# Council Social Services Committee - February 8, 2011 > Auto-transcribed civic record · February 8, 2011 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/1875 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/1875?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2011-02-08 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 13,560 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Social Services Standing Committee met at 15:00 under the presiding leadership of Chairperson Myers. The committee heard six informational presentations covering a range of social services topics, including updates on partner agency health plan costs, a departmental overview of the Department of Social Services, operations and staffing at the Day Treatment Center, senior center and aging services, a potential partnership with United Way, and the legal status of providing health insurance to partner agencies. During the meeting, the committee took one motion to a vote and heard public comments from seven members of the public. The session focused primarily on information-sharing and discussion rather than formal action items. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on February 8, 2011: * Leslie Jarvis * Jeanette * Commissioner Mills * Diane Woods * Christy Stambaugh * Bill Farmer * Council Member Lawless * Council Member Stennett * Council Member Myers * Council Member Henson * Council Member Ford * Council Member McCord * Council Member Simpson * Council Member Wallace No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions **Motion to Adjourn** Council Member Ford moved to adjourn the meeting. The motion passed by voice vote at [timestamp: 1:22:57]. The following council members voted in favor of adjournment: - Council Member Lawless - Council Member Stennett - Council Member Myers - Council Member Henson - Council Member Ford - Council Member McCord - Council Member Simpson - Council Member Wallace No council members voted against the motion. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed several financial allocations and funding mechanisms for community programs: **Day Treatment Center Funding** The Day Treatment Center received a total appropriation of $490,315. This funding was structured through two sources: * DJJ reimbursement: $241,845 * General fund contribution: $248,470 **Senior Center and Aging Services** A contract valued at $2,000,009,000 was approved for funding the Senior Center and aging services. This contract involves 18 partner agencies in the delivery of these services. ## Public Comment Several council members and commissioners raised concerns about staffing, agency operations, and facility planning during the meeting. **Staffing and Leadership** Commissioner Mills announced the hiring of a Director of Youth Services and Director of Family Services, emphasizing the importance of strong leadership prior to reorganization [timestamp: 0:10:54]. Council Member Lawless raised concerns about staff at the CASA project who had not lived in the city for years, noting that names in the organizational chart may be outdated [timestamp: 0:11:25]. **Financial and Reimbursement Issues** Council Member Stennett asked about $3 million in uncollected Medicaid reimbursement, citing back billing from the health clinic and ongoing efforts to resolve record mismatches [timestamp: 0:15:19]. **Senior Center Operations and Space** Council Member McCord questioned the suitability of the current senior center location due to traffic and access issues, and suggested exploring the former Lexington Mall site as a potential new location [timestamp: 0:38:36]. Council Member Wallace suggested relocating some partner agencies to free up space for programming, noting that the current setup limits opportunities for seniors [timestamp: 0:35:00]. **Partner Agency Space and Housing** Council Member Simpson asked whether partner agencies pay rent and expressed concern about space constraints, suggesting some agencies might be better housed elsewhere [timestamp: 0:42:35]. **Budget and Youth Services Priorities** Council Member Ford emphasized the need to focus on youth services and prepare for a tight budget, urging the committee to advocate for social services funding [timestamp: 1:21:14]. ## Appointments The following appointments were made during this meeting: * **Diane Woods** was appointed to serve as Acting Director of Family and Youth Services. * **Commissioner Mills** was appointed as Director of Youth Services. * **Commissioner Mills** was appointed as Director of Family Services. ## Contested Items **Legal Authority to Provide Health Insurance to Partner Agencies** [timestamp: unavailable] Council Member Wallace raised a procedural dispute regarding the legality of extending health insurance benefits to non-LFUCG partner agencies. Wallace challenged whether the government had the authority to provide such benefits, citing concerns about financial advantages and the arbitrary nature of which agencies were included in the arrangement. The dispute prompted a formal request for a legal opinion to clarify the government's authority in this matter. **Senior Center Space and Partner Agency Relocation** [timestamp: unavailable] A split vote occurred over the question of whether partner agencies should be relocated to free up space at the senior center. The debate centered on the practical feasibility and consequences of such a move. Concerns were raised about the partner agencies' ability to relocate given their operational constraints and the potential impact on the services they provide to the community. The council remained divided on whether the benefits of reclaiming senior center space outweighed the disruption and challenges a relocation would create for these partner organizations. ## Update on Partner Agency Health Plan Costs [timestamp: 00:01:00] Ms. Leslie Jarvis presented data on the financial impact of including non-LFUCG employees in the health plan. The presentation focused on the costs incurred by LFUCG for satellite agencies over a three-year period. **Key Findings** According to the data presented, LFUCG incurred nearly $1 million in claims over three years for satellite agencies. Following the removal of these agencies from the health plan, costs decreased. **Discussion** The committee discussed whether the policy change to remove satellite agencies from the health plan was financially beneficial. Jeanette participated in this discussion alongside Ms. Jarvis. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken. ## Department of Social Services Overview Commissioner Mills presented an overview of the Department of Social Services [timestamp: 00:06:39], covering organizational changes, budget allocation, staffing levels, and program performance. **Key Topics Presented** The presentation included a detailed breakdown of the department's budget and organizational structure. Commissioner Mills highlighted staffing vacancies within the department and discussed current program initiatives and their outcomes. **Key Emphasis** Commissioner Mills emphasized the department's need for strong leadership in youth services. She also underscored the department's commitment to cost-efficiency, noting that the department has maintained service delivery despite operating under limited funding constraints. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action or debate recorded. ## Day Treatment Center Operations and Staffing Acting Director Diane Woods presented an overview of operations and staffing challenges at the Day Treatment Center [timestamp: 0:21:10]. The discussion focused on significant staffing gaps and operational constraints affecting the facility's capacity. **Staffing Shortages** Woods detailed critical staffing shortages, noting that 10 positions have remained unfilled since 2006. This long-standing vacancy issue was identified as a major constraint on the center's operations and service delivery capacity. **Enrollment and Capacity** The committee discussed the potential to increase enrollment to 75 participants. This expansion would require addressing the existing staffing gaps and securing adequate resources to support additional clients. **Operational Challenges** Several operational barriers were identified during the discussion: - **Medicaid Billing**: The need for Medicaid billing capability was raised as an important factor for the center's financial sustainability and ability to serve eligible clients. - **Transportation**: Transportation challenges were noted as an ongoing concern affecting client access to services. - **Funding**: Funding limitations were discussed as a constraint on the center's ability to expand operations and fill vacant positions. **Key Participants** Acting Director Diane Woods and Commissioner Mills participated in the discussion, with Woods providing detailed information about the center's current operational status and the barriers to expansion. **Outcome** The discussion was informational in nature, with no specific decisions or action items formally recorded. The presentation highlighted the interconnected challenges of staffing, funding, and operational capacity that would need to be addressed to expand the Day Treatment Center's services. ## Senior Center and Aging Services Christy Stambaugh presented on the aging population and current challenges facing the Senior Center [timestamp: 0:31:01]. The presentation addressed several key issues affecting senior services in the community. **Current Challenges** The existing Senior Center faces significant space constraints that limit its ability to serve the growing aging population. The facility is currently occupied by partner agencies, which further restricts available space for senior programming and services. **Key Discussion Points** The committee discussed several important considerations for future planning: - Ideal location for a new or expanded facility - Programming needs to serve the senior population - Solutions to address current space limitations - The role of partner agencies in the facility **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with the presentation serving to educate the committee about the challenges and needs related to senior center services and aging population support. No formal action or decision was recorded as a result of this discussion. ## Potential Partnership with United Way Bill Farmer from the United Way presented information about the organization's strategic direction and discussed potential partnership opportunities with the committee [timestamp: 1:03:49]. **Presentation Overview** Farmer outlined the United Way's shift toward an outcome-based model that focuses on three primary areas: education, income, and health. This represents a change in how the organization approaches its community impact and grant-making strategies. **Partnership Exploration** The committee explored the potential benefits of partnering with the United Way, with particular emphasis on two key areas: - Improving oversight and accountability of partner agencies - Leveraging grant opportunities available through the United Way **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal decision or action items recorded. The discussion served to introduce the United Way's new direction and explore how a partnership might benefit both organizations' goals. ## Legal Status of Providing Health Insurance to Partner Agencies [timestamp: 1:16:03] Council Member Wallace raised concerns regarding the legality of providing health insurance to non-LFUCG partner agencies. The discussion centered on potential issues with this practice, including questions about the financial implications and the criteria used to determine which agencies would be included in such coverage. Council Member Wallace specifically highlighted concerns about arbitrary inclusion of partner agencies in the health insurance program, noting that providing such benefits could create unintended financial consequences. The discussion reflected uncertainty about whether the current practice had a clear legal foundation. In response to these concerns, the committee agreed to seek a formal legal opinion on the matter to clarify the legal status of extending health insurance benefits to partner agencies that are not part of LFUCG. **Outcome:** Informational. The committee determined that legal counsel should be consulted to provide guidance on this issue. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to adjourn the meeting --- ## Full transcript Music It's 3 o'clock. We're going to start the Social Services Standing Committee. Thank you, everyone, for coming today. We're going to start our agenda with Ms. Leslie Jarvis. As many of you know, the last couple of years in the Partner Agency Oversight Committee meeting, we started looking at the number of people in our health plan that were not LFUCG employees. And so we went through the process of looking at that and made some changes in that. And so we're going to have a presentation from HR to hear kind of the numbers and the update on how that all went. Ms. Jarvis? Okay. Jeanette's going to give you another packet of information because it's basically got some of the same information in it, but we didn't have, when we provided Jeanette with the information the other day, we didn't have the full year for 2010. We only had three months of 2010, so the packet that she's going to give you is going to include the Humana and Caremark costs for those people, those agencies that were on there for the full 2010. One of the difficulties in this is a lot of the people who are at the table making decisions to remove the partner agencies aren't here in LFUCG anymore. So we've had to look through files and so forth. So basically what I'm just presenting you with is what the costs were for those agencies during the years and what the costs were when we removed them from the benefit plans. As you know, we are self-insured for our medical costs. That means that we pay all of our claims, the LFUCG does. In 2008, what the first page shows you is the first column premiums paid. So, for example, Convention and Visitors Bureau premiums paid $90,000. That means that they were sending the Division of Human Resources, or LFUCG, $90,000 during 2008 to cover the cost of their claims. The Caremark Pharmacy was $23,000, and then the Humana was $33,000, and the Aetna was $4,000 because we offered an Aetna plan at the time. So whether the claims were over or under, what that shows is that for the year 2008, the LFUCG came out $28,000 to the better. So basically that's what the chart is showing you. So for 2008, the total after we collected the premiums from the satellite agencies and paid all of their claims, the LFUCG was $536,000 in the whole, meaning that was what it cost us in addition after we were paying their claims from what we collected. We did the same thing for 2009, looking at that data, and it shows you there again, the LFUCG paid out an additional $389,000 to cover the cost of the claims for the CARAMARC and the Humana for the satellite agencies. And that cost is going down because we moved off the satellite agencies in two different phases. So on the fourth slide or the fourth handout that we just provided, this was the information we had available from January through March of 2010. And then what we've provided you that we got this week is the additional of what it was costing for 2010 for the entire calendar year, but we didn't have time to break out the premiums. So the overall cost of the premium is there at the bottom of the page for all of those satellite agencies. And then what we did was the premiums for 2010 were $939,000, so almost a million. What the claims were for Caremark, what they were for Humana, the total claims, and then what the difference is. So that year, the last year that we did that, LFUCG paid out $25,000 for 125 employees, which is what was left on that in calendar year 2010. Are there any questions? While the council members are looking at the information, so if we were to add these up, we have almost a million dollars in claims that had we done this five years ago, we wouldn't have had in those three years. Is that correct? I'm sorry, say that. Repeat that, please. If you were to add these years up, the 536 and the 389, the 8,000 and that 25,000, if we had made this change in our policy, say, four years ago, then this almost million dollars were the claims we would not have had. Is that it? Correct. It's not a fair statement to say that we're going to save a million dollars every year, because obviously the people who have these claims may not have the same claim every year. Correct. But we can go back and look at over these years, we spent almost a million dollars on claims for satellite agencies that those employees were not employees of the government? Correct. Okay. And just to clarify, the $8,000 is not a standalone. It goes into the $25,000. Okay. Yeah. Are there any questions? Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks. So next on the agenda, we're going to have a brief overview from Commissioner Mills and some of her staff on the Department of Social Services and the programming therein. Good afternoon. I had a short time, but I brought a packet with me. There are no overheads. The first thing I want you all to look at, and we've stapled them at the bottom so that you can look through them, these are the organizational charts for the Department of Social Services. And before I start, I would like you to know that I've made some notations in here because some of the things in these organizational charts were changed in pilot programs within our department. Things were kind of reorganized, but they haven't gone through council. So we're looking at maybe doing a different model. We're going to do it in conjunction with our budgeting process and some of the comments we got on the transition team. So we're looking at all that data carefully before we make these reorganizations permanent or change them differently. The first sheet is the commissioner's page, and this is the way it used to be for quite a long time. Except if you'll look over on the far right, the Partners for Youth program with Stephanie Hong, she's now reporting to the acting director of Family and Youth Services. Part of those two divisions have been put together. If you have any questions about this as we go along, feel free just to stop me if you'd like. The next major division in our department is Adult and Tenant Services. This department has stayed the same pretty much throughout the years. It's changed very little. We have some neighborhood programs. We've got a HOPE 6 grant. We work with the Newtown Pike Project. But one of the major programs that you all may be familiar with is emergency financial assistance for people who need help with rent and utilities. and we also have some social service case managers that work with some of the adults in our community. Over to the far right is the Cardinal Valley Center, which used to have some social services and some work with our Hispanic individuals, and it's now as a pilot as an intake center, and there are six employees there who are taking calls and navigating folks into social services. We will be looking at the data about how many calls are going in there, if that's replicating 211 and 311 and deciding if that's the best use of our staff or not. We haven't made a decision, but we are looking at the intake center. Next, we get to the Division of Family Services, and I'm sure that you all are familiar that the clinic was taken over by UK several years back, so that's no longer a part of our department there. We still have the high school. We have the child care center. We have the social work services and the hands network. So you'll see all those services across there. We still have comprehensive services. We just no longer have the health care center. What happened, however, is that we currently do not have a family services director. Sarah Hendricks left at the end of December. A plan was to put a deputy director of youth services under family services in a pilot program of making family and youth services. Diane Woods is with me today. She is our acting director of both family and youth services. So if you'll look at this across several of the youth services program, not only does she supervise these family services programs, she's also supervising day treatment. And I think CASA and Partners for Youth are reporting to you, or CASA reports to the commissioner. That's not correct. Then we come to the youth services division, which no longer really exists as an entity unto itself. Part of it has been named Family and Youth Services. I had some concerns about that because I'm not sure if the charter allows for it, if it went through, but it was presented as a pilot project, so it's not a regular thing. Given the fact that the team, the transition team, said one of the highest priorities ought to be youth services, and I know this council has looked at day treatment under a microscope and what it does, and I'm going to talk a little bit about that more in detail. I really do think that we need a strong Division of Youth Services and a Division of Family Services. I just got permission to hire a Director of Youth Services and a Director of Family Services today. And I really don't think that we can move forward until we have strong leadership. So that's the first thing we're going to do. We're going to have two separate divisions, as we did in the past. Any questions about organization or where people sit? Yeah, Council Member Lawless. I'm looking at the Youth Services Organizational Chart. Yes, ma'am. And I'm assuming you got this information given to you from somewhere. But like under the CASA project, staff assistant Brian Estes, he hadn't even lived in this city for like two years. Okay. The names may be old. Okay. And I've got an extra sheet in here. I'm sorry about that. No, I mean. No, I'm glad you pointed that out. I have a sheet in here about vacancies and where people live, but I was told that, you know, the names may not be correct. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. The next sheet is our budget, and this is broken out by divisions in the commissioner's office. Our total budget, $7,744 and some odd cents, represents 2.8% of the urban county government budget. I did the calculations, and we have about $275 million, so we're under 3% of the budget. When you look at the programs we offer, the sites we staff, what we're doing, I've got to say I'm really proud of our department. We're doing a whole lot with a little bit of money. And, of course, some of that money leverages grant dollars. We do get federal money with some of the local money. But I think this department is really very cost-efficient, and I'm really proud of the department I've inherited in that respect. The largest budget you'll see on here is the Family Services Division. They probably have the most federal grants. The Home Network Program is self-sustaining. They bill Medicaid for the services they do, so they don't cost the government anything. but they offer the services because they're directly billing and getting reimbursed for what they do. Another thing that is not on this budget is we have more partner agencies than any department government. We're currently funding 18 partner agencies, and the budget last year was just over $2,000,009,000. So that's our budget. I want to show you what you're getting for your money. If you look at the next page, these are the sites where our employees work across town. We work in 13 different sites in Fayette County, so we're dispersed widely. I think that is important. I think you need to be in the neighborhoods where people live. And each one of these programs is kind of unique to the neighborhoods and what those neighborhoods need. So if you have any questions about any of these sites or what's done there, I'll be glad to answer those for you. Finally, on the back sheet, I have wanted to show you all the vacancies we have in our department. I've been told that at one point we were well over 200 employees in the Department of Social Services. Our current authorized strength is 144 employees, and of those 144 employees, we currently have 17 vacancies. We understand that it is a lean budget year. We will be meeting together with all the division directors on Wednesday, and we're going to try to find our budget cuts department-wide rather than division-wide. And as we do that, we're going to wait to fill vacancies. I do want this council to know that we have a lot of positions who are on paper in one division and they're working in another because of these reorganization plans, quite a few of them. But I'm not comfortable in moving anybody to any division until we figure out our budget and what our work plan is going to be. So we're going to do our budget based on where people are on paper in the budget. That's what I want you all to know. But, like, we haven't had a director of youth services since 2008. We do have the funds for that position. We may be needing to work more in youth services, and that was one of the questions that Council Member Myers brought to me, and I'll talk a little about youth services in a minute. If you have any questions about the overview or? Councilman Stennett. Thank you. Commissioner, thank you and welcome. We appreciate your update here. Just had one question. This is more financial than anything, but we've been trying to collect on Medicaid reimbursement. Do you know, have you got your hands around that yet and why we're missing almost $3 million to date? It's back billing from the health clinic, as best I can figure. And I do have a meeting set with Ryan Barrows. There's still a question about, you know, matching the records with what they owe us. And we are still pursuing that, but I'm a rookie at it. But I'm aware of what you're talking about. We have sent requests, I guess, to the federal government asking for that money, or the state, I guess, in this case. Right. Yes, we have. We've requested for back billing. So we're looking at that. Very good. Thank you. What I'd like to do now is. I have one more question. Yeah. Diane. At the day treatment center, because we do provide services that might be also billable to Medicaid or insurance. Is anybody looking into that? Yes, that was one of the questions. So let's just talk about day treatment in general. I'll talk about a few things, and then I'm going to turn it over to Acting Director Woods, and she can explain to you what's happened at Day Treatment Center. Lisa Berman is our clinical director. She has a licensed clinical social work degree, so she can bill Medicaid. She's currently not doing that, and I think certainly that's something we ought to look into, the possibility of doing that. We also have a worker from Bluegrass MHMR that comes on Wednesdays. One-third of our youth at that building need intensive mental health services. We don't receive that money directly. However, well, not CompCare, now it's Bluegrass MHMR, they don't bill us for it. They bill directly. They come there so that our youth don't have to leave and go take an appointment and miss a day of school. They're in-house. There was some question whether all treatment services ought to be offered by CompCare, and Ms. Berman's expert opinion, that's not a good idea. For the main reason is they're focused on treatment. Our social workers at Day Treatment also do case management. They work with the teachers. They do community resources. And if there's a fight in the building, they're there to do crisis management. So if we went that way, all we would be providing would be the building and the transportation. So we do need to look in Ms. Berman's building because she can do diagnostic assessments. She can deal with youth that are suicidal or having psychotic episodes. So she does some things that are billable, and I think we ought to look into that. We really should. The other thing she told me, the funding stream, and I don't understand this yet, I'm going to learn, we get funds from DJJ based on Medicaid, and they pay a set amount for each youth that we serve. However, our numbers have gone up and our grant hasn't gone up. So they may be getting money from Medicaid based on each youth, but I don't know what the formula is for funding day treatment. I am proud to tell you all that we are licensed for 60 youth at day treatment, and we're up to 57. And Ms. Berman felt like we'd be having a waiting list within two weeks. I think there was a downturn in youth when it was said that the only youth that could come there had to be court-ordered, but the judges believe in day treatment, apparently. I met with Judge Wise at lunch today. They're now at 57 youth, so day treatment is doing a really good job. I will talk a little about the transportation out there. We try to do transportation with Fayette County Public Schools. The problem is the bus routes. The bus routes, the only time they could get the youth there was by 10, and they couldn't get them home until after five, which is not as an acceptable school day. The other problem is they were also going to do the transportation for our Fayette County, I mean, our family services families. They will not transport people who are GED students because that's out of sight of their purview. So it fell apart. We budgeted both for Fayette County schools and for running our own buses. We were going to do extra projects with that funds, and I'm sure this committee is aware of it. we may be having to use those funds to balance our budget or to make our budget cuts this year. So that cushion was really very helpful. I talked with some people from the schools, and they said with a new superintendent coming in, it wouldn't even be a good idea to bring up the transportation question for another couple years. So we would say $60,000 if we could pay Fayette County schools instead of running our own buses. If I could add something in on that. And the key to that is the fact that the state will not reimburse a local government for transporting kids, but they will reimburse the school system. So if we can get that done, the school system will get their money. It's just it doesn't have to come out of the taxpayer's dollar here because the state will reimburse them for it. So hopefully we can have that conversation. And I think one of the other issues were that with the family care folks that we were going to transport, they have babies, and I think that's another thing that the school system can't. Right, there has to be child care seats in our buses. So there were several issues with the schools doing transportation. But if we could get to the point where they could do some of it, we would also want to look at that cost analysis. So in the next, you know, when we get a new superintendent seated, we will ask them about that. Also, some of the questions were about day treatment and family services. I'm going to let Ms. Woods speak to you all. And then there were some questions about the new senior center and aging plan, and Christy Stamball handles that for us. So if you would entertain them for a few minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Chairperson Myers, Vice Chair Henson, Social Service Committee members, I want to speak to you just real briefly on day treatment. I have an outline here so that I can keep focused to the important points. Since 2006, ten positions at the day treatment center have not been filled. a day treatment program administrator, social services supervisor, social worker senior, an ICS worker, intensive community service worker, staff assistant, and five child program aides. The current enrollment, as the Commissioner said, is 60 students, and that enrollment fluctuates. So today, in fact, Ms. Berman enrolled another student, so we will meet the 60-student enrollment threshold. There are four social workers there who have a caseload of 15 students each. Fayette County, as you know, we're in partnership at Lexan Day Treatment. There are eight teachers there and three paraeducators. The cost of the program, the total cost is $490,315. That cost, the DJJ reimburses us $241,845. that's billed in increments monthly of $20,153.75 per month. And it is a set amount, as the Commissioner alluded to, about how we get the DJJ billing. The Lexington-Fed Urban County Government general funds put in $248,470 for that total of $490,315, which it costs to operate the Day Treatment Center program. Currently, DJJ has us rated at a capacity of 55 students. That also reflects in the amount of money that we are reimbursed. That is based upon the number of staff that we have, not the size of the building. I think everyone here has been in that building. When I first came on board, I was an administrative officer part-time last year at that facility facility and spoke with Mr. Pods and Ms. Miracle and several other staff there. And the original plan was for that building to expand to well over 100 students. But without the funding, you know, that expansion certainly is inhibited. The potential for growth. As we look at all the programs in social services and the divisions that I'm working in, we're always looking what can we do to enhance this program to better serve the residents of Lexington Fayette County. If all the classrooms there were used at Lexington Day Treatment, except one of the resource classrooms, which is the smaller classrooms, We could have seven home rooms with 15 in each group, going to a maximum of 15 students per group for a total of 105 youth. Now, for this to become a reality, it's going to cost some dollars. And sitting with Ms. Berman and her social work staff, they've estimated that we would need three more social work seniors, additional transportation because we have to get the students there, and then two more regular ed teachers and four paras, which would come from the Fayette County side of the funding. So in closing, I want to thank you for the opportunity that I've had to work with that particular program. It's a wonderful program. It fills a niche in this community. We're not only servicing some students that are court-ordered, but we have a middle school component there. And if you know any middle school principals or administrators, you know that that's a growing need, that 13 to 14-year-old child and the way that we can provide some services to them. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Are there any questions? Yes. Thank you, Diane, for being here. And I have been at the school several times. I was curious about you said there are 17 vacancies, correct? The commissioner did. At the school? Oh, okay. I misunderstood. Now how many of your vacancies are at day treatment? Well, if you're looking from 2006, there are ten positions that have not been funded. So currently the program administrator is not there. That's a vacant position. The social work senior, we started with five social workers and now we have four. So that position is not there. And three of the program aides. The program aides were full-time that are no longer there. So do you feel like you've been able to provide adequate services to the children or? Certainly. For students, we should call them. We have been able to provide adequate services to the students that are enrolled. But the question becomes how many more out there could we be providing services for if we were adequately staffed to the number that we've had in the past. Okay. So to me, the first step would be to increase the enrollment and then increase at the same time. We're looking at our waiting list, which would be the increase in the enrollment, and then providing the staff to service those students, our clients, our youth. Well, and I want you to know this is a program I truly believe in. I think if we can't invest in our children, then they're the most important, I think, to our future, and allowing them to become productive citizens and do all that they can do. And I always get teary-eyed when I come to the graduations there. But I guess I know there's some room for improvements over there. And one thing I would, I'm not sure that we could do this, but I do not like the name of the school. I don't, is that something we could change? You know, that's interesting that you said that because that's a conversation Lisa and I had a couple of weeks ago that we need to, we need to change from day treatment center. When we go to venues for their other high school students there, and the day treatment center students are over here. So I don't know if there'd be something at the day treatment center, but coming up with another name. And that is a conversation we have had. Right. I'm glad to hear you say that. Okay. Thank you. I'll see you soon. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Henson. I have a couple of questions for you, Ms. Woods. What is the highest census count that we've ever had at day treatment? You mean daily attendance or enrollment? Enrollment. The highest enrollment has been 72. We have it? Okay. And let me back up and tell you what that 72 was. That was when the program first began. when it moved to the new building, and 60 of those students were actually day treatment students and 12 were GED students, and we no longer offer the GED program. Okay. So the largest we've had is 60 in terms of day treatment students. Yes. What would it take to make that number increase to 75? I know that you listed a different staff, but I think that was to get to 105. Right. Even if we had one more social work senior and we had five groups of 15, because we've got four groups of 15 now. So adding that one social work senior. One social work senior could take us to 75. What is the current waiting list number? The current waiting list, and I cannot, I don't want to. The last time that I spoke with Ms. Berman, she was still interviewing, so we were still not at the 60 level. But you have to be there. And here are the calls that come in from parents who are, can you just help my child? They're not court-involved yet, but they need to be in a treatment program. And we want them in a day treatment program where they're at home with us in the evening. So I think the need is out there, Mr. Meyer. But now the change in policy this last year was that, beginning with this school year, if they're not court-ordered, then we don't get the same funding, correct? It's from the state. Yeah, and it's a funding issue from the state. Okay. I guess if you could look at this, I would be interested to know if we could get the census up to 75. 75. But get that funding in there to go along with it. And then also, you know, we had a task force that looked at day treatment for a while. The issues that we kind of hit the brick wall on are the transportation piece, but also this direct bill Medicaid. if Ms. Berman could do some of that, I think certainly she can't be the only administrator, because for those who don't know, there used to be three administrators in the treatment center. Now we have one. I'm not sure that she can actually do that treatment that would be required to direct bill Medicaid and still be the only administrator there. So I think that's something else we have to look at as well. So those are the things that, you know, and that MHMR money, we had DJJ at the table during the task force. We couldn't get out of them if there's some type of formula or why it is that we're not getting the dollar amount that we should get to match the 60 students. But I think that's something else that we can revisit. We also had conversations with CompCare, and that's really why we tried to bring them into the picture, to see if they could do that direct bill and we'd get the funding that we needed. So if you could look at that and then see what additional funding we would get to see if we can match this budget and see how much we would be short to bring the census up to 75 if we have court-ordered need at that level. Okay? Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. I'm Christy Stambaugh, the Aging Services and Disability Support Administrator, and thank you for letting me speak. And the silver tsunami is upon us. With the aging baby boomers this year, the first turned 65, and I was in a brainstorming session that the transition team put together yesterday, and this group of persons was amazing as we look at how we're going to meet the needs of our seniors in the days to come. I mean, we entered in 20 new seniors just participating in the Senior Center in January. And that was just the first month of this year. We have about 798 seniors that have ID cards that belong to the Senior Center currently. So the task that I gave you, what I gave you is what the Senior Center looks like today, and it's this sheet, and the many agencies that are also housed in that facility. I've given you the square footage of the building on the other sheet, and in the transition team, they asked for revitalization or support towards the Office of Aging Services, so I wanted to provide to you what my office does and the things that we're involved with, and we could use more help always, and I think that we're doing a pretty darn good job with what we have. But the building is 13,727 square feet, but only about 4,000 square feet is program area. The rest is offices. We have seven community partner agencies housed in our facility. And when the facility was built in 1980, the idea for Older Americans Act funding was that you would have a focal point or a one-stop shop for persons who need aging services. And so that was the model that it was created under, and we have all those partner agencies, and it works pretty good. The space is just not big enough. We have to break down and put up and set up and break down and set up and put up, and we can't have a lot of programs running concurrently. And so that very much limits the opportunities we can provide to our seniors who want to be active in our community, who want to be engaged, and who want to experience meaningful socialization or doing things that are important to them and to our community. So I think that the question was, where are we on the new center? And gosh, as soon as we find a person who would like their name on the Lexington Senior Center or until there's some grand funding scheme to make that happen, we're going to do the very best that we can in meeting the needs. There are some ideas out there. We are a very small staff, very small. We have five professional staff there and four part-time staff. And so the idea of going to the community and taking the programs to the community is very appealing, but it's not super realistic given our current staffing. We can be very creative within the Department of Social Services, and we're all a pretty good team, and I think that we'll be able to put pockets here and there, but be able to cover the whole city, I'm not sure that that's something that we can do at this time. And we have an idea of what the new center might look like. It was funded for the study in 2007, and the drawings were completed in 2008. And the Commission on Community Services for Older Persons, which has had its fourth meeting, reviewed those plans last week at our fourth meeting. And they're brainstorming to help us to support the mission of the senior center and also for the community and those that are aging. Any questions? Ms. Wallace. Thank you, Chair. When I look at how many square feet you all have and how much is used for programming, and I look at the list of partner agencies, all of which are extremely worthwhile, And I see how at one time, possibly when you didn't need more room, it kind of made some sense. But like Meals on Wheels, their main office being there, the Nursing Home Ombudsman Agency, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, which, you know, all these are wonderful programs. Don't let, you know, don't get me wrong. But it seems that they would be better housed somewhere else for their main office if it's taken up. When we're struggling to meet the needs of programming needs and we're only using, you know, about a third of the building for programming and we're housing, you know, senior community service employment, job training, I mean, those are economic development things as is RSVP. And so I think that's something that we should look at is can those people be moved somewhere else and you all have more space for programming and to meet the needs of what the purpose of the center is. Thank you. Mr. McCord. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Christy, for all that you do and for all that all of you all do. It truly is. It's about people. And when we get into space and blocks and all that kind of stuff, you have to try and remember that it's about people. And, you know, you mentioned the silver tsunami. The state demographer came and spoke for us a couple years ago and said, look, you've got this giant wave. And what he had shared was it's not so much 65 that's the trigger age, it's 70, because that's when some of the equipment starts to break down, and, you know, hips and knees and things like that, and just how everything is going to have to be rethought as these boomers start going over the wall of 70. And that gives us a couple of years. It gives us about five years to actually plan. And his point to us was, you know, in 1952, every municipal school system in America was taken by surprise by all these first graders. And there were portables everywhere, you know, trying to deal with this. We know what's coming. And so I think that it's very critical for you all as an administration and as part of the group that's on this day today is to keep doing what you're doing now. keep casting this bigger picture of what's coming and what we need to be focusing on. As he mentioned very bluntly, the state demographer said, you know, Lexington has built a lot of McMansions with four bedrooms on the top floor and three bathrooms. And when you've got bad hips and knees, you aren't going upstairs for anything. And so there's a real need to do what you're doing today. And I guess, Christy, a couple questions I've got for you is, is this the ideal location? I mean, is that building sitting where it is a good place for what we need going forward? You know, when they did this study, there were a lot of concerns, and Priscilla probably can talk about this too because she was in on that, but the concern is the traffic flow at that particular location. And even now, when some of our seniors might want to come to an afternoon enrichment program, they're telling me I'm not coming because when that lane switches on Nicholasville Road, It's very difficult if you live on the north side of town to try to go north from the senior center with one lane. So is it the best location? Probably not. Is it a really nice location? Yes. I mean, the land is nice. The parking's available. It's, you know, not during peak times. It's easy to get to. Right. Certainly, one of the things that we're really struggling with is meeting the needs now, but we know that our seniors aren't going to do what our seniors are doing now. When we're all older, we're not going to be looking for the things that our current 70-, 80-, 90-year-olds are looking for. And so we still need to meet their needs because they're here with us now and living to be 100, and they have very specific needs. And then we have our 60-, 70-year-olds. And what it's going to look like later isn't going to look at all what it looks like today. Nursing homes of the past are going to be gone. They're going to be housing. They're going to be families. There are going to be lots of different things. So our challenge is pretty big to meet the needs right at this minute and the emerging needs to come. We're aware, but we need help. Well, one of the suggestions that I would like for you to kind of come back to us with is, you know, ideal location, ideal space. I know we've drawn drawings and we've got studies and that. But let's kind of put those over here to the side for a little bit and just say, given all that we know is coming, nationally as well as statewide and here. You know, what are those critical things that we need from access to, you know, parking to, you know, lanes that don't change, bikeable, walkable, those types of things? The other thing that I would suggest is that I'll give you the name and number when we get done here, but I believe it would be very worthwhile you all going out to visit with Southland Christian Church with the Lexington Mall Project. And I know that they have a very strong interest in what's going to be programmed there. And this was something that has been discussed around there that might be able to be built over the next five to six years the way that the community needs it. And that's a project that is moving forward and yet has a lot of room for creativity and so forth and partnership. So I would be happy to connect you with the right folks over there and carry that discussion. But I do think for our benefit and for the public's benefit, it would be very helpful for you to bring back, this is what's coming. Think about this. Even down to, you know, we all had the experience of going through an airport and trying to make a connection flight, you know, across the Atlanta airport in five minutes. That's not going to happen when this group is getting over 70 and you don't have enough golf carts to whisk people through there. So everything is going to change. and we as a government need to be thinking about that. So, again, I appreciate all the work that you're doing and recognizing you've got to kind of be all things to all people right now. But let us know what those ideals look like, because I do think there's some creative opportunities. Thank you. Very good. We like creative. I know you do. Ms. Simpson? Thank you, Chair. Hi, Christy. And I do think you're wonderful. You do such great work. I was wondering about, I had some question about the partner agencies that are existing there. Do they provide, do they pay any rent, whatever? There's no current rent. The agreements that were first launched into many years before many of us were around was that they would offset the cost of phone services, copy and fax. incidental kinds of things. So they don't pay rent, and that's an item for discussion, certainly. They do serve a great need, and it's really handy that we're all in one building, but we don't all fit. So it's pretty nice that we get some volunteers from the SECP program. We can help with the Meals on Wheels and the nutrition site and the nursing home ombudsman. I mean, we all work really well together, but they don't pay any rent. Right. And I think each of these probably provide a great service that is a needed service. But I was just curious if we said we don't have the space for you, what would they do? Boy, that will be a very difficult discussion across the board. I mean, some of them don't have other locations that our facility at 1530 Nicholasville Road is the only office space that they occupy. A couple of the others have satellite centers elsewhere, but that is a very big new creative idea. Well, I think it's convenient to have them all in one location. and I like Councilmember McCord's idea because I think the former Lexington Mall would probably be a good location as far as traffic for them and parking and all of that. So I just appreciate the work you do, and I appreciate, too, the fact that you brought up the vision that what seniors are doing today may not be what we're going to be doing in another 10 years or so. So I think it's good to have that vision of the future. Thank you, Christy. You're welcome. Thank you. Ms. Wallace? The nursing home ombudsman, is that a state employee? No, it's at Surve 17 counties. I believe they're private, not-for-profit. They receive Title III money just like we do, which is the Older Americans Act money. But they have their own board. They do their own fundraising. They are housed in our facility. They have staff that serve the 17 counties for the Bluegrass region. Well, and I agree with Council Member McCord and Council Member Henson. My mother is 90. I've tragically got my father's genes. But anyway, she lives alone, still drives. However, if she lived in Lexington, she would never come to that senior citizen center because of the right turn lane and that she lives in a smaller town. But she uses the senior citizen center a lot. So I'm wondering if some of these churches, et cetera, might have an office space for some of these others. So I think we have an immediate crisis of space, and then we have a long-term issue. So I think we need to kind of look at both. But I certainly see that also those needs, that wave is changing as someone who's approaching. The really unique and different thing is we're all going to get older. I mean, the other population I work with is persons with disabilities, and hopefully we may not all acquire a disability, but we are going to get older. Pretty much we're mostly all temporarily able. That's exactly right. But at any rate, I think that looking at the short term as well as the long term, because your programming needs are important, it just seems like there might be someplace else. Certainly, we appreciate your support. and any creative ideas and advocacy that you can lend in this area, we will embrace. Well, I very much appreciate the work you all do. I've known a lot of people that have used the services, and I know how important it is to my mother in Owensboro to have that Senior Citizen Center, which is, by the way, huge. So, anyway, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. I have a few questions for you. Okay. I want to start by saying I'm glad that Ms. Lawless asked the question about the partner agency so she can get that email instead of me because it's going to be coming. But it's a great question that needs to be asked. And so a lot of my questions have been answered, but some of them were, do we own that building and the land? We do own the building and the land. And it was $2.8 million. Is that what we said is what the value of that land was, Beth? The value of the land itself without the building? Yeah, the building's a little bit a cash cow in that the roof continuously leaks and the plumbing issues and things like that. So it's not in the best of repair. I mean, if we looked at the logs for facilities management, they just scream when we call them. Okay. How much land is there? Goodness, I'll have to get back with you on that. I'm sure that it's on the drawing. Do you have any idea, Priscilla? No. Okay. Beth can talk about the land. I've got more questions for you, though. I was the first center director, so I came with the land. What happened was the city owned a parcel of land right in the middle of UK's campus. It's where the faculty club currently sits. Nobody wanted the senior citizen center in their neighborhood. You think it's only homeless people. Willem Park didn't want them. North Broadway didn't want them. And so we traded that land, and that's how we got this land over in UK's campus. And if you'll go out there and look, there are these wooden balusters along. That is our property line. Okay. We were always told that we couldn't go beyond that because UK owns all, we're landlocked by UK, and they were always planning an agriculture extension during my history there. And it was, you know, no, no, we can't ever give it away. Of course, since 1983, they haven't done that agricultural extension. However, at one point, there was a talk of putting a Patino Palace there. And when that happened, we thought that our property was going to be very valuable. So if we stay there, but we are right at UK's edge, and if UK makes plans to move that way, we certainly have property that we could sell back because we do own the land. When you say Patino Palace, you meant a new stadium, right? Yeah. New arena. Yeah, but Rick Patino had visions of a new stadium, and they were going to put it right there. You all may remember because it was over from Commonwealth. Right. And that is one value to the senior center. We rent the parking lot during football games, and it's a lot easier way to raise money than selling spaghetti. So the location is very good. Okay. So my other questions I had about the land were, you know, is that the best location, as Council Member McCord said. But now that I hear that the building is in kind of disrepair, the question would have been, do we do both? Do we have that facility there and a new facility maybe out in Richmond Road or somewhere else? Also, when you look at the new building design, did it allow for all those partner agencies to have space in it again? It had allowed space for most. The one exception was the Center for Creative Living, which is operated by the health department. It's an adult day program. in the set of drawings, they were in a separate building on the same campus. And there was a lot of discussion because even still, some of the seniors don't enjoy coming to the senior center to see those that are more medically fragile because that's eminent. It's just a little bit scary. And so there were a lot of different discussions going on, a lot of different models. In other communities, there are senior centers that have adult days, but they have a private entrance so that the persons are in the same facility, but they're not walking in the same halls with their medical apparatus, things like that. So to answer your question shortly or long, Lee, with the exception of CCL, there was office space, because that's largely what they use the rest of the space at the senior center for is office space, with the exception of the Center for Creative Living, which is a program. Okay. On your documents here, you have 600 unique seniors or members. Yeah. Right below that, you have daily attendance fluctuates 125 to 150 visitors. When you say visitors, are those members? Those are members. Or are those just people visiting? And we're doing a new data program that's going to allow us to better track actual numbers. Right now we're doing it by pen and ink, which is horrible. So a senior may come in and they may go to a fitness program. They may stay and enjoy lunch. Then they may go to a history lesson in the afternoon. And we try our best to capture those. But we know, and that number is up since I did this in November, but we know that we have more than 660 unique members, new name tags that we have created. And so on any given day, like come by on a Thursday when we play bingo, they say bingo's dying, but it's not. We have a capacity in our dining room for 94, and we regularly have 90 folks come and play bingo on Thursdays. So we plan our big educational stuff kind of when we know we have a big captive audience, which is Tuesday and Thursday. Fitness, though, there's 50 folks that come and work out. Our fitness instructor is 84 years old. That's awesome. You know, Parkinson Rec has some software that might allow you to track programmatic use. Yeah. You know, we're looking at including and incorporating it into our social services database so that when we have a household, if they need nutrition assessment, if they need financial assistance, if they need Medicare Part D, they're already in our Department of Social Services database. But I was very familiar with the PARCS program, and it was really awesome. But I think we're going to be able to meet that need within our social services database. Okay. And then when you look at the partner agencies that are in there, do you have any idea or sense of participation or, you know, the number of seniors that visit those partners? Probably the largest number of folks would be for the Community Action Partnership, which is the contract for the congregate meals. So there, how is there they bring the food in, and then the seniors that are participating in the center come there for lunch. The other would be the SECP program, which is the employment program operated by the Urban League. They regularly have participants coming in looking for jobs, doing their job training. And then certainly the biggest is the Center for Creative Living because every day, and I don't know, I think that they're licensed maybe for 30, and their average daily attendance is 22 to 25 seniors. So every single day they have that many plus their staff. Okay. Have there been any surveys done to see community-wide what the need would be if we had a new state-of-the-art facility? And maybe the location issue goes away? I'm not sure when they did the study where they got some of the research and the data, but I know that the Commission for Community Services for Older Persons is going to have a subcommittee looking at the needs of the Senior Citizen Center and also looking at the needs of the community at large. And so that commission is going to be very actively engaged in recognizing where the gaps in services are for our city and what it is that we need. And so, again, we can't do it alone, so I'm very thankful to have our commission. Can you get us a copy of that study that was done, the feasibility study on the new facility? Sure. And then cost estimates and all those things. Sure. And then one final question for you. Did they look at, and I'm sure they did, the difference between remodeling and adding on to that current facility as opposed to building a complete new structure? The drawings that I've seen is adding on, digging a basement, adding on to the current structure. I don't know that they did. I've not seen a drawing other than on that location making it a two-story facility. But I'll look through all of the documents and see if there were other proposals that included a new site altogether. I know that we've all dreamed of various different sites, and the Southland Christian Church's Lexington was a good one. Okay. Okay, and then I said last question, but one more question. Could you get us the information to break down on the physical space that each of the partner agencies is using? Absolutely. I have that. Okay. And then have you done any polling about what other programs seniors would like to have there? Yeah, we did just last year, we did kind of provide us with feedback, things that you want, what is it that we can do to meet your needs, and I can give you those results as well. And we did that just last year. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions for Ms. Stambo? Okay. Are there any more questions about social services in general? Nope. Mr. Ford. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon and thank you guys for coming and providing this information. It seems like you have a lot of work on your plate, but I'm confident that the Department of Social Services is up for the challenge. What perhaps should we focus on? What perhaps will be your priorities as you continue to work through your transition heading into the budget? In looking at the transition team report, there were several things that rose to the fore. The first was that the department morale was not very good, and that is easily solved through communications and having enough staff to do the work. You know, I think we are going to be loath to, we don't want to lay anyone off with a new budget cut, so we're going to have to look at vacancies. I want to fill as many vacancies as possible, particularly in the youth services department. Our youth services has been without a director for quite a while, and I don't want to fill them until we know what these folks are going to do. We're certainly going to retain day treatment. Youth probation and parole is doing a good job. Partners for Youth does a good job. We have youth and family services, but their role may change. community I met today at lunch with the folks who used to run the truancy assessment center, Judge Wise, Belverita the schools, and Diana Kramer the schools. And when the truancy assessment center and that part of court went away, they lost case management for those youth. Judge Masterson has lost youth drug court and family drug court. So there was some case management going on there that this community's lost. The cabinet for health and family services has some cases they can't meet and I want to meet with them. I'm also hearing there's more and more children between 9 and 11 that are having serious behavioral disorder problems. What I think we need to do for youth services and the way I want to move is first figure out what our niche is in the community, what's not being done. We just don't want to hire people just to be there. And then I think we need to find a pipeline for referrals. Do we want the cabinet to refer cases to us they can't see? Do we want the schools to refer people to us they can't see? We need to form partnerships with people that are already working with our youth so that regularly when they're finding needs they can't meet and we can fill that niche. We have four regular social workers right now that are in family and youth services to do community work. We have three vacancies, one social work senior and two social workers. If we can fill all of those in addition to the other youth programs, we'll have seven social workers. I would like to say that one of our social workers has done a wonderful job of meeting the needs of refugee children and immigrant children in our community. And we've got some special programs going on in neighborhoods for those kids. Youth services is on the top of the list, I'll be honest with you. There's some other community needs. We're looking at how we might be able to leverage some more dollars for job training in our community because that's a huge need. And, of course, the homeless thing, everybody just keeps talking about it. So I don't know what we're going to do with that one, but it's certainly on the radar screen. Thank you, Ms. Mills. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I just have a couple comments wrapping up. We know salaries are low, and Council members have heard me talk about this every year, that your department's salaries, if you compare a director with a director in another department of government, are typically lower than probably any place in government. And I know that we have a budget situation, but I hope that somewhere in your mix in the next couple of years you can bring a plan to maybe bring in some of those things up to the same standard that we're paying other departments. Youth services budget was slashed 55% in the last couple of years. So I'm putting this out there because I hope that you come with a budget request that's different than a budget reduction. Absolutely. And I know that that's part of what you're being asked to do. But at the same time, this department, and I heard commissioner after commissioner say in the previous administration that when, you know, the rubber meets the road and the budget was tight, that social services was one that offered up cuts to help make everything else work in government. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think one of the council members talked earlier about investing in our kids. And really the question isn't are we going to invest in our kids. It's what investment we're going to make. We're either going to invest in things like day treatment on the front end or we're going to invest in juvenile detention and drug treatment programs and jails and all that stuff on the back end. Frankly, I think we can make a good economic case for social services, not only in prevention from saving those costs, but working in elderly services is a great economic asset to our community. It was CNN, I believe, wasn't it, Christy, I think it said we were one of the top five communities to age in. And my mother has moved here from North Carolina. People bring their parents here. And that's an economic driver. People will move here with families. Social services, what we're going to do is we're going to have strategic plans for the short term and the long term. And the things I really do not want to give up is the framework for when the economy recovers. If we do not have good leadership in place and we don't have some basic positions, then when the economy recovers, we're not in place to do the things we want to do. So we need to plan two ways, much like Christy said. We need short-term goals, and then we need a long-term strategy. And the other part of that is that if the economy doesn't recover or if it recovers slowly, that's even more reason why. We have more need. Exactly. And the people that are going to come to you, we're going to be the last resort in most cases. So economy or no economy, wherever it does, we've got to be prepared to help the people that need the help. I'd like to ask this group to be kind to us during budget years. Absolutely. The last thing I would ask about is the court system. I know that our social workers are not in the courts, and you mentioned Judge Wise, who's a huge supporter, and Judge Masterton as well. When you said they lost case management, is that because it's something that happened on their end, or is that because we're no longer there? No, it's something that happened on their end. They ended the truancy assessment center, which came with social workers. They ended youth drug court, which came with case managers and social workers. You know, you don't have to be in court doing testimony, but you do need to be a resource to the judges. Anybody who's been to Judge Wise's court on Monday afternoon is full of school social workers, DCBS workers, Cronin Clark, people show up and she sends people to resources. So whether, you know, you don't have to be in court testifying to be a social worker, but you do need to be available when the judges need to send somebody. The ultimate goal is that we don't respond to the courts, that our kids don't end up in court. Exactly. So prevention is one, alternative detention is two. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay, now we're going to move along to Mr. Farmer. He's here from the United Way, Bill Farmer. We've got three Bill Farmers in the community, but we're pleased to have him here today with some dynamic information. And a little background to set this up. I chaired the Partner Agency Oversight Committee for the last six years. One of the things that we did when we first initiated that committee back into place was look to move towards oversight of the partner agencies and move away from the partner agencies first going to the mayor to try to get into the budget, and if that didn't work, then come to our committee to try to get into the budget. We've made great strides with the previous two administrations. Thank you very much. And in the last conversation that we had before the year was out, the last meeting, we had Mr. Farmer come, And what we really were trying to glean from him is how he's moved his organization to an outcome-based organization. He's done a fantastic job with that. And that's really the term of where we were trying to go with partner agencies. So in having those conversations, it kind of dawned on me as well as others that there could be an opportunity here to partner with the United Way. So because they already have that apparatus in place, And rather than us trying to staff up, utilize our resources here that are already short to look at putting matrices together, to look at oversight and accountability and outcomes, that we might be able to partner with the United Way to do some of that. And then may potential be an opportunity to leverage more dollars in that process. So we've asked Mr. Farmer to come today and kind of talk about that just a little bit. Sure. Thank you. And thank you, excuse me, Chairperson Myers and council members. It's great to be here. I've provided to you so there would not be any confusion Q&As that we presented in our meeting on November 9th. It shows that it is the partnering agency committee. I realize that this changed and it's now social services, but I didn't want to confuse anyone by changing names and changing dates. Then you have to try to look at the two documents and reconcile them. So you don't have to do that. I always enjoy the opportunity in coming before Council and talking about the United Way. I think it's important, though, for me to just take a quick step back and remind everyone that the United Way is actually changing its mission and the reason why we're doing that. The United Way in Lexington has been here for nearly 100 years, almost a century. And we've been known for taking care of critical and essential services. But just as council has just heard a conversation and a discussion from your department, our board of directors nearly three years ago took an assessment of this community and said that the traditional United Way model is an outdated model where we're focusing solely on critical and essential services. And so the board of directors required the staff to work on programs, initiatives, projects associated with education, income, or asset building and health. In essence, the goal being to move people from crisis to stability to sustainability. So that's really the model that the United Way has. We continue to work on critical and essential services, which, again, for nearly a century, that is our brand, if you will. That is what the United Way is known for. So what our board of directors made up of leaders such as yourselves said, we understand that this community is changing, it is aging, the demographics are changing, and that if we don't start making systemic change immediately, that we're going to have long-term problems or long-term implications for that. Also before, just in case you leave, I do want to make an offer that if there are opportunities for us to partner in leveraging our combined resources specifically in grant applications, we have some excellent grant writers on staff. And to put it in our perspective, because we are focused on critical and essential services, we still have to fund those. But in order to work on the education, asset building, and health initiatives, we have applied for federal and foundation grants. To put it in a different perspective as it relates to numbers, in 2009, United Way had generated $15,000 in grant revenue. And in 2010, we had $2 million in grant revenue. Now, again, that wasn't for that calendar year, but that was for the life of the grant. Clearly, there are federal and foundation grants of what we call institutional investors that when you have the leverage and the combined resources of an organization such as LFUCG and your organization, your project or your programs with the United Way, I think there's a unique partnership that we can build together. But because the United Way has moved to this education, income, and health, and quite frankly critical and essential services, the board of directors have talked about what we call a return on investment model. What the United Way wants to be able to tell our investors, our contributors, our donors, is how well we are utilizing the dollars in the community that those dollars are being invested in. And so I have the architect or a couple of the architects of the program, so if there are specific questions that you might have, because this is kind of a, we're in the process of changing. I think the last time we talked, we discussed that we met with all of our partnering agencies in, I believe, four separate meetings. And those meetings were designed based on whether the agency was interested in education, income, or health. and we allow those agencies to come together as a group. And we made a presentation to them as to the changes that were being made with the United Way and the agencies could have a better understanding of how that might impact them. We also require for the very first time for the agencies to provide us a letter of intent before they actually apply for funding. Because a letter of intent gave us an idea, gave us an indication of the direction that the agency was contemplating before they actually applied for funding from the United Way. It also allowed us and the architects of the program to work with the agencies well in advance before they filed their application so that we could give them helpful advice on how to address issues and concerns. What we found when we brought all of these agencies together is they found tremendous commonality and that in some cases they were actually doing duplicate work. For the very first time, they became aware of that. And so on their own, some of them started meeting and talking about how they might be able to change and modify their approach in their application to address these underlining issues in the community. So I wanted to at least remind everyone that the United Way has changed or is changing. We're morphing into something else than what we were before. but I always want to continue to emphasize that critical and essential services will be the hallmark of our efforts. But we are working on major issues associated with education, income, and health. So if there are specific questions that you might have, I or one of my staff members would be able to provide you the responses. Are there any questions? Many of the council members up here were on that committee, and so they've already heard your presentation, and they've got the questions and answers. I guess maybe the next step is how we look at what a partnership might look like and how we might put that together. So do you have a recommendation for how we can maybe start that process? Having worked around city councils in many other communities, I would make a suggestion that there would be a subcommittee that would be made up of members of this committee who have interest in some type of partnership and would work with our staff in crafting a plan or a series of plans that could be reviewed by this committee. So that would be my recommendation, is that a subcommittee, and we could house it in our facility, in our office. I think that probably would be the best approach. Okay. Well, I just had a comment about that. That certainly is one way to do it. But I'm also wondering if that's something that the commissioner and the staff would be better able to do rather than a committee of the council and come back to us with what you've come up with. It works great for me, too. Thanks. I would look forward to working with Commissioner Mills. And maybe a twist on that is that we have some council members on there as well. So we have council members, some members from the administration, as well as some folks from the United Way. We have a designated administrative officer who is dealing specifically with partner agencies. Of course, all the partner agencies, by the way, are not housed in social services. Right. Other divisions in the departments of the government have some partner agencies, so we'll need to look at it just for social services. I think there are 18 that came into this committee. And I think if I hear you right on your mission of education, asset building, and health, it's probably those social services agencies that would be the ones that would be involved. Well, you also have critical and essential services also. Yes. So certainly, though, if there's another partner agency that the city is partnering with that we may be able to leverage. Well, if it's permissible, then what I could do is our team could meet with Commissioner Mills and her staff and craft a plan to present to you and the committee members on how to move forward. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there any other questions? Are there any other questions? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So I guess if I will say now, this is the first time this committee, unlike some of the other committees that we have, This is the first time that a social services standing committee has existed. So we don't have a backlog of things in the committee. A couple of these items were things that the partner agency's oversight committee was looking at. So I guess moving forward for our next meeting, if you guys have a preliminary discussion and kind of maybe a broad framework that we might be able to discuss in the next meeting would be good. I also would like to look at mental health. There was a study that was done, and I had the 2-1-1 study. I'm not sure this is the study that I was thinking of, though. I think it was the United Way that did it with social services several years ago. And in there it talked about one of the questions that stood out at me was how many people self-reported mental health needs or knew someone directly that did. And I would love to get a copy of that and put that into our committee and look at what we can do in our community to move in the direction of solving some of those issues as well. And then I guess I'll entertain right now anything else from committee members that they would like to see in our committee. Sure. Ms. Wallace. I have served on the partner agencies committee for the last two years. that I've been on the council, and I'd like to go back to the insurance issue because we were told that it was illegal for us to provide insurance to these partner agencies. And then I got different information. And I'd like to point out that when we talk about the savings, When you look at it, the total deficit in 2008 was $536,000. The three agencies that were part of the Kentucky Employee Retirement Plan for retirement services but we're using our health insurance, their total was 549,876. So if we took out those three every single year, we would have actually come out ahead if we just took out those three that were in KERS. And we worry, we talk about the space issues with these different agencies, and it is true that a lot of these different agencies were put into our health insurance, you know, randomly, who knows why, whatever. but so were the space issues, and it has absolutely cut them off at the knees, many of them. I mean, they can't because there are so few employees. And like I say, if we take out the three that were in KERS for retirement and in our health plan because it was cheaper than the state that they could get, then we would have had a net gain every year. So what I would like is somebody definitively from law to report to us whether or not it's illegal for us to provide them with insurance, health insurance or not, because it's as arbitrary as the space needs. And frankly, you know, I've had so many of them contact me that their policies are like $1,800. You know, I mean, way more than rent. So I'd like some definitive answer from, I guess, the law department about whether or not we were illegally providing insurance to these partner agencies. So thank you. I think we got that when we did this. But I can check and we can take a look at that again. I would also comment that you mentioned that these were arbitrary decisions that were made who got into our health care plan and who didn't. And that's the same way with space use utilization. And that's why partner agencies was also working on facilities use policy. And that didn't come into this committee. That went into general government. But that is an issue that we're looking at, and we're trying to take the subjectivity out of that as well. Now, and I would say that the biggest issue is going to be who gets in and who doesn't, because I think if you bring back some of those outside satellite agencies, then every satellite agency in the city is going to want in there. And you have to remember that the employees are subsidizing the families. So when you bring folks in that don't work for LFUCG, LFUCG employees are helping subsidize those family plans as well as the taxpayers. So if you want us to get that definitive answer from the law department as to the legality of providing insurance for folks who don't work here or haven't retired from here, we can do that. And quite frankly, if you want to put into committee the whole discussion about bringing satellite agencies back in, we can look at that too. But I think that we would probably want to look at something from HR and law on that before we move forward. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I just want a definitive answer. and we were just told I never saw a legal opinion about that. But some of them are agencies that we have by ordinance created, like the Parking Authority, the DDA. I mean, we created these entities, and so it's not, you know, so that's that. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Ford. Thank you, Chair. And moving forward with this new committee that we have to study social services, I think that while our docket and agenda is not long, I think we have some opportunities to address some real needs in the community. I was pleased to hear Commissioner Mills talk about the focus on youth services. And I think not just particularly in regards to what the department does. I think it's still yet cold outside, but weather will turn soon. Unfortunately, in some parts of our community, we've already seen where idle time has not worked out so well for some of the youth. And if we're having issues in regards to the youth in our community in February, just imagine what we might face later on this summer. So I would just offer to the committee members that we have opportunity to do two things, particularly in this committee, is to prepare to be willing to support our Department of Social Services in the budget. We know the budget is going to be tight, but I think the seven of us can implore to the entire council and to the administration how worthy social services are to the community. And then also, I think we really ought to just really start focusing on youth. And I'm not speaking in regards to recreational or educational. I mean youth in regards to how we help them mature in our society and be productive in our society as opposed to face some of the problems and consequences if we choose not to address this issue. So focus on our youth and get ready for the budget. Mr. Chairman, is what I would hope we could focus on in future meetings. Okay. Thank you. And any issue that you want to put into the committee, we can certainly do that. Specific needs around that topic. Do I have any other questions? A motion to adjourn? Is there a motion to second? All those in favor say aye. We're adjourned. Thank you. We'll be right back.