and on any item that is on the agenda for today. Seeing none, we'll proceed to the docket approval. I have a motion and second that the docket be approved. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll proceed to vote electronically if we can. Mayor? I don't know, Mayor. Yes, sir. There are several zone changes on the docket, and I don't know if we need to consider those individually, but I would move that the item number six be placed on the docket without a public hearing. No, I guess we have to have a public hearing because it's a Number seven. I think there's a first instance here to ask for a public hearing on number seven. It's already set. And the next one after that. Seven, eight, and nine on the docket require a motion to have or not have a public hearing. But I understand that we need hearings on seven, eight, and nine. We don't have to have a public hearing, just a motion whether to have one or not have one. That's all that's required. Is there a motion to have a public hearing on it? Mayor, I'm here on behalf of one of the applicants to request a public hearing. That would be number seven on page two. I've looked at the dates that would be available, and the two that would appear to be most convenient are December the fourth or December the sixth. Is there a motion? Council Member Gordon. Mr. Simpson, did you say December seventh? December the fourth or December the sixth would be the, that's a Tuesday night or a Thursday night. The fourth, Tuesday, the sixth is a Tuesday or Thursday. I would move to put it on for eight, eight p.m. on December sixth. Second. We have a motion and second to schedule number seven at eight p.m. on December sixth. Any discussion? Yeah, that's fine. Thank you. I was upstairs. I couldn't get down here fast enough. All right. If there's no further discussion, those in favor, please vote yes. Electronically, those opposed, vote no. We'll see if this works. All right. Let's vote orally. Those in favor, vote aye. Those no. Let's have a show of hands for the benefit of the clerk. Those in favor, please raise your hand. Those opposed, vote no by the like sign. The clerk, I think, has the information she needs and the motion carries. Thank you. Mayor, Mr. Blues, I guess, is next. I'm sorry. Council Member Blues. I wanted to add an item to the docket for December. Should I do that now? If you don't mind, let's deal with these public hearings first, and then we'll come back around. Council Member Stevens. I would move that item number nine, in submitting Article 111 and subsections B and N of Article 816, a text amendment be placed on the docket without a public hearing. Any discussion? Then those in favor of putting item nine on the docket without a public hearing, let it be known by saying aye. Aye. Those no. Motion carries unanimously. And that leaves us with item eight. Council Member Maloney. I move to put number eight on the docket without a public hearing, so I'll move. Without a public hearing, did you say? Okay. I have a motion by Council Member Maloney and a second by Council Member Lane to put number eight on without a public hearing. Any discussion? Those in favor, please let it be known by saying aye. Aye. Those no. Motion carries. Now, Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. I move that the lease with Sprint.com for a cell tower at Coldstream Park be placed on the October 18, 2007, docket under second reading resolutions. So moved. If I understood your motion correctly, it was to put the Sprint.com cell tower lease on the docket for a second reading. Is that correct? That's correct. Has it already had a first reading? We've had a first reading and we postponed it at least twice, I believe, for a second reading. Very well. Is there a second? Do I hear a second? I have a second. Council Member Gordon. I just had a question. Were there any changes made? Is it going back on in the exact format? Yes, it is. Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion? Eight. Number eight. It appears as though we may be in a position to vote electronically now, so please vote aye electronically. If you are in favor, vote nay if you're opposed. Motion carries. Council Member Lane. Excuse me, Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Second reading of resolutions, number seven. This is a procedural thing, ratification of the CIO position, senior advisory CIO position. Subject to confirmation, we're kind of running out of time to have confirmation. What are we going to do about having confirmation prior to Thursday night, or are we? I don't know. That's my question. Do you want to have it before the council meeting, Council Member Gordon? I would suggest we could have it at 630 on October 18th before the council meeting, if council members wanted that. Is there something else? If there's no objection, we'll proceed along those lines. All right. So moved. I guess the motion and the second is to have a confirmation hearing on the CIO position on the 18th at 630. Any discussion? Those then in favor, please. Please vote aye electronically. Those opposed, vote nay electronically. Motion carries. Council Member White. Thank you, Mayor. I move to place on the docket a resolution requesting the issuance, of revenue bonds by the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority, in an amount not to exceed 1.2, excuse me, 125 million, the proceeds of which will be loaned to the Bluegrass Equine and Tourism Foundation, Inc., for construction and equipping of tourism and tourist facilities at the Kentucky Horse Park. Do we hear a second? I think I heard a second from Council Member Ellinger. Any discussion? Those in favor then, please. All right. Council Member Ellinger, could you give us a little bit more information or call someone who does know about it? This is a pretty big bond issue. All right. Or at least explain what you're trying to do. Okay. I'm not the expert on this, though, and I'm going to advise that this is ethical approval by the council so that this bonding can be done, but the Durham County government is not liable for the amount of the bonding at all. Mr. Kelly, I guess, is the man. Thank you. I can confirm, Councilman, that what you said is accurate. This is a technical approval. Since the project is located in Fayette County, financing will be moved to the State Economic Development Cabinet, but since it's located here, council needed to bless, if you will, them moving it to the state level. There will be no obligation on the part of Lexington and Fayette County. Could you tell us why this didn't go through the normal new business item process? Is there some sort of rush here that we need to do this? It's my understanding, and I don't know all the details. We just simply got a call saying that because of the tight time frames that they were operating under, that if it would be possible, they would appreciate us expediting it to the best of our ability. And so we got the resolution, the text of the resolution, together on Friday. So that's why we're bringing it to you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Any further discussion? Anybody else? I'm sorry. Council Member Myers. Thank you. Is this something that would normally go through the Internal Revenue Bond Committee? Industrial Revenue Bond Committee? No. Straight bonds. Okay. My question has been answered. Thank you. Anything further? Those in favor of them, please vote aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. That now brings us to the motion to approve the docket as amended. Move approval. Second. Council Member Beard moves approval of the docket as amended. Council Member Gordon seconds. Any further discussion? All right. Let's see if you can vote electronically. Those in favor vote aye. Those opposed, vote nay. Do we need to stand by while we try to clear this up, or should we roll ahead? All right. Then those in favor of approving the docket as amended, please let it be known by saying aye, orally. Those no, motion carries unanimously. Brings us down to the approval of the summary for October 9th. I have a motion and second. Any discussion? Those in favor, please vote aye. Those no, motion carries unanimously. We're ready to proceed to budget amendments. Is there a motion? I have a motion to approve by Council Member Sennett, seconded by Council Member Brevins. Any discussion? Those in favor, please vote aye. Those no, motion carries. We're ready to consider the items of new business. Motion by Council Member Gordon, seconded by Council Member Bood to approve the items of new business. Any discussion? Council Member Jane. I want to ask a question of Item B. Maybe Commissioner Call? I meant to ask you this earlier. I'm sorry. I forgot to ask. Can you give us the list of the nine ball fields that are included? I don't have that with me, but I can see if I can get it quickly. Thank you. If you'd share that with our Council Members, that'd be great. Okay. Thank you. Anything further? I think we're ready to vote. I had a question. Council Member Stephens. On Item F, this is to help the Hope Center with the development of their rental housing project and a $500,000 Home Investment Partnerships Program loan. I just wanted to point out that if, after 20 years, if this facility is still being used for the purpose it initially stated, that loan is forgiven. So this is a gift, really, $500,000. And I was curious about G. This is an agreement for schematic design and design development for downtown sidewalls, which appears to be a project we've all supported. I was wondering where the funds for construction would come from. I think I know, but I would like to hear. That's a great question. The money that's being used to pay for the design is coming out of the original $500,000 that was appropriated by the Council last year, I believe. Yes. Correct, Dr. Stephens. Construction funds, we're still evaluating what our options might be relative to funding the construction once the design work is done. We have a couple of ideas that we're pursuing, but at the moment, we don't have any firm suggestion about where the project funds will come from. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. Council Member Maloney. I've got the same question on that issue, Mr. Kelley. It costs $170,000 to design these sidewalks. Am I correct on that? It's not just the sidewalks. It's a streetscape design, and they have, using some sophisticated high-tech equipment, have spent several days, perhaps weeks, surveying the downtown area and capturing digitally the downtown streets, sidewalks, and streetscape. They will take this information, and from that, they'll create a schematic design that can be used to estimate what the cost for construction and renovation might be, and then the next phase would be to do design, build design plans. Do you all, I mean, and then, do you still have the $340,000? Is that still in there, capital project? Is that money still out there? This design will, actually, it was anticipated that most of that money would be used in the initial evaluation that occurred, but because folks did a pretty nice job of managing the dollars and getting us to this phase, to the design phase, we were able to actually do much more than we anticipated. We thought that we would have to find additional dollars to help pay for this design, and in reality, we're still operating on that original $500,000 grant, so. So, you're still in the budget of $500,000 and long. The $170,000, do you still have enough money to do what you want to do with those sidewalks out? To get us through this schematic design phase, that's correct. I'm sorry, I'm getting, you're saying it's not going to cost $500,000 to do a design of these sidewalks. No, sir. So, it's just going to be $170,000, and the remaining $330,000 is going to be money to replace these sidewalks and fix them or whatever, y'all. No, the, it's not quite $330,000. It was expended on the initial phase of the evaluation process. So, actually, at the moment, we're, well, from where we thought we would be in January, we're actually probably, I'm going to guess, maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000 or $400,000 ahead of where we thought we would be relative to money saved. It's not cost us as much as we anticipated, or as y'all anticipated when you allocated the dollars previously. So, we're doing really, really well in getting to this point, and we're getting to this point at significantly less money than was anticipated when y'all first allocated the money. Okay, thanks. Sure. Other questions? Council Member Stephens, I have you on the list now. All right. Council Member DeCamp. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Kelly, one specific question. I'm chairing a committee of interested citizens and some council people who are concerned about newspaper racks in the downtown area, and at our initial meeting where we really went into a lot of detail about how we might get this done, it was suggested that whoever was selected to design the sidewalks and streetscapes improvement for downtown, that this be included, that the design of some sort of newspaper corral, the decision of what way we will go as far as, you know, what we're looking at, and where it will be given to the designer, and that be incorporated in this overall project. Are you aware of this, and is this part of the contract that we're making with this organization? I can't say absolutely, or 100%, but yes, I think it has been, and if it, I will confirm. Would you confirm that, because the committee, I think, at our last meeting, which was a couple of months ago, said that this should actually be a part of the whole sidewalk design effort? Yes, sir. Okay, I'd appreciate you looking at it and getting back to me. Yes, sir, I will. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. One further question, or maybe two further questions, depending on what the answer to the first question is, I guess. Define downtown as it relates to the sidewalk. What is the scope? Is it main streets? Is it main and by? Is it main and short? Just what exactly is it? I believe it runs from high over to third, if I remember correctly. And the second question, does this mean that the two-way street initiative is a dead issue now? No, sir. Is there going to be an awful lot of ripping and tearing of sidewalks and turn lanes and a few other things before spending this money prematurely without having that decision made? Yeah, I don't think this has anything to do with the two-way decision. This would be dealing with the existing sidewalks and streetscape. The issue relative to the two-way traffic has not been a part of this discussion. Well, maybe I'm suggesting you should be. Either that or I'll go ahead and kill it, which is not going to hurt my feelings. But I think it would require a different set of skills than what these folks bring to the table, the people who are going to be doing this work. Okay. I think that would require them. Oh, good. Thank you. Two-way streets will still be an option within the boundaries that are going to be maintained there. So it will accommodate either way. So that decision can be made at a later date. Okay. Thank you very much, Byron. Thank you. Council Member Maloney, do you wish to speak further? Oh, no. That was my question. Thank you. Council Member Boyce, Mayor Craig. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to make an observation. Having I sit on the review committee for this project and led by Purchasing Director. Is that the right title, Brian? Okay. Close? Mr. Markham. And really a number of really outstanding proposals, as Mr. Kelly knows as well. And I think Brian commented that he's never had an RFP process where the selection committee voted unanimously for one firm without recommending a second firm or an alternate firm. So this firm has done a lot of work, really outstanding work, all around the country. And they're the lead firm and they're located close by and they've done work in Columbus, I believe Columbus, Cincinnati, Blue Ash. And they're being incorporated, incorporating elements of public art as well as sidewalk and streetscape issues. They'll be addressing all of that within the framework and within the scope of the assignment. Thank you, Vice Mayor Gray. Any further discussion on item G? Ms. Cole? Yes, Council Member James, I have the list of ball fields for you. There were nine fields included in this project and it's Castlewood T-Ball, Castlewood Minor, Douglas T-Ball, Douglas Minor, Idyll Hour T-Ball, Idyll Hour Minor, Kirk Levington. Major, Minor, Girls Softball, Lansdowne Merrick Girls Softball, and Southland T-Ball. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. Thank you. Any further discussion of any of the items of new business? Seeing none, I think we're prepared to vote electronically. Please cast your votes. Thank you. The motion passes unanimously. That brings us down to the presentations. And the first one we have is the Intergovernmental Committee. I'll give that report. Council Member James. Thank you. Council Member Maloney was out that day, so I chaired the meeting. And thank you for the opportunity, by the way. We, the minutes are in the packet for review, but just a brief synopsis. We discussed the employee compensation system. And Director of Human Resources, Michael Allen, presented us information, the background information on why the issue is in committee. We heard from Wally Barker, who is, was the hired compensation manager that spearheaded the process. He went over the competitive compensation program, which is attached in your packet. If you have any questions about that, let me know. From that process, I'm sorry, I wasn't prepared to do this, so. From that process, we heard that they, that they, Mr. Barker participated in a number of surveys. They represent municipalities in the geographical area, because we, we were talking about what kind of markets were they comparing Lexington to, Cincinnati and Nashville were mentioned. We, there were some questions as to the comparison of those cities. Council Member Blevins requested that council should be given a report or presentation as to what the, what Mr. Barker finds from the analysis of turnover rate. So, he will be reporting that out to us. We also discussed the hazardous street tree ordinance, and Tim Query gave us a wonderful presentation regarding the street tree ordinance. He showed us the citations that are being posted on citizens' residences, and showed us a pamphlet, which educates on how to effectively and appropriately prune your trees. He explained to us that if a tree, what the process is if a tree is a hazard on private property, as well as public property. Council Member DeCamp talked about tree roots, destroying sidewalks and curbs, and Mr. Query mentioned to us about the regulations with regard to minimum width within utility strips, as far as tree planting. The tree board had sent the recommendation, the original recommendation for the revision of this tree ordinance to us, and Mr. Query talked about the recommendation to the planning commission with regard to the minimum width of seven feet constructed by developers for the minimum width of utility strip plantings. Tim Query said that they normally see a minimum of five and a half feet utility strip, that only a small to medium tree can be planted in. Council Member DeCamp asked about hazardous tree, the hazardous tree program. That program does exist. There is some funding available for low-income residents for assistance. Currently, we talked about how much money has been budgeted regarding that, and that their balance was just $13,000 left at this time. Let's see, we, the motion was made by Dr. Stephens that the Intergovernmental Committee approve the ordinance and recommend it be placed on the docket, seconded by Council Member Myers, passed without dissent, and the meeting adjourned. I'm not sure what I need to do from here. I need to make a motion, which one? I need to make a motion that we approve the tree ordinance revision. Thank you. We have a motion and a second to approve the tree ordinance recommendation. Any discussion? Yes, Mayor. Council Member Stephens. This tree ordinance would allow the forestry section of the Division of Streets, Roads, and Forestry to apply the same procedure, basically, that code enforcement uses when people do not comply with the citation they've received. And after due process, the Division of Streets, Roads, and Forestry would be able to do whatever is indicated for the particular tree that's in question, and then either do it or contract with some outside agency to do it, and then place a lien on the deed of the properties. And he presented this to the tree board and to the Corridors Committee, which then, in turn, took it to the Intergovernmental Committee, and I support it without hesitation. Thank you very much. Any further discussion? Those in favor of the motion, please indicate by voting aye electronically. Those opposed, vote nay. Thank you. The motion carries and is approved. We're now down to the second presentation from the Community Action Council. Mr. Birch, we'll turn the podium over to you. The gentleman behind the podium gave me a thing that's supposed to control all of this, and I hope I don't mess your voting thing up. I'm not real good at this stuff, but I'm going to give you the annual update on what we've been calling the Council Heating Initiative Program. It's been a year since I've been here. Some of you are new, so let me give you a very short history, then I'll go into the report. In fiscal year 05-06, we had recently experienced a 50% increase in the cost of natural gas, and it had a huge impact on low- and moderate-income families. And federal and state funds to provide energy assistance were not keeping up, and under the leadership of some council members, including especially Councilman Stinnett, our urban county government appropriated that year 05-06 219,000 to help local citizens with utility bills. You made an additional appropriation for 06-07 of 250,000 out of fund balance. There has been no appropriation for 07-08. What I have for you today, in both the handout and the overhead, is a report on the 06-07 program, except this isn't working. I'm going to give you some demographics. I need help here with this. Does this mean they all just voted to fund it again in 07-08? I'm going to give you some demographic background on the program. Some of them are expected. Some of them I'll point out to you as interesting about this program and what's going on. The age distribution is not unusual if you look at census data. The gender is, but I think that just reflects the fact that we have a lot of single female-headed households in the community. Next slide. Ethnicity, race. Those numbers are definitely skewed. If you take a look at the census data, there's a, in terms of the actual poverty population in the community, whites and Hispanics are significantly underrepresented. I can't give you a reason for that. Don't know. And the other characteristics, I think just an interesting thing to note, that over 1,000 of the households assisted with no health insurance. Again, no surprise there with the large number of single-parent female-headed households. The single persons, we have done a little look at that. The way the federal program works, if you're a single person, you've got to be at minimum wage basically to qualify for any assistance. Families can qualify because the more people you have in your household make you more likely to be eligible. So we've got a lot of single working people that we're benefiting from SHIP. Next slide is the family's income sources, if I can get it up here. Somehow I, well, family size. Really no surprises there again, but you'll see, of course, the single family households was the largest number of households. Then we should go to income. Well, I've skipped over the source of income the council members have, but I would point out to you two figures on the source of income. I don't know if I can get back to it. No income, what that really means is we ask people what was your income 30 days prior to coming in and asking for assistance. So that doesn't mean forever and ever they were without income. What that actually means is you have a large percentage of households that have benefited from SHIP who were unemployed for some period of time and got into a brief crisis. And then the other number to note is the large number of working low income folks, the people with wages at 489. Income ranges, and for those of you who are not familiar with HHS Health and Human Services Guideline, the federal government has a number that they call the poverty level, and 100% of poverty means 100% of that means that federal level for household size and income. It's a very outdated number, so lots of people use different ranges. Lots of programs use different ranges to award assistance. This gives you a breakdown, which is somewhat of a surprise, because I know in the discussions that you all had around SHIP, the expectation was that it would help people who were above the federal poverty level, the 100%, more than it seems to be doing. As you can see, the preponderance of families that are getting help are families at or below the federal poverty level, and it's a much smaller number as you get up in there. But the 130% and over is kind of an interesting number. A breakdown by ownership in rentals, and then this last chart gives you, I think, a pretty good sense of trend lines in terms of assistance available. First you see 04, 05 before the big spike in gas prices, and LIHEAP is a federal program. That's the acronym for the federal program. The private dollars that we raised, and of course SHIP did not exist, we had about three quarters of a million. We got the 51% spike that hit the 05, 06 heating season. Federal dollars went up significantly by 200,000. Private funds actually declined, and we've never been able to quite figure out what caused that to happen. Urban County government came in with the 219,000 for SHIP, so we actually had, ended up with a 51% increase in funding available. For 06, 07 gas prices were fairly stable, roughly a 9% growth in income. And then current estimates for 07, 08, the LIHEAP number, the top number, the federal number is based on what is currently marked up in the House and the Senate. It's hard to predict what they'll do. I don't think they'll go above it because the President is threatening vetoing because of his dissatisfaction with the size of the domestic budget. Private funds is a best estimate from our development staff. The 105 for the SHIP is not a good number anymore. We shut SHIP down on June 30, and then we were advised by the Department of Social Services that the way the documentation was written, it can and could and should be reopened because of the extreme heat we were having and the big problems people were having with electric bills, so it was reopened in July at the request of Social Services. And of that 105, only 9,000 of that was left as of close of business yesterday. So we'll be really at approximately 900,000 and somewhat less than that minus 12% going into the 07, 08 winter. The very last slide is an article that I wanted to share with you from New York Times. It actually came out at the end of last week. They're predicting a 10% average increase in natural gas prices in the course of the winter. So if you factor in at least a 12% decline in assistance money and a 10% increase in gas prices and a normal winter, we are likely to have some difficulty getting through the coming winter and getting all of the households through without them losing their heat. Council Member James is a member of our board of directors and pointed out to me recently, she heard we were going to have a, was it the mildest winter and some warmest winter in a long period of time, and that may get us through. But I can tell you right now that the financial resources and the estimates in terms of energy prices, you know, are strong indicators we're going to have a serious problem in the coming winter. Be glad to answer any questions. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much, Jack, for your presentation. On the slide about, it's titled Housing, where you show own and rent. Some of us, about nine of us council members went this morning to tour the Home of Excellence. The home builders did a green build this year. And one of the things we were talking about was low-income folks, and I know that they still need help with the heating bills, but putting money into the tightening up of the homes so that in the future the utility bills are lower. And it was pretty impressive this morning how much they predict that these efforts can lower the utility bills, sometimes up to 40%. And so when I look at this, I see there are actually almost 200 homeowners that you have assisted, and can you tell us if there's been anything done in terms of an effort to tighten up their homes and make them more energy efficient? Yes, we are also the sponsors of the U.S. Department of Energy's Organization Assistance Program, which tightens up the house, the envelope of the house, insulation, sometimes furnace replacement. Urban County Government supplements the furnace replacement dollars with some CDBG dollars to assist us with that. We only can do about 90 households a year with the dollars that we receive. Our energy savings that we're producing based on the audits we're doing are about 20%. They had varying, you know, depending on what they do to the house, sometimes it's 15%, sometimes it's upwards of 40%. We could push it if we had more funding per household, and at some point, I suspect the federal government probably needs to rethink the dollar limit for household, but I would hope they would also add more dollars where they did that. I am very interested in greenhousing. I've had one discussion with Vice Mayor Gray. The problem it poses for low-income people is there are energy-saving things you can do today to homes that will reduce consumption and do have good payback. But if you're a low-income person, you can't afford the initial investment if you're a homeowner. If you're a renter, it's kind of a catch-22 because the landlord's going to charge you more rent up front to amortize the cost of those additional measures. So low-income people are not participating in this whole drive that you're seeing out there now to make housing more energy-efficient, and lacking a significant commitment, which I think would have to occur on the federal level, a significant commitment by government. I don't know of any way to significantly improve the heating and cooling costs of low-income households. Because we would be talking about millions of dollars, not hundreds of thousands of dollars, just in a county this size. But thinking about it from a, you know, one-family-at-a-time perspective, we might impact one family at a time. I realize that would be on a low scale, but still, it might be helpful for the years out for that particular family. And I think you could look at codes, and you may have some influence there. One of our disappointments in trying to weatherize houses that are rental properties is there's a federal requirement, for example, that the landlords participate in the cost, 50% of the cost of construction work, 75% of the cost of a heating system replacement. A lot of landlords in this community refuse to participate. They basically say, well, my tenant has to pay the heating costs, so it doesn't matter to me. My other question is, I believe this year was the first year we did sort of a debit system. How did that work? At least it was my understanding that we would put the money in an account here. We put it on a draw basis, and we spent all but, I'm looking for that number again on the chart. We spent all but 105 of it by the end of the fiscal year. We thought it was the account closed, and that the balance would lapse to your fund balance. And then we were advised by the Department of Social Services that no, it had not closed, and that the Division of Adult Services folks were being hit very hard by people having problems with their electric bills, and we were asked to reopen. So we reopened, and I can tell you we've been paying some substantial summer cooling bills. But then that exhausted that carryover. But the system worked okay from your perspective? I was fine with the draw, and I think that that's a very good approach. Actually, I wouldn't expect you to recall, but when I came in in 05, 06, the first year, several council members said, tell us how much money it would take to get through the winter. I can't tell you that. If Council Member James is right that we're going to have a warm, you know, the information, she will have a warmer than average winter. We won't need as much. If the New York Times is wrong about the cost of natural gas, we won't need as much. So I think for the government to say we want to make sure that citizens in this community do not freeze this winter, do not lose their heat. But we don't want to spend any more than it will take to get there, and we want our dollars to be last resort makes perfect sense. And putting the dollars on a draw basis, having them there where we don't have to do anything but notify somebody down here that we need them, makes a lot of sense to me. Well, I do have another question, but it's more for someone, if there's anyone here from budgeting. I'm curious, is there anybody here who can answer a budget question? How this money, I'm curious about the closing out at the end of the fiscal year and then reopening since we haven't really had our audit yet and we don't, we've had some questions about other amounts of money that we would like to be reappropriated. I know Councilmember Stenna asked about the capital projects that neighborhoods were doing. So can you tell me the mechanism that was used to get this money passed? I'm not familiar with this particular situation. I'll be happy to get that information back to you sometime after this meeting, because we have, and I've asked Commissioner Helm, too, and she wasn't familiar with it. We have not closed the fiscal year, so from our perspective, there hasn't been a closing and reopening. But we certainly can follow up on this and get something back to you. But because it sounds as if, and maybe Commissioner Helm knows, too, it sounds as if at the end of the fiscal year, there was $105,000. But then after the beginning of the new fiscal year, that money was drawn down. So I was just curious about the mechanism for doing that. Do you? Well, Community Action Council, as is, as does each of our partner agencies, they are requested to send regular reports and, you know, request funding. And at the end of the fiscal year, Community Action Council had the total of the amounts that we had forwarded to them totaled, you know, leaving an amount of about $105,000. So I think the total was about $140,000. I think at that time, Mr. Birch did not realize that the way that it had been set up last year, that it was forward, you know, in other words, it was to be carried forward. That is in the Purchase of Service Agreement, it is spelled out, that any funds left over would move forward to the next year. So I think we assumed that that $105,000 would be the amount that Community Action would have for this year's heating program. But I think, as I'm understanding the way the program works, is that individuals can apply for heating assistance or utility assistance, I guess, throughout the year. And so I was not aware that that $105,000 had been reduced to such a small number. Mine is actually more of a budgeting question. And so I see Connie Underwood, because I'm just curious about how the budget year ended, but yet we were still able to access their money when other monies aren't accessible. When we made the change to the Purchase of Services Agreement to include this funding, we changed the purchase order that was available to them to encumber the funds. So they were still encumbered for the program, and the program didn't have an end date. It was simply a reimbursement program with no end date. Okay. So it's, in that case, they can draw on it until it's gone. Do we have other entities who do that? Not generally. Any outside agencies or any Purchase of Service Agreements where they have an amount of money that? Most of the agencies have a term, and it's from July 1st through June 30th. This was an unusual program in that it was a program they were doing and not an allocation to their agency overall. Okay. Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you all. Council Member Stena. Thank you, Mayor. I can kind of shed some additional light on what we, the previous discussion. And thank you for asking the questions, Council Member Gordon. The original purpose of this program was for heating. It wasn't for any other utility bills or any other times of year. It was for heating because of that winter, it was 51% projected increase in heating utility bills. It was originally supposed to be a one-time hit, one-time $250,000. And last year, we decided to do it again out of surplus fund, out of budget surplus dollars. And with that money, we changed the pay system because several council members felt that if the money was not spent on heating, it should be sent back to LFUCG. The reindeer should stay here. So we did a draw system last year. So I don't know where that communication got mixed up with the budgeting and the distribution of funds. But that was the original intent. Now, how we choose to administer it and do we fund it again, that's up to obviously the council, this council, to move it forward. But that's the history behind it. That's the original intention was to provide heating help for those families during that one year that requires some assistance on their heating bill. And the other portion of it that we haven't really talked about is we were also looking for a local match from corporations. It was supposed to be a 50% match. So we were going to do $250,000, and we're looking for companies to do the other $250,000. And I don't think that ever progressed the way we were anticipating it to move forward through marketing and that sort of thing. So that was the other component of it that never really came about. I know they've done a great job soliciting private funds through their own measures, but we were also looking for some help corporately that same year on that type of heating initiative. But I guess my question to you, Jack, through your presentation today was on your slide that shows sources of family income, on that one slide that shows all the different sources, what is represented by the word no income? I mean, if they don't follow those other categories, are they 100% without income, not $1 in the family? That would be for the 30-day period preceding the application date. Okay, so but why wouldn't they sit in unemployment during that area? I can't answer that question. Okay, so they just said they don't have any dollars at all coming in. Standing here in front of you right now, I can't answer that question. I can't go back and see if I can get that for you. Would you be glad to send you that? Well, I'm just curious, because that's the second, well, second biggest percentage. It is. It is a very, very large number. And how soon, because they don't have any income, how are they paying the rest of their bills? You know, I guess that's where I'm looking at. How they spend the money on things that should be spent on heat instead. That's just. And this says they're not spending anything on anything. And I quite frankly, I have some questions about this. I do know that to some extent, because, in which we were glad to do, Urban County Government asked us to provide for the administrative costs of this program, and to basically give 100% of these dollars. We did adopt a lot of the federal rules and procedures so that we could streamline it internally. And whenever I see the no income number, I'm concerned. I do believe a lot of them are unemployed people who do not draw unemployment. I do think that's what's going on to some extent. But I'm also a little concerned, because how do you prove a negative? Well, and are they receiving other benefits, such as their houses being paid for by the government, that sort of thing? No. Because generally, if their house is being provided, there's a utility allowance. That's right. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Who are these 423 people? That's the biggest number of who we're giving money to. What I can get for you is to ask our data people to mine the data a little deeper and see what we can find out. Many of these people may be in our system, because they've been in prior time. So I'd be very curious, for example, what do we look like if we go back 60 days, 90 days? Right. And then I guess my last question is, what is your ask for this year? In summation, what are you asking this council for this year? I think just to hold our own, it's going to take about the same level as last year. That $250,000? And I'm guessing it based on what kind of winter we're going to have, what the natural gas prices are going to be, and what Congress and the President finally decide. So when Dr. Stevens last year suggested we put this on a draw basis, I supported that. I did think it was only for winter heating, but somehow the paperwork made it something other than that. I think we ought to have a quarter of a million dollars available to help make sure people get through the winter, but we ought to do it in such a way to make sure that if we can fund it with federal dollars, state dollars, I'd say the General Assembly is going to discuss this, or private dollars, we go there first. And we use it on a draw basis. And if it's not needed on June 30, you either keep it in a new fund for the next winter, not necessarily just utility assistance, or you use it for something else. Okay. Thank you. I can find lots of something else for you. I'm sure. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to just expand upon what Council Member Stennett said, because there was, there were three of us in the room that are sitting up here, Council Member Stennett, myself, and Myers. And where this came from, it's going to be something else I speak about during Council Report, is we were looking at, that year was the year of the tsunami. And we got to talking about what was the tsunami that was coming? Is it related to social services? And we were asking the then Commissioner to give us an idea of where we could start looking for a place to maybe be ready, or the Katrina, I guess, of that time. How could we be ready to move assets into place? And we saw that the natural gas prices were going to go through the ceiling. There was a lot of talk about that at that time. And so what we did was we came up with this program, or this idea called CHIP. And what's interesting is how it changed. And this is something that I think everybody in this room needs to know, the history of this. It's not the Council Heating Initiative Program. In fact, that group very intentionally called it the Council Heating Initiative Plan, because we did not want to imply that this would be an ongoing thing. And somehow it kind of creeps in and gets some roots in it. And all of a sudden now we've got to do it every year. That was not the original intent of what we set out to do. We set out to find what was a community's need, how could we put some money towards that need as a one-time situation, and we did that. We challenged the private side to find matching dollars. And I guess my question, Jack, is what are the efforts that you all are doing right now to get those matching dollars for the government side? Well, as you can see, we predict we're going to raise something on the order of $140,000 to $150,000. I have some severe limitations placed on me in that 85% of our budget is federal, state, or local dollars, and all of those have restrictions that prohibit me from using those dollars to fundraise any portion of those dollars. Our total fundraising budget in Community Action Council for the current fiscal year is $7,432. So we will be, as an organization, soliciting private donations this Friday night. We have a silent art auction. Council Member James has tickets if you want to buy some. She's a member of our board, you know, that we hope that's being sponsored by National City Bank. They're paying the overhead cost of that, you know, to raise these kinds of dollars. But I have extreme limitations on me and my ability to raise private dollars because I cannot use government money to raise private money. Well, and I think that is, again, one of the things that we wanted to do with this money originally was to create a chip-in type program, to not restrict you with this so you could match and so forth. And no, you couldn't use these monies to hire somebody to go out and fundraise for you, but you could certainly use these as the catalyst for soliciting those private side dollars. So I... But you see, that doesn't work when you appropriate the money up front. It doesn't give me any real ability to go to a business and say, would you match it, because I've already got it. Well, no, again, we had a press conference when we came out and did this, and Bonnie Quantrell was there to talk about what her donation was to this and to challenge other folks. She just wrote another check for $20,000. Sure, exactly. So again, I think that for the sake of the council and the people watching and for Commissioner Helm and some of the other folks that are in the audience, this was designed to be a one-time thing. It was designed to address a community need that was on the way. It was not designed to be an ongoing thing. It certainly was not designed for all utilities or anything like that and become another bureaucratic government program. So I just want to point some clarity to all that because I know these things kind of get confusing. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for coming this afternoon, Jack. I have a couple of questions. Did you say that there's no administrative cost that's coming out of the money? The savings that we gave you for this program? 100% of the ship dollars go for energy assistance. Okay. We don't take any admin. We don't take any operations costs. Okay. Can you go over again with me because I didn't understand what you were talking about when originally, as a couple of council members have said, this program was for home heating only. And it was not only the tsunami but Katrina was the main thing that happened that drove up the price of home heating fuel. And I think Councilman Wigginson is the one who was kind of the brainchild behind this. And that council stood for the City Council, Urban County Council. And that, like Councilman McCord said, it was a plan and it was a one-time deal. Somehow you've kind of co-opted this into an every day, every year function. But let me explain something to you that our government also does this same program. I have not co-opted it, Council Member Myers, and you can do as you choose. I don't have any authority here. A, I did not change the name. The government changed the name. Go look at the documentation. When it went from a plan to a program, I do not know. Okay. So then. You mean, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm going to tell you that this winter, the federal dollars and the private dollars will not ensure that families will not be in crisis. Okay. But whether you want this to be an ongoing program or a one-time program is your choice. I can't, you know, I can't make that decision. Only this government can make that decision. I have advised the Commissioner and others that we do face a crisis this winter. Okay. I'm going to. That's all I can tell you. Okay. Before. And what I want, finally, I want to say is I don't want you to think, I think you are the only source for assistance. I'm not sitting at my office hoping you all will do something. I'm assuming you won't do anything this winter. And I'm doing the best I can. I've been to Washington three times to improve the federal appropriations. I will be lobbying in Frankfurt in January to get state dollars. And I will do the best I can to raise private dollars. But we have a serious problem at this point. Okay. I disagree with you that we have a serious problem. What I understand is that the city has a plan and a program that they've always done to meet this need for citizens. And this is a one-time project that came about because of Katrina. I'm not aware of the city's plan and program. Excuse me. I gave you the microphone when you were speaking. Commissioner Helms is behind you. She's going to come up in a minute and speak to you about the program that we have that Adult Services has been providing for years. I am aware of that program. Okay. Again, I've got the microphone now. What I see here is not a crisis. What I see here is an opportunity to set the record straight. And so rather than putting money back into this plan and making it a program for you to administer, I think what the council needs to do is just make sure that the program that the city has always done is funded so that the citizens who need help with heating costs in the wintertime have that taken care of. And I'm perfectly fine with that, Councilman Myers. The discussions, as you know, we've had over the years is we run into a problem with some households who shop around. And that's, they go to a church. They come down here. They come to Community Action Council. And three of us pay the same utility bill. And we do need, and it doesn't mean the Community Action Council has to administer everything, but we do need to have a way to make sure that that doesn't happen. And that's the easiest way to make sure that doesn't happen. Instead of giving you one pot of money to spend and the council or the government having another pot of money to spend, everyone comes to the one-stop shopping, which makes it easy when we advertise a program citywide, that everybody knows they just come to Adult Services and they receive that funding. And we can also track everything so that people aren't going to three and four different places for the same thing. But we'll still have the million dollars in federal and private dollars. That's what I'm talking about, whether you fund CHIP or not. So if you have a million dollars, then why do you need the $250,000? Well, I think the chart explains it. Run back through that with me. You do not have a decrease in energy costs. In fact, you've got the federal government saying you're going to have a 10% increase in natural gas costs this winter. And you have a minimum, and that was before we updated the figure today, you have a minimum of at least a 12% cut in available dollars. Okay, I'm going to have the commissioner come up. I did not have a copy of this presentation, so I wasn't quite certain as to which slide you were referencing. But you might want to show him so he can put it up. I think as Mr. Birch has stated, at least in an email that he sent to me back in May, that Community Action Council was not contending that CHIP, whether it's a program or a plan, was ever intended to be a permanent program. At least, again, that is what he said to me back in May. In August, we asked for and Community Action provided us with an update on the amounts that had been expended for the program. There was the confusion that Mr. Birch and Community Action did not understand or did not realize that whatever dollars had been left at the conclusion of the final report submitted for the 07 fiscal year, that those dollars, according to the purchase of service agreement that had been signed back in March, specifically stated that any funds left over for the 206-207 winter heating season would be carried forward for the 2007-2008 heating season until those funds were completely expended. I think in our office, at least my understanding was it was a heating program. So I assumed that the dollars, the $105,000 that was left, would be available for Community Action to use for this heating season, which, in my opinion, has not yet begun. Again, the monies from the council for the CHIP program were to be used as a last resort because according to Community Action, they used their LIHEAP funds first, which was close to a million dollars. They used private funds, which they were estimating at about $140,000 for 2007-2008, and then adding what would have been that $105,000, which is what you see up on the screen. So I think it was our understanding that going into the 07-08 heating season, there would be a little over a million dollars for this heating season. And that is our understanding of the Community Action Program policy for this. The Department of Social Services, through its adult and tenant services, also provides utility and other emergency assistance for individuals or families. And we are very prepared to operate any kind of emergency heating program or any kind of emergency utility assistance. In fact, this question was actually raised during the budget hearings, and Cheryl Lewis, who is the Division Director for Adult and Tenant Services, was asked directly if she could handle providing services and responding to individuals with an additional amount of money. And her response was yes, because I do think that there was a question that had been raised that perhaps she did not have the staff to provide that service, but she certainly can. Thank you. Mayor, if you'll go ahead and move on to the next person on the list, and I want to come back in a second. Thank you. Farewell. Could I interrupt the record on a couple of things? Commissioner Helm was referring to some emails. I have an email from Cheryl Lewis, the Adult Services Director, asking why we are not using CHIP funds to help with electric bills this summer. And I have an email from Priscilla Gales on her staff saying it's okay to do that. So we assumed we were following the government's preference. We have absolutely no opposition, Commissioner Helm, to Urban County Government administering these funds. We just think the community needs to make sure that you don't have people shopping around. And when you don't have a one-stop shop, you've got that opportunity out there. Council Member Maloney. I have a question. Commissioner Helms, how much money do you have now for this heating emergency? Well, the funding that Adult and Tenant Services is actually called Emergency Assistance, and so it includes not only heating, but other kinds of emergency assistance that an individual or family might find themselves in need of. We have over $150,000 in that particular line item for that issue. Now, have you used any for the air conditioning that we had to heat in the summer? Has that money been spent yet? Any of that money been spent? We've used about $39,000 for utility and other types of assistance, and I would assume a lot of that is for air. But it's also because we have individuals who find themselves with their utilities cut off or close to being cut off. They've allowed their bill, and I think that's what Community Action has found, is that individuals find themselves, you know, they allow their bill to get so much in the arrears that if they don't get some help, it's more problematic to allow it to be cut off, because then we've got to try to help the individuals find the down payment and the money that they need in order to put kind of an escrow to get the account back up and running. My next question is to you, Jack. Everybody keeps coming back saying we started just a couple years ago, but it freshens my memory, back in 1999 or 2000, we had some tough winters back then, and I remember there was a pass-around, and you needed some extra emergency funding around January, February for some heat programs. Is that right? We did have that really severe winter, and the government came in and assisted. Generally, though, we have been able to get by fine. It was that 51% spike in natural gas prices, and those natural gas prices are the same. The gas prices didn't get cut back down again by half. That's been the real problem, and I don't have an easy solution to it. But you did come back in the year. Yes. Because I remember that you all were doing, because you ran out of money. And you all jumped in at the last minute and helped us get through that one year. So if we have a bad winter, you're going to be back. If you have a bad winter, I'm going to be telling the community and you and everybody else we're having a bad winter, and I need help. I don't know what to do. So my question goes back. I know the internal audit is getting ready to make a report. I guess your recommendation is if the same thing happens, if we come out having a surplus, you're going to want to use some of that money to make up for, like you did last year when we had a surplus. I mean, you've got 105 now. You're looking at hopefully maybe getting it built back up to 250. Is that what your goal is? Do you want 250 on top of the 105? Not exactly. I really am not doing what Councilman Myers seems to think I'm trying to do here. I'm not trying to get you to establish a permanent program. I am strongly urging that you find a way to set aside enough dollars to avoid a crisis, and you don't have to go through a lot of bureaucratic mechanisms to get the dollars out there and to help people, and you ensure the dollars are coordinated so that you're not duplicating services. I don't need you to authorize me today or next week or next month a quarter of a million dollars, but I don't want a situation where I'm out of resources, Commissioner Helm is out of resources, people are losing their energy assistance, and then you and I and everybody else in this community have to start dealing with it. I think we can be prepared. So what you're saying, it doesn't matter who gets the money, one of you two have money in case one of you runs out. I would caution you, we have got to figure out a coordinating mechanism, and there is not one in place. At one point in time, I offered to allow Urban County Government's employees to have full access to our database, and the government refused. That's one way of doing it. If you can check each other's databases, you can check and see if the person has received assistance. So you're not here to beg. You're just here to give us a heads up. That's exactly right. Commissioner Helm is here to say she knows the time comes we need, if we have a bad winter or whatever happens. You warned us either I don't care who gets the money, but you better be prepared, and that's what you're here for. That's exactly correct. I appreciate you telling us. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Are you through, Council Member Millen? Okay. Council Member James. Thank you, Mayor. My question is for Commissioner Helm. Are the requirements the same for our emergency assistance as they are for community actions chip distribution of funds? That I do not know. I would have to get that information. I have not laid the two side by side and really looked at them, so I don't know. Okay. That would be really important for me to be able to look at. Also, we were talking about winter months, and you said in your opinion you felt maybe the winter had not started yet. Is there an official definition of what's considered winter months and when chip funds can be distributed? Is that anywhere in writing official? Not that I'm aware of. My only understanding was that chip was to be used as a last resort, that the LIHEAP funds, the private donations were to be expended first. And I think when Ms. Gales from my office or Ms. Lewis from Adult and Tenant Services were responding to community action, I think they were simply letting Mr. Birch know that those funds were available for his use. When we had our earlier conversation, he was not aware. He did not think that there were any funds at all forthcoming to community action for the chip program. And when we reminded him or made him aware that the funds that were left over were available for continued use, that is really what we were talking about, not necessarily specifying that, you know, to go on and spend them at that particular time. If that's the way they're operating, that's one thing. We don't control that. But we were just simply trying to let him know that nothing needed to come back to the council. Those were just dollars that were going to continue to be available to community action without any additional, you know, direction or action from the council. Okay. And I know that you've done some research on community action in other cities. How do they make it to where their heating initiative is a one-stop shop program? How do they make it to where people aren't jumping from one place to the other? Well, I think in some of the cases that I've looked at, most of the other cities, the community action program is actually an entity that is run by the particular government. And so there is not an external agency that is actually doing that. For example, my counterpart in Louisville, when I've looked at the budget that they have for community action, very few dollars are provided in addition to what comes from the federal government. I think it's less than $10,000 that actually comes from Metro Louisville for the community action program. So trying, in some cases, to try to match the two is almost like trying to match apples and oranges because it's just different. And our community is different. I think when I asked Mr. Birch at one time to give me the name of another city, I think he said Boston. When I asked him for the name of a city that I could use to make some comparisons and to get some questions answered, he offered Boston. And I just simply, you know, the population is different. The situation is different. And so I have not really found that to be as helpful as I need for it to be at this particular time. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Helm. One question for Mr. Birch. Dr. Helm mentioned that the CHIP funds are to be used as a last resort. So do you see that at the end of your fiscal year that you've exhausted the LIHEAP funds and the private funds for the CHIP prior to or for the heating prior to tapping into CHIP funds? I mean, obviously, listening to Commissioner Helm today, you know, I think there have been some miscommunications. But as of June 30, we were out of any money. Everything was gone. And we thought the $105,000 CHIP had lapsed. And I was getting e-mails from my staff copying me on e-mails from members of her social workers in adult services saying, why can't you all help people? And so I began speaking to Priscilla Gales and her staff and saying, you know, would you explain it to us? We don't have any money. And now I'm being told, oh, no, you all have CHIP dollars. So my understanding was government wanted us to reach in and use the CHIP dollars to get people through what was, and I think we should all understand that, an extremely difficult summer in terms of utility bills. This was a. a horrible summer for utility bills. I haven't seen anything like this in a very, very long time. There was a problem out there. But clearly there were some miscommunications going on and clearly everyone inside social services was not convinced we should take the 105 and help some of these people get through the summer. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Just real quick, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to thank Jack again for coming in today and just say that the one thing I think that everybody in the room agrees on is that we need to make sure that our citizens need assistance this winter to get that. And I assure you that the 16 people sitting around this horseshoe and the Commissioner will make sure that happens. Thank you. Anything further? Thank you very much, Mr. Birch. I don't see Dave Lucas. There he is. All right. Dave, if you want to come forward. This presentation is in response to the Council request not too terribly long ago, so I'll turn the podium over to Dave. All right, thank you. I just have a short presentation today about addressing. In my 13 years with Herb and County Government, I think I started with addresses on day two. That's only because I had orientation on day one. My first job here was rerouting garbage trucks, and we had to find where all the garbage was and quickly found out that addresses were the key to that. And so for 13 years, I've been working with addresses, either through solid waste, engineering, land use, census, which by the way, will be coming up. That is my big project in 2010, is the census is coming around again. Also with 911 and with the delivery of all of our services to the citizens, address is the key. And it's an integral part of LexCall as well. Today, I'm just going to kind of present where we are with enforcing of our addressing ordinance. And I've got some samples for you. And at the end, open up to some questions and maybe we have some samples that are specific to your needs. 911, you know our number, now show us yours. It's a little model we have. And I will try, there we go. My finger's too quick, there we go. What is an address? Well, it sounds simple, but over the years, we have come to bring it down to a few things. An address is made up of a number, a direction, a name, a street, and a unit, being an apartment number. Obviously, not all these are pertinent to every address, but every address does have a number and every address has a name. Not every address has a type or a direction or an apartment number. Posting requirements. This is straight out of the ordinance. Every address shall be clearly visible and identifiable at all times during daylight hours to persons and vehicles traveling in both directions of all streets or named easements from which the structure is accessed. A lot of words, but it's very simple. When the guys in the big red trucks come down, they need to be able to see your number clearly. And a lot of verbiage to get there, but when we're on a street and a police or fire or even a garbage truck or whatever it may be, we need to see the address from the street that it's named on. Which comes down to the pamphlet I handed out that kind of outlines four inch minimum height on numbers, three feet high above the ground level. And the number should be affixed to the structure or when the structure is set further back, which is most of our rural areas, it must be within four feet of the named easements. We have fire gate poles and other people use decorative poles for this. Here's an example of a fine home. If you come up to this home, even though they show their UK colors proudly, we have no sign of an address anywhere on this structure. These are some samples of some addresses that don't quite make it. Right here, this address is falling apart. You might see the 07, but we don't know what it starts with. Actually, there's two numbers missing. Over here is a sample of our fire gates, which we install for people in the rural area. This gentleman did not like the number that was assigned, so he decided to paint over it and use his own number, which could be quite confusing because we will respond to the number that was assigned, not the one that he chose. Here's a non-compliant posting. If you could see the address, it's actually this circle down here, which is the nice concrete markers. As you can see, it's not very high off the ground. In this case, the grass is covering the number. It wouldn't take much for leaves in the fall or just a parked car to hide their numbers. Here's a issue we have in Lexington. People like to paint numbers on their curbs. There's people who provide a service to this. Service would be a stretch because, as you can see, these two examples are actually two different numbers. It's 3831 on the left and 3891 on the right. These are two different homes within two blocks of each other, but you could probably not distinguish which house is which from these postings. Now, here's some nice numbers. We like to show off the good people as well. Above the door, black on white, you can see their number clearly. Here's one above a garage, clearly seen from the street. No shrubs or trees in the way. Businesses are not left out. As you can see, this site displayed their numbers, nice white letters on a dark background. Here's another one. They stepped needed to make sure you could see their address from any direction as you approached. They put it on the corner. Here's one of my favorites. If you've been out to Beaumont, you see a lot of buildings look exactly alike, except for they all have their numbers prominently posted where you can see them. Additionally, they took the extra step, which we enjoy at the entrance of their driveways. They have their number posted as a list of all the suites that are inside. Here's one out Harrisburg Road. There are several buildings in the back of this shopping center. And as you can see, they posted a range of the numbers that are accessed through their entrance. And if you can see in the back, they actually posted it on every building as well. And if I had a closer shot, they have it above every door. We love this place. As in December of last year, we actually created an addressing board that is similar to Code Enforcement's hearing board. Code Enforcement has a lot more to cover besides addressing. It was after many months of research, we realized having our own board would be beneficial and quicker. And they review all citations that we could and do give citizens for not adhering to our addressing policies. And also list that the land subdivision regulations, which is actually the posting of street signs temporarily until the government actually posts the permanent sign. This is a new development. The citation program that was approved in December, this is a brief outline of what happens. When we notice or get a complaint on someone not posting their address properly or at all, first we give them a notification of noncompliance, which is just a letter outlining what is wrong. Some of the photos you've already seen with the red circles are examples. We actually gave them a photo, circle what is wrong and give them direction on how to fix it. If it's not fixed in 30 days, we give them a second notification. And then after that, the third time we actually give them documentation is a citation of $100. And every citation after that, as you can see, increases. We've also put an incentive in if they would just fix the issue that we have outlined for them and do not appeal, the fines actually are in half. So far, we started doing citations in August of 2005. We did that before we got an addressing hearing board to find out the need for a board. So we actually had code enforcement work with us. We gave them five locations per month. They would go out and cite them, take these people through their citation program, through their hearing board. Of the 135 that we've done, two of the 135 were appealed. In the appeal process, in the end, they still posted what was necessary, which is our ultimate goal is to get the numbers posted. Currently, we have 16 outstanding and those 16 range because they're within that 30, 60 and 90 day period where they're still working with the property owner to post the correct address or they're not quite at the stage of getting a citation. Here are some before and after, some locations we've been to. This right here is what we call a vanity address, similar to someone with a vanity license plate. They make up their own address, in this case, to Paragon Center. It became quite common about a few years ago, people start naming buildings. We don't mind if you name a building, but don't give it its own address. In this case, we just asked for them to remove the TWO and prominently display the correct address of 2343 and it was a simple correction. Here's a barn, we have many, many barns in Lexington, many farms and the problem is, is most farms have one or two entrance and once you go down that entrance, there are multiple structures, either from three to 23 buildings. In this example here, we went out there and they had a naming system for their barns of an alphabet, A through L. Unfortunately, when they had to put a new barn between K and L, they started another numbering system, so they were not easily located. We went out there and assigned new numbers to every structure, which is, in this case, the A became a 60 and we had to go back out there and remind them that their old number needs to come off and only use the new numbers because we will be responding to barn 60, not 60A and if we showed up, we'd be looking for 60A or 60B. Excuse me, look quick with the thumb. All right, here is a rural area. Fire Gates, if you drive out in the rural areas, Fire Gates has been a very successful program or actually enhanced that has been here for decades. This pole over here to the side, you can see uses reflective numbers. It's very well seen at night. The numbers posted on both sides of the pole so you can see it from either direction. It's also on a very strong pole that you literally could drive over with a truck and it's gonna flip back up. Don't ask me why I know that. Over here, you can see this gentleman posted his own number on a cardboard piece, which is not the same as what was assigned. He was told to remove that and use the number that was assigned to him. Another problem we have is people will put their numbers on their buildings, however, they do not maintain them. In this example here, this is a building off of Harrisburg Road and the number is behind the hedges. The hedges were not blocking it when they built the building and they put the number up. So we had to request them for them to put their number up where you can see it from the road. And right here, if you see through the trees, their number is posted at the top of their building now when before it was at the bottom below the hedges. All of these before and after pictures are ones that we had to cite to get fixed. Here is one of the rural areas. As you go down a rural farm road, you can see these people have installed directional signs. So if we are responding to an emergency in a specific barn, that when we get to the crossroads, they don't have street signs, but they will actually give us directionals on where the barn numbers are and where to turn. This might be hard to see. It didn't show up well in the photo. This is a building off of Limestone over by campus. And they actually have three different entrances to this building. Each one has been numbered and you cannot see it, but they actually have the suite numbers on that building here. Because if you enter this door here, you actually go upstairs to a apartments. And before, the apartments were not numbered anywhere we could see and get into them. Over the last three years, the addressing unit of Irwin County Government has embedded themselves into the development process. And the reason is, is the best way to get addresses out there is to get them to them early, before they start building them, before they start putting the signs up. The example here is actually one of our facilities. This is the Bursells Road Complex. As you can see, there's actually three different buildings. They all have their own number. The first building actually has several suites. We assign those. And if you do drive by, the signage out front does list all the addresses that you can find at that access point. This is typical of one of our rural issues. As you can see, this was a small farm with a farmhouse that actually did have a number that you could see from the road. However, they have developed it with a larger road in the back. This road, we required them to put signage on if they wanted to name the street, or if it's just going back to one house, we required a number to be posted out front. So we do not either go to this house or move on down the road, bypassing their emergency. This is an example of our fire gate post. We have two at this entrance. And actually, our older one was right here until they painted over it. So we came and installed new ones that were closer to the road and a little further away from the paint gun. Here are two examples. This is a street sign. If you could read that, I would be impressed. That's actually Old Harrisburg Road. And we find these while we're out there. And that's just one we tell our other division, in this case, the traffic engineering. They went out and cleaned that up so everyone can see the street sign. And we work very closely with our parks to make sure, if you notice, most of the parks now do have an address listed on them as well. So a lot of our parks have multiple entrances. So we made sure when the entrance you enter on, you would actually see the address of the park, because a lot of people will call with emergencies to a park. And sometimes if we know where they're at, which entrance to come to, it would be great. A prime example of that is Constitution Park. We actually enter to get to the pool off of Bryan Station, but you enter to get to the other facilities off of Old Harris Road. And it would be a great delay if we went to the wrong entrance. Why are addresses posting so important? Besides that they're very important to David Lucas, I'll let you in why. And the reason is, the basis of 911 is your address. When we get a call in, we have two things. We have your phone number, and if you call from a landline phone, we have your address. If you call from a cell phone, we just have a map that will show us where you are. In this case, this is actually what the 911 dispatchers will see on a call. Up here is actually the address and the apartment number that this person called from, and that is what we send the officers to. We do have maps in the 911 center. In this case, you can actually see a little telephone because we had an exact match on this person here when they called in. This is their address, and we can send someone to this exact location. All the dots that you see up here on the map is every address in the county. We have about 80% of them collected. This is going greatly towards our efforts for the next census. We should not miss anybody who wants to be counted. Here's an example of a cell phone. If you notice on this phone, there's actually what we call a halo around where the call actually came from. Cell phones are not as accurate as a landline, so we have a area that we know the call came from, and in this case, the software produced a list of all addresses in that area for us to respond to. So what it comes down to is we know where you are, we have your address, but if you don't post it, it's gonna be very hard for us to find you. That is my brief presentation and examples on addressing. If you have any questions. Council Member DeCamp. Thank you. David, thanks very much, and I think you've given us all a better understanding of the importance of having your street address visible, and I suspect that if you, I can speak for the 3rd District, if you came into in-town neighborhoods, 95% would not conform to what you have recommended, or which mainly is the three feet high address sign, and I can understand why you need it, but I don't know how aggressive we're gonna be at this and how much education we have done for the general public so that they can make an effort to try to conform to what you have said is needed, really for public safety purposes. The other thing is, beside education, I think it's a lot easier for the people out there if they know where they can easily get this sign. I mean, what usually happens, and I know what will happen here, people start leaving things at your mailbox saying, you're gonna be fined if you don't get my sign put out in front, and we don't know whether that's the best price, and there's usually only one source. I know that the government does not recommend one vendor over the other, but it sure would be helpful if you had a list of vendors that those of us, and I certainly am not in compliance, but I would love to have a list of people that sell a three feet high, one that I think is appropriate for my particular situation, and I think that is something, if we're going to make such a drastic change in what we have been doing over the last so many years, if we can take it a step further, first of all, educate the public some way why this is important, but secondly, let us know where we can get the proper kind of signage that will put it up three feet if that's what you want, because it's very difficult, because you say, you know, they're not gonna go all over town and look for this, and you could have three or four vendors and not recommend one over the other, but it would be very helpful, I think, if we took it a little further. Thank you. Well, it is hard to find a good vendor. It's also hard to find numbers. I mean, even if you go to the large hardware stores, getting that four inch number is the minority of the numbers they have available. We do offer a service, and it's actually listed on your pamphlet. For people who want their numbers fixed, we will come to their house, recommend where to put it if they want to put it on their structure, and for a lot of people, we will install it for them if they buy the materials. But I believe a list of vendors would be very helpful. I know other divisions do that for abatement reasons as well. Well, I mean, not only to find the, but to install it is another thing. I mean, if we're going three feet high, sometimes you really, the installation can be very important, because if it's not installed right, pretty soon it will be knocked over, and I guess it has to be installed in some sort of concrete, I would assume, to really stand the test of time. So I think we've got some, you know, if we're gonna go ask the public, and I think we have all good reason to ask the public to do this for public safety purposes, I think we really need to help the public be able to get the kind of signage that is appropriate. Any other questions or comments for Mr. Lucas? Yeah, it's on the computer. I'm sorry, oh, I need to read the new instrument panel here. Mr. Maloney. Thank you. I have to repeat what Mr. DeCamp said, because we did one of these about seven, eight years ago, and there was a gentleman that went around after this presentation, and I know there's a lot of people watching this, with one of those signs and put them on everybody's curbs, and had a thing on there that said it's an ordinance that you got to have signs up, and this is, you have to have them there on that curb. And I just want to make sure, like Dick's saying, that we've got to have some measures out there, or some kind of education to tell the folks out there, don't be listening to these vendors that are making a buck by spraying, it was like 150 bucks to spray those things on the curbs, and I just want to make sure that everybody watching this, and that you guys, somehow, I know it's hard to do, but education, maybe the press, or somehow that you can do, or maybe GTV3, do a show on what is legal, because I guarantee you, after this, you're going to have some vendor going around saying that these signs are illegal, and have it written up in an ordinance, and they're going to be spraying them on people's curbs, so I just want to make sure that you all have some kind of education. The other question I have, and it goes back to the 9-1-1 Enhanced, are we making any headway on funding on that, because I know with the cell phones and all that, a lot of people are now no longer using their phones anymore, they're kind of using cell phones, and the budget, I know we have a special tax for 9-1-1, is that money starting to really drop, and are we going to have to eventually go into the general fund and start paying for some of this cost that's no longer there that we used to have? Eventually, it was last year. Last budget year, we actually dipped into general funds for the first time in three years to help pay for the 9-1-1 system. Currently, we're seeing a 4% to 5% decrease in our 9-1-1 revenues on landline for the very reason you mentioned, which is more and more people have cell phones, and eliminating the landline. I hope to be up here in the future with a detailed presentation. We have ideas on how to fix that and get off of using a landline as a way to collect that fee, and there's other alternatives that we should do, because a 4% to 5% decrease for the last four years adds up very quickly, and unfortunately, our costs keep going up. Not as quick, but we're trying to maintain those as well, but funding is a big problem, and it's not a Lexington problem. It's a problem for all the 90 9-1-1 centers in the state. How much did you all have to take out of the budget last year to recruit some of the dollars? Well, originally, it was projected 700,000, but I think it's going to be less than that. We haven't closed the books, but I think it's going to be less than half of that, but the projections for this fiscal year we're in now is going to be over a half a million dollars from general fund to supplement the 9-1-1 expenses that were paid for by the fee at one time. So you're going to be coming to do a presentation on how we can do another way to get to keep, without jumping into our- Without raising the fee, I hope, correct. Has anybody gone to the state and asked them how we can tap into those cell phones and use those as a fax? Yes, we have. Actually, I sit on the board for the state, the CMRS board that collects and distributes the money, and last legislation, we changed the way the money was distributed. We, just like all the other counties, received a 30% increase without raising the 70 cents fee. Actually, I've been attending meetings about the next legislation, but the legislators have to change the fee for us to see more funds from the cell phones. They do have a higher growth rate, around 8%, however, their fee's a lot smaller. It's not making up for the loss in landlines. So I appreciate when you come by and give us some information on that. I thank you. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Vice Mayor. David, this is probably a series of questions. The brick mailboxes that you see that have an inset, maybe a limestone inset, those letters are not four inches. Is that still acceptable? The four inches is the new rule. We're not going to cite people who have three inches, especially in the stone. I've replaced those already, but we do require they have it on both sides so we can see it from either direction. What about the things you see in Sky Magazine, for instance, the bronze or wrought iron little short jobs that are out at the curb? The ones out on the curb, similar to the ones painted on the curb, do not meet our requirements. I tell people they're a nice supplement and they're a nice decorative, but put one on your structure. Still are. They're nice. Third question, where you have fairly deep overhanging eaves and people put the numbers over their doors back underneath the eaves, even in the daylight, they're kind of hard to find. We like to tell people to keep it simple. If you keep it where we can see it without stopping the car, it's great. The ones under the eaves, there are people we have told them they need to bring them out, especially with the large porches. Put them on the front. And usually once we point it out, a photo says a lot to them. But you're right. If they're under the eaves or even on a door that is open, an open door with a number is like having no number at all. Right. And maybe my last one. Vertically employed numbers or diagonally employed numbers, how are they looked upon? They're not bad. What is found upon is numbers in script and actually in text form instead of numeric form. Hmm. Yeah. I guess you see a little bit of everything. You go through the campaigning process and you're out trying to put up yard signs. Sometimes it's a challenge, especially when it's after work and it's in the fall and it's dark. Thank you very much. I appreciate your answers. Council Member Gordon. Lynn Cross. David, thank you. I've appreciated your work for many years now and I have a couple questions. On your citations, 135 citations, what is your process? Do you actually have someone out driving the street looking for numbers that are not in compliance or is it complaint-based? Currently, since we do not have staff dedicated to citations, it is complaint-based or it's based on people we have changed who have never reposted their numbers. Also, since we're in the development process, we're assigning addresses earlier and a lot of the new buildings we are going to directly because we've already worked with them for six months and they just might need a little reminder to go ahead and put those numbers up. Okay. And then on the cell phone, is there any problem area in Fayette County where when someone calls on a cell phone, they don't pop up on the map? Yes, there is. Anytime after a UK wins a big game, you will not get 911 service from your cell phone. We laugh, but for an hour after the game, no one got service around the stadium and even if you weren't near the stadium, and that's a pure volume issue. That happens when we have any large incident. But as far as cell phone coverage, we have 100% coverage for 911, even if you don't get Lexington. If you're in some of the further edges of Fayette County, you will get one of our neighbors who has the same system or very similar to ours. We're all certified, so we had minimum standards we had to meet by the state. So it's not uncommon if you're at Fayette Mall, you might get Jesmond County and that's based on how many people are making calls and the traffic volume and the way they're networked. So do all the contiguous counties have that something similar? Yes, we all have the enhanced phase two system and we all have what we call one push transfer where we can transfer a call to any of our neighboring counties with just one push of a computer screen. Okay, and then my last question has to do with the census. You kind of took me back to the last census and I know there were a lot of meetings of the committee and a lot of work done. So when do you anticipate that we'll crank up that census work? We've already started. The census has already contacted us. I will not be the lead person this time around. Phillip Stifel will be taking care of that who helped with me last time. So we're already working with the federal government on what we need to ramp up for. Some of it we already knew, but there will be probably before the end of the year, we will have to submit our data for final review and we have 120 days to review it. So here it is already 2008 and we're pushing hard on it because what you see in 2010 is just the end of two years worth of data collection to get people out. So now your data, does your data have to be finished before the redistricting council kicks in? That is correct. After the census is done and it usually took 18 to 24 months after the census for them to return the information, which is when we got into the redistricting. Okay, all right, thanks a lot. Council Member Crosby. Actually, Council Member Gordon asked one of my questions that I would like to just follow up on something Council Member Maloney had mentioned earlier and that is some education. And I would totally reiterate doing something on maybe GTV3 along those sorts because I would be willing to bet a lot of people do not understand the guidelines as far as posting their numbers. And I'm one of the suckers years ago, 10 years ago, I would say, who had somebody come to their door and say, can you paint, we'll paint it and pay $100. And of course, I was like, sure, that'd be great. I'll pay it. And didn't understand that that probably was not helping our emergency response people if they came to my house. And also as somebody who needed an emergency response at their house, literally minutes, seconds can make a difference. And so I think that doing any kind of education in this area to help the public understand what's appropriate when it could be a life or death situation truly would be very helpful. Thank you. We'll do that. We did one several years ago, but we have to recycle it, update it. And it should, we should re-educate because we do have a influx of people into Lexington. And I'll tell you one thing, it is just as important as to have your number up, it's important for your neighbor to have theirs because as we're driving down a road, just like you're searching for a house, you're reading them as you go. So having everyone cooperate as a neighborhood is extremely helpful. Anything further for Mr. Lucas? Thank you very much. Thank you. Good presentation. We now ready for the very patient Mr. Tom Martin and friends to talk about the downtown entertainment issue. Thank you very much. I'm more accustomed to listening than presenting and I'm also affected by these fall allergies that have come along. So if you'll bear with me, it's been really interesting today to hear, to sit back and listen to references to the Kentucky Horse Park, to what's coming there in 2010. We all know what that alludes to and to references to fixing up our sidewalks downtown. What I thought about when I brought all this together while also thinking about how quickly I can get home and check on my address sign, which I know is out of compliance, was that we're gonna have a lot of people here in a few years and they're gonna be walking down our sidewalks. The question is to what? And so a group of folks here in town have been talking about this over the past month or so, a very ad hoc committee, if you will, concerned about what sort of entertainment venues and opportunities and options will await the folks who come here in 2010. But more importantly, what do we have here in this city? Last week on October 9th, Vice Mayor Gray informed you of the formation of the Citizens Task Force on Downtown Entertainment Development. The announcement formalized what had been a series of discussions by this group of citizens. We've been interested in ensuring that art in general and live music performance in particular become integral to what we're seeing evolve downtown. A recent survey that was commissioned by Ivy Walls Management, this was related to me by Alan Stein, found that Lexington suffers from having what he called a low entertainment reputation in our region. So the purpose of our task force is to figure out why that is. Of course, if you can walk outside of this building, you can pretty much see why. But why does what we find out there exist in the way it does? Why does Lexington lag behind other benchmark, media market, university cities across the country in creative industries? And that's even as we all talk about becoming a place that would attract a creative class. The urban center that's now taking shape and form right downtown here in the heart of our city is not our grandfather's downtown Lexington, which I remember fondly. It's not my father's downtown Lexington. It's not even the downtown Lexington of my own experience earlier in my life. What's emerging downtown now is something completely new and different. And it's based on a model that we're seeing become successful in other cities across the country. We wanna look at those benchmark cities and see how they have succeeded in bringing back the heart of their cities and see if we can emulate what they've done and come up with our own creative ideas while we're at it. As you see up there, Paducah has its artist relocation program, a very innovative program that has garnered global attention. They have, I think, at any given time, somewhere between 50 and 80 artists who have relocated to that town from as far away as Hawaii and Germany. Omaha I'll get to in just a moment because the folks out there, I think, really have a mindset that we might wanna think about. Austin, Texas speaks for itself. And many of us will be going there to actually see it up close and personal next spring, in June, actually, when Commerce Lexington takes its next leadership trip, it will be to Austin. I think the priorities of the agenda are to look at their entertainment districts. Austin got jump-started with something called a Creative Industries Loan Guarantee Program. They have an actual music commission in their government that oversees the criteria for music and performance venues in that town. And believe it or not, they even open every city council session with a performance there. In Toledo, Ohio, they have, among other things, they have sparked their arts community by creating a partnership with a bank and offering a 1% one-year loan of $500 to $2,500 to citizens who would like to purchase local art from a local gallery. This makes art more accessible. Knoxville, Madison, Louisville, Chattanooga are all cities who have been paying attention to their arts deficits and doing something about it in a very successful way. In fact, I was down in Knoxville, Tennessee recently for the first time in many, many years and frankly was pretty surprised by what I found there. It's a vibrant little rejuvenation of their city center, a lot of music going on, a lot of venues happening down there. The city center that we have emerging here is relying on dense mixed-use street-level retail and residency above, and that reflects economic, social, and demographic realities that didn't exist in the agrarian and industrial 50s and 60s, 70s, 80s, and even into the 90s. While much has occurred in those key sectors of the local and regional economies, to be sure, the presence and relative impact of higher education in our community has only steadily grown. Today, Lexington, more than anything other than the horse capital of the world, is a college city, and we're still struggling to fully exploit that, to exploit academic research, for example, as a resource for commercial growth. Efforts are being made, the partnership between UK, the city, and Commerce Lexington is implying important possibilities. In a city that relies on payroll taxes very heavily to finance perhaps sidewalks, potholes, firefighting, law enforcement, all kinds of things, not to mention the cost of the forthcoming EPA mandate, what options exist other than smart, serious economic development to get these things done? I would say none right now, unless our constitution is someday amended, and we know that's not gonna happen overnight. It's becoming more widely and better understood that the success of the downtown Lexington that's materializing today is critical to the well-being of us all, be we urban, suburban, or even ex-urban dwellers, wherever we are in Fayette County. The mix of residency and hope for street-level commerce designed to attract, house, support, engage, and entertain an educated, sophisticated, professional workforce is essential to the future prosperity of our city. So while we hope to see the establishment of certain forms of crucial retail to support the residency that I'm talking about, a grocer, for example, is crucial. The explosion of mega retail centers all around us, from the well-established Fayette Mall, Hamburg Pavilion, to similar new retail centers coming online down in Richmond and to the north of us in Georgetown would seem to narrow the practical options for commercial activity in downtown Lexington. So if the district is to thrive, we think, it must provide an attractive reason to become regarded as a destination, not only for those who choose to live in it or near it, but also for those who live in all of our city's neighborhoods, and for that matter, our city's neighboring communities, a place that attracts people. People like to linger over coffee and conversation, maybe read a book or a newspaper, watch people go by on the street at a sidewalk cafe. It's an enjoyable thing to do when you have the time to do it. We're drawn to live music. It's a human thing. We're inspired by it. We're inspired by visual art. It's nothing more mysterious than simply making allowances for us to be the way we are when given the opportunity to commune in the center of our city. As we've mentioned, from Knoxville and Paducah to Greenville, Asheville, Chattanooga, and Louisville, arts and entertainment have been central to most, if not all, successful downtown redevelopment projects all across the country. Lexington has traditionally focused heavily on sporting events, and undoubtedly will, and should continue to do so, especially if we're gonna have Saturdays like the last one. What is missing, however, are equally energetic and imaginative efforts to nurture a thriving arts and entertainment culture here in our community, one that you walk out into every day, not one that you have to search for occasionally. Recognizing this, the Task Force on Downtown Entertainment Development plans to investigate the regulatory environment that awaits any entrepreneur who's interested in investing and assuming risks of operating arts and entertainment venues. The aim is to figure out ways to create an attractive commercial environment and then to invite the market to participate. There may or may not be a strong response to that. Either way, freed of any regulatory obstructions or any other obstructions that we find, the market determines the outcome. The one thing I wanted to point out before I close is something that's taken place in the virtual heartland of our country, the development of the Old Market District of Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha. Over recent years, there's been a real focused effort on the part of city and civic leaders there to encourage the growth of Omaha's arts community. These leaders understood that Old Market, as it's called, couldn't become what they wanted it to become without giving the arts community some measure of latitude. Consequently, whenever somebody came up with a slightly quirky way of going about something, efforts were made to find ways to allow it through code changes or through financial incentives. The folks in Omaha, this is Omaha, Nebraska, have made it work by concentrating on creating the physical and legal frameworks that have brought just enough order to their downtown so that business and entertainment needs can be met while still allowing enough freedom for artists to flourish. We think Omaha and its mindset should be emulated in efforts to bring Lexington into the hyper-competitive economy that now exists here in the early 21st century. So task force members plan to roll up our sleeves and examine what exactly is necessary for the growth of a vital live music component and art spaces in downtown Lexington. And we will in the near future report to you with our findings and offer recommendations for making the very most of what is, as we all know, a very fleeting opportunity that exists here in Lexington, right here and right now. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Martin. Any questions or comments? No, thank you. Tom, do you have a list of the task force members handy or? I don't have it handy. As I say, we've been forming over the past several weeks. We're about 20 to 23 people, all walks of life, ranging from a few city officials. And we would like to invite your participation, your thoughts, your ideas, to former, present, and would-be venue owners who are very interested in seeing where we go with this. And also other members of the performing arts community here in town are involved. Vice Mayor, go ahead. I think what you just mentioned, Tom, in terms of the others who are participating in the task force, I've been fortunate to go to one meeting and I think it was David Lord, who's the president of our tourism and convention. And yes, I knew I'd get it right. David commented, he said, it's great to see so many young people that sort of have been joining, like Vitaly, who's with Preston Osborne. And I think Armane Mott and Les Miller, who have acquired Al's Bar and Grill at the Outpost on North Lyme and Sixth Street. And others have also been participating. I think there's a real sense, I think, among these people, and again, quite a cross-section of folks, that we really have to do this, that if we're gonna be a competitive city, regardless of what goes on around the heart of the city, the heart of the city has gotta be a thriving place. Whenever you go visit another city, what you wanna see is the center of a city, not the same thing that you've got in your town. Whatever it is that makes it unique and interesting. And so that's what we're doing. You might mention, too, that just as evidence of how a group like this can come together and begin networking and find some solutions that were unexpected, I believe, was it Harry Richard or was it Glenn? It was Glenn Leverage. Right. Who's president of Chase Bank. Tell that story. We began talking to several members of the banking community about the Austin Loan Guarantee Program. Glenn immediately jumped on that and is now conversing with his counterpart in Austin to get the history of it, find out how it works, and how the city of Austin was brought into play. And explain that, the loan guarantee. It's related to new venues? It's related to the development of venues in Austin. And we all know the rest of the story when it comes to Austin, Texas. They now have not one entertainment district, but three. And all of them emulate out from that program. Our interest loans, you have to meet, of course, a very rigid set of qualifications and criteria to qualify. And they're guaranteed by the city. Thank you, sir. You bet, thank you. Anything further? Thank you very much, Tom. That concludes our presentations. We're ready to go to council reports. Start with Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of things. One, I wanted to say how excited I was to see the paving of the first leg of the Healthway Trail System, a portion from the roundabout up to Shiloh Toe Park. And for those in the Ninth District, that's been kind of a missing piece for a long period of time. Just wondering what might go there, or why does this particular piece of trail end in the grass? And so very glad to see that got paved. And we have a number of other things that are going to be happening in and around Shiloh Toe Park as it relates to that. Secondly, I wanted to say congratulations to the Citizens Police Academy, especially the Alumni Association. Last Thursday, they put on the chili cook-off, and I was able to see that. And again, I want to thank Debbie Wagner and all those that are involved in the Citizens Police Academy. This is a great thing where literally every shift of the police officers was fed at Roll Call Center, and it was a great opportunity to interface with those folks. But again, for citizens out there, if you are not familiar with the Citizens Police Academy, it's probably that and the Fire Academy are probably one of the best two things that we do as a government to really give insight into what's happening here with our fire, with our police, and what it means to serve in that capacity. And I would challenge everyone to take a look at those programs. All right, the third thing is a challenge to council. And over the last couple of weeks, we've been sitting here listening to one report after another talking about how next year's budget is really going to be a tough budget. And we recognize we're already starting in the hole a number of millions of dollars. We have things like the EPA and the Police and Fire Pension Fund and all kinds of things that are massive challenges. And of course, again, it's probably the most exciting time to be in Lexington. I would just challenge each member of this council over the next couple of months to start looking at an area of government that either you're familiar with or you recognize or you want to dig into. And let's look for an opportunity within that area of government where either there is an opportunity to cut back or an opportunity to go forward that is a real positive. We can all find areas that we can cut that ultimately hurt people and frighten people and have damaging repercussions. But what I'm challenging our body to do is to begin looking at ways that this government can make and save money right now before we get into January, February and then into the meat of the budget time. Because there's some very specific things that we all kind of rub up against and interface with where we can see opportunities. And what I'd like to do as we move forward, Mayor, is to find an opportunity with the council, the whole process, to start bringing those ideas forward to you and working with your floor on that. Because now is the time to do it. So that is my report. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. A couple of things. One, the Donald Task Force will be meeting tonight from 6 to 8 p.m. over in the Phoenix building, third floor. If any council members or mayor or anybody else here today would like to come over and join us this evening, or actually are in the recommendation phase of the task force's work. So hopefully we'll be wrapping up in the next couple weeks and be able, once again, to present the council sometime in November. Also, many of us share a need and concern for private waterways or streams or creek beds that flow through private property. Due to erosion and embankments failing, there's a great need in our community to go in and perform some repairs to those areas. And as many of you know, we've been around a while. By law, we cannot go onto private property. So I've asked the Department of Law, I'm working with Commissioner Askew, to look at some type of conservation easement or some ability for LFUCG to enter onto private property to start beginning some of those repairs to some of our streams and creek beds. So hopefully that information will be coming forward to council and maybe we can make some progress in that area. And then, let's see, last but not least, I'm gonna pass off to council an idea that I came up with during the Mayor's Neighborhood Summit that we hosted here a couple Saturdays ago. And also, piggybacking with his Mayor's Night Out philosophy, I've created what we call Meet the Council Night. And without going into too much detail, I'd like to bring forth something more formative, or formal, next council meeting. So I'm passing this out as information only to my fellow council members. I would appreciate your dialogue, input, suggestions. This is just a rough draft that I'm passing out today. But I do think there has to be an opportunity for council members to have formative dialogue via Q&A with our citizens. Because as you know, many of our processes are formal. Many of them, such as zone changes or council meetings, only allow for three minutes without a response. And what I'm proposing is to take one quarter or four times a year or once a quarter for a council member to be open and accessible to the public the first Tuesday of every month so that the citizens may come and have a good dialogue with the five different council members they otherwise would not have the opportunity to meet and to ask questions to. So again, this is just a suggestion, open to your questions, comments, and of course, support. Hopefully we can have something to each everybody by next Tuesday. Thank you, Mayor. Let me expand on that just a little bit. Earlier in the year, we had talked about the possibility of the council having some meetings outside of the council chambers in different parts of town. Is it still the sense of the council that that would be something you'd like to do, maybe in conjunction with what you're talking about, or independently, Council Member Maloney? Oh, long as I don't have to take a photo machine, I'll be interested. Council Member Gordon. Well, and I just, I remember when we met in the Phoenix building when this was being renovated, I would just like to know if there's extra cost involved to do that and how much it would be. I know the video and audio folks and other folks could give us some input on that. I think it's a great idea. I would like to see what kind of cost is involved. Alden, could you crank on that just a little bit or get somebody in public information to do that? And then I'll try to follow up with Council Member Beard. Probably three, maybe four years ago, I think there was an attempt, an invite from the student council at the UK for us to go meet there at one time. And supposedly, it was not a very successful trip. GIS was not available, I don't believe. And Council Member Gordon probably, I wasn't there at the time, and she probably can expand on that. You know, we've got all this technology around us, and this idea right here would maybe alleviate the need for going to find places elsewhere. And that's kind of why I raised it. I know in January, we talked about the idea of having some council meetings outside. I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad idea at this juncture or not, but I at least wanted to raise it, and whatever you all want to do is fine with us. And Council Member Beard? Yeah, well, we have tried this in the past, and each time we've done it, it has not really worked because there's so many technical things that we have here. It was expensive, it was very cumbersome, and unless you come up with a slicker method of doing it, the three or four times that we've tried it, and I think Linda's been here, and David, that it really has not been very satisfactory by kind of getting the right chairs, and I mean, everybody squeezed up around. I mean, by the time you got through the technical eras, it sort of took the punch away from the meeting. So, I mean, I think that if those things can be figured out, it isn't a bad idea, but I think people are used to coming here if they need to get to the council first. Well, but, and Council Member McCord? I was gonna say, you know, I think what Council Member Stennitt's idea actually goes to the heart of this, in that you can accomplish what he's saying by having the council come, and we can host those meetings around the town, and be accessible to people, and be able to interface with folks in a much better way than we can even down here. So, having council meetings where we have to officially vote and all that is fine down here, and keeping Council Member Maloney close to his screen is really important, but if we can have the opportunity to go out around town and interface with folks, I think that probably accomplishes that. I'm glad we've had this conversation, and I think some good points have been raised, and unless I hear some sentiment to the contrary, we'll just take off the table for now the idea of trying to hold meetings elsewhere, although don't worry about cranking your numbers, and we'll just continue as is, and maybe this proposal will address that issue. So, thanks for addressing that with me. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. And just to continue for one thing, I think one of the most successful ones we had was our joint meeting with the school board, because they were already set up for the technical aspects of this, and Alden, you may remember that. I think in that case, it was very successful, but the others weren't particularly. I wanted to ask Council Member Stennett if this is the equivalent of you've come up with an idea while the mayor was doing his neighborhood summit. Is this like coming up with an idea during a Sunday sermon, or different from your mind getting creative there? I see you've stimulated something. Well, I think in all honesty, when the constituents stood up during the opening ceremony and says, I can never access council members, there's some questions I'd like to ask while the meeting's going on, how do I do that? Obviously, I think we've set up an email where they can email into while we're having our meeting, but again, we can't have dialogue back and forth, and that's when the process started, based on that one question. Great. Just real quickly, I wanted to go back and revisit our trip this morning to the Energy Star Home, which was the home of excellence for the home builders. I know I learned a lot, and I wanted to thank Todd Johnson for putting that together for us. Not only did we see methods that they're using for lowering energy costs, we also saw some of the sustainable materials that they're using that don't use up the earth, so to speak, they're using things that are replenishable, so I think that was really very good. And then I just wanted to say that I've been thinking so much about Lieutenant Richard Carlin, and I did get on and email him, and I know the public went out to Fayette Mall in large numbers and signed the banner. I just, his accident just highlights, with our police and our fire, how every day you go out, and you just never know what kind of situation will be out there, so I know that many of us continue to think of him. Thank you. Council Member Brevis. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to echo Council Member Stanton's comments about the conservation easement. It's a great idea we need to pursue to its full extent, and to remind Council Members that we have our next meeting on the Private Property Task Force, which is looking at the same problem from the sanitary sewer side of things, but also trying to look at the stormwater while we're at it, and this is one of several ideas in that task force, so I invite you guys to join us. That meeting's Thursday at 10 o'clock out at the Town Branch Waste Treatment Plant. Second thing I have is to move approval of this week's Neighborhood Development Fund Lists. I have a motion and second. Any discussion? Those in favor, please vote aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. Let's go ahead. Council Member Bruce. Thank you, Mayor. I've got a few Neighborhood Association meetings to announce, and I really want to encourage folks in the neighborhoods to come out to the Neighborhood Association meetings. We have Neighborhood Association officers and volunteers and people who give of their time, who are really committed to and interested in making their neighborhoods better, and they need the support of all of us. I know everybody's busy, and an evening away from home sometimes is a task to undertake, but it's worth it. The neighborhoods need support, and I encourage you to join in. Tonight, there's a meeting of the Historic Woodburg Heights Association. They'll be meeting at 6 p.m. at the building, and I can't remember the name of it now, but it's a commercial building at the corner of Marino and Maxwell on the southeast corner, easy to find. Thursday night, the 18th of October, South End Park Neighborhood Association meets at 6 p.m. at the Conference Center on Patterson Street, and the same evening, McConnell's Trace Annual Neighborhood Meeting. That's October the 18th, 7 p.m. at the Bracktown Baptist Church, and then next Monday, the 22nd, the Oakwood Neighborhood Association meets at 7 p.m. in the Park Community Center, and the Radcliffe-Longboro Neighborhood Association also at 7 p.m. in the Northside Library. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member James. Thank you, Mayor. I have a neighborhood meeting to announce the William Wells Brown Neighborhood Association, which traditionally meets at the Charles Young Center. I'm sorry, does not traditionally meet there, but will be meeting there. Usually, they meet at the Brenda Cowan Coalition on Chestnut. They're gonna be meeting at Charles Young Center on Thursday at 6.30, so it's a change of location, but the same time. That's the William Wells Brown Neighborhood. Also, I have been asked, as well as, I believe, Vice Mayor Gray, to participate in a Black Elected Officials Political Forum to be held at the U.K. Student Center in the small ballroom that's tomorrow, October the 17th, from 6 to 8 p.m., so come and participate or listen to that discussion, and I had a couple of questions that I wanted to ask. I'm not too sure, and I wondered if you could help me, Mayor. With regards to the Shelburne Plaza, and I don't know if I can even talk about this, it went to the Planning Commission. We had originally approved an IRB and some tax abatement for this project, and I read in the paper to where this went to, Planning Commission, for some changes last week, and I wondered what the procedure is now that their plan has changed. Do we have an opportunity to reevaluate that bond issuance, and when will it be coming back to Council? Yes, is the answer to your question about will we have an opportunity to reevaluate it, and I'm not sure about when it will be coming back, but we became aware of the fact that there were going to be some material changes in the proposed project, and when we heard that, we advised them that it would be our expectation to come back to the Council if they wanted to pursue IRB funding again, so we will have an opportunity to revisit that, but I'm not sure when. Okay, if anybody, yes, I'm sorry, go ahead. Sure. Council Member James, I had a long conversation with Joe Kelly about this, and what he felt confident in that he told me is that with that development plan which changed, which won't come to us for approval or anything, that he felt that this was now off the table, and that if they wanted to come back, it will be something very different, so I feel very comfortable that now what we approved earlier is off the table. Okay, thank you for that. Speaking of Joe Kelly, is he still around? And, Mayor, maybe you can answer this, but I'm curious how grievances are handled, and wondered at some point if that could be presented before Council and explained to us when an employee has a grievance, who's handling those, what's the process? Welcome back, Mr. Kelly. And just to be clear, you're talking about grievances with employees subject to a collective bargaining agreement? Yes. Agreements or other types of grievances? Yes. Both? Grievances, period. Okay, they're two different, at least two, maybe several different processes. Okay, I guess a brief on all, or if you would like to, I don't know, you could either give- Forgive me, I left 12 when we were talking about Shelburne, and I think we're here- Talking about something totally different now? Yeah, there's no TV on the elevator yet. Well, I had received a request, regarding, or a question regarding grievances, and I don't know the process of grievances of employees of government, and I would like to know if that can be shared information with me and maybe other Council members have a question, I'm not sure. Okay, some are nodding yes, some are nodding no, but if it could either be a presentation to Council as to how grievances are handled, or if you'd like to hand us some type of information that we can relay to constituents that are asking us about having grievances. I believe the information's in the employee handbook, if I'm not mistaken, but we'll be happy to provide you with- Then a presentation may be more appropriate, because there may be some confusion with the way that it's worded, sometimes words don't tell the full story. Sure, absolutely, we'd be happy to do that. Thank you very much. Was there a question about Shelburne that- Linda Worden answered it for us. Did you, thank you. Thank you. I think the question generally was, given the change in the project, what's the status of the bonds that we previously approved here, and where we left it was, that's off the table at this stage of the game. If they want to come back, which they may or may not do, it could be subject to entirely new review. And I don't know if anything else needs to be said, but that's essentially what we- What the Council did simply enabled them to go forward to the state to continue the process of seeking some abatements associated with the project. But given the fact that they had their anchor tenant pull out shortly after y'all enacted the tax abatements that we had asked you to do, they had to change the scope of the project, particularly the commercial retail piece of it. And so it's a material change that had to go back through the planning process. And so what action you took is no longer applicable. And if there was any desire on their part to ask for incentives or abatements, that would have to come before you again. Do you foresee that happening? I'm not expecting that, no ma'am. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Joe. And my last question has to do with the health insurance. And I'm a bit- I used to work in health insurance a little bit. So I'm a bit familiar with open enrollment periods and making sure that we meet that open enrollment time here. There's usually a date by which you have to sign up for a policy. And I think all Council members have received some emails regarding the potential increase. And I wanted to see if someone from Human Resources would be able to officially address with us whether there's going to be a substantial increase in the health insurance. And if that's foreseen, then I think that's something that we need to have that proposal as quickly as possible so that we're able to figure out what we're going to do before the end of the open enrollment period so that we as Council members are not stuck making a quick decision because we don't want our employees to be without health insurance. So I don't know who needs to come forward or what method or how we need to have it, but I'm feeling uneasy because of the emails. We had a meeting on that topic last Thursday or Friday, one. And I think we'll be coming forward with a proposal maybe in the next Council's work session. Commissioner Coe seems to think that timetable is feasible. So we ought to be in a position to make a definitive proposal to you then. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Stephens. Thank you. I have to hurry because I have to get home to dog sit so my wife can come to the dog meeting. And Annie's expecting me, but she could have got a dog. Pardon? You can bring the dog. Oh, you can? Well, she'd probably add to the intellectual composition of the group, I think. She's pretty smart. But I'll make that announcement tonight. I'll let Annie speak for herself. But some of us are a little anxious about water, not water coming out of the sky or water that's going through our wastewater treatment plant or other waters, but our potable water system that we've been talking about here in Lexington and Central Kentucky. And so I've asked, on behalf of some of the other council people, I asked the mayor if he would provide us with a little update on that next week so we can all exchange our ideas and answer questions. And he said he'd be happy to do so. So next week we'll be covering that issue. Thanks. Council Member Duquesne. I pass. Okay. And you're through, Council Member Stephens. You're through? Yes. I'm sorry. I think I'm well done. Council Member Peer. Thank you, Mayor. Joe, could I bother you to trot back down to the podium for a second? Okay. You had mentioned the loss of an anchor tenant, and I think we need to know at some point why they pulled out. I don't have an answer for that. I know you probably don't now, but I think we need to pursue it because without knowing the reasons, it may taint other projects, when the word is out on the street. Or was it because of delays? I mean, it may be some simple answer like that, that they're cutting back on their own expansions, whatever, but it just would be nice to know so that we can be forearmed. Yes, sir. I don't think it had anything to do with the project itself. I think it probably was the latter. It was just a business decision on their part, given where, perhaps, they saw the economy at this time. Maybe Harold can talk to Guy Titino and pry that out of him. It'd be, I'd just kind of like to know what I'm hearing, but sir, we may not like the answer, but still, it would be nice to know. Sure, absolutely. I would also just like to correct something I said earlier. You asked me about the downtown streetscape sidewalk project and I think I said high to third. It's actually high to Barr Street. High to Barr and from Midland to Newtown. So, I'm sorry, I misspoke. No, it's fine. Thank you. Yes, sir. Council Member Mormy. Mayor, I've been getting a lot of phone calls on this Montana girl, whoever that is. And I remember when I was, 20 years ago, when we had some big concerts in Rupp Arena, we used to have tickets go on sale Saturday where everybody would either get in line and go through the process to get the tickets. Now, I hear the tickets are sold out in five minutes and 90% of them, I've been hearing this is through the grape, but they're scalpers and the tickets are going for $3,600. And to me, I think it's pretty sad the kids don't get, I mean, I don't understand why we can't go back the way it was back 20 years ago where everybody got in line and got the tickets. And it was really a fair system, I think. I mean, it may not be a perfect system, but it seems like it's a lot better than the ticket being sold out in five minutes and when the majority of these tickets are going out of state and they're being put on eBay and being sold for a lot of money. And when you got a lot of kids around here that don't get to see this concert, really concerns me on how that would, and I didn't know, I'm assuming everybody on this council is getting the same kind of phone calls that I'm getting on this concert. Well, it's too bad y'all must not have no kids in your district, but I got them all. But I think, to me, I think this system did not work the way it should have been working, I think. But I still don't know who this concert, this girl is, but I still think there should be a better way to do this than having scalpers getting tickets. The ticket distribution policy for the Hanna-Montana concert has not come across my desk yet. I will keep a close eye open for it, as I suspect there are at least a couple of people in my house that would be interested in that as well. But if, in all seriousness, you'd like to take a look at what's going on in ticket distribution policy generally at Lexington Center, I'd be glad to have Mr. Owen come talk to us about it. I appreciate it, because I think, from what I understand, these tickets are going out of state, they're getting phone calls, and if you look on eBay right now, you'll see tickets of Ruff Arena for this band, whoever this girl is, and from what I understand, it's just not in Lexington alone either. It was on 60 Minutes, it's been on all the ABC shows, whatever, and I like the way it was back when I was in. Everybody got in line, and you got a chance to get a ticket. Let me, let's do this, I'll ask Mr. Green to touch base with the folks at Lexington Center and try to get a two or three page summary about the distribution policy, and we'll circulate that, and if we need to do more in the way of a presentation, we can do that later. Will that help? Okay, anything else? Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Artie, I spoke with the Lexington Horsemen a couple weeks ago, and they had asked us if they wanted to come and talk about some of the challenges they were dealing with, but I saw on the paper today that it looked like that they were gonna be the new division, so I'm not sure if they're gonna wanna be on a presentation, but I'll try to get back with you. I think they had contact about being on for a presentation next Tuesday, so they might or might not want to, but I was gonna say I'd like to put it on just in case, okay, unless they call otherwise, okay? Thank you. Anything further? All right, we've previously circulated the Mayor's Report. A motion would be in order concerning those proposed. Second. I have a motion and second to approve the Mayor's Report. Any discussion? Those in favor, please vote aye. Aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries unanimously. My account takes us down to public comment on any issues not on the agenda. Does anyone wish to comment? No. In that case, we're gonna obtain a motion to adjourn. And I have a second to adjourn. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪