that are on the agenda today. Seeing none, we'll move on to the docket approval and rezoning requests. Are there any motions? Mayor. Council Member Duquesne. Yes. We're talking about the docket now? Yes. I think you see on the first reading on the zone change, I make a motion that we put it on without a public hearing. Second. I have a motion and second to put item 14 on without a public hearing. Any discussion? Then those in favor, please vote yes electronically, if we can. I'm not having much luck, so let's do it orally. Those in favor, please vote aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries unanimously. Any further motions? We'll entertain a motion to approve the docket. Move approval of the docket. I have a motion and second. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll proceed to vote. It looks like we may be back in business electronically now, so please vote aye electronically if you support approving the docket. All right. Motion carries. Takes us down to the approval of the October 23rd summary. Do we hear a motion? Second. I have a motion and second that the October 23rd summary be approved. Any discussion? Those in favor, please vote yes electronically. Those opposed, vote nay. That motion carries. We're now down to budget amendments. The floor is open for motion. Move for approval. Second. I have a motion and second. Any discussion on the budget amendments? Seeing none, we'll proceed to vote electronically, please. The budget amendments are approved. Now down to the items of new business. I move approval of the items of new business. Second. I have a motion and second that the new business items be approved. Any discussion? Council Member James. I had a question regarding item D. I think Ned Sheehy was going to come forward and respond. Sure. Item D is the PSA between, I guess it says, between Ogden County Government and Simon & Company. And I hope all council members have had an opportunity to read through this PSA. And please, if you have any questions, I believe this would be the appropriate time. Or concerns, this would be the appropriate time to address them. And I wanted Ned to be here so that Ned could address one of my concerns was, what is the relationship between Ogden County Council and this PSA? The relationship is kind of what I had done when I first came in. And I asked you all to join forces with me to get an agenda together. So I'm kind of like the point person. The mayor, of course, is the main point person. But I'm the designee for the mayor. And in as much, I'm the one who collects the information from you all to try to come together with a consensus of an agenda. Okay. Oh, are you finished? Yes. Okay. Did any of the council members have any questions about this PSA? Okay. I'm not sure. I think any previous council members may know better as to how this is supposed to work than I do. As a new council member, I just felt as if, within the scope of services, that the relationship between the person who is the advocate for the legislative, the federal legislative items, that it should be listed within the scope of services, the relationship between the council and maybe this is not the appropriate place to do that. But where do we have a relationship? Where do we have the agreement between you as the advocate and the legislative items that you would be lobbying for? It's in the structure that I had mentioned before, where I ask you all to tell me what items you all are interested in, and then I report back to you as to their progress. Is that something written somewhere that we have? It's not written. No, it's just that when I first came in, that's what I said that I was going to do. And that's why we had the meeting where we all sat down together, and then there were two follow-up e-mails asking for your all's input. Okay. And then we also had the meeting following the General Assembly where I gave the presentation as to the actions that we took during the session. Okay. All right, Mayor, I guess I would ask you, how do we get our information to you as to what we would like to see, Ned, what types of federal interests? How do we determine what the federal interests are that he's working with Simon and company? Well, I think there are a couple of different questions there. First of all, if you've got things that you want to push on the federal level, then just contact Ned, either in response to those e-mails that he sends out periodically, or alternatively, pick up the phone call him. Because Ned's pretty much the point person in terms of dealing with what's going on in Washington as far as LFHCG is concerned. There are other people that get involved periodically, but just pick up the phone call him if there's something during the time of year other than when he is soliciting your input. Now, second, I think if I understood you correctly, and if I didn't, clarify it for me, Council Member James, but the relationship is such that the folks in Washington need somebody to pick up the phone and call, and Ned's, that's his function, working both Washington and Frankfurt. So if you've got questions about how he develops a legislative agenda, I'll be glad to try to elaborate on that, or Ned can. Or if you've got another question, I'll be glad to try to answer that. So he does that as your designee, or as the urban county government designee? Well, I guess as the executive branch's designee, so mine. I mean, you all set policy, and then it's our obligation to go and implement it. So if you all tell us we need to do X in Washington, then we go do X in Washington. And I'll defer to someone else to ask a question after I ask this, but one of the concerns when I spoke with Ned about this was, you know, there are 15 council members. I can't talk to 15 different council members about their 15 different issues, that that's not something that, you know, individually it's better to have a collective voice in what the agendas are legislatively, federally it will be addressing. And I just wonder, how do we get to that collective body? Well, that's what Ned was talking about just a second ago. He sends out these e-mails requesting feedback on issues that you think need to be advanced in Washington. So the way to do that is to respond to those e-mails, number one. Or number two, if you see something in the paper that you think that's going on in Washington that we need to weigh in on, then, you know, pick up the phone and call Ned, and we'll talk about it. The difficulty is, you know, during the course of the year, there will be probably dozens of things that will be of interest to the city of Lexington going on in Washington. The people at Simon and Company need to be in a position where they can pick up the phone and know who to call in order to get our feedback, and that's primarily Ned's responsibility. Then, to the degree there's a question that needs council input, we come to you and talk to you about it. Okay. I have more questions, but I will yield to anyone else that has questions. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Okay. Council Member Mulally. Now, I don't have a question on Ned. I have a question on another, Jim. Okay. Then does anybody else have questions on this particular item? Council Member McCord. Just a little bit of perspective as to where we have come from. You know, as before, I think, Ned, just in previous administration, the council and the administration had no relationship, certainly not as good as we have it now, and the communication line was severely severed, shall we say, and so we never knew what agenda was being pushed, and is this something that, as Council Member James has said, is this the city's perspective or is it the mayor's perspective or the council's perspective and so forth. So I think that therein lies the questions, and I think that I appreciate the fact that we do have a point person now that is accessible, that is on top of things, and I think what you're hearing and what I would encourage is some sort of continued dialogue with the council, because it is difficult to get 15 people, and some care, some don't. Some have one particular issue. Some, like me, are watching a lot of different things and in communication with you. So I think that if you take anything away from today, what I would do is continue to kind of ratchet up the lines of communication, and if there are some things that you see that, hey, this is a particular interest or this is something coming, I would over-communicate with the council because it's been kind of a tenuous relationship up to now, and to have somebody there is very good, and I appreciate the mayor having that, and I understand that you have to be able to respond quickly, but I do think that in the past there's just been no real communication. I think some of us want to make sure that we've got that. So I think that's what you're hearing. That's what I'm trying to do. Yeah. I would take it. And I appreciate that. Continue to take it to another level. Thank you, Mayor. And I would add that we really haven't been very aggressively pursuing the Washington agenda, which is why we needed to have somebody in place there. So we haven't had an awful lot of activity in Washington over the course of the last ten months. I expect that's going to change going forward. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. I'm glad Council Member James brought this up because I also had a couple of questions. Actually, in the past we have worked as a council to develop a list of items for the mayor's point person to take as a lobbying effort, and in fact those of you who were on the councils before remember the meetings we had. We had a council member who was actually in charge of legislative agenda for the council, and we came together as a council as a whole to put our legislative agenda together and take it to the mayor. And so I think that has worked pretty well. Rather than having individual council members shooting you emails about what was important to them, you might get 15 different answers. And so I would hope that we would work as a council together, as we have, and develop some primary issues we could bring to you to take them to this person. That would be the most effective way. So you prefer the meeting together as opposed to the emails? Well, in the past, meetings aren't always possible, I think. Right. Especially if there's some issue that comes up quickly and needs quick action. But in general, I think it is possible for the council to have a meeting to talk about some of the big issues that you see coming forward and to get feedback from us. I think that is important. I guess my other question is in the scope of services item B, what do you anticipate as, I mean, one of the issues listed here is environmental protection agency, and I'm wondering what you're anticipating there that we aren't aware of. Is there something? Is this just an example? This is just an example. Just an example. Yes. I mean, there are definitely a lot more agencies that we're going to be on. Okay. Other than just those listed. Okay. All right. Very good. Thank you. Any further questions of Council Member Stephens? Mayor, I'm on the list as well. And I'm interested in any further questions with regard to this proposed contract. Mayor, I'm on the list. My name keeps being removed, but I'm on the list as well. Well, do you wish to speak with regard to this contract? Yes. I think you've already called on Captain Stephens. I'm sorry. You've already called on Stephens. That's okay. As you know, I'm going to be on the list as well. Okay. Do you want to talk about the contract? Yes. Okay. I would like to speak to Item Delta. All right. Good. In the past, Mr. James, we have had occasion to pass a resolution for an item that was pending in one house and the other of Congress and the Council with collaboration. Or without collaboration, the Mayor passed a resolution to express our collective thoughts about a certain issue. The Council Planning Committee also was set up to handle matters of legislation. So if it's not some kind of emergent problem, that's a good place to take it also. My question, that is, what about this company? I don't know. Are they dealing with municipal legislation? Yes, sir. Can you tell us a little bit about them? They are actually Louisville's lobbyist. They have actually an employee that works, used to work for this company. Then she now is an employee of Louisville, but she's still housed with this organization. They've been around since 1987. They deal solely in working with cities, nonprofit organizations, and they do collaborative work with other organizations that do such work like this, like the Council of Mayors and National League of Cities. And they're already representatives, too, before agencies as well as before the legislative body. Yes, they are. And they're also, when the time comes, when there's the need to pull the trigger for the Mayor or me to go up, they'll tell us when we need to come up. And looking at the income of some of the lobbyists that have been working in Washington in recent years, this seems like a bargain. This is a bargain.  Yeah. Especially for the concept paper that they proposed to us that they will do, this is a very good, very good deal. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now, I apologize. Council Member Meyers. That's okay. I was putting my name on the list and it kept disappearing and I kept putting it on there. I couldn't understand why it was disappearing. Thank you, Mayor. I guess I have a few questions. Sure. I think lobbying is largely about relationships. Yes. And I appreciate that you came to us at the beginning of the year and asked for what our priorities might be or what we want you to look out for at the federal level. And then you – is it my understanding, is it correct, that this company, you've kind of given them that information and when those issues come before Congress, they kind of flag them and then contact you and let you know if that issue is coming up. I guess what I would ask that you would do is to – and I've talked about this at a local level between us and Frankfort, that we had somebody in our office that did sort of a bill watch type of position. If you would like, I would be able to forward you my bill watch. Okay. I do create a bill watch. Okay, so you actually proactively look at what's happening in D.C. so that we don't have to continually be watching and monitoring what's going on in D.C. But as our lobbyists, you look at it and say, these are some issues that are coming up that are going to affect our city or our state. That's what this company would do for us. See, in Frankfort, it's easy enough for me to jump in my car and get there. Right, right. This would be our eyes and ears in D.C. They would tell us when the things that we ask them to look out for when they come forward, they would call me and let me know and I'd say, okay, it's time for us to go. Okay. Okay. Now, as we move that to another level, with legislation being something that's always moving and always evolving, you've got our priorities at the beginning of the year. But as far as that bill watch goes, how does this company know about other issues that are coming forward that may affect our state or our local government here? They are connected with other, as I said, they work with only, this company works only with governments and nonprofit organizations. This is their specialty. They actually are tapped into different networks that they, you know, they will be able to tell you when a certain grant is coming due, you know, when it's coming forward. And they will let me know that. And then I would send that out to the appropriate department. And if it's something that I know that one of you would be especially interested in, I'd make sure that you knew about it. And if you would like, I could make that available to the entire counsel. Okay. So do we have a mechanism in place that, as issues hit nationally, and then things come about in D.C. and Congress quickly, are we just relying on the information that we gave this group at the beginning of the year? Or what is our mechanism in place that we continue to update them on? I still continue to get stuff from different people throughout the year. Okay. It's not just the one time that we've met earlier in the year. Okay. And I guess I'd say one other thing is that this counsel, I think, under Pierce's administration, also had another question that was whether or not we would fare better to have a person on the ground in D.C. as opposed to sort of this almost reactive to wait for this company to call us and say, this is coming up, now you've got to mobilize and respond. Okay. Mayor, if you could speak to that. Financially, it's probably more effective to have it set up this way, but will our outcomes be as well? You know, if you want to trot around about a half million dollars, I can give you a half million dollar legislative agenda watch in Washington. But this particular group comes very highly recommended. They represent a number of municipalities around the country and have, for a number of years, that's about all they do is represent the interests of cities. So I think by virtue of their rather longstanding network of relationships in Washington, that they're probably more effective for us right now than if we were to try to find somebody up there. Now, if after we work with these folks for a while, we're not comfortable with the results we're getting, then I'd be the first to say, let's try something else. Because I think LFUCG has a lot of room to grow in Washington with our efforts to seek federal funding for any one of a number of different projects, and I want to aggressively pursue an agenda there. I think this is the most cost-effective way of doing it. If it doesn't work, then we'll try something else. Okay. If I could just add one more piece. The person that works, that represents Louisville, that used to work for this company, but are they actually stationed in D.C.? In his office. In D.C.? Yes. Do you know how much Louisville pays that person? No, but I could find out. That might be something that we want to do next year is look at actually having that relationship where we've got a full-time employee that's stationed there, so we don't have to do the half-million route, but we do have a person on the ground. Right. Okay. Thank you. Oh, if I could ask one more thing. We used to have a legislative committee, and I think Councilman McCord chairs that committee. Is it possible that we could kind of do you guys meet on a quarterly basis or anything? The way that was set up was Councilmember Farmer and I had shared the responsibilities of that, and, again, it goes back to what Councilmember Gordon had said was in the previous world that we lived in where there was no real relationship between the mayor's office and the council office, that was very much a necessary evil that we needed to have. So when Ned came along, one of the things that he did was he invited all of us to come and be at the table and started doing that, so we kind of rolled that function into this. Certainly we can do that if that be the case. What I found, though, just to be fair, is that when you say, hey, we're going to have a meeting about this, sometimes folks can't show up, don't show up, and then you have people saying, well, what about this? What about that? So what I would encourage in my earlier conversation is I think I'd be delighted to work with you on the council side as to how can we flow information a whole lot more effectively, and I think, Mayor, if we do that more and more, I think that that's really what we keep talking around here. How we do it is certainly left up to debate, but I think that at the end of the day what we need to do is continually flow a lot of information for those of us that do have an interest. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Anything further with regard to that item of business? Well, I appreciate the questions that have been asked. If I am not mistaken, I think this is the first time this sort of relationship has actually come before the council for your consideration, and I just think that's an appropriate precedent to establish going forward, and then if we feel like a change needs to be made later on, we'll make it. All right. Now I'll go back to the screen here. Council Member Maloney. Thank you, Mayor. I've got a question on E, Mr. Kelly. I guess is Commissioner Kelly here? I thought I saw it. Okay. Robert. My question goes to I understand that Blacktown is a new project that came on in the last couple of years when we got funding from the federal government, but was Blacktown involved in 1999 or when you all did the design phase for phase one to have the engineers come in and do a design? Wasn't that already done in 1999? Or why was it not involved in that phase one project then? Yes, Blacktown was in phase one, but not Cadentown. Cadentown? Cadentown was not, but Blacktown was in phase one. $84,000, is this for the Blacktown phase one or is this for the Cadentown? Actually, it's for the whole thing, for all the projects that we're working on now. Wilbernish Road, Cadentown, Blacktown, and some of the future projects that are coming up. So, Blacktown, was it already designed in phase one of the $710,000 back in 1999? Yes, it was. And it's going to cost $84,000 to just do Cadentown design? No, sir. The $84,000 covers all of the projects that will be coming up, including some of the ones that we're working on now. Wilbernish Road, Cadentown, Blacktown, Shales Road area, Lane Island, Old Paris Pike. So, those really have not been designed yet? No, some of them have not been designed, yes. So, this $84,000 will pay for those new designs? Yes. Yes, sir. Thank you. Council Member Blevins. Thank you, Mayor. I have the same item. If I read this correctly, the original contract amount was $128,000, is that correct? Yes, sir. If we were to cumulatively modify this contract to the tune of now, gosh, $600,000, something like that, over a period of 1999 until now, that's going to look funny to some of the citizens. Can you walk us through what are the checks and balances internally that you all go through to make sure that we aren't just increasing the scope of a low bid contract so that folks can be assured that we're re-bidding when we need to re-bid and so on? Can you walk us through the procedures so that citizens understand that? Let me first explain to you, when we first started planning to do these projects in 1999, at that time we were in the planning process. We wanted to do these projects, but we didn't have the funds to do them, to construct them. So we started by first planning which areas to be done and then pick certain ones and design them at that time. But then as the money came in from the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority, from KIA, we got the money, then we started constructing them. Then we started planning to go ahead and do some others that we knew needed sanitary sewer service. As we went, we added design, added to the scope of the design, but not beyond what the original planning was to be. So you've not added any new areas on this particular contract? I think, Bob, Cape and Town was added. That's an addition. So you might want to explain to the public why we didn't re-bid this. I think that would be educational for everyone. Why we took some – What was originally a planning contract in 1999 has now become multiple design work items under an original contract. Okay. So we've had – well, let me finish for a second. We've had numerous modifications to a single contract that started at 128,000 is now 794,000. It gives the appearance that we've picked a firm and we're just giving them more and more money. But I know that's not our intent, so I want you to explain to us why we're sticking with one contract and one firm over such a long period of time with such a massive change in scope. Well, I think the original plan was to hire a firm that would do the original planning and then do the design for these projects. Okay. That was the intent of our original agreement with them. Okay. But at that time, we didn't know how much funding would be available. So as we got the money, we started adding design – not design agreements, but changing, making amendments and changes to the original agreement to add design. In other words, as we get money to do, for example, Blacktown, okay, then we ask GRW to go ahead and start working on the design. But besides design, there are other issues, for example, public meetings and some other planning issues. So there were other issues besides design, but that's the way it went. So when we let the original contract, it included design as money became available. That is correct. And we would amend the contract as we go along. That is correct. Okay. That answers my question. Thank you. I've got another question on that. Council Member Norley. I mean, that concerns me. When they bid the project, was there a number that you all allowed to go up to? I mean, a million dollars or something? Because to me, the sign of contracts say, well, when the money comes in, we'll pay you when these projects come on board. Shouldn't, when they did the bid process, shouldn't they have been able to give you a step dollar that we think it won't go no higher than this? Well, first of all, this is a consulting engineering services firm. They don't bid. We pick them based on qualifications mainly. Okay. Now, at the time that we started planning to do these areas, to soar these areas, I don't think, like I said before, there was, the funding was not available locally to do these projects. I know that. I understand that. So we had to look for funds somewhere else. So we couldn't have at that time, we couldn't have at that time estimated the cost to do the entire county. So we had to start a step, had to do it a step at a time as money became available. Well, I mean, I understand what you mean when money comes available. I just have a problem the way the bid process goes out. How, like this thing can go up to $2 or $3 million. And these guys here, shouldn't there have been a number that you all would say, when it gets to a million dollars, we're going to have to bid this thing back out because we can't be giving one company all this money for the next 10, 15 years because they're doing the design phase. It's going to cost a million to $2 to $3 million. That probably may happen. I understand your concern, and we may be able to go back and put a termination term to this agreement with GRW and then advertise for other firms when we get more funds. Well, I'm not trying to make that a policy and procedure for you guys. I just think, to me, it goes back to what Mr. Blevins is saying. And the public is just, we're just giving an open check. Anytime something comes available, you design it, we'll pay for it. And if this thing gets to over $2 or $3 million, it just really concerns me that we should have a number we stop at and then we start bidding the process back. I mean, I don't know how you guys feel about that. But to me, we're just an open door. It's just write a check and go ahead and design something. This could go on for the next 10, 15, 20 years. I mean, could this go on this long with the EPA, whatever happens on that, that these guys could still be doing design phase for us for years to come without bidding this out? No, I think we know the areas that need to be stored, the ones that are on septic tanks now. We know these areas, okay? It's just a matter of making plans how the funding is going to become available. And so we know how much we're going to be doing. But we cannot go ahead and design everything at once. So we're designing it. I understand that. And I just have a problem is there should be a stealing limit on how much we bid on these things before we open it up. And I know I'm not an engineer and I know I may start a lot of pot here, but I think it kind of opens up a can of worms when you start, you might start to have an open check in there before they want to put in that 15 years. Can I respond to this? You haven't said anything I haven't asked, I assure you. This first contract, the original contract, was $19.99. The next year, 2000, was the big change. That was $500 and something thousand dollars. This current change is to finish off one little piece of work, and it's only $80 something thousand dollars. So, you know, the process we might disagree with. We should have been arguing about it seven years ago if we didn't like the process. It should have been bid out when y'all did the $500,000. That should have been bid out and y'all didn't do it. Well, it bid out then. You guys, whoever worked back then, did not do that. That's correct. Thank you. Councilman, Vice Mayor Gray. Perhaps I'm just speculating, but I'm going to come to the defense of the engineering here for a minute. I suspect, though I don't know, but from having some familiarity with contracts like this, I suspect that the engineering assignment for Phase I was concept schematics, which allowed then for, and that original contract more than likely provided for a Phase II, and at that time, at the original time of the offering and the letting of the contract, Phase II was contemplated. So I suspect that, I'm only speculating, but most of the time that these sorts of contracts are let, they're let this way. So it was anticipated at the time. I'd be surprised if it were not anticipated. So I think it's important that we don't give the misimpression that for nine years or eight years that we've been going on with an unlimited scope assignment. Right? That is correct. Right. Council Member Blevins. I'd just like to follow up, too. It certainly makes sense to stay with the same engineering firm that you began with that did the concept stage, and then it would make sense to stay with them to go into design. I also come from a contractual background in private practice, and what can happen, and I am definitely not saying this happened here. I want to make that clear. GRW is an upstanding engineering firm. What can happen, though, is someone can low bid the planning phase, and then they get a really lucrative contract long term. That's the danger, and you have to be a little careful. So my question was not about this particular one so much as it was, what's our procedural way of making sure that we're getting the best value for our money and protecting other contractors who might want to bid on it? And it sounds like you share that concern. Absolutely. Professional services contracts are slightly different than normal. There's not a bid process. You submit a proposal with a cost, and then you select the best one based on the money available, and that's pretty much, I agree with that process. The part I don't like is change orders, which really, really bother me, and I get the same feeling from this group as well. Any further questions on that particular item? Any further discussion of the new business items general? Mayor? Yes, sir. Item L in the new business needs to be corrected. The reimbursement agreement with Seabrothers LLC, we need to strike out from the third line where it says force main and pump stations. Seabrothers LLC will be constructing a 21-inch trunk line, which does not include a force main or a pump station. This was a mistake in the synopsis. Mayor, I'll move that we amend item L. Okay. The motion is to amend item L by deleting the words in the third line, force main and pump station. Any discussion of the proposed amendment? Those in favor of the amendment, please indicate by voting aye electronically. Voice vote. All right. We'll vote by voice. Those in favor, vote aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Unless there are other items to be discussed, I think we have a motion on the floor that is now amended to approve the items in new business. Any further discussion? Are we ready to have a vote electronically now, please? Thank you. The items of new business are approved. That brings us down to our presentations, and the first one is from the Budget and Finance Committee by Councilmember Stephens. If you'll return to page 50 in your packet, the minutes from the Budget and Finance Committee are there contained. The first audit business was a quarterly report from the Interim Audit Division by Mr. Bruce Salley, the director. He reported on two audits, one for the Senior Citizens Center audit, satisfactory, and a second on the Bid and Request for Proposal Process audit. The auditors went through this and made some minor recommendations and found no problems of significance. The next item was a review of the Budget and Brief Book. We all received several copies of this small summary of our annual budget, and we reviewed what it contained so that we'd be up to date on that. There were several small discrepancies which were corrected, and there being no further business, not having our monthly financial report, the meeting was adjourned. Thank you. Any questions for Councilmember Stephens? We will move along then. I think we have two presentations today. My sense is that we may have several people here interested in the employee benefits item. Is that what most of you all – okay. Would there be any objection if we went ahead and dealt with that issue first in order to free folks up? All right. That being the case, Mr. Allen, if you would come forward, and allow us, our friends from the Transportation Cabinet, to stand by for just a few moments. Thank you, Mayor, Councilmembers. It's always a pleasure to come and address the Council, but especially when I have some really great news. That's always a lot of fun. And something that's very important to all of our employees and also to you as Council, employee benefits. Just for a little historical knowledge before we get into it, I passed out a small packet of information. I trust everybody has received that. The current medical plan that we have consists of two carriers. Humana, which has 80% of our employees, and Aetna, which has 20% of our employees. There are two basic plan designs for food provider network and like an HMO type network. There are three tiers that the employees can enroll in, which is the employee. We have 1,271 employees in that group. The employee plus one, which is 437. And then family coverage, which is 768, for a total of 2,476 employees currently enrolled in our medical plan. The dental plan, we have one carrier, Delta Dental. We have two basic plan designs. And in this plan, we have four tiers, which is employee, employee plus one, employee plus children, and family. The total in that is about 2,590 employees. So we have a few more enrolled in dental than we do in medical. In January of last year, based upon our collective bargaining agreements, we were required under those agreements to establish a benefits committee, whereby at that point police and fire could have some input into what we were looking at as far as recommendations on employee benefits. We decided to kind of expand that view and ask a variety of our employees to become members of the committee so that we had the widest perception across government what was important to our employee groups. The benefits committee, that's the reason for its forming. But the benefits committee, the membership, I did pass it on. I'd like to recognize them today for the hard work that they did in coming up with the proposal that we're going to be giving you today. It's David Lucas, representing Public Safety and E911. Brian Markham, representing Purchasing. Billy Van Pelt, representing the Mayor's Office. Rick Bowman, representing CSEA. Chris Ward and Chris Bartley, representing Fire. John Taylor, representing Community Corrections. Hilton Hastings, representing Police. Paul Schoeninger, who represented the Council Office. Susan Combs, who represented Police and Fire Pension Fund. Candice Wofford, who also participated from her purchasing role. Tracy Stevenson, Alice Phillips, and Kim Nesbitt from Human Resources. And Mary Lyle, who is also our RN and wellness individual. Those were all on the committee and did a lot of really yeoman's work to get work done on this project. When we met with the committee, we had certain goals that we established. One was to create more differentiation between the plan design. The medical plans looked very similar. The dental plans certainly looked similar. To enhance our benefits in response to employee comments and suggestions. To control our costs and save money, which is almost, when you're talking about health care, an oxymoron. And to offer the employee plus children's option for the medical plan as well as the dental plan, so that there would be four tiers in both. Those were our goals and objectives. We had a big challenge. LFUCG has not had a rate increase to our employees in three years. While at the same time, regional health care costs, just in this region, have gone up an average of 44% in the last three years. And I know it won't surprise counsel who picked up most of that 44% as far as the employers are concerned. It was the employees. Employers just can't continue to keep track of that kind of cost. As standard procedure, we put out a request for proposal. Now, I brought a visual aid. I don't know how many of you had a pleasure to look at these things. That's one response to a request for proposal on the medical plan. We had a pretty good response. Under the medical plan proposal, we asked for three. We had medical. We had dental. And based upon an internal audit report, a third-party administrator, potentially for auditing purposes of claims. To the medical providers, we had to make sure they understood the ground rules, that we're a self-funded plan, that we pay administrative costs, which is a term called ASO, administrative services only, and the actual claims cost. When we put the RFP out, based upon the committee's suggestions, we asked for the bids to reflect certain things for the best deal that we could get. In other words, what if you were the single provider? You've got the whole book of business. What would you charge us? What if you were the single provider and also got our pharmacy business? So we asked our providers to respond and give us a variety of different scenarios so that we would have the most suggestions that we could possibly make. We asked the providers to respond on what they consider best practices for a consumer-driven health plan, which is the new programs that you'll see out there with health spending accounts. One of the largest concerns that we had was coming from our retirees, our police and fire retirees, who felt that there was not sufficient access for some of the providers that we currently had. We also asked our dental responders to come up with more of a best practices plan as well, considering we had a lot of feedback from our employees that the cap on the annual cap was $1,000 and they spent it too quickly. So we wanted a little alternative plan design. The responses to the RFP were good. To the medical plan, we had five. Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Blue Grass Family Healthcare, Humana and United Healthcare. To the dental plan, we had four responses. Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Delta Dental and Humana. For the dental plan, we also asked for some changes besides the general best practices. One of the responses that we had from our employees was lack of coverage for certain things. Those two items, the largest items, were periodontal work and a big one, orthodontia, for both child and adult. So we asked for that as well. The committee did review the third-party administrator information we got, but are not prepared to make any suggestions to the council or to the mayor and the commissioners at this point in time as far as go forward with that. But that could be in the future. The committee analyzed the RFPs, and like I said, I'm sure you can all appreciate how much time it takes to go through multiple RFPs like this to get the information that we need to make decisions. We presented a variety of suggestions and options to the mayor and the commissioners for feedback. And today it's my pleasure to present the combined efforts for your review and approval to approve a future blue sheet that will come across for the mayor's signature. What the committee is recommending for medical, the use of one local provider instead of two, and that provider is Humana. We want to offer three distinct medical plans. A high-end, we're going to call it the platinum plan, that offers enhanced benefits to what our current plan provides. Examples of the enhanced benefits would be instead of $20 co-pays at the doctor, it's $15 co-pays. The network is terrific. Every hospital in the state of Kentucky is in this network. So going outside of network is going to be a little tough. So that's the platinum plan. Our current plan is very similar to what we're going to call the gold plan. And then we're going to offer a high-deductible health spending account type consumer-driven health plan that we're going to call the silver plan. These are very, very unique. I've given you in your packet sample of a comparison of what these kinds of plans, what they're going to offer. And they're incredibly competitive. The silver plan is very interesting because it is a health spending account plan. The beauty of it is that we absolutely cap our costs as a government to the contribution of $500. The gold plan, as I said, is very similar to our current plan. And the platinum plan is much more enhanced. Under the medical plan, we are also going to offer the fourth tier, as I said, the employee plus children. This is for two purposes. The first purpose is to assist our single parents who are currently enrolled in family plan and paying a high-end family cost when they don't need to. Children, for medical purposes and medical purposes only, are cheap. You know, they're costly and a lot of other things, but when it comes to the actual medical side, they're not that expensive. So, we can offer a plan for employee plus children at a lower rate than employee plus one. The employee plus one being an adult. So, we're able to offer a lower rate by offering that tier. We did, before we made the recommendation, we did do a survey. We sent a survey out to everyone who was enrolled in family coverage and asked them if that kind of a tier at a lower rate would be beneficial to them. And over 25% of those responding said yes, it would. So, we know at least 25% of our currently enrolled family group would migrate to the employee plus child plan. One of the enhancements to the medical plans will be the addition of a vision benefit. Currently, we have quite a few people enrolled in IMED, which is our vision plan. The exact same coverage under IMED will be incorporated in the UMANA plan at no cost to the employee. We will also continue to offer IMED if the employee wants to just enroll in that and not enroll in the medical for six more dollars. But it saves every employee six dollars who are currently enrolled in IMED now. We've also expanded, based upon feedback that we received, the durable medical equipment benefit to include hearing aids up to a maximum annual of $1,400. So, those are two key enhancements to the plan. Probably the biggest recommendation is to maintain or lower the average employee contribution rate. Basically, based upon what the mayor and the commissioners and the committee has suggested, we are going to be offering enhanced plans at lower employee contributions. I mean, that's almost unheard of these days in health benefits. Under the dental plan, as I said, we are going to continue our current 100% coverage, $1,000 cap plan for at least a year. But we'll be offering another kind of plan through Delta Dental that is more standardized in the industry, 100% preventive coverage, 80% for certain of the fillings and that kind of work, and then 50% on major dental coverage, which includes periodontal and also adult and child orthodontia, which is very unique. And the annual cap on that is $2,500. So, it's two and a half times what the current level of coverage is. We are also going to, based upon how Delta Dental came back, because it's interesting when they thought they might lose the business, they came back at rates which were phenomenal because they were fully insured. We were currently under the same kind of program as we were with Humana, which is the ASO, the administrative services cost, which is a per employee per month cost, plus we were playing claims. Well, Delta came back and offered its rates, which were currently lower than what we were offering now, fully insured. So, we will save all of the ASO money that we paid last year to Delta, plus the difference in the claims dollars between the contributions and the actual claims. I have given you a brief example of what the current contributions would be for the rate comparisons, and these are rough averages. They're blended rates. But under 2007, the employee rate was right around $317 a month. The proposed gold plan rate for single is $300. So, it's going down. The employee plus spouse was $566. The 2008 recommended rate is $540. So, it's going down. The employee plus children rate is $520, so less than the employee plus one. And the family rate was right around $690. And under the gold plan, it will be $650. So, it also is going down. The dental insurance for the employee, average last year was $29.50. And remember, that was ASO plus claims, so it's much more costly. Fully insured, it's only $28. So, it's going down. The employee plus spouse is going up slightly. The employee plus children is going up slightly, again, $5 or $6. And the employee plus family is going up $6 a month. So, not a lot of rate increase, but a lot more benefits and a lot of enhancement. From the projected savings perspective, which is almost, again, my hat's off to the committee, a lot of it is negotiation skills and Humana's willingness to work with us. But we've been able to negotiate a significantly lower administrative charge per employee, which will result in an estimated savings to the plan of approximately $497,930 or about half a million dollars. Based upon the survey results of those 25% of employees migrating from the family to the employee plus children, that subsidy that we'll save is an additional $475,225. And by going to the fully insured dental plan, just using last year's administrative costs and the claims paid, the difference between the claims paid and the contributions, which is the costing, that will be approximately $225,575. I guess in summary, I'd like to thank the Benefits Committee, the Mayor, the Commissioners, in being able to offer an enhanced medical and dental plan at substantially the same or less employee contribution rates with an estimated savings of approximately $1.2 million to LFUCG. And if you'd like to see where I keep the magic wand, I'll be glad to show you at another time. It's our hope that Council will approve that forthcoming request. Thank you very much, Mr. Allen. I think there are a few questions here. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Allen, thank you for coming to us today with this information. I know it's a lot of hard work. As you know, my office, that's what we do, is one of the benefits we offer is group health for our clients. And I can tell you, working with the many carriers here in Lexington, which are now three, it's still not an easy task, what you have to go through. I just have a couple questions regarding the plans that we ended up with. What criteria did the group use, specifically the top one or two or three, to come up with just a Humana-only plan or one provider? What was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak? Was it price? Was it the benefits offered? How did we get to those three plans? Great question. It was based upon the RFP responses, which outlined exactly what the plan designs were, as you know, and wanting to know can you meet these plan designs. It's also geo-access, as you know, which is absolutely incredibly important as far as number of facilities, number of doctors available within a certain geographic area and radius. And the third piece, obviously, is price. So the other two or other three, Anthem, Aetna, and Bluegrass Family, did they not meet the criteria? Anybody not meet the criteria? There were several, and we have all that data. Purchasing has put all of that together and will obviously make that available to you if you would like. Also, one of the largest pieces, Council Member, was, and I only say that because I don't have the responses right at my fingertips, but one of the big issues was trying to work with the HSA, the consumer-driven health plan, which we think is vitally important to make sure that we offer to our employees an alternative to the high cost of health care and putting health care in their hands to manage. And we're able to offer that kind of a plan at a much lower rate. As you can see, we're able to offer single coverage under the silver plan, the consumer-driven health plan, for only $250 a month. And remember, the benefit pool that the employee receives currently with LFUCG is $355. So we wanted to make certain that the providers would be able to work with us on a consumer-driven health plan, and not everybody is. How hard did you negotiate the HSA portion, the health savings account portion in the plan? Because to me, you know, if I'm offering this to one of my clients, a $2,200 deductible for an $80 a month savings is not exactly exciting me. So how hard did we negotiate with that? Because we can get it down to $1,500 out there. Some of it, as we understand, is driven by statute, as far as minimum requirements for a consumer-driven health plan. A high-deductible plan has to have a minimum deductible. And $2,200 was what we were informed is our minimum deductible. If you do look at it from the perspective of costing, Council Member, at $250, that leaves the extra $100 in the benefit pool. Additionally, LFUCG will contribute, based upon the current plan design, $500. So that's total dollars potentially into the HSA account of the employee of $1,700 on a $2,200 deductible, which is only a potential exposure of $500. As you also know, these kinds of plans are not for everybody. They're designed for either people who are very, very healthy or very, very not healthy. And so from that perspective, that money, Council Member, stays in the employee's account. If they don't use it, that does not revert back. That stays in the employee's account and rolls over for the following year. So if they're not – if they don't have any major issues, Council Member, that first year their exposure is probably $500, and then the following year it's almost nothing. So it's designed, as I say, with what we were told was the minimum requirement for high-deductible health care. And when you say that's what you were told based on them being a government agency? Yes. I think there's much lower options, as well as we do include the prescription drug coverage, the same as what it is in a PPO. And so here it's not. They're paying the negotiated rates on the drug. That's correct, because under the Consumer-Driven Health Plan, again, the HSA, they can't be part of our – if they're paying the bill, they can't be part of our – because Humana doesn't hold the pharmacy. We have that carved out. So because of that – That's what I want you to make the distinction. That is absolutely correct. And it would be nice if we could get them to work together, but they won't. Right. Well, you spoke a little bit earlier about the numbers here, about how many people are in each of the levels or tier or classes. You said there's about 2,400 people enrolled in our medical insurance. Does that include all the outside agencies that also participate? No, sir. So where are they and who are they? I mean, I think we need to know who else is taking part of this plan because it does affect our overall rates. The more people we include could have an adverse effect on our overall rates. And it is good to see, as you said, our rates dropped this year. And I wish I could say it for every one of my clients, but, you know, it's just not happening right now in the market. No, it's not. But how many other – can you give us a list of how many other people are also using this plan? I absolutely can. As well as – are these the rates also for the retirees in the Police and Fire Department? Are these the rates for them as well? The rates will apply to the Police and Fire retirees, Councilmember, with the exception of the Silver Plan. The HSA will not be offered to the – the administration of that would just be a little too difficult. But the Gold and the Platinum Plan would absolutely be offered to our retirees. As well as the outside agencies. As well as the outside agencies, absolutely. And I do have a listing of those outside agencies that I will absolutely make available to you with their enrollment numbers. Okay, very good. And then one last question. I know there's a couple other people that want to speak. Who are you going to have set up available to help on the HSA? Is Humana coming in? That is a great question. We have scheduled, based upon approval, a week of training at a variety of different locations to make certain that our employees are well educated on the HSA. I really believe that the enrollment in that will be low the first year until people get more comfortable with what it is and if it will work for them or not. So will Humana be coming in and doing that? Yes, sir. Okay. Is that part of our deal? Yes, sir. Very good. Thank you. Councilmember Crosby. Thank you, Mayor. Kevin actually asked a couple of my questions. I just wanted to clarify. Currently, how many or what percentage? I think you said it at the beginning, and I just want to clarify. I think I heard 80% of LFDC employees are currently enrolled in Humana. That is correct, Councilmember. Okay, great. Thank you. Councilmember Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Michael, thank you very much. Absolutely. And I want to thank the committee members. I have sat on this committee and read those thick books, and I appreciate that they did it. It's a lot of work. Thank you. I had a few questions. First of all, when is open enrollment? Based upon, again, approvals, because we're in a time crunch, is the first week in December. So the first full week. Okay. Now, how many employees do we have who are also on Medicare? Under the police and fire pension, we do not require Medicare enrollment. But we do have approximately 230 to 240 who are Medicare eligible. And part of the plan that we're looking at is to offer a Medicare Advantage plan through Humana to replace the current Anthem plan, which is not well received by our retirees. Okay. But we don't have any current employees who are Medicare eligible? Are they all retired? And if you're 65, you can be enrolled with Medicare. Councilmember, that's a good question. I do not know that. The reason I'm asking is whether if we have current employees who are Medicare registered, can we be the secondary automatically? Or do we have to be the primary insurance? Currently, under the police and fire pension plan, that retired group, it has never been pushed that we require Medicare enrollment. It's driven by statute, and we are looking currently, we're looking at what our options are under that plan as far as getting LFUCG out of being primary. Under our current employees who are not retired yet, we have never, to my knowledge, once they become Medicare eligible, that Medicare becomes primary and we're secondary. It seems to me it would be an advantage to us, since we're self-insured, if we have Medicare employees for Medicare to pay first and then us to be the secondary. That would require Medicare enrollment of both, as you know, of A and B, and there's a fee associated with Part B. So it would just depend whether we pick that up, didn't pick it up. And that's part of what we're looking at as far as options. Currently, for single coverage, as you know, obviously with Medicare, it's rated by the amount of income that you make. So with our retirees, it's a lot easier because we know pretty much what the cap is on that. And currently it's running right at $93 a month for Medicare Part B. So there's that dollars are out there. Who's going to pick up that if we require Medicare enrollment? Okay. Now, on your chart, your LFUCG health insurance comparison, January 1, 2008, it looks like this. I had a couple questions. On the left-hand column, a little more than halfway, you have ER visits, and in parentheses you have life or limb threatening only. Does that mean that there will be someone auditing all of the ER visits? Would that be Humana to determine if the visit was a life-threatening visit or one that was not life-threatening? What does that mean? What this means is that we're trying to encourage emergency room visits only when they're absolutely necessary and not just for visits that could be better handled at an urgent care treatment center or something similar to that to discourage people just going to the emergency room. There's also the issue of admission. So if the emergency room visit also involves life or limb, which also implies not just emergency but potential admission to the hospital, then there's no charge for that emergency room visit. But there isn't. But this is simply put on here to discourage everyday visits. That's correct, Council Member. Going to the emergency room. There won't be any audit or any checking on that. No. Because you're going to pay it. The only good part is if it is significant and serious and you are admitted, then there's no charge. Now, at the bottom of this form, I wanted to ask you about the total pool credit. Is this what we used to call the benefit pool? It is exactly that. So the total benefit pool for all non-bargaining employees is $355.74 monthly. That's correct. And so from that, employees will choose to pay for insurance, retirement, however they want to use it. That's correct. Council Member, that goes back to the ordinance from the days when we merged the government where we were required to pay for single coverage. And on the bargaining, I noticed that the corrections are $405.74 and police and fire are $530.74. Now, with those amounts, do police, fire, and corrections have any different options for where to put their benefit pool, or do they have the same options as all government employees? They have the same options. Which are health insurance, retirement, anything else? All numbers of options with Colonial. Absolutely. There's a whole gamut. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. My last question is, did the committee – I know that in the private sector, many companies are looking at smoker versus nonsmoker rates. Did you look at any smoker versus nonsmoker rates? It was discussed and reserved for potential changes or recommendations down the road. Okay. In coordination more with our wellness, we wanted to make certain the committee felt it important that the message we were sending was one more of a carrot instead of a stick and to take a look at a much more holistic approach so it wasn't just like smokers will pay more or less. I think a lot of companies now are doing that. Yes, they are. Councilmember Sennett also would probably know that. They're offering different rates for nonsmokers as opposed to smokers, recognizing that the health risks are greater, potentially greater with smokers. They're actually approaching a wide variety of different areas as well as smoking. You know, from a wellness perspective, as you know, and I think when we do it, we should do it from that perspective so it doesn't look like we're just targeting a certain group of individuals. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Maloney, you were on here and you evaporated. Is that because you decided you didn't want to ask a question or it was significant? That's right. You're right. Okay. All right. Councilmember Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you for coming in today, Michael. Sure. Fantastic job. Thanks. I have a couple of quick questions. Can you complete a cost-benefit analysis with respect to requiring Medicaid or Medicare? We will absolutely look into that based upon Councilmember Gordon's. Absolutely. What it will mean is just figuring out who under our current enrollment is eligible at 65. Absolutely. Okay. And then you'll bring back your recommendation? Glad to. Okay. Thank you. Last year, in the past budget cycle, we budgeted a 75% subsidy for all city employees with respect to joining the YMCA. Is there a way of doing a cost analysis to see if a certain percentage of employees enrolled in the Y, that would drive down our cost for healthcare? That goes hand in glove, sir, with exactly what Councilmember Gordon was talking about and kind of the approach we were thinking about taking from a more holistic approach as far as wellness is concerned. And if you're involved in those kinds of programs, there is obviously a benefit in people living healthier lives. But exactly quantifying that, we can sure take a look at it. Absolutely. Okay. And that was one of the driving forces behind the Council budgeting that money, was not just so that it would be cheaper for our employees, but that we get that benefit out of it as well. And long-term, it's a great program. It should have great effect. I know that you have long-term a lot of goals for a wellness program that's really holistic for our government. At some point, will you bring something back? Are you looking at this budget cycle to bring back some proposals on how you want to increase that? We're actually targeting that whole group from an occupational wellness organizational piece. And, yes, sir, we will. I'm speaking for Mary Lyle, but I'm sure she will be thrilled to come and address Council to talk about those programs. That would be fantastic. Absolutely. Thank you. And I thank your committee's work as well. Thank you. Mr. Stennett. Just a follow-up. You touched on it. I wasn't going to bring it up today, but the Medicare cost analysis that you're going to do, you're going to do for the employees and retirees? We're already working on the retirees because we knew that. You say working. I mean, it requires a state statute. We've got – well, it's driven by statute. Right. And the law department is looking at our options, Council Member, as to whether it requires a legislative amendment to require that Medicare piece or not. Because it simply says that we have to supply a program, but we also have to fund it based upon what the single medical coverage is for our current LFUCG employees. So there's a wee bit of leeway. But requiring Medicare literally might require a legislative amendment. Well, you get what I was going to touch on. To give them a lesser benefit or a lesser amount just so we can save some money, I would caution you, I'm not sure that's the policy that this body would want to take. Giving them the same benefit that we're giving to a single employee would be where we need to stay at. And furthermore, you talked about adding the $93 for Part B, but don't forget about Part D either, which is the prescription drug benefit, which you consider too. And that's great. The current proposed Humana supplemental plan has a fantastic pharmacy benefit that doesn't have any donut holes in it like Medicare Part D. They get the absolute benefit of the Humana network on discounting. And, Council Member, you wouldn't believe this plan. You would. I had to keep reading it several times. When they reach their maximum out-of-pocket for like specialty drugs or something like that at $4,000 a year, their costs go down. Right. You know, I mean, it's absolutely amazing. They can also go to Walmart or Kroger as we're encouraging people to for $4. Well, and they can do that too. You know, so, yeah, we've taken it into account. Well, when you get that information from our law department, I hope you'll share it with Council and keep us going forward. Glad to do it. Glad to do it. Thank you. Absolutely. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Michael, one other thing, which is probably the other side of the coin, and that is the claim-paying history of Humana versus some of the other carriers. And was that analyzed or do you all keep track of complaints and such as you go along through the years? Yes, sir, we do. And that was also part of what the third-party administrator function was going to be doing, Council Member. So we haven't let go of that yet. It just seemed like we had enough to do with just the plan designs and making some of those changes before we did the third-party administrator. But, yes, sir, that is still on our radar screen. Obviously, it doesn't make any difference what the price is if they're not paying out any claims or delaying for some significant length of time until they wear people down. It doesn't mean anything. And that's customer service we need to continue to work on. Absolutely. Thank you. My pleasure. Any further comments or questions? Then thank you very much, Mr. Allen. Thank you, sir. We'll proceed now to the presentation on the Newtown Pike widening. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Bob Nunley, and I'm with the Transportation Cabinet. And today we're here to present to you the project, the widening of Newtown Pike from New Circle Road to I-75. And we've hired a consultant to work on this project, and I'm going to turn the mic over to their project manager to let him present to you this PowerPoint presentation. Thank you, Mayor, Council Members. My name is Charles Raymer. I'm here on behalf of the project team and the project manager, Bob Nunley, to provide you early information on the Newtown Pike project to improve that section from north of New Circle Road up through the I-64, I-75 interchange. We're currently coordinating with a project on either end of the project. There is an interchange improvement project for New Circle Road and Newtown Pike currently underway. There's also a design-build project north of the interstate that is currently moving quite aggressively. This project, as we noted, basically is from the north limits of the New Circle Road interchange through the I-64, I-75 interchange. Obviously, the driving force here is the traffic on the road. The existing traffic is about 41,000 average daily traffic, people moving on that route each day. That volume is projected to increase in the design year 2030 to about 66,000 vehicles a day. Just for an example, the Citation Boulevard extension will add a considerable amount of additional traffic to the stream with the ultimate connection on over to the east. That projection is intended to provide or projected to provide about an additional 380 turning vehicles in the design hour for Newtown Pike. The projected truck volume, which is a significant volume on this route, is about a third of the traffic stream today and projected to be that in the design year as well. We are looking at four basic things, four basic purposes for this project. The first, obviously, is capacity, the need to address that increase in traffic. We're looking at adding an additional travel lane in both directions. The second and very important or the next very important thing is safety, which will be emphasized throughout the development of the project. We're going to retain the grass median that you have through most of the length of the project. We're looking at improving the turn lanes at the various intersections along the route. We're also looking at providing an access management plan that addresses some of the existing access, particularly in terms of left turns through the median and also some of the turn lanes on the outside into the development that exists within this corridor. The next thing we're looking at is pedestrian and bicycle accommodations. There is a proposal included with the project to add an eight-foot bike lane on both sides up to the Aristide-Newtown Pike intersection and also provide curb and gutter along the outside with a berm that will allow for sidewalk construction. Right now, it looks like primary emphasis will be on the east side of the road for pedestrian accommodations because of the type of developments you have out there today. And the last thing, which is very, very important on this corridor, is the aesthetic character of the existing road, and we're trying to reflect that into the actual development of the project at this preliminary stage. We're going to be looking at minimizing impacts of landscaping. We know that we're going to affect the landscaping within this corridor, and we have a partner on our team, Sherman Carter Barnhart, to assist us in identifying things that we can do to avoid some of the existing landscape, preserve some of that, and also enhance some of the areas where we know we'll have to take some trees and shrubs and other features down. The typical section of the project, this shows a 32-foot raised median that's in the vicinity of the Citation Boulevard intersection. At that point, we're proposing dual left turn lanes in the median. The bulk of the project will have a 20-foot raised grass median, very similar to the median that you have throughout most of the length of the project. The median on either end flares out slightly through the two interchange areas. Project's in a very preliminary design stage. We've had preliminary meetings with the department to review some of the details, looking at the intersections, which are highlighted on this schematic of the plan view. We're also looking at part of this, trying to decide what we can do with the median in those areas where we have existing openings. Current schedule for the project. I know that most of you are going to be very concerned about the timing of this relative to the World Equestrian Games. At this stage, the project is not anticipated to be underway until after the 2010 World Equestrian Games. Part of the reason for that is the fact that the current six-year highway plan does not include funds for the right-of-way, utility relocation, and construction phases. The department is working on that in terms of the six-year plan adjustment that the legislature will be acting on come this January, February. We expect after Thanksgiving that we'll begin work on the final details of this project and also come back to you later on next year to talk about what those details might include on the project. Some of the general concerns that were identified in the original advertisement for this project and that we have identified through our early work on the project and some of the contacts that we've made are listed here. I'm not going to go over each one of them. One of them that is highlighted here is safety, and obviously that's an issue that has been raised by a number of people, the need to pay attention to the safety of the road and try to do something that would accommodate some improvements with respect to that. It's also on the list on the left side, including the list near the bottom, recreational trails, which I'll talk just a little bit about later on. The project included a couple of things in terms of what we call community involvement. There was an early public information meeting and a presentation to the council, which we're making today. There were actually two of those. There was one early in the project and one late in the project. We were going to come to the council and then go to the public in a general information meeting to provide an opportunity for input from the general public about the project and things that we were considering and then later things that we had detailed for their consideration and final comment. Their project team felt like that that was not sufficient for this project, so we added a third item, which we've listed here as early stakeholder contact. Prior to coming to you, we've gone out there and met with a number of the stakeholders on the project to gain some insight into their concerns, their issue, and their perspective on what the project should be accommodating and what we should be including in trying to make the road a safer road to drive on. Some development issues that we'll be getting into, maintenance of traffic, obviously a big concern. It's an important issue in the project. Our intent, our goal at this stage is the project will maintain two lanes of traffic in both directions during the construction of the project. We feel like that's a very important goal for this project. Utility relocations are extremely important for a number of reasons, partly because we believe that based on the information we have, we're going to have to relocate and reconstruct approximately one mile of that stone wall out there along the west side of the road. And to do that, we need to make sure we coordinate the utility relocations with that work. We're also going to be coordinating the landscaping with respect to utilities so that we can find the best place to put the utilities with respect to the existing landscaping and where we can put other landscaping back in its place. The last thing is to accommodate reasonably perceivable impacts, and we have had some early meetings with utility companies to see what they have and what's in the works. We've also met with LexTran to look at their existing bus stops out there on the route, look at ways that we can enhance those bus stops in terms of where they're at and where they are with respect to the widened roadway section. Recreational trail, I mentioned that was not part of our project, but early on in some of our early stakeholder contacts, it became obvious we need to look at how the recreational trail could get from one side of Newtown Pike to the other. So essentially what we did, we developed a preliminary concept study to look at the opportunities for coming across basically from the road that goes into the Lexmark property from Newtown Pike over to the Bluegrass Mental Health property on the opposite side. There are three basic options that we looked at, one over, one under, and one along the road to the Citation Boulevard intersection. We actually looked at two options for going over, two options for going under, and then one option along the east side of the road to the Citation Boulevard intersection. Just briefly, the two options over would require bridges in the range of 180 to 190 feet in length. The grades would be approximately 2 to 10 percent. What we call the alternate four, which is the one closest to the Bluegrass Mental Health property, and I'll try to indicate that this is the one closest to the property, or this is the Bluegrass Mental Health property. This option has slightly steeper grades because of getting up to the elevation of that Bluegrass Mental Health property and crossing over. The other option, I think, was about 8 percent. Either of these options would have no major effect on the Newtown Pike widening project. It could be accommodated with or without. We also looked at two underpass options, one of which we have Cane Run Creek crossing right here. We looked at a parallel structure to that skewed culvert. We also looked at another culvert crossing a little further up the hill. Those would require tunnels in the range of 150 to 190 feet in length, grades of approximately 1 to 10 percent, with alternate two having the slightly steeper grade of 10 percent. Alternate three, the one closest to the Cane Run Creek culvert to Cane Run Creek, we were looking at setting it above that culvert for the underpass approximately 3.5 feet above Cane Run Creek. Would not get it out of the 100-year flood, but would get out of normal 25-year type flooding events. Culvert for the other option, up here closest to the Bluegrass Mental Health property, would be a slightly higher elevation simply because of the terrain. The difficulty with the underpass options is that the existing clearance over the culvert that carries Cane Run Creek under Newtown Pike is very shallow, and to do either of these two options would require raising the grade of existing and proposed Newtown Pike anywhere from 2 to 6 feet. So it would make it extremely difficult from the standpoint of maintenance of traffic and also from a cost perspective to actually add these culverts with that condition. The third option was looking at a trail basically from the entrance into Lexmark property opposite Nandino Boulevard along the east side up to Citation Boulevard and crossing over and tying in with the recreational trail that you already have underway or plan for on the west side. The grades would be approximately 2 to 8 percent. The length would be approximately 2,600 feet. This would need to be coordinated with the Newtown Springs development. They actually have a 75-foot landscape easement that, from our indication, they had planned to potentially accommodate a trail or a bike path of some sort within that area already. This alternate would not have any significant effect on the Newtown Pike project. There would be some coordination issues. With that, these are the various intersections on the project. I'm not going to go into each one of these. I am going to take just a moment of your time and highlight one in particular, which is Olivia Lane. Olivia Lane is just about 400 feet north of the Citation Boulevard intersection. It's relatively close, and from the input that we've had from the Red Cross, from the Better Business Bureau, and also the tenant or the landlord of the little shopping center there, as well as the Griffin Gates Neighborhood Association, all of this in this particular area raises some concerns from a safety perspective. And a lot of the people here actually discourage their employees from coming out. So what we're looking at is a comprehensive plan in terms of dealing with this particular intersection, as well as Sugar Maple, which is the next one to the north, that serves as primary access into the Griffin Gate community, and also looking at the possible connection to Citation Boulevard Extended as a comprehensive package for providing a much safer condition with this increase in volume of the additional lane that we're proposing with the project. Let me go back here. The features on the route, I think I mentioned something about the rock wall along the west side. This is just an example. I think most of you who've driven through there are familiar with the area. There's a rock wall pretty much continuously along the west side, with the exception of the two openings where Aristide and Citation breached that wall. Because of the widening of the project and the difficulty in options here, we're looking at having to displace this wall, but we're looking at working with the various groups in the area, as well as the Kentucky Heritage Council, to reconstruct that wall, similar to what's been done on the design-build project north of the interstate, and retain the relationship of that wall to the existing road, so that we have a corridor that's very similar to what you have today, except with a safer, wider roadway that will accommodate the traffic, bicycles, and also pedestrians. Let me conclude by saying, basically, what we found in our discussions and our early work on the project, that Newtown Pike is an important gateway to the Lexington community. We know there's some things that the project is going to do, some things the project will need to do, and they're kind of highlighted here. We're looking at moving traffic safely and efficiently by adding additional lanes and adding additional fissures that will provide for safe movement, safe egress and ingress for those people along the roadway, as well as those people using the roadway. We're looking at retaining or reconstructing some of the unique corridor characteristics that we have out there, looking at accommodating bicycles and pedestrians, and we're also looking at trying to balance these impacts and costs so that we can get this project moving forward and get it to construction as quickly as possible. Thank you, Mr. Raymer. Let me clarify one thing. This would not impact the intersection at New Circle and Newtown Pike. That would be a separate project. Exactly, Mayor. And is that currently on the six-year plan? I think it is, but I couldn't recall. Okay. Yes. Thank you very much. Council Member Stephens. It looks like it will be a beautiful road, but how much land will you have to acquire, and do you plan to acquire it on both sides of the road? At this stage, it looks like we'll be acquiring a small strip taking on both sides of the road. I believe, based on our preliminary information, that's going to be a very minor strip taking on the order of five to ten feet or less. On both sides? On both sides, yes, sir. As you probably know, the government has received a grant from Transportation Enhancement for vegetation on Newtown Pike from Main Street out to the interstate, and we need to coordinate that. And we wouldn't want to plant something right where you're going to come along in a year and take it away, as sometimes has happened out here in the history of the world. But if you're going to take more than five feet, you're going to have to move that whole rock wall. Is that right? Or just five feet won't require you to move the whole rock wall? Well, there are certain portions of the wall that we physically get into and we'll have to displace basically on the ends in that citation. There are other areas, such as along Bluegrass Mental Health, where the wall is slightly above the road and the time we encroach into it, you wouldn't like the outcome with that wall kind of being suspended there. So basically as a result of the direct impacts as well as indirect impacts, it appears the best plan is basically to reconstruct that wall, move it far enough away that you can put whatever landscaping and some of the additional features that we've included on the project, such as the bike lanes on the side. Well, it sounds like you'll be taking the vegetation on both sides. There will be a considerable number of the existing trees and some of the shrubbery on both sides that will be displaced for the project. As I mentioned earlier, that's part of the reason we have Sherman Carter Barnhart included on our team, to help us identify those things that we can avoid. As you well know, when you get close to a tree, sometimes you can leave it, but it doesn't survive. So we're going to look at those things that we can leave and those things that we can't. We're going to look at what we need to do in terms of replacing or restoring those conditions. Now, we have an RFP out for a contractor to help us with this, and who should we coordinate this with? You or with Sherman Carter Barnhart or with District 7? I would suggest Bob Nunley in the District 7 office. He's got our number and knows how to reach us as well as Sherman Carter Barnhart, and we'll work with you in trying to coordinate those two activities. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. As it relates to the bike trails and so forth, as you had mentioned, this is the corridor for the Helfway North-South Trail that ultimately goes not only from the horse park to downtown, but eventually on down to the Kentucky River in Geary County and becomes the main corridor and so forth. And I know that so many folks from District 7 and the Highway Department have been extremely helpful with us, and I think for those watching, one of the things that I want to make sure we point out is that we have a game plan for between now and 2010, which has some temporary ways to get across Newtown Pike, potentially at Citation Boulevard, using some other ways down that corridor that ultimately, past 2011, we may have a really amazing gateway with bridge work and so forth like that for pedestrians and bikes. And so I just wanted to make sure that, as we were speaking, we've been working very closely with you guys and really appreciate the attention to detail that you're giving that corridor as well, and it's more about a holistic transportation plan, not just moving cars and a lot more of them, but moving people and moving in other ways. So I appreciate all the efforts you all have made so far. I look forward to working with you on that. Yeah, the district has emphasized very much trying to figure out what we can or can't do with the project and make sure that we understand what the trail will be doing. Thank you, Mr. McCoy. Charlie, you probably don't have this information yet. Are you all anywhere, or do you have any estimates yet, construction estimates on it? The preliminary cost estimate, I figured that question may come up. We're looking at about $17 million for construction. That's assuming that we're able to use much of the existing roadway, and obviously if we're not able to do that, the cost could go up. So, yeah. That's a preliminary cost. I'll ask my question then if you have got costs. Have you got optional costs or alternates on the bridge or the underground, the tunnel? Do you have any costs identified for the bridging span? No, sir. No, that's not secretly identified? We did not look at those costs because, as I mentioned earlier, that's not part of the project. We were asked to look at it to coordinate with the trail to see how that might affect the project or how we might affect the trail. Okay. Sorry, I missed that. Anything further? Thank you very much. Appreciate the presentation. Thanks to you all for joining us today. That now brings us down to council reports, and Council Member Blues doesn't have access to his monitor today, but he did indicate a desire to give a council report. Council Member Blues. Yes, the second district will not be silenced. Thank you, Mayor. I've got a kind of a bookkeeping motion here, first of all. I move to amend the October 23, 2007 Neighborhood Development Fund allocation list to change the name of the recipient of the elderly nutrition program from the Black and Williams Center in Dunbar Seniors to the Bluegrass Community Action Agency. So moved. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries unanimously. And then I have a few announcements. Monday, November 5, three meetings. The Georgetown Neighborhood Association will meet at 6 p.m. in the O'Rear Center in Douglas Park. Also at 6 p.m., the Brookfield Chase Neighborhood Association, and this is a new neighborhood on Muscle Cave, I'm hoping that all the neighbors can come out and participate and begin to form that organization. The Brookfield Chase Association will meet at 6 p.m. in the Green Acres Park Community Center on LaSalle Drive. And then at 7 o'clock, the Green Acres Hollow Creek Breckenridge Neighborhood Association will meet in the same building, the Green Acres Park Community Center. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. A couple of things. One is, again, I want to thank all those residents and constituents that are in the 9th and the 10th District that live along the Clayton Hill Road corridor as we're having new pavement on that. A lot of calls and questions about that given the fact that that road is due to be improved and widened and so forth, and it is a major project that's been going for or been needed to go for about 30 years. And just for a point of clarity for those that are watching, the portion that's being paved right now would see really no construction until 2013. And as those who have to drive the road know, it's really, really a bad situation, and so we're very appreciative for the discretionary money from the state and from the Fletcher Administration to make that happen, and we look forward to all the improvements over the next few years, but certainly appreciate that road being a lot nicer. Friday night was a great night for those of us who call Lafayette our alma mater. Tyson Gay was honored there that night, and we were able to be with him that evening, and again, the mayor had Tyson Gay Day here in the city, and again, another one of our standout talents, and look forward to seeing him in the 2008 Olympics. I want to also invite you all as council members and the public, on Friday, November 9th, a week from this Friday, the Jesus Prom is held at Southland Christian Church. It is one of the most incredible community events we have. It is a prom held for the physically and mentally challenged, not only of Lexington, but surrounding states come. Last year there were 1,600 special needs folks with 1,000 volunteers, and we have folks flying in from other states now that are replicating this in other states, and I want to invite all of you all to be my guest and my wife's guest at this and come and visit. Vice Mayor Gray was able to come last year. Council Member Myers, Police Chief Beatty will be there, and for those in the community, if you have an interest in serving in this and volunteering in this, you can go to JesusProm.com or you can call Southland Christian Church at 224-1600. And lastly, I wanted to say congratulations to a constituent, a family in the 9th District, whose daughter did something amazing that I'd like to recognize publicly, not only today, but at a later council meeting. Grace Schaffner, who I've known since she was born, is eight years old and just won the state championship in the Academy Riders state championship and is competing in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in the national competition here this weekend, and I certainly wish her well, but I certainly would like, Artie, if you can, for us to coordinate having her come down because it's an amazing achievement, and she's been riding since she was two-and-a-half years old, and having a daughter that is three-and-a-half and is riding, this is the type of thing that's really neat to see. So, again, thank you, Mayor, and that concludes my report. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Dr. Stephens needed to leave and wanted me to make two motions. One is I move to place in the Services Committee the issue of speeding on Shinaway Road from Gainesway to Lakewood Drive. So moved. Second. I have a motion by Council Member Gordon and a second by Council Member Beard to place the item of speeding on Shinaway into the Services Committee. Any discussion? All those in favor, please vote aye electronically. And Council Member Blues, you're voting aye. If you will note that as well, that being the case, the motion carries. And the second item is I move to place into the Services Committee a study of the traffic patterns in relation to stop signs on Providence Road, Colony Boulevard, Romney Road, and Cochran Road. So moved. I have a motion by Council Member Gordon and a second by Council Member Crosby to refer that item to the Services Committee. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll proceed to vote electronically. Those in favor, vote aye. Those opposed, vote nay. The motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Brabant. Thank you, Mayor. I have two items. First one is I move approval of the Neighborhood Development Fund List. Any discussion? Those in favor, vote aye electronically. Those opposed, vote nay. The motion carries. Okay, thank you, Mayor. The second thing is to give a quick update from the Stream Construction and Restoration Task Force. We met last week with our six-month review of the 38 recommendations we gave from our task force last spring, and I wanted to give you a quick update. I would say the results were mixed. I would like to thank the Bluegrass Partnership for Green Community for their fine work as volunteers in furthering the areas of communication and education. We made some good progress there. I'd also like to say thanks to the friends of Wolfhorn Creek for their volunteer efforts in posting pilot projects that are going on in our community. That's another win for us. I'd like to also thank Parks. Parks and Recreation did some good work as well. The other area is we've agreed to reconvene in another six months and see how we're doing, review again, and hopefully we'll see some more progress in that area. And then one sort of tough example that came out at last week's meeting, Mayor, like you helped with, we continue to have a disagreement in our engineering department over how much we can enforce our existing laws. I think it's probably time to move that up to the executive level, and I'd like to ask Commissioner Askew and Commissioner Kelly to get together and hopefully resolve this one way or the other. If legislation is required, I'm glad to sponsor it if that's necessary. Otherwise, I think it's just an interpretation issue. If you could give us some assistance, that would be a big help. Thanks. That's all I have. Thank you, and we'll see if we can't get you a report within a week or two, something like that, to try to resolve that issue. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a couple of announcements. The first is this Thursday, November 1st, Andover Hills will be holding their public meeting at Crossroads Christian Church at 7 p.m. And then also I just want to remind everybody that tomorrow night there's going to be lots of little kids out on the streets and sidewalks across Fayette County, so please use caution while you're out driving home from work. Kids can get excited, particularly when they're jacked up on sugar. They can jump out in front of cars and things, so just be careful driving through your neighborhoods and be aware that there's some sugar treaters out, I think, from 6 to 8 p.m. tomorrow night. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to place into the Services Committee the traffic study regarding a traffic light at the intersection of Mount McKinley and Man o' War. So moved. I have a motion by Council Member Myers and a second by Council Member Ellinger to refer that item to the Services Committee. Any discussion? Those in favor, please vote aye electronically. Those opposed, vote nay. The motion carries. Thank you. And then finally, I'd just like to say that my wife and I did go to the Jesus Prom last year and had a great time and would recommend that to everybody in the council and anybody out there in the community. Thank you. Thank you very much. And it's next Friday, the 9th of November at Southern Christian Church from 6.30 to 10.30. Thank you. Thank you for the team effort there. Anything further from the council members? We've previously circulated a mayor's report with some proposed recommendations. I trust everyone received the updated version that came out yesterday or today, one or the other. I have a motion to approve. Second. Second. Any discussion? Those in favor, please indicate by voting aye electronically. I'm not having any. Those in favor, please vote aye verbally. Opposed, nay. Motion carries unanimously. I have two individuals who've indicated a desire to speak on matters not on the agenda. Adam Jones, Mr. Jones. I don't see him, so we'll move on to Marie Knight. All right. They both apparently left. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? Second. Any discussion? Those in favor, please vote aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you.