Music Thank you. The End Thank you. The End Thank you. this packet. We have presentations which I've been asked to ask you if you would be willing to move them to the beginning, preferably after public comment and approval of the summary. So I think I heard a motion from Farmer and a second from Myers to do that. So is there any discussion of that motion? If not, and I'm not in my screen yet, if anybody has logged in, just let me know. Okay. No discussion. All right. So the motion is to move the presentations to come after approval of summary. All those in favor, please say aye. Anyone opposed? All right. The first item on our agenda is public comment of issues on the agenda. And there seems to be one person who has signed up, and Yolanda Dodford. Oh, I'm sorry, Bradford. Okay. If you'll come to the podium, please, and give us your name and address, and you'll have three minutes. Hello, my name is Yolanda Bradford. Our address is 1035 Strader Drive. I'm with the Road to Home Ownership. I'm the Executive Director of the agency. And I just want, I think I sent each board member a letter yesterday stating and asking that we be put back on the budget for this coming year. We were completely eliminated this year after our third year of funding from the city. and we're just asking that we be put back on because we are, I believe we're an integral part of the new project that you all have coming up. The way I understand it, we were eliminated to create a housing and development program. Well, the Road to Home Ownership is a housing and development program that is in existence, and we've been very successful in our performance within the last three years with the city. And so at this time, we're just asking that we be added back, even if it's half. We have a lot of clients in our program right now that are getting ready to graduate. And then also, we've taken every stride that the city and our banking institutions has asked us to. We're a HUD-approved counseling agency, and now this year coming forward, we'll be able to apply for HUD fundings, but we still need that support from the city at least for the next year. So we're just asking you to look at that and reconsider giving us at least a portion of our funding back. Thank you very much. The second item is approval of summary, and there is no summary. And so then we will hear from the first report is I'll call on Commissioner Mason. This is the community corrections response from Director Bishop. Commissioner Mason. Thank you. First, I would like to bring up Community Corrections Director Ron Bishop, who will briefly address some of the concerns raised by Sheriff Witt's survey of the facility. Throughout Sheriff Witt's survey, Mayor Senior Advisor Jeff Reed and others have been engaged in regular communications with her as well as internal communications about this process. Mr. Reed is here and available to address questions as well. Thank you. And, Commissioner, I will ask for the 15-minute clock, please. That's fine. Thank you. Director Bishop will now provide some clarification and updates on a few of the items highlighted by Sheriff Witt's report. Welcome, Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Vice Mayor. members of the council. I appreciate the opportunity to be here to update you and to respond to some of the issues raised in the sheriff's report. I will be brief. In your packet that you received from us with the responses, we tried to be as succinct as possible and as factual in our responses to give you the information that we felt would help also with the assessment of this entire evaluation. There were obviously some areas that we didn't respond to, didn't feel that we needed to. They were pretty self-explanatory. Hopefully, though in our responses, we provided some clarity, and hopefully in any comments I have today or any questions you have, my responses will try to provide some clarity. We believe that there are two things that are absolutely essential to maximize the effectiveness of this report, and that is the context in which it is delivered and the objectivity in which it is delivered. Without context, you're going to have just a group of raw numbers, philosophy, theory, and you will have information where it would be very difficult, I think, to determine whether this was an isolated incident or a pattern of practice. So hopefully we can address some of those issues there today. There are three attachments in your packet. They are shown as attachments three, four, and five. Those are inspection reports. One from the Kentucky Department of Corrections, one from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and one from an Alliant Insurance Company. We are inspected semi-annually by the Kentucky Department of Corrections. We are inspected on 160 standards. They are measurable and quantifiable. All jails in Kentucky are measured against those 160 standards. I am on the JL Standards Commission as appointed by the Secretary of the Justice Cabinet, J. Michael Brown. So I'm involved with those standards, and I'm very familiar with those. As you can see from the packet, the Department of Corrections accepted our corrective action plan as we submitted. And our inspections are always very, very good. The corrections that they did, the deficiencies that they did note, were corrected within 24 hours because they were very minor with the exception of one, and that's the mattresses that I'll talk about in just a minute. The DOC and the Bureau of Prisons are fairly large agencies that have a lot of experience in evaluating and inspecting jails and prisons, so we're very proud of that record that we have with them. The United States Marshal Service inspects us annually. They do not do a report, so that's the reason you don't have one from them, but it's always favorable. And Alliant Insurance Company was doing a risk management assessment and only had one issue, and that was a ladder that had been placed over the case of a fire extinguisher, and that was removed on site. I'd like to, as Commissioner Mason mentioned, just highlight a few of the areas that we thought were very, very significant that obviously have been in the past some interest to this council and we feel like would be important to address. In the area of retention, I'd like to point out that our retention rate is up. Our turnover is down from 40 percent in 2002 to 23 percent in 2010. That's a 17 percent reduction. The national average is 17 percent, and that's our goal to reach that average and go below it. And we believe with our continued efforts that we are on the path to do that. We do exit surveys of individuals who leave the facility. We provided three years of those surveys to the link committee. And the people who leave our facility don't leave for poor working conditions. They leave for better paying jobs. They sometimes say this was just not a good fit for me. They leave for family or personal reasons, sometimes school and sometimes health. Part of our retention efforts are going to include this year something new. We were able to get into the mayor's proposed budget for FY12, psychological or as they're called, suitability assessments and polygraphs. We think that's going to even strengthen our ability to identify more suitable and more appropriate candidates that will help us continue to bring that turnover rate down. We also track with applicants, how did you hear about us? What brought you to us today? Is it the Internet? Is it the newspaper? Is it the bulletin board in the government center? And the number one reason that they come to us is referrals from current employees. So, again, I would submit that people are probably not going to recommend a place where they work, where there are poor working conditions to their friends and family members. The next item are mattresses. We completely agree with the sheriff. We have requested funding in FY11 and FY12. The government is experiencing serious financial difficulties, and those funds were pulled. But I think the fact is that there are some issues with those mattresses. Many of them go back to the beginning of the facility. So we're in complete concurrence there that those mattresses do need to be replaced, and we assume that when funding is available, we will address that. There's a security upgrade that's going on that this council voted on a bond issue, a $1 million project that is replacing our pan-tilt zoom cameras with higher resolution cameras and the software and behind-the-scenes kind of guts, if you will, that operates our doors and a lot of the mechanical systems. I'm pleased to report that that project is on budget and on time. It is nearly complete, and there is an estimated or projected completion date of late September. One of the other issues brought up in the report are warrant checks. We, on most individuals, warrant checks are done about four times before an individual is released. The arresting officer generally does one when they're bringing them in. The pretrial staff, which is part of the administrative office of the courts, does one. The Division of Community Corrections and our classification staff does one. And then at the release period, we do another one. There are some occasions when there are what we call sudden releases where bond issues or the court has released someone or ROR that we may not do those. But what we are planning to put in place is a pilot project where we are going to use our staff to do a court net search on all individuals. We're going to run that for about two to four weeks, see what kind of results we get from that. That would be five warrant checks over the current four we have. I would like to draw your attention to attachment number six. Those are major accomplishments that we have had over the years. I am extremely proud of the efforts of our staff. And given the reduction in our staff and the loss of budgets, it makes these accomplishments, I think, even more notable. We have currently 74 positions that are unfunded from 2009. And that makes those accomplishments more difficult. But, again, that's why we're so pleased with that. Our senior staff makes up about 152 years of experience, and many of the men and the women that you see in the audience here today, they are responsible for those accomplishments. They made those things happen, and I'm extremely proud of them, and I think this community and this government should be extremely proud of them. The last issue I want to bring up is our maintenance. We're in partial agreement with the sheriff on the maintenance issues. We have a lot of technology and a lot of mechanical systems in that facility. It is probably one of the newer facilities in the government. We have lost, over the last three years, 56% of our maintenance staff. But the facility is in by no means deteriorating state. Yes, it's a decade old, and yes, things start to break down and have to be maintained. I will admit to you that our preventive maintenance program is pretty much, for the most part, gone. We are reacting to situations on a daily basis. But I can tell you that the maintenance issues are being addressed and the facility is not in a poor state of repair or deteriorating. In closing, I would just like to say that I feel very comfortable in saying to you today that you do have a leader in corrections and jails with the Fayette County Detention Center. In every sense of the word, the physical plant design, the operations, the classification, the programs, the direct supervision. I am so proud of the individuals that are sitting in this room and who work with me on a daily basis. And I think that the responses that we've presented bear that up. We have had numerous delegations come to visit us from the Midwest and all over the country, more than I can keep up with. But I can tell you that six international delegations have visited us. Finland, Poland, Australia, Canada, Uruguay, and the Iraqi delegation had to cancel. Those folks came to see us because of what we do and what we do very well. And once again, I want to pay tribute to the men and the women sitting in this audience and out there at the jail right now. We do that heavy lifting every day. And I would be happy to take any questions you have at this time. Thank you very much, Director Bishop. Council members, do you have questions? Councilmember McCord. Thank you, Vice Mayor. A couple of questions. First of all, thank you for coming, and thank you all for coming and the job that you do every single day. As I started looking through the two reports, and there were a couple things that jumped out at me, and I'm glad you mentioned a couple of these, but I want to reiterate for folks, because you packed a lot in about ten minutes there, Director, that there are four separate groups that have looked at your operation as well as the sheriff's group. That's correct. And so one of the questions, let me ask you, is anyone from the sheriff's office here today? Oh, hello, Sheriff. I've got a couple questions for you as well. So that's a really important piece that there is not only an annual, semi-annual, but also inside and outside of government taking a look at the operation. I guess one of the questions, Director, that I've got for you is, are many of the issues that were brought up in the Sheriff's report, do you see that they have a direct tie to budgetary constraints that we and other administrations have put on you? There are some, Council Member McCord. Obviously the mattresses, which we talked about. I think there's a record there of the fact that we've needed to address that. Many of the recommendations in the sheriff's report do require some additional funding. And subject to the availability of that funding, there would be things that should be looked at. But I don't think that without that funding they should be held against us. But there are some very worthwhile recommendations in there, but they do have costs attached to it. Thank you. Sheriff, if you want to come up, I've got a couple questions just of clarity on your report as well. The $86 or $83 a day that was the cost of housing, the inmate, how did you derive that number? Our staff asked a person in their physical division for the cost per day for the inmate, and we took it at the truth. Okay. All right. You had also mentioned the recommendation of the jail management system and so forth. How do you propose or how would – it wasn't really clear in this, but how would you propose paying for that, or how much does that even cost? I think that there are a lot of things that we can do to be more cost effective. There are a lot of resources that we can share to be more cost effective, certainly in the office of sheriff. We have a lot of resources that we are a partner in public safety, and we're willing to share to make our work better for all of the entities in public safety and, most importantly, for our community. So we're willing to share any resource that we have, Councilman. Is that something that you're willing to do now? I mean, it sounds like you've got some resources that we could go ahead and start using. We're getting ready to give you a significant amount of resources here in a matter of days or weeks, and that amount of money will be up to you to choose to do what you want to do with it. But, you know, in our new term, we're willing right now at the front end of our new term to sit down collectively to see what we can do to make things better for everyone. Well, I would just ask that, you know, as some of the recommendations that have been made, that if there are those types of resources that you've got in addition to what you've already committed to us, that we would certainly let us know and how those would be used. One of the things that's been a huge concern for us year after year is the turnover rate, and it's one of those things where you all have an extremely tough job to do and very underappreciated. Sometimes it's easy to be for public safety and some police and fire, but when a policeman arrests somebody, they come to see and stay with you, And sometimes that's very difficult to see and appreciate. And, Sheriff, one of the questions I've got is the turnover rate that we mentioned, is that something you're seeing that's indicative of law enforcement agencies across the board? How is it with your operation? What is your turnover rate? Our turnover rate is very low, and our loss ratio for loss runs for liability is extremely low. So we're very low on both sides of that. Why that is, I'm not sure. Certainly in corrections and in municipalities in which the jail and the sheriff are all one entity, a lot of folks start out in the facility and then they move into field operations. You see that in similarity in this type of arrangement in which a lot of their staff will come and apply with us. Sometimes it's very soon after they complete their training there. Sometimes it's a couple of years. It's different for everyone. But certainly when those folks come over, it's seen as a career advancement for them, and we want to help them advance that goal. Okay. As far as at the courthouse, the courthouse holding cell, is that something that your operation does or is that something that corrections folks, do they oversee inmates in the holding cell at the courthouse? Is that them or is that you? They oversee the adults and those that are incarcerated in their facility. We oversee juveniles. State folks come in with state incarcerated persons. Federal folks come in with federal incarcerated persons. So there are a lot of different entities that use those holdover cells. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Since you're up there, I'll just ask the question because it could go to either one of you. I will say we had your presentation two weeks ago, and I was surprised to get such a large response. Did you all meet after you had concluded your study? No, we tried to set up a meeting with the director prior to the presentation. His schedule wouldn't allow him to meet with me prior to the presentation, so I was a little surprised that he was at the presentation because I certainly wanted to sit down with him and go over the report to gauge his thoughts on the report. We had had only one other opportunity during the few months that we were out there to actually meet with him, and that was when we said, we have got to sit down and do a survey with the director. We don't want it to be a designee in that sense. And the other times that we were out there, he was not available. And certainly I know that everyone's schedule is busy, but we did feel it very important on our end to sit down and meet with him prior to coming before your body, and we weren't able to do that. All right. Thank you. Council members, are there any other questions? Council Member Lawless. I guess this is for Mr. Bishop. Excuse me. Do you have an explanation why your financial people gave Sheriff Witt a different number than you came up with? third. The only explanation I have, Councilmember Lawless, is that that figure was tied to a projection that was done for a study for the Marshall Service. And that figure was based on our budget being projected at $39 million and was done a couple of years ago, thinking that our budget would increase to that level. Of course, it did not. And that's why the projection of 86 was off. It's actually $70 a day. Another question I had is that in 2011, two COs have been arrested for domestic violence offenses, another for misconduct, and four officers have resigned or been terminated as it relates to violation of policies. Do you see a problem with people who are arrested for violent crimes also being over the inmates and the correlation between domestic violence and other types of aggressive behavior? Absolutely. We see a problem with that. if an individual has some issues in their personal life that can affect their professional life. But that's the reality, and that's the business that we're in. Those two officers are very good officers, and I don't think either one of those cases has been completely adjudicated in the courts yet. But we do take the appropriate action as far as restricting weapons privileges or anything else that is appropriate given the offense. As to the other officers, they were all disciplined because we hold the officers to a high accountability level, and we want only the best people there. We have had a number of people who, over the years, who just can't meet that standard. But we think we have a very, very capable workforce now. But we're always very vigilant in watching for those kinds of problems, addressing them if we become aware of them. And for those individuals that happen to have those things happen in their personal life away from work, such things as EAP and the proper actions we always refer to them, and then see what the court does with it. Well, certainly I know that there are a lot of extremely dedicated, good correctional officers. However, it isn't, I wasn't asking if sometimes your personal life, I'm talking about domestic violence. To answer your question, yes, yes, we're always concerned about that. And as I mentioned in my comments, I think that that suitability assessment is going to give us just another tool in our toolbox to try and help identify people who may not be quite suited for this and hopefully identify some of those traits or some of those things that would come up in an interview process as a red flag. The other thing, just quickly, that really concerns me is there have been ongoing problems at our jail for a long time. And I see in your report all these things that you're going to do differently now after this report came out. And I'm wondering why these things haven't been done prior. I'm not following you, House Member Lowe. Well, it's not like this is a new problem at our correctional facility, that there have been ongoing issues at the jail. And certainly any of you all that have not read the transition team report, some very serious matters came up there with the CAP program, you know, not having suitable training and backup and equipment going into, often blind situations with to pick up people who they're taken back to jail, which is not something anybody wants to go to. And a very serious concern. And I think the CAP program is a really great program and can benefit everybody involved, involved, but not if it is done at the risk of the safety of our correctional officers as well as the public. Again, I think it's important that that be put in context. The officers never make those calls alone. They are never done after dark by themselves or with a partner, and the Division of Police has always worked very closely with us in those cases where we have had to do that. And some of our officers have had that street survival training. And so I'm really not clear when you say things that we're proposing to do. The things that are in there are things that we are doing or have done, and there's only one or two things that we're talking about doing, and that's like the QuotNet pilot project. I think at this point I'd like to have Jeff Reed come up and give the mayor's office perspective on this situation. All right. Mr. Reed. Thank you. I'll take Chief Boggs' time, leave him about a minute and 50 seconds here to do here. Okay, that'll be good. I'll be very brief, but I do want to talk a little bit about the mayor's office involvement in this process. I was kind of assigned to help coordinate and work on this issue. The second day, the mayor was in office. We started looking at this, had a conversation with Mr. Bishop, and I think many members of the council had raised concerns over issues at the jail. Staff at the jail have contacted members of the council with concerns at the jail. And when the mayor was vice mayor, he shared similar concerns. We decided the best way to approach this issue was to, like we do many, many problem issues, and that is to get in, review, try to find the facts, see what's going on. We chose Sheriff Witt because the sheriff's office is involved in annual inspections anyway. The sheriff's office has interaction at the jail in doing things like intake. And we also chose Chief Boggs. We chose Chief Boggs because I think you all know him, know his managerial expertise. We also did a lot of informal things. We contacted people who've been involved in investigations of the jail in the past. I talked to people on the federal side. I talked to people on the state side. I talked to our lawyers who defend the jail on a routine basis. And I think we're getting off track a little bit when we have it, the sheriff's office and their interpretation versus what the jailer is saying and his interpretation. I think there's a great deal of middle ground that's been achieved in this process. And I think we are on a correct course. not only when we bring people out to the jail and have them out there like Chief Boggs, who put in an awful lot of time out there, and Sheriff Witt and her staff, who put in an awful lot of time. That serves not only the purpose of fact-finding, it also serves the purpose of monitoring and watching what's going on in the jail and having, if there are problems, a calming effect. And I can tell you, since this mayor started, we have had a stable situation at the jail, and that's something that can change all the time. Things happen at the jail. But things have been stable. Things have been going on. Clay Mason has taken an extremely active role in the jail and has been at the jail a great amount of time. Now, the questions that we started with when we started this process were we had a couple of big problems. The bulk of these problems didn't happen when this mayor was in office. These are things that have been investigated, looked into. There's an investigation that's continuing on another level, the Human Rights Commission, which has taken over two years, which we're still trying to find out why. And a decision was made that Mr. Bishop is a merit system employee and under civil service protection. And that was done by the council with very specific reasons in mind to keep the jail out of politics and to keep it out of political considerations, and I know how sensitive you all are to that. And what the merit system implies when you put someone in the merit system is that there are other people involved in overseeing an operation like this. And I think when blame is to be assessed, if there is blame, you have to not look just at the jailer, but look at the entire hierarchy. And that's entirely and terribly difficult to do when you've had a transition and when this jail has received good marks from the state, an awful lot of compliments from different groups that Mr. Bishop has pointed out. So the sheriff has come up with a lot of specific suggestions. She made a very, very good selection in Ray Sabatini to consult on this. Ray Sabatini helped start this jail, created this jail, and put an awful lot of time into getting it off the ground. He is, by all standards, an expert on jails across the state. I think both Kathy Witt, who solicited his help, and Mr. Bishop would agree to that characterization of Mr. Sabatini. I've been in contact with Mr. Sabatini a great deal with the Sheriff's Commission. The Sheriff's permission, not our commission, our permission. We'll talk about our commission in a minute. And we've had some very good discussions. I've been involved in investigations in about four facilities in the past. I was the lead investigator on escape from the Gromman unit at Central State, and I spent the summer as the lead reviewer on our three secure juvenile facilities. And I know the more you get into these issues, the more you find and the more difficult it is to get it reality. But the sheriff has done a good job of presenting a report that steers toward issues that we need to look at. Her idea of a commission is one that the mayor embraces. It's one, I think, that Mr. Bishop embraces. and I think it's very, we're going to be proposing something coming back and visiting with you in a couple of weeks. Mr. Reid, I apologize for interrupting. We're going on about 30 minutes. I haven't talked 30 minutes. No, you've talked about six. I'm going to show you a film. Okay. Oh, jolly good. I'll finish right now. Because we do still have another presentation. Well, he's only going to talk a minute. I will say the sheriff has done an excellent job. Also, Mr. Bishop has been put through a lot in this process. It's not pleasant. It's not fun. He has handled it in a professional manner. He has been forthcoming with information. We're on the right track with the commission. We'll be back to you. I hope you stay out of the weeds and look at the big picture, because we've had an excellent job done on this. Thank you. And I apologize for being worried. That's okay. Thank you very much because we still have Assistant or Deputy Chief Boggs' report. And did you, Council Member Lawless, did you have a question of Mr. Reed? I'll just wait until after. Okay. Welcome. Thank you, ma'am. I will be brief. I understand the scenario we've been through today. The only thing I would ask is please don't take my brevity as a lack of attention to this matter because I realize that you're all schedules tight. You have the report, so certainly I'm not going to go through all the points. I'm just going to talk about a few highlights very quickly. Some of the things about the history of the Fayette County Detention Center that became clear and important to me in my review of it was the conversion of a linear jail to a direct supervision model. What that did is it changed the emphasis that the employee had to place on doing leadership to direct supervision of inmates. It raised the bar for what the employees have to accomplish out there every day. They moved from a civil service to a collective bargaining environment in 2007, and as many divisions in our government have experienced, that can be a difficult process because there's a steep learning curve to moving from one form of governance to another when it comes to pay, benefits, and even grievances. certainly image issues are a significant concern for the detention center as one of our council members mentioned police and fire regularly get public attention for positive things and that rarely happens for the Fayette County Detention Center and I think we all need to take note of that that's something that's a difficult work environment to work under it's not good for the employee and it's not good for the overall image of the detention center and that that's one of the recommendations for us to work on as a city all divisions have been working on budget issues for several years now. And as was earlier mentioned as well, budgets are a component of my investigation here, just a small piece of it. The change in staffing levels is something that everybody's suffering through with belt tightening. We can all work our way out of this, but when you're in a facility like the Fayette County Detention Center and you have a direct supervision ratio of employees to inmates, there has to be a certain number of people to accomplish the task for a certain number of inmates. I do believe that part of what you've got in terms of budget presentation for this next fiscal year is how that's going to be reduced to make the job easier for everybody involved and still accomplish the task for the community. The first focus of the first 45 days was to talk to as many employees as possible, different shifts, different units within the detention center, trying to get my arms around exactly what the core problem was that people could help identify, because that's what I was charged with? What is the baseline problem that we need to address? I tried to boil all my discussions down to one final question. If you could change one thing about this organization that would have the greatest impact on the most number of people, what would that be? And really the resounding theme came back that that needed to be an increased emphasis on communication so that the employees in the organization felt heard. Now people came back with a lot of ideas and they talked about a lot of things and some folks gave me other issues that they wanted addressed, but my job was to try and boil that down to what are we going to work on first and what are we going to spend the bulk of our time on from a leadership, management, and executive team perspective. I think Community Corrections has done a tremendous job of managing through the budget issues that they've had over the last several years, as all divisions in government have, and that has resulted in a condition that I'll probably term as overmanaging and underleading, and that's listed in my report. We manage things and we lead people. And it's very easy for all of us in our jobs to look more at stuff and try and handle overtime budgets and how are we going to get by with this amount of these dollars and those amount of those dollars and sometimes forget that people are the most valuable asset that we have and they don't want to be managed. They want to be led. In meeting with the executive team, we've outlined a handful of things. Some of them were a genesis for my ideas, but the bulk of them were from them. They sat down. We brainstormed through several sessions trying to come up with how are we going to solve this problem. Some of the things that came up in terms of solutions, they're all listed in your report, and I'm not going to name them all, but adjusting the meeting frequency at all levels. The executive team, the composition has been changed. They meet more frequently. They talk through more issues, and they're talking about leadership and organizational change issues now, not just agenda items, and I think that's really significant and positive. Organizational rotation to staff to enhance employee development. Just about a week to two weeks ago, a lot of their middle management moved around in the detention center. I think that's going to be good for the employees. It's going to be good for their senior management. Planning a division-wide survey for ideas and goal setting. That's something that the staff is working on now to get out to all the employees so that people have a constant feedback mechanism so that they can talk about things that need to be solved. One of the critical components for the detention center is to include their captain's rank overall in their planning process. Every organization has different layers of governance that actually have the largest impact on the employees. And for the detention center, that really seems to be at the captain's rank. They're the shift commanders. For the bulk of custody, they run the large areas of the Fayette County Detention Center. and so including them more in the overall executive and team building process is going to be critical. A minimum of four hours of management by walking around time. Clearly, if you want people to hear you more, you have to spend more time with them, and that's one of the things that this team is going to have implemented. They've done it for several weeks now, and I think it's going to have really good results. One of the other things we're doing is multiple training sessions that are being brought in to discuss leadership, management, organizational change, and interpersonal communication skills. We have a couple currently scheduled, and these are actually going to be joint training sessions between community corrections, fire, and police. We're going to include leadership from all those areas, so that not only do we get training sessions out of it for all the major areas of public safety, but we make sure that we're brainstorming about problem solving as well. So we're going to build those things in together. And then the last piece I would tell you is the plan is to continue to meet at regular intervals to brainstorm more ideas and make sure that we build in a feedback loop so that this problem doesn't raise itself up again. If we do anything poorly in government, and I say this from my experience teaching around the world, I don't think we do a good job of soliciting feedback about the changes that we put into place, measuring their effectiveness, and leaning forward to make future changes. I think many times we get busy and we deal with something, and once we get it off our plate, we move on to the next thing, and we're not going to let that happen at the Fayette County Detention Center. So I would close in telling you that it's comprised of hundreds of excellent employees who do a great job. Like every employee, I think they just want to be heard a little more, and we're going to make sure that happens. Thank you, Chief Boggs. There are a few questions from Council Members. Sure. We'll start. Council Member Lawless. Oh, Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. I think I like your report, and I think because I've been really looking at the detention center for a long time, and I think a lot of the report, both reports actually, had things in there that some of us were already aware of. but I have a real concern with the electronic monitoring, which is that the CAPS program? Yes, ma'am. And, you know, putting someone, putting some of the officers in danger, and I don't know, I was just hoping that there would be a plan in place that would address that in some way, like either using the sheriff's deputies. Now, I know the next presentation is from the police, and you guys are shorthanded as well. And Ron Bishop stated that you use the police on some occasions. Certainly. They call us if they need us. Absolutely. Yes. So I was just, you know, curious if that was a good plan or if maybe you could partner with the sheriff's office. I would ask this of you, I guess, from my perspective. My analysis did not get into that. It was really a leadership and management analysis. But if you think that that's significant, then Commissioner Mason and I will sit down and talk about that and figure out what the way to move forward with looking into that is. I'd, that's beyond the scope of what I can speak to today. But I know Ron Bishop and I and Edie Dabney and James Cameron have also, we've talked about utilizing the electronic monitoring as much as possible. Absolutely. It's a great tool. Which will, you know, cut down costs quite a bit. And if we do that, then it might require more time of the police, more time, you know. So I just wanted to make sure there was a good plan in place before you did that. We will get together and make it work. How about that? Okay. I can count on yours. We're all about solving problems. We'll solve them. Okay. Okay. And I had a question about the mattresses, because I know that came up in our LYNX meeting. and would you say overall they're like, I know they're in really bad shape? Can you remind me what the cost was? They're about $50 to $55, $60 a piece. Some of them are in bad shape. Some of them go back to the beginning of the facility in 2000. We have replaced some over time. We have just used some budgetary funds to replace them just to keep us going. But essentially, the outer ring needs to be replaced. And we are pretty good at adapting and improvising and overcoming. We were able to get up to North Point, and they gave us some mattresses. So we do what we have to do to keep going, but ultimately, those mattresses do need to be replaced. Yeah, and I was going to suggest doing that maybe on a rotation like they do in a hotel or a large institution. Yes, we inspect them and then kind of slowly work them down and take them out of service. Right. Okay. But I appreciate all the work, and I know that there are some really good things that are going on out there that Chief Boggs mentioned. And, you know, as far as the, I think the Hope Center program out there is excellent. And we really need some successes. And we need to share those successes with folks. But I appreciate it. And I hope that everything goes much better out there. I'm sorry. And if I might say, Vice Mayor, while I have an opportunity, we very much appreciate Deputy Chief Boggs and the work. he's done. He's been a real sounding board for us, an opportunity for us to kind of step back, if you will, and look at the bigger picture because we do oftentimes get very much involved in the minutiae, and we appreciate his efforts and his reputation had preceded him on that. So thank you. Very good. Are there other questions, Councilmembers? Councilmember Myers? Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Chief Boggs, for coming in and doing your report. Thank you for the work that you did out there. I don't, at this time, have any questions for you. I have one question for Mr. Bishop. In the conversation earlier with Sheriff Witt regarding whether or not you two had any communication while she was doing her audit, can you clarify something for me? Did you meet with her during that time? There was one occasion when I was able to meet with the sheriff and her team. The, I guess you would call it an exit audit, if you will, or exit meeting. Her schedule and mine, there was just a conflict that I was not able to change that prevented that last meeting. How long was she in there doing the audit? I believe from January through the latter part of May, I believe that's correct. So in five months, you only had time to meet with her one time? Well, that was the only time she asked to meet with me, except for the one time at the end when my schedule just did not permit it. The one other time that we did meet, that was when she asked to meet with me, yes. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Sheriff Wood, are you still here? Is my time running? It's over. How can it be over? I was waiting for her to get up. Oh, she's going to put your time back. You have a couple. How much does he have left? Three minutes left. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We were just seeing if you were paying attention. I was. It went away, and I was like, okay, where'd it go? Okay. Thank you, Sheriff Witt. But I guess I just have a couple of things I'd like you to kind of overview for us. Okay. In a lot of counties in Kentucky, the sheriff oversees the jail. Is that correct? Well, never in Kentucky, do they, but we're the only state in the country in which the sheriff is not charged with oversight of the jail. Okay. Can you briefly go through some things that you think would be cost effective if that were to happen in this case? Sure. Sheriff's offices are fee-based. Our current jail is not a fee-based facility. We are completely fee-based. As all of you all are very well aware, the Sheriff's office never comes and asks you to help us keep our lights on and our doors open at the Sheriff's office. We have to pay our own way. So we get a fee for the things that we do for the community and for the law enforcement community. So I think that there are cost savings to be had there in duties that we can bring together that are currently being replicated or duplicated, duplicated is the word, and be more cost effective. I also feel like that there are a lot of different divisions in which if we combined our resources, maybe there wouldn't be such a shortage on their end as far as their budget numbers go. So I think there are some cost savings there. I certainly believe, and I'm not really sure where the director stands in the area, of actually being more diligent in trying to get some of these federal prisoners who are the ICE prisoners and maybe some of the other federal prisoners. There are certain requirements that go along with that, and certainly keeping them housed separately is one of those requirements, but I feel like we can accomplish that. Certainly in the booking area, I feel like there's a lot of room for opportunity for cost savings that we could work together on. and share resources. You know, quite frankly, and I think we all agree with this, that by working together, we accomplish so much more. We save so much money for our community. Okay. Are there any things that you think you could bring to the table in terms of reentry for the inmates? I think reentry is a really big issue. It's a big issue for our community. It's a big issue across the country. And with House Bill 463, and I know that the director is very familiar with that piece of legislation, we are going to have more responsibility on successful reentry. The HOPE Center program, you're right, is a wonderful program, but we've got to give folks tools, vocational opportunities, educational opportunities to increase the probability that once they get out, we won't see them again. Law enforcement won't see them again. And as we're seeing across the country, our inmate population, our offender population, is more violent. They come in less educated. They come in more unemployed. They come in more mentally ill. They come in more physically ill. And while they are in our facility, we have got to do everything we can to shore that up, to correct some of those things so when they get out, they won't reoffend upon the community that we all serve. Okay, and since my time is short, I'm going to go ahead and move that we put into committee. I'm not sure how to word this, but what I want to do is put into committee the study of the opportunity of having the sheriff run the jail. One of the other things I failed to mention, and I think it's a big cost savings, I'm sorry to interrupt you real quick, is our loss ratio for liability is extremely low. We are an excellent rating. And maybe to look at that opportunity to fall under our law enforcement liability umbrella would also be a tremendous cost savings to this body. Okay. Second. Thank you. There's a motion on the floor. Is there discussion on the motion? I have a question. Did you put that in Public Safety Committee? I actually would like to, based on all my questions being economic in nature, put it into budget and finance. I'll second. Okay. The motion is to place the study of the issue of the sheriff getting the corrections. Is that how you? Right. And maybe we take the word study off and just put the opportunity of the sheriff running corrections into budget and finance. Okay. Okay. If you wish to speak to the motion, will you please log in? Council Member Crosby. Council Member Myers, is your intent for there to be, like, for this to be a financial discussion? I support the motion, and I think that my support comes into the fact that we need to do a comparison of the numbers and see this on equal ground. One of my comments, one of my questions to the sheriff was going to be, I sensed through these presentations that there possibly has not been much communication or cooperation, And maybe cooperation is probably the better word, and I intend on asking that question, not to the motion, but on getting accurate numbers and doing comparisons from more of a cost model versus some of these other leadership and management issues. Is that correct? That is correct. Thank you. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm inclined to support this motion. I would hope, though, that the wording of it does not narrow the focus too much. I think we would be best served by a study that would give us some sense of what's the best administrative structure, the best administrative relationships, the best administrative fit on a number of levels in terms of the management of the community corrections, in terms of, you know, budgetary and finance considerations. And so I would like to see that done and to make sure that Mr. Ellinger's committee will see it in terms of a larger scope. Mr. Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm more than willing to accept that into this committee, but I think it personally, I think it probably fits better in public safety, but it just depends, I guess, of what you want for us to look at from the financial or as I think we talked about as an overall administrative structure. And I just guess we need to decide what we want to do with that. But from that standpoint, I think it would probably be better served in public safety. But if you just wouldn't look at the financial, then I'm more than willing to take it in the budget and finance. So I think we just need to ferret that out here on how we want to attack this issue. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I wish to express gratitude to all the parties who have brought information to us this afternoon. The question that I would have and would request a ruling from the chair and perhaps our parliamentarian is, is this a point of order for us to discuss such a motion at this stage of the agenda? We are still under presentations to the council, and it might best be, if I could offer a friendly suggestion, to address this under agenda items referred from council members. Willing to discuss it, but I'm concerned whether this is the appropriate time or venue on the agenda. Mr. Parliamentarian. You know, I would say I would agree with it. It's not the appropriate time because under the new structure, we have steered away from doing those kind of things during presentations. But technically, we move B and C to the front of the agenda, which are under agenda items referred from council members. So the chair can rule on that either way. But technically, we have not made motions under the new structure. I think the law department alluded to that a couple of meetings ago during this time that we can make a motion later on. I know that happened to you previously as well. And I would just ask, just chiming in, in all fairness, again, to all parties involved, I think it would be more appropriate for us to conclude the presentations in total and then perhaps come back and have opportunity to discuss this. Just my suggestion. Because, again, it's not a motion. It's a motion to refer to Thursday night. So we have to go on twice still. And I agree with both of you and would rule that we not hear this motion now, that it come later at the appropriate time for referrals. So you can either, if you want to withdraw the motion and bring it back later, or pull it off the table. Either way, I'm more than happy to do it. We were done with the presentations. I thought that was the appropriate time to do it. We can wait until later in the meeting. It's fine with me. So if you want me to withdraw it, I'd be more than happy to. Okay. And does the second withdraw? Well, I mean, yeah. It can come back later. Yeah, no, I understand that. But part of the reason for us moving the presentations up was because there are several people out here that relate to this issue. And so they were able to hear the presentations. But we may have more questions when we make a motion. Sometimes we have questions that have to be clarified by members of the audience. so they can just hang out. Thank you. I would ask Vice Mayor that if I would draw the motion, that I'd be the first to make a motion when we get to that point in the agenda. And if you'll please log in at that time, I would appreciate that reminder. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to do that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Now, Council Members, do you have questions of Commissioner or Mr. Bishop or the Sheriff? Those of you who are logged in, or was this for the motion? Council Member Stennett? Okay. Council Member Henson? Vice Mayor, my question came about because of the motion, but since the sheriff and the director of the corrections is here, I would like to ask a question as far as being sensitive to the number of employees at community corrections. I just, I don't know, I just have this feeling that they might get into a panic state and all look for other jobs. I was thinking, so if this were to occur and you took over the jail, could you give us any reassurance of what that might mean? I certainly am very thankful for the opportunity for this council to refer the issue collectively and in totality to a committee to further study it. I think that that is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to come together to see how to best utilize our tax dollars for our community as a whole. I think that in particular the answer to your question is everyone at the Division of Community Corrections right now, they're under the same retirement system that the men and women at the Office of Sheriff are under. So they're all either under hazardous, sworn hazardous retirement, or the non-sworn, non-hazardous retirement. And those are the two different types of retirement that our office participates in. And, you know, I have been through several transitions in my life, having served for several different sheriffs. And I know that that in and of itself can create anxiety and uncertainty. But there is certainly no reason to have anxiety or uncertainty in this situation. We're very in tune with that. We think that these folks in this room and at the facility and the folks that are going to come on on third shift, we are all one body of public safety. And we are all here to serve the same community. And hopefully, collectively, we can all move forward in whatever manner that this council deems is appropriate. Our office is here to help, to share resources, and to just assist in any way that you all feel is appropriate. Thank you. I think all the questions about that can come up in the committee rather than, you know, once it gets referred. Council Member Lane? Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Reed, I have a question for you, please, sir. Before I throw that question at you, I'm just going to say I'm on the Budget and Finance Committee, and I'm fairly receptive to evaluating the economic impact of some type of consolidated operation to see if there is a financial benefit to the government. But my question above and beyond that issue is the mayor is planning the commission to study this issue, and do you feel like the commission and the work of the council could work so hand in glove, or do you see that as any kind of conflict issue right now? Or would you rather have the commission do their work before we did ours or vice versa? I'm not sure what I want may matter. Obviously, I would prefer that the commission have its opportunity to look into issues regarding the jail. And I think the concept of right out of the box discussing the sheriff assuming control of the jail raises a number of issues. I think the sheriff has put very well some arguments for being more involved in the operation and taking more responsibility for certain facets. I think those certainly can be discussed. The concept of the sheriff assuming control of the entire operation raises legal liability questions. We're currently in collective bargaining negotiations. The sheriff has a different situation with her staff. How that is going to be impacted, I think, is an open topic for discussion. This has been a topic that's been discussed for 30 years, shortly after merger. There was a discussion of whether the sheriff should take over the jail. And there's been discussions whether the sheriff's office should be completely phased out. And in the early 80s, the sheriff was pretty much just someone who provided court security and limited law enforcement. We got a sheriff now who has got the tax collection and has expanded the office, who has filled a niche extremely well dealing with domestic violence and doing some of the operations that police would normally do. So I think there's obvious advantages to looking at these type of things. But I would be very cautious in moving too quickly to make a complete change in who is responsible for the jail without a great deal of consideration. So that's a long way of saying I'd prefer the committee. And I'll reiterate, it may not matter. Okay. Thank you. That was my question. Thank you. You're welcome. And we're still in this segment of questions for the director, the commissioner, the folks who've presented. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm going to make a motion to waive the rules to allow Council Member Myers to make his motion. And it's so made. And the reason is we have so many professionals here in the room who have come to talk about this today. And we have on the docket, and I understand completely the concerns about the order of our discussions, but we have the reorganization on the docket, and that may be a detailed conversation. So are we going to ask all these wonderful professionals that we have to wait another hour or two before we discuss this again? And I think it sort of does a disservice for them. I think we should go ahead and decide what we're going to do. It's obviously up to the council, but I move to waive the rules to allow Councilman Myers to make his motion, so move. Do we have a second? Council Member Ellinger seconded. Do you wish to speak to the motion? Anybody? I think the people on here were wanting to speak to other things. So, Council Member Blues. I agree with Councilmember Martin. I know that we'll have a review discussion of our current structure, and this is one of the details we're going to have to work out, but I think it is appropriate in the wake of these presentations, and given the fact that we do have a number of people here and interested, that we go ahead and complete this discussion by acting on Council Member Myers' motion. Does anyone else wish to speak to the motion? Council Member Ford. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm not opposed to the motion. I would just ask that we somehow set protocol to form, are we formally done with the presentation? Yes. with the folks before, say if we are formally done with the presentations, I'm not opposed either way. I just didn't want the motion to preclude or interrupt communication between the council and those that were here per the agenda to present. Thanks, Vice Mayor. We do still have three council members who had questions. So even though the presentation is finished, the questions are not. May I amend my motion to allow Council Member Myers to make his motion at the end of Council Member's questions? I think that's an excellent point. And the second agrees. Anyone else wish to speak to the motion? Do you want to restate your motion? My motion is to waive the council rules to allow Council Member Myers to make a motion at the end of Council Member's questions at the conclusion of this presentation. Okay. Would all those in favor please say aye? Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay. Thank you very much. Now, we had three people on the list, and as soon as it comes back, we'll continue our questioning. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Sheriff Witt, I had a question. It's somewhat of a follow-up to a comment I made during the motion that we stopped, and now we're going to have again. And this is one of those things where I'm not even sure how to ask this question because listening to the different presentations from two weeks ago and today, it's one of these things where I can't put my finger on it, but the impression I have is that you did not have an easy time completing your report. I'm not sure if I'm accurate or if you had a difficult time obtaining information, or would that be an accurate statement? Yeah, I think over the period of the almost five months that we were working on this report, there were periods of time in which it was more difficult to get information than there were other periods. I think that when you look back at that, maybe it was because the individuals that we had to get the information from Maybe we're busy with responsibilities and preparation for the budget process for you all. Maybe they were on other assignments and they weren't assigned to help us get our information. And so at the end of the day, at the end of the length of time it took for us to get our information, I feel like that we got the information in the end. And now, having read the director's comments, I believe he differs on some of the information that we were given. But I will have to say that we have to stand behind our report and believe that it is accurate, because when we finally got all of our information, we had no reason to question whether or not we were given accurate information. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I also personally just want to apologize to you. As an elected official, I don't think that anybody should ever be mocked in this room, and I want to apologize. I'm not going to bring it up publicly, but I'm sorry that that happened to you today. I did not yet. Oh, well, I guess I'm the only one who maybe caught it, but thank you. Council Member Stennett Thank you Vice Mayor I don't have any questions Sheriff Whitt but thank you for coming I want to thank you for your report and your time but I also want to thank our collection Corrections Men and Women for being here too to support your management team and support your responses to this and Deputy Chief Boggs and Mr. Reed and Commissioner thank you all for taking the time out to present us with information I want to go back to something Mr. Reed said and we don't often agree or maybe we do, but you did say that we're not here. I think we're missing the total point today, and we're trying to compare the sheriff's report against the corrections response. I think we missed the whole point that the administration, who's in charge of running the jail, has a plan set out to make corrective steps in that jail. And when we have a motion that will be presented to council, it's a specific that says, I want the sheriff to run the jail, or let's look at that, that's jumping way before the cart, before the horse. and we haven't even allowed the administration time to go in there and take these corrective steps because the sheriff's report is very valuable. It gives us insight from a third party. But, you know, I had concerns back in January, and it's nothing to do with the sheriff herself and that body. But any time you have an agency review another agency, then the suggestion would be made that that agency go in and take it over. There's an inherent flaw in that, and it's not right in our community to have that happen. And to sit here as a council and put that into committee to look at that specific item that we addressed back in January before the sheriff came in is wrong. And I apologize to you. If we're in here apologizing, Director Bishop, you've been through a lot, so has your command staff, so has the men and women out of the jail. We all know publicly what the problems are. We all know what's happened. We can't go back. We don't need to sit here and point fingers and look for scapegoats because that's, I guess, the easy way out. But what we do need to do is look at what Deputy Boggs has said, listen to what Mr. Reed and the commissioner have told us today, and that there is a plan to correct it. there is something in control that we can go in there and manage something six months down the road and see what we've done. And that would be the appropriate time to look at the operations of the jail and to see more holistically who is the best entity. It may be the sheriff ultimately. Who knows? But at this point in this junction, it's a little premature, but I do want to thank everyone for being here in attendance and thank you for the comments everyone has made. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. I think it is. First of all, Council Member Stennett, there's an assumption that everybody in this room is here to support the management of the jail. And I don't think we know whether that's accurate or not. What I'd like to ask both Sheriff Witt and Chief Boggs, if you all want to come to the podium, you said that your report was about the management and leadership. Is that accurate? Yes, ma'am. And how much input did you have from the rank and file people on the ground doing the job every day that weren't supervisors? Well, I spent the first 45 days meeting with people across all shifts, weekends, nights, so I think I had a tremendous amount of input. And did you have any sense that there was a reluctance or fear of retaliation if they spoke openly to you? I did not. I've been asked that question several times, and I found all the employees to be really open and anxious to share what they thought would make their division better. I think what we've got, just like in all other divisions, we've got hundreds of employees who have their adult lives in government service, and they want to see their division better tomorrow than it is today. and that's the impression I was left with. And did you talk to inmates at all? No, ma'am. Okay. And I guess I'm asking the same questions. Our review, as you can tell from the report, was more operational. We sort of looked at it from A to Z. We looked at concepts, policies, procedures. We looked at prior inspections. What type of inspections were they? The Department of Corrections and Inspections is minimum standards, and it's standards set into place by statute and administrative regs for all jails in the Commonwealth to meet, not just our large facilities. So we looked at all of that. We talked to several members of the staff. We talked to several members of the inmate population. We talked to several members who we consider our stakeholders in our community as well. Okay, thank you. And I guess where I'm having trouble is from the transition team, what we heard was very different than what I'm hearing from Mr. Bishop and Commander Boggs or Chief Boggs' perception. I heard some of the same things that we heard during transition. We talked to staff all along the way, initially before Deputy Chief Foggs was there. And then as he was there, I asked several people when I would see them in the courthouse, when I would be at the facility, when we would meet in our office, do things appear differently? Because there is, and someone up here said it, it may have been Council Member McCord or Stinnett, about, or maybe Jeff and Mr. Reed, about us being there created a situation of a monitor. And they acknowledged that when there were other folks there, that there were some things that were changing. So along the way, it ebbed and flowed, if you will. Okay. Thank you very much. and I appreciate everybody's hard work on this and certainly all the corrections employees. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Vice Mayor. With all the points that have been brought up here, I've been sitting here thinking about this, And if we really evaluate this, it's really the executive branch's responsibility to oversee the day-to-day operation of the government. And, you know, thinking about that, I believe that the mayor and the commissioner of public safety and his advisors and the police department and the sheriff and everybody should have input to the mayor and then let the mayor come back with a recommendation to the council. And then I think it's our duty to set policy and approve the expenditure of the taxpayers' money, and we could take that recommendation and make a judgment on that. I'm starting to feel like we're getting too micromanagement of this issue, and we've taken the responsibility that's really the mayor's and thrown it over here on the council side, and I would like for us to restrain ourselves a little bit and let the process go forward, maybe the Commission before we get too involved in the issue. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess I want to start out by saying that I think it's disingenuous to say that the sheriff, by going into the jail and doing her report, had some type of ulterior motive, and that that can be tied to the outcomes that were in her report. And I think that some of us here know that the proposition of the sheriff running the jail has been on the table with previous administrations. So I don't think that we ought to end the day with people thinking that the sheriff went into the jail with the purpose of auditing it and coming back with an audit that says that she ought to run the jail. Secondly, I would like to open up the motion that I made to include whatever would be the best opportunity for running the jail. And if that means that that's going to a different committee, that's okay. I respect Mr. Reed's opinion that, you know, the mayor would like to have this commission do it, but we are the elected officials of this government. And when I look at all the lawsuits and the money being spent and the things that the taxpayers are having to deal with as a result of things that have happened in the jail over the last several years, while I understand that we have a new sheriff in town, if you will, because we have a new mayor, that mayor was on the council for the last four years as well. So it's not as if, you know, he didn't have anything to say about what was going on before. So I think that we need to put this in the committee and let this body determine the policy of who would be the best entity to operate the jail. So to Mr. Blue's point, Dr. Blue's point, I'm very open to looking at other opportunities besides just the sheriff operating the jail. But I think that it's clear to me at least that we need to change. So if you would like me to open up the motion, I will. If not, we can do it the way it is and still look at things. Is there anyone else who wants to question about the reports? No. Okay. Council Member Myers. Okay. So. Okay. Then I'm just going to go ahead and leave the motion the same. and move that we put into budget finance the opportunity to look at the sheriff, and I'll just say, or any other best practice for operating the jail. So moved. And Council Member Crosby seconded. Is there any discussion of the motion? Council Member Kay? Yes, I want to agree with the sentiment that was expressed earlier that this perhaps belongs more in public safety. It seems to me that the issue really is a public safety issue. It may have budgetary aspects to it, but I would hate to see the decision and the conversation being driven by budget issues. So I would offer an amendment to the motion that it be placed not in budget and finance, but it will be placed in public safety. Second. Council Member Ford seconded. So the amendment is to place the issue in public safety committee. Is there any discussion of the amendment? I'd go ahead and accept that as a friendly amendment. Does the seconder? Okay. So then the motion on the floor would be to put the issue of the sheriff operating the corrections, the jail, into public safety committee and best practices. Do you want to restate your motion, Council Member Myers? Since we're going to put it into budget finance or into public safety, then I would just move that we put the issue of looking at the opportunity for the sheriff or any other best practice for operating the jail into public safety. So moved. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Kaye still has the floor. Thank you. One other comment, and that is that I will, having amended it, I'll support the motion. But I believe that it's appropriate for this to go on in parallel with the work of the administration. I don't think either this body or the mayor's office ought to be held back in working on this important issue. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak to the motion? I don't have my screen yet. Raise your hand if you do. Okay. I'd like to speak to the motion. I think if this motion were in four to six months, I would be supportive of it. I am especially interested in going forward with the recommendations that we've heard, And I don't think a parallel track is, I think a parallel track would be somewhat distractive of actually focusing the administration, focusing on what the changes are that are needed. And I'd like to see those go forward to the end or whatever end we achieve to see what is done through those recommendations. So at this point, I'm not going to support the motion. I would be willing to support it in four to six months after we know where we've gone with the recommendations. Does anyone else wish to speak? We don't have a screen back that can support speakers. Can you get it? So I guess we're ready to vote. Okay, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Anyone opposed? No. So we'll do a hand vote, or you can register on the screen. And that motion passes 10 to 4. Thank you very much. To all of those of you who presented and who answered questions, thank you so much. Really appreciate your hard work, especially the sheriff and assistant chief Boggs who did the investigating. And we want to thank all of our corrections employees for the good job that you do out there. Thank you. And now we'll move back to the beginning of our agenda. And we'll start with our review of the docket. and this is item number three, and we have first reading of ordinances, and the first two items are zone changes. Are there motions, referrals, questions? Both of these, number four and number five, need to be moved to the docket with or without a public hearing. I make a motion to put them on the docket without a public hearing. Both of them. Council Member Lane? Yes, both, please. All right. Any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. Are there other questions about first reading of ordinances? And if you'll please log in. A second was, who seconded that motion? Council Member Farmer. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have a question on number 10 and 11, but I see Commissioner Mason is leaving the building, I guess, walking out with the crowd. Commissioner Mason. Tell him he's still running the jail, so. And then I guess while we're waiting on 14 and 15, these are council NDF funds. Can somebody tell me why these aren't budget amendments and why they're in ordinances instead of budget amendments? I can tell you about number 14 because it originated from my cost center. It's going directly to the government, so it has to be a budget amendment. So it's not NDF? Yes, it is. Okay, so it's from all of council if it's NDF. So why is it in a budget amendment like the rest of them normally are, or a resolution? It has to be a budget amendment. It has to be a budget amendment because the funds are being transferred within the government. But it's not listed under budget amendments in the back? It is a separate budget amendment. They're handled separately. On both of them? Yes. Okay. And then on 10 and 11, this is for grant funding, for training, for fire. Is that correct? Got to find it. And police? Yes, sir. So will this provide us the training that we were talking about during the budget process that they're not getting? What will these funds do for us? These are incentive pay for training that they pick up for their annual requirements. So it won't help out on the paramedic piece or anything like that? No, this is separate. Like CE? Yes, continuing ed kind of training. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. I was trying to look maybe another way to use the money to help us get more paramedics, but that answers that question. The paramedics thing is going to be done on duty without any cost. I understand. I was trying to find money. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Other questions about Council Member Crosby? Commissioner Mason, I have a question on number 17, please. Who was this initiated by? Was there something we had a – Council Member Beard spent a lot of hours two summers ago working on tethering and the ordinances as it relates to that. Can you just – the description is not very clear. Well, my understanding is that there was a group that looked at this, I think headed up by Rick Curtis out of my office, working with the animal control folks and doing the research into something that came up a couple of years ago, I think, in terms of mistreatment of a dog. And this was what they have found and is recommending that the tethering be at least 12 feet in length. I see Mr. Horn behind you. He might. Good. This was initiated by Animal Care and Control through Public Safety. At the time that the tethering law went into effect, they did not change the length of the tether and the kindling ordinance. So what this does is bring the kindling ordinance into the same standards as the care of animals ordinance. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Minus about number six, which I think is, is that the reorganization? Yes. So where do we stand with that? Did we finish our meeting this morning? It's on for first reading, according to our motion at the last committee of the whole work session, and this is another opportunity for discussion. Okay. Thank you. Did you have a question about it? Okay. Okay. Council Member, Council Members, do you have more questions about first reading of ordinances, or do you have referrals or tabling? Council Member Martin? Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner Mason, I have a question about 17. Did this come through one of our committee meetings, or did this come through the Council Committee? I'm seeing a shake of the head. It came through animal care and control through public safety, because public safety being animal care and control's contact with the urban county government. It did not come through a council committee. So what's the story behind this? I mean, what's the current length for a tether? I think the kenneling ordinance reads as three times the length of the dog. And this requires, so is this like a dog leash if I walk my dog around the block? No, this is for kennels. The tethering ordinance for your dog was passed, I want to say, two years ago or so. And all this does is for kennels, bring that same length of tether when a dog is stationarily tethered to the kennel ordinance. but it relates only to kennels correct so it's not affecting the size of the cage no and it doesn't require them to have a tether if they're in the cage but if they do have one it needs to be 12 feet I guess I just don't know the process for having these things go through committee I guess this would be the time to send it to committee if we wanted to. I'm okay with it, but I just, these things sort of pop up, and I never know where they come from. So thank you both. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Are there other questions, Council Members, about items 4 through 18? And we do have some commissioners here if there are questions or comments about the reorganization. No? All righty. We'll move right ahead then. First reading of resolutions starts on page 5. And are there questions, comments? Refer to a committee. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm sure this was discussed at the quarterly Cal meeting, But number 44, providing for the procedure for requesting two readings for legislation at a meeting in Durham County Council. So what's the subject of the change or what substantially is going to be changed by this action? This is, if I might answer this, and it is in my report on page 52. Actually, the item itself is on page 55. And the issue that was discussed is the frequency of requests for second readings. Yes, ma'am. And so what the substance of this resolution is, is that if it passes, the Council would like for anyone from the administration who's requesting a second reading to simply come to the microphone, state the number that they want second read and why. And likewise for council members, council members would in their seat state the number they want a second reading for and the reason. So the administration would not come to council members in the future. They would simply come to the podium and state which numbers they want to have second reading and then give the reasons for each one. That's very good. That's very good. And I hesitate to ask about number 25. a resolution accepting the bid of River Ranch LLC in the amount of a little over $100,000 for compost pond discharge improvements. Susan Bush looks like she's ready to answer that. I just couldn't let this item of business pass without knowing more about the discharges from the compost pond. Welcome. Thank you, Vice Mayor. We have to do some work. out at our yard waste composting facility. And there's a large pond that controls the drainage from that. And we need to bury a pipe and some pumps. And to get the water, the pond cannot discharge. So we have to pump the water back over to another treatment facility. And so this is for the design and the installation of that piping and pumps that will pump the water from the compost pond to the leachate treatment pond. Oddly, I would like to come see that. And you are more than welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have a question on number 38. That's the sale of the letter we got yesterday in terms of Red Mount property. Can you just give us in a nutshell why this is a good idea to sell this property just so the public can understand why we're selling it when it's a revenue generator. And this was the item we referred to earlier during our budget discussions that will, I guess, close on June 29th and go in this year's budget. Yeah, we'll go in this year's budget. From the help of Councilman Lane, and we had a meeting about a month ago with the Fayette County Extension District And they were getting ready to renew the contract, and they came to us and asked if they were interested and would like to purchase this. So with the help of John's chief and all of us, we were able to get some fees, and we were lucky, and we agreed to an amount, and it also helped us to be able to balance the budget issue. And they're the only occupant, right? Please. They're the only occupant of the building? Yes, sir. They've been there for 20-something years, I believe. It may have been there ever since. All right. The second question on number 42, this is authorization with the Chrysalis House for participation in the police activities lead. I have no problem with them participating or the resolution. My concern is will we still have a police activities lead within the budget? I thought during the link discussion that that was going to be cut from the budget due to the police funding issues. So if we're going to cut that, why are we going to pass a resolution to allow them to participate? Can we check on that? Because when the link reported out on public safety, Councilman Myers is not here, but no, there he is. Are we still going to have Powell? Did you get that impression in the Police Activities League? Or is that one of the things that was going to be cut? And if we're going to cut it, I just have concern doing authorization with a group, and it's not going to be there. I'll be glad to find out for you. I just want to make sure to watch out for them. Okay, I'll find out for you. So, C.O. Maloney will find out the answer to that. Can you find out before Thursday? Commissioner Mills, do you have an answer? Maybe it will be answered Thursday night when we get a presentation from the police. Crystal's House is applying for a grant, and as part of it, they have to put in the grant the various services that they're applying for with urban county government as support. And one of them was the police activities lead because they had to have the grant in by June the 7th. And at that point, it did exist. And so that one was for services from social services, from the police, and from Parks and Recreation. Yeah, I mean, I support the idea. I just want to make sure it's going to be there for them. Well, and they put that in their grant proposal. They haven't gotten the award yet. So I would assume if the Police Activities League goes away, there could be a letter to the grant that we're saying it, didn't it? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Maloney, could you help me on number 37 understand why this, I believe the documentation says it's six acres with the Red Mile property is not being sold to the extension? As of right now, we have a memorandum agreement with them. and they were monitored the ground because it used to be a landfill, and as you know that, and they need that land. They've been using it all along anyway for activities, so we're going to go on and sign a lease with them to continue on them using that land. Was there discussion of them buying that land? Yeah, that discussion. And why is it not being sold? Well, the discussion wasn't in buying the land yet because of some environmental issues and all that, but they approached me that they may be something down the road we may look into. But I told them, as of right now, we were going to do a year-to-year lease with them, and then they would come back, and we would be glad to listen. So the administration did not want to sell that piece of the property, is that correct? Part of that land also, we have trails, and we want to make sure we have the use of those trails for our activities. They have been maintaining that, the piece that we're talking about for the past 20 years, all they want to make sure that that area is available to them for some of the activities they've been involved with. Did they offer to buy that six acres? Okay, thank you. Sure. Is there any other question about the first reading of resolutions? No? If not, we will go ahead and move to second reading of ordinances on page 9. Any questions, removals, referrals? And I don't see any, so we'll move to second reading of resolutions, starting on page 9 and going through to the top of 13. Council Member Lawless. Do you have questions or referrals? Yes. On number 12, this is in regard to the change of addresses on Richmond Avenue. It has come to my attention that the homeowners were sent a letter in April of 2010, and nothing since then. I talked to, I had conversations more recently with the address change people and notified some of the residents about it. And I found out early today that most of them just thought it went by the wayside. So they have not gotten proper notification of this. And so for that reason, I would like to table this until the next council meeting after Thursday. Okay, we have a motion to table and a second from Council Member Ellinger to table number 12 until the next work session or council meeting. Until the next work session, I guess we can be on the docket. Okay, that's non-debatable. So all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All righty. So that's tabled until the date of June 21st, Committee of the Whole Work Session docket. All right. Council Member Blues. Did you want to speak? You took yourself off. I took myself off. All right. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I voted in favor of the tabling, but I think that that's too short a time period to table it because those people will need to have notice in at least 30 days to digest what's going on. So I agree with tabling it, but we may want to come back and tinker with how long for. Just my comment. Thank you. Councilmember Lawless? I agree. I mean, they have to have at least a 30-day written notice, So that's a good point. Thank you, Councilmember Farmer. So what would be... Do you want to hear from Mr. Lucas, who will be sending out the notification as to when it will get sent out? And then we can... We can change accordingly. Yes. We'll table it indefinitely, or table it until we get the information about when the letters will go out. Well, this motion tabled it until June 21st, and we can change it at that date. Okay, thank you. Depending on what we know about the notification. Mr. Lucas, this has to do with item number 12 for second reading of resolutions, and it's the property address numbers on Richmond Avenue. and the motion tabled this item until June 21st because of a notification issue. Only, Claire, would you like us to send a notification out to them? Or would you like, okay. Could we have it tabled beyond the 21st? Well, we can deal with that on the 21st. Okay, because I will be out that week and I would like to be here to discuss it with them. So Council Member Lawless, I'm sure, will make a motion that day to change it. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. All right. Council Member Lane. I want to ask a question, Mr. Jarvis. Mr. Jarvis, are you here? I'm sorry. I meant Mr. Lucas. Oh, Mr. Lucas. Oh, okay. We have Mr. Lucas. You don't look anything alike. It was the IS that got me. That is not the first time that's happened. Excuse me. I apologize to you. My question, when you give a notification to property owners, could you tell me what the format of that is? Is it a certified letter or just a regular letter? How do you do that? It is a regular letter. We only do certified mailings on citations and things like that. But for these notifications, we just send it regular mail. If it is returned to us, then we try to find another way to get to them. Okay. That's all I wanted to know. Thank you. Okay, are there any other questions about a second reading of resolutions? If not, then we'll move on to review of the budget amendments, pages 42 to 45. Are there questions? Seeing none, we will move to item 5 on the agenda. Items referred from Councilmembers to committee to the docket. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. I have an addition to the NDF list. Three of them I'd like to go ahead and add. I'd like to add the Eastland Parkway Neighborhood Association for $3,000. That includes a park bench for that neighborhood. Laclede Farm Village Homeowners Association for $500 for neighborhood entrance improvements. and Colleges of Liberty Woods Neighborhood Association for $500 for maintenance of their common area. We have a motion by Council Member Stenet, second by Council Member Blues to add that to the docket. Is there any discussion? Is this for discussion? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? And that's to refer it to Thursday night for the docket. And I have a second motion, Vice Mayor. Sorry. Earlier last week or at the end of last week, I emailed council members an ordinance change to our residential parking ordinance. Currently, you're not allowed to park a car on unapproved surfaces in the front yard or side yard. The change in the ordinance would also add the backyard to that. So, therefore, going forward, those vehicles, whether it be recreational or automobiles, would have to be parked on an approved surface going forward if this should pass. So I make a motion to place on the docket for Thursday, June 9th. Council meeting under first reading of ordinances, an ordinance amending section 18-129-2 of the Code of Ordinances to prohibit parking in backyards in a residential district. So moved. And I have extra copies if no one printed it out. Okay. Council Member Lane seconded. Is there discussion about referring this to Thursday for the docket? Council Member Martin? Yeah, I just want to say, and I appreciate the spirit of the motion. I know we talked about this at great length when we were looking at the vinyl box issue last year. I've been working all weekend. I have not had a chance to look at your resolution, so I can't support it yet. So I just wanted to clarify that, and hopefully I'll be able to get on board when it comes up. That's fine. Okay. Any other discussion on the motion? All those in favor of referring this to Thursday's docket say aye. Anyone opposed? There's one nay vote. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mine is on the last item on page 49, which is a budget amendment that in here says funding for tennis court repair and maintenance at Acton Park, which is the amount of $4,000. After Parks and Recreation spent more time with this, they felt like it would take about $8,000 to do that. So the suggestion was made that rather than just send the $4,000 to Parks and Recreation, that we send it to the Bluegrass Community Foundation until we can find the other $4,000 to then make the repair of the tennis court in Acton Park. So I'm going to make a motion that we change the subject line from funding for tennis court repair at Acton Park and going to Parks and Recreation to the Bluegrass Community Foundation. Okay. Okay. Council Member Farmer moved and Ellinger seconded. And is Elizabeth still here? I'm presuming then this would no longer be a budget amendment. It will go under an NDF allocation. Is that your understanding, Mr. Farmer? That works. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Any questions about the motion, discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. and Council Member Martin are you still on? Okay Sorry about that I too am going to have an NDF change for Thursday night but I don't have it here we've been waiting for the reimbursement of some funds from the chamber Commerce Lexington I had a scheduling conflict and so we had to cancel my planned trip to go on the chamber trip this year and we almost didn't expect that money to come back in time for us to allocate it in this year. We thought it was going to lapse, but it did come in, so I just wanted to let the council know that I'd like to bring that up on Thursday night, maybe at the report or something like that. And I don't know how much it is yet. Okay. I think if you want to bring the motion from law or whomever, and we'll just as a walk-on, it could come as a walk-on. Okay. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay. Any other items under Item 5? All righty. The Neighborhood Development Fund list is for pages 46 through 49 for your information. And now we will skip down to committee reports. and Councilmember Lawless will start us out with the Public Safety, Public Works report starting on page 50. Thank you, Vice Mayor. This was the May 10, 2011 meeting. Present were Councilmembers Ellinger, Lawless, Farmer, Crosby, Martin, McCord, and Henson, and Vice Mayor Gorton and Council Member Stennett were also in attendance. The topic was charitable solicitation within the public right-of-way. There was a presentation by Ms. Darlene Thomas, Director of the Bluegrass Domestic Violence, and Rhonda Henrich, Director of Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center. about a program that has been done in the city of Louisville and many surrounding areas. Mr. Clay Mason, Commissioner of Law, stated he was reluctant to support this ordinance change due to public safety concerns and did not think he had adequate time to study the request. Council Member Henson stated she had concerns about using additional police resources during a tight economic time. Council Member Farmer stated that he was reluctant to support this because he was unsure if he wants to see Lexington to make this change. and Council Member Crosby stated she thought an ordinance would give more control on which organizations could collect money at intersections. A motion by Council Member Crosby and seconded by Council Member Ellinger to move this forward to the full council for a vote. The motion failed by a vote of three to four. items referred to the committee councilmember farmer made motion to have the council representative present during police and fire collective bargaining meetings and makes motion after discussion councilmember farmer withdrew this motion the committee held discussion regarding the remaining items in the committee to be reviewed. There was a motion and seconded by Council Member Crosby and seconded by Council Member Martin to remove fire corrections and E-911 from the committee items. It was passed unanimously. There was also a motion to remove residential parking permits from the committee items, and that passed unanimously and to remove sidewalk specifications from the committee. And that also, the committee discussed the issue, and Council Member Farmer withdrew the motion. Item stays in committee and will be discussed at a future date. A motion by Council Member McCord and seconded by Council Member Martin to remove horse cruelty from the committee. Motion passed unanimously. There was no discussion of how long their tether should be. All other agenda items will remain in the committee. A motion by Council Member Crosby and seconded by Council Member Martin to adjourn from the meeting. Motion passed unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. The quarterly Committee of the Whole report starts on 52, and the Committee of the Whole met May 26, 2011, and the first item on the agenda was a conversation about Neighborhood Development Fund disclosure of Council Members' names, and there was a lively debate. And we learned from, and the issue is that whether Council Member names should be included publicly, and there currently are rules against that, and our law department did remind us that an ethics complaint was filed some years ago against a council member who made public a donation from the Neighborhood Development Funds, and each entity which receives Neighborhood Development Funds signs a disclosure form saying they will not say and do not know who gave the money individually. And the reports are available on the I-Drive to council members if they wish to see. So no motion and no action came from that item. The second item was one we discussed earlier, which was suspending the rules to give second reading to resolutions or ordinances. and the motion which came forward, which is on the resolutions, is that any second readings which are requested from the administration, the person from the administration will come to the podium to request a second reading and give the reason, and any council member will do the same at their microphone and explain why a second reading is necessary. And I'll ask law. We don't need to have this motion, do we, since we already have it on the docket. Okay. And the third item on the agenda was council office restructuring conversation to begin that conversation. and the council members will meet June 20th in a special committee of the whole at 430 to do the six-month review of the council meeting restructuring. There's two resolutions that will be discussed, one on standing committees and one on the rules and procedures, and council members are asked to email the vice mayor with any issues that you would like to be put on that agenda. And if you can email me by June the 13th, that concludes the report. And so the next item is council reports and Council Member Stennett is at the ready. I'm at the ready always. A couple things. One, on the core staff workgroup, I just want to give Council a brief update. We will be bringing to you some job descriptions for the remaining positions of core staff before we go on break. We definitely will be bringing the research analyst position and then hopefully the two administrative positions and what they will look like coming to Council. We're trying to get this done before break, but just a brief update on those I wanted to give you today. The second item, I have a couple items that have raised questions in our community. One is Red, White, and Boone. And CA Maloney, I don't see Ms. Houlihan here, but can you answer what's going on with it and where it's going to be located? There seems to be a change in location of it, and I don't think the council's been notified of the changes. So I'm not sure what's going on, but we've had several calls, concerns about the moving of Red, White, and Boone from downtown to, I believe it's the Legends Stadium. I'm not sure if that's accurate or not, but we need to get some information. If you can have her email the details as to what's happening with our 4th of July. I'd be glad to get that because we are going to change, as you know, the run, too, because of the street improvement. I think a lot of – we'd like to get that information for you next week before everybody goes on break. But I believe they moved it to Saturday night. Is that – I mean, don't do Alphabee's. But I think the public needs to know, too. So if you can give us something by Thursday night so we can announce it so people can understand and be clear about where the location is going to be. All y'all need 72 hours and all that, but I think this is something that I think the run's important that everybody needs to know that that's going to be changed. Yeah, we do. And I think the bluegrass, so we'll be glad to get the difference. The more information we can give out, the better. And then the second item was I'd e-mail, I know, Commissioner and yourself earlier today about why we're using police officers at our government entrances, one being in the Phoenix building as well as our building, along with our security guards. I know you probably haven't had time to respond since you've been in meetings, but I want the public to be clear because this issue is coming back to us from the public. We have a clear officer, specifically in my district as well, that has been moved from his duties out there to sit in the Phoenix building. And I have a real concern with that. When we're telling the public we can't do funerals and we can't do things out there, but yet we can put them here in our own buildings, it doesn't look good. So if you can find out why we started that practice and why we have those and get back to us so we can make sure the public is aware that we'll still either continue clear of what's going to happen. One thing I do want to bring up on the 4th of July, unless you council members know, because when I used to work for the housing and building construction, I had the state fire marshal on to me. Last year they made fireworks like Tennessee. So just want you all to know, anything goes. So, I mean, she'll be glad then. But I just want to give everybody a heads up. There will be no laws like there used to be on fireworks. Like you go to Tennessee, now you can go to Luttonton and get your fireworks. So I just want to show it's going to be kind of an active two-week coming up. Lori, Councilman. I think you need to clarify what you just said. So you're saying the law in Kentucky has changed that now we can have Class A fireworks. Okay. Okay. I mean, you'll get the calls. We won't. Council will get calls because I know I used to be a council member. I know I'm 30. Y'all are going to be getting tons of calls, so I was going to give y'all a heads up. That did pass. Okay. Lori, Council Member Stenet had a question about Red, White, and Boom. Yes. What's the details of the plans for the Fourth of July Festival Red, White, and Boom? I understand it's been changed locations, and I think the public is very concerned about the change. The Red, White, and Boom was actually a clear channel event. that the city was paying Clear Channel to do in the Cox Street parking lot. Clear Channel chose to move it themselves to Legends Field. So are we still paying for it? No. So we'll still have our own 4th of July? We'll still have our own fireworks. Downtown? Yes, we just won't have the big concert in Cox Street parking lot. Okay, because I think that was a concern. They're going to have fireworks at the Legends, and we're still going to have our own activities downtown. They're having their fireworks on Saturday, and ours will be Sunday. Okay. Or Monday, I'm sorry. Well, people usually can associate Red, White, and Boone with the city, so that's not our event. It's not our event. And that's good to clarify that. And that's why I asked. So thank you. You're welcome. For clarifying that. So everything's good there. Okay. Council Member Ford, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Commissioner. I wanted to take this time to just address some of the concerns and share with Council some activities that will be happening here very soon. I know that there has been concern throughout my district as well as perhaps throughout your districts as well in regards to crime, in regards to some of the homicides and violent crimes that have happened thus far this year. Of particular concern, to me, all loss of life is a major concern, but of the homicides thus far, they have been young folk, teenagers in our community. So with that, one of our biggest jobs is to provide for the public safety of our citizens and provide a good quality of life. And I recognize that we keep that front and center on our priorities. But we need the help of the community. I know that we cannot do it alone as government, and we should not. To that end, I look forward to standing with Mayor Gray and Chief Batson tomorrow as we engage youth advocates on a process to find some strategies to increase opportunities for our youth and our community, and probably more importantly so is to ensure their safety as young residents of Fayette County. And I ask the council to join your constituents, my constituents. It's not an issue that's confined just to my district. It's a concern citywide, and we look forward to doing that tomorrow. So, again, there will be a press conference tomorrow at 1.30 here at the Government Center. And I would ask council members, if you can, on such short notice, if you would feel free to stop by and lend support. There's so many great youth advocates in our community that are going to be there, and I definitely look forward to the representation Chief Bassett is going to provide for the public safety workers of our community. So community, if you're listening, if you have constituents in your district, please let them know. We'll have an opportunity very soon to work towards youth development and public safety. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just a couple of announcements. This weekend, June 12th, is Second Sunday, and unlike any other community in America, Lexington borrows infrastructure in this case we borrow the infrastructure of an airport runway for health, wellness and physical activity. From 1 o'clock to 5 o'clock I want to invite the community and every member of this council and their families to come to something that is truly unique to Kentucky and truly unique to Lexington to come out and blade, bike, walk, run on the airport runway. In conjunction with that the The Aviation Museum brings out a lot of their historical planes. Blue Angels planes are there, Black Hawk helicopter, the police helicopter, a number of other things for kids of all ages. But this is something that last year we had roughly 15,000 people come. And, again, it's something that is very unique to our city, but it's also a part of changing this culture of health and wellness. So everyone is welcome. If you want to find out more details, you can go to SecondSundayKY.com, and it's the number 2ndsundayky.com, and just click on the Lexington button to find out information. Council members, I've passed out to you the letter that I had requested, had been requesting from the home builders with regard to the specifics of their interactions with the administration on the Parks Acquisition Fund and its potential use or not use during this budget. the balance of that particular fund is on top of the page, and I just wanted to pass that out so that everybody could have that information and see the correspondence that's gone back and forth. And I appreciate CAO Maloney getting this information to me today. That's it. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Vice Mayor. The Ellsford Neighborhood Association will be holding their regularly scheduled meeting tonight at 7 p.m. at Woodland Christian Church. Everyone's welcome to attend. That particular neighborhood association on Sunday, June 12th, will host its inaugural APNA garden tour. It should be a lot of fun. Over a dozen gardens will be offered on the tour this year, and volunteers are still needed to help with the event. Additionally, if you are a resident of the Ellsford neighborhood and a member of APNA Neighborhood Association and would like to nominate a garden or have your garden on tour, please go to the APNA website at www.ellsfordplaceplac.org for more details. And congratulations to them for putting this fun event together. The Suburban Court Neighborhood Association will meet Monday, June 13th at 730 at the Good Foods Co-op located at 455 Southland Drive. And on May 21st, there was a terrific porch party in the Bell Court area. I was not able to go, but I hear that it was quite a to-do. And congratulations to Chloe Hurley and Greg Abernathy for being crowned king and queen of Belcourt for their outstanding service to the neighborhood. I'd also like to recognize the passing of a very talented, well-loved, well-respected artist and author and illustrator of children's books, Paul Brett Johnson, who passed away this past week. He was a longtime friend of mine, and a lot of people didn't realize he even lived here in Lexington, but he had accolades from all over the United States. He was written up in the Smithsonian, got the California Young Readers Award, and his service was this past Sunday, I mean Saturday, and he will be greatly missed. I also would like to announce another boss to our community, but in a different way, Officer Keith Gaines, clear officer, who has done so much for the neighborhoods in my district and others, will be retiring, I think, tomorrow as his last official day. and Officer Gaines was not only dedicated to his job and did so much for our neighborhoods, he also did a tremendous amount of volunteer work on his own time, researching things for town and gown, researching ordinances, putting together groups, and it will be a great loss to the community, but congratulations to him for his retirement, and I hope he has better sense than I did when I retired. So Officer Gaines will be greatly missed, and I hope we can put something together to honor him and his service. That's all. Thank you so much. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to reiterate what Council Member Stent said about the core staff and in specific about the personnel committee that was put together for the council administrator. We met today and are going to be having interviews set up on Monday starting at 10 o'clock, and I sent an email out there to all council members. If you would like us to have any questions to ask to prospective candidates, please email a question you'd like us to ask. but committee members are the only ones who will be asking the questions, the five people on the committee. But if you would like to attend, council members, you're more than willing to attend, but just not able to participate during the question part of it, we will be in a closed session format. But that will be starting Monday at 10 o'clock. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to announce the State Fire School will be in Lexington this weekend. and it's a really fun event. There's firefighters, hundreds of firefighters from across the state that come into our community. They bring in their trucks and they open it up to the public. So if you have kids, I know my kids love to go and look at all the fire trucks and see all the different activities and displays. And for council members interested, I'm not sure, they might have the physical fitness course set up again and they always like to see a council member huff and puff their way through it. So if they've got that set up, I'm sure that would be great fun for you all to try it out. Thanks. Thank you. Councilmember Farmer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I want to go back to the comments that led off by Councilmember Ford. There's a heightened awareness of crime in all of our neighborhoods, and the subject of so many neighborhood meetings and presentations from the police department. And, you know, they're the best force and they do the best they can. But I think it's important for the citizenry to understand there's a responsibility to a certain degree to use the police department's insight and advice. And one of the forms that they have at each one of the meetings is a property identification record, which is little more than an opportunity for us as individuals to write down the specifics about our automobiles, bicycles, guns, electronics, refrigerators, sewing machines, jewelry, and other equipment, but most importantly, the serial numbers for all those things. The serial number is the most important number that you can write down and keep separately so that after something is gone, we can check those numbers against things that are pawned in the city. And I think that's the most important single thing that comes from all these meetings, besides the crimes of opportunity that befall so many of our constituents about locking doors, locking your car, closing your garage door, spending time being aware of your surroundings, wherever you are, but just make it harder for the bad guys to get your stuff, is the best single thing each of us can do. And I just think if you don't have this form, I know it could be readily available or downloadable, or you can videotape your belongings or just use time to go around and write down the serial numbers and descriptions of the things that people steal, like a GPS unit out of a car, a camera out of a car. Put those things under a seat. Put them in a trunk. Take a moment to look around your house or call the police and they can come in, spend some time with you on how to make your home, your business, and your person a little more secure. And I think we all need to spend more time on security, not just with our police every time something goes wrong. It's something we need to step out and be a little forward on. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Lawless. As a follow-up to that, and thank you very much, Councilmember Farmer. I'd like to learn this the hard way a few years ago. If you have collectibles in your home, they need to be insured separately. So several years ago I had a very valuable silver dollar my uncle had given me as a child. It was worth $18,000, and it was stolen from my house, and it was worth a dollar. So if you have collectibles or art in your home, you need to have a rider on your policy, and it's very inexpensive to do so. Thank you. Thank you. I have just three items. I want to thank Council Member Ford for being proactive on the issue of crime in the neighborhood and other neighborhoods. I'm fully supportive of the initiatives that you're getting started. As you know, I've talked with you about this. I won't be able to be at the press conference, but I'm certainly fully supportive of any effort we can make there. Just to review, the council will have its next budget committee of the whole on June 9th, and at 3 o'clock that day we'll continue our discussion on late items and then get into other recommendations for the budget. And then finally, I wanted to echo the thoughts that have been expressed about Officer Keith Gaines. He has been a shining star on the Town and Gown Commission. He told me one time he brings forth new ideas. He frequently has new ideas to submit to Town & Gown, and he stays up thinking about things and what would make our neighborhoods better. And so we will especially miss his input in the neighborhoods on Town & Gown Commission and thank him for his service. Councilmember Martin. Thank you. Tonight at 7 p.m., the second edition of the Southland Jamboree is going to be held at the Collins Bowling Lanes. And this is a great, great series. And if you haven't been over, see some just tremendous bluegrass music, stop over to Collins Bowling Lanes, go have some dinner on Southland Drive while you're over there. But it's just really a neat thing. Also starting up is Moon Dance at Midnight Pass out in Beaumont. And so on Thursday nights, they're going to have movie night on some Thursday nights. And these are movies for grown-ups. They're going to have Pink Floyd, the Wall out there. And so this is our own little river bend. And so LexArts is managing this. There's going to be a lot of some of the Ecton Park jazz series will be out there and some other great acts. So the moon dance at midnight pass is just really going to be a tremendous thing out from my neck of the woods. And also at Azure, we have a new farmer's market. and the chef at Azure is going to take the local produce and make special things on the Saturdays that it's out there. So you can Google that and check that out Saturdays at Farmer's Market out at Azure. So really neat things going on in the 10th District. Thanks, Vice Mayor. Thank you. I had one more item. It's a little bit, the notice is a little bit late, but if you're watching and you're a dog park fan, The Friends of the Dog Park group has their annual meeting tonight at 6 o'clock at Parks and Rec on Harrisburg Road, and they will be discussing formation of user groups for each dog park. Is there any other council report? Okay. Is there public comment for issues not on the agenda? Do we have any public here? No? Okay. Okay. We have a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor, say aye. Anybody opposed? Thank you very much. Love it. Take me to help you, beautiful you. Beautiful you I'll never let you go Beautiful you