhoods? That's on top of our list. That's absolutely correct. If any of them is not sold, that is the next option we're looking at to reaching out to property owners around the lot as well as the homeowners association and see what can be done. I don't believe any of them probably would be interested in actually purchasing it and changing their deeds, but by being able to provide it to them for community-related activities. Gardening would be one of them. At least we will see some savings because we will not be responsible for maintaining those parcels. So it would be mutually beneficial. Okay, that's great. I like that. Thank you very much. I just want to say thank you to our water quality folks. Item EE is the first of our Class A neighborhood water quality grants, and it's really great. I'm looking at Charlie Martin and I want to thank him and Susan Bush. This is the result of the committee which established the way that the incentives would be used, and it's great to see that we're right on schedule with that and that we have neighborhoods that actually are going to be accessing this water quality incentive grant. So thanks for all your work on that. Thank you. Council Member James. Thanks, Mayor. I have a question on two items, items A and T. I see Commissioner Bennett coming forward. Thank you, Commissioner. Anytime you see no budgetary incentives, anytime you see no budgetary impact, kind of look closer. So I just had a little bit of a question about the CARFAX authorization and being part of this. A couple of questions, some of which I think you've highlighted in the additional information, which has to do with that no unnecessary data will be transferred to CARFAX, so they won't know any of our private citizens' information. I just wanted you to restate that. Yes. And what safeguard do we have with knowing that? Like how does the transfer occur to where it blacks out all the other data? It's going to be an electronic transfer, so it will be safeguarded through the programming, and we'll have our folks, RAMA's folks, and police involved on that piece of it getting it in place so that we can ensure the privacy of data. Okay. One of the other questions I had was, you can look up CARFAX information now from Lexington. Why would we need to be part of this? What information do we have that other facilities don't have? Let me get back to you on that, Ms. James. It's been a while since I dug into this piece of it, so let me get some of it back to you before Thursday. Okay. I just wonder, you know, are other government entities engaging in this sort of contract? My understanding is, yes, they are. But let me get you some more information on that. Okay. And also, if you want to find out as well, it says that CARFAX account will continue to be free to our agency as long as data is allowed to be supplied. So my question is, are we under some sort of contract to pay beyond that? It doesn't really say it will end once we stop supplying information. It just says we'll be free as long as we're supplying the information. So I want to make sure that if we're not giving it, then it just ends. Under no ongoing obligation is correct. Okay. I don't think that really says that here, but I'm wondering if you'll verify that before we give any second reading to that. Thank you. Are you item T2? No. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks, Rama. Item T sounds really cool. It sounds really fun to have touchscreens. And I wonder if you had a picture or anything of what they're going to look like. I don't have it with me today. It is a cool project. And this is when Austin Minks came and presented here. Right after that, they had contacted us wanting to do that. We just needed to work some of the logistical details out. I'll be glad to contact them and get some pictures to you. Okay. And who determines what information goes on the touchscreen? Who's the holder of that information? LexCol currently at this point, and there are some guidelines that they're going to follow that we adhere to. Do we have those guidelines in our paperwork here that will be followed? No. I don't think you have that other than the memorandum of understanding that we're going forward with. But I'd be glad to talk to Pat Tatum, who was involved in the discussions, to get that to you. Okay. Are you clear on what it is that I want? You want the guidelines as to what is going to go up on the display. Okay. Because in the memorandum of understanding, it says to existing LFUCG facilities, plural, yet I only see one facility identified of where it's going to be posted. Well, there is only one identified. They said, what if we have other entities? I said, unless you're going to put it down right now, they said this is the only one they had. Okay. So that language in that second paragraph should just say to the existing LFUCG facility at that particular address. And then the memorandum of understanding has it dated the 23rd of July? Well, that's when we agreed we didn't have a work session since then. So we're not asking you to backdate it. That's when the memorandum of understanding was crafted. But they haven't installed anything yet. Okay. And it automatically renews in the successive year beyond this year? I believe so. But we have the right to cancel it. Okay. Is there a fee attached to the renewal for the additional year or anything? Okay. And, yeah, so that additional information would be helpful to figure out how do we determine, because I know if you ask me what downtown is and you ask Council Member Lawless what downtown is, we'd have different views maybe. Maybe. I don't know. But I definitely would, you know, like I'd be hoping that the DDA boundaries could be utilized in that way. It would extend to Third Street so that we'd be able to utilize some of the new things that are happening along Third. So I just want to get an understanding of who makes the determination of where downtown is and how people can get on the list if their business is not included in on the screen. Who's the person administrating or, you know, feeding in the data, correcting data if it's flawed and that sort of thing. So if we can get some more information really prior to the first reading. So as quickly as we can get that, that would be helpful. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. Oh, and I just wanted to give a plug for Item AA. Council Member Gordon, is great to remind us of the good things that are happening. And I think we should remember the good things that are happening in our city. And AA is the combined venture of the Urban League and Community Action, the restoration they're doing of the Russell School there. And this is the introduction of 27 new rental housing units that will be solely for low-income elderly households. I think it's amazing at this day and time that we're, you know, we are acknowledging that we're all getting older and we're living longer and having great new safe places to live is very important, especially when you can revitalize an area. So kudos to all those that are working on AA. Thank you, administration, for bringing that forward. Any further discussion on the new business items? Council Member Lawless. I had a question for Rama about the touch screen. Is the Downtown Lexington Corporation going to be involved in the business, you know, the business promotion, et cetera, with the touch screen? I know they've worked really hard on that and have met with these folks and other folks about the. All the downtown entities, they're going to be involved in the discussions. Initially we wanted to get this in place before we had a discussion, are we going to go forward with this or not? So the discussions have centered around dining and attainment shopping, you know, primarily that's pretty much what we focused on. So as you're walking by, you can see being displayed. But my question was, is the DLC going to be involved in that, in this process and going forward? DLC, DDA, we hope to talk to all of them to get their input. Thank you. Any further discussion? All in favor of approving those new business items, please indicate by saying aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. I have passed out a letter from the council that the committee, or that the full council voted to authorize the Special Investigative Committee to hire. He appeared in court last week on my behalf as the chair of the committee. I want to reiterate that the lawsuit has been brought against me as the official, in my official capacity as the chair of the Special Investigative Committee by Mr. Bruce Salley and the Internal Audit Board. I do not believe that the committee, the Special Investigative Committee, has the authority to go into the court and defend the charter of LFECG, which is what would need to take place if we continue with that course. So I wanted to present this to the full council and let the council decide what it wants to do with this case. I also want to say that I do not intend, the committee does not intend to enforce the subpoena or go into court to enforce the subpoena that we sent to Mr. Salley to provide the documents that we requested in our investigative process. And we also do not intend to exact a penalty against him, as was outlined in a letter to his council, I believe it was last month. And I also just want to say that I believe that we have his documents anyway, so we don't need to issue another subpoena. We're not going to retract the subpoena that we provided to him, but we have his documents anyway. And then we have asked him to appear before us. We've asked several other people, everybody else in the administration that we've asked to appear before us has willingly done so, provided exhaustive information to us without any trepidation. So we hope that Mr. Salley will change his mind and do the same. But we've asked him once. We're not going to ask him again. If he comes, he comes. If he doesn't, he doesn't. So I guess the council does need to take action on this because they have sued the government. They haven't sued me. They've sued our government. And the government's the one that's going to have to defend the lawsuit. So I'll open it up for discussion. Well, is there a motion that you wish to make? No, I am just wanting to inform the council that the lawsuit has been filed against it and the council can do what it wants to do, but I do not have a motion. There's a letter here from the council. If you want to read that, he believes he can get this dismissed anyway. But when you get sued, you have to go to court to get that done. So there's going to be costs associated with that. And I guess there's going to be costs on the other side of the aisle for Mr. Salih's council to sue the government. I'm not sure who's paying that bill, but our committee does not believe that it has the authority to say that we are going to go in and defend the charter for the government because it wasn't given that charge. Well, I guess the question still I've got is do you want to put a motion on the floor for discussion at this point? Yes. I don't have a recommendation, but I'd like to have a motion for discussion. And so what is the motion? I move that we open the floor for discussion to see how the council wants to direct the committee chair to direct its council to respond to this lawsuit. Our council is actually here. The committee's council is here in the building. If you'd like him to come and speak and answer any questions that council members that aren't on the committee or even on the committee may have, he's willing and happy to come in and do that. The motion is to open the floor for discussion of that topic. Any discussion? All in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Okay. Then the floor is open for discussion. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Just so we all understand what you're asking, what the question of the day is, are you wanting to know if Urban County Government Department of Law will defend this lawsuit if it's not dismissed? I guess that's the real question. The council could direct the outside council that the special investigative committee was given the authority to obtain, represent the government or the council in this suit, or the council could elect to hire some other council to do that, or it could direct, I guess, the Department of Law to do that. My sense is that the law department considered itself conflicted out in the beginning, and that's why it hired Mr. Sellers to represent the government, and then I guess I understand that he now represents the auditor and the audit board. So I don't know if the law department would consider itself conflicted and not want to take this case or not. But the case stands before the courts, and so the council has to decide what it wants to do. I mean, in essence, the outside attorney for the government has sued part of the government. Right, and I don't know how he received that authority to do that, but yes. Okay. I would just simply ask if our law department has any recommendations here as to how it could proceed, whether it is conflicted out or you might be the only one here. I think there probably is a conflict, not that that's my call to make on it. I might have recommendations, but it might be better to have a discussion with Mr. Sellers and Mr. Crinton Any thoughts I might have might be better had with them to avoid any potential conflict that may exist. I don't know that that's very helpful to you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. So, Mr. Sellers, who was on contract as outside counsel for the government, as Council Member Gordon stated, is now suing the government. So, at what point did he quit being our attorney and start being, representing the Internal Audit Board's attorney, and is there documentation of that? Are you directing that to Council Member Lawless? I'm just throwing it out there for whoever might be able to answer that. I can respond by saying I've asked those same questions, and I don't know the answers to those questions. I don't know who hired Mr. Sellers, and I don't know. I've been told that he represents the auditor and the audit board. I've been told that by Mr. Sellers. I have not been told that by any official of the government. So, I do not know who hired him and who is his actual client. I do not know the answer to that question. Well, in emails and in meetings, we've repeatedly heard that he was the attorney for all of LFUCG. I mean, that he was representing the government. The best I can tell you, and you may want to have Mr. Sellers down to discuss this with you as well, Mr. Sellers was initially retained to opine on the particular availability of a document. At some point, a potential conflict became apparent perhaps after the council decided to have a special investigative committee. But somewhere along that line, there became an apparent conflict. Mr. Sellers, who had advised Bruce Solley and the internal audit board as to the availability of that document, having advised them is conflicted out of also now advising the entire government as to that document. Is there any precedent set of, well, first of all, who's paying him? And if it is continuing to be LFUCG, have we ever paid an outside attorney to sue us? I'm assuming he's still being paid as he was being paid. Any time a conflict arises in the government, outside councils have been retained to represent those employees. Now, that generally arises in litigation circumstances where the government and employees may have inconsistent defenses, but they're still entitled to a defense by the government. And so outside counsel is hired to represent that employee, perhaps more than one employee, and their defense may be inconsistent with the government. That's not a direct suit against the government. That is correct, although I don't know that it would necessarily prevent a cross-claim in certain matters. But you may want to talk to the director of litigation about that. But there are, the reason why outside counsel on many instances are hired is for conflict situations. Thank you very much. Council Member James. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Horne, who typically defends the cases when the charter is in question? I would say typically it would be the law department. And any time when, this is from my recollection, any time a particular attorney from the law department is conflicted out, counsel is brought forward with, you know, who the alternative is or who else will be defending the case, but we, there's an assumption from the beginning that it will be defended by our division of law. That's my, okay. I think that's a safe assumption. So here we have an instance where our charter is being questioned or the authority of the charter is being questioned. Without us jumping ahead and assuming anything, the normal practice would be that our law department would handle that. So how do we just go ahead and say that's your charge? If you're conflicted out, we need to have that kind of officially in writing or we need something that allows us to go some alternative way because it's clear that this will set a precedent for future cases when the charter is questioned. First, and again, I'm not the director of litigation, so I don't know that you've ever had a case in this government where you had conflicts within the government. When there's a charter or ordinance challenge, it usually is coming from outside the government. Someone challenging a constituent, a company, somebody challenging something that they don't like that you did in adopting an ordinance or claiming part of the charter is illegal or unconstitutional. I'm not aware that the government has ever had this type of situation inside the government. Now, I'm sure you all know that at state and federal level, that happens a lot. And you may have at the state level the General Assembly suing the governor or the governor suing the General Assembly. It's just a little bit odd to me at the local level because you don't have as solid a split between those branches of government. And so to me, this is a very unusual situation. I don't know that any of the former commissioners of law or whatnot may have knowledge that this has ever occurred before. And so the best I can tell you now standing here is the best I can. In my experience with this type of situation, this is a first. And so you may have never actually addressed this type of thing before. Okay, thank you. Council Member Myers, let me ask a question about the charter. The council appointed the investigative committee and the investigative committee then takes on whatever the charter then allows them to do. And it's clearly referenced because I was at a meeting this morning where it was stated that council doesn't have the authority, but it's clearly stated in the charter. Do you know what section of the charter that is so that if anybody wants to go reference that they have that? I just I don't I don't want there to be an appearance that council is trying to do something that we're not authorized to do. And I just I think that gives a false impression. And someone commented earlier that this is creating a circus. And I think that the circus that's created comes from it almost appears purposeful. And I just I have I think if we could clear clarify the facts as far as what the authority is, that that would help to allow folks to know that this is where kind of it appears that there is a process that's being followed. That's guided by the rules that are set forth by this government, you know, from its creation. And if there's an opportunity, if someone feels the need to amend that, they have the ability to go through the process to amend those. But you can't just defy them. Do you know the reference to the charter? I customer James, I do not know the reference to the citation. We can find that certainly. I will say this, though, that if you recall the discussion in the meeting in which this council voted unanimously to form this committee. I think it was council member Lane suggested that we ought to do this in the whole. And I believe that council member Beard, who actually made the motion, stated that he did not want it done in the whole. He wanted it done by special investigative committee because the special investigative committee committee would be given subpoena power or authority by the charter. No one on the council disputed that at the time. We voted 15 zero to put this committee together with the express purpose of being able to use subpoena power. So I think maybe you have this. I do. Section four, section four point zero eight. The council or committee of the council appointed under council rules for establishing standing or temporary committees shall have the power to make investigations into the affairs of the merge government and the conduct of any department, office or agency of the merge government. For this purpose, the council or such duly appointed committee of the council may subpoena witnesses, administer oaths, take testimony and require the production of evidence under penalty to be established by the council. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. That's my remarks. I guess I was going to ask one question. When you were talking earlier about you kind of described how we got to where Mr. Sellers was representing the audit board. But it sounds like you skipped a step because I don't remember and I don't know that any of us truly understand when Mr. Sellers went from representing the Department of Law for the government to advising the audit board. When that transition took place again, you're talking to someone who didn't make that transition. Sure. But my understanding and you may want to talk to Terry Sellers about it is. As I said, he was retained to opine on the availability of a particular document in the possession of the internal auditor. When you when you say that, who obtained him for that purpose? I think that when the it was it was done the same way, to my knowledge, that outside counsel was ever retained, meaning either through the administration or through the commissioner of law, he was retained. Do you remember coming to the last not today's audit board meeting, but the previous audit board meeting? I do. Did you come and present on open records and open meetings? Yes. Why then, if they if the. Mr. Sally and the board, I presume they asked you to come and make that presentation. That's correct. If they asked a member of the law department to come and make that presentation on open records and open meetings, why then would they need to hire outside counsel to advise Mr. Sally? As to open records and whether or not he needed to comply with a request for certain documents. How can you not be conflicted out when you can come and make a presentation to the board, but then the board can't rely on you after making that presentation to give them counsel as to whether or not he should have to The presentation they wanted was generally on open records and open meetings, on nothing specific document or meeting wise, just generally. The particular and recognize that there's a distinction between an open records request and the ability of this council or a council member to get certain documents. The same exceptions that apply to. A constituent or someone making an open records request may not apply to this government. So when you're saying that it's analyzed under open records, my understanding is that document is it was not. As to this council. Can you repeat that? The analysis that was applied to this document as it relates to a request from this council or a council member is not an open records analysis. Can you elaborate on why they asked you to do that presentation and what the purpose of the presentation was? All I know is they asked me to come and do a presentation on open records and open meetings. And I guess it was more open meetings than open records. But that's all I know. And so I went. And as you know, we had a it wasn't a long discussion about open meetings and exceptions to open meetings. So they got sort of specific at that point. Let me let me ask you this. Does there not have to be. A situation in which an employee you talked about employees in the past we've hired counsel for. Have we hired counsel for individual civil service employees? If there's a conflict, yes. And I'm talking about in litigation situation. Right. And so. Right. And so. When people ask the question, does Mr. Sellers work for or represent Bruce Sally or the board or both? We keep getting he represents Mr. Sally and he represents the board. So my question goes back to. There's been no legal action against Mr. Sally. And certainly prior to the subpoena being issued to him, there was absolutely nothing. So why would he have legal counsel? I'm not sure I understand your question and recognize that I have not been involved in all that has occurred and all that has been advised by Terry Sellers to Bruce or the internal audit board. What has transpired there? I know, as you all know, an action has been filed, but I'm not sure my knowledge is much greater than yours. The question, as it related to the document for the council, since it involved the Department of Law, risk management, all those other types of issues, it was decided it would be best to have an independent counsel opine as to that document being provided to the government, to the council or a council member. That's my recollection. When you say that document, are you talking about the fraud assessment survey? That's correct. But wasn't Mr. Sellers moved over to represent the auditor and the audit board before the request for that document was made? I believe, unless I'm misremembering, that Mr. Sellers was retained when a council member made a request from Bruce Solly for that document. Okay, so you're not talking about the committee. No. Okay, that's why I was trying to understand that. And that's my recollection of events. Okay. One more question. You talked about reasons why LFUCG would hire counsel for a civil service employee. Wouldn't there have to be a case where that employee is in jeopardy before they would need counsel? If you're talking about the litigation standpoint, I think that that's a fair statement because it would generally mean that a complaint has been filed. Because if no jeopardy exists, then there's no reason for counsel. I mean, if no one's taken action against that employee, then what do they need an attorney for? Well, if you're talking about in this particular case, it was purely to advise on whether or not to provide the document to the request. Right. Right. Right. Okay. Okay. Could I, if it's okay with the council, could I ask Judge Crittenton, who is the counsel that the committee obtained to come over and answer a couple of questions? There's no objection. Why not? Okay. Can you go ahead and address other council members' concerns while he's coming? Sure. Sure. Can I just say real quick, I'm passing around two letters. One is from Mr. Sellers regarding the subpoena that the committee issued to Mr. Saleh, and then the second letter is a response from Judge Crittenton, the committee's counsel, to that letter. And then I think the judge is on the way, and then I open the floor, Mayor. Vice Mayor Gray. Thank you, Mayor. I was just going to suggest what Council Member Myers suggested, that we, if Judge Crittenton is here, then we ask his advice on the matter. Thank you. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. I was just going to ask, Council Member Myers, do you have a copy of the civil action that was filed against you? I have a copy. I do not have a copy here. I think it would be appropriate, since there are those of us who are not on the committee and are not in the process of voting whether you subpoena or not subpoena, be given a copy of that first before we decide whether or not we obtain counsel, because I think you made the statement that it's against the entire government that the lawsuit is submitted to an audit board, but there's other different opinions that say it's just against an investigative committee and not the whole government. So I just want to clarify who it's against so we all know who we need to defend. That's an interesting question, and I'll let the judge certainly speak to that. The reason I made that statement is because that committee is an extension of this Council. This Council created that committee. So if you sue the committee, you're really suing the Council. But I would say to you that Mr. Lane is on the board, and he had a copy of the lawsuit before I did. So I would say that since he's on the side that filed the lawsuit, that's who you might want to get that from. I'm here because I've been enjoined in a lawsuit, and the Council needs to determine how it's going to defend or not defend that lawsuit. So the other side is the ones who filed the lawsuit. So I would ask those questions of them, because we're in it because of what they did, not because of what we did. Council Member Myers, do you want to address Judge Crittenton? Yes, sir. Thank you, Mayor. This is Mr. Judge Crittenton, Roger Crittenton. He is the counsel that… Thank you. I'm going to call the rest. Mr. Mayor and members of the Council, and to address Council Member Stennis' question, Mr. Myers has been sued in his capacity as chair of the Special Investigating Committee. The counsel has not been named in the lawsuit. The import of the lawsuit is that it challenges Mr. Myers' authority to issue a subpoena, which is awarded by Section 408 of the Charter. He's got the same authority by the Charter that this Council has. And that is the challenge in the lawsuit that says Mr. Myers does not have the authority pursuant to Charter to issue a subpoena. But it is not against the Council. It is only against Mr. Myers in his position as chairman of the committee. I think what we were asking for, what Chairman Myers was asking for today, is some expression from the Council that it is okay for me to go in to represent him in Fayette Circuit Court. I did that last Friday on a motion to set a hearing for summary judgment. And I expressed to Judge Corsoni that I really wasn't sure of what portfolio I had from the Council to be there. And he continued for a week the motion to set a hearing on Mr. Salih's motion for summary judgment. And the motion for summary judgment is for the judge to decide whether the Council has this authority or not. And they want to set the hearing as soon as possible. I would like to have some expression from the Council that the Council has no problem with me defending Chairman Myers in this lawsuit. At the present time, I would hope within the next month to get the case dismissed. If I cannot get the case dismissed, then when this committee ends, the committee will have no authority to be in court. At that point in time, the Council might very well be named, or I can't tell you what would possibly happen. It's sort of a, it's a problem that the committee is not going to last forever, and certainly would not last for the two to three years that would take for this issue to wind its way through the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. And I don't know that you want it to do that, because by the time the thing's over, you're going to be mad at me and the other Council and everybody else before this ends. I think the issue as joined right now is a good issue from a fact situation to differentiate it from the challenge that's brought. The challenge is based upon a 1978 case out of Louisville in which the high court at that time said the Board of Aldermen could not get the mayor's appointment book. And then there was some extraneous language about the Board of Aldermen's subpoena authority under the Home Rule Act for Jefferson County at that time. My opinion has always been that the Home Rule Act for the Fayette, for the Lexington-Fayette Urban County government is different, it's distinguishable, and under the facts of the situation as the committee is attempting to get government documents from government employees that this is a good issue to join. I'm not so sure that it's one that the Council wants to have continue forever and ever at the present time. As Mr. Myers stated, the information that the committee was seeking by subpoena, the committee now has. So the committee, and I've advised, and I've certainly advised Chairman Myers that the committee did not have authority to go into court to seek to enforce that subpoena. That was not a part of the charter, part of the charge to the committee. But I just would like to have some sort of authority from the Council, or at least an expression that I can go in and ask to get Chairman Myers to get it dismissed. Whether the judge will do that or not, I don't know, and if he doesn't, then we'll probably be back to the Council to ask you to hire an attorney to represent the full Council. I did, I was watching the monitor. Council for the Department of Law is correct. There was a conflict, which was brought out in yesterday's committee meeting. There was a conflict with the Department of Law that did allow the Department of Law to hire outside counsel to represent Mr. Salih at the time. I think there was a conflict within the Department of Law, and that allowed that. Now, whether that allowed a lawsuit to be brought, that's going to be your call. But the initial basis for bringing in outside counsel to advise the internal auditor was as a result of a conflict that the Department of Law had, and that was a genuine conflict, I can tell you that. Well, I don't have anything else. I think, is that the background? Is that satisfactory, Council Member Stennett? Because it's like 25, it's 25 factual presentations and it's asking for a declaration of rights that George Myers, as chairman of the committee, does not have subpoena authority to demand these documents. That's what the lawsuit is. But within that is the argument under the summary judgment motion is that the Council was never given authority specifically by the legislature to subpoena documents or subpoena testimony. So it is against him, but it does involve counsel. It does involve the Charter. I think, I think I can, I hope I can defend Chairman Myers without involving the Charter on motions in front of the Fayette Circuit. But if I'm not successful in that, then the Charter will be called into play. Council Member McCord. Keith, just a quick question to you. As far as Judge Crittenden's representation of us, is there an approval process? I mean, is there, I mean, do we have to, as a Council, say that we vote for this, these attorneys to represent us as outside counsel? I think, I think there was, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I think there was an initial resolution from the Council that got me hired to represent the committee. Okay. And the charge to the committee was to investigate the allegations and the response to those allegations. There was not a charge to the committee that I would have been comfortable with going into court to try to enforce a subpoena based upon what the Council had charged the committee to do. I don't have any problem going in and defending the chairman or any member of the committee. But I would like to be, but as I told Judge Scorsone last Friday, I really kind of showed up without portfolio. The chairman of the committee that I worked for was sued and I felt an obligation to be there. And I do feel an obligation to be there. If the Council votes not to approve me to go in from the Council standpoint, I'm still intending to go in and defend the chairman of the committee. And I will just have to explain that to the court as it goes. That's what I was hired to do. Keith, is there any, do you see any issue with that as far as just an approval list or something, some step that maybe we've missed in this if we have him? I don't, I don't, Mr. Horne may be able to advise you as to what the position of the Council is. Right now, the Council is not a named party. And I would think, you know, a simple agreement that the committee can defend itself until such time as the Council is a named party would be all that I would be comfortable in telling the judge, yes, I have some sort of authorization from the government to be there. Is that your stance? I don't have any problem with what he said. Like I said, this is an unusual situation. I can tell you, my knowledge of how it is generally handled is, as you may know, there's an RFP put out, I think, I'll say annually, where attorneys submit responses to that request. And typically, when outside counsel is being chosen, based on the areas that those attorneys submit that they would like to represent, and the costs that are submitted with that is how they, outside counsel is typically selected. Is that what you're asking? My thing is, you know, again, I just want to make sure that we're abiding by the processes that are set forth and that if we're saying that this committee is an extension of the full Council, if that's the argument being made, then if the judge goes in and defends Chairman Myers in his official capacity, then, you know, I want to make sure that we haven't missed a step and we're going to get sued because he's not on an approved list or something like that. That was my question. I think that there would be nothing to prevent you from authorizing Judge Crinton to act in this case. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member. To answer your question, I don't know that I'm on an approved list. I was looking forward to my first free summer in 47 years, when I was called early this summer and I responded to that with a resume. So, I mean, that's what I've done on this. It is against Chairman Myers specifically. The Council is not named. But the issue involves the Council Charter or the Charter of Lexington, Fayette, Odee County. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to clarify something. I have read the internal, I know that Council Member McCord talked about abiding by the process and I was just curious, there was a sense of urgency as to why this was done. I guess the process that it went through with the phone vote, at least that's what we've been told. I don't know if the question is appropriate for you or maybe Council Member Myers, what the urgency was. You mean to hire Council? To file suit, to vote as a board. We didn't file suit. Not us. But, I mean, do we know or have they told us what the urgency? As I understood the argument, the urgency was that there was a subpoena issued. From my own knowledge, the internal auditor did not respond to the subpoena for the original documents. As responsible as I'm not going to get them to you. What I have, I'm not going to give them to the committee. That was the response to their first request. After that, the committee, I'm trying to recall, the committee received the documents from the external auditor and so did not subpoena the original, the fraud assessment surveys from the internal auditor. The committee then subpoenaed from the internal auditor any documents that he had, that he had relied upon in making his decision that there was no fraud contained in the assessment surveys. That subpoena was not responded to by the internal auditor or was rejected or no documents came forthcoming to that subpoena. The same subpoena went, not the same subpoena, but another subpoena went to the Department of Law for documents that the Department of Law had. The Commissioner Askew responded that he did not think the council had the subpoena authority either, but he thought the council had a right to review the documents and he provided the documents to the council, not under subpoena, but on his own behalf, on behalf of the Department of Law. No individual was subpoenaed to appear before the committee. I made the statement to the committee that I thought we should invite them to appear. If they did not appear, they wouldn't appear under subpoena anyway. I think that's a matter and we have invited several people to appear and discuss with the committee. They're not under oath. The Commissioner of Law has appeared. Mr. Kelly has indicated he'll appear. He's been there waiting for a couple of weeks to talk with the committee and time ran out. We have a letter now from Mr. Sellers that says Mr. Salih will not appear before the council as long as there is a subpoena out or as long as this legal action is taking place. That's on request, not under subpoena. After hearing all that, I guess I'm trying to figure out, what was the urgency of... You'll have to ask Mr. Sellers about the urgency of filing the lawsuit. Filing the lawsuit. That's what I was... You'll have to ask Mr. Sellers about the urgency of filing the lawsuit. It wasn't urgent for me, but, oh, okay. I did, I think you've, I don't know if you saw copies of the letter that Mr. Sellers sent on July the 30th. I just circulated those. Okay. And he, again, cites the cases and of his legal basis of why the internal auditor would not respond and then said the committee must withdraw the subpoena and said public officials who knowingly or recklessly exercise power they have do, they do not have risk forfeiting any claim to immunity for their conduct. There's a response that I provided Mr. Sellers at that point in time on August the 4th that indicated that, requested that he supply the documents in the same process that Commissioner Askew did, not under subpoena, but just as a matter of right to the council and that the committee could not penalize his client. Only the full council can do that under section 408 of the charter. And if he wished to threaten the entire council, he could do that to you individually and not send it to me. That's how I perceived his letter. I guess my question is, and I don't know because there's a few members of the internal audit board who voted, I'm just trying to understand the process of, and I don't, I understand you may not be able to answer this, but. He was subpoenaed. He was subpoenaed to produce documents. That subpoena is still there. That subpoena has never been enforced. And in order to enforce that subpoena, since he declined to do it, my legal opinion is we have to go into Fayette Circuit Court and ask the court to enforce the subpoena. We would have to file a lawsuit. The committee would have to file a lawsuit against the internal auditor and ask that the Fayette Circuit Court enforce the subpoena. The committee has not voted to do that. The committee, I guess, could ask the full council to impose a penalty as the charter provides for failure to address the subpoena. The committee has not done that. Would that be what they sensed the emergency? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Because the, and I know this may be asking you to comment on something. You may not, it may not be your area to build a comment, but I, that's what I was trying to get to. My advice to the committee has been, you know, try to work around it rather than spend the rest of the summer in court trying to get documents that somebody's not going to bring. My advice to the committee has been try to work around it. The committee has worked around it. The documents that we saw, that we sought from the internal auditor, the committee now has. So, I guess, as a member of that committee, I guess I'm trying to understand the urgency when there was not the discussion that I recall that there would be that type of action taken. We didn't take an action. Well, you know, that we wouldn't be doing it in court, which you just said, that you recommended. Okay. I think that actually answers my question. Thank you. Mayor, can I respond to that? Or do I wait in line? I can wait. Yeah. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Back to this level of discussion about our authority, just follow me for a second and I'll be a simplistic attorney at heart. Thank you. I appreciate it. The General Assembly approved the Charter. Does it not approve also the content of the Charter? That may very well be an argument, and I don't know. I think the General Assembly approved Home Rule, and I'd have to go back and look, and the Charter may have been adopted subsequent to the General Assembly approving that by the voters. The argument is unless that power is specifically given to any city or county government or urban county government, then urban county government doesn't have that authority. That's the argument. That was what the ruling was in the 1978 case of Stansbury v. Maupin, the final ruling that came out of then the, I guess it was then the Supreme Court at that point in time. But that hasn't been tested since. I mean, for you that are lawyers on here, I've tried to find any subsequent cases that involve that same issue, and it hasn't been tested since, either because no one has tried to enforce it or because everyone has always cooperated with various governments. So that's the argument that's being raised. Does that make any sense? So it's a definite maybe. Pardon? It's a definite maybe then. It's a definite maybe. I'm not telling this committee that you ought to jump into court and war this one out because you're going to win it. I'm saying I think there's a good argument for the validity of the charter, but I'm not so sure at the present time. I would just like to defend Chairman Myers and not worry about that. If we can get Chairman Myers dismissed in the lawsuit, this goes away for the time being. And if the council wants to devise other ways to get information, councils can do that. Does that make sense? I'm sorry, Mr. Beard. No, I understand. I understand what you're saying. I just, I was trying to get a chain of events together to satisfy everybody that the fact that we did have the authority to do so. Whether we have that or not or whether the council has that or how it was adopted, that argument will still be made based upon then Justice Palmore's opinion. Okay. Council Member Myers, excuse me. Council Member Myers, I think given the fact we've been talking about this for a little more than an hour or so now, some kind of motion to do something would be appropriate before we go any further. All right. Council Member Gorton. Yes. I move that the council authorize Judge Roger Crittenden to represent George Myers in the lawsuit. I have a motion by Council Member Gorton and a second by Council Member Beard. I move that the council authorize Mr. Crittenden to represent Council Member Myers in the litigation. That motion was seconded by Council Member Blues. Is there any discussion on that motion? All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Is there anything further on this particular issue? I don't want to be the dead horse. But Council Member Crosby asked a question about the urgency of them filing this lawsuit. And to me, something that's very important is the fact that when Mr. Sellers sent that letter to the committee stating that, you know, any public person that, I gave my copy to the judge so I can't read it verbatim, but the judge read it, they talked about recklessly using power and all that stuff. That was a precursor to the lawsuit. On the 14th of August, the Herald-Leader reported how they took this phone vote and it says they could not get together to vote on it and the situation was urgent, Sellers said. Later on down here in the letter, it says Lane, Council Member Lane, said the board had discussed the committee's subpoena at a meeting on July 21st, but the matter became urgent last week because Myers had spoken publicly about penalizing Salih for ignoring the subpoena. Nobody had a basic right to respond to that, Lane said, but he didn't want to do that without discussing it with the board. And then down below, there's somebody in here that's quoted as saying there was an emergency, they had plenty of time to do that before. The reason I bring that up is because, as the judge said, on August 4th, he responded to Mr. Sellers' letter and on the last paragraph, first sentence, last paragraph, it says in response to that last sentence in your letter, the Special Investigator Committee does not intend to take direct action against the internal auditor as a result of the refusal to provide a request in the government's documents. So my question would be, and I tried to ask this question at the audit board meeting this morning and they wouldn't let me speak, this clearly, their attorney was clearly told that our committee did not intend to take direct action against Mr. Salih. There was no urgency. There was no reason to file this lawsuit. And so we keep asking the question, why was it filed and why is the government allowing someone to be hired to sue the government? There was no reason for this lawsuit because we clearly said in writing to him that we were not going to take action against Mr. Salih. And so I want that point to be made clear. Thank you. Anything further? All right. Mayor. Yeah, I'd like to speak, Vice Mayor Gray. I think it's worthwhile for us as council members to speak out on issues that may be difficult and inconvenient. I think it's appropriate to go on the record and say that from my point of view, the work of this committee has been discharged properly and effectively and responsibly. And it is difficult to read this letter, and especially the last sentence in the letter, for us not to defend and to be advocates for our colleagues who are assigned this difficult challenge is not responsible on our part. So this, the last sentence and the legal challenge that Council Member Myers has presented with today seems a little short of intimidation and irresponsible muscling on the part of others. And that is then our responsibility to defend it. Thank you. If there's nothing further, we'll move along to the Services Committee report. Council Member Ellinger. You want to put the Services Committee report at the end of the presentation is not a problem. All right. The Ed Valorem tax presentation is next. Mr. Barrow is here, as is Mr. Umpke, and I think I saw our County Clerk, Mr. Blevins, here a bit ago. Mr. Barrow. Well, welcome back, everyone. Given the long agenda this evening, I promise to be brief, give you as much opportunity All right. Our IT issues appear to be solved. This is a calendar that we put together, Don Blevins presented at our meeting on June 22nd. I'm not going to go over a lot of the details. I want to point out, obviously, today, given a briefing on what we've run two weeks ago, you saw the full packet of all the material we present came out today, and I believe you got an additional copy today. We're scheduled for first reading on whatever is decided this evening, first reading Thursday, followed by a public hearing next Tuesday, as well as a second reading. When I kind of tackle this issue of Ed Valorem, really the driver is assessed values, and the two I'm going to cover today is the real estate piece and the personal piece as well. The good news, and one of the first things that I looked at when the data came in from the state, is that our real estate values went up, went up about $235 million. The first clerical error, and I apologize for that, I didn't get an opportunity to correct this when your packets went out, under the growth number, that's about a 1.1% growth, which I think in current economic times was a positive, and I was happy to see that. I want you to invert the .9 and .2. So the reassessments grew minusculely, about $35 million, that's about .2%, with the new property that came online at .9. Again, that's a 1.1% increase, about $230 million increase in assessed values, which is pretty much the driver associated with this Ed Valorem tax. So personally, that wasn't as strong of a story, but it makes up so much a smaller piece of our tax component or the revenue that is generated from this. It actually decreased about 1.1, and when I reflected on that, I felt like some of the incentives, the federal incentives associated with new home purchases was the driver for the real estate, as long as I think we haven't been impacted as much, so we did have a slight growth in kind of the reassessments. However, I think tied up purse strings translated into a slight decrease in this value. It was about a $16 million decrease, which you have seen some of the historical, so it has gone up and down over the board. We've seen kind of a steady increase in real estate. The purse limited has gone up and down over various years. I wanted to jump in kind of to the two slides that I really want to focus on is kind of the meat and potatoes of what we're talking about today, and those in your big packet are kind of page one and two. So basically, what we've listed here, and this is a similar format that you've seen in years past, we've listed out the various tax rates, and the first column, going from left to right, you see our prior year rates. So without any additional guidance, budgeting just kind of put together three scenarios. We can do hybrid scenarios or run additional models, but given the time constraint, we went with three basic scenarios. Option one was to keep the various tax rates the same, the same as last year. Option two, we went with a compensating rate, and option three would be our maximum that would not be subject to recall. We have the ability to go above that, but we went with the maximum that would not be subject to recall. So when we run it through the model, given what was budgeted to what information we received from the state, option one, keeping the tax rates the same, we have a negative $25,000 hit the fund balance. This makes no concession associated with cash flow. In the budgeting world, we look at ending cash fund balance. So I think in our budget book, we had roughly $41,000, and we put the budget together at the end of the year, we're going to have about $41,000 left in our accounts, absent contingency, economic contingency reserve. We had about $41,000. So running these rates, it would be a decrease of $25,000 to that number. And then across the board, obviously option two, the compensating, it would be another $250,000 and just short of a million dollars if we want the maximum rate. Again, this is for the general services fund only. Looking at the urban services fund, we ran a similar kind of analysis for those funds. Three options as well. We went with keeping the prior rates in existence for this upcoming budget cycle. We ran the compensating tax rate, and we ran the maximum. Now I think this slide, even though this is how it's been presented in the past, was a little misleading to me. And I do want to pull up one additional sheet to walk through the numbers. But option one with the additional $639,000, that is not extra money. Again, that makes no concession associated with cash flow. In terms of that fund, in talking about this in the back, we thought maybe this is a couple extra slides I brought in case of questions, but I do want to incorporate this, and I apologize for this not being your primary packet, but I thought it was germane to walk through this. Because the additional money to fund balance, to me, is a little misleading. I thought we had, well, we have extra money. In terms of what was budgeted, first column is budget. So we budgeted about $35 million in revenue for the urban services fund. When you take out operating capital and transfers, we were actually drawing about $2.2 million out of our fund, cash that sits in the fund. With these more favorable assessed values, the good news is our budget, if option one is selected, we have additional $639,000. So moving to the projected column for 11, we now have $36.2 million in revenue projected, same expense, capital, and transfers. So we're only pulling out of our fund balance about $1.5, $1.6 million. So I think that kind of rounds out the full story associated with the three options for the urban services fund. The packet goes on, given the time constraint this evening, the packet goes on, and we ran models for a $150,000 home, what each scenario would mean in terms of the tax bill, which I think is important when you make those decisions. And again, you know, we also sent out the full packet of material roughly two weeks ago you should have received via email. Is there any, I'd love to open it up for questions. Councilmember James. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Ryan. I had, I think, just two questions. Can you talk a little bit about compensating rate and what that actually means? Yes. The compensating rate language that the state has, I think, is somewhat cumbersome. But basically, the compensating rate is a calculation, the state performs the calculation that excluding new property would just incorporate existing real estate. The tax rate that would be calculated would produce the same amount of revenue as the previous year, rounded to .001 per $100,000 of assessed value. And so they don't, so how do we capture the new developments? The new developments are not captured in the compensating calculation. The new developments would produce additional revenue at the same tax rate as the existing. And the logic behind that is that new people coming online need additional services and it's going to cost roughly the same amount of money for their services. If it was included in the compensating calculation, in essence, your tax dollars, tax dollars per citizen to serve that citizen would decrease as your community grew. So that's why the state wrote the language for the compensating rate and wrote the formula that way. Okay. So between like the option ones and the option twos with the compensating, is there one that's more favorable to our city specifically as opposed to being more favorable to the state at all? Or I guess I shouldn't say the second part. Is there one that's more favorable to the city? In terms of the rate calculation? Yeah, as far as including the new development versus not. I think in terms of setting the rates, the pleasure of the council to set that rate. So I think that would fall more in the realm of a policy decision in terms of what revenue needs to be generated to perform those services. Okay. And as far as the urban services fund, as we're looking at that, do we take into account proposed expenditures? If we know there's planned expenditures, do we look at that? I know we're trying to make sure that what we're taking in is what's needed to expend on projects and not go over an amount and not be under as well. How do we weigh that as we're looking at this number? Well, there's two ways we do. We obviously do it for the budget cycle. The information here came from the budget book. There's plenty of information. I think it starts on page 232 in the budget book. It gives a blown-up analysis as well as all the information. So this information here came from the budget as well as the model and the assessed values that come in after we put the budget together. So we've already run a projection here. And I'm meeting tomorrow with accounting, and we're going to run through some more modeling. So we do a very robust on the front end with the budget, and then we continually monitor these and run projections as well as when Bill presents the revenue numbers, we look at it then as well. Okay. And you have options one, two, and three. Those aren't in a particular order that you're recommending that we select. Of course, it is the council decision, but do you have a preference with your experience as to what council should go with? I typically never comment on policy decisions. But today's an exception, right? I don't know about that. Well, let me take him off the hook there. Our recommendation would be that we adopt option one on all the tax rates or all the tax funds, rather. And how do you come to that recommendation? I was just saying tax rates as current. Okay. Thanks. And I think that that is one other thing that I intended to cover. Just jogging my memory. Can we go back to the other slide? I did apologize. I cut one slide off associated with that. That was the same kind of analysis that was going on the three other districts that we need to, I don't know the correct term, certify. The Conservation District, the Extension Service, and the Health Department. And we received some of these on my primary presentation. I apologize. We went back and forth from presentation to here. But the Conservation District, well, let me start with the Extension Service has kept their rates the same, or at least their proposed rates. For real property, .0032. And personally, .0035. Those both are staying intact. They're using the previous rate. The Health Department is doing the same thing. Their rate is .028 for both real and personal. The Conservation District has decided to increase the rate roughly 4% to what you see on the screen there. And I did receive word, I think, from Bill O'Mara this morning. I believe the school district intends to keep the same rates, but we don't opine on theirs. Anything further? Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much, Ryan, for your presentation. Could you, the slide you showed us on the Urban Services Fund that I believe you said isn't in our packet. Yes, and I apologize for that. That's okay. Can you get us a copy of that, please? Yes. Email a copy of that slide. I'll email that out today. And then on the other taxing districts, the Conservation District, have they actually asked for the increase, that slight increase in the Conservation District? Who asked for that? The district. It's my understanding that they actually set their rates and then we approve. I can't remember the exact legal term. But we don't have to approve that. Is that correct? I believe we have, for lack of a better word, I believe we have veto power, yes. That we can tell them no and we can set a different rate. So the impact of, on the other, on the options with the General Services Fund, you've given us the impact on $150,000 assessment. What would be, is this 0.62 cents per year impact on $150,000 assessment on the Conservation District increase? Is that what that is? The Conservation District increase, mathematically, will be minuscule. If I may just get technical real quick, there is one small issue with the Conservation District. The software and the state only records, I'm going to turn this question over. We want to hear the end of that. Oh, okay. Bill, will you finish that sentence? Can I help him out here? The state doesn't do compensating rates more than three digits, 0, 0, X. Their entire rate is four digits, 0, 0, 0, 4. Our computer software only goes out to four digits. They are in an impasse. They can never have an increase in rate. So what they have decided to do is to vote for the 4% rate, 0, 0, 0, 4, 1, 6. We will bill 0, 0, 0, 4, the same as last year. We cannot go out further than that. If they continue to do this, four years from now, it will round up to 0, 0, 0, 5. Okay. This is the only way they can ever have any increase in their rate at all. Okay. But for the taxpayer and the tax bill, there is a zero impact until that rounding finally gets up to the point 0, 0, 0, 5. It looks like on this last page of the presentation, it's $0.02 impact on $150,000 assessment. We can only bill out to four digits, so we're not going to bill out to 4, 1, 6. I see. Okay. Thank you for that explanation. With that, Mayor, and I know there are others who want to speak, but I'm going to go ahead and make the motion so we can have more discussion, that the council approve option one for the general services fund, for the urban services fund, and the other taxing districts as presented. And I think the correct form of the motion would be to place a resolution on the docket for Thursday evening to take that action. Yes. All right. We have a motion by Council Member Gordon, second by Council Member McCord. Any further discussion on that particular issue? I see that Council Member Beard wishes to speak. Thank you, Mayor. Just a quick question involving homestead exemptions with the baby boomers continuing to get into the over 65 group. Is there any effort made to track what that will do? All other things being equal assessments-wise, zero growth, we still are going to have a potential of a negative number because of the homestead exemptions, are we not? Well, the historical values associated with the homestead exemption are in the full packet on page 13. So in terms of that dollar figure, 411 is projected at 462. So, yes, in the model, as well as what the state calculates, we do run calculations for the amount of money and do net that out of what we receive. So the 1.1 increase that we have seen in real and actually our increase at even netting out the homestead exemption, we do have a positive increase in terms of tax dollars. Actually, I was leading toward what we are thinking about in the upcoming years, whether there is a peak that is reached and then tails back off again or how that works. I guess the census people would have that information for us if we couldn't get it ourselves. Typically, the longest that we do plan for is roughly a five-year cycle. We run five-year forecasts. I've started some modeling to do longer term, but the longer-term training is very difficult associated with that. But we do roughly run five-year forecasts, and that is incorporated in this forecast. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member James. Thanks, Mayor. Ryan, I don't know if you know the answer to this, and I'll just open it up. Do you know the last time that we made any, that we went for an option two or three? The historical, let me find it in the packet here. There is a chart in here on page five that runs the compensating rate, the maximum allowed, and what the government did actually adopt. So maybe 2004? Yeah, it looks like 2004. Does anybody recall that situation then and what caused that increase? Anybody that was on council at that time or Mr. Mayor, do you recall? Sorry, Council Member, you caught me talking to Rama. I don't know what the question is. And you may not know this. I don't know. I was asking historical information about the last time council passed an increase, and it looks like it was per the chart on page five back in 2004, and I wondered if you remembered the conversation around that and how it came to be that council did pass an increase. I do not. Do any of the council members recall? Council Member Gordon, do you recall? My only recollection is, and Bill, I don't know if you remember, that was for fiscal year 04, and I believe 2003 was a really bad year in terms of revenue. I mean, I think that that was a very bad year. That is a correct statement, but I don't remember the conversation relating to property taxes. Okay. Okay. Thanks. The motion on the floor is to place a resolution on the docket for Thursday evening that would set the rates as Council Member Gordon specified a moment ago, essentially option one. If there's no further discussion, those in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Opposed, nay. The motion carries. Thank you very much. Mr. Ellinger, if you're ready to go with the services committee report, we'll back up. Thank you very much, Mayor. The service committee met on July 6th. There were two items in the committee. The first one was a street repaving list priority plan, and Kevin Winty with the Department of Public Works and Development did a PowerPoint overview of road resurfacing fund allocations. There were many questions that came. Commissioner Webb stated a question that Council Member Beard asked about the county road fund. Commissioner Webb had stated that the county road fund is separate from the resurfacing fund. Council Member Blue stated his concern is the extent of the ratings being up to date and accurate. Mr. Winty stated the full county assessment should be completed by the third week of August, which is coming up here. He stated that they can reevaluate a specific street if necessary. Commissioner Webb also stated that when Council Members get their list, they can sit down with Street and Rose and go over those sections. Council Member Henson stated the amount the district received is not enough when you look at the leaner footage, and she asked what is the cost of all the streets that are rated 65 or less. Commissioner Webb has stated that they were able to pay approximately 20 percent of the list with the $1.7 million. Commissioner Webb stated with the new data they will provide Council Members the total cost of doing all streets that are rated 65 and under. Council Member Henson asked for a report of the streets that are rated 40 or less and the cost to repay those. Commissioner Webb said he can provide that to Council and provide a weighing factor as well. Commissioner Webb stated this was the first year Council Members were providing a list for their entire district that showed what the paving was. We will keep this item in committee. The second item is street cleaning on street parking restrictions. And Gary Means with LexPark gave an overview of this issue and suggested it came out in some meetings. And we once again will keep that in committee. And one of the issues that would have been addressed was the street sweeping procedure, certainly one that needs some adjustments in the area of communication enforcement and actual sweeping of streets. And one of the areas predominantly that was being affected was the U.K. They looked at some ideas about trying to do sweeping during U.K. breaks and maybe limit it down to five during the breaks of the fall, winter, spring and two times during the summer. And they're also talking with the U.K. and the parking department to provide parking on campus and also talking to the police and streets and road about helping to communicate to people when this actually would be happening. Everyone agreed that towing was really the only way to ensure the streets would be clear to be properly swept. Apparently that was tried in the past and due to numerous complaints that practice of towing was dropped. This item two will be kept in committee. And Mr. Means said he will keep the committee informed as this progresses on this issue. And then one issue we have some to catch up because we don't have a scheduled meeting in August. I have called a special services committee meeting scheduled for August 31st at 9 a.m. We adjourned at 2.03. Thank you, Mayor. Any questions for Council Member Ellinger? Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to follow up on Commissioner Webb's report on the road resurfacing. I just want to make sure if we can give us a firm deadline as to when we're going to start spending the money for this fiscal year, the $4.5 million. I know you all are reevaluating the list over the summer. And you said the last week of August. I just want to make sure we're still on track for that because a lot of council members are asking, a lot of people in the public are asking when we're going to use the current year money. The sooner the better, obviously. That schedule, we're still on schedule for that. We're actually a little bit ahead of having the survey data ready. That is something that Public Works is working on as a group to try to get those in your hands very quickly. And we'll be working with purchasing just to keep our repaving going until we get out of the repaving season. So we should have it before Labor Day? Yes. That list? Yes. And the quicker we get those turned back in, you know, the better we're going to be about being able to get as much of that work as possible done before the end of the repaving season. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Council Member James. Thank you, Mayor. Commissioner Webb, while you're here, I was going to ask you about the list we got listed. about the list we got list today from Sam about our paving list and I just it said final on there but the three streets that were listed on mine weren't even on my request so I was curious about that. We're gonna have to work directly with the director I didn't select any of those streets I would you know that was handled through streets and roads so we'll get together get Sam in touch with your office I know that he did work with your aid on that yeah I have that list that we sent but none of those three that were the other council members have conflicts at all with their list we had another one councilmember Henson may have I didn't I didn't know where those streets I thought maybe and two of them I thought were covered on some other project so I wanted to be sure that there wasn't duplication when we had the opportunity to expand out because out of the I think our list had maybe seven streets maybe and it ended up just being three streets because of the length of this of one of the roads that was selected but it wasn't even on my it wasn't on my list at all there's not on that section I don't even think that there's house well it might be one group of housing but it doesn't even have again we're gonna have to work with Sam I'm not familiar with any council districts individual list can you when we meet can you work can you meet with us so that way you will be aware yes ma'am okay thank you thanks mayor I think we're ready to proceed with the presentation by mr. Markham on the distillery district you thank you mayor vice mayor a and council members welcome back we're here today to present some additional information on the engineering services agreement for the distillery district and how that selection process took place how we arrived at the final fees and that sort of thing so basically the outline is going to go through four different phases the distillery district back project background procurement process for the professional services project scoping and negotiations and scope and fee justification you the distillery district project background basically is Manchester Street bounded by South Forbes and Newtown Pike extension this is a very complex project that different differentiates itself from a basic design type project because of all the components that are involved in this and we must always remember that's a roadway so it has a lot of varying areas of degrees of difficulty some of those we're touching on here the historical value of that corridor environmental floodplain barrel of the overhead utilities rehab and replacement of stormwater and sanitary sewers and much of that area stormwater does not exist Manchester Street is a straight as it is a state road and potential change in use of this this roadway could lead to an additional traffic study that's required numerous right-of-way acquisitions and a very complicated part of that's a railroad and the overpass over Manchester Street there are a multitude of agencies that will be involved in this public agencies Federal Highway Administration the Kentucky Department of Transportation FEMA EPA the US Army Corps of Engineers because there's a lot of floodplain area there state historical State Division of Water and then any of our local corresponding governmental agencies will also be involved in this some of the private entities are RJ Corman Norfolk Southern and then the numerous property owners in that corridor consultant team is made up of seven firms in itself and utilities potentially could be dealing with seven different utilities which further complicates this project procurement process decision was made to proceed with qualifications based selection because involved engineering and architectural services with a relatively undefined scope Manchester Street Street is a state road that qualifies for federal dollars QBS process allows us use of any potential federal state funding sources the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and Federal Highway Administration QBS process states that the use of a qualifications based selection process and a local government's procurement of engineering or architectural services mandatory in order to qualify federal or state funding for those services cost of the proposed project cannot be considered until negotiations begin with the highest-ranked firm no consideration of pricing allowed for any other firms in addition to QBS the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is involved in funding the project the firms that are to be considered also need to be pre-qualified or certified with cabinet you the request for qualifications that was advertised included feasibility study this component was necessary due to the many variables and opportunities that the project offers that had not been previously discussed or placed in any study selection committee participants included myself dr. Tom blues counsel Corinne Gulick from Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Jim Clark from LexArts Harold Tate downtown Development Authority Andrew Grunwald from the Division of Engineering and Billy van Pelt Department of Public Works and Development as the project manager the selection criteria that we used are pretty much a mirror of what we use here for our CAO policy number one with the exception of cost cost was excluded and item number six was added to sort of I guess further look at the qualifications of a firm when they're submitting on this to meet timelines project schedule and the project construction costs and detailing of the project complexity these criteria also very closely mirror the criteria that are listed in the 45a statute for the state that governs their procurement of professional services selection committee findings top three of eight firms were shortlisted and interviewed all seven members voted on the best qualified firm the selection strand was unanimous the Transportation Cabinet has indicated that the QBS process used was satisfactory project scoping and negotiation process 45a also talks about negotiation of a contract with the highest-ranked firm the estimated value of services needed is one of those criteria to be used estimated value scope and complexity of the proposed project business risk anticipated and the professional nature of the services required in project scoping and negotiation process four key meetings with lead members of the design team were held there was initial scoping meeting going through the RFP what was outlined there what things were needed for the corridor what our expectations were there was a follow-up we had strand to go back and come back to us with how they thought the project should break down break out where they felt like the work the work needed to be focused on scope of services was reviewed and refined in the second meeting and the third meeting initial feasibility study fee proposal was reviewed with a detailed budget of hours identification of deliverables and a critical path schedule out of that meeting there was request for scope changes basically the negotiation that occurred was negotiation of task hours and those task hours from the consultant side were reduced based upon some topics that were discussed and that the revision to fee meeting it reduced the number of considered alignment alternatives from six to three it integrated trail and streetscape planning process into one function rather than two separate functions it streamlined public meeting strategy whereby the government would take the responsibility of actually running those meetings we asked for additional council update presentations and reviewed and performed analysis of the task hours and proposal fees for that engineering also reviewed those task hours they blended hourly rate of $132 an hour including expenses is an acceptable acceptable range of some other projects I'm not saying it's going to be the lowest but there's also some projects that were a little bit higher than the speeds plays mill feasibility study fee is comparable as a percent of construction cost this this fee here is very close to the Clay's mill feasibility study fee as it is related to the construction cost on Clay's mill project communication plan was more clearly defined the public meetings and workshops were planned out the number that we would have to progress updates the council planning referred alignment alternative to council planning with the final preferred alignment alternative to full council for acceptance the feasibility study will take five to six months highlights from the proposed agreement five hundred eight thousand not to exceed for the feasibility study including topographic survey alignment alternatives with opinions of probable construction costs full council reviews for the study findings and recommendations before any design work is negotiated or performed requires written approval for strand associates to proceed with any of the other phases of the agreement listen exhibit a the council can terminate the contract with seven days notice scope and fee justification there's been a lot of comparisons of this project to a finance cabinet basic design services contract which is in the middle column the first column clearly defines the things in this project that fall outside of basic design you have the feasibility study itself preliminary engineering report the survey and topographic mapping environmental review archaeological and culture cultural historic baseline survey of the property and properties through that corridor public art property surveys and easement development some preliminary evaluation of any existing traffic data partnering meetings environmental permitting and mitigation planning and Clomar and Lomar on a basic level of service you'll see some of these things in both columns the first column really in this feasibility study is just doing some initial analysis of what we have and that sort of thing and when you get over to the design side you're getting full-blown so there's many different expertise areas here that are not included in a basic design flat fee range project those things all need to be considered key feasibility study deliverables public involvement I think we've ended up with 24 meetings valuation of alternatives with cost options topographic survey high-definition survey of project corridor on phase one trail this is pretty important because and this is also what makes the fee on the survey side be a little more expensive is because we're talking about doing the scanning of the facilities and the properties out through that corridor basically what it allows for is when you have exact locations of buildings telephone poles and things like that it allows you to more readily prepare and design in the office without having to go out and make field investigations numerous times to determine locations of these things existing infrastructure and utility assessments archaeological and cultural historic baseline survey environmental review alternative cross sections and alignment schematics and renderings and outline implementation strategy there's four basic areas in this feasibility study it's program development services site inventory and analysis conduct physical conditions investigation and site analysis and alternatives analysis and public involvement each one of these different categories all have many things within them that's in the agreement the largest portion of this really is in the survey section and the site inventory and analysis and the conduct physical condition investigation and site analysis we're talking about looking at all the existing land uses that are out there where you're performing the archaic archaeological and the cultural historic baseline surveys of the properties that are out there see how those things can be incorporated into the streetscape design things like that conduct the environmental review of the study area this includes documenting aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems traffic noise air quality any underground storage takes or hazardous situations that may occur trying to locate those things socioeconomic impact and community impact data within the project area conduct a stream assessment review existing traffic data review way finding signage evaluate linkages to downtown and neighborhoods and parks review existing roadway and railway bridge data and to conduct inventory analysis of existing information those things are all included in the engineering services agreement the breakout of the five hundred eight thousand dollars strand strands portion that's 50% they're managing all the public meetings they'll be managing all the survey and that sort of thing out of that that portion KKG will be the LA on the streetscape portion land story will be the LA on the trail third rocks doing all the environmental eh eyes doing public involvement and cultural resource analysts doing historic review and then Todd brissy and Stacey Levy are doing the public art mr. Markham it's got about five seconds left okay so feasibility study elements here you see the breakdown site inventory analysis the largest portion then you go into the alternative analysis and public involvement it's important to note here that a feasibility study fee was not included and what was presented to council for the bonding we feel like it is important to have this feasibility study in there to get all the data that we need so it's very important to realize the five hundred eight thousand was not in that original presentation decision can be made as to whether somewhere all these items should be reprocured we have some representative projects from other locations in here these really are just to show you that we're not at this point yet but when we get to this point don't be surprised at what the rate may be this is not a standard design this is a roadway there is not a sliding scale for roadways you all right councilmember blitz Thank You mayor Brian would you comment please on the process mr. leach at the beginning of the meeting questioned of the integrity of the process I think that if you compare our process to the guidelines we did not comply with the guidelines mr. Barbary from law has made an opinion on that and the fact is that those are guidelines and there are some structures within those guidelines in the manual that really we don't have in place here to accommodate some portions of that other portions yes we could accommodate but if you're looking at me to say yeah we fully comply with that no we did not we did meet and discuss these proposals we did talk about the the merits of the proposers we talked about the qualifications we talked about the capacities we talked about what would bring the best value to the city and we took it we did take a hand vote we voted on each one of those and everyone was afforded opportunity to vote the way they wanted to vote and we ended up with with strand as a unanimous selection and well our will our process stand up scrutiny well I think that's then I think that's the question I mean the only thing that we can do at this point is go back to the state and say you know was it a mandate that we must follow everything in the guidelines every step of the way and believe me the guideline in the manual really is directed toward the state and some of the structure they already have in place so the question then becomes if they say yes to every one of those then we may have some difficulty in complying with the him but there are some components of this that you know if if the council so chose to proceed and do this again we could more closely match that process yes but the state really has never said that these are mandates for you and so we would have to go back with a direct question saying is this a mandate or is this a guideline and the Brooks Act the Brooks Act does not really identify a process either it just talks about cost not being considered you want me to speak on this issue or not since it sounded like you were kind of asking for an opinion we reviewed all of this the guidelines the state law and everything else and the way it's structured it's not a mandate that's our opinion the Department of Law's opinion and that was pretty much couched in limited discussions we've had with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet however I think what Mr. Markham saying is the only way you're going to get any potential certainty on that issue possibly if they're willing to do it they're willing to send us anything in writing would be to specifically ask the cabinet whether we had to follow all or some parts of that guideline process that step has not been taken we had conversations with them about trying to get further verification on some of those issues and we simply don't have that at this point in time thank you very much I think that since we last discussed this this this issue and the second reading of the you know the previous resolution was was table it was decided to as had been suggested by some council members to present a new proposal to council and that is to fund only the feasibility study and that would give us a clear picture of what we were facing and and and whether we wanted to then go forward with all of the other components of strands proposal and so that's what we're what we're talking about now we do realize that that that Manchester Street is sort of uncharted water in a in a sense and it as you have pointed out and others have as well it's an extremely complicated meant multifaceted process here and and and I think the case has been made very thoroughly for the necessity of the feasibility study so I want to make a motion here to move this along and that is to place on the docket for August 19 2010 council meeting a resolution accepting the response of Strand Associates Inc to RFP number 17 dash 2010 and authorizing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute an engineering services agreement with Strand Associates with Strand Associates Inc for design related services for the distillery district public improvements at a cost not to exceed five hundred and eight thousand dollars someone have a motion but councilmember blues and a second by councilmember Gordon to add that item to Thursday evening's docket so the floor is open for discussion of that that motion councilmember Gordon actually I just have a question and it's I have more questions later but about this motion is it possible to do a project such as this which does seem rather complicated without a feasibility study that would be not that would not be our recommendation I think Mike can speak to that a little bit more but there's definitely a lot of data that has to be collected before you even go down that road so you know you did list out quite a number of things I just use a couple examples and if you look at the last example that we had in the presentation of a project it's not a streetscape project it's an urban rural road and Jefferson and Oldham counties it began with a feasibility study and it was because of some of the issues along the road some of those issues are the same that we had there's a rather extensive paper there that would be an interesting one for you all to check into because actually what the feasibility study will do is identify those issues that you have along the right-of-way to be rebuilt or the road to be rebuilt and in some cases it allows you to redesign around it to save money it allows you to know what you're getting into up front some of the issues you can run into environmental issues when when you speak of hazardous waste you speak of floodplain issues you can go out and do a design and then find out whenever you do a LOMAR that you have created an issue that's going to cost you a lot of money to resolve that's the intent of that feasibility study it's not that you can't do the project it's that it will help you identify the best and most cost effective ways to do it and it'll also help you with your funding down the road because once you have that feasibility study there are things like brownfield grants there's a lot of opportunities out there that you can you can start addressing those issues with well if we approve this resolution to go on the docket and it passes through second reading then how how does the funding flow I would hope it's not all paid up front is it paid after the services are performed is part of it paid before the services are performed if it would be paid and as you move through the activities it would not be a final payment at the very end I I would okay because I I would hope that there wouldn't be a final payment until urban county government is assured it's got and everything that it thought it was going to get and quite a bit of that is towards the end and the final council presentation with alignments and proposed cost estimates and that's one of the things that you have today you have a cost estimate for construction that was produced I think as part of some of the TIF requirements that has been referred to a couple times that's that it was not based on a feasibility study it did not take into account all the issues that you saw X down on that list that will have to be dealt with in this corridor and as I recall if from our discussions earlier in the summer if is it possible that the feasibility study will come back and say you have some unsolvable problems out there and this project can't work is that possible or do we know I don't think it would ever come back and say you cannot redo this road or you cannot build a trail but if what I would suspect is it would what it would do is say if you want to invest X number of dollars you can use this alignment for the road and you can use this alignment for the trail if you choose not to spend that here this alternate could still produce a trail through here this alternate could produce a road that does not use certain right-of-ways that are contaminated it can produce a lot of information for you it gives you choices on how much what do you want to get done for how much money you have to spend okay I do want to thank you all I earlier in the summer did vote to table this because I had a lot of questions and quite a few of my questions were answered so thank you councilmember Lawless thank you first of all I want to say that I appreciate work of mr. Markham and all those that served on the RFP committee because it can be grueling for something like this having had similar experiences I applaud the notion of a feasibility study and was why I was so concerned about South Lyme that we didn't do that and it ended up costing a lot of extra paying money and inconvenience for folks I've had very positive interactions and many interactions with strand so it's not about that but you talked about the guidelines and federal dollars it is my understanding that since last year some of those guidelines on the federal level passed down to the state if any federal money is going to be used are no longer goals and guidelines but mandates and so that being said I would hate for us to get in a situation that we have recently been in where we submitted it the the project on Maxwell Street was pulled for two or three years he started into it with the assumption that the guidelines you know the minority 10% minority contractors so before we go any further I think it's imperative that we find out if we're going to be able to qualify for federal money if any of these guidelines are actually mandates now by the federal and thus the state government can you find that out or answer that we will do our best can you kind of do you have something to say about that no I die it's just we it's hard to make connections sometimes down there and so we will do our best to try to get an answer back yeah they're overworked and understaffed yeah and they've been very helpful with the Maxwell Street situation well and to address that a little bit we had conversations with the state on a conference call where we asked them to tell us that those were mandates so that we could write it in the specification that way and at that point in time they did not come across with that well and they weren't then that was in 2009 and so things have changed since then so I think we need to make sure that if we're hoping to get federal dollars that they are not guidelines but mandates and I think that's imperative in moving forward thank you thanks Mary great thank you mayor thanks Brian I appreciate the work that put into this and I'm sympathetic with the time it takes I understand that the context of my earlier objections to this really had to do with the absence of some level of competitive price negotiations I have to just confess that being in this world in this business in this industry I have a natural aversion a DNA aversion to the appropriateness of that model you know it was our understanding that the estimate was 1.1 million and as far as I know today's the first time that seen that that did not include a feasibility study no I guess that's okay I understand but if that was the expectation then it's troubling that the scope was not defined adequately enough to illustrate that or for for us to understand that that the 1.1 million estimate budget did not include the feasibility study so but you know digging into the digging into all of that really just confuses the issue that for me which is the absence of competitive price negotiations and I you know Mike you're back in the back Mike Williams with strand is here great company you know if I were in the engineers position I'd like to get a project like this but as the buyer that's the problem that I have with it is that it's simply not demonstrating that we have competitive price negotiations and it's I'm not going to say especially in this time today in this period in this economy because we should always have competitive price negotiations is my view on so yeah I don't wear it out I think that a rebid on it that's the way I do it in my business or I'd simply say hey guys you know we've worked hard on this appreciate everybody's work on this but we can't I don't feel like we can demonstrate that this is a responsible and competitive price councilmember Crosby thank you mayor I have a question and I think I'll the comment but I wanted to clarify with I'm not sure who the total on this or the motion that was made is that part of the table of motion from is it is this considered to entirely new motion or do we vote to table that at the last meeting as part of the overall motion at the last council meeting at the last council we tabled a resolution to approve the contract what we have now is a new resolution that would be coming forward that I think changed the amount from a million one and change to five hundred eight thousand it was one six million six I'm staying correct the motion is for 500 for the feasibility study now yes okay is that under second reading of resolutions no it's where I'm sorry okay so they're separate that's where I was getting confused because I was looking at and I don't have the walk-on that dr. police just made in front of me I just want to disclose to everybody that I was contacted by Glenda George this morning from the Department of Law and she had informed me that there could be potential conflict because somebody in my husband's law firm may have done some work regarding this project I have been able to check in it is my understanding that there's there's no longer a relationship with that law firm thank you councilmember Wallace yes sorry to be a stickler for details but mr. Markham knows that I am ask these questions if we alter the scope of work that was put out for bid would that not have to be rebid because we're not altering the scope the scope was actually included a feasibility study we're just lessening the scope down now but I mean they were voted on for the entire scope is that correct or not I think it's a combination of all the things that are in the proposal right feasibility study and design well I guess my point in that is there may have been another firm that would have ranked as you know as well or higher if the feasibility portion had only been there that's my only question and again I'm very supportive of this project I just don't want us to get in right any further discussion on councilmember blues motion motion on councilmember James can I have it repeat it please the motion repeat it you might just reread it if you would thank you the motion is the place on the docket for August 19th meeting a resolution accepting the response of Strand Associates Inc to RFP number 17 2010 and authorizing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute an engineering services agreement with Strand Associates Inc for design related services for the distillery district public improvements at a cost not to exceed five hundred eight thousand dollars so that's the motion on floor there's no further discussion let's proceed to vote those in favor let's do this electronically those in favor of the motion to add that item to the docket please indicate the voting yes electronically those opposed vote nay electronically all councilmembers voted all right we have two who are absent motion carries by vote of eight to five all right that concludes presentation portion of our docket we're now down to council reports if you'd like to make a report please indicate logging in councilmember beard thank you mayor I would like to move that approval of the NDF list this week motion and second to approve the NDF any discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed no motion carries councilmember Gordon thank you I have two community items that I wanted to highlight the as many folks know the major fundraiser to fund our dog parks is coming it coming up and this is the dog paddle where it's a dog swim at woodland pool and this is the 10th annual this is the 10th year that friends of the dog park in conjunction with our parks and rec division have sponsored this and in those 10 years we have raised over $100,000 to put back into the parks and it's all every penny that's raised goes back into the parks and so this will be September 11th from 9 to 3 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Woodlands Aquatic Center and it's $10 per dog with a limit of two people who can come in with that dog extra people cost $5 to come look and dogs have to have proof of rabies from either there oh 809 or 2010 tag and we have several community sponsors who have really helped us along the way and the rain date for that is Sunday September 12th so I encourage everyone to come to woodland pool with their dogs last year we had about 800 dogs swim and it's quite fun day and then the second item I wanted to highlight is an inaugural event it has not been done and this is the 2010 wounded warrior celebrity golf tournament and this is sponsored by the bluegrass military affairs coalition and they are actually holding a golf tournament which will benefit the operation enduring freedom and operation Iraqi freedom living memorial for Kentucky warriors who were killed in action since 9-11 and the monies will go to the warrior transition units at Fort Knox Fort Campbell the Lexington VA Medical Center and to the to help those wounded warriors and it's going to be quite an awesome event so if you're a golfer please support this there will be wounded warriors on the golf what do you call them foursomes I'm obviously not a golfer but so they're going to be having our wounded warriors out there golfing and so if you're interested in getting up a foursome the event is going to be Monday September 20th and the number to call is 245-1100 or you can go online to www.bmaconline.org and please support this it's an awesome effort first time we've done this and it's for a great cause thank you thanks councilmember blues Thank You mayor I wanted to to announce a the the the first cane run watershed shed festival coming up this Friday night and it's hard on the heels of the mayor's announcement the other day and putting up with the first signage indicating the the area of the of the town branch watershed we're very much accustomed to living in in the city to living in neighborhoods to living in districts we've we still need a lot of education to realize that we live in watersheds that that is to say we each live in an in an area in which whatever rainwater comes down drains into drains into a waterway we have nine watersheds in Fayette County I think and I think it's eight of them are polluted and it's absolutely imperative that we begin to clean up our water by recognizing where we live and how to do that so this the the cane run watershed festival is a sort of a three-part event it takes place from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday August the 20th and it involves food first of all and education and entertainment the this is a family event it starts at five o'clock with registration and food this is all absolutely free but the cane run folks want us to to register either on the site or by going to the website which you can see on the on the screen write that down and and check it out so hamburgers hot dogs chips cookies drinks to the first 500 people who show up at Green Acres Park on on on Friday evening the programming then begins at a quarter to six on a main stage with a welcome and an explanation of the watershed festival its purpose and then though participants can attend one of three workshops on watersheds and stormwater pollution on lawn care and on car care there are several several workshops actually with prizes and and giveaways and then at seven o'clock the entertainment begins with a with a live band and everything winds up at 8 p.m. the festival takes place at Green Acres Park which is accessible by either Hollow Creek Road or Asbury Road the park itself is on LaSalle because there is fairly limited street parking in that area folks are advised to to the park in the Consolidated Baptist Church parking lot on Russell Cave Road and take a free shuttle to the picnic site so looking forward to seeing a lot of people there and getting us started in the right way to recognize that where we live is in a watershed you don't have to live in the Cane Run watershed to to show up you can whatever watershed you live in qualifies you to come to to this event a few other announcements mayor and I'll be finished tonight or I'm sorry Thursday night August 19th at 7 p.m. Spiegel Heights neighborhood will hold their monthly meeting at Antioch Church on Monday August 23rd the Oakwood Neighborhood Association will meet at 7 p.m. in the community center in Oakwood Park at the same time different place the Radcliffe Marlboro Neighborhood Association will meet in their neighborhood center in Marlboro Park and again at the same time McConnell's Trace Greenway Committee will be meeting at Harmony House in McConnell's Trace neighborhood that's at 7 o'clock thank you mayor thank you councilmember Ellington thank you mayor two things first I want to give an early birthday wishes to the vice mayor whose birthday will be tomorrow happy early birthday and second we were all busy over over the summer break but none more than councilmember Beard who who got married on the 28th and I just want to congratulate the groom and wish the bride good luck congratulations councilmember Wallace congrats to all that are do congrats first of all I'd like to say announce that the Elizabeth Street Neighborhood Association will meet tonight at first Christian Church on Audubon Avenue at 7 and everyone is welcome Columbia Heights Neighborhood Association is also meeting tonight at Ashland Terrace retirement home in the upstairs room at 7 p.m. the Woodland Art Fair is this weekend from Saturday 10 to 6 and Sunday 1 to 5 and it is really a great event the Aurora Street Block Party which is the Mintel Neighborhood Association but everybody pretty much is welcome to come is on Saturday August 21st at 2 p.m. so you might want to put that in your calendar and then I want to also say Woodland Park being in the third district the dog paddle is on September 11th is truly a great event and is well worth paying the not attending a dog fee to go watch so I hope you all will put that on your calendar also thank you councilmember James thanks mayor I was I was gonna ask councilmember Beard a little earlier what why do you have so much pep in his step I kind of noticed something different about him congratulations to you councilmember or vice mayor gray brought it to my attention that there was a conflict of an event that we may council may want to attend and I forgot to ask you council or vice mayor gray why don't you say that is the is the cow meeting on that day a quarterly cow it's on the 24th is that correct the councilmember Tuesday councilmember Gordon was asking what what is the conf oh it's the it's a lyric it's a lyric event I don't know if all councilmembers received the invite or not but it's um it's a lyric event where well we already have a lot of RSVPs where we're inviting corporate potential donors and interested groups to come and do a luncheon to learn about the lyric and also to do a tour so this will be opened up and it would be I think a really good time for councilmembers to see the lyric but as well as to also talk to potential private donors about investing in the lyric moving forward and that it's scheduled for the same time that our quarterly cow is scheduled on the Tuesday right so yes like I think it starts at 1130 so the proposal was to move it move our quarterly cow to the Thursday prior to the confirmations so I wanted to see just kind of you know take the temperature of how council felt about that we at 430 the 26th I guess that's the day you're talking about we have a citizen advocate work yeah okay yeah that's not gonna work then okay well let me put on my thinking cap and anybody else have any alternatives they want to offer this point do we have an agenda set vice mayor for the quarterly specific one yet right okay do we have a certain date or time when we need to have it if it's a mayor would be okay if I address the council on this thank you if it's acceptable to the council this meeting the what I read about the lyric and the invitation did sound like that council members might want to join it and it perhaps be a very meaningful experience for the council members so if it's acceptable I could propose a another date and circulate that within the next couple of weeks and we could then discuss it on Thursday night that'd be great all right all for that okay thank you councilmember Michael you thank you mayor as a member of the picnic with the Pops Commission I just wanted to remind people to put August the 21st which is another event on your calendar Saturday August 21st at 1st at 8 30 p.m. is the picnic with the Pops event and this year it's called Cirque de la Symphony with the Lexington Philharmonic and unlike in previous years this will be a one-night event only and it will be held at Keeneland and tickets are still available and you can go to www.lex pops.com to get additional information general admission tickets are 1250 or you can buy tables of eight so put that on your calendar and hopefully you'll go to their website and make your reservations thank you councilmember Martin Thank You mayor I had a chance to to call councilmember beard on the phone he forgot to tell me you're on your honeymoon I apologize I was trying to get you off the phone I understand congratulations really truly congratulations tonight is the Southland Jamboree at 7 p.m. and we all have a few left so come early go to dinner on South and Drive Friday night the UK women's basketball program is having a night at the moon dance amphitheater in Beaumont Center UK our hour starts at 6 p.m. and they're gonna have inflatable games UK cheerleaders and mascots and I understand the mascots aren't inflatable they're gonna be walking around or something but the hot dogs will be for the kids and the music with the Johnson brothers starts at 7 p.m. so that sounds like a great evening also Friday night is is the annual McDazzle event for the Ronald McDonald house and that is going to be at the Hilton downtown and that of course goes to fund the Ronald McDonald charities the bluegrass which is a wonderful organization that helps families gives them a place to stay when their children are in the hospital so if you want to support those that type of that charity please come out to the McDazzle on Friday evening Thank You mayor thanks that appears to conclude the council reports we have a fairly lengthy mayor's report that has been previously circulated and I might yield the floor to councilmember Gordon to talk about a couple of confirmation hearings Thank You mayor councilmembers received a an email on August 13th from the council administrator we have one board of adjustment confirmation and one Planning Commission confirmation and I know that the Planning Commission has a deadline on it otherwise if we don't approve someone they will do their own recommendation and I think the deadline is is it September 9th what August 29th excuse me so I move that we have our confirmation hearing August 26th at 6 p.m. have a motion but councilmember Gorton and a second but councilmember James scheduled confirmation hearings on the Board of Adjustment and Planning Commission appointees for August 26 at 6 p.m. any discussion all in favor say aye those no motion carries that having been done a motion in would be in order to approve the recommended appointments other other than the Board of Adjustment and a plan at its motion by councilmember James correct and a second Oh councilmember Crosby and a second by councilmember James any discussion all in favor please say aye those no motion carries that gets us down to our last agenda item which is public comment does any member of the public wish to address the council seeing none a motion to adjourn councilmember Martin is in order do I hear a second second councilmember Gordon has seconded all in favor please say aye those no motion carries Thanks okay