It's 3 o'clock and today is June the 9th, 2011, and this is a budget committee of the whole meeting of the council. And we are continuing our agenda from Tuesday with one item that we agreed on Tuesday to add at the beginning. Does every council member have a packet? We We have a few extra if you need one. And so the first item, if you'll pull out from Tuesday your police presentation, you each should have a packet on that. And I will welcome to the podium Chief Ronnie Bastin, who was very patient on Tuesday. Thank you. Okay. First of all, thank you for allowing me to come forward and talk a little bit about some of the transition that we're going through within the Division of Police. I know it's been a topic of discussion. We've had a number of inquiries from some council members and others about how we're moving forward and our plan to move forward for the future. Can I ask how much time that I have, Vice Mayor? Fifteen minutes, and just if I could say, is that enough time? I think it will be enough time for me to present what I need to, but I think there will be questions. Questions can go on after that. And, Council Members, this was a direct request from Council Members to get more and final information on the police issues before we go into our LINCS discussion. Okay. Thank you. Hopefully I'll be able to provide you with enough information in 15 minutes that you have an understanding of why it's necessary for us to make some movements within the Division of Police to retain and make sure that we provide our basic services at the level that citizens have come to expect. To give a little bit of background, I think that's necessary to do this. Our actual sworn strength peaked in 2007 at 593. We were actually authorized at 595. We had some transition during a recruit class process and weren't actually able to maintain that after we hired the class. In 2007, 2008, as you may remember, Mayor Newberry had a growth plan for the Division of Police. We were on a plan, on a track to hire 150 police officers by 2010, and that was the mode that we were in. We actually moved some folks around within units within the police department to make room for the people that were going to be moving into some areas that definitely needed to grow at the time. The economy started turning south, as we've all dealt with, and it wasn't long before that plan of 150 officers wasn't a reality anymore. We actually realized 25 officers of the 150 that we were looking to grow. So since 2008, when the economy started turning down, we've seen somewhat of a decline in the number of officers that we had. We've tried to be very responsible with budgeting and community partners and shoulder the parts that we were asked to shoulder in terms of budgeting to make the budgets work. And so we've held vacancies through those years. For the past two years, we've held 26 vacancies that were unfunded in the budget, and we've had additional attrition up and beyond that, certainly. But as we did grow in 2007-2008, we grew proportionally. We had a plan. We had a plan for each of the two recruit classes that would come out each year and where each extra officer that we realized that made up the 150 as we moved towards that number, where they would go within the division based on priority for need for growth and what additional capability that was going to give us. So we knew exactly at each graduation date where a person would be assigned and what additional capability we were going to have. That was a pretty exciting time to be thinking about and how we could increase services. In the last three years, we've been looking from a 180-degree view, though. We've been looking at what we can hold on to, what we can continue to do and afford to continue to do. As we were growing, our clear unit grew considerably. Our school resource officer program, which had been grant-funded, the grant ran out. We chose elected to maintain the officers in the school, the resource officers. We felt like that was a necessary responsibility that we had to partner with the school system, so we absorbed that entity that had been funded by grants. The horse patrol grew in numbers and number of animals. The air support unit was created, and we assigned two full-time people to that unit. Second shift traffic was created to relieve patrol officers when they get out from roll call at 4 o'clock from taking accident reports. Prior to second shift traffic, when you got out of second shift roll call, most everyone was tied up taking accident reports during rush hour until about 6, 30, or 7 o'clock. So that gave patrol officers, we retained the opportunity for them to respond to calls for service and priority calls. The downtown bike unit grew from one to four people and so forth. So you can see there was a pattern of growth, and we increased the service level that we could provide. Where are we now, and why are we at the point of having to reassign people and reduce some of the service levels that we've been providing? We haven't hired anyone. We were scheduled to hire, as those of you that were on the council last year know, you budgeted for us to hire a recruit class for the second half of fiscal year 11. And we were planning to do that. We were geared up to do that. We had about 33 or 4 vacancies that we would have been able to hire had that class been able to come to fruition. The health care issue, I think, came in, and we were looking for $9 million because of a shortfall with the health care fund. And obviously, we had to have a balanced budget to finish out the fiscal year 11. and our recruit class, it wasn't possible for us to have a recruit class. So that's why we're where we are today. The reduction in services isn't about money necessarily. It's about bodies or lack thereof to do the things that we've been doing. We've been stretching our rubber band pretty tight, and we just can't stretch anymore. We have to reduce what we're able to do and what we can accomplish. And so you might say, well, whose fault is this? I can tell you, it's not Mayor Gray's fault in any way. He inherited a situation that he couldn't anticipate. A $9 million shortfall is pretty significant, as you well know. We understand that, that the money has to come from somewhere, and our recruit class was part of that decision, had to be. It wasn't your fault, because you didn't have anything to do with that. It wasn't my fault. I'm standing here to tell you. But it's the fault of the prolonged downturn in the economy that we all had hoped would have turned the other way by this point. But unfortunately, it hasn't. So we find ourselves now picking up the cards that we've been dealt, the hand we've been dealt, organizing it and trying to play the best hand that we can. And that's what we're doing with the movements that we're making. Next slide. Oh, I'm sorry. You already were ahead of me. I don't want to insult your intelligence by talking about budgets a whole lot, but one thing that I find internally and externally that people aren't aware of, our budget, because it's such a large budget, the largest budget in the urban county government, individual budget, last year was $59.6 million. That sounds like a lot of money and a lot of room to make cuts and do a lot of things. We've experienced cuts for the last three years in a row. And when you break it down by what we control and what we really don't, we're at a point to where there's nothing left that we control to where we can sustain a substantial cut. Salaries and benefits by contract are $53 million of the $59.6 million. $3.7 million are expenses that we consider outside of our control. Those are $1.9 million for fuel. We have a large fleet, and our business is driven by putting miles on vehicles. 1.2 million on vehicle maintenance. I think that makes, what, 2.9 or something. We have grant match of 200,000. We have utilities, 375,000. So those are things that go on that we have very, very limited control over. We don't even make the charges against the account. Fleet Services does that for most of that for us. We have $1.6 million in overtime last year, and we had had the previous year $2.2 million. So we cut that significantly. Typically, as resources and number of personnel go down, to retain the same level of service, you have to increase by subsidizing with overtime. Our folks have been ingenious in being able to find ways to get tasks done without having to spend excessive overtime. I'm extremely proud of our folks for that. But with overtime, we have a certain amount of that that's not discretionary. We have court overtime that's by contract. If an officer goes to court, they have to be paid overtime for that if they're off duty, and we can't control how many court appearances that they have to go to. So that's out of our control. So the $1.6 million has some limited control, which leaves us really $1.3 million of operating expenses, the paper and pencils and ammunition we have to buy and taser cartridges and pepper spray and all the things that we have to do to make a division of about 700 people work every day. So as you can see, it doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room for us. We're down to no fat. In preparing the FY12 budget, we were asked to do several scenarios to look at what the effects would be on services if we could afford and we had a flat budget, a reduction of 7.5%, 10%, and 12%. And our approach to this request was one of trying to develop people that are upcoming in the agency, which is something we place a high priority on. We asked all of our commanders in the Division of Police to be a part of a group, and we divided them into teams of three and gave them all the information, with the salaries of our people, all the expenses, and ask them to run scenarios and give us recommendations of what they would cut, how much they would cut from each area, and what we could continue to do, and what services they would recommend that we cut. How would they reorganize the division if necessary to do that based on those cuts? And it was remarkable that out of all those groups of people who were working independently, how close they were at the end of the day. There were some differences, but they all had the same theme. So we used that, and we used the best of the brightest people that we have to try to come up with a plan that we've devised. The FY12 budget, obviously, is a 7.7% fiscal reduction and 10% personnel reduction from the authorized strength of the highest authorized strength that we have of 595. Reduction implementation. Even if we hire officers today, it takes us 11 months from the time they come in the door, the first day to go through training and field training program before they're able to take one call for service and ride a beat by themselves. So what we had to do as a division is look way ahead of today. We had to look out to the future and the promise of when we might have additional folks in the pipeline as reinforcements and figure out what we were going to have in terms of demands and figure out how we were going to get through that and the number of people it was going to take to make it through until we can see some replacements in the pipeline. As of right now, we don't see an opportunity for that until we get probably within six months from now or eight, depending on the amount of attrition that we have. We had determined previously, three years ago, what the minimum patrol staffing levels needed to be, the number of patrolmen assigned to patrol to be able to have calls for service and keep a safe environment without having to supplement significantly with overtime. And that number, we've been below that. So we're at a point where we're going to have to transfer people from specialized support units back into patrol to make sure we have enough people to respond within a reasonable time and a safe environment to take calls for service. So that's exactly what we're trying to do. At the same time, we're seeing we have some challenges. We're seeing property crimes elevate compared to previous years. We're seeing in the last couple to three months some violence escalate, which concerns us. And as a result of that, we've put people together from various places within the department to respond to those two challenges. We have a task force for theft reduction. been very productive, made up of folks from Bureau of Investigations, Clear Patrol, and Traffic, and the same for a violent crimes task force. They're being very productive and making some good inroads. To give you an example, in one four-day period in May, we responded to 40 calls for service for shots fired or assault with a weapon. That's much higher than we typically would run. So I use that point to illustrate what we're looking at and the reason we have to assign folks and have an adequate number responding to calls for service with what's being faced. How did we go about the implementation? We determined the minimum patrol staffing. We believed in the philosophy that we should try to do whatever we could to keep from shutting down and eliminating some of the units, support units within the Division of Police, because they all have important functions. And the folks that are assigned there are doing good jobs with what they do. We hope that this transfer situation and reorganization or workforce restructure will be a temporary thing. We know that it will be easier to build back to the levels that we've seen in the past if we retain the units. If we totally abolish units like the horse patrol, it's going to be cost prohibitive and take a lot of time to stand that back up. So we believe it's better to try to hold on to the units, reduce units across the board, and retain the capability as efficiently as we possibly can. It was determined that unit seniority would be used in determining who would be removed from the units. So the last people into the unit would be the first ones to have to go back to patrol. and we felt like that was the best compromise in using seniority and recognizing that and at the same time keeping the folks with conceivably the highest skill levels and amount of training in those specialized units to carry on the function that we could afford to carry on. We felt like that was the most equitable way to go about this. So let's move on here to the future and what that is. The air support unit currently only has one full-time employee because Officer Don Evans retired, and he was the other full-time employee that we had. So that's going to become a part-time unit, and we won't have anyone assigned full-time to that. The mounted patrol unit will be reduced from eight officers to four. They ride in pairs, so it's not feasible to have an odd number, or otherwise they couldn't ride in pairs together. The ERU coordinator will change from a full-time position to a part-time position. The clear unit neighborhood coordinators will be reduced from eight to four. We've been covering eight neighborhoods, and we're going to have to cover four now. We can't afford to have four people in that capacity. We know how important that their job is and what a great service it is to members of the council and neighborhood presidents and community. I started that unit. I conceived that unit, and I've been very proud of what they've done. So many people, I guess, would say that I've been partial to them over the years. So I wouldn't want to cut them if I didn't feel like it was absolutely the right thing to do and we were faced with any other alternatives. Community Services Unit, be reduced by five officers. And there we're looking at the sections with teaching Dara in schools and great. Excuse me one second. Council Member Ellinger has something he wants to say. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I think your time's run out, but we'd like to, or I'd like to, and I think the council probably would, too, give you an extra five minutes for your presentation. So I make a motion that we extend your time, five minutes. And we have several seconds. All those in favor say aye. Anyone opposed? Thank you. You can relax on your last five minutes. I can get it within two, I think, I hope. But I did want you to understand where those folks are coming from. So community services, certainly. We did retain the ability to do PAL within community services. It's been our experience that direct, everyday relationship building over a period of time has produced great results over the years. That would be one of the last functions in community services that we would want to reduce. The traffic section reduced by four officers. I think I mentioned the other day and here a couple weeks ago that we responded to 2,041 funeral escorts last year. The minimum time for a short funeral escort requires two people for two hours. The larger escorts take three people or more for sometimes up to three hours. So if you use the minimum, you're looking at over 8,000 man hours. The typical person works 2,080 hours in a year, so that realizes four full-time people. That's how we got to that number to reduce traffic. We still shouldn't, by reducing those four, affect the ability to write tickets and do the other enforcement things we're doing in traffic right now. But we will have to cease to provide those funeral escorts. Stop our Safety City program, which teaches all second graders in Fayette County. Our ability to do some other functions like crime prevention and kid print will be reduced, but we'll still hang on to those. And we'll be reducing our full-time recruiter position from our training unit. So the only support unit within the Division of Police that was not touched was K-9. They have a very small number of officers and dogs. They have nine, and, you know, they're just such a vital resource for patrol doing building searches, large buildings in the middle of the night that it's a huge officer safety issue. So we propose not to cut those. So what does the future look like? As I've explained, we're having to reduce some services that we provide. You know, some of our officers, obviously, it's affected their lives, and the movement has changed schedules and done a lot of things, and we've ensured them that we'll try to do all that we can to minimize the impact. We realize the importance of this is to them, how hard they've worked to get to some of these units and to step back and have to move back into shift work in some cases. It has a huge impact on the family, but we're committed to our people, and we're going to do all we can do to reduce that impact. Normal attrition is going to be 20 to 25 people for most years. So, you know, what we have today and moving those 20 people is what we felt like we had to have to face the issues we've got coming up this summer and hopefully until we can get a recruit class in the pipeline. If we're not able to get a recruit class in the pipeline very soon, then we'll be doing another movement like this. and I think it's important that you know that we don't have a lot of people to choose from. When you take away these 20 people that will be moved July the 11th, we don't have an abundance of people in specialized support units. It leaves us with 23 people after that that are in support units, and those are the ones remaining in PAL and some other, the foreign mounted patrol and those things. So it's conceivable by, you know, depending on attrition, that by February next year, we may not have any of those people in the support units in order to maintain the levels that we have to on patrol. So the next one will be a lot more painful because the services will totally have to disappear. Are there any questions? Thank you very much. We do have council members who are logging on for questions, and we'll start with Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor and Chief. Thank you for coming back once again and presenting with the picture that we're currently faced with in regards to our police department. A couple questions on your budget numbers at the beginning. I assume that did not include the confiscated fund that we approved on Tuesday. I'm not aware what was. So that was, well, we approved a decrease in the confiscated fund and left you a balance of about $1.1 million in there. My question is, obviously, can you use that for anything? Can we use that to get more officers in training? Can we use it to shore up the patrols or to continue with funerals or Safety City? I mean, can that money be used for any of those programs? Drug asset forfeiture money is very tricky, and it has limitations by federal statute on what you can and can't use it for. We'd have to talk about specific programs. There are provisions in there. And one of the main overarching goals, I guess, that helps to understand it, is that it's not to go for things that are recurring expenses. So you can't fund folks' salary for three years in a row or four or five or whatever. If we were to maybe conceive of a project where we could enhance some effort and would need to hire people, we might be able to get by with hiring people for one year using the funding, but we couldn't do it on a recurring basis. And that's one of the things that we really have to watch. We currently use asset forfeiture right now for things that special needs and equipment and training. Travel, for instance, a division our size, we spend about $200,000 a year for training and travel. Our budget with general fund dollars is $8,000, and we have $7,000 left to turn back into at the end of the year here. We realize that, and we take that upon ourselves to try to be responsible, help with general funding wherever we can. when we need to buy things like radar trailers or things that have enforcement functions or whatever. We try to do that rather than to come and ask and put you on the spot for it because we have that money and it's a great asset for us. We want to be very careful that we use it appropriately, though, and that we not jeopardize participation in the program. Thank you. I'm glad you said that because I think you have used it appropriately in the past. I just didn't want someone thinking out there that there's 1.1 million we can use anyway. but we want to make it sure of your budget. You mentioned some of the cuts for next year, for the next 12 months or so. As Tuesday, are we keeping PAL, the Police Activities League, going, so that's not in danger of being cut or anything? PAL is being kept. And the reason we had to make tough choices, and we actually, I came up with a list of where these positions would come from, looking at the organizational chart, and then I had all the assistant chiefs that come in, and I didn't tell them, wouldn't share with them what I decided, and I had them come up with a list too. and explain it to me, we were one position different out of the exercise. So our thinking was very consistent. So I'm confident we are on the right path with it. We felt like PAL, all the positions were important, but PAL was something that we have seen direct results from. We've seen that long-term relationship building with that risk youth provide a number of success stories, and we feel like that's something that we can layer our hands on and say we know this is working. there and great programs. There are some issues with researchers saying whether or not they're effective. I think they're good, and I think they have some effect, and it's hard to measure it. But when compared to what we see from PAL, given those two choices, we made the choice that we did. And the final question I had was, going forward, obviously we don't have any officers in training. And if we were to hire a class or get them in training in 30 days, you're still a year out from them hitting the street. What is our plan? I mean, theoretically, in January we could be in serious trouble if we lose any more officers to retirements and things like that. What is our safety, safe gap stop? I mean, what do we have in place? The safety issue I'm not as concerned about because we're going to continue doing what we've done right here, and we'll continue to do that. At the end of the day, on a priority basis, we have to, number one, be available and answer calls for services when citizens call us. That has to be our number one priority. Second priority has to be investigate crimes that are reported to us. So we have to staff patrol and investigations. Those are the last two to take a hit. Third priority would be traffic. But we'll, you know, if we're not able to hire, if we're faced with a large attrition or whatever, we'll continue to transfer people from all the support, rest of the support units first, and then start with traffic to keep patrol and investigations adequately staffed. So citizens shouldn't see a safety issue, if you will. Well, again, I'm just concerned about your overall numbers, and who knows what will happen at the turn of the year. But if you could come back to the council, maybe give us an update on how things are going, maybe in January or something. I think that would make a lot of us feel a little more comfortable at the changes being made and proposed. I know if I start seeing commanders on patrol and maybe yourself out there on patrol, we're in trouble, right? Well, we're going to give you the best service that we possibly can for the resources we have. Thank you for everything you do, and thank you for your staff for being here and everything they do to keep us safe. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. And we do have a few more questions about your presentation. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Chief, and to the command staff that are here and for everybody that is a part of our police force. You know, one of the things that I guess a couple weeks ago, Chief Jackson came in, and this council really honored the work that he's done with regard to overtime. And I see you in the back, and I want to reiterate those things to you. Thank you very much for the work that you've done in getting us the numbers that we needed. But I want to personally thank you and thank your staff because for the last number of years, you all have been doing that year after year after year. And it can kind of go by the wayside to say, well, you know, that's just part of it. But the job you all have done has been fairly incredible as far as reining that in. You mentioned the numbers. You had $1.6 million worth of overtime, but last year it was $2.2 million. 2.1, roughly. So, you know, a reduction of a half million or 600,000 of overtime in one year's time. I want to compliment you on that management just in the budget, and I know that comes from your command staff and everybody all the way down. It's our people. We've tried to instill those skills in the philosophy, right philosophy, in our people at all levels, and it's amazing the progress they've made. I'm very proud of them. Well, and I wanted to publicly thank you all and thank everybody that's involved with that because, again, I think that can kind of go by the wayside and get lost in all that we're talking about. As Council Member Stenet said, you know, one of the concerns that I have is six months from now, you know, as we kind of keep cutting and cutting and cutting with retirements, and then we just sent six officers into harm's way, deploying them back into the military, and, you know, those types of things continue to put a strain on you all. And so please do keep coming back to us and let us know as we walk through this year, especially just because it is probably the most challenging year we've got. One of the things that I think is a big point of confusion for council members, me, I'm going to speak for myself, is clear. I don't have a clear unit in my district, and so I don't see the benefit and the value of that every single day like Council Member Myers and Council Member Ford and some other folks that do. But one of the concerns that I've got is how that's set up. I don't think the public even understands very well that while you may have a clear officer, there is a back room that basically is taking that function and doing things with it. And primarily my concern is the rise of gang-related violence and some of the things that we've got going on in our community. And I want to make sure that we fully understand what that is. I want to give you some time to talk about that. Before I do, because you may take the rest of the two minutes and talk all you want about that, I think that one place that you can certainly come away from this meeting and start looking for resources is our sheriff's office, because that sheriff stood up on that mic and said that they had lots of resources and wanted to share. So I think that's something that I'd tell you to go forth and see what resources we can borrow from Kathy, because I really think she meant that and that she's looking for opportunities there. But with that, would you please explain the CLEAR unit function? Absolutely. But let me address the last point that you made. Sheriff Witt's been a tremendous partner with us, and we do work jointly on so many things, crime reduction task forces and a lot of issues. So she's been a great partner, and we certainly will continue to reach out to her. But the CLEAR unit was a new concept. We weren't aware of this going on anywhere in the United States. I talked about it before we formed it on a committee that I'm on nationally with some other professionals, and they really didn't know whether they thought it would work or not. But I think the success has kind of shown that it works very well. We have two separate groups within CLEAR. We have the neighborhood support officers, and what they do, their primary job is to be a one-stop shop for government services as a council person resource or neighborhood presence or whatever, if there's a problem that any government service can touch, they help coordinate it, they help reach out, try to cut through any red tape that may exist, and work to be effective and get the job done. Quality of life issues, and they're invaluable, I know, in the districts that they're in. The support of the resource officers, on the other hand, started out being three squads of eight. We're down to two squads now because as we've moved down in our numbers, We had to cut back on them already, and that may have been something that folks didn't understand either. But they actually are an enforcement arm. So they work with the neighborhood officers, the patrol commanders, and they prioritize issues that they feel like they can go in from an enforcement perspective and be effective with. They work very closely on narcotics issues, street-level narcotics sales, with larceny from autos, breaking into cars, breaking into houses. They do stakeouts. They're a very proactive group that don't have to ride a beat, but yet they're equipped, they're out, and when they're out, they do take calls for service when patrol gets backed up. So they're in a direct enforcement mode all the time. They're putting people in jail, writing tickets every day they're out, and they're extremely productive. And some questions have been, why haven't you moved the enforcement officers out and kept the others? Well, if I move the enforcement officers away, I don't gain anything because they're already out there doing enforcement. I'll lose the ability that they have to do that. So I'm sure there's some misunderstanding on that, but I promise you'd like to keep all of them if we could. They're a great resource for us. With our growth plan, we planned to try to really increase the number of neighborhoods that we were going to supply neighborhood support officers to. Council Member Hanson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Chief, I just want to reiterate what Council Member Stenet and McCord have said. I'm always very, very impressed with the work that you do. And all the programs, I think, are very, very important. But I also understand the predicament you're in right now. It's an unfortunate situation. I had a question. I know you've applied for the COPS grant. Is that correct? We have. And what do you think the chances are? Goodness, that's a tough one. That's extremely competitive. With the situation of law enforcement throughout the country and the numbers that people, the folks that people have laid off and vacancies are holding, there's going to be an exorbitant number of folks that apply for that, and there's not going to be near the amount of money to go around, even to a small proportion. We've applied for the last two years and haven't received one officer funded from it. Part of that was because of our lower crime rates over the last two years, though. Crime rates are something they look at. So sometimes I think you get penalized from those things for doing the community, doing good work together. I'm hopeful that we get them. If we do, the federal cycle is the budget won't start until, what, October, even if we were announced, and then it would probably be February or so before we could realize hiring those 27 officers we applied for if we were fully funded. Okay. Do you feel like that you can still maintain the overtime cost being understaffed? That's why we're moving people. One of the reasons. That's one of the factors we have to look at. We have to have enough folks out to allow people to take their time off, or we get in trouble with that. We have to have enough folks out so they can be safe and there can be someone available to back if they run into one of these people who are doing the shots fired, those kind of things. So there's a multitude of things we're looking at. I'll say this. If any team can do it, ours can with the police. I agree. Well, also, as promotions come about, there will be, I don't know how often you promote or anything like that, but that would also decrease your patrols. Well, it's interesting you mention that. If we get to another slice, like I alluded to, that we might with these other 23 folks in February, March, or whenever the attrition would force that to happen, then we have a plan to restructure the agency. restructure the rank structure. So we would probably be looking at demoting some folks to send back down to lower positions. I'm holding two assistant chief positions open right now from folks that left in January that we just didn't feel like it was right to hire more at the top of the agency when we're looking for people at the bottom. I appreciate your work. And I can't help but be concerned about the current officers if they're not able to take vacation time or, you know, because it is a very stressful job dealing with some real craziness out there. And I worry about their morale and how that would be affected. So hopefully the economy will pick up and things will look brighter for us soon. I'm not sure that it's going to come as soon as we need it to, but something that certainly needs to be addressed. Our folks are resilient. Okay. I'll say that. Well, they're always wonderful to me, and I appreciate that. Very professional. They retain focus through a lot of potential diversion. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you. Chief, thanks for being here. We appreciate it. I want to echo Council Member Henson's comments. I am very impressed with the department and the people. Every interaction I've had with folks on your staff have been tremendous, and they come out to neighborhood meetings. You and I have had a number of conversations, and obviously we have other things that come to council. So I appreciate what everybody does, and it's extremely professional. I want to kind of walk you through a couple of budget items. And for the council, I apologize. This isn't a packet that I had from something else. So what we're going to start is look at page 11. These are sort of budget numbers we have. and Chief I got you a copy as well I won't sandbag you I know you may not have your reading glasses but I'll sort of talk but I just wanted to let you follow along so this is the adopted public safety budget since 2002 and just looking at the police column back in 2002 it was approximately $34 million and when we made it to 2011 we were up to about $59.5 million So we've increased the police department budget anyway since 2002, about $25 million, 25.3, which is about a 74 percent increase. One of the things that when we looked at this was that the whole public safety budget has basically taken up about 85 percent of the increases in the general fund, of general fund increases in 2002. So all the rest of the government has only really received 15 percent of the other increases that we're on. If you'll turn to the next page on 12, this is basically the salary increases in public safety since 2002. And obviously in the mid-2000s we had substantial increases, particularly in 2005. but in 2004 we had 3.2 in 2005 we had a 23.8 2006 we had an 8.3 in 2007 we had an 8.3 the last page I wanted to show is page 15 of the packet excuse me, which page? page 15, sir, yes and this is police salaries my legislative aide basically called around and got as many base salaries We did everything we could to compare base salaries to base salaries. If you look in the police lieutenant, which is the fourth row down, Lexington pays police lieutenants as a base salary $78,654, whereas Nashville is at $56, Madison is at $63, Austin is higher than us at $97, but they have fewer ranks, it looks like. But Louisville is at 65, Chattanooga 49, Covington 61. Looking at the – and on over to Knoxville and Green. Police captain, our base is 98, Nashville is 67, Madison 72, Austin is 97. So we're sort of on par with Austin, Texas. Louisville 75, Chattanooga 56, Covington 66, Knoxville 55, Greenville 58. and an assistant police chief. I'm skipping over the commander because that seems to be not many comparables on that. And for some reason, our number looks odd. I think the Austin commander is their chief. But the assistant police chief, we're at 116. Nashville is at 80. Madison is at 83. Louisville is at 65. Chattanooga is at 73. So being that I have a minute and 10 seconds left, My question is, when you show the chart about what you have control over, do we have control over our personnel costs? Because that is such a large part of this. And what these numbers show is that middle and upper management in both the police department, also the fire department, are way above comparable cities. And so what my concern is that we have, over the years, we have taken the rather substantial increases that have been to the general fund, and instead of hiring more officers, we've increased our salaries and increased our benefits. And that's why we're squeezed, is that we've sort of raised ourselves over market. So I guess I would ask you to maybe comment on that. You know, one of the things I'd like to see in comparison rather than just, I know this snapshot is important, but there are other factors I think you have to look at. And some of the comparisons I've done, we still are lower when you take the total percentage of public safety from the overall general fund budget than many other agencies. If you want to look at Cincinnati, for instance, they're a significant portion. Their police department alone is over 30% of their entire budget. If I remember, it's like $110 million out of a $349 million budget or $50, something like that. So I would want to qualify it by saying we need to look at a lot of other things. Rather than this, collective bargaining, as you know, is responsible for setting the wages and benefits and all those kinds of things. So we have bargained or folks have bargained for those, and it's been agreed to. So those are other issues. and the last thing if I have 30 seconds to say or five seconds is we're better than they are. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you for your excellent answer just then. I appreciate that. Back on your presentation, the future, the 20 involuntary transfers, just personally for me because I missed the inception, is CLEAR an acronym, and what does it stand for? Community Law Enforcement Action and Response. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. In looking down over those things, many of them are things that only you can do, it strikes me. I specifically just wanted to ask, since the sheriff can do anything, that's just my joke, sorry. We've had some conversation about her potential to provide funeral escorts. Is that something you think that they could provide? I'm certainly no expert on their capability, but I would assume that if the sheriff says that they can take that responsibility, they'll do their best to do the job. And we'll work with them to try to help them. If there's any training or anything, we're going to work with them to try to help make it a success. That's nothing but encouraging, and I think that's great. That's the situation we're all in. And kind of the next couple of questions follow up on that. Is there a group of community volunteers or graduates from the Police Academy who might, or the Citizens Police Academy, excuse me, who might potentially somehow administrate or run the Safety City program? That's certainly an option that we can look at to see. I mean, it's just not an out-and-out no. That's what I was after. Yeah. I mean, we're going to scramble to do what we can to try to keep services as high as we can, but right now we can't do it with police officers. And my same question about teaching DARE. I'm just wondering, are there people out there other than uniformed officers who might, under some circumstance after some training, be able to do that? There may be. Potentially. There may be. You lose the value of having a uniformed officer in the school, and I think that's pretty important. Understood and agreed. Absolutely. I mean, that's part of, I think, the teaching and the learning of it is to see that uniform, to understand what it means, what the insignia on it does, and the fact that that gun is right there. It shows how thin the blue line is, truly. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Chief. I appreciate your presentation. Do you have a priority list for restoration of services if and when funding becomes incrementally available? We will. I don't have it to show you today, but we'll build the units back based on the priorities and try to stand up the units within a logical mode. I mean, with horse patrol, we can't put one person in because they ride in pairs. So when we can afford to put two in, we'll try to prioritize to get that one in, for instance. But we'll try to do it where we get the most bang for our buck, and that's what we try to do with everything we do every day. And can you say at this time what your top priority might or would be? Well, certainly I'm partial to the clear units, and that's one that I'd like to see restored as soon as we possibly can because I think they do make a huge difference in the quality of life issues in communities. I mean, they're very good at what they do, and that's one that I would certainly look at trying to restore as soon as we had bodies available. But, again, I would remind you it's a bodies issue as opposed to necessarily a money issue right now. So we're trying to beef up our basic services. Well, I hope we can get that restored as soon as possible. It certainly is important and extraordinarily helpful in my district as well as in others. So thank you very much. I hope you're right. And we hope that you feel comfortable calling the sector commanders, too, because as we lose some of the neighborhood officers, the sector commander and the staff at the sector will be the link to try to provide some of those same activities and services. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Chief, for coming in today and for your presentation. I guess I have a couple of questions about the clear unit. One, there were eight officers before, and you're going to cut it down to four? Four. I mean, yeah. I asked before, and you hadn't made the decision yet, Do you know if you're going to give each of the eight neighborhoods a part-time clear unit officer, or are you going to cut four neighborhoods out of the program? No, we're going to cut four from the program is the plan right now. And as I said, you'll still have the access to the sector commander, and they'll have resources that they can help devote to and work with you and your council aides on some of those problems. We don't want to ignore the issues. I know they're important to you and they're important to community members, but it will be a different way of going about it. It won't be as convenient necessarily as having a clear officer in those neighborhoods. Can you list the eight neighborhoods that have them currently? I think I've got a list here. Currently we have Center Parkway, Wood Hill, Eastland, the U.K. area, the Georgetown Street neighborhood, Cardinal Valley, Winburn, and Northside, MLK, North Limestone. And after July the 11th, we're going to maintain UK, Cardinal Valley, and the Georgetown Street neighborhood. So that's only three. Well, and I'm sorry, and Central Sector, the North Limestone. Is that what I said? No, I didn't. North Limestone neighborhood as well. We have an officer there, Ricky Lynn, you may be familiar with. Most people know Ricky, who is in Central Sector, and we're going to continue to have Ricky doing what he does very well. to handle the north side issues there in the north side neighborhood. So we'll actually cover four. We had a retirement in the middle of this with Officer Keith Gaines, as you may or may not be aware of, so that affected our numbers. And which one was he in? I'm sorry? Which neighborhood was? UK. Okay. So can you share with all of us what you used to base your decision on which four would stay and which four would go? I actually allowed our commanders and the folks with boots on the ground that command the sectors that are very aware of all the problems to help advise on that. And these are the neighborhoods that they felt like the neighborhood officers could actually address the most issues in. Did you take into consideration the number of homicides in neighborhoods this year? There are. There are. We're considering all of that. And part of that consideration did take into account some of the recent violence that we've been seeing in some of the neighborhoods. Okay. Can you talk a little bit about how that's going to work without – you said the commander would be able to be a point person that council members or whoever could go to. Could you talk a little bit about how that interface is going to happen and then how that person is going to relate with that back office piece of it that you talked about earlier? It's going to become their responsibility to handle the issues that you bring to their attention. The commanders that we have over the three sectors that we have are all very high-quality people, great folks who are extremely passionate about what they do. and usually the last thing they want is for you to call me about an issue they haven't been able to resolve for you. They don't like those calls coming back the other way. So I think you'll find they'll be very responsive within all the capability that they have. Oh, I don't doubt that for a second. It's just that you've lost the body, and that's the most important thing, because if they're a commander, they've got other duties they have to take care of, so it's not going to be the same as having a clear unit officer in the neighborhood. Right. Okay, thank you. Chief, would you say the four areas, again, you're keeping, U.K., Cardinal Valley, North Limestone, and? And Georgetown Street, and over. Thank you. Council Member Ed Lane. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chief. Good afternoon. I guess I'd just like to say I think our police department does a great job, and I just want to thank for all the effort. Anytime I've asked for any help for any of our neighborhoods, the response has been immediate, prompt, and successful, and thank you for that. My question, though, is I was interested, do you have a forecast of how many officers may retire or drop out of the force for the next fiscal year based on maybe what you have happened this year? Do you have a rough number on that? It's really hard to predict, and most people don't like to let us know. If we ask them, they won't tell us until we get close to retirement. They like to keep their options open with that. Typically, for the last four years or so, we've had about 20 to 25 officers that leave through attrition. Prior to collective bargaining and when all the money increased, Council Member Martin, we had 67 officers leave the year prior to, which cost a tremendous amount of money of training and replacement. So, you know, we offset some costs with some of the increases that we incurred. But we're looking at a new situation. I mean, I think about it an awful lot. And, you know, we're coming off this three-year protracted downturn in the economy, and I'm sure there have been people we've wondered every year why we hadn't had more attrition. And I think part of it is uncertainty. There's a lack of opportunities for people to step out of what they currently have to maybe pursue something else. And they've been on the three-year end finishing up a three-year contract where they got a raise last year when a lot of people didn't get a raise. So depending on the results of the future in terms of some of those factors, I think it could really have an impact on the number of people that might leave. We may have more people than we've seen in some time. That's a possibility. In other words, what you're saying, if you feel when the economy starts to turn, upturn, more people might retire at that time, is that what you were saying? That, or if they see a period, a window where they're not going to increase in salary and they've already got their three high years, and they could make a 2% increase on their pension retired, then that becomes more tracked. I see your point. Well, the reason I was asking the question is do we have a plan to maybe have a recruiting class if you identify that a number of officers are going to be retiring or switching jobs, And so you could replenish those, staying at the same budget level we're at, but just have a plan to implement that. Well, we're working very closely with Jane Driscoll, who's been a great person to talk with and share with all this. And we do, as we move forward, we have plans for when we reach certain levels to hopefully use those funded position levels to be able to bring a class on. We won't think we'll be able to be in a position to hire over hires to account for the attrition that occurs naturally during the training process and those kinds of things. But, you know, we're all working together to have the best plan we can to minimize the impact. And I'm confident we're going to do the best we can with what we have. Okay. Thank you very much. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you again for coming down. Are there any other council members who have questions? I don't see any, so thank you very much, Chief. We really appreciate your presentation. Thank you all. Okay, Council members, what I think we will do if you'll get out your meeting packet, I'd like next to just very briefly talk about the process. You may have seen my email. we will need to decide by the end of today if we think we need to schedule more budget time. And so by the end of this meeting, we'll need to look at that, see how far we are in our process. And then I think it might be a good time to ask our budget analyst, Connie Underwood, to just briefly give her viewpoint on where we are. She has made a wonderful spreadsheet for us and kind of reorganized things according to our actions taken on Tuesday. So welcome, Connie. He set me up over here. I had handed out to you, I had responded to Council Member Stenet's request for an updated summary of revenue and appropriations based on what happened at Tuesday's meeting, and I handed that out before the meeting today, in that it includes the approved late items, and it does include those revenue items that are sort of on hold for discussion again on Tuesday. But I wanted you to see where we were in an overall picture as of today. After today, I'll update that and give you another view so that you'll have it for Tuesday. I also, and you have in your packet, there we go, I took the information that you all had on Tuesday and put it in a spreadsheet format and included those items at the beginning that you've already approved. and what I wanted to do today then was as you go through and approve or disprove an item, I'll remove it from the list if it's disproved or leave it if it's approved so that you can keep a running idea of where the fund balance stands as you go along and make your decisions through this process. So that's where we are now and when we're going. Okay. Council members, do you have any questions before we go ahead? Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Connie, for getting this updated sheet. I did have one question. I guess maybe someone from the administration can answer it. So we're projecting at the end of this fiscal year to have $500,000 left over. Is that correct? To carry into FY12? Do you mind to come to the mic, Commissioner Griskell? And where I'm coming from, we've heard about all these budget reductions, and we were going to borrow from park funds and salt funds, but yet we're going to end the year with a half million dollars. It seems kind of high to me on that projection. We have budgeted an estimate of the five. If you look on Connie's sheet she just gave you, 522, 583 is in the mayor's proposed budget. That is the fund balance. We obviously, with the fiscal year 11, still working through that, so that could fluctuate. But the budget is built on an assumption that we would have half a million. Is that taken into consideration, the Red Mile property sale? Well, that came later. So we really have 2.2? Well, but don't forget our assumptions did include some other transfers that we're not going to do. That's what we're going to give you an update on Tuesday. Okay. So I think it would be helpful to have that whole picture. Like not taking the salt, not taking the park acquisition fund, et cetera. So we built a FY12 budget starting with $500,000 from last year? Yes, we did. Okay. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Connie, thank you very much also for your piece. Council members, if you turn to page one on your packet, this is the page Connie referred to. This is all based on Tuesday's actions, which the Council took. And then starting on page two and working forward, these are the remaining late items, and she has organized first a group that have zero financial impact because they're awash. So this will be a good place for us to start. And it starts with the changes with zero impact. So let's see. Commissioner, we're kind of going to do this like we did on Tuesday. And if you can be the point person as we work through. Pardon me. Are we going by the new packet or the one we were using Tuesday and stopped? The colored packet. Well, the new packet is the old packet. It's just reorganized so that it's easier to understand what we're dealing with. If you want to use the old packet, that's fine. We just stopped on page four. We were going by that method. Do you want to deal with the zero impact items? I'm happy to go to the old packet. It's just not organized in this way. Council Member Farmer. Okay, so now we're having a broad-based discussion over whether we're going to – I guess using the list we were using on Tuesday was color-coded, which had a sense of, I guess, some clarity about it, the fact that we had accomplished on several pages. The one you've given us today is organized differently, and I understand the reason it's organized that way. I guess we're just trying to find what's most comfortable for us to act on. Okay. And we can do either. I guess just from using the color-coded packet from Tuesday, it's more linear where I appreciate, and we may go back and use this yet, but I don't know. I was actually going to come to page two of the packet from Tuesday where we had had, I mean, I guess what I like there is the item numbers on the end, and on that page is item number 11, which basically recognizes all the money we're going to save by keeping Avon closed. Is that not what that does? If you're shaking, you're next up. I'll yield. Same question. I think that may have inadvertently been included in the items that we voted on. Item 11, Connie, you may correct me if I'm wrong. I believe that was not voted on on Tuesday. I was under the impression it was, so I may have been under a misimpression. I thought on Tuesday that you voted yes to everything on page one but the $44,000 item for immunizations. Page two. I thought all on page two went forward. We didn't do 10 or 11. 10 or 11 under my notes were not voted on. I don't have, you don't think 10 or 11 did? Okay. I don't believe so. 10, that is correct. That is correct. 10 and 11 still need approved. So I'm hearing use the old packet, and you can, if you want to keep your new packet for, besides you, just to see what zero impact and others are, that might be helpful. So, Council Members, then shall we start on page two with on the old packet? I hope you brought your old packet. Most of you did. And items 10 and 11 still need action. One's the immunizations program and one is Avon Golf Course money. Council Member Farmer. Just an explanation on number 10 would be excellent. Number 10 is the immunizations that we inadvertently omitted. A portion of those are flu shots that are in some of the contractual collective bargaining agreements. Not the entire amount, but a portion are. But anyway, as we were going through, it was one of the scenarios that we looked at, the potential of charging for flu shots, et cetera, and it inadvertently got left out in the end. So it is a correction that should happen. So this came as a late item that adds expense. It is a correction that does add expense. Understood. But something that at least partially we're contractually obligated to provide. Correct. For the flu shots particularly. Vice Mayor, I would move approval of number 10. Second. Second. So Farmer moves and Blue's seconded, approving number 10 on page 2, which is immunizations, $44,000. Any discussion on the motion? Council Member Kay. Okay. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Lane. Right. We cover that in our links committee, and the thinking on that is that our cost of insurance, and we're self-insured, would be reduced if we provided the flu shots, which would hopefully be a preventive effort to reduce the sickness for the employees. So I think there's good justification for putting that back in the budget. Thank you. Is there any other comment on the motion? All right. All those in favor of approving number 10 on page 2 of the old packet, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. That item passes. Do I hear any motion on number 11? Avon golf course remaining closed. Vice Mayor, if I may? Yes, Councilmember K. On item 11, for consistency with the work that the LINC did, since we have allocated those funds, I would move disapproval of number 11. Are you moving to keep that open and in the budget? If I understand correctly, Commissioner, number 11, there's money in the proposed budget for Avon Golf Course. Avon Golf Course is closed. So this item takes that money and recognizes it as, if you will, revenue. It does reduce the expenditures. It's doing the same thing that the link recommendation is doing. So if we approve this, it means we take it out of the Avon line and don't fund Avon. Okay. So I withdraw my motion. So Council Member Ellinger has moved to approve. Council Member, do I have a second? Farmer seconds. Council Member Lawless. It was my understanding that in the revenue and that that money was taken back as general fund dollars rather than for, because our link used that money for several different items. No. None of it's used yet until the council chooses to use it. That was one of the late items was they reduced that money and put it in the general fund rather than keeping it with parks. Well, to be clear, the piece that when I say similar to the links, the removal of those expenditures to be used at Avon was similar in the links and what we're proposing. How you choose to appropriate those dollars is still the question for you. Yes. But this one item is an expense decrease. It says nothing about how to spend that money or if to spend it. Any other comment on the motion? Council Member Farmer? What is the total of all those combined? 61,547. That's in the decision item column. To the right of the column. Thank you. Thank you very much. Other questions? You're the third. Thank you. Okay, if there's no other discussion, all those in favor of approving number 11, say aye. Aye. All those opposed? So that item is approved. And so that goes back into the budget as it's not technically revenue. It's money available. So going to page 3, those have both been approved, 12 and 13. And page 4 is late items again. And if you have your color-coded copy from Tuesday, you know blue is already blue sheeted or in process. Green is new item, and yellow is council approved already. So, Commissioner, do you want to lead us through as you did on Tuesday, starting with 14? Sure, I might just make the first point that the one next to the Block 42, you've already approved, and one of the earlier funds, so that's a cross-reference to something you've approved. And that's the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7th block down under the Detail column. Reclassification of one equipment operator senior, is it that one? Yes. And one public service worker. Yes, Vice Mayor, that's that one. If I could, in general, say the ones that are shaded or that don't have a color, that are white, are just corrections to the mayor's proposed budget. As the vice mayor indicated, blue is items that have been blue sheeted or in process. That relates to a reorganization item that Commissioner Graham spoke about between HR and law, and it's actually a savings to the government. The green item is a new item. This is an issue that has come up since the mayor's budget was proposed. They do have a situation in the mayor's office where they're asking your consideration for $20,000 for temporary personnel. It's for one temporary position to replace two full-time employees that are both going to be out for extended medical reasons. And, again, both these have come up recently. Both of these individuals have either already gone on their leave or are shortly going on leave. So that's what the new item is, but it's something that changed recently. And then the gold color is the council approved item, which has been approved through you for the salary increases for two of the aid salaries. Council Member Lane. Yes, my question, this may already have been approved, but regarding the mayor's base salary. Yes. And the question I had is, do we have an opinion from the legal department that we can do that that way or actually rebudget his salary, or does he have to receive his salary and pay it out on his own check? I just was curious. What this will do is he will receive half of his salary. As he mentioned in his budget speech, half of his salary will go to the mayor with his full benefit package. And then the remaining piece of that, he's asking for your consideration to appropriate those to these two agencies. Right. My question was, I understand what they're doing, but I just wonder if that, as the legal department said, that's cool to do it that way. Well, I would defer the legal aspect. If you notice, one of the things about this is the chart fields, and you'll notice the chart fields there are the depth ID for partner agencies. So actually, this is not money that's going to reside in the mayor's office to the partner agencies. this will actually be funded partner agencies and then would be able to be incorporated in the professional service contract that we have with the respective entities. But your question is, legally, does he have to receive a certain amount of salary and then he make that designation? Is that your question? That's my question because someone had said that was the case, and I just wonder if that was the case or not. I'm not aware that that has to come to him first before it's redirected. I'm comfortable with the way that the budget office is doing it. If somebody wants to send me something to show me differently, I'll be happy to look at it, but I'm comfortable with it right now. Okay. That's all. If everybody's happy, I'm happy. Thank you. I will tell you what the information we receive from the Department of Local Government on an annual basis only lines out what maximum salary levels need to be for the elected officials, if that helps you. Okay. Thank you very much. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess I've got a follow-up question on that issue. I have no problem with increasing the benefit for $2,000, but the other two, the $39,000 each, that's $80,000. Mayor's salary is, what, $110,000? So where are you getting the money there with a request to increase them both? Again, we took the fully loaded amount. That's with benefits. Yes. So he makes $160,000 with benefits, and we're just basically taking that. Okay, and then on the temporary positions, the $20,000 request, I'm just curious, why do you feel like we need to add money to the mayor's budget for that when you have three vacant positions down there? There's personnel money budgeted for those three positions. Why not take it from one of those three positions? I believe Ms. Massadi's gone, and you have two other vacancies as of March 8th, so I'm not sure you need $20,000 at all. Again, I know in working with the mayor's office, we were asking the same questions in terms of looking at their plans on when they would hire those vacant positions. And that's how we got to the $20,000. There hasn't been any new hires there since March, right? I'm sorry. Has there been any new hires in that office since March? No. So, and you've lost a couple people since then. So that money's there. What I'm saying is it's already in the budget. I don't know why we would need $20,000. but we can come back to that when they want to come up and address it. Okay. Since Commissioner of Laws here, the $35,000, explain to us again what exactly that will do, because I guess we do net out about $75,000 back to the positive that we can use somewhere else. So just make me feel comfortable again on that $35,000. Sure. Thanks. What I'd like to do is we are not filling the senior manager position in human resources. What I'd like to do is, if you all would allow it, take $35,000 of that, create three internal managerial attorney positions to assist me with this new division I'm getting. It would only be an internal posting. Nobody would be hired from outside. And that would help me with the new duties that are coming aboard. And actually, the charter lists two managerial positions in law already, one of which we only have one right now. Well, I mean, $35,000 is not going to hire three attorneys. If we do, we're in the wrong business. Right. I assume we're going to add to three people's salaries, basically. Yes. It would be an internal promotion, and then if we do end up hiring internally, we would abolish three other positions in law, so there would be no addition to the personnel complement. So, yeah, it would be an internal promotion, and we have a qualified applicant pool in law. Okay, very good. Thank you. And then I guess, Vice Mayor, I'll wait to get the answer on the $20,000. Okay. Councilmember Farmer. Well, I was kind of right. I was there with him on that. I think we're ready for action on this other than we could be. May I just add, I wanted to make sure before I said you, but I believe we've abolished in this budget the other two vacancies in the Mayor's office. So it is just the. Jennifer's. Yes. Vacancy. Yes. which might not cover $20,000 between then and now. Well, again, I know there are plans on proposing to hire that position sooner rather than later for the one position. I was about to make a motion to approve number 14 with the exception of the $20,000, but I'm unsure how to act at this point. And I will defer. You want to hold? Okay. So, if so, okay, Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner, on the mayor's base salary, he wants to allocate $39,000 whatever to Commerce Lexington, the same amount to LexArts. And is that in additional monies that those two partner agencies would be getting? That is correct. So what's the total amount that they would be getting? I mean, we need to do a little math for you on that. Okay. We can. I didn't know what page it's on or I would. It is. You've actually already approved. I believe it's on page 3. If you look, Commerce Lexington is getting $457,210. So it would be in addition to that. And LexArts is not on here. I'll have to get a budget document. Does that answer your questions, Council Member Henson? You're waiting to hear from Mr. Barrow. I apologize. It's listed as a different term, so I just want to make sure I get the right line. Okay. We won't, Council Member Henson, we won't let this eat your time up. We'll hold you right at three minutes and 15 seconds. Thank you. I apologize. It's actually budgeted in the mayor's office, not partner agencies. So I will get that number. We get some backup here. Call for backup. It's 400,000. It's 400,000, so it would be the 430. And that is not for the mayor's office, right? And it will go to Commerce Lexington. The additional $39,000. Goes to the two different agencies each, 39 plus each. Okay. Each agency. Thank you. We have the mayor's chief of staff here. If you had an additional comment, he has more knowledge on when they're expecting to hire that vacant position. Thank you. Welcome, Jamie Emmons. Did you have a specific question? Council Member Stenet, I believe, had the question. Sure, did they clarify? I know you have three vacancies in your office now. Two of them will be abolished in the budget. Correct. And you have Jennifer's opposition. When do you plan on hiring that? Very soon. I think we'll probably have a decision made on that towards the end of the month. but we were going to use the $20,000 that we requested for the next fiscal year for the temporary assignment was, actually we're in the process of hiring that individual right now, and we were going to use the funds that were vacant from Jennifer's salary for that person this year. So we didn't request any more money this year. We just need it for the next fiscal year. So they'll be on board July 1? Hopefully. Okay. And you have two people going on family medical leave? Correct. Well, I don't know exactly FMLA, but they are medical leave. Essentially, I mean medical leave in general. And how long do they anticipate being gone? Eight weeks on one and potentially six months on the other. So $20,000 will buy you one person for how long? Six months. You need somebody extra for six months? Okay, thank you. And if I could follow up on that, or maybe the commissioner knows this, did the council already vote to abolish those positions? I believe you did. Or is it in the, they're not in the budget, so if we approve the budget as is with those, we will in effect be abolishing those positions. They won't be funded. and they won't be funded, and we would have to, as I understand it, come to you for abolish all the positions that we're talking about in the budget, but they will not be funded for sure. The positions will be in place, but no funding. That is, the positions will exist. Yes, but no funding. Correct. Okay, thank you. Are there other questions or motions on page four, item 14? Is there any motion? Council Member Farmer. I was just going to ask for just any clarification of the funding for the project manager and public works for the 92-6. That's right above the green. That is the position that was left out in public works, I believe. They've been speaking about how those infrastructure streetscape projects would continue. This would fund that position, and it was not included in the budget. Well, I know that there's at least one other place in there where that's true. I'm just wondering which one this one was. I know that number 33, we're doing the same thing there. I'm just, you know, we're at the point where once we have voted on this and moved away from it, will likely not come back. So I was just trying to get some clarity on just that's a heck of a job to either have left out or to slip in. It's George Milligan's position. That is a heck of a job. Thank you. I thought his was under number 33 for a different amount. At least that's what I've been led to believe. and public service supervisor position inadvertently amended for 54-8. Where are you, Council Member Farmer? I'm on page 7, item 33. We're looking up what that other position is, Council Member. Thank you. This was after some discussion about, again, that project had been scheduled to be completed. It's not. There are other projects. And there are other projects. I agree. And the commissioner asked for us to include this, and it was because it was scheduled to end, we inadvertently didn't include it in the budget. So that's the case for both items, in item 14 and in item 33? We're checking on 33. Okay. Do you want to come back? Yes, that would be fine. We'll come back. Do you have the answer, Ryan? Yes. Okay. Just to clarify the question, this was $33,000, roughly $54,000, $55,000. That was James McCarthy. Basically, it was an error in the extraction out of the ATM. The individual works here and just was failed to be entered into the personnel model. That's the case for $33,000? Yes, sir. So 14 is the one for the downtown streetscapes to be followed up by the Tates Creek Road sidewalks. I believe that's the assignment, yes. And then the chief of staff gave us commentary about the $20,000 that seemed to kind of make sense. Not that he wouldn't. Then I would move approval of number 14 as tendered. I have a motion to approve 14. Council Member Stennett seconds, and I'm presuming that includes everything in 14. Is there discussion? Now, Council Member Stennett, do you want to discuss the motion? I just want to make sure on the 92,615, that is at incumbent so everyone understands, and is George Milligan's position currently? It is. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Did it come this way? I'm sorry. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Vice Mayor. On number 14, the project manager, Mr. Milligan was on, I think, unclassified non-civil service appointment. That was to end. And so this will be a civil service position and will be, I assume, advertised. Not to interrupt you, but it's the same classification. This is just continuing his service. So this is for George Milligan as project manager? Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, then that begs the question, is that a full year salary and will he be needed for a full year? I believe so. It's not a full year. You know how much it is? I do not know that. We can, it is not a full year, according to Ryan, but this is fully loaded. Again, remember all his personnel costs. We can get you exactly that. I think it would be important to know whether that piece of the motion. We've got. Okay, you have that piece. When we started this process, we envisioned his appointment, the whole project ending in June. But because of delays, we're going to need him into the next fiscal year. We found some savings through the reorganization process that actually allows us to fund him for the full year. The fact is, as we roll through the year, I think we can find other projects germane to the Waste Management Program. We could potentially fund part of his salary out of the Urban Services Fund. But for this exercise, we put full funding in the general fund for him. So this 92.615 represents one full year, even though, and I heard what you said, the streetscape project will end before that. Yes, hopefully. So, Council Member Farmer. The follow-on project, at least from my point of view, is then the Tates Creek Road sidewalks on both sides, which we're supposed to have already started, which now won't start until late this summer or early into the fall. And then the illustration here is that after that, there would be something in, you said, waste management? Potentially. We haven't really worked all of that through. We need project managers in waste management, but we haven't made a decision exactly whether Mr. Milligan would fill that role exactly or not. It's an option. So was there any discussion about funding half the year from the general fund and half the year from somewhere else, and why was that not done? Well, yes, we have talked about the possibility of funding him in part by the Urban Services Fund. During the mathematics of this exercise, we saw funding that would allow us to fund him out of the general fund in full, so we just placed it in the budget like that on this list. Council Member Lawless. I fully support having a project manager. I'm probably the only council member that dealt with Mr. Milligan because all the projects were in my district. He was first given a contract position by Mayor Newberry as the liaison between the mayor's office and the businesses. That was not my experience of how he conducted himself. Then he was given an unclassified non-civil service appointment for $63,000 that never came before council. Well, then when everybody left, because so many other divisions that normally would have been part of the streetscape information were left out of it, there was no choice but to keep him on because supposedly he was the only one that knew anything. So I fully support the position of project manager, but if that project manager is going to be Mr. Milligan, who I think is a very nice man, but if that's who it's going to be, there's no way I can support that. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Your illustration was potentially half of this position's salary would come from which fund? The Urban Services Fund that funds the Division of Waste Management. How's that fund doing? Well, it's under the same sort of scrutiny and constraints that all of us are. that's trying to live within its means as well. Well, I guess you're saying that the theory was that after he'd finished with streetscapes and Tate's Creek sidewalks that there would be things in waste management that would go, what am I trying to say here, projects that he would direct there that would let his salary be potentially paid from that fund. Yeah. I mean, that's just an option down the road. We don't have anything concrete today. The way it stands with this is he would be 100 percent on the general fund, unless we amended the budget at some point. Sure. Well, because I'm going to make a motion along those lines or to amend this motion along those lines, so I'm trying to kind of find out where we stand. Well, I think Brad's point is that in the future, if there is work that's appropriate to be charged to another fund, again, once this work is complete, that that could be an option for us to continue his service, doing work that's appropriate for another fund. But this is, we just got some clarification, full year of general fund to continue the project management work. However, if you're us up here, you're looking at this as an option to find $45,000 to do something else with, if this is the way to administrate this off. That is a choice, of course. But we don't have concrete projects and costs lined up for him to do yet after Streetscapes concludes today. But he has certain experiences and background that would lend itself towards work in the waste management arena. So then that would roll along later as a budget amendment changing the situation somewhere down the line. Yes, sir. Vice Mayor, I believe I'm going to stick with the motion that's been tendered, because I just think it's cleaner than trying to administrate this another way. Any other comment or amendment to the motion? I will simply make my own comment, and that would be that I don't remember other positions where we funded them for a year where we knew the person's work would finish and we need to look for something else for them to do. So if there was someone who made a motion to fund it half-half, and then you come back in the middle of the year to say here's where we are, here's what we need, I would certainly think that would be more practical, particularly given the stress that the general fund is under. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I was going to add to something along those lines. You know, when we're laying people off in cutting positions, I think funding a position for a whole year without a dedicated workload doesn't make sense. And I would make a motion to amend and pull that item out for a different vote if we can. So an amendment could be made to that line item if we need to. So I'll make the motion to pull that line out and approve the rest. Council Member Stennett moved and Myers seconded to pull that 92,615 out of the motion on the floor. Is there any discussion? Council Member Farmer. I'm afraid if we pull it out, we won't come back to it. No, we're going to come back to it. Okay. We've got a few people keeping track of what we need to return to. The job that's going on on Main Street is great, and the one that's going to go on out the road is great. We just need to make sure that we don't mess up. And we're here working out the imprecision, and that's fine. It just takes time. Thank you, Mayor. Yes. Thank you. Any other discussion on the motion? Raise your hand if you want to discuss the motion. Okay. The motion is to amend the motion and remove funding for Project Manager and Public Works and bring that back separately. Yes. All those in favor of amending, please say aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, we have one nay, Mr. Farmer. And so the motion on the floor is to approve that amendment passed. The motion is to approve all items of number 14 except the project manager in public works. Is there discussion on the amended motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes, so all but the project manager are approved. Do I hear any other motion? Yes, Council Member Stenet. I'll make a motion to approve half of the $92,615 salary out of the general fund. And so the motion on the floor by Stenet, seconded by Lane, is to approve half of the 92.615, which would be 46.307 and 50 cents. We could make it 308. Is on the floor. Is there discussion? Now, are you, Mr. Farmer, are you on to discuss this motion? Okay. Ms. Lawless? I think the discussion of this would best be in closed session, since it deals with the individual employee. Well, the motion is to fund the position, half the position, which is a motion on the floor. I think that's a separate issue of personnel. It would be a separate issue. I mean, we don't put into closed session, I guess what I'm saying is, we don't put into closed session an item in the budget, a money. Just to clarify, I think to go into closed session, you need to be discussing the discipline or dismissals of an employee. And this wouldn't really be the discipline or dismissal of an employee. Okay, thank you. Yeah. So the current motion on the floor is to fund half of the 92.615 for project manager and public works. Any more discussion on that? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, so that is approved to fund, let's see, 46308. Is that what you're calling it? Yes, ma'am. Okay. All right. Now, so we've taken care of 14. 15 is next. Well, 15 and 16, you've actually already approved. Okay. So 17. Yes, thank you for keeping me where I need to be. Okay. Now, page 5. and again 17 through 24 are corrections or omissions. There's some big items in here, so I'm sure you'll have questions about some of them. And just for clarity, 16 is on the docket for second reading, correct? That is correct. Okay, so that is on tonight's docket. Okay. Okay. And so do you want to work us down through starting with 17, Commissioner? And if you need your backup for your, I know you have your voices. Yeah, that's fine. I'm doing okay. So far, number 17 is a large correction. You might ask why is it $900,000. As we went through the process of building the fire department's budget, that there is a significant line item for fire hydrant rentals in that budget. When we looked at the trends historically from current year, looking at the current year budget amount, to next year's request, it was a similar level. As we moved through the budget, that was the amount that was assumed. As we've been spending time looking at the current year budget to bring forth a plan to you to balance fiscal year 11, we noticed that the expenditures for fire hydrants was significantly more, it had basically hit, had already expended all of the budget for current year. So we began looking at that issue, and it appears that last year's budget was built not considering the rate increase that went into effect, I believe, in October. So we have to make a correction for current year, and it's about $500,000. When we extrapolate that to next year for full year's funding, plus there have been a few additional fire hydrants, the correction that's needed to appropriately pay for fire hydrant rentals next year is $900,000. That is a big correction. Council Member Stenet. Oh, okay, other ones. Are there questions about 17? Again, that's in the fire department's budget. Well, we'll, if we, yes, we'll need a motion eventually. Does anyone have a motion? Vice Mayor, I would move to approve item 17, fire hydrant rental net increase of $900,000. Second. Council Member Farmer moved. Blue seconded to approve number 17. $900,000 for fire hydrant rental. Anyone wish to discuss? Council Member Martin. So who gets the $900,000? Is that the water company? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. Other discussion on the motion? Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Anyone opposed? Okay. Did we just bust our fund balance? No, not yet. All right. If you'll keep working us through now. Sure. 18, and some of you may not view this as a correction or omission, But let me just tell you why we put it in that category. This is restoring the funding for Valley View Ferry. Again, as we were building the budget, we based the decision to the administration, based the decision not to continue the funding for Valley View Ferry on some information that was erroneous. and we had all indications that the other counties involved in the ferry also had the sentiment. And as we worked through the issues, and since that time, in particular, Council Member Lane has worked at this as well because I know it's a part of his recommendations that we did determine that we did need to correct it, that that was a mistake based on not full information as we built the mayor's budget. So it is a request to correct that. Council members, this is also a link recommendation. So move by Lane, second by Farmer, to approve the Valley View Ferry funding of $41,620. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. Thank you. And I think we'll do number 19, and then I think that the council and some others in the audience might enjoy a five- or six-minute break. So if you'll go ahead and do 19. Sure, 19 is a net zero change, and it's really a request so that we can more assist parks in more appropriately tracking the cost for parks patrol. So it's a net zero item. Do I hear a motion? Ellinger moves and Kay seconds to approve. Any discussion? All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Anyone opposed? All right. If we could take a brief recess, maybe six minutes. Oh, 20's easy. Okay, I'm getting 20's easy, so they don't want to break yet. 20's already been approved. Yeah, 20's approved, so it's done. Now we break. I depend on my wingmen and wingwomen. Okay, so we will take a six-minute break and come back at five. Our budget discussion of late items, and we are on page 5, ready for item 21. Thank you, Commissioner. Excuse me one second. Mr. Lane, would you round up the rest of the council members, please? So number 21, security outsourcing adjustment, is the next item on the list. Ready? This is John Sheed when he was speaking to you at one of the sessions when we were answering questions. Someone had some questions about the cost savings for the outsourcing of security. This is actual adjustment that reflects those cost savings that he was speaking about, the original budget. We had an error in our calculation in terms of the amount of savings, And this just corrects it to the amount that was a little over $200,000 that John Sheet spoke about. So in the current proposed budget is $201,440, and it should be $225,000. Is that correct interpretation? What's in the budget is $201,440 of savings that we assume that need to be backed out. And the $225 is? Well, it's the difference between the two. There were some adjustments between line items. If you look under the decision item column, you see the net total increase is $201,440. In other words, we assume too much savings in the mayor's proposed budget by error. This just corrects that to the appropriate level of savings in Jomsche's proposal. The savings were in different categories, so that's just two that needed to be adjusted. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I would just put the hat on as parliamentarian for a second. this may be the first time that, especially for our new colleagues, a clarification on motions. Motions should be made in the affirmative. Therefore, if you don't agree with this, you can't make a motion to disapprove something. So the way you would handle that is one of two ways. You make a motion to approve it and then vote against it if you don't agree, or there's no action taken on it at all and it just stays there and it's never added to the budget. So I just want to make sure everyone understands that. I know I heard some people ask if we could make a motion to disapprove something, and you can't do that. So just clarification, Vice Mayor. Thank you very much for that clarification. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So what is the number? What is the total savings that the administration says that we're going to realize by outsourcing our security? The savings pretty much stays the same, which is $199,000 and change. The error was on our behalf, and we were calculating the total number of hours needed to be outsourced. So with the adjustments that's requested, we still are going to recognize about $199,000-plus in savings. And I guess I still don't understand this because we're adding, I guess, a net of $201,000 to the budget. Go ahead. but the mayor's proposed budget took too much savings out, took too many expenses out, and so we need to adjust so that it is where we are saving the $199,000 and change, $200,000 basically. What was the original projected savings? Well, the $200,000 is the error resulted in it showing $400,000, a little over $400,000. Okay. That makes more sense. Okay. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Are there other questions on this item or any motions? Council Member Ellinger has moved to approve item number 21. Do I hear a second? Council Member McCord, did you second? Council Member Farmer seconds. Is there discussion of the motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed? No. I believe that item is disapproved. Vice Mayor. Do you want an aye vote? If you'll, there's a request over here for an electronic voting. So I think that helps our recorders. Has everyone, there are 11 votes registered. Okay. Has everyone voted? All right. That motion fails 12 to 0. Number 22 is next. Excuse me. This is a correction. There's a lot of discussion about this in the links in terms of restoring funding for traffic sign installation that should have been included in the budget. Council Member Martin moved and Council Member Farmer seconded. Item 22, 57,165 for traffic sign installation. Any discussion? Council Member Farmer? The Commissioner is correct. Our link handled this, and this was one of the first things that we came upon, that something that either had been overlooked or the fact that spending this money actually saves us in other areas. So it's something that was an easy add back for our link. So this also was a link recommendation? Yes, ma'am. This was part of our link report, the same amount. Okay, thank you. Council Member Stennett? Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess I don't see a commissioner here in this area, a director. My question is maybe the link chair can answer it. Is this all traffic signage or just essential in terms of, you know, we have a lot of other signs we put in neighborhoods like children at play or the dog way signs, things like that. Is that included in that cost or is this just essential traffic signage? Because I thought the budget was much bigger a couple years ago. It's actually been up in the 70s, and that's what the division requested originally. But this is a contract expense. It's deemed to be more efficient to use a contractor instead of investing in the capital with the trucks and the full-time people to do the work. This will get the division through at a minimal level. And this is all signage in that division? I'm not exactly sure how far it goes. I think it's the fundamental signs that we need. Speed limit signs, stop signs type stuff. I know for sure that it is street signs. Oh, street names? Yes. Thank you. Are there other questions about the motion to approve number 22? And just for the sake of helping out our recorders, we'll start saying voice but also registering electronic votes. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye and register. Aye. Aye. And please register electronically. Okay, we're still lacking a couple votes. Thank you very much. That motion passes 12 to 0. All right. Number 23. The next item, 23, is a net zero impact. It is just correcting between. Ellinger moves approval and Martin seconds to approve number 23. Is there discussion? All those in favor, please say aye and register electronically. All right. Motion passed 12-0. Number 24. Number 24 is some corrections to the personnel model as we adjusted positions that were being deleted or laid off. We had to go, when we went back in and looked at the actual persons in the personnel model, they're just rounding. Council Member Stennett? Yeah, I'm not sure I'll follow that because you're decreasing the security officer's line. and adding to parks and social services a much higher amount. So why addition to parks? It's not, don't think of it as between agencies, but, for example, if there were a certain number of positions that were determined to be laid off, as we went through working with HR, there were some adjustments that needed to be made to that because of seniority, et cetera. So there were different costs associated with individuals. This is making those adjustments as those changes happen. I don't mind going along with approving it now, but, Connie, we will have to make an adjustment. Obviously, if this council makes a motion to put money back in to keep the security guards, I hope they're tracking that $1,500.40. I'd hate that be short on that. Thank you. Thank you. Good point. is there other discussion of the motion to approve 24. And, Council members, I might ask you, it will also help our recorders. If you make the motion, if you'll tap Motion on your screen, this is no joke. This is helpful. That way they don't have to hand type it in, and it's here to use them. And then if you're the seconder, I'm not sure if you can second or not on there. I think you can. So, okay. Any other, we're getting fancy. Any other discussion? All right, let's vote on this. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. And. Is there anyone opposed? And there if you'll just register your vote electronically. Didn't you move, Council Member Martin, or did we not? Yeah, he made a motion to approve. And will the seconder reveal himself or herself? I think it was you, Council Member Farmer. I just want to see my name on the phone. We've only been in here two hours and some. Okay, so that motion passed 12-0. Now, we have three items, 25, 26, 27, which are new items. And so, Commissioner, do you want to talk to us about these? Sure. Number 25 also relates to two other items on the list, one of which you've discussed, number 51, as it related to E911 funding for the radio project. If you recall, we were able to identify and propose to you $5.5 million for the first phase of that radio replacement project. So it would be this million would be from general fund. There is a million from the E911 monies, and later for your consideration is $3.5 million from previously authorized bond proceeds. Thank you. Are there questions about item 25? Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess my big question is why not bond the million dollars for the radios when we're using bond proceeds from another project already that have been bonded? Why not continue with bonding? Well, again, this keeps in our, as we looked through putting forth this budget in terms of the fiscal sustainability issues that we wanted to keep to the no bonding, and we were able to identify these sources of funds that would adequately fund the first phase of this project. And we have to think about future needs in this project as well. So, again, looking at future capacity, we determined it was this is what we wanted to present to you for your consideration. And here's where it gets tricky, because when we go back a year from now or two years to look at how we funded this project, we're not going to be able to track it. We had this issue on our link. It was when you spread funding out and don't use one particular bond fund to track a particular project or spread out amongst other funds, it's hard to know your final real cost. And I would think we'd want to be consistent. I appreciate your effort not to want to bond. But to me, you know, the public safety rate is one of those things that almost like you have to do. It's a critical need. And I would be more in favor of bonding that million dollars rather than sitting here and taking a cash from the general fund that's already cash strapped for a system that will be implemented over the next two or three years, basically. So I'm not necessarily in favor of using a million dollars cash for that. And I guess we're just talking about the first one, Vice Mayor, not the other two. Just the first one. So I wouldn't be supportive of taking cash to fund that right now when we're using bond money to fund the rest. And did you already ask what the debt service would be to bond that? No, I haven't. Can anybody figure that out for us? Vice Mayor, I believe that was from the tax on cell phones and that sort of money that we were allocating to that expense, as I recall. No. This is the second million. The first million is from E911, and we talked about that on Tuesday. Yes. And this million is from the general fund cash. There are three pieces to this project as proposed. Okay. Well, then in that case, I agree with Council Member Stenet. I think we should bond it. Oh. Thank you. Council Member Stenet. I was going to follow up. I'm glad Council Member Lane brought this up. Why not pay the bond proceeds for the radio from the E911 fund? Can that be done? Because I know that there are pieces of the project that we can pay for from those funds, and David is the expert on this, but I know from my experience in Louisville, we could not pay for all the component pieces because the regulations are very specific and the E911 funds can be used for a good portion of the infrastructure, but not for every component. Right. And in the future, we are using that entire balance and the annual receipts from E911. You know, I'm not sure that would support a bond. Well, we haven't looked at it yet. Well, let's put it this way. We're using the balance with this million, and we're projecting to use the receipts from next year to end this budget. So that would lead you to believe it would not support debt service. I thank you. Council members, does anyone else wish to speak to this item? Do you want to wait on it until we get debt service number and an official E911 ruling? I see a lot of shaking heads. No, both ways. Is there a motion to wait or a motion to approve? Either one. I move with wait. Okay. Well, I'm hearing all kinds of motions off the microphone. Do I have someone who wishes to motion officially so we can know what kind of motion we're getting? Council Member, well, are you finished, Council Member Stenner? You're still on here. Okay. Anybody want to make a motion? Council Member Farmer. My question is, do we have to make a motion? No, we don't. If we want to just bypass it and come back, is that what you're thinking? I think let's just leave this open and let it flow down to the end of our conversation. All right. Seeing no other action, number 26. Number 26 also relates to an item that you've not addressed yet on the capital sheet, but there are two requests to provide funding for repair of parking facilities. Again, I mentioned when we were able to identify additional general fund, there were many, many needs that the mayor had wanted to address in the budget if he had had the funding, but two bubbles to the top, the radio situation and the garage repairs. So this would be $500,000 to go towards garage repairs. and again in terms of a long-term plan, you know, the administration is looking at the entire system and how we can move forward with addressing the needs of the entire parking system moving forward. But there has been a study. There have been, I want to say, $4 million of repairs that have been identified that are needed over a five-year period. So this would begin to address some of the most immediate needs, and we all are aware of some of those. Move approval. Council Member Ed Lane motioned. And Council Member Diane Lawless seconds. That was very easy on the electronic. Now, is there discussion of this motion to approve number 26? Thanks. Council Member Martin and then Council Member Lane. Council Member Lane, he made the motion. Okay. Council Member Lane. Well, I mean, this is an expense we cannot fail to incur. This is a public safety issue. Our garages, some of them are not in very good condition. We need to have them regularly inspected and, you know, repairs made to make sure they're safe for other people. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner, is this something that is more appropriately bonded? Is this type of – is this a renovation or is this ongoing maintenance? I'm trying to – These are repairs and or renovations. I don't have that report in front of me, but it was a whole lot of different repairs to the garages. Again, it was over a five-year period. I want to say it was a little over $4 million. Don't hold me that amount, but if I recall correctly. But it was a variety of repairs. And it wasn't general maintenance. They were repairs. It's not a recurring expense. It's a specific project. They're specific projects. Again, as we're looking at the total system, So we want to be able to look at all of those ongoing maintenance, recurring costs, as well as other capital costs. I mean, given the strain on the budget, I would think this is the kind of project we would bond, because it's a specific type of expenditure, particularly, I guess, if it's part of a larger, are we going to take the whole $5 million out of the general fund as we go through this in future years? I know we're doing one year at a time, but I was just trying to – $500,000 in this budget seems like a lot to pay out of cash. Well, again, I think both on this and the previous point, you know, as we looked at presenting this budget, not adding to our percent of debt compared to our operating budget was one goal. The expense of borrowing, now that we've been downgraded, you know, another consideration. So, again, the philosophy was no borrowing. Again, as we identified additional funding in this revenue review, there were some things that bubbled to the top. Well, I agree with Council Member Lane that this is something we need to do. It's just a question of how we need to pay for it. So thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Will you put the screen back? There are some Council members who wish to speak. Can you put it back so they can log in? Ours are not. All we can do is vote. Oh, they're trying to vote, but... Well, there we go. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Now, if I'm not mistaken, this is not cash out of the general fund, is it? Isn't it part of the bond that we use, $4 million bond? No, there are two pieces. Remember, this is the general fund piece. If you look at the next page, actually, we've not gotten to it, is the bond proceed piece. So there's a million dollars total we plan to spend? Yes. Okay. Proposed. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So then between, I'm just going to ask, now that it's a million dollars, because you have $501 page and $500,000 on the next page, what will happen? And will each of the structures get some attention? Will one get more than another? I'm just. And I wish I had that report with me, but it was a report that by year included looking at all the garages in the system. And it had each year had repairs for various garages. So, again, it was an outline of and it was a review that was done, I want to say, a little couple of years ago. so that probably changed somewhat their process. It might not be dynamic enough to include the piece that fell off a couple months ago. Yes, exactly. So that's one example of where it changed. But it was a five-year look, and it obviously addressed the most critical needs early. So the fifth year had not a significant amount of funding, but it was funded over five years. And was it, and again, since you don't have it, and I understand that, it wasn't a million dollars a year. It was several million dollars a year. What was it? It was more than a million dollars in the first year. Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to discuss the motion on the floor by Council Member Lane to approve number 26? If not, we'll take the vote. All those in favor of approving this expenditure from the general funds say aye and vote aye. And if you'll log in please with your vote. Okay. We've picked up a person. This vote passes 9 to 4. We have 13 voting. So 26 is approved. Now 27. 27 is a new item. It came about as we were finalizing the proposal for the radio equipment in the parking facilities and looking at other issues that had been significant through the LINCS discussions. And one of those was as we move forward, this was an area which I think at one of the council meetings you all could see that maybe the administration had gotten different information at different times regarding closure of pools. And in order to move forward in listening to the council members of what would be important in order to make future decisions was to have an aquatics plan in place to address the aquatic needs of this community moving forward, that there would be a plan that as we brought proposals on closures of pools that there would be also a plan in terms of determining what to do with those closed pools, et cetera. So we did include a request for $25,000 to fund an aquatics master plan for the new year. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I was one of the people who have asked for this last two or three years, but I think that we would be ahead to start with this in committee rather than start with an expenditure of $25,000 and kind of get some general consensus from the council and from the community as to what we might want. So I would move that we hold off on this. I was going to move in a negative. I can't. Okay, so I'll move approval, and then I'm going to vote against it. And will you log in as the mover and shaker? Thank you. And so we have a motion by Mr. Myers, a second by Mr. Lane, to approve funding for an aquatics master plan of $25,000. Is there discussion? All right. All those. Was there a question? Motions to approve it. Will you, if you're in favor, please say aye and register aye. Or if you're not, say no. Is anybody? Okay. We have 11 nays and two ayes. So that motion fails. Now, before we go on to page six, which is capital improvement plan, Connie Underwood reminded me that nowhere on the late items have we put Berry Hill and Constitution Pools back in the budget. So we really need, I think, to do that. And this might be a good place. The council's already voted and had second reading on that. And the number to keep Constitution and Berry Hill pools open is $66,255. That's on your new packet, page 34. So who moved? Who's the mover and shaker? Would you log that in, please, so they don't have to type it in? And then who's the seconder? Okay, Council Member McCord moved approval of Berry Hill and Constitution. Council Member Myers seconded. Is there discussion? Council Member Henson. Vice Mayor, would you repeat the cost? The number, and if you have your new agenda, the new packet that we're not really using, and you go to page 4, it's on there. It's the only item on page 4, and it's $66,255. And that's already approved by Council. Are you finding that? Yes, 66 to 55. May I speak to this, Vice Mayor? Council Member, I think, okay, Council Member Lane and then Council Member Mark. Okay, I think as part of our discussion of keeping these pools open, we were discussing maybe having an increase in the cost to swim at all the pools in Fayette County so we could bring up budget, you know, it wouldn't be an additional cost to our bottom line. I don't know if there's been any consideration if there's funding for the increased fee to get in, whatever the arrangement is going to be on that. Well, this motion is strictly to confirm what we did in second reading and have passed. So I think the revenue pool admission fee could be discussed separately. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I supported keeping these pools, but I think the motion is out of order perhaps, because is this a recommendation of the administration? It's a late item. We've already approved it, so we've got to put it in the budget. Right, but is this the administration's late item, or is this a linked recommendation? I think it was simply an omission by the administration on the late items because the council has already approved it. And that's what many of these back here were. And if we don't officially approve it as a late item, it won't get funded. Well, it does if we approve it in a link. I just didn't know whether this was something the administration was requesting, because that's kind of what we're looking at now. No, they're not requesting it, to my knowledge, except technically it's a late item. It's been approved since the mayor proposed his budget. It is, and I think that the budget office working with your folks determined that it was going to be taken care of, so it wasn't added to our late item list. Does that answer that question? Okay. Okay. Who else wants to speak to the motion? Okay. All those in favor of approving the late item, please say aye and register aye. All those opposed? Okay, this is 66,255 to keep Berry Hill and Constitution open, and it passes 13-0 and is approved. All right, now going back to the Tuesday, we move to page 6, and this is the last page on late items. We're getting there. Okay, Commissioner, can you work us through this? Yes, and I want to clarify 28 because I think there's been some confusion, and we've been working through the accounting of this. But just to assure you, this is the million that the mayor had included in his proposed budget for council-designated projects, and this is just a technical piece of that. But that leaves the million for you to designate to your designated projects. I think there was some question about that we were in the slate item list looking to take that out. That is not at all. This is to actually begin to let you all take that money to designate it into individual projects. I heard that rumor but didn't know where it came from. Council Member Farmer, item number 28. So then since we may not have declared yet what we want to do with this million dollars, we may not want to take action on this item at this time? Just rendering a question. A motion would, the motion I think that for this item would be to put it in the budget for projects, capital projects. So moved. You got a different motion? All right. So who was the motioner? I apologize. And Council Member Myers seconded. Can you click your little thing there? It helps our recorders. Now, Council Member Farmer, were you finished? And does anyone else wish to speak? Can you log in? Oh, okay. You logged in lawless, please. Kevin, were you, Council Member Stennett? Yes. And then Council Member Lawless. we're kind of having a little trouble with our screen. So, Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I would make this suggestion is to amend number 28 and put that million dollars towards the million dollars on the previous page for the radio because it's bond proceeds, and that's what this million dollars is coming from. The net is still a million dollars in cash to the council if we want it to be that way, but this is consistent in using bond proceeds, and we don't have to go out and rebond money for the radio system. Because this is leftover bond money. And my question is, can we use bond money from this bond for the radio? I'm not a bond counsel, but I will. That way we don't have to issue a new bond. We did look at the ability to use these dollars towards public purpose projects. That would certainly fit, I would think. Again, I'm not a bond counsel, but we did ask the question, obviously, in order to make this proposal to you, that you could take that and use it for other projects, so that would be an applicable project. Well, what it does, though, is it frees up the other million dollars of cash, and we can use that any which way. It doesn't have to be a capital project. It can be for security guards, salaries, or whatever it may be the council deems appropriate. But we already use bonds. We already have bonded towards the radio, so we don't have to issue a new bond in reference to the administration's request of no new bonds this year. So I would amend that and use that money towards the radio system million-dollar bond. Second. So the motion by Stenet, second by McCord. They didn't punch their butt. I'm not sure if we can do an amended. Can we do the amended? Everybody's screened, but mine is working, so that's why I'm sounding like I'm a little out of it. So the motion is to amend the motion on the floor and use the, let's see, you want to restate it, Kevin? Yes, ma'am. Transfer the money from the Government Center 2010A bond to the E-91111 account. That has to do with the radio. Okay. Very good. And is there discussion about the amendment? Council Member Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I commend Council Member Stinn. I think this is the right thing to do. I was having trouble with having a million dollars. No one would love part of a million dollars for road projects or whatever in my district, but this is a really difficult budget year, and we have to do the 911 800 megahertz. And so I think this is a better use of the funds. We may find that we need that million dollars to balance a budget at the end of the day, because we've got a lot of zeros kicking around up here. So I'm going to support the motion. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Can you get our screen back where we see who's logged in to speak? We had a few council members. None of our screens show that. Okay, Council Member Lawless. We may have to go the old route. Yeah, back in the olden days. My question was probably a moot point at this point is how we were we as a council going to decide how to use that million or whatever. But it sounds to me like that's kind of a moot point at this point. So thank you, Vice Mayor. Well, if I understand correctly, if the motion passes, it will leave that million dollars cash in the general fund. That was, or yes, if the amendment and the motion pass. Okay. Will you just raise your hand if you wish to speak to the amendment, and we'll go back to the old days. Okay. Okay, let's go ahead and vote on the amendment. And some people can log in and I, and some people can't. So everybody in favor, say aye. Could you restate the motion? Anyone opposed? Did you? I was going to have them restate the motion. Okay, your motion was, which seems to me. To use the leftover bond proceeds from Government Center 2010A bond to the E911 radio system. And I'm going to look over my shoulder here. It looks like without my yes vote, it's 12-0, so I'll make it 13-0. And it passes. The amendment passes. So the motion on the floor is the amended. I'm sorry. I'm working without any computer up here. So, y'all. Okay. So, Council Member Stennett. I would make a motion we go back to page five and on that million dollars left. We have a motion on the floor. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's been amended. And the motion is to, let's see, it's the amendment we just passed, to fund the radio equipment from the... Council Member Ellinger won't mind if I scoot over a little bit here while we have some technical support. To fund the radio equipment from the bonds which were stated for the council projects. Any discussion? Council Member Martin. Sorry. I'm not sure where we are. It may be that you're. That your motion wasn't germane to the motion. Your amendment was not germane to the motion. Well, Council Member Stennett, I think he's talking to you. We've restructured the payment of a previous motion, I think, is where we are. But we're currently on a motion of whether to approve a million dollars for council projects. And so I think essentially what you're saying is the amendment became the motion. Is that kind of what you're saying? So the motion is still on the floor, and it is to fund the radio purchase with the bond proceeds, which are listed in number 28. And that's so 28 bonding would pay for number 25. So any other discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? And for those of you who have a working screen, if you'll log in with your yes or your no, because it will help our recorders. All righty. And do we have a couple people who didn't log in? I mean, vote. Okay. I have no computer. Oh, I'm a yes. Okay. Number 29. Excuse me. 29 is just the correction we spoke about before making the PDR a million. It's a correction of an error. Okay. It's a correction. And so is there any motion or question? I'll move. Council Member Martin, did you? I'm doing my best to work without a computer screen. Oh, I understand. I'm still confused about what actually we just did because it seems like we voted on two items at once, and I'm not sure that was the intent. What we did was we approved item 25 with bond proceeds. Yes. Does that mean that we're just skipping item 28? Well, these are all capital improvement bond reallocations. Okay. So we're just leaving 28. You're leaving 25 dollars from the general fund. I believe what we did was reallocate these bond proceeds, tell me if I'm wrong, to fund the radios. To fund 25. To fund 25. Right. So we're not funding 28 at this point. Not at this point because there's no, that bonding reallocation money is gone now. It's over to radios. Right. So I'm going to write no by it. We'll just leave like that. We'll get to it. No, no, that's okay. I just, because I think what we did was we split it into two different things. So I just want to make sure that we have not, at this point, approved 28. any funding for 28, cash or otherwise. No, I think we're all wrong. We amended 28. Yes. We weren't even talking about 25. 28 amended that that bond proceeds went to the E9-1 radios, and that was amended, amendment passed, and then that passed. So we changed 28 to move that bond money to the E9-1-1. We need to go back to 25 and change that. Okay. We haven't done that yet. I'm good with that. 25 is open. We didn't vote on 25 before. Remember, we were waiting for debt service and E911 bond issues. If we do nothing, it just goes to fund balance. Thank you for the clarification. I think the question kind of rolling around up here is, do we need to do anything with 25? and number 25 is specifically a radio expenditure. It's nothing to do with turning a million dollars into council projects. Okay? Is that clear? Yeah. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So basically what we've done, we've approved number 28 in the capital improvement plan, but we're scratching out council projects and we're making it radios. Well, we approved allocating, reallocating the bonding funds from 28 to go to radios. Now, this does not say anything about council projects. Well, that's how I interpret it. And basically we can just leave 25 and really never have to go back to 25 because what we've said is scratch out 28 council projects and 28 will now be radios. That's right. Out of the capital improvement plan bond reallocation. That's exactly right. I think that's the cleanest way. Now, I think, Council Member Lane, did you make a motion on number 29? Or is that an old motion? And is there a seconder? Council Member Henson seconded. 29, Commissioner had already explained this was the error in the budget on PDR. Is there a discussion? And I have my screen back. So does anyone wish to discuss the motion to approve that? I see no one. So all those in favor, please say aye and register your electronic vote. Aye. That motion passes 13-0. That's approved. Now, 30 and 31 are new items. Commissioner? Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor. 30, as I had talked about before, the radio proposal for Phase I had three pieces. One is the million that you approved from E911. The second million is the million you just approved from reallocating the government center bond proceeds. The third piece is this $3.5 million that we are proposing to reallocate from previously authorized bonds to make the total $5.5 for the radio system phase one project. Council Member Martin, did you want to speak? Council Member Martin, you're on the... I just made a motion to approve. Okay. Council Member Martin moved to approve 30 and 31. Is that correct? All right. And who seconded? Council Member Stenet seconded. Thank you. See, we can all read it here when everybody's checking in like that. Is there discussion? All right. All those in favor, please say aye and log in your vote when they come up. Any ayes? Aye. And if you'll then register. So number 30 and 31 are approved 13-0. Now this, pardon me? I just want to clarify so that. 31 is for a different project, just so we're all clear. I didn't want you to. It's for the second piece of the parking garages. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Now, do we all think that we have worked through all the late items at this point from the administration? We still have. Commissioner, are you comfortable that we've worked our way through the late items? I might ask Connie Underwood to just perhaps give us a quick total update, and then we need to have a brief discussion about our process forward and whether we want to add more time on our meetings because we still have link recommendations and individual councilmember recommendations and another update on revenue categories. So you're comfortable with the late item that we've completed the list. You've addressed each one. Thank you. Councilmember Stenet, before we have an update from Connie, do you want to see her number? I was going to go ahead, since we're running short, to get our schedule changed so everyone can understand and make a motion to meet Tuesday at 9 instead of 11. Okay. There's a motion to meet Tuesday, June 14th, Flag Day, at 9 a.m., and that would give us a block of time from 9 to 1. It will give us four hours to work through our link recommendations and our individual council recommendations and hear our update on the other revenue categories. Okay. We need the screen for discussion. People are going to log in for discussion. Council Member Stenet motioned. Council Member Farmer seconded. And some people had comments and we'll just take them. Hold your hands up. Did you have one? Council Member Myers and then Council Member Martin. Oh. The other thing is that. We have an internal audit board meeting at 9 o'clock on that day. Council Member Lane and I are on there. But I guess we'll be here because. Well, I think our other choices would be to meet Monday. No, that's fine. That's fine. Council Member Martin, did you want to speak to the motion? I just had a question. If we don't finish by 1 o'clock, what happens? Well, law, I may need Janet Graham, Commissioner Graham. What my sense is that if we don't finish by 1 o'clock, we will cancel the meeting to ratify the budget and we'll set another meeting to work on the budget and we'll set another meeting to special meeting to ratify. We've done this before and we'll just push ourselves all the way the end of June if we need to. Council Member Stennett. I think we may have until 3 o'clock. I haven't, as you know, Council Member Beard has been absent and we have the Economic and Community Development Meeting. I have not heard whether or not we have an agenda. I don't know if Paul knows. We may have until 3 o'clock. It's canceled. It is canceled. Then what we need to do tonight is to make a motion to change the special meeting to ratify the budget to 3 o'clock, perhaps. It's already set at 1 o'clock. No, it's at 3. It's set at 3. It's supposed to be 1. It's supposed to be at 1 o'clock. Okay. Okay. Council members, we set a special meeting to ratify the budget at 1 o'clock right before the economic development meeting. I did not know economic development was canceled, so we now know it's canceled. So would it not be prudent to, after this motion is disposed of, that's on the floor, to move the special council meeting to ratify to 3 o'clock right before social services? 14th. This is all June the 14th we're talking about. So the motion on the floor is to set the committee of the whole budget and start it at 9 o'clock on the 14th instead of 11. Yes, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. In social services that day at 3 o'clock, we have a review of community development block grant. And if we had to, if we didn't get finished, I would be willing as a chair, I can only speak for me, not the rest of the committee, be willing to forego that meeting to get this done. But I guess the rest of the committee needs to weigh in because it's not a pressing issue. So to the motion, is there more conversation about setting it at 9 a.m.? Council Member Martin? If this is just about 9 to 11, I'm good. It would become 9 o'clock to 1 o'clock. Well, not yet. So is there more discussion? I'm sorry, what's the question? Council Member Blues? If we move the ratification meeting to 3, then we would have until 3 to finish our work. Yes. If we need it. Yes, in a separate motion. Any more discussion about 9 o'clock on the 14th? Until we're finished. Okay, all those in, Council Member Lane? Well, several of us are. We're talking about the 14th. Okay, I know there's a lot going on. Okay, the motion is to start the Committee of the Whole budget meeting on June 14th at 9 a.m. All those in favor, please say aye and log in. Anyone opposed? That motion passes, so you'll notify for the re-advertising of the start time now. Council members, the other issue that came up is we currently have a special council meeting set at 1 o'clock to ratify the budget. Council Member Stemmett. I make a motion we change the ratification of the budget to 3 p.m. on the 14th. And Council Member Farmer seconded that. Is there a discussion about changing the special council meeting to ratify the budget to 3 p.m. on June 14th? Council Member Martin. Thank you. I will not be here at 3 o'clock. I was tight. I have to drive four hours to get to a meeting with clients, so I apologize. I was tight as it was. We could do the five minutes and scoot. The ratification meeting will take five minutes, and we will miss you. And I realize with tinkering with the schedule at this last minute, some people may have difficulty. Any other discussion about setting the ratification at 3 o'clock right before social services? I would just say I've heard from all but one committee member. Okay, now we heard from all. So we could move this meeting if we need to. So for the sake of advertisement, I don't know if you want to push it back to 4 or 5. There you go. And that gives us time to get everything done for sure, hopefully. What's? Well. Some of us are going to be here anyway, so. We have six hours scheduled now, as it is. So some of us may be deceased by the end of that. I don't know. Do you want, does the council want more hours to build in? I appreciate your willingness to change that meeting. Do you think we can do it in six hours? Okay. All right. So if there's no more discussion, the motion on the floor is to set the special council meeting to ratify the budget at 3 p.m. June 14th. All those in favor, please say aye and log in your vote. Anyone opposed? That motion passes 14-0. Now, Connie, in just the last minute, can you, do you want to give us a fund balance update? Or that might look bad at this point, but can you tell us where we stand? Based on the approved items that you just went through and including the adjustments to revenue that the mayor had had previously, the administration brought previously, and the pool issue, you're at $1.5 million and our projected ending 12 fund balance at this point. Projected ending 12 fund balance. Yes. Okay. Now, are you able to, you've done your numbers as we've gone, Are you able to get us that, to email us that update like you gave us the one before? Yes. I think council members would really appreciate that, and that will help us know where we're starting on Tuesday. Yes, I will send that to you. Okay, very good. Now, are there other items that we need reminded of for Tuesday's budget? I appreciate all of your patience. We've made great progress, I believe, and I would entertain a motion to adjourn. All those in favor, say aye. Anybody opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you.