If I could save time in a bottle The first thing that I'd like to do Is to save every day till eternity passes away Just to spend them with you If I could make days last forever If words could make wishes come true I'd save every day like a treasure And then again I would spend them with you But there never seems to be enough time You do the things you wanna do once you find them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's 7 o'clock, and it's May the 24th, 2011, and this is the first budget committee of the whole meeting where we will hear the LINCS report outs. And I thought I would just recap the process a little bit. We have meetings scheduled specifically for LINCS report outs, and so these will not be meetings where we make motions to put things into the budget or take things out of the budget. They're also not meetings where we hear from the public. We just simply hear our links report outs and have an opportunity to ask questions about what the link has reported. And then when we've heard from the public safety links and the general services links, I want to look at the schedule with you, Council members, just to highlight a couple of changes. So with that, I will turn this over to Council Member Myers, who will start us out with the public safety link report. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My public safety link committee consisted of myself as the chair, Ms. Peggy Henson, 11th District Council Member, and Ms. Linda Gorton, the Vice Mayor. Are we? Here we go. Thank you. So our meeting dates were April 19th, we met with Animal Care and Control, Building Inspection, and Code Enforcement. April 26th, we met with Emergency Management, Enhanced 911, and Corrections. We did Police on May 3rd. May 10th, we did Fire and the Commissioner of Public Safety. The next couple of slides show the attendees for each of the meetings. And then we get into the presentation. Animal care control, we had Ms. Susan Malcolm, the Lexington Humane Society president, was there. The way this presentation will read, we're going to do recommendations, a little bit of background, and then the long-term budgetary and policy issues if we have any. So there are no recommendations under animal care and control. The background is that we increased officers from 6 to 10 in 2009. It reduced the response time, which is really key, from 97 minutes in 2008 to 9 minutes in 2010. So that's an incredible decrease in time it takes to get out to our citizens when they call. Long-term care budgetary policy issues. The cost of food and boarding has increased, obviously, with the economy the way that it is. And that's significant because fewer people are reclaiming their pets due to the economic downturn. And so once pets enter into the system, they stay there longer, and so their budget is being negatively impacted by that. Building inspections, Mr. Dewey Crowe is the director. Recommendations we had to refer to the Code of Ordinances, Section 8-4, to law for upgrades so that the cost of mining and quarrying permits, fees, and inspections are revenue neutral. On that, we realize that the current ordinance has not been updated since 1989. The cost of the contractor to perform mandatory inspections, which is line item 72-105, is paid by the taxpayer, and currently the ordinance isn't written in a way to keep up with inflation, if you will. So we'd like to have, at some point when it's appropriate to make motions, have the law department to bring back an edit of that ordinance that would make it budget neutral. Long-term budgetary policy issues, purchasing software that would link data for all public safety. I think we'll maybe hear about that in another link a little bit, too. Code enforcement, Mr. David Jarvis is the director who came in. recommendations. We recommend that the administration details the process for handling nuisance abatement financial issues, including the responsible parties for managing each step of the application account strings. Provide figures for all the nuisance abatement revenue and then separate the information by type. The background on that is the council approved the resolution back in 2009, excuse me, that we would place $200,000 in a nuisance abatement fund on an annual basis, and the ordinance was written to authorize up to $200,000 rather than $200,000. So we want to do the research to make sure that in recent years at least $200,000 has been collected, and then we want to look at adjusting that ordinance so that it reflects that. Continue on to the next page. Model of program after the Operation Brightside, which is in Louisville, to abate illegal signs in the right-of-way. I know you all heard me. That's one of my pet peeves. So we talked about referring Code of Ordinance to Section 12.1 and PM-1082 to law for updates so that the pricing guidelines for board ups includes labor materials and indirect cost and is revenue neutral. That's another situation where we're going out and doing board ups and we're not getting the cost of doing the board up covered to the government. And so we want to recommend that those ordinances be changed so that it's budget neutral, revenue neutral. Background, code enforcement picked up an estimated 5,000 signs from the right-of-way in 2010, and the board up charges currently include materials, but labor charges are minimal. Long-term budgetary policy issues, none. Emergency management, Ms. Pat Duggar is the director. Recommendations, we have to have a strategic discussion about what long-term care emergency preparation looks like. And we kind of talked about in the committee that with all these floods and hurricanes and tornadoes and things that are happening around the country, and they seem to be hitting more and more into urban areas, that we begin to have a strategic conversation around what our emergency preparedness looks like going forward. Background, the FY 2012 budget is similar to the 1995 budget, which they haven't really had an increase in their budget in quite some time. And 10 of 12 of the outdoor warning sirens are 1960s vintage. And the parts cannot be replaced on these older models. and then largely grant-dependent. This office is run almost all by grants. So 11 out of the 12 salaries are receiving grant funding. $36,800 in operational expenses have been transferred to grants. And so we want to look at that emergency preparedness, what it looks like. We want to take into account that right now pretty much this whole operation is running off of grant funding, And if that were to change for some reason, we want to be prepared to make a positive impact with that. Drafting a pets and animal disaster plan, we talked about that, I think, last year in the budget process. I think they've put an RFP out. That plan is being – the drafting of that plan is in process, so we'll hear later on from them about that. Long-term emergency preparedness is the long-term budgetary policy issue that we want to look at. Enhanced 911, Mr. David Lucas is the director. Recommendations, we want to route the non-emergency calls through 311. This will enable tracking of those calls and the issues around those calls, and it will positively impact mandatory overtime within E-91 operations. In the background, we found out that 63 percent of the calls to E-911 are non-emergency. I think when we looked at Louisville, it was pretty much reversed. I think 63 percent of their calls were emergency. Currently, all calls to the police department are routed through dispatch, both emergency and non-emergency. Long-term budgetary policy issues, federal mandate to connect public safety with 800 megahertz radio systems by January of 2013. Corrections, we had Mr. Ron Bishop as the director. Recommendations were to explore possibilities for housing additional federal and state inmates to generate revenue. Work with judges to educate and encourage them to utilize electronic monitoring when appropriate. In the background, they booked 29,000 people in 2010 into the jail. Average dated cost for incarceration is about $70 per adult. Juveniles is about $100 per day. Electronic monitoring generates $10 per day per person. And then, of course, you don't have the cost for housing them. They have about 1,288 beds in the facility. Average number of inmates is slightly below 1,000. For background, weekenders are the most labor-intensive in our book during the busiest time, creating a law jam. So we looked at mandated to check in on Friday nights and released on Monday mornings, and that's pretty much the issue. Long-term budgetary policy issues, evaluate need for preventive maintenance, need a replacement plan for mattresses. They're $55 each. I think they haven't been replaced in a couple of decades. And then recent court ruling may pass health care costs for inmates onto a jail. Under police, we have Mr. Ronnie Bastion as the chief. Recommendations were none. Background, chief stated that there are two primary functions will be responding. There are two primary functions under this new budget are going to be responding to calls for service and investigating crimes. Excuse me. FY 2012 plans reduces the clear unit officers from 8 to 4. Mounted officers from 8 to 4 Traffic control reduces Reduced from 25 to 21 officers Downtown and park patrol From 8 to 4 officers And then there will be limited policing Of the Legacy Trail Continued background Programs to be eliminated Safety City DARE And the GREAT program from the schools Funeral escorts will be eliminated Air support will be limited to nights only, and the emergency response unit is losing a coordinator. Long-term budgetary policy issues, none. Then we had fire and EMS with Mr. Keith Jackson, acting chief. Recommendations include add $30,000 for the FY12 budget to cover late runs, and we're going to put that under account number 63152. The average total hours for EMS fire late runs between FY2006 and 2010 equals about 576.8. And the average hourly rate with benefits is about $47. So that multiplied would equal $27,075.76. And that's why we're recommending that we put $30,000 in there. Late runs, just for a little bit of background, if you're out on a call and your shift ends, you can't just walk away because your shift ends, so you're going to have to stay on site until things are taken care of, and that's going to require overtime. The current budget does not account for that. We also want to establish a new line item for that late run overtime, and then make paramedic training a priority for FY12. 18 existing firefighters could be trained at a cost of $218,000. And then research best practices for staffing firefighters and paramedics. For background, there are $0 located in the budget to cover overtime for late runs. There's not been a new class of paramedics trained in three years. Paramedic class of 27 costs $400,000 when done off-duty. The training for existing firefighters includes overtime and backfilling trucks. Long-term budgetary policy issues, fire tower has been condemned and is in need to repair for training. And then in closing, public safety division, long-term budgetary policy issues, look at cell phone contracts for cost savings. Probably should look at that citywide. and look at opportunities to link government services through e-commerce, connectivity software to track issues through public safety, and a federal mandate to connect public safety with 800 megahertz radios in January 2013. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Myers. First up with questions is Council Member Lawless. Thank you. On the E911, was there documentation to back up that 63% of the calls to E911 are non-emergency? Was there any kind of documentation of that? I'm not sure that we actually saw the documentation in our link. But I'm sure that we could get that for you. I think that would be very important to see the documentation of that. Thank you. Okay. Do you have, could I ask, is there something you're looking for in that? Well, I know that any time you call 311, if it's a police matter, they send it over there to the 258 number. And also, if you're calling, I mean, I don't know how that's going to work, first of all. And secondly, 63% of the calls are non-emergency. I'd just like to see the documentation of that, especially when you said, was it Louisville? was the reverse of that. Yes. So I think it would be interesting to see that documentation. Okay. If I could add to that, one of the things that we looked at doing, I think the administration already wants to do it, and we want to certainly support the administration in doing that, and that is similar to the council office, we used to have our receptionists take all calls directly and then disperse those calls. And I'll admit in our committee meeting that I'm one of the bad ones that would call because if I needed to talk to somebody in government and I didn't know their number, I would just call 3200 and get the council aide or the council clerk and then ask them to transfer me wherever I wanted to go. That's essentially what's happening with this. Most of those calls that are coming in that are not emergency are employees of the government, and they're calling into that line to be transferred wherever they want to go. So the same way that we as a council have that 3200 rolled to 311, that's what we're talking about doing now. So those non-emergency calls will go there. I'd just like to see the documentation. Sure. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Stenna. Thank you, Vice President. Thank you. It's not working. I can yell. We're going to have to switch mics in. Okay. A couple questions. A follow-up, what Council Member Lawson was talking about, Council Member Myers. As I understand, the 63 percent, because we had this issue in our link, too, because we have 311, is most of those are police officers calling their own non-emergency number. So can't that just be corrected? And why are they calling 3,600? Maybe the commissioner wants to comment on that, but that doesn't make a lot of sense. Why they're calling a public number that we give out for the public to call, but yet our personnel is calling the number. So I'd like to see that. You don't have to address it right now, Commissioner, but I'd like to see that information, too, as to why that policy has been in place. I'm not sure that there's a policy in place, but that's why I mentioned that the majority of those calls were employees. Right. Well, I'm not sure shifting that to 311 solves anything. I think if an officer needs to call in, I think there needs to be another dedicated line for them only, not the public line. But we can get there. My first question is, in this link, did you all discuss the total cost of collective bargaining that's built in the budget and what that number is? because the mayor did build in there reducing that by $5.6 million. So I'm not comfortable with that $5.6 million reduction if we don't know what last year's collective bargaining number is and what this year the number is in the budget. I guess for us the issue was that collective bargaining had been pushed back so that it hasn't even started yet in some cases by the time we finish our link work. So we have no idea what collective bargaining is going to take place this year. So, I mean, we can get you the numbers on what they were for last year. But, you know, we don't have any way of knowing what it's going to be this year. No, I understand that. But in this green book, there's a number in there. It's spread out through every division. What is that number? Because it's been reduced, and tell me if I'm wrong, Commissioner, by 5.6 million. I mean, does somebody want to tell us what the number is from last year to this year, how we got that reduction and what departments it's in? Because I think that's critical. If we approve this budget, we're approving a $5.6 million reduction. Does budgeting or finance want to answer that? And then I also, Commissioner Mason, do you know offhand whether there is a policy in the Division of Police that police officers call the, what number are they instructed to call? If you know that, that might clarify also Council Member Stenet's first question. My understanding is that the 3,600 number at night. Got it fixed. We're having fireworks. That it's the 3,600 number at night that rolls to dispatch. So there's no 311 number at night either. So anybody that calls the city at night after a certain hour, it rolls into the E911 system. I think the question Council Member Stenet had was, is there a policy in police requiring them to call a certain number? I don't know. Maybe, could you find that out for us? And then Commissioner Driscoll. Vice Mayor, could I speak to that just for a second before the commissioner comes up? Commissioner, could you come back up for just a second, please? Does this happen because the non-emergency line is answered by the same dispatchers that answer the emergency line instead of 311? So if we routed those calls to 311, would that not take care of the issue? I'm not certain about the exact pathing of those calls. The 311 goes to, after 6 o'clock or 7 when they close, will go to a voice mail. And then in the morning, the crew will come in and then make those calls. Now, 311 does not go to the 3600 or the 911. But I just want to clear up on something here. Glenn Brown is going to come back to you all and give you more information about 911 information and how we're going to make some changes and all that. There's also an education part that you all need to know about. We've been talking to a lot of the guys that take the 911 calls. They're getting calls a lot of times what the lottery numbers are, what the weather is, and they don't quite understand what 911 is. So we're going to have to revamp the education component where 9-1-1 is. And you've got 3-1-1, you've got 9-1-1. We're going to really spend a lot of time with our folks on how we're going to educate that. The police are going to be involved. Fire is going to be involved. So I just want to let everybody know that there are a lot of issues out there about 9-1-1. People are calling. I mean, you'd be amazed what kind of stories we're hearing what 9-1-1 gets. So we're going to try to solve all that problem. When Glenn comes back up here and tells you all what we're going to do with the 911. Okay, Mr. Maloney, I have one more question for you. If you took the 3600 number and rolled that to 311 during the day, would that not allow you to track? So if you have police officers that are calling that number, the administrative line that's out there for the citizens to call, Would that not allow you to track those calls and then we could ascertain, you know, how many police are calling it and why they're calling it? That's something we're looking at before. And there was a, before I went off to council, 3,600 had an operator there in their office. There was a lady there for a long time that took the 3,600 calls during the day. Then when that person left, all the 3,600s went to the 911. And we are looking at all kinds of options. We're looking possibly either maybe putting somebody back in that position for the police only, for administration, or we're looking at how we can also work with 311. That is going to be an ongoing process to help out, to try to help with 911 instead of getting all those 3,600 calls. Okay. I guess I would be in agreement with Councilman Stenet then that if you put the operator back on the 3600 line, I'd still want to know why it is that the police officers are calling that line. That was brought up, and I think in one of the links that we are, Will and Clay and all of us are looking, how we can educate the police. They're using the 3600 to have somebody dispass them to another person. So we are going to try to put a policy and procedure in place that they have those phone numbers in there so they can make sure they called it directly instead of dialing, holding up 3,600. So that's something that was brought out of the links, and we will be glad to look into that. Okay, because they all have computers in their cars, so it seems like it would be easy to have that phone list in there. Yeah, so that's something we're going to be working with. Thank you. David Lucas just entered out of breath. Did you have something to add? I suspect you were watching this. I thought I was in shape, but I'm not. No, actually, I was down at the public library doing a training session, and someone mentioned that you all were discussing this, so I was just making myself available in case there were any calls. Any questions? No, if they've already handled it, that's fine. Okay. I'm still waiting on the collective bargaining number. Yes. Well, but I think there were still some questions about the verification of the 63 percent of the calls that go to E911 that are non-emergency and why the 3,600 rolls over into E911. I think that David can probably address that. Those were the two questions, David, that had come up. Were the 63 percent how we get that number? And do you have some documentation? Yes, actually that 63% we've had it for the last five years. I track number of 911 calls versus number of administrative calls. Actually, we've done it ever since we started collecting a fee for 911 so we can balance that according to state regulations. So we have a call counting software that tracks every month. And actually on our website we post the previous year's call counts. We have it per location and then the total. So every January we look at that number and use that for our budgetary counts the next year. So all calls to 911 come through dedicated trunks, and all calls to $3,600 or $5,600 come through the PBX or our call system, and we track those separately. So before we had 911, people would call $3,600 for police service, and the same people answer both calls. We know, by the way, the call rings and the sound and the visual aspect, if it's an administrative or a 911 call, we set the priority accordingly. But the same person answers both those calls in the same center, and they're all trained. Because there are times we get people calling 3,600 when it's really an emergency, and we have people who call 911 when they want to complain about the basketball goal and the cul-de-sac. So those people are trained to handle both of those. Did that answer your question? Council Member Lawless had that question earlier and was wanting to see the documentation. If you can provide that. How far back do you want? Oh, the last year. Okay. That's on our website. I'll just send you over the link. Would you mind to send that to all Council Members, please? Okay, thank you. And now, where are we here? Commissioner Finance is going to come up and talk about the numbers for collective bargaining. Good afternoon. We did assume $5.6 million for police and fire savings. It is all within the personnel categories. To give you specifics, I'll just tell you the way we approached it. Obviously, we've hired a professional negotiator as we go through collective bargaining. And in the spirit of collective bargaining, we've not set out we would reduce steps by this or uniforms by that. Obviously, again, in the spirit of collective bargaining, have given our negotiators these targets and that they are working through, the plan is to work through with the unions in terms of negotiating which pieces would be included or reduced. And we came about these numbers by looking at a percent reduction and basically a mathematical calculation to get to those numbers. So there's a target for police and a target for fire. Can you give me the payroll, the personnel numbers from last year as compared to this year? because obviously they're spread out through many different budgets within their budgets. Sure. Can you give us those totals? Parison. Thank you. Okay. Then my next question was on code enforcement, Councilman Myers. I noticed there was no money in there for the sidewalk program for people we cite. Was there any discussion about adding money back in there to help people repair their sidewalks again? And also if you want to touch on the abatement money, I know we had a lengthy discussion last year and two years ago about abatement money and keeping that at a certain level. Did you all discuss those two items in code enforcement? Councilmember Myers asked if I would answer that. We did. And the director, David Jarvis, recommended we not put money in because we never can fulfill the need. Now, there is money in another place for the low-income grants. And do you remember where that is, Council Member Myers? I don't remember. We do still have an amount of money for the low-income sidewalk grants matching. And then the abatement money was sufficient? I spoke a little bit about the numbers we're trying to get. The ordinance that we passed, I think the intent of the council, from my memory, just my memory, was that the intent was to put at least $200,000 into that fund. The way the ordinance is written, it says up to $200,000. So it's left to the administration to determine how much they put in. That's why we're trying to get the numbers for the last five years or so. We want to make sure that there's been at least $200,000 collected. And if so, then we're going to recommend that we change that ordinance to say, you know, not less than $200,000 or whatever the law department deems be the appropriate language. So we make sure that money's in there. But we didn't want to do that before we know that we've collected that much, because then we put ourselves in a bind where the administration is going to have to find money somewhere and put in there. Okay. And then the last question I have is for corrections. Was there any discussion with the commissioner or with Director Bishop about doing electronic monitoring for the weekend offenders? Because right now I know that's a big need, and we're housing people on the weekends and having to open up pods and overtime staffing, et cetera. Was there discussion? Because I think the courts are ready to go. The prosecutor mentioned in Ireland he's ready to go with it. What's the holdup in not being able to do that? I think that we did have a discussion about that. It's my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, that the prosecutors are ready to go. They're still discussing it with the judges. That is the biggest tie-up. We talked about that bottleneck or log jam because those folks are coming in on Fridays and leaving on Mondays. Part of the discussion was why allow them to come in on Fridays in the first place? Some of those folks don't even have jobs, so it's not like you're trying to let them stay at their job during the week and then do their time on the weekends. So part of that discussion I think they're having with the courts is maybe to change the way they're actually sentencing some of these folks so that they just do their time during the regular week. That will eliminate the bottleneck. In terms of the funding amount, the cost per day, the $70 per day, yes, they're working on, where appropriate, putting them out on the electronic surveillance. Well, if you do electronic, the offender pays that cost, so it's no cost to us to do this. So the Administration Commissioner, you were in full support of doing this program, if we can get the judges on board? Because I think this would save us a huge amount of money in our jail system. Yes, we had a meeting about six weeks ago with the county and Commonwealth attorneys' offices, and we're proceeding to try and get the consensus with the judicial community here to use that more as a viable option to reduce the jail population. Very good. If I could follow up on that, I personally think that the real opportunity to save money and even make money on that is once you clear the jail of those that are appropriate to put out on electronic surveillance, then to go after more of the federal inmates that were paid to house. The reason is because if you look at that $70 per day, part of that's a baseline cost. You know, you've got the note on the jail. You've got the employees, things like that. So if you put, say, another 100 folks out on electronic surveillance or electronic monitoring, it's not going to take the full $70 away. You're going to save your food costs and some other costs, but I think that savings is really minimal compared to if you do that and then backfill those with federal inmates, now you start to make up that difference. And then the last thing, and I'll be quiet. did you talk about adding money back in to reopen the cafeteria for the employees that we closed three years ago? I think the total was $80,000 so they can have a meal. One of the benefits of working out there would be to stay on site, one for a safety issue, because they only get 30 minutes, and knowing where the jail is, there's not a lot of places you can leave there and come back in 30 minutes. Did you all have that discussion about reopening that for $80,000? Actually, we did not. That didn't come up in our discussions, but I'll be happy to follow up with Director Bishop about that. That'd be great. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My question has to do with the reductions in the Division of Police. And if you have it, I would like to ask some more information on the rationale there, because it seems that where most cuts are being made are in line operations where we're taking police officers off the street, where we're reducing the clear unit by half, mounted patrols by half, taking, reducing traffic control by four, park patrol downtown by four, and so forth, eliminating funeral escorts. Was there any discussion of whether reductions could have been made in administrative positions positions or office positions rather than on the line where our police officers are most needed and will be most sorely missed? Yes, sir. And I'll speak to this, and if someone from the police department wants to come up, if I misstep or clarify. The operative statements here in the background was that the chief stated that the two primary functions will be responding to calls for service and investigating crimes. one of the things they want to do is make sure that they manage their response time. And so when you look at these reductions, what they're actually doing is taking these officers from these posts and put them back on the street. So these aren't layoffs or anything like that. They're just reassigning them basically from, say, the mounted officers, mounted patrol, to a street patrol. So they're getting more officers out on the street to respond to the response times quicker, more efficiently. and then also investigate crime. So I think an analogy or a comparison might be that FIRE, when we heard FIRE's presentation that we all heard last week, they talked about moving people from administrative positions onto the street to make up for their shortfall employees. Police, it's my understanding, has already done that over the last few years. So they've taken all the sworn officers from the different administrative slots and put them on the street. So the only thing left to do in order to get more officers on the street is to decrease these programs. Thank you very much. That's helpful and somewhat reassuring. It's too bad we have to make any cuts at all, but that's the way it is. One follow-up on the funeral escorts. What will be the rules on that? Will funeral processions still work their way through red lights and so forth? And if so, how is that going to work? Presumably these processions will be quieter. I'm just concerned about the safety issue. I think probably it would be good to have someone from the police department come in at a later date and kind of go through that because I think the public needs to be educated on how that process is going to work. I will say, however, though, we found out that some funeral homes actually charge a fee as part of their package to cover that cost, although the city's not getting any of that fee. So, you know, we had some conversations around what if we just implemented a fee and that, you know, the funeral homes could roll that into their package and we could, you know, kind of divert the cost to them. there are some complications maybe with doing it that way. So I think maybe what we'll do is ask the police department to come in to take a look at that, have the administration take a look at that option, and then have them come in and do a presentation on how this is going to work if they don't do them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Kay. Council Member Myers, I want to follow up on a couple of comments that Council Member Blues made. The first one is about the clear officers, and I guess I'm a little confused. They are on the street. They're just on the street in a different way, and I'm curious about what the thought was about the clear officers in particular, and if the reduction is from 8 to 4, which neighborhoods will lose that service. Thank you. Those are great questions, and we have the same questions. And I'll tell you, as a council member who has a clear officer who does an absolutely fantastic job, in my district, that is the biggest concern to me in all of what public safety looked at. It's my understanding, as late as last week, the police department has not determined how they're going to make those cuts. My hope would be that if it's going to go from 8 to 4, that instead of four neighborhoods not having an officer any longer, that the 8 would have a part-time officer. but again that's something that the police department hasn't determined yet so we don't know well I appreciate the thinking on that I guess I just want to add a comment and that is that if the CLEAR program has been so successful it seems to me it's aimed at prevention rather than apprehension which is more cost effective and so I continue to have questions about why that particular program has been targeted thank you Go ahead, Vice Mayor. I was just going to respond to that. But these, all of these cuts were presented for the budget by the police chief. So I think that that's a really good question that perhaps police could answer why they chose these things. and you'll notice most of them are crime prevention, which we heard loud and clear in our link. Yes. And I guess maybe part of what needs to happen is to wait and see how collective bargaining works out as well, because that's another piece of this puzzle that we don't have an answer to until it's done. But I certainly would like to have the police department come in and do a thorough presentation on what these cuts are going to be at the end of the day, should things stay the way they are, and then the effectiveness of them policing, if that's the way it's going to be. Because obviously, like you said, preventative maintenance or preventative policing is better than apprehension after things have happened. So we'll be looking forward to that presentation. Thank you. Do you have other questions? Okay. Council Member Lawless. My question was really along the same lines. I have absolutely no issue with the Safety City and DARE and the GREAT program being eliminated. But one thing that, like, mounted officers, bicycle, police, I don't know where they play into this, but the clearer unit has been the most, I mean, it has saved our neighborhoods an enormous amount. And the response to neighborhood issues and et cetera, I really hate to see that. And one thing I know is, and I witnessed it the other day because I was in a discussion with a neighborhood association about all the problems they were having, and that when the bike patrols do such a good job, but when a patrol car is driving down the street, that's really not, you know, it's not the same as seeing a police officer walking down the street or riding a bike down the street. And the other day I was on South Lime, and there were some young people who were clearly out of control, intoxicated. And there was a patrol car right next to me driving by, and one of the young women stumbled into the street and almost got hit by a car. I stopped and rolled down my window, and I said, please be careful and take care of your friend. But the patrol car, you know, wasn't watching for that. So I really think that the clear officers are a huge, huge asset to the community in a million ways. So thank you. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I don't want to echo what everybody has said, but while I applaud many of our different public safety divisions for looking at ways to make reductions and use people in other areas that are essential areas, I do have concern. I believe that many of these divisions, particularly within police, have been told that these cuts are going to be made, that they're going from 8 to 4 with clear. and I can't even begin to express what that might do to some of these neighborhoods where we rely very heavily on these clear officers and how the four people that might be moved, how that's really going to have an effect on another area within the Division of Police. And I have to say, my initial comment was going to be, I'm a little disappointed that I see fire and the people can answer questions with fire, but that public safety is a majority of our budget and that we do not have representatives from every division here to be able to answer our questions during this report out. So I would just maybe suggest, I don't know if it's to the administration or whether it was our duty to let them know when the report outs were, but like I said, all I see is fire. poor David Lucas had to run over from training. I don't even know if he was aware that we were reporting out and what time we were doing that, but I would make a strong recommendation that this afternoon we have the different directors from within our divisions in attendance to be able to answer some of our more specific questions. I also am very concerned about the overtime with police or lack of. They don't show that much over time, but I know the sector that represents my district and many of you all's districts, that they are very shorthanded and that when they do have officers who are on duty, if they have to haul someone to jail and it's the end of their shift, that they are taking that time. And rather than getting overtime and coming in at their next normal shift, oftentimes they're coming in late two or three hours, and we're already short in a sector. So when you have an officer who is not coming in because they worked over on their last shift and you're already shorthanded, that means that we have less police officers on the street. And that is a huge concern to me, and I would like to hear how they are addressing those issues as well. Thank you. You're welcome. Can I respond? Yes. Okay. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Cosby, maybe the commissioner is going to talk about this, but the last point that you made about the late runs, that was not brought up by the police department in our link. And so where fire made us aware that there was an issue with late run overtime, the police department did not make us aware of that. Well, my point is that they're not, because it's not an issue on paper, it shouldn't be an issue with budget because they're not charging overtime. It's my understanding what's being done is rather than charge the overtime, what they're doing is saying you don't start until two hours. If you worked over two hours, then on your next shift you come in two hours late. Okay. And so there's not a financial impact, but it is a complete service impact. When you are short so many officers and then you have somebody who's not reporting for their shift for two hours, so with the budget there's no impact. Sure. I didn't understand that was a policy that they had made, so that's a question for the commissioner. Commissioner. I'm not familiar with the particulars of that, but I will say we did not receive the report out until this morning. I was not aware that this part of it was going to be on the agenda today because we had no report out of the Lynx report until this morning when I got in here. So I'm trying to get some people from police to come over and address these. that can talk about the decision process that this plan has been through to look at putting people in patrol and investigations from some administrative billets. Thank you. If I could just respond briefly. Council Member McCord is next, so if you want to take a few seconds. Thank you, Council Member McCord. And Council Member Crosby still has time. I just want to respond to the statement that they didn't know about the report out. This meeting was scheduled. It was on the calendar. It went out Thursday's packet. We didn't meet until Friday as a link to finalize our report. And so the report went out today because that's what it took to get the report done. But this meeting was scheduled last Thursday, probably even before that. But I was not – yeah, without us, the public safety portion being in the packet that got out last week, I was not – it was me. I did not know that this was going to come this morning and this was going to be on here. I thought that what was in the packet last week was all that was going to be covered. And I asked that yesterday in the commissioner's meeting. So it's just a miscommunication, but I'm trying to get some people over here. Okay. Thank you very much. Council Member Crosby, I think you probably have about a minute left if you need it. I'll go ahead and yield to Council Member McCord. Thank you. No, it's fine. Thank you. Okay. Council Member McCord. Thank you. And, again, this is, I think, one of the things that comes up when, in the budget address, the mayor had said, you know, this budget balances with police and fire finding $5.6 million more. And I think now we're starting to see, you know, just how difficult that is for police and fire and how some of those decisions don't necessarily positively impact the citizens of Lexington. But one of the things, Council Member Myers, I want to put on your agenda as you go back, is it goes back to code enforcement, something that we have looked at, Director Jarvis and I, for a number of years, that might be a policy change that could radically change the way we do the abatement situation. As Council Member Farmer is going to report out, there's an issue that came up in our links about mowing and greenways and who mows and how do we pay for that and so forth. And there's going to be some policy recommendation coming forward in the next couple of months. as to who mows. But one of the opportunities we have is the way Louisville does it is they don't put abatement money into code enforcement. All right, let me back up. The way that we do it is your neighbor's grass grows to 14 foot tall. They get sited. They don't mow it. We pay a contractor about 300 bucks to go out and then send a bill to the neighbor. And then if the neighbor doesn't pay it, we put a superior lien on the house. That's why we have to put so much money into abatement money to pay those contractors to come and do that. The way Louisville does it is they skip that process and they have employees of their government, parks workers, streets and roads folks, whatever, go and mow that and charge the same $300. So when Director Jarvis gives you the numbers back as to what they actually bring in, which is somewhere, depending upon the year, between $300,000 and $600,000, Just making that change could radically change the way that we have resource for that program, but also I think I would take it one step further. And my recommendation would be to look at putting whatever money came from abatement into Park's budget for mowing. And so that would be my recommendation is you kind of run down more questions and answers and so forth, but I think this is an opportunity that we've got in this year's budget to radically change those things around. But I wanted to put it on your radar while we had a chance and could talk about it. Thank you very much. Council Member Lane, we have the chief here. Would you like to ask your question, or can we ask the chief to respond to the several questions that have been asked? Well, I will defer to the chief. I had a question for detention. Okay. But Chief Bastin, you're welcome to come up and speak to the question. Okay, thank you very much. Chief Bastin, we have had a number of questions come up after the public safety link report. Welcome. Did you also have to run here like David Lucas? I came over pretty quickly. We're still out of breath a little bit. Well, we appreciate your getting here. I don't know what the snafu was in the communication, but thank you for coming. One of the questions early on was would funeral processions simply move on their own without the escort? And then a question about, well, there was a lot of concern about cutting the clear officers, and if you can just clarify what they'll be doing. And then Council Member Crosby brought up the late runs when an officer is on a case and the shift ends, and what is the policy about that. So that's enough for now. So funeral escorts first. That's a good start. I think what most divisions in government are trying to do as we downsize is to reassess our priorities on what we can and can't do. And we're no different than other divisions. We're looking at how we move forward and maintain our primary responsibilities of responding to calls for service and investigating crimes. So as a result of that, we have to look and assess what we can maybe do without in terms of support units and support functions. Funeral escorts, last year we did 2,041 of those. and we estimate that it takes about 8,000 man hours.