♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Okay, we'll go ahead and get the meeting ready. And we've got three issues on the docket in this committee. And the first one is on the customer service for permit processing, and that's Mr. Blevins who brought that to our attention. And I see we have some folks out, and I'll let Mr. Blevins kind of take it over, and you and whoever you'd like to speak first. Thank you, Chair. Let me just give a brief, hopefully very brief, background to the committee. A few months ago, the Beaumont YMCA embarked on a project, actually a few years ago, to embark on a project to build some soccer fields and tee ball fields in the low-lying areas and hilly areas of the property they own out in Beaumont Center. The issue before us today comes to us because they were issued a grading permit, had done all the necessary paperwork they needed to do, or so they thought, and along the way come to find out that what should have happened is they need to go through the Board of Adjustment for a hearing there because their conditional use had changed and they needed permission. As a result, their grading permit was revoked appropriately, and they are now going through the Board of Adjustment process. What I wanted to do was use this as a triggering event to look at our process for issuing the permits and make sure that we're doing the best we can in terms of customer service for folks like the Beaumont Y. Here's an important community partner who's trying to do the right thing and yet was not treated as well as perhaps we could have. They were literally ready to move dirt within a couple of days of their permit being revoked. So what I wanted to do is have that come before the committee and make sure that we don't need to tighten up a process or something here or there. My intent is not to reflect on any person in the government or anyone that may have made a mistake. That's not my intent here. My intent is to review the process. As a result, Mr. Winty in Public Works has brought a nice set of information for us. Is he here? Mr. Winty, are you here? I was hoping he could take us through it. So perhaps maybe we'll go with Mr. King, would you mind walking us through from your impression and your side of things what occurred in this particular instance and perhaps offer some suggestions as to what might be a better way to do it? It's only because I saw you first. Mr. Blevins, with all due respect, the Division of Planning has no role in the issuance of the grading permit. If I might suggest, if you were wanting to review that process, perhaps someone else could better speak. Well, the role that was missing here, though, was that we didn't go before the Board of Adjustment like we should have, and that is a planning function, if I'm not mistaken. It is, however, the referral of any applicant to that process comes through the Division of Building Inspection through the issuance of a refusal for an activity that is not normally permitted. Fair enough. Do we have someone from Building Inspection that would be willing to speak to that? Thank you, Mr. King. I'm still here. Yes, Mr. Blevins. I'm Dewey Crowe, Director of Division of Building Inspection. The grading permits are issued by the Division of Building Inspection, but they're only issued by us as, I guess you could call it a ministerial duty. We do not approve the grading. We do not review the grading. That is done by the Division of Engineering. Once they have done that and send us an approval, then we issue the permit just as a matter of course and collect the permit fee. We don't go any further than that with the grading permit. Under normal circumstances, would an entity like the Y come to you first? You're the first point of entry, so to speak, for a permit like this. If they had come to us requesting a grading permit, we would have redirected them to the Division of Engineering to obtain approval from them. That then means they come back to us with said approval and any conditions that the Division of Engineering would have placed on that, and then we will issue the permit based on that approval. If they tell us that they're doing something else other than grading, then we will take that issue and move forward with it. If they told us they were constructing new facilities or they're doing an addition to a building or they're doing anything else other than just grading, then we're involved at that point and would proceed forward with any approvals that they would need for that. So if I'm the Y, who should I look to to help guide me through this process, your division or engineering or what would be your thoughts there? Well, with the proper information, normally they will come to us for the permit. And that if there's some reason, if there's something we know about, then we will try to ask appropriate questions to try to get to truly what they're doing. If it just appears to be if they ask for just a grading permit to move some dirt on a piece of property, that's probably as far as we're going to take it and refer them to the Division of Engineering. Now, if something comes out with the Division of Engineering, they normally will make us aware of it that this is either a precursor or a preliminary step to another project that they've got underway. Apparently, to my knowledge, that did not occur with this. It wasn't. Right. And I think there may be something fairly simple is what I'm hoping. It looks to me like you all have some great flow charts that were provided to us. I don't know if you've had a chance to see those. Yes. One of which covers this situation. It looks like the problem was because the Y was not doing any building renovation or new construction of a building, it seems to have slid through since all they were doing is moving dirt, as you say. But it needed at some point to trigger review by planning or Board of Adjustment. And I guess what we're trying to get to here today is that you guys are engineering. As far as the grading or the moving of dirt or the changing of elevation of a piece of land, the Division of Engineering would be the ones that would look at that and approve or disapprove what they're doing or modify it. As part of construction, obviously, we're going to be involved if they're proposing a building or change of use for the property. In this instance, I don't believe that it was made clear to us that they were doing anything other than just grading. Right. That's the problem. It didn't trigger someone to say, oh, you probably ought to get just double-checked that you either need to get Board of Adjustment approval or not. And it was assumed that they didn't, which is what we're trying to get to here today. So if you all had the initial point of entry normally for a building, I'm sorry, for a grading permit, I realize you immediately turned them over to engineering. I guess now, directly, you all don't do anything with grading permits. Is that correct? The only thing we currently do with grading permits is just issue the permit, collect the fee for the permit, issue the permit, and put the conditions or specific approval requirements that the Division of Engineering has told us have to be on there. They're referred immediately to engineering. And, in fact, I believe engineering is going to come forth with a proposal to move that permitting process to the Division of Engineering from us. Okay. Because our role is extremely limited in the issuance of a grading permit. Fair enough. And I hear you. I don't mean to berate you. That's not my role. What I'm trying to get to, though, is from the customer's perspective, it becomes very difficult. You can't tell if I need to talk to building inspection, engineering, or ultimately planning, or do I have to hit all three every time I come through? What do I need to do? And what I'd like to get to is sort of one-stop shopping for our public, especially for someone as good a partner as, like, the YMCA. So, thank you. Let's let engineering talk to us. And I agree with you. And we try to ask all the questions anytime anyone comes to our shop to find out what the scope is. Again, I don't know why this didn't come to light, that they were doing more than just grading when they visited. I think this one just slipped through. I really do. We'll see if there's a way we can tighten up the process and maybe make sure it doesn't happen again. Thanks. Someone from engineering would like to comment on this? Good afternoon. My name is Barry Brock. I'm with the New Development Section in the Division of Engineering. In the case of the YMCA grading permit, they were not doing any work other than grading. Now, where I am involved with commercial developments through the New Development Section in Engineering, I'm usually aware of what needs to go to the Board of Adjustment and that type of thing, and I can usually point them in that direction. In this case, I was not aware of the fact that it had to go to the Y, or I should say the Board, and at that point I proceeded to give the Y the grading permit. Once I had discovered the error, immediately contacted the Y, met with Ms. Nicely personally, and wrote a letter explaining the situation. And at that point, the permit was revoked simply because of the requirement to go to the Board of Adjustment. Will you guys be considering revising the process? Because I don't think it's a reasonable expectation to expect the city engineer to know everything there is to know about the Board of Adjustment either. So could we modify it? 99 times out of 100, it's not going to be a problem because there's going to be some type of construction associated with the project, and that automatically goes to building inspection for review because of the building permit process. Right. This was just a very unusual situation. There were some very unusual circumstances regarding this project, and as you mentioned, it just slipped through the cracks more or less. Okay. And as I understand it, the process is now under review, and engineering to consider taking over the entire grading permit process. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Well, I would encourage you, as you all go through that, to add a step in your own flow charts to remind you to watch for this in the future. That way exceptions, I guess this is an exception or a rare occurrence, won't bite us again. That's all I have, Chair, if other council members would like to ask. It sounds like we just had a rare occurrence here. Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you all. Next on the agenda is the county attorney. He's not here right now. So I'm going to have the parks and rec go ahead and talk about the renaming and naming of county government facilities, if you all don't mind going on and talk about that now. So we'll wait for the county attorney to come later. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, Jerry, we'll let you go ahead and do the presentation on it, because I know this issue has been going on for a while and we've had some naming some properties, I mean parks and buildings. But now, from what I understand, you're all committed to parks and rec as a whole? Yes. Yes. Thank you all. I'm Jerry Hancock. I'm the director of parks and recreation here to talk about a naming rights policy that we would like the council to consider. As Richard points out, this goes back actually a few years in parks, and we have recently come to a consensus and we're bringing it to you today, as was recommended by the full council. The next page shows where we began, which was doing a survey of 25 similarly sized cities across the country to see what their naming policies were so we didn't have to reinvent the wheel and start over from scratch. That work was actually done two years ago, and increasingly communities are committing themselves to formal policies to not only avoid making mistakes in their naming policies, but also to take advantage of fundraising opportunities. So there are really a couple of different points on this. The next chart simply says that there are a number of good reasons to go ahead and have a formal policy. We need to have criteria for evaluating proposals. People come to us and say, I'd like to name this for my council member or for my dog or something. We need to know how to go about evaluating. It's always a good rule to have rules to determine how you're going to evaluate a proposal. We need to distinguish at the same time the difference between naming a park or naming a feature within a park or the placement of a plaque or some other monument or a piece of art. We think there's good reason to have a different policy or different approach to naming an entire park. Naming a new park versus renaming an existing park. We need to determine what the authority is in the process for name changes. We've kicked this around, as I said, within parks, and in May of 2007, the Parks Advisory Board deliberated and approved the policy that I'm about to describe and recommend to you. In summary, we think that there are three types of naming considerations that we want you to keep in mind. One is naming of parks or facilities within a park. Secondly would be philanthropic or honorary naming rights that might be tied to fundraising or temporary events. There could be the Susan Coleman Main Street or something for a day in downtown Lexington to honor an event, a fundraising event or charitable event that might be going on. And thirdly, we think there's an opportunity for corporate temporary naming rights. If someone wanted to put the name of their business on one of our facilities for several years and contribute toward its upkeep or its improvement, we'd like to consider that without having it necessarily go on into perpetuity. The next page talks about the process, which we believe starts and ends here. We're proposing that parks be responsible for soliciting proposals, looking at those, evaluating them and recommending them, looking at a recommendation that would include considerable background information on the person whose name would be associated with the park, have those come to the Director of Parks to perform due diligence that might be necessary and take it to our Parks Advisory Board for two consecutive meeting reviews and if approved at that level, send that proposal to you through the administrative review or blue sheet process to be sent on to the Mayor and the Urban County Council for approval. So let's start with the most obvious, perhaps, naming, and that would be for naming of an entire park. I apologize for all the words that you see here, but this is a fairly complex, fact-driven kind of a thing and it runs to several pages, which you have in detail. This is a summary. First consideration would be to name parks for historic events, geographic, locational features, things other than people. That would be our preference. It's easier to remember. Under extraordinary circumstances, we would approve the naming of a park for a select feature in the park, an outcropping, a geological feature or something like that. What we would recommend only in extraordinary circumstances would be the naming of an existing park for a deceased individual, and what we'll talk about later is how long that should take. We're suggesting that we not name a park within 12 months after someone passes away, which gives time for due diligence and to make sure that the person's character and whatnot don't change over time as new facts come to light. New parks and recreation areas should not duplicate or be closely related to or sound similar to existing parks, simply so that citizens can find them and distinguish between them. Naming a park or facility after an individual should require that the individual have been a major contributor to the community, indeed, or financial contributions. We would consider the outstanding accomplishments by an individual for the good of the community, along with the quality of the contribution. Additional names, we think, should not be added to the names of parks already named for an individual. Again, we're looking to avoid duplication and certainly to the diminishment of the honor granted someone for whom a park was named. And finally, efforts to change a park name should be subject to critical examination to avoid diminishing the original justification. The next page speaks to portions or features within parks. Particularly when financial or programmatic assistance is offered, we'd like to consider changing features. Maybe we could have the Kentucky American Water Marina in Jacobson Park. We would love it if they would contribute several million dollars toward the renovation of that facility, and we'd be happy to consider naming it after them. The cost to change signage, et cetera, need be considered when considering name changes. Naming only certain portions would require the same strenuous testing to make sure that merit and achievement are considered and are appropriate. And we believe that certain features in public areas should be named after flowers, birds, animals, that sort of thing. There's a lovely garden that's been created in Woodland Park recently, and that might well be named after the various species or the seasonality with which it was planted and tended to bloom. Some of those things, however, we don't feel need to come to the Urban County Council. We would like to avoid coming here every time we want to name a garden or a rock outcropping or a grove of trees or something of that nature. The next page talks to naming brand new parks. We will attempt to honor all wishes concerning donations of major tracts of land and the wishes of the donor, but we'd like to see those requests tied with 50% or more of the total development costs for a new park. And that is a high hurdle, but we believe that there are opportunities out there for us to receive donations of land, and we'd like to tie it in some way to the actual development. We recently received 250 acres on Briar Hill Road from the Heisel family, and we appropriately, I think, named it Heisel Park. That would be an exception to naming an entire new park. We would like to see funding brought forward with it to develop the park whenever possible. Renaming a park, we think, has certain hurdles to reach as well. We believe that there are multiple generations of people who associate the names of certain parks after individuals for whom they were named, and we don't want to see an opportunity to change those names done lightly. We believe that only recreation areas or facilities named for something other than an individual should be renamed. And certainly parks named by deed restriction shouldn't be considered for renaming. The last point there on page 9 says, the parks or facilities named for individuals should be considered permanent unless set by an individual naming contract or an irrefutable revelation of misconduct. We really don't want to enter into the business of renaming parks, taking some individual's name off and put a new individual's name on, except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. The next page speaks to non-permanent naming. Here we get into temporary philanthropic or honorary naming. Recommendation for approval should require an affirmative vote of the Parks Advisory Board as well as the Urban County Council. We're defining honorary naming rights, as you can see, to be the naming of property to honor the service commitment or other type of participation from an individual or a group. It may involve property outside a park, such as a request to temporarily rename Main Street after an individual that provided a significant public event in Phoenix or the Courthouse Plaza, for instance. Those would be temporary, honorary in nature. The next category would include what we're calling philanthropic naming rights, which would be the naming of property due to a charitable donation that's intended to enhance the community of financial or in-kind support for a specific public service. And lastly, civic or charitable group we've defined as a non-profit entity that's made a financial and or in-kind contribution. Any for-profit groups that choose to make donations in this category would be considered a civic or charitable group as well. Approving honorary naming rights. We believe that any park or facility should generally follow the same guidelines and that honorary naming rights should have certain conditions, including the term and the exchange for which the naming rights are going to be tendered. But generally, we would expect honorary naming rights to last less than one year. We would also expect an affirmative vote of the Parks Advisory Board as well as the Urban County Council for that. And we would expect that a full plan be developed and provided to us for how a campaign goal, considering the capital cost and all that, as well as the marketability, the opportunity to us at the same time. We're not going to treat these things lightly. We're not intending to come on a regular basis asking for honorary naming rights for something, but we certainly see circumstances where it would be appropriate. On page 13, we would intend to create a review committee within parks to establish that compliance with all the naming rights are taking place on a regular basis. This would be a part of our annual accreditation process where we look at our policies to see that they're all up to date. And finally, we're speaking to the area of corporate naming rights on page 14. This would be a mutually beneficial business arrangement between the county and an external entity that wanted to provide goods or services or financial support to the county in return for access to the commercial or marketing potential associated with public display of someone's name, putting someone's name on our golf scorecards, for instance, or in all of our picnic shelters, for instance. If someone wanted to come and provide financial support in exchange for a tasteful commercial message in parks that don't disturb or intrude on an individual's ability to enjoy the park, we believe we ought to have the opportunity to consider that. Finally, then, on the last page, for corporate naming rights, we would expect the same sort of a plan to be developed as we would for honorary or philanthropic and would spell out the campaign issues, the annual operating maintenance costs, et cetera. And again, we would review these on an annual basis to see that they're all in place and they are adhering to the policy and the promises that were made when the agreement was made. So in effect, what we have here is a policy for naming and renaming parks that adds the use of temporary or honorary or philanthropic or charitable opportunities other than the permanent naming of a park or facility. So after some considerable review within parks for a couple of years, the advisory board has approved this and sent it on to the council, and I believe it was timely that this issue was put in the committee at just about the same time that this came forth from the advisory board. So at this time, let me entertain any questions you might have on this. Thank you, Jerry. I have a few people up. Council Member James. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Jerry. I had a couple of questions. I was curious as to whether our new trail systems would fall under the same naming policy. I know a lot of people are talking about having certain portions of trails named after whoever or whatever. Would that fall under this? I think so, yes. Those certainly that are in parks. And as an adjunct to that, sitting on the new trails committee, I asked someone why a certain piece of trail was called the Phoenix Trail, for instance, because in my ignorance it didn't seem to attach itself to Phoenix Park, and the answer was, we don't know. It's been called that for a long time. So I think there is an opportunity for us to rationalize some naming that's gone on in the past, perhaps, where names are just anecdotal and don't appear on legal documents. But, yes, everything within parks, I believe, should fall within this policy in the future if it's approved by the full council. Okay. And there's a mention of significant park features. Does that include the memorial benches that have the plates where you can put whatever you want to on the plates? I would argue that those benches which we make available to people, to honorary lost loved ones, should be exempt from this policy. I believe that having benches in parks is a good thing, and we need to encourage people to step up to the plate and invest in one. And I would hate to have to come to council every time someone wanted to give us $1,000 for a bench. Okay. Thank you. I would consider it significant, no. Okay. And my last question is, in your PowerPoint you talk about that parks will be soliciting and receiving and accepting the request for names. Who exactly in parks, whose responsibility is that? To do the soliciting, I would consider it everyone's responsibility in parks to see if we can create partnerships with the community. Specifically, it would be my responsibility, and I would work with our marketing people to evaluate proposals that we wanted to solicit. I don't mean to be casual, but we need to do more public-private partnership activities, so I consider it all of parks' responsibility to look for those opportunities. Okay. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Baird. Thank you, Chair. This corporate arena that we're talking about, and I know it's gotten quite almost to the point of ridiculous what's happening around the country on this. It looks or seems to me that it just is a vehicle to allow the big to get bigger, those that can afford something of the sort that would catch the attention of us to name a park or a feature within a park, and sometimes carry it to a ridiculous extreme like the Nevada Bob's Men's Restroom and the Posh Salon Women's Restroom or whatever at Shillito Park. It shuts out. There's just a lot of people that can't afford that type of exposure, and you find that it's always the big boys that are allowed to have the wherewithal, let's put it that way, to be able to get a name on something, and this is public property, and all taxpayers are involved in keeping it up, and to be able to buy your way into something like that just rubs me the wrong way. Thank you. Councilmember Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think my comments would go back to page three, I believe. Nope, make that page five. One of your bullet points says that parks director presents to parks advisory board, and then the third dash down there says if approved, parks forward to be a blue sheet to council, and I would prefer that this, rather than be blue sheeted, I think that's too far in the process. I think that it should go to services committee and let services committee vet the recommendation, and I'd like to also see along with that a report summarizing how you got to the point of making that recommendation. With respect to your second point, you would get that rationale in our discussions as a part of the process. We wouldn't likely come to either you or the administration first and say we want to rename this XYZ Park. You would clearly get the pluses and the minuses in the discussion in the background. We would vet the person's name and background and all that business. So wherever this goes from parks, you would clearly see that. Our normal procedure for all council-related resolution or ordinance requests is via blue sheet, and it comes to the council, which certainly has the opportunity to relegate it to subcommittees if they choose. I'm not in a position to know whether that's a good idea or a bad idea. We send everything via blue sheet to the administration to bring to the full council. So that's why that's incorporated here. Okay. Well, I couldn't support this written this way. I would not support this if it came via blue sheet. I would only support it if it came to, and it could be a different committee, but I would think services would be the appropriate committee from our government to hear this, but I think that it needs to be vetted by the council and committee, and one of the reasons why is because that gives the citizens a chance to participate rather than just the Park Advisory Board and its normal process, if this policy is passed the way it's written, to have input into that whole process again before it comes to council for a vote, and then it would be a full recommendation by, or it would be a recommendation by the committee to the full council for a vote, and that's the way that I could support this. Thank you. I think Dr. Stevens had a question. Well, you can't leave our rules or procedures direct matters concerning parks generally to the planning committee. Okay, that would be fine. Planning committee would be better. I'm sure it wouldn't make any difference to you which committee it goes to. It would not. And I'm not sure how this got into the services committee, I mean the intergovernmental committee, but that's been the past procedure. Okay. Thank you. I have a question. I'm going to hand the chairmanship over to Councilman James. Council Member Maloney. My question is on number eight, page eight. If you have a kind of looking at the 50% or more of total development costs for a new park should be part of the donation. So if someone has a piece of property out on one of these farms and donates it to the city, and it's worth millions, do you, and we want to go ahead and name the park after them, are they required to put 50% of some kind of? No. Let me interrupt you, Richard. Here's what I'm suggesting. Probably better written, the last sentence that starts raw land, that probably should have been a bullet point. Raw land should be maybe excluded from that criteria. The point in the middle thing where it says a minimum of 50%, that's intended where somebody wants to come to us and say I want to rename Park X after my grandfather, and I want you to build this on it. Well, that, for that, we're saying we would really like you to participate dramatically in the development of whatever it is you're talking about in order to rename. We already have a park is what you're saying. Yes. We own the park. Right. Or we have some property that we got through condemnation or something else, and somebody says I want to name it X and I want you to build a ball field on it. Well, we'd like those folks to participate with us in building the ball field in exchange for considering renaming it for them. So, in other words, the person who ever donates this property. Yes. The Heisels are greatly appreciated for what they've done, and we're not asking for anything more. That's all I have. Thank you. All right. I'll pass the chair back to Council Member Maloney. That's it. Thank you. I'll have Mr. Blues next. Council Member Blues. Thank you. Jerry, I have one question about signage. Yes. Will there be certain design specifications so that suppose that we have park shelters named? With respect to corporate naming and that sort of thing? That's right. In other words, would there be a consistency of design so you don't have different kinds of signage or signage that replicates a particular company's advertising and so on? Yes. We would ask that the contributor, the corporate contributor, share with us their ideas, and we would want to modify them as appropriate to make them look more like our park's motif. We have standard signs, standard colors, standard sizes. We're not looking to introduce a lot of garish, neon, multicolored corporate logo things in our parks. Although we do very much want the corporate community to participate with us in improving them, we're going to make some compromises. We're going to use their name, but we're not going to necessarily use their logos and colors and all that. None of that is anticipated, no, sir. Thank you. Next, we have Councilman Dr. Teague. Thank you, Mr. Maloney. I think this is a very important topic because in many communities, major park improvements are done through philanthropy, and we really haven't achieved that here in Lexington. The Heisel property was a donation, but most parks have been purchased and improvements made through tax dollars, and naming is an important part of it. I'm involved now in a fund drive for the Arboretum, which is a little bit different kind of park. It's not an LFUCG park, and it's not a UK park. It's a combined park, but I can tell you that in raising money, naming rights for portions of things are very important, and that's what makes it go. Also, about ten years ago, when the last Parks Master Plan was developed and presented to the Council and adopted, one of the essential things, at least I thought essential, was to create a position in the Division of Parks of a development director, a person who would be responsible for making these contacts and nurturing these gifts from people and foundations and so forth. That's never been done, and one of these days when we have a little extra money, I might just throw in another resolution to do that, but I think that's something we need to do too. Thanks. I guess, since there's no other questions, I guess you wanted to make a motion to go ahead and adopt it to the Council to the full. Is that what you all wanted? It would be my expectation that you would take it to the full Council for their deliberation, which would seem appropriate, and I'd be happy to speak to the issue at that time if necessary. Do I hear a motion? Mr. Chair? Yes. I would move that we would pass this on for approval by the full Council with the change on page 5 from if approved, Parks would forward this via blue sheet to Council to say that if approved, Parks would forward this to Planning Commission or Planning Committee for their approval. So moved. We have a second. Any discussion? Okay. We're going to have two votes. We're going to have a vote. Oh, I'm sorry. We have discussion. Mr. Council Member Beard. I still am not going to let up on this corporate situation. Further discussion about how that process would work, if it indeed needs to work at all. Philosophically, I'm 100 percent against selling our souls, so to speak, if the price is right, and that's essentially what we're doing. I don't know how we can separate that question from the rest of it. I have no problem with any of the rest of it at all. It's just this question of getting involved with the private sector. Let me ask you one thing, Jerry, if I might. What happens if two people want the same thing? Does it go to auction or how would you handle that? That's a high-class problem we've not enjoyed. I honestly don't see that happening, but clearly it would suggest to us that we either left something on the table or we didn't package it well enough to make it more dear. I don't know. I can't stand here and say that we'll put it on eBay. That's not going to happen. But I would hope that we would agree as a group over time that there are a number of things in our parks. I would not mind seeing shelter number one called the XYZ Corporation Shelter in exchange for $15,000 worth of maintenance or something. And if two people wanted the last remaining shelter in Jacobson, we might well put it in purchasing if we all agree that the first six were well-named and well-maintained. I can't answer your question, but I hope that that happens. That would tell me that we have something of value that you all agreed was tasteful. Let me say that there is some of this already in parks. I believe if you'll go to McConnell Springs, if you take a look at the glass wall separating the foyer from the meeting room, that Kentucky American Water's name is prominently addressed there as a recognition of their significant contribution in making that facility happen. So I believe we do recognize private sector contributions in a modest way, and it's our intention to go forward in that same tasteful way. We're not looking to put fast food franchise signs on our parks, but we are looking to participate where possible with private money. Well, there are very few secrets in Lexington, and as soon as Fifth Third Bank finds that Chase Bank is in discussions with you, they'll be coming down here and waiving checks. That's terrific. I don't think so. It cuts out the other 18 banks that can't quite afford to play in that arena. And again, the big get bigger. Thank you. Any other discussion? I know Mr. Myers is on here, but I believe he's already asked. Mr. Myers, Councilman Myers, you don't want to be on? You don't have anything else to do? No. Okay. We are voting on the motion. All in favor? Opposed, I guess. Okay. That passed. Do we need to make a motion now on the whole motion? Do we need a second on that? I voted on his amendment. I'm sorry. Okay. That's all. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Jerry. Next we have the county attorney, and I believe Mr. Stennett asked him to come down, and I'll turn it over to you, Mr. Stennett. Thank you, Chair. As we all know, during our budget discussions we received correspondence from our county attorney's office as well as a presentation that definitely needed and warranted additional discussions, and that's why we have our county attorney, Mr. Roberts, here before us today. I'll let him start off, and then I'll begin the discussion afterwards. Mr. Roberts, welcome here. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I really don't know where this is going. I know that when I came before you in June or July, I asked for some more money, and you all did, in fact, give us another $150,000 on top of what Mayor Newberry gave us. So, in effect, we have a $250,000 increase in our budget. And at that time it was recommended by somebody on the council, and I'm not sure it was you, Kevin, or not, but somebody recommended that we do a continuous evaluation of our office, and I think that was because maybe I made the suggestion that I would like to educate you all about what we do and keep that an ongoing thing so that at some point you all are very, very familiar with what we do for the community and what the problems are in our office. So that's where I was called and asked to come. If you want to hear me plead, I can, or I can tell you what we're doing. What's your preference? I think it would be great to start off. Tell us what you're doing with some of the changes. I know you plan on moving a couple, well, you actually moved your office, but moving a couple other people into the district court building to handle complaints. I don't know if that's been done yet. Okay. If you can give us a synopsis. We made a move from the traditional bank building to the first federal building, which is at Vine and Upper. This was something that took a year, basically, because when I came in there, I knew that we had to leave. It was a fire trap. It was a terrible condition to work under, and they'd lived there for 12 years, and everybody hated it. It was awful. And it was a very difficult place to get out of if there was a fire, and I didn't want to have to do that. So Richard Vemont, who came on board with us in 2006 and has just been a tremendous help, began working with me on looking at property that would be available that would be somewhat close to the courthouse where we could move and have some kind of a similar rate of rent there. So we found this building and we negotiated with the Coleman Group, and the bottom line is we agreed to do it. I got permission from the other half of my budget, which is a major portion of our budget from the state, that does child support, and Tom Emberton, who was the commissioner at that time in Frankfurt, I talked with him at length about it because they pay half the rent, and he says under what conditions I had and what I was going to get, do it. So we did it. And then you all have come on and given us $100,000, which makes us almost even on our rent. We're a short, just a little bit under it, of what we need, but it's a tremendous help. We kept our rent at $14 a square foot, and the owner of the building, we negotiated. I didn't know how to do it, but he did. And we negotiated and got the owner to put $185,000 of his money into the building to refurnish it. And then he gave me $100,000 extra, which I demanded if I wasn't going to move. And that was to make the improvements in the office and above just the blank walls and desks and so forth, things that we needed. And so we have a very, very nice office now. And I'd like to invite you to come any time. We're going to have an open house. But, Jim, we've got the best photography art display anywhere in Kentucky. And what I did there is, for instance, I went to the Herald-Leader and I said to Mr. Garrison, this is what I want to do. I want to put photographs on the walls. And I know it costs money. And I want to feature artists in Lexington who are really good. We've got some tremendous photographers in Lexington. And he said, okay, you can have any photograph we have. And I said, really? And he said, yes. And so I went through probably 2,000 photographs, all digital, picked them out from all the seven or eight. Well, there was about seven guys and one woman who was a photographer there and got about 110 photographs that I selected. Then I had to take those and get them developed and framed, which cost me about $115 apiece. And we had to pay nothing to the photographers for that. I did give them an honorarium, but it wasn't charged. It wasn't something they expected. And so now David Stevenson and we've got some tremendous photographs on our walls. In addition, private photographers gave us pretty good deals across. I negotiated with them, and they all wanted to be hung in there. And so we've got a lot of really nice things. So I'd like for you to come down and see it. It's made our office really neat to work in. And if you're a worker and you've got a $20,000 salary, you don't have money to put a photograph on your wall. They literally take pieces of paper and glue them on walls. And I didn't want that. So now it's nice. So I'd like to have you come. We've done a tremendous amount of things in our office so far and have got a lot more to go. As far as services go, I mean, we handle 40,000 cases a year, criminal cases, through the county attorney's office. Every crime comes through our office. The felonies are then funneled up to Ray Larson's office, and that's a small percentage of the 40,000. We handle about 35,000 to 40,000 cases a year, traffic cases, every day, 430 to 7 o'clock. We've got two prosecutors downtown who handle a line of 200 and 300 people coming through on all the traffic tickets. It's a service to Lexington to not put it in the middle of the day because then people can come after work. And that's a pretty big deal. But it also requires our prosecutors to work after the typical 4 o'clock or 430 time, which they were experienced in the last 12 years. So we changed that. And the philosophy from the day we started in our office was there's no more comp time in our office for you prosecutors because they were getting time. If they worked after 430, they'd get comp time. If they'd go to a seminar in Louisville, they'd get two hours' comp time for driving back. And I said there's no more of that. You're lawyers and I'm going to pay you well. I gave them raises. And I want you to look professionally at your position. And if we work on Saturdays, you don't get any comp time. I expect you to work. And Saturday we had seven people working on our office, lawyers, working on cases that are coming up next week and the following week. So it's going to get really, really good. We've got a tremendous success rate already in the office on convictions and DUIs. We lead the state. We've got over a 95% conviction rate in DUIs. And it's going to get better. And the reason it is is because they're working hard to learn how to be good lawyers. I'm not good lawyers, but great lawyers. And my goal for each one of the lawyers, and I've told them all that, including him, Brian Matone, I want you out of here. This is a stepping stone. And so I want to see guys like him become the U.S. attorney or the mayor or the county attorney or whatever he wants to do in life. And that's true for everybody in the office that's a prosecutor. I'd love to see them all leave and be judges and partners in law firms, and we'll keep a new batch coming. We just hired three brand-new students out of U.K. They took the bar, but I hired them as full-time lawyers, paying for them out of our money that nobody funds. We create and earn it ourselves. And I paid them full-time salary for the next three months to get them on board, and they're working hard. And they're basically paralegals, and they're learning the system. So in October, when they pass the bar, they'll hit the ground running, and we'll have three really good lawyers already fired up and going. We do a lot of things that we do not get financial assistance for in the office. Juvenile restitution is something that nobody really thinks about. But when juveniles commit crimes, they have to pay the restitution, and there's no budget for monitoring this or handling it all. So we hire a lady to do that, and she funnels this money back to the victims, and we write letters back, and all that money gets settled. And that's a service that we provide without any funding. We have done a tremendous amount of police training since we came on board in August. I bet I've been to probably 50 roll calls. We have trained the police in our entire office, all the prosecutors. We went through six weeks of training with them on DUI. Every police officer in Lexington has been trained a segment by our office on DUI prosecution and trying to improve that. And that was a huge block of time for us to do, and it's 7 o'clock in the morning, or 7.30 in the morning. And it was very successful, we think, because we need to establish ourselves with the police department, and I know that very well. They don't trust us, no reason for them to, because there's never been any real relationship in the past of 24-hour on-call service to them. They never, never had that, and now they do. And so they call us. Brian was telling me the other day that the phone calls have increased dramatically during the day to us by police officers working on cases that never happened before. And any day you can come to our office and see police officers sitting up there going over trials. That's never happened ever before, ever, in our office. And so they're catching it, and it's a kind of a thing that in five years I think it's going to be a very, very progressive department in junction with the police department. The truancy program is something that is kind of a favorite of mine. It's something that used to be a program in our office, and then it disbanded. And then Judge Wise came in as a family court judge, and she's taken it as her baby. It's really a favorite issue with her, and so she's taken all the truancy issues in Fayette County and made a court out of it. And so I took Jim Newberry there one day to watch it, because, I mean, he's never been and watched what we do. And so I asked him to go. Well, it was an eye-opener for him to go and watch an hour of what we do in truancy court. And we finish about 9 o'clock at night, 7 o'clock if we're lucky. And Judge Wise never takes a break. I think she's got a catheter in her. She never takes a break. It's unbelievable. But we've got two prosecutors working it and about 14 social workers, and we handle all the truancy issues in Fayette County with the school system. And it's an amazing system that's going on, and it's getting bigger and bigger. So we do that, and it's just kind of a thing that suddenly has become a problem or a duty of a county attorney's office. We've got one of the things that I found is that there are an unbelievable number of boards and committees that want the county attorney's office or are required by law to be a part of. And there's about 10 in the community that we are in. Every week we have meetings going on, and it might be a ceasefire program where the Commonwealth attorneys and all the federal government and so forth work on gun problems, and we do that. We've got domestic violence. There's two or three committees on domestic violence that we meet on in this building, and we do it on a regular basis. Partners for Youth is a board that I'm on that, of course, comes out of this government, which is a terrific program. And that's blossomed into a thing that we're doing with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Lexington in conjunction with the school system. We're going to train high school students, seniors and juniors, to go into middle school and teach kids in middle school about the Internet, the problems on the Internet. And the reason for that is that's a very important issue to us, and it's a phenomenal problem across this country. But in Lexington, instead of having a 65-year-old guy like me go in and talk to middle school students, we're going to get high school students to do that. And I'll talk to the high school kids and to their parents, but it falls on deaf ears to kids for a guy our age. So we've got younger people in our office that are going to go to every school with the high school students and talk to the students with them. And I think it's going to be a pretty neat program. So that's a huge effort that we're calling on our prosecutors to do that was never even dreamed about eight months ago. We've got lots of problems. I'm inundated with dog barking cases, complaints, and people whose grass is too tall, and people who scream at each other across fences. It's unbelievable. I'm sure you hear about it because you've got constituencies. We get them all. So whatever calls you get, multiply it by about 50. And it's unbelievable the number of problems that occur in this community, and I guess it's everywhere, with people who can't get along with each other. There are, of course, wonderful groups of people who do get along with each other, but we don't hear from them. We're getting the people who are screaming at each other because of a car parked in front of their house for five days or worse stuff. And lots of them, and I don't mean to belittle this, this is a major issue. If you've got a house next door to you and you've got seven dogs in it barking constantly, or you've got a pit bull who runs down and snarls at you every time you walk down the sidewalk. And so we're working on that. And there's kind of been a misunderstanding, I think, or maybe it was set up in the past. We've got a very good animal control department, but they're terribly understaffed. I mean, you make a call on animal control, probably, unless it's you, if it's a normal citizen, probably that call is going to get answered in three hours or a day later. Well, the dog's gone. I mean, or it's home eaten. It's had three meals since then. And it's a difficult problem to address. I mean, Kevin is working on this. And I've known about it because, I mean, I have represented dog owners in the past. And I know how to play the game of keeping the government off of me. And so I think I'm an advantage now as a county attorney because in the past, nobody would ever do anything about it in law enforcement. And you take a guy like Nathan Bowling, his hands are tied. If the prosecutors can't do anything about it or won't, well, we've pledged to them we will. And so instead, Kevin, I mean, Nathan was a little bit, well, he thought, he literally thought that the only way a charge could be brought was if he brings it. And he couldn't bring it if he didn't see the crime committed because it's not in his presence. Well, I mean, we bring charges every day from the citizens who want to file a criminal complaint. So that communication has to be gotten out to the community. And we're willing to do it. We've got 17 prosecutors. And we're going to do that. That's just another little task that is part of what we do. So that's an education issue. The same thing is true with nuisances. You know, if you've got, I mean, you all know about the nuisance problems we've got from high weeds to trailers. That's part of our office. We're an enforcement arm of that. And we can do something with that if the cases are brought to us. And so we're trying to get that message out as much as possible. And it takes time. You can't do it immediately. But eventually it will get there. And we're going to have a website. We've already done it. And I haven't started it yet. But we've had a lot of help from the city to help us financially with that. It's been a terrific help. And we're going to do it. And I'm going to do it in Spanish as well so that the other segment of this community that's under fire right now with all the illegal stuff can at least know what is expected in the court systems that they're dealing with because they don't know. They're really in the dark on it. We have a hundred. I have got 96 or 97 employees right now. We have nobody who speaks Spanish. We have a lady in child support who does. And she's leaving next week. She's quitting and going up to eastern Kentucky with her husband. And every time we have a Spanish person coming into the office, we steal her from child support to come down and talk, like criminal complaints or whatever. She comes down and talks to them. Well, we don't have that luxury anymore. And I can tell you, just like the jail or any place else, we need it. We need this solved. I need probably two paralegal-type individuals who can serve as a receptionist on the telephone and help lawyers or do secretarial work who speak Spanish. And then I can use them in lots of different areas and call on them. So I need that in a budget. I don't have any money for it. I can't go out and hire them for $25,000 apiece. I don't have that. If that's something that can be done by the city, it would be a huge thing for us. I mean, a huge thing because we don't have anybody. I'm going to start taking Spanish lessons. People in our office are going to do that. I do a truancy program at Cardinal Valley, and it's primarily Spanish, Hispanic people. And I can't speak Spanish to these individuals. And they've got people, great people at Cardinal Valley who do that. But I've got mothers sitting there who can't understand what's going on and interpret it. I don't know if she's telling her exactly what I'm saying. And it's a major problem. So we need some help in that area, I can tell you. Got questions as you go? You want me to keep on? I can talk for two hours. I think we can open up for some questions. I know a couple of council members have chimed in here and want to speak. I just want to say, obviously, you play a vital role and importance to this council and this community because we can pass any law we want. And if it's not enforceable and prosecutable in court, then our laws mean very little. And, obviously, you've been making a lot of headway in working with our police department. You're serving on our committees, the Dog Task Force, one of them. We're making some headway there. I just have two quick questions to open up. One is, what is your stance on Sunday alcohol sales? You don't have to answer that. I don't mind answering it. I don't mind answering it. But I am curious about the number. You said, talked about DUIs a little bit ago. Have you seen a significant jump in DUIs because you're trained or because more people are out there doing it? I have not seen a significant jump in alcohol arrests because of Sunday drinking. That's the number one thing. When I was Commonwealth attorney, I came out against Sunday drinking. I was on the campaign against it because I said, you know, even though I didn't do DUIs, I said, you know, I think if we open up Sunday drinking in restaurants and whatever, you go and get whatever, then you've got the potential of having lots of problems, more wrecks. And it hadn't proved to be true. I was an advocate against it. I think I was wrong. I mean, based on, you know, the next 20 years. An interesting story, though, I'll tell you, I made a lot of enemies taking that position with businesses and so forth. And one day there was a neighbor up the street from me who was having some major problems, elderly couple, and they were having holes shot through their window. This was on Montclair, David. And it's an elderly couple about 80 years old. And what it was is a marble comes flying through their window at night. And they're sitting there watching TV, and the marble ends up in the kitchen. And, of course, they're terrified. And they called the police. The police come. They said, well, who would do this? And they said, we don't know. We don't know. Who hates you? Well, we don't know. And so they started looking. You know, the people saying, well, who hates me? Is it my next door neighbor or what is it? And they became paranoid. But they finally came to me. And I went out there and talked to them. And they had 11 holes in their window, this big plate glass window on Montclair. And so they had them taped up because they couldn't afford to redo the window every time, just right up the street from you. And so I got Jerry Wright, who was a police officer at the time and probably the best police officer we ever had on being able to deal with the mind of a person who commits a crime. He's terrific. So we staked this out. Kevin Horn was with me. He was an assistant. And we staked it out in my Toyota. And we watched this house. And Jerry decided that it would happen right before a holiday because we looked at all the dates. So we staked it out right before Halloween, and nothing happened. And the next holiday is Thanksgiving. And we staked it out. And, of course, the people knew we were in there or we were outside. And we told them if anything happens, come running out. So we're laying there in a car. I'm laying back in my Toyota because we don't want to be conspicuous in this driveway. And up comes a car. And all of a sudden, the people come running out, waving, and the car takes off. And they said, that's him. So we get going. And we're riding just hell for feathers down Montclair toward Tate's Creek. And I see, I'm driving, I see the car turn right on Tate's Creek and the taillights. And I say, they're turning right. So I go, I mean, I'm busting it now in that little Toyota. And all of a sudden, I get to the corner. And I see in the garage right there on Tate's Creek, beside me, two taillights in a garage. And they went out. And I said, oh, they're in the garage. So I back up. And I pull in this garage. And I pin this couple getting out of the car with my headlights. And they both got a drink in their hand. And it's Sunday. And the law has been passed. You know, it was the issue about drinking. And there was no drinking on Sunday. And they said, oh, God, are you going to arrest us for drinking on Sunday? And I said, oh, no, ma'am, we're just after a couple of marble shooters. So I don't know the answer to this new problem coming up. I don't have any idea about statistics or what it will do. I mean, morally, I'm not against it. But from a standpoint of safety, I think communities would have statistics on that that I don't know. I appreciate your honesty and, of course, your story you just told us. And I guess my main point of asking you here today is what ways could you better work with our Department of Law? I don't see Logan here, but I see David Barbary. Are there opportunities that this council is missing? I know we're in a lot of lawsuits. A lot of different things are happening in our law department. They do a great job. But is there any areas that you already have written down or you can provide to this council that you can help us with and we can work together a little closer? Well, one of the duties of our office is to represent county officials. And for the last 12 years, Margaret really didn't represent many county officials. In fact, she hired me once to represent the coroner in a case of a lawsuit because I was a law firm. And I know that most of the county officials, in fact all the county officials, have gone and hired individual law firms to represent them in issues that come up. And that's fine. They've got the right to do that. That's a budget issue that they've got to raise the money to do that. And I don't know if that comes out of city budget to pay for it or not, but it's the county's responsibility to do it, the county attorney. We hired Richard Vemont because he is a very, very fine lawyer and knows more than I'll ever know about representing these kinds of things that occur in a county. So he's on board, and so far he's put in over 1,250 hours in one year and working in our office on everything. I mean, he does more than just do civil things. He does a lot of stuff in our office, but he has been a tremendous asset to us in civil issues, particularly the coroner. I mean, we've had a major dealing with Mr. Ginn on all the plane crash incidents and things that went after that. And Richard has represented now us on four or five lawsuits where people get sued in the office or we already inherited a lawsuit. And we've saved, I know we've saved $150,000 at least in legal fees to the law firms that we would have paid. And we stopped. We got rid of them and are representing ourselves in this. And he's doing a phenomenal job. And I have talked to Jim Newberry and to his staff about our, my belief is that we could be helpful to the city, greatly helpful to the city in representing cases that the city would represent, but decide to funnel the cases out to private law firms. And we certainly can't do it all. But I can tell you, Louisville, for instance, Jefferson County, the county attorney has a staff of civil attorneys in there, and they do everything. They do everything for the city. And there's no funding. They're not sending cases out all over the community for private work. And it's a huge amount of money that's spent that way. Well, I don't want to do that. I don't want to get to that point. But I would love to be able to help our city law department if they've got a case, let's say a jail problem, you know, that they've been sued on in federal court or lots of different kinds of things, we could do. And I'd like to do it. You know, if we do it, we need help for him. And I've lobbied for that for a while to see if we could get another private attorney who does civil work. We're going to start using some of the lawyers in our office who are prosecutors. The problem with that is they're paid by PAC, most of them, and they're pretty restricted on that. But I think I can use them outside of PAC if they're doing something, if it's not encroaching on their time. And I want to give them that experience. And we're available to do it. I can do it. This guy right here can try the heck out of a case. And Vmont is terrific. So we've got a law firm sitting right here that could handle civil cases and would love to do that. And I think it's important to do it. And we'd save money for the city rather than send it out to a law firm and have it. I mean, I don't think that you need to totally get rid of the law firms. But if you can cut into that money, then I'll bet you it's huge. I'll bet it's huge what they spend. I mean, you get $200 a piece and you've got two lawyers working or three and then some paralegals, and it's a cash cow that they build. I know how that's done, and I think we can help that. So Richard needs a secretary. I can tell you that right now. He has to do all of his own secretarial work. There's a whole lot of pleadings that go on in civil cases. And if I had two paralegal secretary types who could speak Spanish, then I could utilize them in our civil practice with the things that we do for the agencies here. So that's a big issue for us. Thank you, sir. I'll open it up to other questions. Next is Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for coming in today. And it sounds like you guys are doing an extraordinary job for us. And I just appreciate the enthusiasm that you bring to your office. And I particularly like what you said about everybody coming through your office is really a stepping stone and they've got other places to go, other things to do. They want to learn and provide a good product for you while you're there but move on down the road. Just a couple quick questions. How much do you need to do the things that you've talked about today that you haven't yet done? How much do I need? Yes. Well, our expenses, our operating expenses in our office are $237,000 a year. You know what you all pay for that? $4,500 a year. That's what the city's done the last 10 years. Now, that's gone. What's happened here is the county attorney's office has run a business within the office. And so we fund things that go on in the office by necessity. I've got, for instance, a list of the people that we pay for out of no budgets. I've got, and I'll be glad to give them to you. Can I pass them out? Sure. This is a budget of $487,000 that we pay for employees that is money that we have to raise. Now, it's a little bit skewed in one respect because you're going to see three people on there who are brand new attorneys that we just hired in. In October, they will go off the rolls and they'll go into PAC. So it's a $200,000 hit that we take on salaries that are not budgeted by anybody, but it's happened because we've taken property taxes and we get paid for property taxes and that money doesn't go into the city. We don't give it back. We never have. They take that money and they use it to run the office. We run a cold check program. I mean, it's a huge thing for the community. A huge thing. It's like $200,000 a year that we give back to the community and we get $200,000 or $170,000 for the fees that we charge. So we use that to pay these bills. Probably, in my opinion, that ought to be money that goes back to the city because I think the city's responsibility is to run our office. It's never been done that way. It's always been a kind of, well, don't ask for any money because we're running this program over here. So as a result, the city doesn't have any idea what we're doing. And I'm saying you should know. I mean, you all should know what we're doing. I mean, we can function and we will function because unless the cold check business dries up or the taxes dry up, then we'll continue to function. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Could I interrupt just a second? Sure. In a letter that you sent to the mayor on February 2nd of 2007, in there it talks about a civil litigation division. Have you had a chance to set that up? That's what I thought. Okay, that's what I thought. Okay. Could you identify for us specific cases or case types that you think that that division could help us with and maybe put together a proposal for us? I think that your statement in here says that you could aid us a lot and you're thinking that you could probably save us $200,000 a year. Easily. Without a question, we could. Could you put a proposal together for us to let us know how you would do that and what it would take to get that done? I don't know what the city spends for private law firms, but I know when I was a lawyer, it's $150 or $200 an hour, and I would think that if you're hiring good law firms, you're spending that. Plus, you've got a lot of staff that so I don't know what you're spending. So all I can tell you is you can give me, I can give you two good lawyers, and we can try the living daylights out of cases. Now, that eliminates, I mean, you get a lawyer for $80,000 a year or two of them, then you've got, you know, 1,000, 2,000 hours that those lawyers will bill. I mean, they don't cost you anything. It's a no-brainer in my opinion. I agree with you. I agree with you. So could you put together a proposal for us? Sure. I'd be glad to. I'd be glad to. One other thing I'll tell you, George, if I might, when I talk about the stepping stone, and I really mean that, some of the lawyers look at me and they say, I don't believe that. I've got two lawyers right now, two assistant county attorneys, two women who are now United States attorneys. They've been appointed United States attorneys. They're full-time county attorneys, but they're working in the federal court system and they're trying cases involving Internet predators. It's the first time in the history of the United States that's been done. Never before has that been done. And the U.S. attorney came to me with that proposal, and I said, well, hell, yes, we'll do it, without a question. I want them to do that because I want those kids to be U.S. attorneys. And maybe they'll decide they don't want to. Maybe they'll decide they do. Maybe the government will say, we don't want them, but I think they're going to get them. And so I want that as a catalyst to bring new people in. And I've got three people who are the tops in their class as people coming in and working for me for $33,000 a year this year. I mean, that's unbelievable. It is. We're not begging anybody. We've got people we're turning down. And one guy, this one young man that I hired was offered an $87,000 job in Washington. And he took a $33,000 job. So I know we're going to be able to build that stepping stone. Let me give you another handout. This is the salaries of what you pay in Lexington for our staff, and it's $626,000. And the $250,000, I think, that you talked about that you received this year, that's what a lot of that goes towards. No. No? Well, it goes for one lawyer, Richard Demont. It goes for another lawyer, $33,000. Microphone, please. $33,000 lawyer. And it goes to help pay the rent. It was about $100,000 for our rent. Okay. So we're pretty even on our rent. Now, what I'm passing you out is this sheet that shows the salaries of the people that you're paying for in our office. And what's the total on it, Dick, down at the bottom? What's the total salaries at the bottom? Last year it was $600,000. Okay, $600,000. Right now, we are $80,000 shy. You give us the money, we still have to come up with $80,000 to make that current. How do you do that? Well, we do it by cold check collections. Okay. And taxes. And diversion. We've got to do it. I haven't talked about this, but diversion is a phenomenal program that we're doing in our office. Since I came in, Margaret started it a long time ago, and we've come in and we've increased it dramatically. And so this year we have done 57,000 hours of community service by people who were charged with a minor offense. And we let them get out of it by getting a sponge, but they do 80 hours of community service or 60. And it's just been unbelievable with the agencies here in town. I mean, they don't have to hire anybody to do this. We've got people cleaning the streets with the Downtown Lexington Association or whatever it's called, the corporation. We give them people to go down and clean up the streets, and they're targeting the businesses that have got the problems. So that's how we do it. But we need $80,000 just to make us even on the LFUCG budget for salaries. So expenses, you give us $4,500 a year. It's $237,000 a year that we have to come up with. I can do it. I mean, I don't have to have that. I mean, we're going to float. And thank goodness Margaret was sensible enough to take the money from tax collection that we had, and she put it into bonds. It's invested. And we've got about $700,000 or $800,000 invested that we can go back to and get if we need it. And we have to draw on it pretty much every six months because we don't have enough to make the nut. And the reason we don't is because when the private agencies come in and buy the property taxes, okay, and they can do that, we make a huge fee all of a sudden. It would be the same fee as we would get apportioned over. But let's say we get $200,000 or $400,000. All of a sudden we're rich. Well, she didn't act like that, and she put it in bonds. And so we've got it invested, and so we're living off that as we go. But I see it running out. I mean, eventually this $237,000 that we have to pay every month or every year is going to dwindle. I think the other question is what increased services could you provide for our community if you had that balance taken care of? I think that's the real win-win. I don't think we're going to be able to produce any more services. I mean, if the $237,000 comes in, I mean, we can still produce what we're doing. You're not going to get more for your money that I can see. It's not an investment. It's something that we're having to do. What's going to happen, George, is Walmart has stopped the cold check business. Okay? There is no more cold check collection for Walmart or Kroger's. It's all done by private collection agencies. So that's a huge lick to us. That's like $80,000 a year income that we lose from Walmart. Let me ask you this question. Let me rephrase that then. Okay. You've talked about your civil litigation division and what you could do in terms of saving us money if you could ramp that division up. Yes. So if you weren't having to worry about the cold check being the balance of your budget, and you had other great ideas like you already have with hiring some of the young people out of college and some of the different things that you're doing, how many more things could you do if you had more money to do them? I don't think I'm going to be able to do any more just if you give me money for my expenses of operating the office. I'm talking about office expenses, everyday Xeroxing the whole thing. Okay? That's not going to change what I can produce for you. I mean, it's happening. So I've got to do it regardless of whether you pay it or somebody else does. Now, services-wise, if I've got more money, if I've got people who can answer the daggone phone, I mean, when the phone rings and the secretary has to go to the john, she gets up and goes and nobody answers the phone. Or if she goes to lunch. I mean, we had one woman who answered the phone in our office when I took over. Eighty thousand calls a year. One woman. And so I said, this is ridiculous. So we've got five people now answering the phone. But when they're sick, I've got to draw a prosecutor out of the bench and make them come up here and answer the silly phone, which I need that. That's not something that costs you. That doesn't give you money back from the city or make money, but it serves the city. That's what I'm trying to get to. Yeah. Well, that's what we need. We need two paralegals who can answer that phone, who can speak Spanish. I need desperately. And I think we can function pretty well in what we've got right now to handle issues. But if you call our office, call us up sometime. It's a hundred times better than it was, but it still rings. I mean, it's maddening to me. Okay. I look forward to your proposal. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I want to warn you out. Do they know what we've done? Well, let me tell you real quick. I didn't even think about Andrea on what program we're doing. We're going to start a prostitution program in Lexington, which, you know, lots of cities have done various things. But we've been to Buffalo with Andrea and Brian and I and a couple of police officers. And we've studied a program there, and we're looking at agencies in Lexington to see how we can treat the prostitution problem and deal with it in a proactive manner rather than just chase prostitutes from here over to East End or West End or whatever. And it's pretty interesting what we're going to do. I'm convinced that we can have a real impact on the prostitution problem, not so much as there's a prostitute, get her off the street, and it's ruining our business, but to treat that prostitute, because it's drugs, almost 90% is heavy drug usage. And if you can take that woman and get her treatment in our Hope Center and some other things that we've got in this town, which we have a phenomenal resource base, I think we can have a real impact here. And we're going to do it. And it's going to be one of the funding methods will be with the use of the individuals, the guys, who get involved with this problem, because it can't work without them. And we're going to hit them with some money to get the funding for the women to get treatment. And I think it's going to be important. It'll get done in six months or so. Councilmember James had talked to me about that program before. That's kind of what I was alluding to, but I didn't want to steal the thunder, when I was talking about if you had more money, because you're going to need some money to ramp up this program. So it's those kinds of things that I want to hear about that you can provide or increase capacity into if you have more money in your budget. George, I don't think I need money for that. I'm going to try to do it without money. We've got people that I want to involve in our office to do the work. I mean, I can do that. So I don't need money for that. I mean, thank you, but I don't think we're going to. I mean, I want to do it without using money or use private money. It seems like maybe you could hire some more people to help you out or something. I don't know. Well, we might. I understand. We might eventually. And when I need it, I'm going to ask for it. But I'm not going to. I mean, we've got plenty of people to work in our office on that issue, on prostitution. We can handle that. Next, Counselman Blevins. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to look at the you've made a compelling case on the needs side. I wanted to look at the revenue side for a second. Okay. You list, I guess, four major sources of income to the office. One is child support, which I guess we can sort of put over here because it's sort of a self-contained entity. The other is the state funding for your prosecutors. And then, obviously, LFUCG supplies you some money. And you've mentioned as we've talked, you have fees and fines income. Yes, sir. Or other income. Right. And that completes, I assume. That's it. Sort of the picture. Right. I wanted to ask, I think what happened back during the budget cycle, and it may be me that brought you here today, so you can wear me out after the meeting, if you like. I think the reason was there was confusion over where the state responsibility ended in funding your office and where ours began. I can see there's areas that we ought to own up to, especially for barking dog kind of things. But, obviously, enforcement of state law ought to be state money. And I think that's where we all got a little uncomfortable about giving more money or any money. We needed to know where does the separation occur. So if you could illustrate that for us, I think it would help. Sure. Well, I mean, you can look at the PAC budgets. They don't provide anything except salaries. I mean, there's some nominal stuff that if they have a Christmas wish and they'll give you a computer or something if you want. But there's no expenses paid. I mean, I think there's like a $1,200, $1,500 expense for stamps or something, but nothing. So they don't run the county offices. They just fund the prosecutors for it. Okay? So if I need, for instance, another prosecutor, which I did, and I came to you all and asked for help, and you gave me another lawyer. And so PAC turned me down. I asked for three. They gave me one. Okay? So you all gave me one, and now I've got two. And so, but I'm going to switch that guy into a PAC position.