# Council Social Services & Community Development Committee - October 18, 2011 > Auto-transcribed civic record · October 18, 2011 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2212 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2212?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2011-10-18 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 6,581 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Social Services and Community Development Committee met on October 18, 2011, at 10:00 a.m. in the Council Chambers, with Myers presiding. The committee addressed three agenda items during the session: a continuation of discussion on leveraging new money for partner agency funding, a discussion with UK around needs assessment, and items in committee. All three agenda items were deferred. The committee took one motion and vote during the meeting and heard one public comment. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on October 18, 2011: * Myers * Henson * Kay * Ford * Lawless * Stinnett * McChord * Ellinger * Lane * Crosbie No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The council took one action during this meeting. **Community Needs Assessment Recommendation** [timestamp: 00:29:06] The council voted on a recommendation to the full council that the commissioner work with the deans of the University of Kentucky's College of Social Work and Martin School of Public Policy to determine a way forward for a community needs assessment. The motion was made by Kay and seconded by McChord. The vote passed unanimously, with all ten council members voting in favor: Myers, Henson, Kay, Ford, Lawless, Stinnett, McChord, Ellinger, Lane, and Crosbie. There were no votes against or abstentions. ## Public Comment [timestamp: 00:37:13] Corey Dunn addressed the meeting with suggestions regarding community needs assessment methodology. Dunn proposed leveraging school social workers and the public school system as resources for gathering data on community needs, with a particular focus on issues affecting children and youth. Dunn noted that students in practicum placements could gain valuable real-world experience through participation in this data collection effort. ## Appointments Vice Mayor Gordon was appointed to the Senior Services Commission. ## Contested Items **Use of Student Interns for Needs Assessment** A heated discussion emerged regarding the employment of student interns for needs assessment work. The central point of contention was whether students should receive financial compensation for their participation. One perspective held that student involvement in needs assessment constitutes part of their academic training and educational experience, and therefore should not be treated as compensable work. Proponents of this view argued that the learning opportunity itself represents adequate recognition of the students' contributions. Other meeting members advocated for providing modest stipends to the student interns. This group contended that recognizing the students' work through financial compensation was appropriate, even if the primary purpose remained educational in nature. The discussion reflected differing philosophies about the value of student labor and the distinction between educational experience and compensable work. No outcome or resolution was documented in the available meeting materials. ## Continuation of discussion on how to leverage new money for partner agency funding [timestamp: 00:03:02] The committee discussed strategies for leveraging external funding through partnerships and internal resources to support partner agency funding. Key participants in this discussion included Myers, Kay, Henson, Stinnett, McChord, Lawless, and Lane. The committee emphasized that a needs assessment should serve as a foundational step before pursuing new funding opportunities. This assessment was identified as critical to establishing a clear understanding of requirements before moving forward with funding strategies. University representatives contributed to the conversation by proposing the use of graduate students and faculty within a structured academic framework. This approach was presented as a potential mechanism for leveraging internal resources to support partner agency funding objectives. The discussion explored the feasibility of both external funding through third-party partnerships and the development of in-house staffing solutions. Committee members considered the relative merits and practical implications of each approach. **Outcome:** The discussion on this agenda item was deferred, indicating that further consideration and development of these strategies will be needed at a future meeting. ## Discussion with UK around needs assessment [timestamp: 00:11:53] University representatives from the College of Social Work and Martin School of Public Policy presented their perspectives on student involvement in a community needs assessment. The discussion focused on how students could contribute to this work while maintaining academic standards and curriculum integrity. **Key Presentations and Points** The university representatives, including Dean Adams, Dean Holt, and Associate Dean Badger, emphasized several important considerations: - The necessity of academic supervision for student participation in the needs assessment - The importance of meeting accreditation standards in any student-involved projects - The integration of internships and community work into the formal curriculum **Committee Response** Commissioner Mills and other committee members engaged with the university representatives on these points. The discussion centered on how to structure student involvement in a way that satisfied both academic requirements and the practical needs of the community assessment. **Outcome** The committee agreed to support collaboration between the city and the universities on this initiative. However, the agenda item was deferred, indicating that further discussion or action on specific implementation details would occur at a later time. ## Items in Committee The committee discussed two matters during this agenda item. **Employee Raises for Pilot Agencies** The committee addressed funding for pilot agencies that provide employee raises. Kay and McChord participated in this discussion. The committee noted that information would be gathered across all agencies before making recommendations on this matter. **Senior Citizen Center Task Force** The vice mayor's appointment of a task force for a new senior citizen center was brought to the committee's attention. Commissioner Mills explained that the Senior Services Commission is already conducting a needs assessment through the 'Ask Lexington' initiative, indicating that preliminary work on understanding community needs in this area is underway. **Outcome** This agenda item was deferred. [timestamp: 00:40:36] --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Recommendation to the full council that the commissioner work with the deans of the University of Kentucky's College of Social Work and Martin School of Public Policy to determine a way forward for a community needs assessment --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's seven minutes after the hour, so we'll go ahead and get started here today. Welcome to the Social Services and Community Development Standing Committee meeting for October 18th. We now have a quorum so we can begin. Could I get an approval of the amendments and the motions? So moved. Second. Any questions? Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? That passes. Okay, secondly, we want to start last week or last month. We left off. We had two motions that were made, and we ran out of time to continue on with those motions. we also started to lose our quorum. And those two motions were around a third party leveraging dollars, and then also another motion was around a needs assessment. So I'd like to start with number two on the agenda and begin to have that renewed conversation about whether or not we leverage new money and if we're going to do that, how we go about doing that. So I want to open the floor up. In the last meeting we tried to make the meeting a little less formal, This time we want to make it even a little less formal than last time. So when we take public input, public comment, we want to be able to ask questions of those who come to the microphone as well. So I don't know if we have a sign-up sheet back there yet, but if we could get a sign-up sheet in the back for those who want to make public comment, that would be fantastic. And I open the floor for discussion. Okay. Council Member Kaye? interested in finding ways to get more funding for the programs that they run. The second question is, if that's the case, there's an interest in essentially finding additional funds, how should we go about doing that? How should the government be cooperating in what ways with the partner agencies? And there's a variety of options, including the government hiring a grants writer, some cooperative arrangements with various other agencies in the community that already do grant writing, working with the individual agencies and organizations. At least that's my understanding of what the question was that was on the table or on the floor, really. Thank you. So is there any additional discussion on how we might leverage money if we want to go in that direction? Are there any citizens out there that would like to speak or agencies that want to speak to that issue? So in the last meeting we had a motion around that issue. Is that motion still going to come forward, or are we just... Did that motion get withdrawn? Come back, or was it table? Actually, it didn't get withdrawn. Actually, one motion got withdrawn because we ran out of time. The other motion didn't get made because we ran out of time. So... Okay. Chairman, so going forward, because we've kind of left this, we've talked about this and talked about this, but in your mind's eye, what is it that you'd like to see this committee bring forward as it relates to this topic? Actually, there's been conversation about whether or not we partner with a third party and have them leverage dollars. Also, another committee member brought up to me a couple weeks ago the idea of actually hiring someone in-house to do that rather than doing a third party. I'm not sure if that person's interested in making that motion or not, but that was another facet of the conversation. So, you know, when I got this, when I put this into committee, my thinking was, and it really goes back to seven years ago when I first got on the council, it seems like every other budget year partner agency funding was taking a hit. And so I'd always been bringing out the conversation, do we look at sort of a formula for funding for partner agencies where we say, you know, X percentage of the general fund is going to be used for partner agency funding, or what is that leverage point? And part of the way that we, I think, need to get to the point where we can make that argument to the council and to the community would be to have the analytical data and the outcomes so that we could show people that this is what your money is getting. These are the changes that are being made in a positive way. So that's how this whole thing got started with doing the needs assessment, doing the outcomes, doing the analytics and things. Then we started to kind of break that down. So at the end of the day, my goal was to find a way to bring more money into the pot for partner agencies to spend to do the work that we need done in this community. And the fact that the economy is downturned, the way that this government takes in revenue based on a net profit tax, an employee payroll tax, our budget is going to continue to shrink, to contract. So it seems to me that if we're going to bring new money in, it would have to be from the outside. And so what I've always said, though, is how we do that isn't what's really important to me. What was important was that we bring new money and more money to the table. So it seems like there's a lot of consternation about partnering with an outside agency to do that. I'm still not quite sure why. I would still like to hear from anybody that's in an agency out there that can add more to that discussion. but really at the end of the day it was how do we bring more money to the table. Our previous discussion, we talked a lot about the needs assessment and so forth. Is that something that you feel comfortable maybe bringing to the full council that we need to flesh out how we would do a needs assessment? I mean, I think that's a separate piece of this. And then from that, it would seem like to me, Chairman, that we would begin to look at what the analytics are around that needs assessment. How do we quantify and qualify what it is when we have these needs, how we're meeting those and so forth. So it would seem like to me that one of the things that we would bring out of this committee is a motion for a needs assessment. Now, how we do that and what's the best way, again, I want to kind of put it back into your court since this is where you have spent a lot of time. And we've got some other folks that want to speak. Thank you. Councilmember Kay? I think the conversation, you put a motion forward. Last time we had a lot of conversation about that. my suggestion was that at that time that we get more information from the commissioner about what they're doing so that we know what's needed and what's not needed. And would it be appropriate at this time if we get a little bit of information from the commissioner about kind of where the city stands in terms of needs assessment and what the need for a needs assessment might be? I think the timing is perfect. Like, Dean Adams just came in from UK. He's brought somebody with him. One of the things that we talked about before, as you said, is sort of moving down to number three on the agenda, for those who are following the agenda, that we were going to have a continued discussion about a needs assessment and how that might happen. So really, if we could bring Dean Adams forward and the commissioner forward, and let's have an open conversation about what is the best way that we could come up with a needs assessment that would suit our community. And so the goal of this right now is to just have an open conversation about it and then see if we can arrive at something that this committee can bring forward to the rest of the council. So Dean Adams and commissioner. And, Dean, if you'd like to bring your guest up also, that's okay. No. Oh. And Dean Holt, I'm sorry. So Dean Holt's also here from the Martin School. I'll just briefly introduce these folks and let them tell you what we discussed. I used to work at the College of Social Work, and I didn't meet with Dean Hoyt, but I did meet with Dean Adams and Associate Dean Badger about how social work might help with the needs assessment, and that's kind of what I alluded to in the last meeting. They really didn't make a concrete proposal. We just talked about how it could be built into a course and perhaps spending some money to pay a professor to develop it in combination with practicum internships, that sort of thing. And subsequent to that, I got an email from them saying they didn't know if it would be possible or not because they're changing curriculums and resources, and weren't sure that Martin School was able to do it at this time either. So I really don't know where we are at this point. The one thing I would say, needs assessments can be very expensive to do, particularly if you get an outside person that comes in. I do support using local universities and local experts to do this if it's at all possible for them to do so. Just because, you know, it's local folks. They know our community. It's good for the educational process. But I will have to defer to them because I don't know what their capability is at the college right now. And Dr. Badger and Dr. Adams have looked into it. So I'll turn it over to them. Commissioner, we have a question for you first. I'm sorry. Before you let them come forward, can you give us a look? This is off the top of your head, so I apologize for that. but can you give us an idea about the range of similar studies that may have been done, whether by individual agencies or by the government? I mean, it seems to me that I guess the reason I ask the question is it seems to me there's a lot of data out there already. There is, and that's why in our initial discussion I felt like the starting point for this would be the first thing you would do is have students do an inventory in the community. Let's go find all the needs assessments that are out there first rather than bringing somebody in and starting from scratch with focus groups. look at those and look for common threads. And I think there was some agreement with Dr. Badger and I that that would be the place to start because I know the government had one in 2008. Community Action has one. I'm sure that the Chrysalis House has done some of that. That's kind of the way we were going to go. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Councilman Stennett, are you on this issue? Okay. Okay. So could the deans come up and maybe, and Commissioner, please stay up also. Can we just kind of start to have a conversation about how we could formulate a need assessment utilizing the expertise of not only the students but the deans at the university? Good morning. Good morning. I apologize if I'm late. We were under the impression that it was 1030, so we were sitting downstairs. Perfect timing. Yeah. Let me first start off by introducing our associate dean, Dr. Karen Badger. Dr. Badger has served the university and the College of Social Work well over the past few years. She served in the capacity of the director of our undergraduate studies and recently accepted my request for her to become the associate dean. So she's still learning the intricacies of the total program, but I thought I would bring her with me because she did, as Beth mentioned, And Commissioner Mills, I'm sorry, we sort of have, Beth was a tremendous worker for the college, and we, as you well know, miss her dearly, and she made a major contribution to the college while she was there. So Commissioner Mills and I, along with Karen and one of Commissioner Mills' staff persons, met to discuss the needs assessment component one day. And this, in addition to the college meeting with others who have also indicated a particular proposal. So I thought it would be appropriate today to, instead of talking about the needs assessment, essentially, to try to talk about our role as a university and most specifically the College of Social Work and how we go about attempting to find learning experiences for our students. And one of the reasons we were receptive to this idea was because we thought that this sort of approach would allow our students to have a great learning experience. And so with that in mind, we have certain expectations and requirements for our students as well as for the agencies, and Commissioner Mills knows about those expectations and requirements. Essentially, because we have certain standards, The Commission on Accreditation has developed what is called our educational policy and accreditation standards that we have to abide by. And field is one of those that we call our signature pedagogy, which means that there are certain rules and regulations that we have to address as we put our students in field, one of which, as an example, is that our students must be supervised by a supervisor who has, in the case of graduate education, has an MSW and more than two years of social work experience. So that's one of our requirements. and that the agency will agree to abide by certain learning objectives as have been identified and reaffirmed by the Commission on Accreditation. So I mention that to suggest to you that while we talked about needs assessment and we really believe that with the appropriate supervision that our students can make a contribution, especially our graduate students, to make a significant contribution if we had a supervisor steeped in these assessments, as well as a person of some people call field liaisons to make sure that they're monitoring the educational objectives of their needs assessment. And the second point is, according to what we had envisioned, without having all of the specific details, we thought that that educational experience would be of quality, especially if we partnered with the modern school, which brings a certain level of expertise to the table. So in a combination of having graduate students from the College of Social Work, along with students from the modern school that would bring a certain level of expertise with supervision, we thought that we could do some of the things that we thought were a part of the assessment plan. And that's what I wanted to mention. Thank you, Dean. Dean Holt. Yeah, I'm William Hoyt. I'm director of the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Kentucky. And I think a lot of what I would say will echo some of Dean Adams' comments as well. I think when this discussion initially started, we were thinking about some interns from both of our programs to be working on these issues. And I guess one thing that I want to stress in terms of what we would be looking for, the internship, as in social work, we have accreditation standards. We have a requirement for an internship. and in sort of looking at the social services proposal that was put forward, and I hadn't seen it, they had discussions with the College of Social Work, I was not involved in those, I must admit a little concerned because it looked as if faculty were supervising it and had a significant role. Now part of the idea, really the internship, is that you're out there, Our students are out there being supervised by practitioners, people in the fields that they hope to be employed in. They've been supervised by faculty members throughout their program, so that's a switch. Now, obviously, one of the things would be that faculty would have some role in guidance in ensuring that the standards are being met, but they are not sort of directly, not at least in the sense of this being an internship, directly involved with the product. I could imagine some suggestions in terms of analysis for our students or something like that. So that was one of, I think, the points that I wanted to bring out, and I think that's, again, along the lines of what we heard with the College of Social Work. in sort of thinking about this, and I will say that in sort of a structure for the curriculum and how this might work, at the moment the Martin School has all its classes in the evening. It's a two-year program. We have a summer course in between the two years, and that's when we do the internships. Now, some of the internships can go longer. we are also at this moment trying to work on a one year program and as part of that one year program we still need a requirement for an internship but we have to structure it different since we no longer have a summer in between and one of the things we want to do and I think this may be similar to some of what is being done in social work and I could envision working well with this is what our intention would be in that program would actually be to have group projects over the course of the year. And my idea on this and sort of what we're putting forward is to partner up with agencies and organizations. Of course, there would be a number of them, but this would be an obvious candidate for that type of thing. And so I actually think that there may be some real opportunities there. And I guess better yet, from the council perspective, we have no intentions of seeking compensation for students involved in that. It's really because they're not working in full time, but they would have this over a course of a year. So I think there may be some opportunities there. In terms of the needs assessments and outcomes, I guess there are a couple things that I'd like to stress there. One is using students versus expertise of faculty. Extensive faculty role requires compensation. We have contracts. We have responsibility to the university to seek external funding. And you would be competing with other funding, external funding that we do, and we do quite a bit of that. So I think that has to be, to the extent that you want to draw on faculty time, that's got to be a consideration. I do also, again, thinking about not as much the needs assessment, but there was discussion of outcomes, too. I think it's important, and of course our students don't want to be involved, We don't want our students being involved in deciding outcomes. We can be involved in collecting data that they would be involved in collecting data to help analyze and evaluate how organizations, what outcomes they have and stuff. But it strikes me that that is a discussion that has to be between the council and the organizations themselves to decide that kind of thing. But I would envision our students' roles, collecting information, collecting the data, surveying, doing some analysis. And, again, I think our faculty can be, if some, assistance in that, but limited, but some. So I think those are more or less along the lines of College of Social Work's comments as well. Thank you very much, Dean. Commissioner? Yes, sir. Could you – the goal here being the three entities kind of pull this thing together, does that sound like something that you guys could then, if a motion came out of the committee and it was passed by the council, the three entities get together and figure out how this would happen? I think everybody agrees that starting out with the assessments already done, and also doing the inventory of all the agencies out there and the work they do would be a great starting point. Do you think we can work within sort of the framework that they just kind of outlined? I would be happy to meet with the universities to do this, but I will say I'll defer to them because they will need to let me know. As far as time frames go and things, I'm not really sure that's something we can dictate to the universities because they're going to have to build it around their curriculum and their student capacity and their faculty capacity. But I would be more than happy to meet with both programs and see what might fit with them, and then we could bring something back to you. Because realistically, I'm going to have to talk with them about how all this fits into their university world. It would be my preference if we could work it out to do it with universities because we're building future leaders here. We have students here that are interested in urban county government. I would like to see the students come to these chambers, frankly. I think, you know, we have local experts, but how the mechanics and how it's all going to work out, that's all just real muddy to me right now. Okay. Thank you. Does Assistant Dean Badger want to add anything? Then we'll go to questions for Council members. I'm Associate Dean Karen Badger with the College of Social Work. And the only thing that I wanted to add is I wanted to also reiterate what Dean Hoyt said regarding the structure of the practicums. In the graduate program, we also have required practicums or internships, and the students complete a total of 600 hours in the field in those two internships. We have a program change occurring that is beginning actually this, that has begun this fall, that requires students to be in the same placement across a year. In the advanced standing model, which means that those students have had an undergraduate social work degree from an accredited university and met GPA requirements in social work courses as well as overall GPA, they do their practicums in the spring and the summer semesters. In the other cohort, we have some options because they actually do an extra practicum. We have a community and social development concentration that directly relates to this project. There's actually a community needs and assessment course that the graduate students would take the semester prior to entering the field. So that it's a real, we did see this as if this could be worked out as a nice collaboration and a nice opportunity for the students to be able to apply their learning in a meaningful way. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman McKay? Thank you, Chair. Given what I've heard, I think there's a major opportunity for mutual benefit, and I would like to make that motion that this committee recommend to full council. We support the commissioner in working with the two deans represented here to determine a way forward that would meet their needs and our needs. And I guess I'll just add that I'm encouraged by what I've heard, that there is, I think, a big opportunity. So move. Is there a motion in a second? Is there any discussion? Yeah, we've got a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? That passes unanimously. Thank you very much. And I guess we'll just wait to hear back from you guys, maybe the next meeting. Okay. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I had a couple of questions I would like to ask before the people leave. If that's okay. Dean Adams, can you hold just one second? Councilman Lane. Thank you. First, I'd like to ask Commissioner to come to the podium. Commissioner. I'm sorry. And let me apologize for maybe a couple of questions that will be naive or whatever. But this is my first meeting, but there were a couple of questions that came to mind. So I'd just like to sort of put things in perspective. The first question I had is approximately how many organizations would need to have a needs assessment conducted on them on behalf of the urban county government? We wouldn't be doing it agency specific. We would be doing it community wide. Rather than doing individually with each agency, what we're going to look at is social trends in our community. And where do the biggest service gaps seem to be? Where does the biggest need seem to be that we're not meeting? So if an organization put in an RFP for funding, that's not really evaluated by this. It's just as part of the assessments we'd be doing would just be more macro assessment of the whole community's needs? Yes, sir. And the purpose of doing that is we can't fund everything, so we may find that the biggest needs are in five areas. And so when we go to distribute money from partner agencies, those five areas, if you're a program that's going to meet one of those areas, you're going to get a higher score than someone else. That's the purpose of doing it that way. Okay, that's very helpful. Do you feel that all the assessments have to be done simultaneously, or could you do the assessments on like a biennial arrangement where maybe two or three are done in one, like the odd year, and then two or three are done in an even year? It would be like a two-year sort of outlook. so that we wouldn't overload the university with everything all at one time? I think that that might be very prudent because once you set these priorities, it's going to take a while to impact those. So you don't want to change that path consistently because it's going to be hard for agencies to know where we're heading. The one thing that they could do in the interim, say we selected aging services as an example, they may look at an adult daycare as being a need as opposed to in-home care. And they could say, give higher points to this specific service as to that one. But as far as doing an overall needs assessment, that's not something you want to continually redo because it's just going to create confusion. Would the student interns, and maybe you can answer this or somebody from the university could answer, would these students, would they be graduate students or would they be, so they've already got an undergraduate degree, so these are going to be well-trained and very competent people to do the assessments? Yes, sir. They would be graduate students. As a matter of fact, some of these students are already working in the field as undergraduates, so they will be experienced people. These guys are going to handpick people for us, I'm pretty sure. And as I understand from the comments earlier, we cannot pay the interns. That's part of their core curriculum for a master's degree. Is that correct? Or we can pay the interns? I mean, I would be supportive of paying the interns and not trying to get free services. And the other question I had, I would be in favor of paying the professors, too, to perhaps review the assessments and maybe make some kind of analytical comment about those so that we know we're getting really high-quality information in which to make our decisions. Absolutely. I think Dean Hoyt referred to that. you can't ask faculty to give their time free. So that's something I'm sure we'll get into in our discussions is how this would be structured, whether it's going to be individual interns or a group project in a course, and how they would need funds to move forward. Okay. Well, I'm sorry to hold you guys, but I think it answers all my questions. And as I said, I'm new on the committee. We just restructured a committee, and I wanted to get up on the curve. I think what I hear today is very good, and I would be supportive of that. Thank you all very much for hanging around a few more minutes. Thank you all. Are there any more questions for the group before they leave? I would just make one additional comment, and that is that I'm always in favor of, if we can find a way to pay the students at least a small stipend, I'm always in favor of that as well. So if you want to at least kind of build that into your proposal, that would be fantastic. And then if we can't do it, we can't, but we'll do our best. I appreciate all of you coming today and look forward to what you guys put together for us. Thank you. So now, Council Member Lawless? I just had a quick comment about the paying students stipend. I think it's nice when we have the money, but when a student is a student intern, just like student teaching or social work practicums, it's a class. They're earning credit for that. and I think they're not paid to take any other class. So it's not that I'm against it, but when there's money available, that's fine, but I also see it as a class. And I did a 60-hour master's in social work as a single parent working full-time and on my own paying for it. Nobody paid me to be an intern, and I considered it part of my classwork. It was my learning experience. It was like any other class, so thank you. Thank you. Are there any more comments on that? Okay. So now we can move forward to if we want to kind of reignite the conversation about leveraging money, and maybe it's that we just wait until the need assessment comes back or at least the proposal comes in and then go from there. Is that sort of the will of the committee? I see a lot of heads shaking. Okay. So then I guess we can move on to other items in committee. So on the back page, we've got unless, let me, is it okay with the committee if we open it up? and have public comment? Okay. Is there anybody that would like to come up and speak? Yes, sir. Is there a... Yes. To the microphone, please. Anyone else that wants to come up when he's done, could you state your name and your address, and then we'll give you a few minutes. My name is Corey Dunn. Address is 633 Eureka Springs, apartment A. I have a question about the needs assessments. Exactly how they're going to go about doing the needs assessment. Because you've got a lot of social workers. Well, let me go back. Last year we had a student doing her practicum through a social worker at MLK. And I think that if you're using schools like colleges, you could also utilize the public school system because they have – there's a social worker at pretty much every high school, middle school, I believe. I'm not sure about the elementaries. So if you want to do a public – if you want to do an assessment about the needs and children are part of the needs, which is one thing that I'm really big on is the children. I just think that if they utilize the school system, that they can get a lot more information because I don't know exactly how they go about doing assessments, but I know a lot of the needs in the community can be met through the students because it's 36,000 kids in Fayette County Public School System this year, if I'm not mistaken. Those kids have parents and everything. So, I mean, one of the things that they're mentioning is using college students. If they can work with the school students and see what's going on in the school system, you know, they're talking about the widening gap with the grades and performances as far as, you know, the minorities as opposed to everyone else. So it's like I believe utilizing the school system would be one way that they could do it because the social worker that we had, well, the student that we had last year that was doing a practicum with our program, she said she learned a lot more that she wouldn't have necessarily known about community, about the at-risk teens and the immediate needs of people in the community as opposed to just doing the stuff that she was learning at school, you know, the technical stuff. And then it's one thing to have the book knowledge, but to actually be able to apply it and know how to apply it when, where, and why in the community is different. So that's just one of the thoughts that I had on it as far as, you know, using students and just doing practicums. If they can do it within that system as well, then maybe they'll meet more needs of everybody in the community because most families have children, but that's just one thing that was on my mind. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner, that's actually a pretty interesting comment to me that we have school social workers. when you talk to the two programs can you at least entertain how we might be able to glean some information if nothing else from the school counselors and school social workers to see you know absolutely we're doing an inventory of needs that's a good point that mr dunn made there's a school report card there's a school equity council i'm sure they've done a study we can say what have you got kirby neal has also done a youth survey which has come before our use commission and I would include those things when we're doing an inventory that's what we need to do is cast a wide net so I appreciate Mr. Dunn's comment excellent thank you Commissioner any other further comment okay the committee will turn to the last page and items in committee we've got community development block grant we've got this whole this is another issue that is pertaining to this topic And that is, you know, we had the conversation this year during the budgeting about what we do with agencies that are going to provide raises to their employees. So that's been put into committee. What do you guys want to handle next as far as the committee goes? Councilman McKay? Thank you, Chair. I guess I'm not clear on the recommendation about funding pilot agencies who give raises. I thought we were going to get more information about the other non-social service agencies and the way in which they are funded and give raises and so on. Is that information still coming back to this committee? I guess I'm not clear what happens with that. Yeah, I guess when we get ready to work on that, what we'll do is have our staff gather that information so that we're looking at it across the board, yes, because it's more than just social service agencies. Okay, so the policy recommendation? Well, we'll bring the information back into the committee to talk about how all the different agencies are doing things. And then out of that, we'll have a discussion about what we want to recommend to the full council. And it might be that we just recommend that we don't even take that into consideration. We may take it into consideration and deal with it in multiple different ways. Okay, thank you. So really, first thing, like you said, is to get the information, and then we'll discuss that in this committee and see if we want to make a recommendation to the full council. Thank you. Thank you. So I will work on getting that for the next committee meeting. And then, Commissioner? So on here we have the vice mayor appoints a task force to look at a new senior citizen center. I'm not sure why that's actually in committee. If the vice mayor is going to appoint a task force, then certainly our committee doesn't need to look at that. But do you have any thoughts on that, or are you guys probably already working on that issue? We have a senior services commission, which was appointed by the mayor. It was revitalized several years back. There are 22 members and four ex-officio members from across the community that deal in aging services. And I don't know that Vice Mayor Gordon was going to do a separate task force, maybe so. She is the chair of that commission along with Bernie Vonderheide from the community. And I'm sure that if a new senior center will go forth, it will come from that commission. If you'd like, I can tell you what we've done so far. We're trying to do sort of like a needs assessment. That word keeps coming up. But AARP has a model called Ask Lexington where you go into neighborhoods and you ask specific questions. And so we can find, and then we have developed a one-page survey about specific aging needs. Christy Stamball did a lot of work on that. We went to the neighborhood council with Ms. Tibbs, I think, last week. and we're training facilitators to do the Ask Lexington questions. And so that will be done on the 29th of October and then we're going to be invited to anybody's neighborhood that wants us there so we can ask questions and what are the aging needs and yours and when we get that back that will give us some data to talk and dream about a senior center in these hard budget times. It's tough. We're talking about public-private partnerships at this time but it's all just in the planning stages. Okay. Could you provide some information for us electronically? I know my office has a newsletter, and I'd love to include that information in our newsletter and send it out and maybe help you advertise that. I'd be glad to do that. Thank you. Are there any questions for the commissioner? Okay. Okay. So for next meeting, we'll try to have on both the discussion about partner agencies and their funding with respect to giving raises, and then also the community development block grant and the consolidated plan. Is there anything else for the committee to discuss today? Do you have a motion to adjourn? Motion. Second. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. We're adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Heat it up, can't stop now What up, cutie wop, short, short's cooking, yo I know I'm spoken