# Council Public Safety Committee - September 20, 2011 > Auto-transcribed civic record · September 20, 2011 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2180 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2180?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2011-09-20 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 19,171 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Public Safety Committee met on September 20, 2011, at 1:00 p.m., with Chair Lawless presiding. The committee addressed four agenda items during the session, taking three votes and hearing four public comments. The committee considered three substantive matters. The Fireworks Ordinance, presented by Stinnett, was postponed. The Taxicab Ordinance, also presented by Stinnett, was tabled. A presentation on Corrections Best System of Management by Myers and Kay was postponed. The committee also received an informational report on items referred to the committee. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on September 20, 2011: * Lawless, Chair * Martin, Vice Chair * Ellinger * Ford * Beard * Farmer * Stinnett * Crosbie * McChord * Henson No members were absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions **Fireworks Ordinance Postponement** [timestamp: 0:46:15] A motion by Stinnett to postpone the fireworks ordinance for 30 days was approved by voice vote. The postponement will allow time to prepare a final clean version of the ordinance and review relevant state law. The ordinance will be brought back at the next meeting with the final clean version and state law attached. **Taxicab Ordinance Tabled** [timestamp: 1:23:56] A motion by Crosby to table the taxicab ordinance was approved by voice vote. The tabling will allow for further input and public comment on the ordinance. As a condition of this action, a special public safety committee meeting will be scheduled to address issues related to the taxicab ordinance. **Corrections Best System of Management Postponed** [timestamp: 1:26:06] A motion by Henson to postpone discussion of the corrections best system of management was approved by voice vote. The postponement will allow for a special meeting to be held. A special public safety committee meeting will be scheduled to address corrections issues. ## Public Comment **Taxicab Ordinance Changes** Will McGinnis expressed concern about proposed changes to the taxicab ordinance, characterizing them as a government power grab [timestamp: 1:03:51]. He objected to the reduction of fleet size from 25 to 10 and increased penalties, and advocated for allowing more competition in the taxicab industry. McGinnis also criticized the high insurance costs associated with operating taxis. Carmen Davis presented data on taxicab service pricing and competition [timestamp: 1:08:15]. According to Davis's presentation, Lexington's taxi rates are the highest in the region compared to other cities, which Davis attributed to the lack of competition. Davis called for lowering the fleet cap to 10 to encourage new entrants into the market and improve both service quality and pricing for consumers. Council Member Crosby raised concerns about the decision-making process behind the proposed taxicab ordinance changes [timestamp: 1:22:12]. Crosby questioned the lack of supporting documents, studies, or data backing the proposed changes and expressed concern that decisions were made without sufficient evidence or adequate public input. **Jail Expansion Capacity** Council Member Beard addressed jail expansion capacity [timestamp: 2:01:09]. Beard noted that the jail's third ring is already graded and the necessary infrastructure is in place to expand capacity by more than 1,000 beds. According to Beard, the expansion could be completed in under two years if funding becomes available. ## Contested Items The September 20, 2011 meeting included three significant areas of disagreement among council members and the public. **Fireworks Ordinance Enforcement and Safety** A heated discussion arose over proposed fireworks regulations. Council Member Martin argued that the ordinance would be difficult to enforce in practice, specifically contending that the proposed 200-foot buffer zone was unenforceable. Martin advocated for a complete ban on fireworks as an alternative. Other council members countered this position, arguing that regulation represents a better approach than outright prohibition, since people would likely violate a ban regardless of its existence. **Taxicab Ordinance Changes and Competition** The council split on proposed changes to taxicab regulations. The central debate focused on whether reducing the fleet cap from 25 to 10 vehicles would promote competition in the market or stifle it. Public comments during the meeting raised concerns about the current high taxi rates in the community and questioned whether the council had sufficient data to support the proposed changes. The disagreement reflected fundamentally different views on how market regulation affects service quality and pricing. **Jail Governance and Best Practices** A procedural dispute emerged regarding the jail governance discussion. Council Members Stinnett and Myers expressed concern that the committee had moved too quickly into specific operational changes without first addressing the broader governance question of who should be responsible for running the jail. Their objection centered on the sequencing of decisions—they believed the council should establish the fundamental governance structure before debating particular operational details. ## Fireworks Ordinance - Stinnett (1-6) [timestamp: 0:09:00] The committee discussed a proposed fireworks ordinance designed to regulate the sale and use of consumer fireworks in Fayette County. The ordinance would establish comprehensive rules governing retail operations and consumer use of fireworks. **Key Provisions** The proposed ordinance would classify fireworks retailers into three categories: ancillary retailers, seasonal retailers, and permanent retailers. The ordinance would restrict fireworks use to specific hours—10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on regular days, with extended hours until midnight on designated holidays. The proposal would prohibit anyone under 18 years old from purchasing or using fireworks. Additionally, the ordinance would require 200-foot buffer zones for fireworks use and establish permit fees and enforcement penalties for violations. **Committee Discussion** Speakers on this item included Stinnett, Barber, Martin, Henson, and Crosby. The committee reviewed the proposed regulations and considered how they would apply to fireworks sales and use throughout the county. **Outcome** The committee decided to postpone the ordinance for 30 days. This delay would allow time to prepare a final clean version of the document and to conduct a thorough review of relevant state law before bringing the ordinance back for further consideration. ## Taxicab Ordinance - Stinnett (7-24) [timestamp: 00:50:14] The committee reviewed proposed changes to the taxicab ordinance during this agenda item. The discussion involved key speakers Curtis, McGinnis, Davis, Crosby, Henson, and Myers. The proposed ordinance included several significant modifications to taxicab regulations: * Reducing the maximum fleet size from 25 to 10 vehicles * Increasing inspection frequency requirements * Requiring additional insurance coverage * Allowing meter charges during idle time **Concerns Raised** Public comments during the discussion highlighted multiple concerns about the proposed changes: * Competition impacts on existing taxicab operators * Safety considerations related to the proposed modifications * Lack of supporting data to justify the proposed changes **Outcome** The committee tabled the agenda item to allow for further public input and to schedule a special meeting for additional discussion. This decision reflected the committee's desire to gather more information and community feedback before proceeding with a vote on the ordinance. ## Corrections Best System of Management = Myers/Kay (25-31) [timestamp: 1:25:32] The committee discussed potential operational changes to jail management, specifically examining the possibility of transferring certain functions to the sheriff's office. The functions under consideration included court transport, holding, and the CAP program. **Presentation and Options** The discussion centered on improving efficiency and reducing costs through organizational restructuring. Committee members explored options for staff swaps between departments and identified potential revenue generation opportunities through federal inmate placements. **Key Participants** The discussion involved multiple committee members including Sabatini, Mason, Witt, Stinnett, Myers, Kaye, and Beard, with Myers and Kaye appearing to lead the presentation of management options. **Outcome** The committee agreed to postpone further discussion of this agenda item. Rather than proceeding with a decision, members determined that a special meeting should be scheduled to more comprehensively address the broader governance structure and best practices of the jail system. This decision reflected the committee's recognition that the topic required more extensive deliberation and a wider-ranging examination of jail operations before moving forward with any transfers or reorganization. ## Items Referred to Committee (32) This agenda item was presented as informational only. No substantive discussion took place during the meeting regarding the 32 items that had been referred to committee. The committee acknowledged the referral of these items but did not address them during this session. No specific concerns were raised, and no debate occurred on any of the referred matters. **Outcome:** Informational --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — postponed: Postpone fireworks ordinance for 30 days to allow for final clean version and state law review - **Motion** — tabled: Table taxicab ordinance to allow for further input and public comment - **Motion** — postponed: Postpone corrections best system of management discussion to allow for special meeting --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo I'm going to go to the next video. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and get it. Display, buy, purchase, whatever fireworks. It does regulate the selling of fireworks as to temporary and permanent stands and addresses the penalties for violating this ordinance, which are much stiffer than what they previously were under our code of ordinances. And then last but not least, it does address the hours in which you can display fireworks and designates those four or five days a year that we do extend the times in honor of a certain holiday. So those are things that it does do. And hopefully everyone in front of you have a draft copy. There are items in that copy that are in bold. Those are some of the major changes. Again, we don't have a current fireworks ordinance. This is not part of the noise ordinance. This is a standalone ordinance. So the things in bold are the things we wanted you to pay closer attention to. And I'll turn it over to Mr. Barber here in a second, but I wanted to let you know we have met with police. We have met with fire. We have distributed a copy to the Commonwealth Attorney's Office for input. so we've been through the enforcement agencies both on the safety side and on the enforcement side to get their input. And so this is a first attempt draft. By no means does it have to be final, and that's why we're here today to discuss it. Mr. Barber, you want to add anything that I may have left out? I think you covered it. Madam Chair, excuse me. Can I ask a question? I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt, but the copy I have has nothing bolded. Yeah, let me address that. there's actually a more recent copy than what was in the pack, which will make it unduly confusing. But I think the one in your packet, the actual packet that got distributed last week, does have some highlighted sections. We were working on a couple probably rather non-substantive changes in the meantime, and I think that's what Mr. Schoeninger handed out to you all today. So the appropriate draft is the 9-2, September 2nd. Which does not have those sections highlighted. I will go ahead and point out to you all as we go through what the important ones are so you all won't lose track of it. The date on my draft is 8-1. Yes, Paul ended up putting an earlier draft in the packet because I didn't include him in the loop on the most recent one. Okay, thank you, and thank you, Council Member Kay. I was looking for him, too. Thank you. If you want, I can go through the ordinance. That's okay. This is your presentation, and thank you all for all your hard work on this. All right. The first part you all probably want to pay attention to is the definition section. There are three types of retailers that are going to be regulated, although the first one would be on a very cursory basis. That's the ancillary fireworks retailer. Those would be the ones that more or less were legally selling things that you could buy prior to this change in the law. And what happened is in March of this year, the state allowed some sales to take place that prior to this year were not allowed to take place. So if you had some of the fireworks that were not very loud, those kinds of things, those are sparklers, those kinds of things. Those are pretty much, and only selling those and not doing it is a major part of your business. You just have those available for sale. You would be an ancillary fireworks retailer, and that's going to require, as you'll find out in a minute, very little in the way of being regulated by us. The ones that would be regulated more heavily are the permanent fireworks retailer, which is someone that's in the business permanently of the primary thing they're going to do is sell the louder type of fireworks. And then we would have a seasonal fireworks retailer. The first thing you all may want to pay attention to is on the seasonal one, we went back and forth as to some appropriate dates that we might want to allow these to operate in Fayette County, and the draft that's in front of you would only allow someone to get a seasonal permit to sell between June 10th and July 7th of every year. That's not something you have to do, but that is what the working group wanted to do in this particular case. So you could either be selling them permanently year-round, or you could get a seasonal stand like you see at the gas station or whatever. But if you got the seasonal one, it would only be for that three-week period a year. And Mr. Barber, not to interrupt, do you want to explain where we got those dates? I think those dates are consistent with what the state is doing around Fourth of July. I think there are other localities that they've also allowed the sales to take place other times of the year around holidays. also on a seasonal basis like maybe around Christmas time or some time like that. But what the state has said in the state law is you all are free to come in and regulate these on your own on a local level. So I think you've got a great deal of latitude on what you decide to do in this particular area. The use and sale, there's just some general statements in here regarding the use and sale in Section 9A3. The restrictions would be an important section for you all to focus on. There's some general compliance restrictions. And then on a daily basis, other than the exceptions that are listed, it would only be legal to have fireworks used or exploded between the hours of 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. And on the holidays that are listed in that section, you would be able to go until midnight. And once again, as Mr. Sennett pointed out, this is not focused on displays. These are focused on consumer use. So if you're talking about Applebee's or the ballpark or the Fourth of July festival, those don't necessarily come in under these particular restrictions. This does prohibit someone from under the age, and I need to verify this with the fire department later. I believe it's the case, I'm told, and I need to recheck this, that the sale of fireworks under 18 and under is pretty much what the state has done now anyway, and we're just mimicking this. But this does not allow someone under the age of 18 to possess, use, ignite, or use these types of fireworks. These ones that are listed are the most dangerous type. These are the two and three type, the louder ones. These are not sparklers, for instance. we added possession in here. That's not something that was in the state law. But from an enforcement standpoint, we thought it would be much easier to enforce if we also had the possession of the fireworks by these particular individuals as being something that was prohibited. Another important area would be D. And I think we used Owensboro's. Owensboro adopted an ordinance prior to Fourth of July this year. We used that as a model. this is going to be your general restriction on where you can shoot these types of fireworks off. And once again, these are the loud fireworks. These are not, for instance, your sparklers or something that doesn't make any kind of noise. You can't shoot them off within 200 feet of any structure, vehicle, or person, or anywhere that's otherwise prohibited by law. So that obviously is going to be a big hindrance on someone shooting these off in most neighborhoods here in town. And the 200 feet is, once again, I think that's something we got from Owensboro's ordinance that they had on the books. You all would be free to make that less or more if that's what you all wanted to do. we added in a burn ban section at the request of the fire department so that it was clear that if there was a fire burn ban on in place that you weren't supposed to be shooting the fireworks off during that period of time we added in a section to cover some storage requirements that the state has and then we wanted to have a section that would require them to pick up to result in trash and debris. But those are the general requirements that apply to the use of the fireworks in Fayette County. With respect to the permits, there will be a permitting process that's established in 9A5. You would have to go through the normal requirements that you would for any other type of business permit, and then there's some other things that you would have to do in addition to that because of the nature of this type of sale. Some of the highlights are, you know, the fire marshal is going to have to sign off on this. You're going to have to go through the process of getting building inspection to sign off on any kind of certificate of occupancy. You're going to have to have a minimum insurance requirement, those types of things. I think the fee section at the bottom, at least on the version I have, somehow that's gotten mushed in together. Can you pull that up on the screen? I think that one might be clean. That's at the bottom of page 4. Try page 5. All right. I'm not sure if the one you will have is clear or not, but these would be the proposed fees for these types of permits. And these are based upon how much effort we think the fire department and the police department would put forth in having to do their various inspections of these types of locations. The seasonal one, these are on a per-location basis. The seasonal one would be $500 per location. The permanent one would be $2,500 the first time you get it, and then it would be $500 a year for renewal. These fees are, we think, are on the reasonable end, but once again, you all would have the latitude to set those at a lower amount if that's what you wanted to do. I don't think we've necessarily got the justification to go to a higher amount than what's proposed there. With respect to the actual conditions that are placed on these types of retailers, that's included in 9A6. There is an additional prohibition on having someone sell consumer fireworks that's under the age of 18 years old, and then they would only be able to be legally sold between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. We have a revocation or suspension ability. If you all feel like that's going to be something that you want the Commissioner of Public Safety to regularly use, We may want to discuss adding on an administrative process where someone could appeal that decision being made. But I think this is just left in at this point in time to make it clear that they would have the ability to do that until such time as the violation is corrected and then they would be given their permit back to continue selling. If you all want to have a permit process set up where you want to run them out of business for a violation, we would probably want to go towards that administrative appeal section, which is not in the current draft. The ancillary fireworks regulations are in 9A, 8, and those are fairly de minimis other than once again, you would have, and I need to check on the state law on this, but this would prohibit the sale to someone under the age of 18 years old. and I think that that's if I'm told correctly that is the state law now anyway so they should be doing that if it's not that's something you need to know because that would require someone for instance like Walmart that sells them occasionally as part of their regular stock they would have to set a system up where they weren't allowing someone under 18 that they'd have to be checking IDs on on the sale of fireworks the penalty provision is a 9 a 9 we have different sets of penalties for depending on the type of violation i talked to the county attorney's office yesterday and i think we're going to clarify the language a little bit but the idea would be on on both of these you would have on the first one you would have a progressive level of of fine for each continuing violation so that we would go from a minimum of you can maximum would always be a thousand dollars or 30 days in jail which makes and a misdemeanor. But the idea on the first set of violations would be it would be $100, minimum $250 the second violation, and $500 the third or following. Councilman Laws, just to clarify one point of his presentation, the 200-foot requirement that you cannot set off a firework within 200 feet is the current state law that they passed back in March. So it's not an arbitrary number. That's where we got that 200. I believe we can't go more than that, can we? I thought we could only go less was our discussion since the state set it at 200. I'll have to look at what the state did. But I didn't recall that that was in the state law, but you're probably correct that that's where that came from. It did. Thank you. That's it. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, it was unfortunate how he ended up getting here because someone at the state level changed the law, and it's like everybody went crazy. And, you know, all we got were phone calls right and left over the Fourth of July because people started shooting things off about June 1st and went until about August 15th and really abused this new opportunity to shoot off fireworks and so forth. So let me start by saying I want to compliment Council Member Stenner and the work of the committee of putting something together that addressed the complaints that we heard but also working inside what we as a local government could actually do. And what I heard, at least in our office, was the frustration of how long people were allowed to shoot these things off, again, starting somewhere in June and ending somewhere in mid-July, and then also what time of day they were going off and so forth. And so, again, my compliments to you and to the whole committee for at least trying to work through and find a solve in this. And I think that the good news, or at least what I see in this, is that we're going about this in a way that we didn't create some laws that are unenforceable, and we didn't create some laws that would just force people to go into Jessamine County, let's say, and buy the exact same thing. So, again, compliments to you. I don't know if there's anything from my end, at least, that needs tightening up. But, again, for folks who are watching this and saying, well, you know, why would the council get down in the weeds over that? It's because if there was any one thing that we heard over and over and over, and we were in the middle of the budget process and we heard more about fireworks than we did about the budget. So, again, my compliments to you all on this. And it is unfortunate that sometimes personal responsibility is thrown out the window and we have to create another layer of laws. But I do think this is extremely fair and got to the problem. So, again, compliments. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. I just had a question, Dave, I guess. If, according to this, they could continue to maintain a permit or get a permit and have multiple offenses, correct? Would it become a time where we're saying we're not going to give you a permit? If you all want to have a process where after multiple violations, for instance, the Commissioner of Public Safety would permanently revoke their ability to get a permit because they continue to be a problem, we would recommend that we add in some sort of appeal process. The language that you have in there now would allow him to go ahead and do it until they correct the violation pretty much. But once the violation was corrected, the idea would be they'd get their permit back to continue sales. But if you all want that to be part of this, we would just add an additional section on there in order to protect their rights from a due process standpoint. We would put in a section that would allow them to go through some sort of appeal process to try to get their permit back. And there's already an appeals board set up with public safety? I don't think so. I think when we normally do this type of regulation, it would be an appeal that's done through the Commissioner of Public Safety's designee, which oftentimes ends up being Mr. Curtis, I suppose. So I don't know if he's volunteering to do more of that or not. But we could certainly set up something like that where they had a process that went through the public safety office if we went through the process of telling them they could no longer operate here in Fay County. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the effort that's gone in to put in this ordinance together, but I'm just hearing something different from my constituents. They don't want these fireworks in our neighborhood. They think they're dangerous. They think they're loud. They go on through the night. And this kind of thing is going to create a cat-and-mouse game where our folks have got to go catch them and give them a warning, and then it's going to be another couple of weeks or the next time they catch them. You're right, I've got a lot of complaints about this, and folks just don't want it. We have, as I understand, and I would look for the law to tell me, we have the ability, I think, not to opt out of this state permission for these high-powered fireworks. And I think we should take advantage of that and not allow these type of fireworks in our community. Someone's going to get hurt. Right now you're not supposed to fire them within 200 feet of houses. How many think that's being followed? It's state law right now. And us putting it in a little piece of paper and voting on the council is not going to change the fact that these things are going to go on into the night. And it's going to be up to our overly taxed police department to go find them and then cite them. And then they've got to do that kind of thing. So I think we need to take the opportunity to say no. I don't care what the legislature did. We have the opportunity to say no to these in our community, and that's what we need to do. Can we do that? The state law appears to be drafted in a manner that would allow you to do that. If you wanted to totally ban the sale or use of these types of fireworks in Fayette County, that would be within, based upon how the state law reads that, appears to be the intent of the legislature. Well, I'm going to get a lot of cheers in my neighborhood if we do just that. Thank you, Chair. I have some questions for Mr. Barbary and Council Member Stennett. Boiling it down, this ordinance would allow those new high-powered? I cannot speak to where in Fayette County you could legally shoot them off. I think we had a discussion about that, and if it's 200 feet, there's very few places. Now, I'm not saying there aren't any, but if you go inside, for instance, New Circle Road, I doubt there's more than a handful of properties where you could legally shoot them off under this draft ordinance because of the 200-foot of a building, of a vehicle, of a structure, of a person. That's not to say there's not some that you probably couldn't identify for me, but it wouldn't be a whole lot of places. But, yes, it would allow you. I think the idea was they're legal. as far as we know they've got a couple permanent operations in jessamine county so the sale is legal right across the border so i think the idea was this is kind of in between you know we would regulate them on some level but because we acknowledge that sales are taking place already less than you know 15 miles from here we would go ahead and not only allow the sale under regulation but also allow their uses on a limited basis? Yes. Well, first of all, I want to thank all the hard work that went into this. I too am inclined to agree with Council Member Martin about the sale and use of these high-powered fireworks that used to people. Granted, we all know everybody would go to Tennessee and purchase them and bring them back here, and that's going to be an issue, but they are extremely dangerous. And would we, Council Member Stenet, could you address the thought behind allowing the sale of those at any point? Well, I think Mr. Barber just addressed it. If we do prohibit that in Fayette County, which we did talk about doing, going to that extreme, you're driving less than a mile across our border in the Jessamine County. You can buy them there or Scott or Paris, wherever you want to go. So unless the state or the other counties around us would join into that, that's going to see little effect of being able to do it. So we thought we'd try the regulation, try to make it safe, try to prohibit the under-18, try to set appropriate permits and appropriate oversight versus trying to ban it. Because as Councilman Martin said, they're going to do it regardless. People are going to break this law. So we're going to have to be able to enforce it one way or another, and having something on the books is a lot easier to enforce than not having something on the books. And if we prohibit them totally, they're still going to do it, so we still have to enforce something. And this gives us a little more guidance, a little more structure to be able to enforce it. We don't want to see a black market of fireworks in Fayette County. It would be nice if we lived in utopia and could ban everything having to do with the new law, but that's not reasonable, and it's not going to work here in Fayette County. Okay, thank you. I, too, received an enormous number of phone calls and e-mails and complaints this year more than any because the high-powered, and I think having a time limit makes a difference, but I also am concerned about the safety factor. So, I mean, it can't be within 200 feet of a building or a vehicle, but somebody's got to light them and run real fast. So, thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair, for recognizing me. I'm not a member of the committee, but I appreciate being able to ask a couple of questions. Could I have Mr. Barber come up for just a second? If I'm going to understand this correctly, and I've gotten a lot of complaints from constituents too, but the complaints I had were regarding people who were lighting these fireworks off in their backyard or wherever, you know, at 3 o'clock in the morning and, you know, way before the 4th of July and continuing way after the 4th of July. What I did not get any complaints about, though, are neighborhood associations, homeowners associations, or neighborhoods who got together and, say, on a cul-de-sac or over on Tate's Creek, I don't want to mention any names of any neighborhoods or anything, that the community came around and they lit off some pretty substantial fireworks. And I actually attended one of these. And it was a neighborhood gathering and people got together and had fun, and there weren't any complaints about that. They lit off fireworks for an hour, hour and a half on the 4th of July, and they were done. they had exhaustive people that went out and picked up all the firework remains out of people's yards and everything. So am I to understand that if this passes, those won't be able to happen on the 4th of July either? I think it's going to depend on the exact type of event you're talking about. I think if you're talking about a display event that requires, like the real fireworks that go hundreds of feet up in the air and require somebody certified to be shooting them off and stuff, this does not really address that. It says you have to go through the permitting process with the fire department like you should be doing that. But that does not prohibit that type of display. Okay. If it's something less than that, which I know some neighborhoods do something less than that, yeah, it would probably, depending on exactly what types of fireworks they're using and everything else, then that activity might end up being prohibited. But if you're talking about a – there's several neighborhoods here that do a real show. They get a display permit from the fire marshal's office, and they shoot off real fireworks. And this does not really address that other than to tell them they have to go through that process, and they might have to pay some corresponding, I think, overtime stuff if they have to go out there and do something with respect to the show. So the intent is not to get in that type of firework regulation really at all through this ordinance. This is focused on consumer fireworks. Fantastic. Thank you very much. Council Member Martin. Mr. Farmer, thank you. Oh, I apologize. Council Member Farmer. Thank you very much. I, too, had many phone calls, and I think we all did. But mine's more of a process question. So is there before us today one marked-up copy of this that shows what we currently have versus what we're talking about going to? Because what's in the packet isn't what's proposed, and what's proposed hasn't been marked up in my estimation. You all don't have anything. There's nothing on the books now. This is the first draft. Well, then, when this piece came separate from this piece, what did it change? That's my mistake. There was more than one draft circulating around, and I tried to get Paul the most recent version to give you all today. So there's some very small changes from the draft that's in the packet to the one that's dated 9-2. And that's my fault because I didn't get Paul the last draft we worked on in time for your packet. Not intending to be confusing, but there are two different drafts in front of you all. Neither one's been adopted, and this is all a new issue for you all to talk about. And you know my proclivity for being easily confused. All I know is on the draft copy that you handed to us once we got here, I guess the fine schedule is overprinted, so you can't really read it, but I'm assuming it's similar to the one that was in the original here. It's the one that you all had displayed on the overhead. I think it's $2,500. Yes, it's $500 for a seasonal one per location. It's $2,500 for a permanent place that that's what their main business is. And if you wanted to renew your main business one after the first year, it would be $500. Thank you. And I will add, too, to that, the $2,500 permanent retailer, there's already restrictions on where they can go in a community. For instance, they can't go in a strip mall. They can't be attached. They have to be a detached single building. I know our fire guys can speak to that if anyone wants to understand how someone can really set up a permanent spot. It's pretty difficult. Is that all, Council Member Farmer? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. David, I don't know whether you're the person, sorry to, you're just there, you know, but whether you're the appropriate person to ask about this, but do you know whether the City of Lexington cited any individuals for firing off these new fireworks within 200 feet of a structure this year? Well, I'd have to get information from the Commissioner. I think the number of actual citations were de minimis, and my recollection is none of them were based upon that being the particular offense that was committed. I think they would be for probably violating the noise ordinance if I had to guess. But they did not issue, there were not hundreds of citations issued for the display of fireworks this year. But that's current state law, is that correct? I need to check that. I need to check that. That's in the, that's what's been represented by it. But certainly I can follow up with you all. What I should probably do is get you all a copy of the entire state law so that you all just have that. But I did not look at that particular issue for today's meeting. And I just think my point is that when we allow these in the community, I mean, we don't want to have the fireworks police. These folks have enough to do. And I think that expecting them to somehow prove and our prosecutors to somehow prove that someone fired something off within 200 feet of a structure creates a fairly large hurdle for this. If they're not allowed to do it in Fayette County, I think that's a pretty easy hurdle. And so I think this is going to be difficult to enforce, and I think that it's – I appreciate the efforts that's gone into it, but I think that we already have laws now that say that prohibit it within 200 feet, and they're – I guess I'm assuming are hard to enforce. So I think it's reasonable to assume that when we adopt or if the Council adopts this ordinance, that those similarly will be difficult to enforce. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Chairwoman Lawless. I also want to thank Council Member Stenner again for his leadership on bringing this forward. My understanding is that the 4th of July season, 2011, was the first season for us under the new state law. I would ask if the fire department would come forward. I see some gentlemen in the back maybe to address one or two questions that I may have in regards to the safety aspect of this new law. Again, I think the council in this committee is doing a great job to respond to the constituent concerns that we've had in regards to nuisance and noise as of this. But I mentioned this earlier this summer when we talked about it. the safety impact that was in place this summer. Chief Griggs, if you can talk about were there any injuries this 2011 summer season in comparison to those past with these new fireworks laws in place. Sure. I'll be glad to answer that. There's a couple things that factor in here, though, before I wrap it up. But to make a long story short, essentially we saw no significant increase in fires or injuries as opposed to the past four or five years. We saw three injuries, all relatively minor, all to children, related to fireworks that we responded to directly. Our communication with emergency rooms in the community gave us information of just a handful, even through the ERs. We did see an increase in, and we always do during the Fourth of July, an increase in brush or rubbish fires. And it's sometimes difficult to determine if those were necessarily connected to fireworks or not. But we did see about 15 fires over that weekend, which is obviously more than you would normally have on a given weekend. And we feel like at least one of the reasons for that is we saw the weather was good and that we had a lot of rain, so we weren't dry at all, which definitely helped not only that weekend but the weeks prior to that. Also, we did an extensive, with the direction of the Public Safety Commission, we did an extensive public education campaign that I think, I can't help but think that contributed to us not having bigger problems because we were frankly concerned about it when we saw the law. We thought we want to get out in front of this and slow things down. Well, Chief Riggs, thank you for that recap of this past summer. I think it's also going to be important, and that's a question I would have of the Fire, Division of Fire and Emergency Services is whether in the context of this proposed ordinance, I know we're addressing the enforcement action, and I would assume that the enforcement would primarily lay upon the Division of Police, but what kind of role will the Division of Fire play in being proactive in raising the education and awareness of this ordinance so that perhaps our Division of Police won't be so overcome with enforcement responsibilities, but perhaps more importantly, that our citizens, our kids, and our families are safe. In regards to this ordinance, do you foresee in the future continued efforts to make the neighborhood? We, this year, due to the fact that it was the first time this law went into place, we had double the number of temporary tents or sales things set up. So we, obviously, that incurred, through the fire department, we go out and inspect those tents, making sure that what they're selling is legal, that their distances are proper, they've got all the necessary equipment for safety involved in those. So anytime there's an increase in the tents, it's going to be an increase on our part. But we did a lot in the community. We did public service announcements. We did spots on the news, noon shows, morning shows, all to try to educate the folks. GTV3 was a huge help there producing those things. And, of course, we're always going to continue to focus on whatever area of concern there is. We're going to focus on that. And, of course, this year fireworks was certainly a concern, and so we did spend a good amount of time making that happen. But we'll continue to work with that. Prior to this, we focused on it every year because, as was mentioned, there's illegal stuff that comes in the community every year, so we worked really hard to make sure those things weren't sold here. This year was a little different. We couldn't say it can't be sold. We had to look at it and see what was legal and what was illegal. If they were selling anything, any display fireworks, we just had to make sure that we focused on the proactive side of it, the education side of it. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Ms. Vosk. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Ms. Wallace. I, too, received a lot of complaints this year regarding the fireworks. In fact, I was late because I was at the UPS store, and I had a constituent who complained about fireworks and a park. Anyway, I just had it this afternoon and told him that he had to let me go so I could get here to talk about this. I have some issues. I appreciate Council Member Stinnett bringing this forward because I know a lot of us got bombarded, But I think the root of the issue and the bigger problem that we're not addressing is we have already ordinances. I feel like we're passing something else as a Band-Aid to take care of the ordinances that we're not enforcing because we don't have enough police officers. So I just don't know how we can keep trying to put Band-Aids over things when the issue is much bigger than the fact that people are blowing up fireworks. It's the fact that we don't have enough police officers to enforce noise ordinances and the other ordinances that are already in the books. Thank you. One last comment I have. Vice Mayor Gorton informed me yesterday that the Noise Ordinance Task Force has completed three years of work, And I don't know if this is addressed in their... It's not. Any other discussion? Do I hear a motion? Council Member Stennett? I won't make a motion today because I think we need to... I have copies of the state law, so the committee can see that as well. And we'll get a clean copy from Mr. Farmer especially so he can see it the way the current version should be, just to make sure everyone's clear. But it's important to understand this is not just passing a Band-Aid or another type of ordinance that we can't enforce. This is changing a lot that we don't even have on the books. As Councilmember Farmer brought up, we don't even have anything on the books addressing fireworks right now. So this is an attempt, one, to address the safety aspect of it from a fire standpoint and regulate who can sell it and what type of sellers are regulated in Fayette County and how long they can sell. We had people up for two or three months this summer selling fireworks. This will cut that down significantly. We addressed the age limit to buy these type of fireworks and display them. That's significant to protect our young people in the community. It also attempts to allow people to enjoy those holidays, because we're not here to say you can't have fun on those particular days. We don't want to take that enjoyment away. But what we also want to say is do it within a reasonable time frame and do it with safety in mind, one being the burn ban in here. We don't have that right now. If there's a burn ban, you can't do any type of firework, no matter what time of day or any time. So we don't have that currently. So there's a lot of things that they do address. And the biggest complaint a lot of you got was litter. That's in here. We don't currently have an issue. People like fireworks and they leave them on their street in the sewer drains. Who do you think is paying to clean up that sewer drain in about three years because it stopped up? So those are things that it does address. What is significant of passing an ordinance that does have some good things in it, and it's a first attempt. It's just like any ordinance. We do need police to enforce it. We do need people to go to court with our police if they saw them doing it and testify. Same problem with any ordinance we have on the books. This is no different. So we have the same situation. So I'll keep it in committee another 30 days and then bring a final clean version along with the state law so people can see that as well at our next meeting, Chair, if we can have it then. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Stenet. And I do agree something needs to be done. And I would also like to hear at some point from the police about their experience in difficulty or whatever of enforcing this and how that might impact them. but it certainly was much worse this year with these high-powered fireworks. Thank you. Oh, Council Member Henson? That was the comment I was going to make, because I know that police were handling calls regarding fireworks, so I would be very interested to hear a report from them, because it sounds like they were already maybe not, they were going because of the noise ordinance or for whatever reason, but this ordinance would probably give them a little more power. Thank you. Briefly, Council Member Myers, because we have two other items that probably are going to take quite a bit of time. So, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would also say that my district did have one citation given for fireworks. It took the police seven visits to that home before they were able to do the citation. So whatever this law will help, limit the number of times they have to touch that person before they can write a citation will drastically help. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Any other comments on fireworks? The second item on the agenda is the taxicab ordinance. and I believe Mr. Curtis is prepared to present on that. Last time you all met, I actually gave a presentation relative to the taxicab ordinance and the changes that we had proposed in public safety to the existing taxicab ordinance, which you still have in front of you. It's still part of your packet today, along with a copy of my presentation the last time that you all met. It actually went to the full council and was tabled and sent back to the committee by council member Stenet. Since that time, at the request, as you all remember, I was basically requested to contact all the companies to ensure that they knew that this process was ongoing, that it was in fact coming back up, and I've done that. I've contacted all three managers or people that are associated owners with the three existing permitted companies and given them the full schedule for the council for the remainder of the year so that they know that they're going to have to go and find out whether or not taxicab ordinance is on there or whether or not it's coming up during that meeting. And I'm also following up with them the week before the meeting and calling them individually to make sure that we don't have the same claim as I heard a little over a month ago, that they never were informed that this was going on. So they know that specifically in two out of the three companies that I can see today are here, at least, as well as the potential company owners that want the law changed as well. So with that in mind, and I've got everybody basically on speed dial so that they'll know that this is coming back to council, so that there isn't any more, for lack of a better term, misinterpretation of that they weren't actually contacted. I also requested from each company, because they said they did not have any input into the actual orders itself, which they did have input. This is a two-year process it took to get this ordinance where it is. There are some things that are within the changes that are a direct response from some of the owners and the managers in the cab companies themselves. One in particular is the change for the meters themselves to allow them to charge for times when they set. That's not in the original ordinance. It's in there now because they were complaining about the fact that they would set in traffic for 20, 30 minutes at a time and not get paid for that time because the meters would only register cost when the vehicles were moving. I added that to that because of their suggestions, not ours. The additional inspections were part and parcel to conversations that we had over the last two years. Now, they didn't actually make the suggestion, but no one said when I asked about the possibility of additional inspections, would they have a problem? As a matter of fact, two of the major companies encouraged us to have additional inspections. Now, they didn't do it in writing, but yes, I have contacted all those people all over the course of the last two years. Anyway, I actually sent them a formal email last Monday to each of the managers themselves requesting that they put their formal request for changes, send them to me, and at the request of the law department in a Word document so they can cut and paste to add to the existing ordinance as it is. I want them to justify why they want the changes based upon the existing ordinance, just like we did when we actually drafted the ordinance, why we wanted to change the ordinance, and also whether it's new, that they want something new added to the existing ordinance. We did that as well with the ordinance, as well as justification for the proposed changes. Is this something that's going to enhance taxicab service countywide, which is what we tried to do with the ordinance changes? Or is this just something that's going to enhance your company operations? And I think that that, in fact, is a valid point, that, yes, we want their input, and I've gotten their input. Now I've officially asked for their input in writing, and I'm willing to bring that forth in a proposed change within the ordinance itself. But by the same token, this is an ordinance, a governing ordinance. And because it is a legislative document that governs the taxi cab business, they cannot part and parcel dictate what's in the ordinance itself because it's going to affect every one of them. So, yes, I'm more than willing to accept any change that they have at Jural's request, and I want them to do that officially, and they know specifically what format I want them to use so that we can do this the right way. What I'd like to do is once those changes come in, I did not set a specific due date for those changes. I told them as soon as possible. There's only been one company that's responded, and that's the one company that only has one cab to the changes that they would like to see. It wasn't formatted properly, but he's agreed that they'll go back and do that. The end result is that once those changes are brought to bear, then we need to sit down either with someone within your laws committee to discuss the changes that have been proposed. Law needs to look over the changes that have been proposed. We need to evaluate those changes that are being proposed to ensure that they can even be enforced or that they are applicable to the taxicab service for Fayette County itself. So with that in mind, that's pretty much what we've done. I also have an appointment with an individual who's here today who actually wants to start a cab company with a smaller number of cars, as we had proposed in the original ordinance. And I have an appointment with her tomorrow so that I can sit down, and everyone that's involved hopefully will have input into this before I bring it back. So that's where we are. Okay. If anybody else has any comments, I have a couple of questions, if that's okay. Yes, ma'am. When we last talked, you said that you were working with law, that you did have some changes about insurance levels from the previous. That was actually suggested already by one of the companies verbally, but I haven't seen anything in writing yet. Okay. I hope it was under the impression it was going to be in this document today. No, I'm sorry, it wasn't, because it just wasn't ready to be in this document today. And I don't want to bring forth something else to you all that is not prepared for a final vote. Okay. Excuse me. I believe there are some people here that wanted to speak to this. Thank you, Paul. And I will recognize Council Member Stemmett and then the people that have signed up to speak. Thank you, Chair. So, Rick, you're going to bring us back the insurance change? Yes. What is the current? Can you explain to the committee what we're talking about in terms of what type of insurance you're talking about and what the current is and what? They basically have to have a commercial insurance policy for a taxi cab service. And it's extremely expensive upwards now, and they can quote me on it. The members of the company can quote on it a lot better than I can. But Don's the one I see first. You know, it's somewhere upwards of $2,000, $3,000 a month per car. It's very expensive because you're transporting the public around, as it should be very expensive. What we're going to propose is that we also have an additional blanket insurance bond to cover any kind of accident that may occur. Just because someone has insurance doesn't mean that they paid it on the date that they paid it. And I want to ensure that there is some sort of blanket coverage just in case one of our cabs is involved in an accident so that, number one, the company doesn't get destroyed, and also, two, we as a government are doing the prudent thing to have a blanket policy for each and every car that's out there. And that was not in the one we moved out of the committee? Not originally, no. And that's one of the reasons why I brought it back, because the insurance is very important. But the other issue that I want to make sure we're clear on is how many calves we have currently operating in Fayette County today. Do we know that exact number? That's an extremely good question. I mean, I'd have to go to each manager every day to see how many calves they have up and running. I mean, at the ballpark, are there 100 on the street? Do we have 400? There's somewhere between 2 and 250 on the street. On the giving day. Okay. That should be available. And I know I brought this up again last meeting, but there is this economic demand for more service. Yes, there is. And where are we hearing that from? I'm not saying it's coming from Rick Curtis, but where are we hearing that from as a government? I really don't know how to answer that other than the fact of the phone calls that I get because I take all the calls in my office. And it's usually from citizens that want to know if there's going to be more cab service, more choice out there, because I've heard the complaints that, you know, really only have two cab companies that we can call. And I know that there is a third licensed cab company through the state, but they only have one car. And I basically have heard those situations where the citizens, I heard it especially last year during the World Equestrian Games, but I can't believe that you only had two cab services for the entire county. that was just unheard of. Yeah, maybe my colleagues are getting calls in their office for increased demand. I was just curious about... I mean, I don't have any facts and figures to say that that's out there. But I mean, I think that we probably could get that just based upon, especially on weekend times, when there's times when people have to wait an hour, an hour and a half to get a cab sometimes. When they're wanting to go home at 11, 30, 12 o'clock, because every cab that's out there is busy. Now, I know that that's just one specific time during the week, but during the day, I mean, there's how many flights come in on a regular basis. So without actually going out and studying whether or not there are people that are waiting, which I could probably get the airport to do for us, which would be that and downtown locations at night after 9 o'clock. But I really don't have numbers to tell you that there is definitive need for more. Okay. Very good. Thank you, Chair. As far as the demand, there's no other business that we regulate in this way, that they have to have a certain, I mean, you can open up a clothing shop that's a big box shop or a boutique that has four different dresses, or you can open up a restaurant with one table. So for me, it's not about the government's job to decide whether somebody else, some citizen in our community or other community wants to start a business and put their money in, whether or not they're going to make a profit or there's a need. So that being said, I will recognize Council Member Crosby. It appears to me that this started as one thing, perhaps, that was initiated by a council member and went into a committee and now has become a much bigger issue. I don't get complaints in my office about taxicab service, personally. I did during the World Equestrian Games, but it was more because people couldn't be dropped off at certain places, and it was more of a logistical issue than a need issue. So I would be curious just to know, as Council Member Stenet mentioned, how many caps would you have operating? I don't think any of us have any clue, really, how many are on the roads in Lexington. And then personally, I want to know where this demand is coming from. You said you have had many calls into your office. I don't know if that's five calls or four calls. Well, we just discussed that, and what I'm going to do is reach out to the locations that have the normal cab services, the airport, the hospitals, the towing companies, and find out specifics of how many times they actually call cabs per year, and I'll be able to provide those numbers. No, that wasn't my question. My question was you mentioned that you have a lot of calls that come to you and complaints that come to you that have caused this to progress into this form of an ordinance to where there is the demand. That's what I'm trying to find out is, you know, roughly, I mean, I don't think you've given us that answer today. Is it you've gotten ten calls, or is this just a really overwhelming problem that we had to dig into with this ordinance? Because, again, what I'm hearing is this started as one thing, went into a committee, and now it's coming out as another thing. And I do, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I do believe that this is one industry that does need to be regulated. You are transporting citizens and that there needs to be inspections and that they have to have insurance and that there has to be some sort of regulations, just as you would, I imagine, buses have to go through inspections and there has to be certain insurance policies on them as well. So it's not, with all due respect, I think it's a little different than opening up a clothing store. So I just want to know where the demand for a lot of these changes came into, because as I recall, I've been on public safety for a long time, and I recall that this was brought forward as one thing, and now it's come back to us completely something different. So if you could just answer those questions, and not today, but if you could go back and check on those, that would be great. Thank you. Council Member Henson has requested to speak, but I'd like to recognize and give three minutes to Will McGinnis, I believe, from the public that would like to speak to this. Hello, counsel. Thank you. My name is Will McGinnis, 934 Winchester Road. I own Lex Taxi. I'm the one that broke the monopoly, and I have the one permit. And I've been driving a taxi for 10 years, since 2001. I worked for Yellow Cab for about six months, and then I went and started my own company. I went to a two-day state hearing up against Yellow Cab's legal team, and I beat them. The ordinance that I've looked at, the changes I've looked at, I've just looked at today. I think Mr. Curtis, he did try to email it to me, but it went to the wrong email address. So I've just gone through this real quickly sitting out here. I'd be real cautious about making a lot of these changes. Some of them are okay, but the most important change is the actual number of calves. That is the biggest one that I've been trying to do for a long time. If you remember, six years ago or five years ago, I was before the council, and I asked you to allow me to grow my cab not from 1 to 25, but to increase it one at a time until I reached that number. And the council unanimously allowed me to do that. In fact, they asked Glenda George if that could be done, and she correctly said that I could. But then it was later, it came back, no, that would be considered special legislation. So the council asked them not to put something that would be special legislation, but something that would allow me to grow, but they wouldn't do it. All they had to do is say all existing taxi companies can increase their fleet one at a time. That would not be considered special legislation, but they wouldn't do it. But anyway, they have recommended going down from 25 to 10. That's a big change, and I definitely would be happy with that, but I think you need to go maybe a little bit further. I think five is probably your best number, and I'll tell you why. We've got a guy on the road right now, Stephen Rader. People know him as Radar. He provides a great service for Lexington, and we need it. He has these vans. I think he has maybe, if he started with one, maybe he has two or three on the road now. Mainly works on the weekend. Like I said, he has a great service, but he's not under the control of the taxicab ordinance. He needs to be brought back under the control of the taxicab ordinance. And I don't know if he can add seven more vans, but I'd say he would have no problem adding two more. And that's a needed service. It is a needed service. He came before the council to ask you guys for permission for a support letter. You all didn't give it to him. You didn't vote and give it to him. But on the Mayor Newberry, on the day he lost the election, I think the next day, he sent him a letter. He sent a letter to the state to give him this support from the city, which I think is completely out of line. Stephen Rader, well, anyway, I'll leave it at that. But a lot of these changes, when I'm just looking over this ordinance, it looks like a power grab, a government power grab. The public safety is asking you for all this power. I am against that. I mean, they're increasing penalties for things that are like even asking jail time for violations. But I don't even think you can do that. These are violations, and they're asking for up to, I don't know, 30 days in jail I saw in one case. But like I said, I just briefly read through it. You are right about insurance. Insurance is a good deal. Well, I think he misquoted the cost. I think it's like $324 a month. Still very expensive, $3,000 a year per cab. I don't think Yellow Cab pays that. I think Yellow Cab is self-insured. I'd like to see Yellow Cab pay $324 a cab for every cab they have. And I think they probably own a little over 100 cabs. Yellow Cab probably does. But like you said, there's not enough cabs on the road on busy weekend nights. For example, this last game, UofL game, UK-UofL. We probably had 5,000 people out on the street for 100 cabs. So it was ridiculous. But normally we have enough caps. Just on the weekends. We have your time is up. Ms. Carmen Davis. Thank you. Ms. Davis had a prepared statement that was passed around to all the council members right prior to the meeting. Yes, thank you, Chairwoman Lawless. I did pass out a packet. I believe only 10 got passed to the council. So I'm asking if there are people on the council who have not. We'll make sure everybody gets me. Okay, thank you. My name is Carmen Davis. I reside at 3679 Red River Drive and I came before the council during the last committee meeting on July 12th where Mr. Curtis gave his presentation requesting to lower the number from 25 to 10 taxis. In the packet there is some additional information, but I will try to keep it down to my three minutes. First off, I would like to say you're paying too much for your taxi service. everyone in Lexington is paying too much money for their taxi service. If you will refer to page two in your packet, you will see that I did a preliminary study regarding the price and services. I'm sorry, maybe it's page three. It says taxi rates of other cities as compared to Lexington. I sent this to the council on Labor Day in an email, but I have again attached it here for your review. you will see that on that day I called other cities that are locally in our region, for example, Louisville, Cincinnati, Nashville, Atlanta, and I just randomly called and asked them, what do you charge for your pickup fee? What do you charge for your per mile fee? And you will see Lexington charges the highest rate of any of those cities. Why is that? Clearly, it's competition. In all those other cities, there's at least five taxi services for a consumer to choose from. In Lexington, as Mr. McGinnis said or Mr. Rick Curtis said, really there's only two. And to me, that's a shame because with competition brings choice. With competition brings innovation, brings quality, and brings better service and pricing. Think about it. If you let McDonald's come and say, well, I don't want Burger King to set up shop in Lexington, what would happen? We wouldn't have the choice of restaurants that we have today, right? So I also did some research online regarding taxi regulation, one of which was the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy. They did a research and study based on their taxi services in Ohio. Their study basically summed up in this one page is local regulatory barriers impose more obstacles to startup companies, establishing unnecessary financial burdens and restrictions to new businesses, which creates monopolies. Right? Twenty-five vehicles. That's a huge number of vehicles. If you look at the other page that I attached, this shows you basically after four months of research what it would cost to start a business, a startup. If you're looking at a quality vehicle of at least $10,000, you see just 10 vehicles, an investment of almost $300,000. So please, I ask you to repeat the unanimous vote that you had at the last committee meeting and give a startup, a small business person, a chance and opportunity. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Davis. Ms. Henson? Council Member Henson? Thank you, Chair. Rick, I had a couple more questions. I guess regarding the need for more taxis in Lexington, you said there's approximately 200? Well, it's 250 that are actually registered that are permitted. I can tell you exactly the number, how many are permitted, and how many are out there at any given time, I have no idea. Right. But aren't the drivers self-employed? Do they set their own hours? A lot of them, yes, are self-employed. So they choose when they're going to work. Pretty much. Because the complaint that I received through my office was the late night hours where someone got off work at 3 o'clock in the morning, there's no Lex Trance service available, and relied upon a taxi, and she was having to wait for long, long periods of time. And so that's just something that I wanted to clarify about, even though we might have that many taxis already permitted, that does not mean, you know, we may only have a handful at certain hours of the day. And also individuals that are dependent upon wheelchairs have no option once wheels stops running. But I do know Yellow Taxi is getting ready to put some on the road. And I applaud them for that. But even if you had a fold-up chair, you could get it into a regular taxi, but having the lift fans are certainly helpful. But that would be something I would be interested in looking at as far as times of service and how many taxis may be on the road from 8 to 5 and so forth. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Henson. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair, for recognizing me again. I'll try to be brief, as I'm not a part of the committee, but do have concerns about this issue. Mr. Curtis, you and I spoke after the last meeting when this came through, work session was tabled. Yes. And you talked today about giving the current companies an opportunity to give you more insight into this current draft ordinance. Yes, sir. How long have they had to provide that information to you? I did not set a time certain. But when was it that you reached out to them? I actually sent out a letter to them on Monday of last week. Monday of last week. Okay, I guess to me that seems plenty of time. If people are going to hire lobbyists and come in and talk to the council members to try to get this thing stopped, it seems like it's important enough to them that when you reached out to them and asked for information that they could have provided it to you by now. So to me, all these questions about market need and demand and all those things, to me the market determines that. If I want to open up a business, I ought to be able to open up a business without too much stringent regulation trying to keep me out of business and let the market decide whether or not it's viable to have that many cabs or grocery stores or wherever it is open. I have an opportunity to be better than those who are in existence now and maybe win market share from them, and then maybe they go out of business or whatever happens, or maybe we all stay in business. But I don't think it's the role of government to try to determine what the need is for a business to open up and then base law on that. We ought to let the free market decide how many cab companies we need in town and who people want to do business with. Also, when we talked, you talked about insurance, which obviously is a very big thing. I guess we don't have in this ordinance, and this ordinance in here today is the same one that was passed out of this committee unanimously, right? Yes, sir. If you were going to make a change, I would recommend looking at whether or not other cities require a certain level of insurance, and if so, how they do that piece. I will. And then I think you and I talked about the inspection of the cabs. Yes. And that you'd like to maybe see more frequent inspection? Yes, I would. Could you speak about that a little bit, what you told me about? And I hate to add more and more and more control to what you coined as free enterprise. But this is free enterprise that puts the safety of the public in the back seat. And because we are a public safety entity, I feel that it's our responsibility to ensure that the public is safe. And the only way that we have to do that is through the inspection process, is to inspect the cabs to make sure that they're mechanically sound, to make sure that the people that are in them are sound themselves, that their backgrounds would not allow them to not be cab drivers and intermingle with the public. So we have to have a great deal of control over a business like this. When you talk about inspections, I know there are cities that do up to four inspections a year. and I was mistaken when I talked to you I told you Louisville had four, they have two they want to go to four and what they do is they do two inspections a year on a round robin basis where they actually go to the company and now they're inspecting cleanliness and permits and the vehicle itself they're not doing mechanical inspections but they require mandated mechanical inspections be turned in to their IPL section of the city government So with that in mind, I mean, I would love to see us go to more inspections. Within this ordinance, we've only—within the original ordinance, we only have one inspection per year, and that's all we have is one inspection mechanically per year for a vehicle that may get 80 to 100, I don't know how many thousands of miles on it, which I think is not enough inspections mechanically to turn people loose to pick up the citizens of this community or the visitors of this community when they've only been inspected mechanically once. Now, I know that the companies themselves have onboard certified mechanics that they do their own inspections on a weekly basis. And not that I distrust them, but it still is incumbent upon public safety to ensure that those vehicles are safe and on the road. So, yes, I would welcome more inspections. Okay. Can I ask real quick, was that brought up in the committee whenever this was passed out the first time, the need for more inspections? Yes. Okay. I guess I'll leave it there. I would say that the most important thing here, just like Mr. McGinnis said, is that we lower that number from 25 to 10 to allow competition. And it seems to me that if I had 10 cabs, it would be more incumbent upon me to have safe, clean cabs because if my cab goes down, I've got a harder time staying in business than if I had 100 cabs and I had a cab or two down. So I hope that this committee will pass this back out and bring it back to the full council for approval. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Crosby? Yes, Council Member Lawless, can you tell me, was this with the task force or was there a committee of council members who worked on this or was it strictly just a committee with? We've been, I know I brought it up a year and a half ago. I understand. And so I really, there have been so many. I'm just curious as to who all worked with you on this. Was it just law, you and law? Me and law mostly, plus the owners of the companies, plus the detectives that actually do the inspections. This public safety commissioner, the other public safety commissioner, input from different council members. As far as a formal task force, no. That was set aside basically just to look at this, no. Okay, thank you. I'd like to make a comment. I did do a lot of work on this with you, Mr. Kirst. And the two things that Council Member calls me, I do agree that just like our restaurants, there needs to be inspections. and the thing that was very alarming to me some months ago when this was up is Mr. Curtis, while it is in our ordinance that they have inspections once a year, Mr. Curtis said that they did not do those, they didn't have the staff to do those. It was at that time that I suggested that many years ago when personal vehicles had to have safety inspections, you went to a certified mechanic. So two things. One, I agree that safety is number one, and I don't think that's happening. I think clean cabs are really nice, but mostly I want my cab that I'm riding in to stop when they put on the brakes. So this, I suggested putting in there that an independent certified mechanic that is not part of the cab company provide those inspections, and the cab companies pay for those mechanical inspections at least once, and then it was decided twice a year. And secondly, this to me is not about whether or not how many cabs we have or don't have. Just like Council Member Myers suggested that we do have, we live in a free enterprise society, and we have a lot of restaurants. Those are safety issues, but it's about the quality of their food and inspections, not how many tables or people they serve or if there's a demand. So I guess this is going to have to, I'm very sorry that this is going to, looks like it's not, is there a motion on the floor? Does anybody want to make a motion? I'm actually up to speak. Oh, I'm sorry. I had not finished. I apologize profusely, Councilman. But that's okay because you did mention a few things. First, I wasn't trying to say that this is about competition or free market or anything. I'm just simply trying to find out how some of these things were initiated. Where did they come from? Where did the input come from? If you haven't gotten information from the people that you said you've requested information from, why not? Has there been follow-up? I mean, these are some pretty major changes to an ordinance, and it's been going on for a year and a half. And I guess I'm just curious because we get this, but we don't have anything else to support the different changes that we're making except for the presentation. There's no other supporting documents. There's no other studies from other cities. There's nothing besides what we're getting from the nice lady who provides us with lots of information that she goes out and researches. I guess that's just my point. I haven't made my mind up about this. I do believe that it's a public safety issue, and clearly we are all for people being able to come to Lexington and do business. One thing that does concern me is that you say that you're going to move the numbers down so it can be more competitive, but with the restrictions, then can they really compete because of the requirements that we put into the ordinance? I mean, those are just issues that I think need to be addressed a little bit more in depth. It has nothing to do with competition. It has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with safety, but it's not that I'm trying to say that we shouldn't have competition. What I'm trying to say is I'm trying to figure out why all this was initiated. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Crosby. I'm sorry. That's okay. Perhaps we'll form a work group. I'd like to move this forward as quickly as possible, unless there's somebody that has a motion to pass this particular... Is there a motion on the floor? And perhaps we can come back with something that we could take straight to council or bring back to this committee so it can move. it's just been very frustrating, I think, for a lot of people in the community as well as myself that it just keeps going on and on and on. And I was under the impression when I talked with Mr. Curtis that there were going to be changes, that we weren't getting the same. So thank you, and I guess we'll move on to the next. Does anybody have any more comments? Well, I would just say that it probably needs to move on. if there's no motion, and clearly there are some issues within the motion. And I think we'd rather move something forward to the full council that we have fully vetted versus just moving something on because we're frustrated that it's taking so long. Well, and possibly we can have an extra public safety committee meeting. But, okay, thank you very much. and if there are no other comments, we will move on to item number three, and I believe Mr. Sabatini and possibly Mr. Mason. Chair. Chair Witt is here to make comment, I believe. Madam Chair. Madam Chair. Madam Chair. Yes. This is the corrections. That's correct. Yes. My question is whether we can really adequately address this in a half an hour. We've had a fairly full agenda today, and I appreciate everyone being here, but I think this is probably something we're going to dig a little deeper on. And I look forward to your presentation. I'm not trying to stop your presentation at all, but maybe we could certainly agree to have this back again at the next meeting, maybe first on the agenda so we can give the kind of attention and discussion that I think it's probably going to need. Okay. If that's the case, we're definitely going to have to have an extra special public safety committee meeting. So do we want to schedule that? What's the pleasure of the rest of the committee members? Council Member Henson? Thank you, Chair. I just know that we have several items that are urgent in this committee. The chronic nuisance ordinance, the noise ordinance. Rick Curtis asked that the spay and neuter funding be addressed and then corrections. Okay. So we would probably need a public safety special committee meeting. Would you all like to try to schedule that right now? And what do you want to do about this presentation? Do you want to start it? Council Member? I would prefer that if we're not going to have time to do the whole thing, because I think it's kind of hard to start something for 30 minutes, then we'd have to go back in the next month and rediscuss what we've talked about today for 30 minutes. So if we're not going to do it, I'd just prefer we wait and do a special meeting. Okay. Can I have a show of hands? How many would like to schedule a special meeting and how many would like to continue with the presentation? Maybe Mr. Seftain could tell us how long he needs to at least go through it. I can give you just a brief overview of what the issues are. These are your choices. And then you can talk about it, discuss it, come back. Maybe there will be some requirement for some further budget definition in these things. I'd love to hear it so we can get rolling. I can do it very quickly for you. Okay, if you would go through your presentation, and then we'll make a date for a special public safety committee meeting, because we do have several urgent matters that are piling up. Does that suit everybody? Thank you. This discussion kind of predated me in public safety before I was even involved in taking over as the interim director. But there were a couple issues, I think, that were mentioned during your earlier public safety committee meetings on role of the sheriff, role of the jail, and so forth. But the only thing I'd like to give you is some information where there has been some agreement on collaboration, possible collaborations between the sheriff's office and the jail. That's between this government and your elected sheriff as to what you actually do. But it can... Can you get a stool for me? Thank you, Glenn. And all I want to do is kind of give you some of the facts, what we're trying to accomplish, How we accomplish those are really for the government to decide. We can do it either way. One way allows us to kind of swap staffs to the point where we will get more people back in the corrections fold much quicker and at maybe a little less cost. And the other way we can do business the way we're doing it now, and I don't think you'll have any interruption either way, regardless of the way we do it. So I think it becomes just a decision of government. We'll present you with some of the options, and we'll be real quick. Two things we're talking about initially that I think you all mentioned earlier was core transport and holding and the CAP program, which is Community Alternatives Program, and their probationary functions. They do both testing and probationary functions. and whether or not if you narrow the scope of the Division of Community Corrections to the point where you're only doing things that are inside the jail as opposed to those that are outside the jail, it might be beneficial to consider those options to go to the Sheriff's Department. The first one is the court transport and holding. And there was one time the Sheriff actually did some of these functions. Harold Buccanany and I think Sheriff, who's Sheriff was it? Remember back? Ed Hahn that made a decision to get the, I guess, legislature to change it. But at this point we're talking about maybe going back to the point where the sheriff will do the court transport and holding issues. And we're talking about 20 funded officers that are already funded. if we take those 20 folks and bring them back in the jail, we can increase the contingency in the jail by 20 immediately so we can cut down on overtime and the drain we're having on the officers and the strain on the officers on overtime, mandatory overtimes where it's creating problems for morale, it's creating problems for retention and things of that nature. and in doing so, there's a special piece of legislation, I think, that was enacted a couple years ago that allows the sheriff to create court security officers that were specific to this type of function. Jefferson County has those officers, and AOC reimburses the sheriff's department $8 per hour per individual if they engage in that type of process. So we're really talking about a swap, and I guess I'm going to have to put the black and white the next time because I can't even read them here. The advantages of going to the sheriff's side is that they have then non-hazardous employees. They are sworn, but they have limited sworn status to the court holding and transport function. But they are sworn. And they get reimbursed $8 per hour per employee. And my guesstimate on savings, and that's something they would have to go through budgeting, is about 20% savings if you had 20 new people hired for that specific function. And then we pull the 20 officers that are not doing that now back into the jails so that we can actually have a reduction in the number of overtime hours and the stress on the officers that are being required to perform 16 hours a day mandatory overtime. The second part of that is seven more officers for the CAP program, which would be a swap. There wouldn't be as much in the form of cost savings because they would also be sworn probably hazardous positions in the CAP program, but what would occur there is that those individuals that were in the CAP program that would go out in the community for home visits would be in sheriff's vehicles that are in much better condition than our jail vehicles. You would have the situation where they would have the many hundreds of hours from EKU that the sheriff is required for training as opposed to the 40 for the jail. they would be better equipped and we believe that that function as far as requiring individuals to go out into the community for probationary purposes that might end up in an altercation, an event an arrest and so forth that it's better that you have sworn law enforcement individuals that are trained in that capacity to take those kind of risks we've done it up until this point we've not had any problems but I think from a standpoint of maybe preventing any of those problems in the future, it would be better to have the more highly trained individuals that have better equipment performing those duties. It's a swap. Seven people would come back to the jail. They would take the seven positions that we already have funded, give them to the sheriff's department, and the sheriff's department would get the funding for those individuals, and then the sheriff's department would run the cap program. In cases where we have employees at the jail that are close to retirement, if they wanted to retire and then reapply to the sheriff's department for either one of those positions, they could. But we would hope that those individuals would stay with us so that we can retain the strength that we have and the seniority that we have in those employees to come back into the jail and immediately fill those positions that are needed to be filled in the jail setting. A little bit on the impact from Division of Community Corrections. We would return 27 vacancies to the jail function. We might be able to recruit 80 additional federal inmates at $70 a day times $365, which would give us a gross of about $2 million and a 60% net of about $1.2 million, dollars, increasing home incarceration by about 80 people with the program, with the CAP program that would operate out of the Sheriff's Department. We basically have a swap in the numbers to the point where we wouldn't have an overall increase in the number of inmates, because if we released 80 to the home incarceration, bring 80 back in that are paying customers to pay quite a bit, it would not only, it It would reduce the number back to the number we have now, but would give us about $1.2 million in additional revenues. So that's the benefit for the jail. From the sheriff's standpoint, transferring those individuals' vacancies to the sheriff's budget, we would have to fully calculate the exact dollars amount, because I'm sure that the sheriff would not want to be compensated at a lesser amount than she would be due if she would accept this responsibility. and it is a big responsibility and she's willing to do it. So I think it's fair to put all this on the table from the standpoint of it's your government, you decide, we bring you options, and the government can decide the best way they want to do it. We can do it either way. We feel that we've done it well in the past from a jail standpoint, but I think in narrowing the scope of the jail perspective and the division of community corrections, we need to get back to doing those things that we do best that are required. And, you know, we've accepted a lot of things over the last 20 years. We took juvenile detention because nobody wanted it. We took adult probation because nobody wanted it. We created the CAP program because we were so overcrowded that we needed to reduce the population. And then the historical thing on the jail transport. So maybe it's time that we narrow our scope so that we can make sure that we have the funding we need to do what this community expects out of the Division of Community Corrections and take those things that are primary law enforcement functions and put them back with the law enforcement community. It's still all part of our community. And I think that's just a decision for you all to make. I'm done. Was I quick? There are a couple of people that I think Council Member Stenet and Council Member Martin, but if it would suit the committee, if Sheriff Witt could speak to this issue. And, yes, the stars and arrows and blocks were really pretty, but I didn't know if it was me, my eyes, but all I could see was stars and blocks and arrows. Yeah, thank you. You know, Ray and I had agreed that Ray would be the speaker today, and it would be from one voice, and I was comfortable with that. So Ray designed the presentation. I, of course, saw it several days ago, a week or so ago. As I've said every time I've been before you all, we are eager to participate, to make improvements to our community, to enhance community service and public safety. And if this is an avenue that this body feels will accomplish that, we are eager to participate. So it sounds like there's some number crunching that needs to be done. If she doesn't want to accept it, she won't get the funding that she needs in order to do it. But it is a swap, and I think there are some cost savings if it is done. Okay. And I think there's also some safety issues with the CAP program that I have great reservations have been raised about that. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. I guess first my questions are for our presenters, and thank you all both for being here. I appreciate that. It's more for the committee because this is a little bit different than what was put into committee. I guess I would look to Council Member Myers. I know he's not in the room, but Council Member Kaye. Is this the direction when you made the motion to put this for best practices on running our jail? I'm not sure what direction we're trying to go to today and how we're beginning examining that because this is very specific to the point presentation about a couple pieces of it. But I thought we were going to look at, from a macro level, the best practices of running our jail. And I don't think this is the one we put into committee. So can you want to respond? Or maybe the chair can explain how we got this presentation instead of what I think the council asked for in committee. Either one? I'll be glad to answer. And I said this at the last committee meeting. When you talk about best practices of corrections, we're talking about something incredibly enormous to put your arms around. We could sit here eight hours a day for several weeks. So it made sense to look at those issues that had bubbled to the top as priority both for financial and safety reasons. One, the CAP program, which we found out a lot about during the transition meetings. And so that was a big public safety issue. And so it seemed to me the committee agreed that starting to kind of chunk it down into pieces that were manageable to examine at a time would be the most thorough and best use of our time. And, Council Member, I do understand the best practices of the jail. But, you know, we're talking about adult probation, transportation, CAP, inmates. Well, it seems like we've started off in weeds versus looking from a macro level what we're trying to accomplish in this committee and our task at hand. And it looks like we jumped to two specific items, which could maybe save us money. But I don't think that's what Council put into this committee when we voted to do so. I think it's more of holistic how are we going to run our jail. what's happening in other cities, what the funding issues are, what the liabilities are, and looking at it from those standpoints versus having two specific changes that the current administration wants to make at the jail versus how we want the jail to look like in the long run. So I think that's different, and maybe I'm wrong, but I saw a lot of people agreeing with what I was saying around the horseshoe here. But I'll let you speak to that. I want to go ahead and address them. I'll ask a couple of minutes since we did bring up a couple of these items. First of all, Sheriff, thank you for taking over funerals. We appreciate that. Thank you, Counsel. It's a great service for our community, and a lot of people are very fond of it. I hope your staff and officers are as well. They're very honored to do it. Good. Thank you very much. Mr. Severs, hey, do we bring in money from the CAP program? Yeah, we don't lose money. We lose money from the standpoint we're accepting the staffing is basically ours, but they pretty much are a break-even on those dollars that are required to run it. So how much money has the CAP program brought in this year then? I can't answer that for you right at this point. I don't know. I can get that information for you, but I don't have it at hand. We were asked to specifically address a couple things. By who? By Paul. Okay. And what we did is responded to those issues. If you wanted something broader in scope, we'd have been more than happy to do that. But at this point, we were kind of looking at those things that were kind of the low-hanging fruit issues that maybe we could address that impacted your cost and our ability to get 27 more people back at the jail as quickly as possible to try to remedy some of the problems that we're facing without spending additional dollars. That's what we did. And I appreciate that. I think that's one piece. I don't think it's necessarily this item that we put in committee. I do think there's some low-hanging fruit. and I'm glad that you are bringing it to us, but I do know the CAP program has made money. I know Council Member Ellinger, myself, and Council Member Henson were out there in February, and we know it made several hundred thousand dollars. So I think we need to know those numbers before we can sit up here and say there's savings associated with transferring this to the sheriff's function. It wouldn't change the function at all. Well, but there is a revenue stream that we're realizing from the program. It would continue with that revenue. It wouldn't hurt that revenue stream at all. Who would receive that revenue stream going forward? The city? It would go back to the government. Okay. So I just want to be clear on those things when we're talking about that. Right. And then in terms of the federal inmate issue, do we have a waiting list or has the federal government sent us a letter or anything indicating that, hey, if you open up another pot out there, we'll fill that for you and we'll make you money? Or is this something Lexington's doing? Informally, yes. That has been presented to us. In fact, it was presented to us yesterday. From the federal government? From the federal marshal's office that they would like to see more inmates here in Fayette County because of the adjacency to the federal court. And how does that? We couldn't accept those if we didn't have the staffing for the ones that we can staff right now, let alone adding additional beds. So it was kind of trying to put those two together as it relates to dealing with their shortages as well as maybe some potential revenue increases for the government. so there was a kind of a zero balance out of cost. So how does the changes to these three programs affect electronic monitoring, which to me would free up beds at the same time for the federal inmates? Absolutely. In fact, they would go hand in hand. It wouldn't impact that at all. We should probably have three times as number of people on electronic monitoring than we have right now. But we can't go out. First of all, it's dependent upon the judges and judges making those decisions. but from a standpoint of being able to handle it, we can't handle what we have right now. We are working people to death 16-hour mandatory days, and that's why we can't. We tried to recruit 42 employees, and we got 26, and three of those have quit before they even went on. So, I mean, we can't get people. So if we can bring people back over, that would satisfy our immediate needs. But as far as the program itself, I don't think it would have an impact. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Stenet. Council Member Kaye, would you like to address the question that Council Member Stenet posed to both of us? Actually, what I'd like to do is ask Council Member Myers to address the question. My name is associated with this primarily because I offered an amendment to his motion, so I don't feel like the prime. At best, I'm the dog. At the tail, I'm this dog. So, Council Member Myers, do you know what the question is? I think I heard it, but if you want to restate it, or if Councilman Sinema wants to restate it, I'd be fine. Well, I'm just curious, and I appreciate the low-hanging fruit effort from what we're currently doing today out there, but from what I understood, and the Council made the motion to put this item into committee, is to look at best practices of running the jail from a long-term standpoint as to who runs it, liability, insurances, revenue, all those kind of things, and start from what other cities are doing. I'm not sure if we got down the weeds really quickly on these two ideas, which could be good potential savings, but this is a little different from what I envision us taking approach to answering the question that was put in the committee. Absolutely. Chair, right. Right. And also the links referred the CAP program and stuff. Yes, please. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to get official recognition from the Chair. You're absolutely right, Councilman Stennett. When I put this in the issue in the committee, you remember I tried to actually put it in budget and finance because it was really some of the monetary things that I thought that we could provide in terms of efficiencies and revenue, new revenue to the government is what we're really looking at. It got put into public safety, and for obvious reasons, too. It was kind of 50-50, but you're right. I didn't have any input into what we're looking at here today. What I actually put in the committee was exactly what you stated, and that is who should run the jail and all those things surrounding that, and specifically the sheriff. And I think how Council Member Kay got in was he wanted to broaden that a little bit and not just focus on the sheriff running the jail, but what other best practices are out there. And that's how best practices, I think, came into the picture. But I agree with Council Member Stenner again, too, that I appreciate the low-hanging fruit that's here and what opportunity might be here. but my question would be for the chair is when are we going to look at, because my real focus is the sheriff running the jail, and not just Sheriff Witt, but the sheriff running the jail. So my question would be when is the committee going to address that issue of all those opportunities that I talked about for cost savings, for new revenue, et cetera, et cetera, if the sheriff ran the jail? I'm all for it. I think that we're going to need to have more than just presentations at a committee meeting. I've had lots of meetings with both the sheriff and with Mr. Sabatini, Mr. Mason, et cetera. But also, if you'll look at agenda items, the CAP program and federal inmates were put in there as separate items by the length. So that's where that came from. Councilmember Stennett. So what would you propose, Councilmember Myers? Well, and again, I thank you for recognizing me because I'm not even on this committee. So whatever your committee wants to do, and if those items were referred to the committee under a different referral, then that's fine to look at this. But what I really want to know is when are we going to look at specifically who should operate the jail? My focus obviously is on the sheriff and the jail, but I understand that others want it to be a little more broad than that. So do you know when that might come to the agenda and how I can be a part of the issue that it should be more than just? I think that's going to have to either be a special task force or committee. It is far larger than we can do in a two-hour meeting once a month with presentations, in my opinion. Okay. I would like, and if the committee wants to do a task force, that's the committee's purview. But so far we voted to put it in this committee. So what I would like is, rather than a presentation, I would like to start looking at, you know, what it takes to do that, the ordinance surrounding that, what it would actually look like if the sheriff ran the jail, if others have other entities they want to look at, that's fine. But I would like to start looking at those things. And rather than have a presentation, really have a discussion in this committee about the ordinances, for example, and the state statute, those kind of things. And then what I saw were the advantages and the opportunities with the sheriff running the jail. And then if from that it ends up we want to do a task force or something, that's okay. But I think we can at least start with what I think the advantages are to that and then go from there. So I don't know what you have for your agenda in the next meeting. I mean, we're pretty packed on public safety, and I don't think that that whole best practices and who can run the jail and whatever can be done in a month, do either of you all have come in? So moving forward, if other people could weigh in on this, Thank you, Chair. And Mr. Sabatini, I appreciate it. And, Sheriff, thanks for being here today. My intention wasn't to cut you short. My intention was to give you all the time you needed. And so I look forward to us continuing this at some additional meetings because I agree with my colleagues that I think we're looking for a sort of a larger picture view of what our best practice is. You know, when I think of best practices, I usually like to hear what other folks are doing. And instead of sort of looking just sort of in our own little bubble, but to look to other institutions in other states, other great cities, to see how have they solved their problems. You know, we've had, at least the council's become aware in the last year or two, serious issues about detainee safety, serious issues about loss of employees, you know, chronic loss of employees, and many things that have led the council and administrations to think that there's some serious stuff going on at the corrections facility. So what we want to do is figure out how can we sort of bring into play the best practices around the country, and whether that means bringing a consultant in or going through this in 10 meetings or whatever. But we want, at the end of the day, I think we all want to know that these serious problems are fixed. And I know you do, too. So I apologize for seeming like I'm lecturing you. But that's, I think, what we're looking to do is we want to know that the best ideas around the country are being put into place here in Lexington. And so that's, I think, the process that I think we're looking to see. So I appreciate your involvement in it, Sheriff. I appreciate your involvement in it. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Kaye, we have about 10 minutes. Thank you, Chair. I've got two different things I want to do very quickly if I can. First, in terms of the presentation, I did have a question just for clarification. It's not clear to me whether the savings on the calculation estimates, Does that depend on the swap of personnel, and if so, why? Well, you're going from hazardous sworn employees to non-hazardous sworn, partially sworn, or limited sworn status for a court security officer, which would cost a lot less than replacing those individuals at the jail. Like we have the 20 positions at the jail that would require hazardous duty employees in order to fill the numbers of the vacancies we have right now. If we swap those positions with the sheriff and she performs those duties, she can do it with staff that are less expensive, narrow in scope from the standpoint of sworn status, and at entry-level positions. So that would render the, I believe, to be about a 20% savings if she would take that over. Does that make sense? It does. That helps me. I was having a hard time putting the pieces together, but that's helpful. And I appreciate your having brought this to the Council, as other people have said, and I have no objection to short-term actions if they're going to benefit the functioning of the jail and our budget. But the larger question, it seems to me, has to do with what the initial intention was of placing this in council, in this committee. And I would agree. I think it was to look at what's now come to be termed best practices. But I think that's also confusing. Initially, I think the question was, what's the best structure of governance for the jail? and I would like to separate that out from the larger question of all the other things that we need to be looking at in terms of the way the jail functions. So my recommendation to the committee would be to separate those two, look at structure, and in terms of structure, if it's acceptable, I suggest that staff look at the two studies that were done and come back to this committee with some options. and a rationale for each of those kind of pluses and minuses as a starting place, rather than putting it into a task force that has to begin its work all over again. So that's what I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Kaye. And again, these two items were placed into committee as separate items by the link. Community corrections explore receiving federal state inmates and electronic monitoring, utilizing utilization with work with judicial, which would be the sheriff's office. I guess I'm seeing two things within one of those things. And I think the history of how it got here is important. The original motion was about, I think, about the structure of governance. I absolutely agree. Okay. And then, because of my amendment, we got language that talked about best practices, and that seemed to expand the scope of it to everything that's going on at the jail. And so I would like to separate those two things if possible. Well, they are separated out on items referred to the committee, and I agree with you if that's so. Okay. Then going forward, there would be a focus on structure and a longer-term look at generally the way in which the jail is functioning. Okay, so having, yes, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. If you look at the last page of our packet where it says committee referrals, number six on here, it is separated out. It says community corrections, best system of management. That's the item that I put in the committee. So the item that we have before us today, these two, it's really not that issue. It's the other two items that the link referred that you're talking about today. So I think that's where the confusion comes from. The system of management we haven't started talking about yet. That is correct. Council Member Crosby. I was going to say it seems like there was just a typo on the agenda versus what is listed. I appreciate that the public safety link, that the chair has taken the recommendations and put them into committee because oftentimes we see that we make these recommendations in our link and they don't get taken up in the committee. So thank you, Madam Chair. I will say that I also was going to suggest that we do a special meeting. And similar to what Council Member Kaye said is that we have our staff do a pro-con analysis for us. And that just because we have a public safety committee meeting doesn't mean that we can't make it more of a work group committee meeting where there's interaction with us instead of forming a task force. but proceed like in the meeting that we are a task force. I think that would probably be the best way to handle this. Instead of getting formal presentations, let us actually just do the work. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Councilmember Beard. Just under the deadline. We always seem to be playing any kind of game from behind, And so I'm going to bring up a subject that probably has been forgotten by some people anyway. At the time the detention center was built, it was mentioned strongly that the infrastructure was there to expand when needed. That's correct. how far are we right now as far as how many beds we have and how many people we've got in them. And, you know, we increased the population of Lexington 40,000 in the last 10 years, and we have probably some illegals floating around, maybe three or four, and we need some place to put them if and when they do something wrong. There was a five-year plan that was put in place before I left. A five-year plan talked about within ten years to between five and ten years, the third ring of the jail, which is the least expensive ring, which is basically open dormitories as opposed to the second ring and the first ring, which were the expensive rings. That third ring would increase the population or the capacity of the jail from 1024 that we originally had. Now, there are a few more there because corrections changed the square footage to about 2200. And that was the five-year plan, which was never acted upon. The point is that the third circle is already graded out. The electric and plumbing are already stubbed out to that third circle, so that capacity is there. The other thing that we did, which I thought was quite wise at the time, is that we built in the core infrastructure, which means the kitchen can serve 5,000, the booking area can serve 3,000 to 4,000, property room and all those core services, the mistakes we made in the Clark facility. Excuse me, it's 3 o'clock and we have a committee of the whole meeting. And I apologize, may we can get maybe... That's pretty much what I needed. The only other thing I would be concerned about is how long would it take for that to happen? Just the third ring, just a guess. Well, it depends on whether or not there are resources there to fund it. It would probably be less than two years to get it accomplished. Okay. I apologize, but we do have the Committee of the Health. All in favor? Aye. Okay, and I'll get with people about a date. Thank you.