# Counci lSocial Services & Community Development Committee - November 29, 2011 > Auto-transcribed civic record · November 29, 2011 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2265 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2265?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2011-11-29 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 17,550 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 November 29, 2011, at 10:00 a.m. in the Council Chambers, with Myers presiding. The committee addressed four agenda items during the session, which included approval of previous minutes and motions, discussion of University of Kentucky student involvement in assessing community needs, an informational presentation on the Community Development Block Grant and Consolidated Plan, and consideration of a policy recommendation regarding partner agency funding. The committee took five motions to a vote and heard one public comment. While the approval of minutes and the discussion on student involvement were approved, and the Community Development Block Grant presentation was received for informational purposes, the discussion on creating a policy recommendation about partner agency funding was deferred for future consideration. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on November 29, 2011: * Myers * Henson * Kay * Ford * Lawless * Stinnett * McChord * Ellinger * Lane * Crosbie No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included five motions and votes on the following matters: **Approval of Minutes** [timestamp: 0:00:00] A motion by Stinnett, seconded by Lane, to approve the minutes from September 27, 2011 passed by voice vote. **UK Deans Needs Assessment Project** [timestamp: 0:00:00] A motion by Kay, seconded by McChord, to approve a recommendation to support the Commissioner in working with UK Deans to conduct a needs assessment using student interns passed by voice vote. **Joint Needs Assessment Budget** [timestamp: 0:05:38] A motion to approve the budget for a joint needs assessment project between the UK Martin School and College of Social Work passed unanimously. All ten members voted in favor: Myers, Henson, Kay, Ford, Lawless, Stinnett, McChord, Ellinger, Lane, and Crosbie. **Section 108 Loan Program Recommendation** [timestamp: 0:59:14] A motion by Ford, seconded by Crosby, to recommend consideration of the Section 108 loan program for CDBG projects passed unanimously. All ten members voted in favor: Myers, Henson, Kay, Ford, Lawless, Stinnett, McChord, Ellinger, Lane, and Crosbie. **Withdrawal of Motion** [timestamp: 1:50:05] A motion by Kay, seconded by Ford, to withdraw the recommendation to treat partner agencies as individual budget items was withdrawn. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included approval of several financial allocations and grants: **Joint Needs Assessment Project Grant** The University of Kentucky Martin School of Public Policy and College of Social Work received $35,000 in funding for a joint needs assessment project. **Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Appropriation** Lexington Fayette-Urban County Government was appropriated $1,904,438 in CDBG funds to support public improvements, housing, and services. **HOME Funds Appropriation** Lexington Fayette-Urban County Government received an appropriation of $1,321,739 in HOME funds designated for affordable housing development. **Emergency Solutions Grant Appropriation** Lexington Fayette-Urban County Government was appropriated $92,314 in Emergency Solutions Grant funds to support homeless services. ## Public Comment [timestamp: 00:00] Corey Dunn addressed the meeting with a suggestion regarding collaboration between the city and the public school system. Mr. Dunn noted that the public school system employs social workers and proposed that the city could leverage this existing resource to strengthen its needs assessment process. He further suggested that such collaboration could provide meaningful learning opportunities for students. ## Contested Items **Use of Section 108 Loan Program for CDBG Projects** The committee addressed the potential use of the Section 108 loan program for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) projects. While the motion to consider the Section 108 program received unanimous approval from the committee, the vote masked underlying concerns among members. Several committee members expressed worry about the long-term debt implications of utilizing this loan program. Additionally, members raised questions about the necessity of establishing a sustainable repayment plan before proceeding with such financing mechanisms. **Treatment of Partner Agency Budget Requests with Employee Raises** A heated discussion emerged regarding how to handle employee raises within partner agency budget requests. Council members debated whether to adopt a formal policy governing employee raises in the budgets of partner agencies. The discussion centered on three main concerns: the need for greater transparency in how such raises are determined and approved, the appropriate timing for considering employee compensation during the budget cycle, and the risk that politicization of funding decisions could occur if raises are not handled through a consistent, formal policy framework. No resolution on a formal policy was indicated in the available information. ## Approval of Minutes and Motions [timestamp: 00:00] The committee approved the minutes from the September 27, 2011 meeting without dissent. Speakers Stinnett and Lane participated in this agenda item. No further discussion occurred regarding the minutes. The outcome of this item was approval. ## Discussion about University of Kentucky Student Involvement in Looking at the Landscape of Community Needs The committee discussed a proposal to conduct a community needs assessment utilizing student interns from the University of Kentucky's Martin School of Public Policy and College of Social Work. [timestamp: 0:00:00] **Proposal Overview** The initiative outlined a three-semester timeline for the project and included plans for data mining activities. The proposal emphasized joint involvement from both faculty and students in carrying out the assessment work. **Key Participants** The discussion involved multiple committee members, including Beth Mills, William Hoyt, Ike Adams, Karen Badger, Steve Kay, Jay McChord, and Ed Lane. **Outcome** The committee approved the recommendation to support the initiative, moving forward with the student-led community needs assessment project. ## Community Development Block Grant and the Consolidated Plan Director Irene Gooding presented an overview of the city's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), HOME, and Emergency Solutions Grant programs [timestamp: 0:07:43]. The presentation covered funding history, administrative costs, and the consolidated planning process that guides the allocation of these federal resources. **Key Topics Discussed** The presentation included details on how the city administers these three federal grant programs and the processes used to consolidate planning efforts across them. Gooding outlined the funding mechanisms and historical allocation patterns for each program. **Concerns Raised** Committee members raised several concerns during the discussion: - **Project Fragmentation**: Committee members expressed concerns about the fragmentation of projects across multiple funding streams and programs. - **Rising Administrative Costs**: There was discussion about the increasing administrative expenses associated with managing these grant programs. - **Section 108 Loans**: The committee explored the potential use of Section 108 loans as a mechanism to accelerate project implementation and funding timelines. **Participants** The discussion involved multiple committee members and staff, including Paul Schoninger, Kevin Stinnett, Jay McChord, Peggy Henson, and Chris Ford, in addition to Director Gooding. **Outcome** This agenda item was presented as informational, providing the committee with an overview of current CDBG, HOME, and Emergency Solutions Grant programs and their administration. The discussion highlighted areas of committee interest regarding program efficiency and project delivery mechanisms. ## Discussion on creating a policy recommendation to full Council about how partner agencies are funded [timestamp: 1:20:38] The committee discussed whether to adopt a formal policy regarding how partner agencies are funded, with particular focus on employee raises. The discussion involved Paul Schoninger, Steve Kay, Kevin Stinnett, K.C. Crosbie, Ed Lane, Chris Ford, and Beth Mills. After conducting research and engaging in debate on the matter, the committee examined whether raises for partner agency employees should be subject to a blanket policy approach or handled differently within the budget process. The committee concluded that raises should be treated as additional information presented during the budget process rather than being subject to a single overarching policy. This approach would allow for case-by-case consideration of raises within the broader budgetary context rather than applying uniform rules across all partner agencies. A motion to formalize this approach was introduced but subsequently withdrawn. The outcome of this agenda item was deferred, meaning the discussion did not reach final resolution and the matter was postponed for future consideration. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Approval of minutes from September 27, 2011 - **Motion** — passed: Approval of recommendation to support Commissioner in working with UK Deans to conduct a needs assessment using student interns - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of budget for joint needs assessment project between UK Martin School and College of Social Work - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Recommendation to consider the Section 108 loan program for CDBG projects - **Motion** — withdrawn: Motion to withdraw recommendation to treat partner agencies as individual budget items --- ## Full transcript packet. So at this time, I would just like to turn it over to Dr. Badger and Dr. Hoyt and let them explain to you all how this is going to roll out, if that's fine with you. Absolutely. Okay. And Dr. Badger, I'm sorry that I didn't get the doctor part on the front end. Good morning. Good morning. And just to provide a brief summary of the proposal, we have submitted a joint proposal between the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration and the College of Social Work, and the time frame for completion of the needs assessment would extend basically three academic semesters, beginning in the fall 2012 and extending through December 2013. We did conceptualize this to consist of three phases. The first one to be reviewing and mining data from existing needs assessments and reports that we can gather from partner agencies, and this would look at both social service and economic-focused agencies. And we would then identify emerging themes and patterns, using that information to inform the design and implementation of a needs assessment of constituents of the area. The third semester would be spent analyzing that data and then disseminating that via a verbal presentation as well as a written report. We do also envision that at the end of each semester, progress on the project would be shared via an oral report. We could also do a written summary. We outlined the responsibilities of the College of Social Work and also the Martin School, and we would be mining the data according to areas of expertise and then using what we have gathered from that process to develop one needs assessment and then participate together in disseminating that to constituents. So I think the staffing has been outlined as well as the suggested budget requirements, and I'm going to actually turn this over to Dean Hoyt to see if he'd like to add anything from his perspective. Okay, thank you. And will someone be able to go over the budget piece of it for us? Yes. Are you able to do that? Yeah, Dean Hoyt can do that. Dean Adams could not be here today. He's leaving town, so he does send his regrets. Okay, thank you very much. Dr. Hoyt? Thank you. Yes. Well, thanks for having this opportunity. I don't have a great deal to add. We are excited about having this opportunity. Let me talk a little bit about the Marden School and what I would envision the students' role in the Marden School. We are in the process of developing and hopefully operationalizing a one-year program beginning next year, actually beginning in the summer of 2012. and as part of that, because it's done within the course of a year, 11 months, we no longer have sort of the traditional internship for those students where they would spend a summer. So this kind of project is exactly what we're really looking for, is a group project. So our students would be engaged in this throughout their course of their studies. These would be graduate students in our Master's of Public Administration or a Master's of Public Policy program. So they are our graduate students. And we will work in conjunction with, of course, the College of Social Work on this. I think we've discussed how we might allocate different parts of the project. But one of the things that we do want to ensure is that this is one cohesive project, that there's not just scattered things. So we envision engaging with them, and we think that will be a valuable interface for our students. In terms of a little bit about budget, I guess, first let me back up and say that we will have a faculty member assigned to this project to oversee it. In addition, so we have a budget requirements, a joint budget of $35,000 to successfully complete the project. Some of that would be to finance the faculty participation, $5,000. Some of the day-to-day operations that we might envision, that would be $2,000. staff I have in mind I'll be honest we talked about PhD students and or staff for each of the for the college of social work or the Martin school I have a staff member with a master's in public policy that I think would be ideal for this and so that's one of the things that I would like to actually transit her from her current operations to heading up this I believe the College of Social Work was thinking more of probably one of their PhD students. But regardless, we have, and that would be their primary work assignment for us. So that's what we have in terms of staffing. And I guess I welcome any kind of questions you might have. Okay. Thank you very much. I'll open the floor up for questions. I guess you guys have done an excellent job. All right. So are there any questions about the budget piece of it for council members? Can I get a motion? Second. All those in favor? Aye. All right. I'm sorry. Discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Those against? That passes unanimously. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Do you want to say anything to wrap up? I want to thank the council for taking a look at this. I would also like you all to let you all know that this budget covers four semesters. So it will be the entire. That budget is not for just one year. That's for the entire project. So two years, and hopefully this needs assessment is something that we can use for three or five years before we revisit it so that the partner agencies don't have a moving target. Thank you very much. One question for you. Yes. When do you anticipate getting started? Fall semester of 2012, which would be like August 25th of next fall. Okay, so we don't need to worry about budgeting in this fiscal year. It's really beginning next fiscal year. That would be correct because budget year starts July 1. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. George, I'm not sure it may have been corrected. I wasn't the second on that motion. You were? I was not. Okay, it was showing. Council Member Senate. Is that correct? I don't know if you were. It was. Council Member Ellinger seconded. Thank you. Okay, moving to the next item on the agenda, we have Director Irene Gooding. and we brought the Community Development Block Grant and Consolidated Plan. We've got a plethora of information from Ms. Gooding. And if you could please start with your executive summary and kind of go through each of the programs. Do you want to do that or do you want to do the PowerPoint? I've prepared a PowerPoint, which ought to make it all very clear. It should address all the points that you requested. Okay. Do you know about how long it will take to get through the PowerPoint? I'm sure I can do it in far less than an hour. I mean, it's not going to be 15 minutes. I have 150 slides. But I think some of them can go quickly. Some are photographs. I wanted to show you some of the work we've done, some of the work we're going to do that's planned for the future. What you have, what's been presented to you is an overview. You have a packet that includes this overview. For the most part, this is the information that's given to our citizens every year at the beginning of the year so that they can see what we're doing, see what we've done, see what funds we have available for the coming year, and to those organizations that want to make applications can make them at that point. Is there a problem? Dr. Gideon, I'm hearing from, I think, my committee members. If we could maybe shorten the presentation just a bit. I'll try. I'll certainly try. Okay. So let's start. Mr. Chair, I think we should have a time limit on the presentation. No offense to you, but we do have normally a 15-minute maximum on the presentation. And I wasn't, I understand that for council meetings, but I wasn't advised of that for this meeting. And that's my oversight. And I was given several points to address. And so we'll go through it rather quickly then. Let's do this. Could you, at the risk of being rude, I don't mean to be rude, but can you go through your executive summary that you gave us, kind of an overview of each one of the programs, and maybe start there and then see if there are questions? Well, let's start with the PowerPoint, because that does have all that information on it. Okay, then we're going to limit you to 15 minutes, though. That's fine. I'll stop when 15 minutes is over. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Lexington Fayette-Urban County Government gets funding every year annually from three separate programs. These grant programs are the Community Development Block Grant Program, the Home Investment Partnerships Program, and the Emergency Shelter Grants Program, which will now be the Emergency Solutions Grant. We are an entitlement city under the CDBG program. It was authorized by the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974. It does not require a local match. The HOME program, we are a participating jurisdiction. We are required to provide a 25% federal match. This has legal authority from the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act, which was signed in 1990. The Emergency Shelter Grants program was Title IV of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. It requires a 50% match, and it will soon become the Emergency Solutions Grant based on the HEARTH Act, which amended the homeless program that was signed into law on May 20, 2009. Consolidated plan. And federal regulations require that we, every year, prepare one document in which we state how we will pursue goals for all community planning and development programs. The overall goal of community planning and development programs to be covered by the plan is the development of viable urban communities by providing decent housing, suitable living environment, and expanding economic opportunities, principally for low- and moderate-income persons. Federal regulations for the consolidated plan have been provided to you in your packet. They're codified at 24 CFR Part 91. Functions of the plan is a planning document. It builds on a participatory process. It's an application for funds. It's a strategy to be followed in carrying out HUD programs. It's also an action plan that provides a basis for assessing performance. It requires that we have a citizen participation plan in process, that we have one and that we follow it. And the contents of the consolidated plan, we get to choose every three or five years when we want to do a full plan. And we've chosen every five years. I don't know of a jurisdiction anywhere that chose anything but five years. As part of that plan, we have to do a housing and homeless needs assessment. This is a description that's in your packet of what's required in that needs assessment. It's based on data that HUD has provided to us or data sources that HUD has approved. It also includes homeless needs, special needs populations. We also have to address lead-based paint needs. We have to estimate how many houses are possibly lead-based paint problems and how we're going to address those. It includes a housing market analysis, general characteristics of the housing market, public housing, needs, assisted housing, those that are not public housing but are assisted, A homeless inventory includes special need facilities and services. We also have to discuss the barriers to providing affordable housing in the community. And included is a strategic plan. We have to produce a strategic plan for the five-year period that brings the needs, the priorities, the specific objectives and strategies together into a coherent strategic plan. And that five-year plan is included in your packet. Specific housing objectives are also required for all of the following, for housing, for homelessness, for special needs populations, community development, cross-cutting issues. We also have to provide a monitoring strategy. we have to describe how we're going to ensure long-term compliance with all the program requirements. And along with that is a one-year action plan, which has to be provided each and every year, where we simply identify those activities that we're going to carry out in a single planning year. And that's what becomes the application for the year. In preparing our consolidated plan, we use something called the consolidated plan management process that's been provided to us by HUD. If you look at our plans, you see this special format that they have provided to us to make sure that we don't miss any of the key points required by the regulations. And we also use that plan for our annual performance report. Highlights of the 2010 consolidated plan, which is the most recent five-year plan, is that we, the goals in the consolidated plan include the provision of safe and affordable housing for low and moderate income persons, homeless persons, and for persons with special needs, public improvements, neighborhood revitalization in low and moderate income neighborhoods, renovation of buildings and sites in the community that are used for the provision of social services to lower income. low-income persons and provision of services that will positively impact social and economic conditions for low-income persons. We also describe our monitoring activities. We have to make sure that we monitor all of our sub-grantees to make sure that they're in compliance with the federal regulations. This is just a synopsis of our housing needs in our five-year plan. Our owner-occupant population was about 59%, lower than the state, lower than the nation. 26% of our owner-occupants are low-moderate income. 69% of our rental households are low-moderate income, provided with definitions of low-moderate income. Cost tends to be the most significant problem facing low-income Lexington residents. We have two criteria. One is called a severe cost burden, which are those people who are paying more than 50% of their income for housing. Moderate cost burden are those people who are paying between 30% and 50% of their income for housing. For all renter households in Lexington, more than 10,000 of them are severely cost burdened, and almost 9,000 are moderately cost burdened. Owner households are less severely cost burdened than renter households, and that's consistent with their income. those people who are considered extremely low income, which are less than 30% of area median income, almost two-thirds of them are severely cost burdened. And also, if you look at the assisted units in the area, there are almost 7,600 of them. This includes public housing, Section 8 housing, other federally assisted units. If you have an estimated 22,400 renter households with incomes that are less than 50% of AMI, you see that only 34% of those can be accommodated in assisted housing. The rest of them are in a private market situation and are most likely either cost burdened or severely cost burdened. The fair market rents in 2009, since then they've gone up and they've now come back down, so this is probably consistent. This indicates the kinds of incomes that are needed to sustain fair market rent in this neighborhood. This comes from the out-of-reach study. Our specific housing objectives were to ensure the provision of safe and affordable housing opportunities, both rental and home ownership, for all low-income persons. We were especially interested in people who were extremely low-income and those who were very low-income. And then there was a priority for the development of home ownership for people who were over 50% of median income. I wanted to increase rental housing units, increase home ownership rates, provide for housing counseling. We had a special section on the South End Park Urban Village, which is Newtown Pike Extension, based on the record of decision that the government signed. This government will be responsible for trying to ensure that new housing is constructed on that site. rehabilitation of existing units neighborhood stabilization program housing for special populations a homeless strategic plan which we take from Chickie also public improvements since 1997 we've been working in the area called Northland Meadows Arlington which is north of Loudoun south of Newtown It's between Broadway and Winchester Road, roughly in that area. We thought this area would probably take 20 years. It can't be done in 20 years, but we've been doing it piece by piece. And this is the schedule during the five-year period. We're now at work on Morgan Avenue. These are the costs that we estimated that this would take over the five-year period. We also included public services. Public services is by statute limited to 15% of the federal award plus our program income. The eligible uses of CDBG funds. CDBG is a very wide, broad-based program. It's not limited to a lot of activities. You can do public improvements, public services, housing. There are also some ineligible activities. General government expenses tend to be ineligible. Political activities, anything in this building is generally considered ineligible. National objectives. HUD requires, and this is by statute as well, over a one- to three-year period, at least 70% of the CDB expenditures have to be devoted to activities benefiting low and moderate income persons. This is a primary national objective. Home funds are used only for housing and only for housing for low income persons. Almost every expense that would be related to the development of housing is eligible under home. qualification is affordable rental housing. We're going to skip this because this is a little complex. Community housing development organizations, at least 15% of our funds have to be given to a special type of nonprofit, which is called a community housing development organization. We have two that we recognize here. One is the Fayette County Local Development Corporation, which is a subsidiary of the Urban League, and the other one is REACH. Emergency Solutions Grants Program. We're going to skip this part. But the eligible activities, ESG, is only for homeless. We can operate shelters with it, and we can prevent people from becoming homeless. And I consider one of the major changes in the new law was that at least 40% of the funds have to be used to prevent homelessness or to bring people into permanent housing, not just operate shelters. So that's a change from 30%. They also have to participate in something called the Homeless Management Information System, which is an online database where they have to provide some client-level data. These are previous use of program funds for five years, 2007 through 2011. we've sort of categorized how your funds were used for administration, planning, public facilities, park improvements, public improvements, housing and services. Administration, you see the dollars that we spent in our division, dollars for the Human Rights Commission, planning dollars, public facilities, parks improvements that we provided funds for, Public improvements, the portions of that area that we did, housing, Realtors Community Housing Foundation, assisted 113 units. We also, in our office with our program, provided 145 single-family units with rehabilitation activities. The services, projects for the homeless, volunteers of America, assisted. That's the dollar amount, how many people for each program, and it's in your packet. All of these were for homeless programs. Number of people assisted, dollars spent. Services, we had some youth projects. These are some more youth projects. Other services, there was an Hispanic homeownership counseling service provided by Community Ventures, and Central Kentucky Radio Eye provided low-income people with radios. This is the home program. This is the long view since 1993, since the beginning of our program. These are the units that we have used home dollars to develop in this community. This is a fairly long chart. We're just going to flip through this to the end. You can see how many dollars we invested, how many units. We invested over $31 million in home funds, and we created over 2,000 units. And these are pictures of some of our units. Pictures don't show up very well. This is the Hope Center, the new Hope Center at West Loudoun Avenue. This is Falcon Crest Apartments. This is something the Housing Authority developed. This is the OY property before it was redeveloped, just before it was torn down. And this is what's being built now, a new housing complex for low-income families. This is Russell School before. And over on your left, the part that's finished is the Russell Community Services Center. The part on the right is what the Urban League is redeveloping into housing for elderly families, 27 units for elderly families. This is St. James Place that's been developed in two phases. This is the before project on Market Street and after. is where we put 10 units of low-income housing into a very wealthy neighborhood. Public improvement projects. This is Northland Metals, Arlington, Highland Park Drive. Before you see the deteriorated sidewalks. This is after it's completed. Shawnee and Brian before. These are after Morgan Avenue before, and it's in process now. This is where it's in progress, and this is the next phase that we will be doing, Parkview and Oak Hill Drive. They don't have after pictures yet. Emergency Shelter Grants Program these are the funds we received and how we spent those funds Hope Center for Women Hope Center for Men, Salvation Army, Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program and then Adult and Tenant Services did homelessness prevention and these are the people they served the numbers of people who were served with these programs and this is the money we have received from the federal government. CDBG started in 1975 with slightly more than a million dollars. ESG started in 1989. As you can see through the years, CDBG program has not really even kept up. It's not even thought about keeping up with inflation. This is, as you can see, the chart. CDBG is the upper line, starts rising in the 70s, decreases in the 80s, goes up in the 90s. If you see in 2010, there was a sharp increase and then a sharp decrease for 2011. Home is the green line, and then the line below that is ESG. It's been pretty level funding. I also wanted to tell you about the continuum of care funds that we, not the government, but in this community that we do receive from HUD. This is their homeless program. It comes from the Supportive Housing Program Shelter Plus Care Program. And Chickie develops this. and went to the website and gathered up the dollar figures that these programs have received in the last five years, program by program. The total is almost $8 million in the last five years. We also received funding from the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program. We are not a formula city for these funds. We've had to be competitive, and so over the years we've managed to receive almost $8 million for these programs. And this one's very important. This is what the 112th Congress is in the process of. As you can see, the 2010 enacted level for CDBG home and then the homeless programs, which is the ESG and also the continuum of care. You see the level in 2010. You see the decrease. CDBG cut 16 percent for 2011. Home was cut 12 percent. Slight decrease, slight increase in homeless programs. There was a 2012 President's Request and then the House and the Senate for 2012, as you can see. And it looks like, the way it looks like now is just based on what they're doing right now, that home would be cut to a billion and CDBG would be cut to slightly less than three billion. So these will be considerable decreases for us. one more time to handle. Our consolidated planning process, when we started it, we started it on September 5th with an announcement that the process had begun. We put a legal ad in the newspaper. We mailed letters to agencies, churches, neighborhood associations, also to council members. We had a first public hearing September 19th. Gave them a deadline for applications, which was November the 18th. We plan to have all of those reviewed by January 10th. We'll send them to the administration, which hopefully they'll be done by January 31st. We plan to publish a draft plan by March 1st, put a legal ad in the paper, mail letters, the availability to everyone, and we'll have a second public hearing on March 5th. Deadline for citizens' comments would be April 2nd. This will be reviewed by council. It's two sessions in April. We'll go to HUD by May 14th. It cannot go there any later than May 15th. That's when it's due. These are the application directions. You have an application in your packet, but I'm just going through it. This is what we tell people. We tell them how much we had last year. We expect cuts. and then this is the information that we ask them for, and this is how we're judging them, the applicant capacity, the quality of the project, the need for the project, and the big thing there is that in the strategic plan, their operational feasibility, and this is what we request from them. If it's a service, it has to be an expanded service. We can't supplant where services are concerned, so they have to tell us how it's a new service or an expanded service. We ask for their mission. We ask for their organizational chart, board of directors, et cetera. They have to meet a CDBG national objective, how it benefits low- and moderate-income people. tell us how and how they're going to identify those people. Project overview. Define the project in terms of measurable outcomes and performance objectives. Have to tell us their history with federal funding. Their experience, their staff qualifications, budgetary plans for future needs. If they can't count on this, They have to tell us what their relationship is with other community partners, give us a project budget, give us a project narrative. Then after we send the plan to HUD, and also that's just the CDBG, the home and ESG applications are in your packet as well, and they are somewhat like the CDBG. Once we complete the plan, we submit it to HUD, and after they approve the plan, we have subrecipient agreements with the nonprofits that have been approved for funding. They're required to submit progress reports on a quarterly or an annual basis. They have to tell us how many people they're serving. They have to tell us how they've met their performance measure. We have a responsibility for reporting to HUD in two formats. One is the online system, which is called IDIS, and then the other is the written report, which is the CAPER, which has been placed on the website for you. And we also have to notify everybody that we have done this report and tell them how they can get a copy. And then we're responsible again for monitoring everyone out there and also monitoring ourselves. And finally, the cost-cutting regulations. We have to make sure that we comply with National Environmental Policy Act. We have responsibility for clearing all our projects. We're required to affirmatively further fair housing. We're required to follow anti-discrimination laws. The federal prevailing wage law, we have responsibility for monitoring. compliance with that. The National Flood Insurance Program, the Lead-Based Poisoning Prevention Act, and then finally the administrative requirements and cost principles. I didn't go over too much, did I? That was absolutely perfect. This is probably the first time since you've been director for sure that this plan has ever really been discussed in this kind of detail before the council, am I correct? Yes. So we appreciate your presentation. I know it went just a little bit long, but I appreciate the committee's leniency on that. We have some questions, and then we've asked Mr. Schoeniger to do a little research on how other cities are doing their comprehensive plan. And so I want to start with Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Chair. Ms. Gooding, thank you for giving us this presentation today. I just want to go back and recap exactly what I think we've heard here. we get three different pots of money from the federal government. CDBG, the home money, and then the emergency shelter grants, correct? Yes. And do you have the totals in each of the three we received last year? Yes. I see them in there summed up, except for CDBG, I think. It's on page three of the presentation. CDBG, $1,904,438. ESG was $92,314, and home was $1,321,739. So it's a little more than $3 million. Okay. Because obviously these costs, I remember when we were getting a lot more than that, you know, back in 2005 and 2006. So obviously the federal government is reducing these expenditures. I don't see that anywhere. One, I notice our administration costs have jumped considerably in the last couple years. What happened there? We have started to add more of our staff time to this program. And we also, the other thing that we added, we increased our commitment to the Human Rights Commission. It's basically a financially troubled organization at this point. And, again, we have that responsibility to affirmatively further fair housing. And one thing that we thought we could do there would be to fund a housing investigator for that program. Well, I'm trying to figure out our funds have decreased from the federal government, but our administration costs have went up by $100,000. I'm not following the logic there. How can our administration go up when actually we're receiving less money to distribute and utilize? Because we were more reliant before that on general fund dollars. As we have been squeezed with the general fund, we have had to charge more and more of our time to federal funds. So it's been a budgetary more than anything. It's taken money away from the general fund. Yes. Because, you know, the way I see it is that's money we're taking away from our community. And, you know, as long as people understand that those are federal dollars, and I guess there's a certain percentage that we can't go over in the administration. What is that view? It's 20%, and we still are well under that. There are communities out there that challenge that 20% constantly. They charge, I mean, you know, the government will charge the program rent. Sure. So there are those communities that do that. So we've always been well under 20%, and we still are, even though we've gone up. Okay. On your rental numbers, those are obviously very startling numbers for our community to understand. And where did you get those numbers, and did you take into account the student population here in Fayette County on rental units? For those numbers, what we're looking at is some data called CHAS data that HUD provides for us, and they take it from the American Community Survey. So it's information that they take from the census. So is student housing included in that? To some degree, some student housing probably is. because obviously in communities like Lexington versus a community that doesn't have a college, there's going to be dramatically different data on rental units and the availability of them and the cost. And some of our newer units that are being built here obviously are higher cost, versus they're geared towards four people living there and they're college students. So I'm worried about that skewing the data one way or another, and I don't know how you take into account that information. It's very difficult. And I guess I can't. I think I'm kind of HUD puts us all in the same playing field, and they provide us with the data. Okay. Which I can pass on to you if you'd like to see it. No, I understand what you presented today, and unless you have additional data, it would make a little more clarity to it. By all means, forward it on. But the student population probably is one of the reasons that our home ownership rate is so much lower. As compared to other cities our size? The state and the nation as a whole. We're much lower than they are. And then, you know, I know I've talked to Council Member Ford about this, and it's something that has always bothered me, and that's the Arlington Meadows project. I feel like we're piecemealing the community by dripping funds into that. Has the discussion ever been around let's bond this thing and do it in bigger chunks to help the community? Because the longer you keep breaking up one street, and, you know, we said it would be 20 years, this project will be 40 years, and the cost of it has skyrocketed on us. So is there not a way to get a plan, and I know our CEO is here, to let's fix this area once and for all and get a better sense of doing bigger projects in there? I think that has been discussed. There are a couple of things that kind of slow down the project naturally, and one of the problems, and this is a problem that we're not able to deal with here, And this usually requires utility relocation, and we are completely dependent upon the utility companies for that. And we don't have a whole lot of effect on their schedule. I mean, they do it when they're ready. And there's no one that can appreciate that more than anything, but I will give you one example. Last year when we did the South Limestone Project, we got people to the table because we asked. And I don't know what the CAO's thoughts and what the administration's thoughts are, but it's time we take a look at that area and help get those people, streets, gutters, whatever it needs to be done, and bigger chunks. We're dripping this money into this area, and it's just not right to make them wait 40 years for some of these projects. This question was brought up about 14 years ago when they started it, and I asked the same question. And my question was, why can we bond it and use just some of our CDBG money every year to pay the bond off. And laws looked into it, and the concern has that they thought we could do it, but I could get more details. But they're afraid if the money ever went away from CDBG, we may be in trouble with that. But then we'll probably have to use general funds. Well, but that's the risk we have to look at taking. That's something that I'd be glad to bring back up. And things have changed in the last 15 years. I wish we would have went ahead and bonded it for a couple of council members back then that wanted to bond the whole project. I think if we would have done it back then, it would have been $11 million instead of $30 million. And it goes back to your point, and that's something we'd be glad to look into. Because in any other parts of the city, we're bonding these projects, and we're doing them. But I think being with that question, but the only problem is the federal government, we may not be able to use it. And I'd be glad to find that for you. Yeah, if we can do that, I think that would help the area and release some frustration there, too. And then the last question I had on the home funds, we've had a lot of discussion on this body about affordable housing. And the money we're getting to the $1.3 million, as I understand what you're in your presentation, 15% goes to two outside agencies to provide affordable housing services. No, not necessarily. Okay, for home funds? Yes, I think that was in your slide. Most of the home funds are used for home ownership and they are used for rental. Rental housing is developed by a variety of housing developers out there. And the home ownership funds primarily are REACH right now. We have used community ventures in the past, but the primary provider of homeownership program right now is the REACH program. So that program is getting the majority of the $1.3 million? No, they get actually only about a third. They do not get a majority. Because there are two agencies you identified in here that are? Those are our CHODOs. They are special nonprofits. They are called Community Housing Development Organizations. It was a little program that was unique to the home program. The federal government wanted us to create capacity in local organizations, and this was the way they did it with these special nonprofits, and we have two of them. Most of the money goes to the Fayette County Local Development Corporation, which is the Urban League. They do not do home ownership with these units. They do rental housing in low-income neighborhoods. And all that comes out of the home money, though, right? Okay. All right. Thank you so much for clearing that up. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Chair. Just I want to thank you, Irene, for bringing this presentation. I want to echo Council Member Meyer's sentiments that it's good to finally get all of this in one thing and in one shot. A couple of things I was going to ask, Council Member Stenet has already addressed. I guess I was confused when we were talking about the five-year plan. Is that for the consolidated plan, or does CDBG have its own five-year plan? How does that work? The five-year plan includes all three programs, and it is the needs assessment part. The strategic plan part is done on a five-year basis, and then annually we do an action plan, which explains basically how we're going to use the annual awards from the federal government to address some of the needs that we have identified in that five-year plan. Okay. Is it similar to how we do in the MPO where you have the projects list in order of priority and then here's the unfunded list that if we had more money? Is that a fair... It's, you know, it's not unlike that. Okay. Okay. I think that one of the things I want to make sure I go on record and say is that, you know, Richard, when you were on this council sitting right here in this seat, you know, we talked about this Arlington Meadows situation. And this is a prime example of how good intentions of, well, we're going to space this out over a time period, has escalated the cost from $11 million to $30 million. And, again, it's very unfair to the neighborhoods. And I have a similar situation on Clay's Mill where if you're not committed to the project and getting it done, it will just drag itself out and cause a great deal of frustration. I also would echo what Council Member Stenet said, is that when you ask the utility companies to come into a meeting, organize it, South Lyme is a prime example, that we got that done, got it done under the time frame. And, you know, it was an excellent project. Now it's a showpiece. I think I'd like to see the same thing done down here in this area of town. And I'd love to see a plan where we could come out of here and say this is what we're going to do. We're not going to drip and drab this thing. The other thing, and I know you've seen this, Irene, in some of the transportation enhancement grants and some of the other, the CMAC grants and things like that, is that when you count on, well, it's going to be about this much, and then all of a sudden Congress says we're going to cut it or we're going to change this or whatever, those plans go away very quickly. So I think that having a mindset of execution, getting it done, moving it off the plate, instead of having these things just in pieces and parts. I know I'd like to see us adopt that mentality on projects. But again, I want to thank you for educating us and bringing this forward. I would love to see Council Member Myers, after Mr. Schoeninger reports, I'd like to hear how they do CDBG and see if there's anything that we can do to maybe help these folks have a very strong formula or a framework of moving projects through, getting them off in a five-year fashion. So I'm looking forward to seeing what he has to say, but I'm prepared to make some sort of motion to that effect at the end of this. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilman Henson. Thank you, Chair. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Irene, for being here. And I think it was a very, very condensed presentation, but I appreciate it. I probably would have gotten more out of it if we could have broken it up into sessions or whatever, but I do appreciate you flying through that. I did have a question. I know back in, shortly after I came on the council, I had requested CDBG funds for sales road sidewalks, but I guess it's an enormous cost, and so I was just curious about what happens with those requests. And I think for sales roads certainly qualifies because of the diversity in the population, the low-income area, high bus route, biggest bus route in Fayette County. Many, many pedestrians walk along that corridor. Sidewalks are in terrible shape. They're not up to code. Is there anything these funds could do to help with that? Our public improvements projects come from the Division of Engineering, and it's usually the result of an engineering study. The Northland Meadows-Arlington area was the result of a large study that was done of that area. Part of Versailles Road would be eligible, but not all of it. Right. Income eligibility has been the problem there, and also that we probably don't have enough money. Right. And I want to follow up on that, too. There are other neighborhoods that are on the list after we get through with this project that take 30 years. American Bully Avenue is one of the areas that qualified, and I assume there's some other ones in some other districts. And so it becomes a priority, and a lot of these neighborhoods have been on this list for years and years, and they're probably going to continue on there. We can put the sales over, but I can't promise you how far it will go up, because you've got a lot of neighborhoods that are in front of them that have been on there waiting on the waiting list. But we could get that list to you, but I know American Bully was one of them, and I don't know who the other was. We always think American Burley will be subsumed by U.K. developer types, so we keep waiting for that. But if you'll look at the areas we've been in since 1975, the Kenwick area, we did that one. Addison. And you can look at that. Addison, we did that one. We did the Chestnut Street area. We did the Detroit, what is that, the area off, both areas off Winchester Road. So those areas were virtually without sidewalks, without stormwater improvements at all until we used these funds. So I know it's dripping it, but over the years we've covered a lot of the low-income areas in the city with public improvements. I appreciate that. They made a big difference. I guess, you know, I just look at Farsales Road as being a major corridor into our city that needs some desperate attention. And we have the Hope Center for Women there. There's Senior Citizens High Rise. There's low-income affordable housing, Chrysalis House. You name it, it's on there. There are many, many pedestrians that don't have a safe place to walk. So every chance I get, I make my spiel about that, Richard. Thank you. And if you look at it, you'll notice that it's going to be very expensive. If you look at Versailles Road, there's nothing cheap about that. I agree, and I think that the best chance I have as a study is being done or a request for funds to do a study to see exactly what the cost would be. But there are some very good projects being completed, and I appreciate what you've done. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Chairman Myers, and thank you, Irene, for your presentation, for sharing this information with us. Just a few comments and questions that I want to raise. I'm very thankful to Council Member Stenning and Council Member McCord for their support for an area in my district that has long benefited the Meadows, Norvland, Arlington area. Let's kind of start there. And I think there's a major difference, and it's going to also lead into my comments about the administrative costs that are required and needed to support the work that your division does. But there's a major difference in funding sources when we're talking bond funds that this government may issue, general fund dollars that we may put towards a project, versus the federal dollar. because he who has the goal makes the rules, and the federal government has a plethora of rules and regulations and funding requirements, things that you must do when you use their funds. And so that the speed at which you would embark upon a South Line project perhaps will never be the speed that you will be able to go forth with a federally funded low-income neighborhood community project. So that's important. One thing that I would encourage us to do, though, however, on that is if the council and I do encourage by whatever means we possibly can from a policy standpoint, expediating projects in the Section 108 program is an opportunity that I think, Mr. Chairman, that we should consider. And I will briefly ask Ms. Gooding to briefly describe Section 108. Well, I'll try. We've had this discussion. The Section 108 program is a program from HUD, the provider of these federal funds, but it allows you basically to take advances upon your allocation to proceed on with projects. Other communities have done it. It may be something that we may want to consider doing because when you look at the Meadows, Northern, Arlington area, for example, there are streets in that neighborhood, and the residents know exactly when they are scheduled per the plan to have their improvements done. And many of them have patiently waited, and many of them continue to wait. Other needs, however, will arise, such as Vassell Road sidewalks and other improvements in our community. But you don't, as Irene mentioned, you don't want to take away a commitment in order to provide an additional need that may come up. So the Section 108 program, something council members and committee members, is something that I think we should ask Ms. Gooding and her division to help us explore. and Paul as well on behalf of the council to see how we may be able to use our federal funds, which we remain in good standing, to help Project Speed Aid along. Irene, do you have anything that you want to add just to that before I make other comments? The Section 108 program allows you to borrow against your future funds. You're not borrowing from the federal government. What HUD does is go to Wall Street and borrow on your behalf. It's backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, so it's not a local obligation bond. You can borrow up to five times your commitment, your annual commitment right now, the year you borrow it, which would be $1.9 million if we borrowed it this year, times five, which is almost $10 million, and you have 20 years to pay it back. You can pay it back out of your future CDBG allocations, or if you were borrowing it for an economic development project, which was really what it was intended for, you could lend the money to someone who was going to create jobs, and then they would pay you back, which is ideal. But the purpose of this is to allow entitlement communities, which are fairly small, like ours, to do a major project. Some of the entitlement communities in Kentucky are less than $5 million a year. So they basically, with their little allocation, don't have an opportunity to do a major project. But with 108, they can. And I want to thank you for that. And Mr. Myers, I know I'm probably running over my time. I have a few more comments to make. But as such, I would, seeing the support around the horseshoe to move projects forward, I would make a motion that this committee would recommend that we consider the Section 108 loan program and have further follow-up at this committee about that opportunity. So moved. We've got a motion and a second. I would ask Mr. Schaumacher to come forward and talk about how other communities put together their plan. Would you be willing to wait until after we hear that before you make the motion, or do you want to go ahead and go forward? I think it's wise of us to go ahead and move forward, because we know that other communities have utilized it well, and it's just for us to consider. It's no obligation. It's just for us to take this one step forward to go towards that. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Okay, the floor is open for discussion. We've already got a second. So we're in discussion now. Yes, I have a question. Council Member Crosby? I mean, I guess we can consider anything. Are you going to put a timeline on when you hope this to come back before us? Or, I mean, I wouldn't be opposed to considering something, but I would want to know exactly. I would say at the very next, if the chairman can get it on the committee, I think it will be important as we prepare into our budget deliberations that will start as soon as we get back from break. So at the next committee, to keep it moving forward. That was what I was getting to. Are you trying to look to tie this in before we do budget? Okay, thank you. And could I add to that? Would you be in favor of asking the administration to come up with the numbers to complete this project? Is that what you're looking to do? No, sir. So I think that would be premature in respect to the Meadows-Northern Arlington project. But I think this is just an attempt to help us from a policy standpoint how it may move other projects forward. So you just want to look at the feasibility of using Section 108 rather than focusing on 108 on this particular project? That's correct, Mr. Chair. Just from an overall broad policy standpoint, how Section 108 may help us in our entitlement with HUD. Sure. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? That passes unanimously. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Just the last few things I want to mention. In regards to the administrative costs, in the context of a project, I know particularly with our housing and other development projects, our community is really brought away when we have the symbolic things that celebrate projects. For example, ground breakings, and then the project designers and architects and folks get on site, turn brick and mortar, and then we come back and open the doors and we have a ribbon cutting. A lot of work on behalf of our government through this division occurs well before and well after. speak very briefly, Irene, if you will, on the before, which is the environmental and the pre-planning requirements that you guys, well before a project is undertaken, it has a lot of, and those of us that do projects know the burdens of the environmental process. And then lastly, really importantly, speak to the monitoring, because long after that ribbon cutting and that door is open day one, So we have obligations for years to come to ensure that those projects and those investments are maintained administratively. One of our responsibilities, and I touched on it, was compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act. And HUD does something with its grantees that I don't think any other federal agency has been able to do. It passes on the responsibility of compliance with that law to its jurisdictions. Our mayor becomes the certifying official for environmental assessments that we conduct. And so we have to do our own environmental assessments for all of our projects. That's for a housing rehab. It could be a ramp that's being built by the Realtors Community Housing Foundation to go out there. We have to take a picture. We have to make sure that this project is not going to be out of compliance with the historic preservation people. When we do streets and sidewalks, we're doing a full assessment, and it's a little bit time-consuming. with our construction projects. We also have compliance with the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage law, which means that we have to make sure that our contractors are paying their employees the amount of money that they're supposed to be paying them. We have to get their weekly certified payrolls. We check those payroll reports against the wage decision, make sure they're in compliance. If they're not, it's our responsibility to make sure that they're paying those people correctly. We also are monitoring. We wanted to discuss monitoring. Monitoring is especially onerous with the home project. If we give a developer, like the Housing Authority, funds to build new apartment buildings, new construction, We have a 20-year relationship. We are monitoring them for 20 years to make sure that they are renting to the people who are eligible, low-income people, that they are renting those units at the rents that they're supposed to be renting them at. And we're also inspecting the units to make sure that they are compliant with the building code. Irene, thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing me the extra time. Definitely appreciate the valuable work that you guys do on our behalf. Thanks so much. Thank you, sir. Director Gooding? One more person. I want to first start where you just left off. When it comes to that monitoring that we have to do, for example, in that 20-year project, is there a way that we can push the cost of that back to that project manager? So if we give the funds to the housing authority to build that property, is there not a way that we can build in a fee to them to do the oversight? I don't think so. I think if you do that, you're going to just give them more money up front. If they basically kick money back to you, And that's probably not the right word. I don't think you can do that. Can we look into that? Because it's not their responsibility. It's ours. Okay. What if we've got it from the perspective of if you want us to give you this money so you can do this project and you have a responsibility, we're going to hold you. The federal government holds us responsible for making sure that things are correct and accurate and they're running to the right people. I'm not sure there's anything that says that we can't hold them responsible for paying for that piece of it. I can check. I can check. Okay. And then briefly I would ask the question, when you talked about when someone submits a plan to be funded and you said that they needed to show the relationship to the strategic plan. Who creates the strategic plan? It actually gets created in our office. So I guess I basically have created the strategic plan. It's based upon consultations with all the people that we're supposed to consult with. It's based upon needs that have been verbalized over the years, and it's based upon the data. Okay. My final comments, I want to kind of augment what Council Member Ford talked about, an example being this North Arlington project. When I, many of you know, when I first came down to the government, I was working for Councilman Wigington. And one of the things that he said to me that always hit home was that he believed that local governments have abdicated their responsibility in certain parts of cities by using CDBG funds to do things that otherwise are really the responsibility of the local government. And Councilmember Stennett focused on the fact that other projects such as this were bonding and were getting done. and I believe that Councilman Warrington hit on something that's always rubbed me wrong. I think that our government, over the last couple decades since this program was started, abdicated its responsibility. If you look at the city when it merged the governments, and then you go back and look at many of these folks are in the city proper before the two governments merged, and now what we've done is said these folks have lived in the city proper all their lives, paid taxes all their lives, but now when they need the improvements to their community, we don't pay for it. We look for an outside source being CDBG. Well, it's being cut every year, and as you said, it's very difficult. You take a project that was $11 million when it started out, and now it's $30 million and it's still not done over 14 years. I think it's because this government's abdicated its responsibility to do things in certain parts of the community and use this fund to do it. And so I would sure enough be in favor of saying that we need to look at this project the way that we do any other project. And particularly when we look at the storm sewer fees that we've enacted, it seems to me that one of the things we ought to look at with the 108 is can we borrow that money up front, get a project like this done, and then use the storm sewer fees to pay off the bond or to pay off that loan back to HUD. And so that's one option. Another option is just to look at not even using these funds for this project and use these funds for other things like affordable housing and just put this on the list of things that need to be done, that stormwater fee, and get it done. So I want to be clear, Councilman Ford, my efforts are to get it done, not to string it out and put it on a list that goes to the bottom, okay? It's to get it done. And it's in progress now. So when we put it on that list, we want it to be first on that list and get it done. That's my goal. That's my intent. So with that, could you check on those two things? If you have any comment on them, feel free to comment. Sure. Okay. And could you have that back at the next meeting also? If you can get it that quickly. I'll try. Sure. Okay. And certainly confer with law on that as well. Okay. Please. Thank you very much for your presentation. Any other questions for Director Gooding? Okay. if we could bring our expert researcher, Mr. Paul Schoeniger, forward. And before you get started, Mr. Schoeniger, I'd like to say that we have a sign-up list in the back for anyone who wants to have public comment. And I forgot to say that up front. So, Mr. Schoeniger. Thank you very much, Council Member. Memo that I did for Council Member Meyers is in response to a request he had for me to review the consolidated plan and to try to come up with a review of the consolidated plan process and also to try to come up with a best practices model. Let me just say, I reviewed our annual plan as well as the last couple of consolidated plans that we put together. I also looked at some HUD documents that were available on the process. I also reviewed some other communities' consolidated plans. In addition, I interviewed representatives of three recipients that received money from the annual plan, Habitat for Humanity, Community Action, and the Urban League. I guess let me first address the questions about using 108 and debt service. While that really wasn't a charge of my memo or a charge from Council Member Myers, I did note that three of the communities, Austin, Texas, Tucson, Arizona, and Syracuse, New York, used a 108 loan fund, and in one case, Tucson. It was almost a revolving loan for them. And then two other communities, or two communities, Charlotte and Tucson, also used some of their annual payments as debt service for a couple community projects. So I think they're both available to you and should take advantage of when you can or when you should take advantage of them. But I do want to talk about the best practices model. It's really a misnomer for two reasons. It's probably a misnomer. One, the whole process is federally prescribed. As Council Member Ford indicated and Irene indicated many times, there's a federal process that you have to prescribe to or you're in default with federal regulations. And the other concern about a best practice is that each community's housing and homeless needs are so unique to that community that if you follow another community's model, you may not be reaching the goals and objectives that you had locally. But what I did find, particularly in Asheville, North Carolina, and St. Paul, Minnesota, they used a performance measurement indicator that both tied back to their strategic plan goals and objectives but also tied back in and also tied into their annual recipients. So every program that came before the annual plan or in the annual action plan, excuse me, was both appraised in their application and also appraised throughout the process. And that's really the thing. And I know Irene and I have talked about this a few times. that's the thing I got most out of it, that it looked like particularly St. Paul, to a certain extent, Charlotte, or Asheville, excuse me, North Carolina, but that's something that we should probably maybe take a look at here in tying the annual plan into a performance measurement matrix. You can also tie it into the needs assessment that you folks are undertaking with the University of Kentucky to a certain extent, as well into the annual partner agency review that the administration is undertaking this year as well. So if there are any questions, I think I'm done. Hopefully I haven't confused you all. Thank you, Mr. Schoeniger. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Paul, for your work in looking at other areas. in regards to how do I want to say this let me just get it out there it's my belief and I know that you perhaps did not study this but it's my belief and I think it's our common knowledge that not all communities do a good job of administering the HUD dollars and compliance. And I feel, my personal belief is, I know we all do, we believe that we do. For the long and short of it, our government always remains in very, very good standing with HUD in regards to putting the dollars on the street and making sure that everybody's following the rules. even to an extent that I know that Irene's division gets along very well with all of us out in the field that do the work, but sometimes they have to be the bad guys just for the purpose of ensuring that this government fulfills its obligation to the federal government. Did you examine that, or can you speak to the difficulties that others may have that luckily we do not have in that complaint? See, I did not look at that. You're correct that some people are out of compliance, and I think generally Lexington has been in compliance. But there are numerous examples of communities, both in this state, that have been on occasion out of compliance. But that's not something I looked at. But it's a critical component. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. McCord, Councilman McCord. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks, Paul, for taking a look at this. I think, Chairman Myers, one of the things is a report out to the full council that we probably should do is to ask the administration to come back with how they could streamline that, tie that to measurements, something for us to respond to. Here's how it would work better for us to five-year plan this. So I don't know if it's in the form of a motion now, but I think as you report out that we make a motion at that time to ask the administration heading into next year's budget cycle in 2012 to bring Council a plan as to how they would like to see that. Does it fall under the new planning commissioner's role? Does it fall under Director Gooding? How's the best way to do that? I think they would probably have a better idea than we would. And so I don't think necessarily we need to make a motion right now, but I think when you report out that we need to craft that motion. Okay. I do have a question, though. Mr. Schoeniger, towards the end of your comments, you kind of made what could almost be maybe three motions. And you talked about tying the performance to it, tying it to a needs assessment, and you said one other thing. Well, tying it to the administrative review that the administration is doing for the partner agencies for this coming year, for this coming budget year? Because the question I would add to that is when you look at, and I will say up front that Director Gooding has done a fantastic and phenomenal job of keeping us in compliance, not only with this grant but all of our grants. I mean, that's one of her strongest suits is making sure that we stay in compliance, and I think everybody would agree to that. Now that we're talking about looking at 108, and you said that clearly other people are using it in the way that we're talking about using it, so it should be available to us. It seems to me there may be an opportunity to look at the strategic plan now and really determine, okay, if we're, from a council perspective, going to set some kind of policy in place with regard to Section 108 and we look at taking some of these things like a North Arlington road project and other funding that, if you will, then how do we use these funds to the best of our ability? And when I look at the gravity of the presentation that Director Gideon provided, there's so much information about homelessness and low-income housing and things that are in there. I wonder if the Affordable Housing Task Force looked at all the different reports that you have and all the different information that you have as they put together their report. And I'm wondering if there's not a way that if we other fund some of these projects that some of this money can't go directly to, for example, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. And I know that none of us really maybe have the answer to that question right now, but as we look at this as a whole, maybe that's something that we can look at as well. when we look at putting together a strategic plan, do we want to think big and think about how we can use this fund to address some other critical needs in our community and come up with a vision around this fund moving forward? And not to say that we don't have a vision now, but if we can streamline some of these projects, fund them in other ways, and then focus this money in another area that we don't have a funding stream for yet. So could you? The only part I want to address, the 108 program is a loan, so it has to be paid back. So there has to be a debt stream or a service stream to pay off that loan. One of the things we asked them to look at is whether or not we could use some of the stormwater fees. I heard that comment. Depending on what the project is. Assuming it's stormwater related, I believe that's eligible. Okay. Okay, so I'm asking the committee now, Council Member McCord said, maybe rather than make a motion, I just report out in a way I want to get it right when I report out, or do we want to make a motion that we, I guess, let's do this. We've got some questions out there, and they're going to come back at the next meeting. Can we wait to report out on this when we get the information at the next meeting and see if that kind of informs us better? Okay. Okay. So any other questions on this? Thank you, Mr. Schoeniger, for a fantastic presentation and research that you did, as well as Director Gooding. If we can go to the fourth item on the agenda. in one of the work sessions we had a discussion regarding whether or not we should have a policy around our partner agency funding with respect to agencies that provide raises for their employees and there was some discussion of whether or not we needed a policy and I asked Mr. Schauniger to do some research on this and I will let him go through his research and then I'll kind of comment on And it's not a real big research project, I know, Paul. To call this research would be very much a misstatement. Council Member Meyers and I had a real brief conversation recently about partner agencies. And as you recall, this came up at the end of the budget process when you guys were considering whether overriding the mayor's vetoes or not. There seem to be three options that the council has. when an agency comes in, an outside partner agency comes in, including in their budget, our employee raises. Number one, do nothing, or almost do nothing. It's just another piece of information you have when you consider the partner agency's request for funds. And I'm actually giving these in the order that I would recommend following. The second is you would reduce that agency's budget by whatever the value of the raises are. If the raises totaled $5,000, you would reduce that partner agency's request by $5,000. And third, reject the request completely because it included raises. And let me tell you why. I think it should just be one of the tools you look at, and it shouldn't really be considered very strongly. Number one, you and the council gets accused of micromanaging internal agencies quite a bit, and to micromanage an outside partner agency that you might not even provide much of their financial support to, I think could cause both you and the community and the partner agencies some real concern. But also two practical matters. on occasion employees do outstanding work and they should be rewarded as such. Hopefully that's not surprising to you, but on occasion employees do outstanding work. And third, particularly with social service organizations and maybe other partner agencies, that the entry salaries are so low that there isn't any reason, assuming they're doing adequate work or in some cases outstanding work, that they shouldn't be given a raise, particularly if they came in on the low end with an understanding with the partner agency that over time we're going to build your salary up to a comparable market level. So those are my really brief thoughts on the matter. And I will say this aside. I was a little concerned about this when it came up, that at least one council member was astounded or concerned that he or she, and I don't remember which council it was, council member, excuse me, it was, that they were concerned. They weren't aware that there were raises built into the partner agency's budgets. I will tell you the budgets, and hopefully you folks have been aware of this, the budget requests have been available on our floor, on the fifth floor, since January. And looking at the budget requests, it's not very difficult to find out the salaries and if, in fact, the salaries ever increased from one year to the other. I think in one case I looked at animal care and control, and it took me about 15 seconds to determine if there were any raises or not. So I was a little concerned that a council member wasn't aware that, at least in a couple cases, there were raises included in their budget requests. But those are my thoughts. I'm happy to address any questions you might have. Okay, before I go to the council members, Mr. Shagri, could you go through your three again and give us, is the first one the one that you would recommend? Yes, sir. The first one is basically to just consider this as additional information. That's what I consider the do-nothing. Based on just that information, you do nothing to that organization's request. Second, that you reduce that budget by an equal amount. If the value of the races is $5,000, you reduce the request by $5,000. And third and finally, you reject that budget. Again, I would very strongly, you folks consider, the council consider option one, that it's just another piece of information for you guys to consider out there. Thank you. Councilman McCord. I guess a couple things. Paul, I tend to lean towards your recommendation, but I guess CAO Maloney, do you have any sense on this, what you're feeling as far as when an outside agency has put increases in salaries as part of that? Do you all consider that at all? No, I think what Paul was saying, I agree with what he has to say. Okay. You know, Chairman Myers, I think one of the things that happened during this budget process was that we were in the middle of a veto situation, and it was brought to our attention that the administration now had 11 partner agencies that had increases in salaries and so forth, And a number of us were unaware that that information was sitting there or that document was sitting there or whatever. And it was a very 11th hour type thing, and it kind of, I think, brought about this discussion. So I think what I would say is I agree with Mr. Schoeniger that we handle this as additional information. I do think that there's a certain consideration of when an $8 an hour employee is getting a raise versus the executive director who makes $100,000 gets a raise, that it sits differently with council members. But I think that that needs to be something that is pointed out and that we can see and make an individual decision as we go through the budget process. And if we've got heartburn that the executive director is receiving a substantial increase in hard economic times, we can just not fund that. That's a good point. And that's probably something that we probably need to do a better job as staff for you folks, make it more transparent, particularly through the links? I don't think it's transparent. I think it's just there's so much information, and we're running against a clock that, you know, from April until June 15th, I don't think that that's necessarily something that is a matter of transparency, but I do think if you can highlight it, that that would be very helpful. And I want to follow up Beth, and they're looking at those now. I mean, when we get those applications, we're going to ask those questions. So there will be more. And that's one thing that I appreciate. We have changed the application process. We've put more teeth into it. And we are going to ask a lot of questions, those kind of questions. Well, again, I think, Chairman Myers, my stance is that we look at it as additional information, but that it is highlighted so that as we go through the budget process, that council members would know exactly where the money is going and to whom. And they don't have to hide it. They don't have to bury it somewhere else and play games in that regard. But at the same time, what I don't want to have happen is what happened this year in the budget cycle where we're sitting in the middle of a veto vote, and you find out information that you didn't have going into that meeting. So, again, if there's a motion to that effect, I would certainly support it. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Chair. I, too, agree with the first option, although I think I would call it something other than do nothing. I understand that. I think it's a matter of our not needing a specific policy, but of having a heightened awareness of that issue when those applications come forward. The other thing I was concerned about is that when we asked for the information after the fact about which agencies had, in fact, included raises in their budget, We got that information from the social service agencies. We did not get it from the other partner agencies. I think that would just, as a piece of information, it would be useful to have. I know it's out there somewhere. So if we could just aggregate that and bring that back so that we'd know in last year's budget what partner agencies had included raises, that would be helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilman Stinnett. Thank you, Chair. Paul, don't we have a criteria as to how much of our money can go towards personnel costs right now? Have we not set a policy? Because I think normally in the past we've tried to limit the amount that's funding either new positions or positions. That may be something we want to look at as well. But I would tend to support looking at it on a case-by-case basis, not having a blanket policy, because where I'm sitting, an outside agency, as long as they're meeting our needs that we've identified in our community that we are looking for a partner with, and the second is as long as they're getting results and how we measure both of those are totally up to this body in our policies. But once those two are met, I'm not necessarily concerned about micromanaging how they get there. Again, how they're meeting our needs and how they're getting results are the two big overhead things that I'm looking at from each agency. I would caution, and when you refer to the animal care and control, it's not an outside agency. It's an internal function that we choose as a government to contract out. Absolutely right. Because we can't afford it or can't do it as affordable in-house. But looking at everything you said, I appreciate your research on that, Paul. And I guess, do you have the information Council Member Kay just asked for? It's on the fifth floor, too. Yes, sir. Because I've seen it up there somewhere. Is it still there? Yes, sir. Okay, so the partner agencies are up there, too. So maybe if you can. You understand that's for FY12. Right. Yeah. No, I understand. But maybe if you can pull that for council members and show them where it's at, and that way they can have that information as well. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Chair. I would say this council member, and I think I'm hearing this from my colleagues, has no interest in micromanaging any outside or partner agency. However, I am somewhat concerned that we do not have a policy. I know I have served on several boards that we partner with outside agencies, and we provide grant monies to them. It's a little different. It's through grants. But they have very strict policies about what that money can go to because what you see year after year, we saw it this year, every single agency's funding was getting cut from every single source. And so when you're looking at dedicating our funding to salaries, and our funding is going to change from year to year, you're then getting into where the funding may be going more towards salaries in future years, and it's tying us in because we're dedicating it to salaries. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do that. I don't know what the answer is, but I think we have to look at what kind of policies we have because when we're funding paychecks instead of functions of the agencies, I think that could get a little tricky for future year funding. And I'm just stating from experience from other boards, they do have, and it's with grants, but they do have very strict policies for what they provide monies for. So I think that's something we definitely should consider. And if we're going to do it, we might want to do it quickly because we're getting ready to hit budget season. Thank you. Thank you. And if I could make a couple comments. Any other council members have comments? Thank you, Paul, for your work on this. Commissioner? I mean, yes, Commissioner, could you come up for a second, please? I know that you kind of streamlined the application process this year. My first question is, the application that you created for partner agencies, is that used across the board for all partner agencies, whether they're social service-based or not? At this point, it's only with social services, but Mr. Benz has been meeting with Ryan Barrow about extending it to the other agencies. Isn't that correct, Craig? Okay. And I think you guys kind of looked at this piece of it. Do you have that delineated on the application? Yes, I do. On page four of the application, it says, will LFUCG partner agencies be used any of our funds for agency salary increases, bonuses, or other employee salary incentives? If so, explain in detail. Exhibit D is the same it's been with budgeting for years, which outlines raises. You all will be getting an email from us to participate in the review committees this year. So what we're going to do in addition to this, each one of you all will be asked to sit on review committees. And at that time, in those meetings, you will have six applications to review in paper, and then you will have ten minutes to sit with those agencies. And if that comes to the top, you will be allowed to score agencies according to the fact that they've asked for raises. So it should come to the front anyway. Okay. And then the description, the detailed description they're supposed to provide, that's where we can kind of glean whether or not it's the front-line worker, if you will, that's getting a raise. As you read through the application, if you have any concerns, be sure to note that, and then when you meet with your six agencies, you can bring that forward. Okay. If I just can make a comment briefly. The reason that I ask this to come into the committee to set a policy is that, in my view, we set a policy or enacted a policy this last cycle because when that information was brought in at the 11th hour, it swayed the vote on whether or not we voted to override the mayor's veto. That was a real action that took place. And so I just wanted to put this into a committee so that we can recommend to the council something so that that can't happen again. And I agree with Mr. Schoeninger and everybody else that it's really the first option. It's just more information that we have to look at each individual agency. But I wanted to really do this so that we stop that 11th hour drop in the bucket that caused us to not override the mayor's veto because that had a profound impact on these agencies this year. So thank you very much, Commissioner, for your review of that application and streamlining that process. Could I ask the committee maybe if we could get a motion for a recommendation? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And if I'll say one thing to you before I turn it over to you, Councilman Crosby, you did bring up a good point, and that is that when you talk about using one-time money for recurring expenses, That's kind of really what she's talking about. If we give money and an agency provides raises, and next year there's a cut in our funding, those employees still have that raise, which means less of our money actually goes to whatever it is, program or services that we are asking them to do, because that raise is already built in. So that is a valid point that you brought forward. Well, I was just going to say what you said. If we don't have a policy, if we take the do-nothing and there is no policy, then we are getting into 11th hour where we stand in the budget and determining. Then we're almost pitting agency against agency, looking at, okay, we only have so much money, and they've got raises built in, or they've got this built in. And if we don't have a clear-cut policy on how we're going to fund, then it gets political between us making decisions on who gets the funding. Councilman, I understand. No, I would just go back to the comment that you just made about, you know, you get into funding more of the salaries versus the operations. Well, I think Commissioner Mills would probably verify this. Most of the operations is personnel because that's what we're doing in social service. So, you know, even take our own government. Seventy percent of our budget is people. So, I mean, so what it goes towards personnel because they're the people that are doing the job. And whether or not they've done a great job, as Paul said, and they get a performance raise or whatever it may be, that's up to the agency as long as they're producing results. So I would caution saying that's a bad thing because most of the work they do is personnel and personnel related. Yeah, just a point of clarification. I didn't say it was a bad thing. I just said that it was a valid point that she raised. So I agree with what you're saying. When people do a good job, they deserve a raise, and I have no problem with that. And certainly you've all heard me say that the Department of Social Work is the lowest paid. If you look at directors of social work in this government as opposed to every other director, they're lowest paid. If you look at every frontline worker by job title across the board, that department's underpaid more than anybody in this government. So you've always heard me say that. You've heard me ask commissioners to come with a plan to correct that. So I'm certainly in favor of these folks getting raises. I just was making a comment that that is a valid point. So overall, I go back to I'm fine with Mr. Shoniger's original recommendation. I just wanted us to come through the committee so that we could make a recommendation to the full council so that we didn't have information dropped on us at the last minute and that it's highlighted, everybody understands, the commissioner's done an excellent job of changing the application so we get that ferreted out a little bit more. I encourage all of us to serve on the committees when she asks us to. And so, again, I'll entertain a motion if somebody would like to bring something that we can report out to the full council on how to move forward with this. Mr. Kay, I look to you. I'm not sure I've got a motion that's going to meet your intent, but let me back up half a step and say that without going back and rehearsing what happened in the budget process last time, from my perspective, the difficulty was that we were faced at the last minute, as has been stated, with a question of whether to cut across the board 10% or not. I think that was the problem, that we were treating all of the partner agencies as one category and not dealing with the information for each one of them. So if there's any motion that needs to come forward, I think it's simply a matter of stating that we want to increase the attention that we pay to each individual partner agency and not treat them as a single category in the budget process. Is that a so moved? If that's what you're looking for, if that's helpful, I'll so move. That's helpful. Do we have a second? The motion would be the recommendation to full council would be that in the budget process we treat each partner agency as an individual budget item, that we pay increased attention to the details of those proposals, and that we not entertain any across-the-board cuts for those agencies. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Council Member Stenet. I appreciate the attempt at this, but being around eight budgets now, it's going to be virtually impossible to sit there and micromanage whatever the administration brings forward on a case-by-case basis. If a council member feels like a certain agency deserves more or less, I mean, they'll feel free to make that motion during the process. but say we have to do that, to me, is not a good way to approach our budget situation because normally I've yet to see a budget that the mayor, a mayor, after three mayors now, has presented that we haven't, for the most part, agreed to on the social service side. The last couple we've done some small changes, but we've never gone through agency by agency and questioned why the mayor put a certain amount in there for that agency. and I think to do so during the budget process is adding a lot of work for something we can already do to make it mandatory. Is that what I understand the motion is? Maybe if I could ask this question. Actually, the motion is a little bit off of what we actually put in the committee. So if we can separate that, I think what Council Member K is getting at is the fact that we have different categories of partner agencies. And in this round of the budget, all of them were lumped together. In previous budgets, we have said we're going to support the mayor's cut on these types of agencies, but the social service agencies, we did not cut. And I think really that's what you're talking about is, correct me if I'm wrong, but looking at these from a perspective of we've got social service agencies that we may not want to cut at all, whereas we've got some of these other agencies that we may want if we have to do a cut, put the cut on them instead. Well, that's my point. We already have that capability during the budget process, and anyone this year could have done that. No one brought forth a motion. So we already have that ability to go through and say, hey, I don't want to fund this one or that one, or I agree with them or I don't agree with them. We already have that ability. I don't need a motion to give me that power to do that. Each one of us can bring forth a motion and decide during the budget process. and it's up to, actually, I made a motion three meetings ago that said that those recommendations would come to this body, this group, committee, and we'd refer it back to the mayor as to yes or no, who we think we should find before the budget process so that we can be involved before we get that book on April 12th that says here they are. So if we are truly involved in that process, I think it would make it a lot smoother during the budget process before we get to the point Councilman Kaye's frustration is, and I agree with him, you get there at the last minute and you've got all these cuts and it's like, what do you do? It's very difficult to go through 29 agencies and determine who should get and who shouldn't. But each one of us had the ability to do that this past year and we did. We did it as a blanket and moved on. Okay. Council Member Ford? You're okay? Okay. Council Member Cosby? I'm sorry, I was just going to say, I agree, that that could be handled during the budget link process. And maybe it's, I don't want to say criteria, but we have the ability, even before we meet as a link, to, as a body, know what is important to us or what our policy might be as far as this funding, whether or not we want to know there's pay increases and what the monies are going to. So, I mean, that may, it sounds like this will fix itself if we just do the appropriate thing in the budget link. Okay. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. I guess I see it as maybe we are duplicating because we're going to set Commissioner Mills is working on the accountability portion of the partner agencies. and maybe during the budget process we should be, I'm not sure what the time frame is on that, so Commissioner, if maybe you want to help me out, but for instance, if that process would be complete with our meetings and then that would be given to us when we get into the budget process. Briefly, the way this is going to happen, January 18th, all partner agencies will put their applications forward. I will say that we had 50 agencies come to the orientation meeting. Now, I don't know that all 50 will apply, but we've currently funded 15 in social services. So we are going to have review committees of five or six people. We're going to divvy up those applications, and you will all be invited to participate in one of the review committees. At that point, you can go over those agencies' budgets with a fine-tooth comb. Every agency that has applied that met the criteria will be rank-ordered by a numerical score that comes out of these committees. At what point would we have the priorities ranked to them, Craig, by March? Probably by early March. You all would have the list, maybe even the end of February. After the committees have done their work, we will give you a list of everybody who applied. This was their score. This is the amount of money. And then you all get to make the decisions. So that's kind of what we thought you all wanted to do, and so we're going to give it to you all. So at that point, you will be making final decisions about where the funds go. That sounds like that's already in place, so I don't see a need for another action, I guess. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. So are we ready to vote on this motion? Oh, there's no second. I'm sorry. Okay. That's actually great. I would say one thing that it was brought to my attention that when the commissioner had talked in an earlier meeting about members of this committee serving on her interview committees, Council Member K. brought up the idea that maybe we should not do that because it was a duplication of effort. if in fact the applications are going to come, the recommendation that you're going to present to the administration comes through this committee, maybe it is better that we don't serve on those interview committees. I don't know. I think that was previously discussed, and I'd forgotten that, but it's brought to my attention that... If I can, I think the question is, in my mind, it's about the calendar and the schedule. If that information comes as a group, as a body, in time for this committee to actually review them substantially, then I don't see any need to sit on the individual committees, although I think it would be informative. I would not mind the invitation. It might be helpful to me. But I don't think we need council people sitting on everyone if they can make their choice. But the key for me is getting that information here in time for us to have a significant review and not just a quick and dirty overview. Commissioner, could you come up for just a second, please? Council Member Ford? I just had one question real quickly on this note. Do you have in your timeline, I know you just went through it, but do you have sort of the date at which it's going to come back through? Or let me ask you this way. But can you coordinate in your timeline the specific committee meeting that that's going to come back to to ensure that we have enough time to do a thorough review? Okay, thank you. Here's the timeline. January 18th, the partner agency submits application. The week of the 23rd to the 27th, Craig and I are going to meet with everybody that's going to review them. And we did want to include you all. There's conflict to infrastructure statement in every one of them. We thought you might know more about what the agencies do, but if you wish not to, that's fine. We're also going to use our social service advisory board, the junior league, and some recommendations from United Way and Bluegrass Community Foundation. On February to March, the initial application scoring and the oral presentation by applicants. So sometime between late February, early March, that's when they would have 10 minutes to explain what the groups have read on paper. And by the end of March, all partner applicants will be ranked and scored. and that's when we would bring that forward. So can we coordinate and see if we can bring that? I'm not sure of the calendar for the March meeting for this committee. I think we're in the process of approving the calendar right now for next year as a council. Can we see if we can? We can certainly try to aim for that date, couldn't we? I mean, I think we can try to do that, yeah. Okay. You got it? Councilman Crosby has it. We just said March? Yes. 13th of March. It would be the 13th of March. That's pushing it. Yep. Would the committee entertain a special meeting for that at the end of March so that we don't have to wait until mid-May? Because then you've got to get it. That's right. Or April, I mean, because you'd have to get it to the mayor. We're off last week in March and then the first week in April. Okay. You can do the week of March 20th. That's only one. If we had a meeting the week of March 20th, could you guys? We haven't ranked by the way. Yeah, we could probably do that. If we could move the 13th to the 20th, is that going to be possible with your calendar? Let us try to work that out today. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Councilman Ford? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just quickly, I did second Council Member K.'s motion for the purpose of discussion. I did second it. I thought we had a second. And if he wants to withdraw, I'm not trying to force a vote. I will say, however, though, I do, and we don't have time to discuss it perhaps today, we recognize that we can all review each partner agency. I do, and we will do that, and we have done that. I do think there is some value and merit in us reclassifying the definition of partner agency. Meaning, the classic example that we've given today was social service agency versus other agencies. And part of the difficulty we faced not only was timing and those things, it was just that we had a lot of organizations grouped, quote unquote partner agency, that did several different things. So speaking to the motion, if we don't take it up today, I do think there is some value, particularly on behalf of social service agencies, and I say that in the context that we're sitting in the social services committee. There were some social service agencies that could have benefited or were impacted based on that vote because they were lumped into a partner agency category. We may want to look at reclassifying that for budgetary purposes to help ourselves as a council. Okay. And so we did have a second on the floor, so we've got a motion. And I did not hear the second, so. I thought we had one. I'll withdraw if that's okay. Yes. I'll withdraw the motion. The second is withdrawn. Motion is withdrawn. Councilman Hempstead. Yes, Chair. I just had one suggestion, and this is something that Commissioner Mills had brought up. For instance, I serve on a few boards of partner agencies, and if you serve on a board, I don't think that you should set on an advisory where that agency would be receiving dollars or doing the assessments or whatever. Thank you. Thank you. So have we determined what we're going to do regarding this issue in committee? Do we want to make a recommendation back to the council? How do you want to report out as a committee? Give me some language. I want to report out, and I want to report out accurately. I'm okay with what the language is. so i guess we're just going to kind of look at this and say we've highlighted the information it's going to be available for people to review you know take it to heart however you wish to so we're really taking mr shonger's first recommendation right i see nods heading yes and the and the council members didn't have his mic on and the calendar kind of coordinating with the process so that this committee will have time to review yes we're Okay. I think I have what I need to report out. Any other comments? It's been a great meeting today. Thank you everyone for coming. Our sign-in sheet, did we have anybody who wanted to make public comment? I'm sorry. There's a sign-in sheet back there. I don't know if anybody signed it. Nobody signed it? Okay, do I have a motion to adjourn? All those in favor say aye. That passes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ladies