Music Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Go, go, go. This is a meeting of the work session of the council. And I'll call the meeting to order and ask for public comment. Is there anyone who wishes to speak to issues on the agenda? All right. I don't have a list, so we will move on then to item number, Roman numeral number two, which is requested rezoning and docket approval. I believe there are a couple of rezoning requests. Yes, Councilmember Lawless. Excuse me. Yes, the rezoning of the property on Walton Avenue. All right. So, Madam Clerk, Susan, could you take us through this? That's fine. What needs to happen is the first one under ordinances, first reading, number 8, that one was the one that was heard first, so it would be appropriate to have a motion on that one first, and then the Ashland Avenue would be the second. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Motion to approve number 8 without a public hearing. Second. Motion to approve number 8 without a public hearing. Motion by Council Member Ellinger, second by Vice Mayor Gordon. Is there any discussion on the motion? Okay. Hearing none, take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. And then number nine would be the one I believe Ms. Lawless is speaking to. Yes, I'd like to make a motion to have a public hearing on number nine. All right. There's a motion to hold a public hearing on number 9. Is there a second? Well, all right. I don't know. Does it have to establish a time? I think Susan was going to give us some time. All right. We'll just amend it then. Can you help us with some options? Yes, sir. It has to be heard before January 25th. The council, you all come back on the 10th of January. So, and Bill, does it take, what, three weeks? I know there's some preparation time for the Division of Planning in order to get the notices out. The notice requirement is three weeks in advance of the hearing, so there will be plenty of time for mail notice to be done. So you could choose if the meeting, typically if the meeting is supposed to be over two hours, you would want to do it at an off-council meeting. That has been the rule of thumb. If it can be done within two-hour time frame, then you can hook it on to the end of a regular council meeting. And the regular council meetings are projected to be the 12th. Well, that's the only one that would be the regular council meeting because the 25th is on a Wednesday, so it's either held on the 12th of January or it has to be a special council meeting on the 17th or the 19th or the 24th. Excuse me, could it be done after a council work session? Yes. It would just be a special council meeting for a public hearing. That could be the 17th or the 24th. All right. Is there a motion for a date? I'd like to make a motion that it be heard on January the 24th. Okay. So the full motion then would be? I think I have to state it at an exact time, 6 p.m. All right. The motion is for the resuming on the, what was the date? 24th of January at 6 p.m. Is there a second? Is that the state of the merged government address on that date? Our schedule is pretty full. It might not be a good date to do that. Okay. How about the 17th at 6 p.m.? All right. So we're still just, yeah. Second. All right. There's a motion and a second for the meeting to be held on the 17th at 6 p.m. Now discussion. Okay. Vice Mayor. I just wanted to say I probably cannot attend that. All right. Council Member Blues. Is there anybody else who can't attend? It's extremely important to have quorum for these hearings. Okay. I think everybody's looking at their clocks, at their schedules. Council Member K. So we have two that are not available. I'm sorry, who else said they couldn't attend? Council Member K. Could you restate the... The motion is to hold the rezoning hearing on January 17th at 6 o'clock in the evening. Could I make an amendment? to the motion well it's just withdrawing to change the date i want to change the date okay you might want to see what uh who could what's the alternative yeah would be the 10th at six o'clock is that a time most people could be here January. It's going to be another long day, yes. That would be the 6th, right? No, the 10th. The 10th at 6. So how about holding your hands up if you can make it on the 10th at 6 o'clock? If you can. If you can. Right. Uh-oh. Can. C-A-N. All right. Try this one. if you cannot make it on the 10th at 6 o'clock. Hold your hand up. Mayor, I hate to be a negative thought thinker here, but I believe that's our first work session after the break, so we're going to be loaded up with a lot of stuff to cover at that meeting because we won't have a meeting for about five or six weeks. It seems to me the 24th, even though that's the merged government, It doesn't start until 1130, which is not a long day compared to most Tuesdays. All right, so you want to amend the motion to change the date to the 24th? Well, can people be here on the 24th at 6? Okay, who cannot make it on the 24th at 6 o'clock? All right, then the 24th, it looks like. Okay, the motion is now for the 24th, second by Council Member Ellinger. If no discussion, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. I did want to ask a technical question about the packet we received for the zone change. because I noted that four Planning Commission members were absent. Can you tell me what the quorum, I mean, I'm sure they had a quorum or they wouldn't have met, but what is the quorum? Is it six? It is. It's six. I believe during this particular public hearing at the Planning Commission there were two members that left during the hearing. Well, yes, one of them wasn't mentioned to have left, but in the body of the zone change documents, but was listed as absent. And this just seemed like a lot of Planning Commission members to be absent on a zone change that didn't receive a unanimous vote. So I was concerned about the absences, but they did meet their quorum. Yes, yes. I believe there were nine at the start of the hearing, and then after the hearing there were seven. Okay, thank you very much. Is it on this subject, Councilman Lane? Yes, sir. Mr. Salley, what is the guidelines if you miss meetings for the commission? How many meetings can you miss without being kicked off the... mr lane i don't believe there's any set number i think there's just a general statement in the planning commission's bylaws that talks about lack of attendance or problem attendance than having a member subject to being removed i don't think it's a hard math number in their bylaws okay Thank you. All right. If there's no need to, can the Chair ask for a motion on docket approval? Second. Motion by Council Member Farmer, second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. There's no approval of the summary required today. Next on the agenda is budget amendments. A motion by Council Member Beard and a second by Vice Mayor Gorton. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. New business is next on the agenda. Move approval. Second. Motion by Vice Mayor Gordon to approve. Second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion? Mr. Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. Going to number O directly, this is on the police radio. Just had a couple questions from Mr. Lucas. First, I want to appreciate, Mr. Lucas, your time in going over this. Obviously, this is something this county and city needs drastically to improve on, and this council entertained some improvements two years ago. We've waited two years, done the due diligence, and we've been able to get a better competitive bid and a better product. I just want to reconfirm publicly what you and I talked about briefly. One, this is a new radio system, correct? That is correct. It would be replacing the two that we currently use in public safety with one that everyone can operate on and communicate. And what we're approving here tonight is the first two pieces of the $18 million contract. We don't have the last piece finalized yet. Is that correct? What we're approving here tonight is the contract with Harris, which would be, it's all one piece. It's for the new system and the subscriber units. And what did you mention, though, in the details that we were still negotiating on that? Oh, we're still negotiating the testing and some of the requirements. that will be ready by your first reading. So we're still going through what we saw, the details and the technical aspects. And I assume in those details and technical aspects it includes the number of towers that we're going to have or not have, and they're guaranteed that we will have coverage border to border? Actually, we've already settled on that. They are going to install five sites on five existing towers in Fayette County. We will not be building any new towers. They're not needed. The requirements and the guarantee we've already agreed upon, if they do not meet our requirements of 95% coverage and 95% of the area, they will fix it at their own cost. So those have already been negotiated and settled. And the price has been settled. We are doing the lawyer language, as I like to say now, and make sure everyone agrees on the policies. Well, I guess that leaves me with the biggest question of all is, if we approve this tonight, next year, and I assume that the mayor's looked over this too because this is going to put him in a hole on his budget right away. We've got to find $10 million next year. That is correct. We budgeted $5.5 for this fiscal year. We only need $3.5 for this fiscal year. And at the time, I think I quoted we needed $12 for next year, and it's a little under that $11.8. So originally we thought it was a $20 million project, $20 million over three fiscal years. It's 18 over three fiscal years, and the total cost is 23% less than what was actually proposed to us before negotiations. And that's good. I'm just, what are the plans to find the $10 million for next year's budget? As tight as things are, we've got a lot more budget to work through this next six months before we even get to next year. I'm just concerned about if we commit today, we're committing to next year just so the council understands that we have to move forward. That's an excellent question, and I have someone else to answer that. Thank you. And I look behind me. And you all may have it thought out. I'm just curious today because this is November and we've got a budget update today. It looked good, Mayor. Here is the breakdown on your screen of the fiscal year cost. The one on the left is May, which is our estimates before we went out to bid. On the right is proposed and how it would cost per fiscal year. And the ongoing is the operation. That's a 10-year. Well, actually, it's eight years. The first two years of maintenance are included. I think the question is one we wrestle with all the time. Obviously, I want to second that we're in tight financial times. I think it's both financial as well as a policy issue. The ongoing, as you see there, which is more the operating and maintenance, that's going to have to be found within the operating budgets of the urban county government. That will be cash funded. The capital, which is the majority of the project, and the bulk of it will be paid in 13. It's about $10.5 million general fund. It's maybe $1.3 million E911, which there is cash for that. So the general fund piece could be a common, it could be entirely cash, could be entirely bond funded. But obviously on projects the size, a blend would make some sense as well. Have you ran the numbers? I assume it would be a 10-year bond approximately. And what our bond payment would be? Well, that is one of the things we met previously, I guess it was last week, and I've asked for the breakdown, which I did get, between what needs to be operating and what needs to be bond funded. In conjunction of that, we've asked for the usable life of each piece. So that is to be determined on the duration of the financing. And, again, I just bring this up so we're all clear as we prepare the budget, so there's no surprises. I mean, we're going to have to find the money if we commit today to this project, which I think we should. I mean, we've got to have it. We've got to have public safety protection with the radios, but it's a big chunk of change to be able to find on top of the other things we're still working on. So I just wanted to be clear. And so are you leaning towards recommendation of bonding, or is it still too early to tell? I think that is a policy question, but a blend maybe makes some sense. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Stanton. Peggy, are you signed up for this? Council Member Henson, are you signed up for this? No, okay. I am. Mayor. Council Member Lane. All right, just for the benefit of the council and the general public, could you just quickly summarize how many radios, just on the scope of the project? In addition to the five towers, which will be new in the system and infrastructure, There will be approximately 1,500 new radios. As you can see in the slide, we have an immediate need for over 700 for the police. But to outfit everyone to be 1,500 in the first fiscal year, and then we'll roll in another 500 to complete all of fire and emergency management in the outgoing fiscal years in 2014. So it's 2,000 radios overall. Okay. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks, David. I want to go back to my comments the other day and just point out that the number one responsibility of government is to protect the public. And so public safety is the top priority of government in general. And this is a key, key piece of that, of keeping our police and fire safe and giving them the best technology available to do that. And so I also go back to what I said earlier, that my comments and my questions center around buyer's remorse and some remorse that this council member has for an ERP system that was in the tens of millions of dollars that we voted on a number of years ago that ended up costing lots more because maybe we didn't have all the facts, didn't understand, Maybe we got the consultant didn't present themselves as what they were, whatever it was. I want to make sure that the questions that I ask are couched in the right way, that that's where my concern is, and that it is our responsibility as council members, especially in budgetary times, to ask as many questions as possible before we make a decision this big. So that is the backdrop. The questions I asked the other day were, is this the very best equipment? Is this the very best technology? and then secondarily about the FCC mandate. So my question is, is the Harris system, am I correct in the due diligence that I've done, this is a Phase I P25 system, correct? That's correct. And that technology came out in 2000-ish? It's the most current technology that's being used widely right now. But there is a Phase II P25 out there, correct? There is a Phase II P25. It is a newer standard. The first standard issued was Phase I, and that was to get all the public safety across the country to agree on one standard of the way the radios communicate with one another. Phase I was the first step. Phase II is the newer standard, and that was the manufacturers that are pushing that. Some of them have only been shipping radios since about August of this year. It's a very new technology, which kind of made us a little leery when it's that new to get into something that we're still unsure about and hasn't been proven. Phase 1 has been out there for quite a few years. There's a lot of systems nationwide that have already gone through the growing pains of it. The system we're looking at now is a Phase 1, and it is software upgradable to Phase 2 if we need to go to that. And Phase 2 basically brings you a higher capacity on the system, so if you needed more talk pass, then you can actually double the number of talk pass by going to Phase 2. So do you see my concern? I do see your concern, yes. When you say there's Phase 2 available, but we're going with this because. Now, again, there may be a lot of good reasons on how we got there, but I want folks to understand why I'm asking the questions I'm asking and why I have some reluctance. The second question I want to ask is, it is my understanding that the FCC mandate is law enforcement. Is the FCC mandate fire as well, Or are we just trying to do everything in one fell swoop? What I'm asking you point blank is, is it an FCC mandate that our fire department go up underneath this, or is the FCC mandate only law enforcement? It's all frequencies. So it goes across all of the radio systems. Okay. So it includes fire as well. So the FCC mandate is fire as well. We have to do this because of fire, correct? The fire system right now is compliant because we're running at 800 megahertz. The FCC mandate applies only to frequencies 512 megahertz and below. And that encompasses not only police, fire, public works, anyone operating between below 512 megahertz must narrowband, which means they're operating in a space this wide, and they're telling them you have to cut it in half and operate in a space this wide. That's basically what narrowbanding really is. So, again, my question is that what you're telling me is that currently, at this very second, that fire is actually in compliance, police is not, and that we are trying to get this all done at one time for efficiency's sake and so forth like that. But if it came down to an issue of what are we looking at from the federal side, that our fire department is not out of compliance. Is that correct? That is correct, but right now the system for the fire department, we have big gaps in coverage because we only have three towers currently, and we have some areas where we do not have adequate coverage. And what this was is, yes, we could upgrade just the police system, but then you spent several million dollars just to do the police. You've not done anything for the coverage issues the fire department has. Secondly, when you do that, police and fire still can't talk to one another because they're still on disparate radio systems. You're maintaining two infrastructures. The goal here is to have one infrastructure, you maintain one infrastructure, and everybody shares that common infrastructure. Okay. And my final question is, is that, am I correct, that we have not applied for any kind of extension to the FCC because it's our director's belief or our belief that we don't comply, but we have not even tried to apply. Is that correct? That's correct. I've communicated with the FCC and I've gotten back some information that would lead me to believe that we have not done enough yet to even qualify for a waiver, that there needs to be much more done in terms of actual obtaining some of the system, having it started to be implemented. And then if you run into an issue, then you can ask for a waiver and be granted a time-specific period of an extension past the end of next December. But the key word is yet. And, again, in my head, just, again, this council member trying to make a decision based upon previously being burned is that, you know, are we able to do something now that gets us down the road, that covers that public safety needs, that covers our folks in the field, but also does not put us and obligate us to $10 million to find immediately. And that's the questions I've got. So I just want to make sure that I'm asking them, but I also want folks hearing, to hear why I'm asking the questions I'm asking, and that it is a very, very serious thing that we consider all these factors. The last question I guess I have is that when you all develop this system, David, or develop this, this is what we need to do, was there a secondary, here's what we need to do, and this would get us covered, but was there a secondary, hey, this is the patchwork, and if we had to, we could do this? Because I've seen this, but I've never seen this. Actually, we did that before we did the May presentation when we had our original consultant do an assessment of our radio to figure out which path would be best for us as a whole. When we did that, we found it more cost-efficient to put us all in one system than to do a band-aid today and come back in another 12 months and ask for all that much money again to replace something. So we took what's the total cost of ownership of a system and what is the most efficient and cost-effective way, and that's why we got to where we put the bids out. Once we did the bids out, everyone did a bid or proposal based on that system, and that's what we judged everybody on. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Henson. Actually, I had a question on item P, but while you're here, I'll ask you a question. It's like absolutely, without a doubt, what kind of time frame do we have? You know, an $18 million contract for a 10-year period is very extreme, especially in our budgetary times. So what is the deadline? If we don't pass this today, if we got another year, correct? We have a year to implement. Yes. So we have to have our system up and running a year and a month from right now. And so are you thinking a year to get it implemented? Yes, that's the timeline we're working on. No less? No. I guess I would feel more comfortable knowing that we are going to have the money. So if we sign this contract, we're obligated to this company for $18.8 million, correct? So why would we need to go back to the FCC once we had started and ask for an extension when we're obligated to this contract? That would only be if we have delays in implementation that would push past December 31st, 2012. The timeline that we are working under that the company we've negotiated with has given us for full implementation brings us in compliance prior to December 31st. Okay. Thank you. My other question was on item P. Richard, I was just curious about the implementation of this, how it would transition for the zoning violations. If I'm by David Barber, you may want to come up here. Is this the silver penalty that we are doing the same thing with building inspection? We're doing the same thing with building inspection that it gets in the same teeth as what historical people can do to all of you. Betty Kirk. Go ahead, Betty. So from now on, zoning complaints would come to you, correct? No, what this is is within the historic overlay districts, we are part, that process, that program is part of the zoning ordinances. We are Article 13 of the zoning ordinance. So people who do work without a permit in the historic district or don't carry the work out in the manner that the permit reflects would be in violation of Article 13 in the zoning ordinance. And this will empower the preservation staff to further do appropriate action to get that resolved. And only in historic areas? Only within the historic areas. I'm sorry, I was a little confused on it. I'm like, because zoning violations were supposed to be moved from building inspection. Right. Yes, and I understand why you'd have that question. The short answer is that the H-1 overlay process is a subset of the zoning ordinance, and hence violations to it are a zoning violation, but they're a subset. Right. And I was a little confused about historic preservation and taking it over, but now I understand. So thank you. That would have made two of us. So, Richard, can you give me an update on when the other? They've already passed, haven't they? As far as the changes to the civil penalties, those already took place. Are you asking about the status of transferring? No, I'm talking about who would handle the complaint. I mean, Bill and Inspector will have their group handle the complaint from a regular complaint from Bill and Inspector. And Betty will handle anything with historical complaint that will go through Betty. So other zoning violations is going to remain in building inspection? And planning. Planning is doing the zoning. But most of this is really for building and planning. We'll also get the zoning. Okay. All I want to know is if I have a zoning violation. Go through planning. Thank you. And that's already in place? Yes, that's already. That will be in place January 1st. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. David, I guess I need you back up there, if you would, please. The $18,800,000, how is that paid? I mean, I understand you've got the years down, but are there progress payments, or is it all one lump sum? No, it is spread out through the first payment actually isn't until February after we get a master plan. And then it's staggered throughout until we get to the implementation date. There's actually 25% held until we actually get final acceptance. And then there's an additional 1% we hold out until we do a certification. So the 100% of the implementation cost, it spread out the 12 months that we're actually doing the project. But of that $18 million, only off the top of my head, $12 million of that is in the first year. The rest is the ongoing cost. So 12 implementation, 6 for the maintenance over the last 10 years. Next question, $695,000 ongoing, I assume, for maintenance. Yes, sir. You know, everybody kind of passed over that, but when you add it up for eight additional years, it's $5,560,000. That's correct. A very, very significant number in and of itself. And I want my colleagues to understand that. When we first talked about this, I had asked this question, and I don't know where we are because there's been negotiations going on about various and sundry things as it relates to this. The sheriff's office, are they tied into this in any way, shape, or form? We have had discussions with the sheriff's department. They are currently on their own 800 megahertz system. Once ours is operational, we'll be able to link them together, so we'll be able to talk to each other on one seamless system. Okay. Then there's a whole litany of other folks that maybe might want to do that, UK, Bluegrass Field, Transylvania, adjacent counties, things of that sort. That's a very good question because our goal is interoperability with all of our public safety entities, even outside urban county government. UK is an integral part of our system. They are providing the tower at the Patterson office, so they are a partner in this. The airport will be providing a tower as well, so they will be on the same system. And we will, although at a later date, Lex Tran and the Fayette County Schools will have a longer time to migrate, but even once we go online, we'll be able to talk to all those entities on one system. And one of the advantages of the Harris solution that we obtain is that we will be able to use our system throughout Fayette County and Madison County on day one and vice versa. Who drives the bus in this group? Are we in charge? We seem to be the leader on this project. Madison County already has a system up, but they'll be linking to ours. Quite frankly, they come into our county more than we go into theirs, so we'll be driving the bus. this may sound facetious because it is but how much are these folks paying us to to drive the bus for them well quite frankly all three of those entities madison county the airport and the uk are all providing towers for us and the utilities to go with that so we are reaping those benefits okay That's fine. Thank you, David. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilman Beard. Councilman Lawless. Thank you, Mayor. When we asked for you all to be here to answer more questions, I asked if Ms. Duggar from Dean could be here, because I know it's going to impact her operations. I don't know if Pat is here, but she's been involved through it all. And actually, she's already tied into the Madison County system. And obviously, we have her tied into our police and fire as well. So she's looking forward to trading in three radios for one that will work on all the systems. How many bids did you get? For the radio system, we had three different vendors bid. Those went out in August, requests for bids. They were due October 10th, and we've been going through them. And the team of myself, but mostly police and fire personnel, reviewed those and came with a score for the top two. And that's who we started negotiating with was the bidder with the highest score, which happened to be the bidder with the lowest price, coincidentally, but it wasn't weighted that way. And so the highest score person was also the low bid? It happened to be that way, yes. Council Member, are you finished? Council Member Lawless? I'm sorry, yes, thank you. Okay, sorry. Council Member Gordon, I mean Vice Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a comment about item N. This is the Volkswagen that has the don't text and drive message on it. And this is a direct result of Don Jacobs' participation in the leadership visit to Greenville, South Carolina, and the conversations which many of us had there about texting and driving. And I think it's a real positive that a business such as this would want to put into place a message about not texting and driving, and I just wanted to express my appreciation. Thanks. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilman Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Barrow, I have a question for you again, and David, I might need you. David, I guess for you, what portion of the radio contract is just the police department? The police department actually will be initially getting 1,400 of the 2,000 radios we'll be purchasing over the term of the contract. That's about the only part you can split up since we're all sharing the infrastructure, but they will definitely have a higher percentage of the units installed in the vehicles and on their hips. I guess my question is, if we can migrate the sheriff's system over, why can't we migrate the fire department's system over? We will be migrating the fire system onto the new system. Police were doing first because of the federal mandate and the date, so we're going to get that done first, and then we will be migrating fire, emergency management, and the rest in that second fiscal year. Are we going to give them new equipment? Yes, they will. The current equipment they have is... By migrating, though, is it? They're able to migrate because they can use some of their old equipment for about 18 more months, and then it literally is no longer in effect. All right. Sorry, Ryan. Yeah, one of the goals here was to utilize the fire equipment. When we started purchasing radios, the radios we have been purchasing for the last several years have been upgradable to the P-25. So it will be a matter of a software change on the radios. Last year you purchased, you allocated some bond money to purchase radios. We purchased 64 new portable radios. All of those radios will be able to be used on the new system. The new mobile radios we've been buying for the last several years will be able to be programmed to the new system. Are they upgradable to Phase 2? Yes, those are. They are? Okay. Thank you. Mr. Ryan, I still understand where this money is going to come from. I mean, I understand we can go borrow it. Has administration put together a five- or ten-year capital needs plan? Because the thing that I remember is it was an early lesson. I was two months on the council when we had to approve the South Limestone Bond, And they failed to tell us at the time that, oh, yeah, we want you to borrow $72 million to put in the police and fire pension. So what I want to see is what are we borrowing over the next five or ten years, and how does this fit with our overall capital needs? Again, has the administration put together any sort of capital needs plan for the next five or ten years? Well, I think the answer is multifaceted. how fast it is. We've put together several 10-year performance. You've seen the urban service already, which we're addressing. We talked about in budget finance today. And you've also seen the sewer performance that talked about rate increases. So we have put together internally a 10-year performance for the general fund as well, which the majority of this is going to be funded out of. In terms of this specific project, this has not been incorporated just in the last week or so we received these numbers so obviously those have not been incorporated into those 10-year pro formas there's challenges in there but you know this one at this point with the presentation that we've just received you know we realize that we have some options for the big dollar figure that's in 2013 have the have the pension been put in these performance? Yes, sir. In the general fund. So we're going to have enough bond capacity and money to borrow all this money then. Again, I think that falls in the realm of policy. Budget's about decisions. So obviously what's here is the decision to do the radios. That will mean that we can't do other things. Well, what I see is that we are happy to spend money and we're happy to, but we don't want to collect it, and we don't want to cut it. And so I'm trying to understand what are we going to cut from our budget, or who are we going to tax to pay for it, because it's got to come from someplace. So that's more rhetorical. I'm sorry. Yes, sir. I recognize that. Thank you, Mayor. Councilor Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Dr. Barrows, the last question you answered, you said it was a policy issue. But the question was, are we going to have the capacity to bond, not the will to bond? So if we have the capacity, it's not a policy issue. It's a capacity or... Well, in terms of capacity, I guess you can measure that several ways. There's a state statute. We clearly meet that test. We could never afford what the state would allow us to bond. Another test would be a percentage of revenue. You know, we're right at the limit, 10 percent in terms of debt service to revenue. We're right at that limit. There is a little bit of capacity that opens up next year, but I think, you know, we need to weigh this against other bonding needs. So there will be some capacity, but it's about choices. We won't be able to do other things if we fully bond this 2013 $10.5 million. So to elaborate on that a little bit more, in previous presentations, I think we had a meeting on a bonding a year ago, and there's a lot of discussion about what happens to our bond rating if we go past that 10%. So when you look at capacity from that perspective and the things that – I understand what you're saying. There's things we won't be able to do. but the things that we need to do, and then you take this money into consideration, where would that put us? I know you're not going to have that answer right now, but can you come up with that number in terms of what percentage would that put us at? We're at 10% now. We're going to have some capacity open up next year. But if we took this into consideration, where would that put us with the other things that we've already talked about doing as a council? I think that is a multifaceted question in terms of specific needs and prioritizing those specific needs. Our intention as the finance department is to migrate the capital planning process in front of the budgeting process. And I've already specifically requested certain recurring expenditures, infrastructure for IT, vehicles, certain things that we know we need to fund each year. So we hope to migrate those departments, general services, computer services, and we've already worked on kind of what an annual expenditure is, and we're trying to migrate that into the 10-year. Right now the 10-year pro forma is somewhat general in nature. It doesn't include things like this because we just got it last week or the week before. We are migrating towards that, especially if we can bring the capital planning process in front of the budgeting process and give it the attention it deserves. And that's why I was saying that there are some things that aren't really as much of a policy issue because some of those things that you mentioned that we have to do, we have to do. And so if you take those things that you already know that we have to do and put this on top of it, can you bring that number back to us next week? Or you can send it to me in an e-mail. You don't have to bring it back in a meeting. I would ask for a little bit of consideration on timing. That is something that is a very large, large process. We can share some of the preliminary, but as we've addressed this year, we don't have a sustainable budget. We have large capital needs for which we are not funding, and we have large requirements to put into the pension fund. But those are long-term structural issues that I don't know if I can put numbers to in a week. Okay. How soon do you think? maybe next month's budget and finance? Yes, if we could work off of a timetable like that and present what we've completed to date, obviously some of those packages from the divisions, I just happened to request them in the last several weeks so that they're working on their time frame and then we'll incorporate it into the pro forma as well. Okay. Thank you. I have a couple questions for David. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Commissioner. I just wanted to add, if I could. One, I just want to make the point, when we went through last budget, we put in the bonding for the first phase of this project. And I just want to remind everyone that we did talk about the total cost of this project and to remember that when this day came, that we would have to find those dollars for the remainder of this project as we budgeted those dollars, $4.5 million in the current year. So I just want to remind everybody about that. We still have to go through and look at our opportunities for next year and the different scenarios that we can have in terms of funding the project. But we also, in terms of the CIP, have built the framework for the projects, working with a couple of our large agencies that are big capital users. Ryan Shop's done a great job in terms of building out that framework, and now we just need to fill in the information with the agency request for long-term planning. So it's a process that we are going through. So I just wanted to remind everybody about that, and that was our goal as we move forward into the next budget. Okay. Thank you. David, two questions. One, can you put the slide back up there where you had, there you go. The May estimates at $5.5 million for 2012, and now we're only going to need $3.8 million. That is correct. The $5.5 million was actually budgeted for the current fiscal year. $1 million was actually cash out of the 9-1-1 fund, and the rest was general funds. So when you go down to FY13 and it was 12.3 and then 12, are you taking the difference between the 5.5 and the 3.8 and saying that that will carry over so that we need less in 13? I did not say that. That goes to the budgeting folks, how they want to do the funding. Of that 12 in fiscal year 13, 10.5 is actually, they refer to it as general fund. and the rest is actually could be allocated to 911 funds. So when he mentioned 10.5, it's 10.5 of the 12. Okay, okay, okay, that makes sense. The second question I have is earlier you talked about, the question was asked whether or not the sheriff's department would work with this, and you said they're on 800 megahertz, right? Yes, they currently have a system off of one tower that they use. I believe theirs is of the same standardization, so we'll be able to intercommunicate using our new existing radios and their current radios. So is there a difference between their current radio and the fire's current radio? Yes. The current system at the fire is proprietary, and they are not on that. Major C addressed that. The fire department is working on a trunked radio system, which means you have a bank of radio channels that you share. The sheriff's office is operating on a single-channel system, so they just have a single target. It's called conventional radio. So they're two different animals on how they communicate with one another. Now, our communication with the sheriff, part of it would be to be able to depend on them and what radios they purchase. We're setting up a system, the P25 is an open source standard, that no matter which manufacturer radio they have, if it's a P25 radio and capable of doing P25 trunking, they would be able to use our system. We also have components built into the system that we can do interconnect with people using conventional radio systems. we can set up a radio and actually interconnect with them if we have to. So then right now the system will not work with the new system. They have to buy new radios first. Is that right? I don't know that. I don't know which radios they've been purchasing. Now, the idea is we put in a system that has a standard that is across the industry, known as P25, Project 25. So depending on which radios they're purchasing, they will be able to interconnect with us. Now, even on their current system, we will have components built into the new system we're putting in that would allow their existing system to go right into the system even if they didn't buy new radios. That's what I was getting to. Okay, so what makes their system different than fire so that their current system can go right into our system without buying new radios if the fire cannot? Okay, right now we don't have an actual piece of equipment that would bring that in right now. How much does that cost? it would be very depending on whether you go on a single channel I wouldn't want to quote the price off the top of my head is it millions? it's six figures when you start doing something that big the biggest difference right now between fire and the sheriff the fire is working on what's called EDAC it's a proprietary standard that the radios talk to one of the digital language that the radios communicate with it's a specific set of zeros and ones that's proprietary to the Harris Corporation the P25 is open source and the manufacturers, any manufacturer can build to that standard. So that if you bought a radio from XYZ and another from ABC, and they're both P25 radios, they'll both work on the system. Okay. I was just specifically trying to understand why it is that the 800 megahertz system that the sheriff has will work with our new system, but FIRE's 800 megahertz system will not. Well, actually, Brad, let me correct myself here. The sheriff can communicate with us right now. We do this on a regular basis at the U.K. football games. But I think David said when the question was asked if the share system would work with our new system, and the answer was yes. Yes, if we put the right components in place, which we plan on doing. He didn't say that part, though. You're right. We've already bought those components in this proposal, so we know that's a need, and so we've already built it into the system we're buying. So when I say it will, I know it will because we've already bought those pieces we don't have today. Okay. Okay. That's just a clarification because what I was trying to get to was if they're both 800 systems, would we be able to wait a year before we brought fire on? But it sounds like no. Correct? You are correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Lawless. I'm sorry. You said that eventually the school system and you mentioned Lex Tran would come on or could come on. That is correct. Those two are actually currently on fire system today. We chose a system that will allow them to migrate over a longer period of time because of their needs, but that's on their timetable, not on ours. We can keep them on the new system for as long as they want to be on it. Eventually, as they buy new ones, they can get the new technology. But they're on the fire system today, and we're going to bring them along to the new system. So would it be reasonable for them, for the Fayette County Schools and Lex Tran to contribute to this effort? to borrow a line from ryan that's a policy decision and not a technical decision we they they buy their own equipment they today all the radios and they use our system because obviously we want to communicate with them on the new system their current radios will still work if they want new radios that is their responsibility but today we do not charge them an access fee to use our system because we are communicating with them as well. Actually, a little history on with Lex Tran and Fayette County Schools. On this system that the fire currently uses today, it was originally installed by the University of Kentucky. It was a single-site system up on Patterson Office Tower. In 1998, we had needs to expand, and we joined, we partnered with UK to expand the system, and those were already users on the UK system. So as part of the contract with UK to share the system and share the resources with UK, they came onto our system as well. So that's how Fayette County Schools and Lex Tran, it was a legacy that came along with the contract with UK when we expanded the system in 1998. So I guess my point is, has anybody approached them about partnering with this new capability beyond buying radios. I mean, we're putting up towers. That's something we've talked about in the formative stages, but at this point we were more interested in getting the implementation of the system, and we can discuss those facets with the schools and Lex Tran in the future. Well, it seems to me that that might be a conversation that should happen sooner rather than later. And I think it would be incredibly important for Lex Tran and Fayette County Schools to be on this system. Well, again, some of the constraint is that it's technically the University of Kentucky system that we're part of. And so today, we've got to get it in a position where, who used the phrase bus driver? We're the bus driver of the system. Once that occurs, then we're in a position to negotiate with those other groups. Right now, it's a University of Kentucky system, and we're riding their bus. Right. I'm just saying, if we're going to be the bus driver, it might be important before we buy all the buses that we ask them if they want to ride. Council Member Lane. My question is a budget question, so Mr. Barrow may be the one to ask. I promise to sit closer. I hope maybe there's a ray of light here somewhere. Do we have aligned items right now in our public safety budgets for repair, maintenance, and acquisition of radios to keep our current system up to date? And when we put in all the new units, will that eliminate some of those costs so that money would be available to work on the new cost? Great question, the one I ask myself. Currently, the operating budgets to maintain the systems are de minimis at best. Obviously, we knew we were going to have to put in a solution in place, so obviously what do you do? You don't invest in capital. The current expenditures that we do have is what I've talked and got information given to me is just buying new radios if they break. Very de minimis, maybe a tenth of what we're looking at in the figure that's on the screen there, the 695. 695 will include maintenance as well as any radios that break. So that is a little misleading on the ongoing costs of both capital maintenance and new radios. But on an ongoing operating cash basis, we are going to drastically increase that because we're not spending much money currently. Okay. And I have one technical question. We'll wait for the questions. The question is, the current equipment that we have for the police department, we've got two parts to it, is the age of the radio system and how long before it would be totally broken anyway or functionally obsolete. I guess it would be functionally obsolete at the end of the year, but we've gotten our money's worth out of our investment in our radios there. And the second part of that, do the computers that are in the police vehicles, do they use this system to send data, or do we have separate data for that? Okay, to answer your first question, our radio system essentially, the backbone dates back to the 1960s. It has been a very good radio system. The problem that we face right now is that our radio system is an analog system that is running radios that cannot talk to fire, cannot talk to airport, cannot talk to UK. Our mobile radios are not upgradable to the P25 standard. They cannot be narrow-banded. Our portable radios, we only have 250 out of 700 that can be upgraded. The rest cannot. So a dramatic part of our expense is the fact that we have a large amount of portables and mobiles that cannot be upgraded to this standard, and they have to be replaced. Substantial cost of that. To answer your second question concerning the mobile data network, that is a totally separate network and is not part of this project whatsoever. Okay. Do we have any bad news coming over in that area? That system is a lot newer, so is it technology okay on that, The technology is working just fine for us. We are exploring right now whether we can do it more efficiently and save money or basically make it a wash by looking at other options. But right now, using the radio frequency infrastructure we have right now, it's working fine to suit us. We are looking at some improvements right now on that. Okay. Thank you all. That's all I've got. Councilman Beard. Thank you, Mayor. The longer you sit here, the more questions that come up, it seems like. The system we would be going to is how old from a technological point of view? How old is the new system? Yes. Or you mean how old is the technology? The technology. Well, actually the technology, the Phase I P25, has been around for 8, 10 years. However, going to a full standardized P25 system, the infrastructure we are actually purchasing will be brand new. What has changed over the years is the software. And the advantage to our new system is if it changes in two years from now, we put new software. It's all part of our maintenance costs, and it's not a big expense as far as replacing physical things. We use the same radios. We'll upgrade the software and move forward. Okay. Second set of questions. The school system and Lex Tran, are they equipping their buses? Or would they be equipping their buses? What are they equipping? It is my understanding that they have been proceeding the way fire has been proceeding. Over the last several years, as they bought new radios, they were buying radios that could be upgraded to a P-25 system. They're also, I know from talking to them, they're looking for a more cost-effective solution to put in a bus. Basically, what they've been buying is the higher-grade public safety radio, which they really don't need in a school bus. But because of the existing system we're on, they're limited on what radios they can buy. They can only buy radios from one manufacturer because of the proprietary system. They are very interested in going to an open-source system where they can get economies of scale and perhaps get less expensive radios in the buses. but they have been purchasing radios that are compatible that I'm aware of. I just can't see that there would be much traffic. You know, my bus is broken down or Susie is sick and we need to get an EMS unit out there. But, you know, it's a lot cheaper to give every bus driver a cell phone. I can't speak for the school system. I don't know what they are, but there is a tremendous amount of radio traffic that goes between the school buses on a daily basis. I can watch the traffic data in the operation. We've got a computer where we monitor the traffic on the system. And if you look at your peak times, between about 7, 9 in the morning and 2 and 4 in the afternoon, because you're combining that with LexTran and the school buses, there is a tremendous amount of traffic. Because not in addition to just the school buses, but you also have the Fayette County School of Security is also using that for their in-school, for their law enforcement officers within the school system. It was the buses I was interested in, actually. I just am kind of groping around for the idea that there would be a lot of traffic, other than I'll meet you after work at Joe's Bar. I'm not sure what the traffic is. I haven't actually monitored traffic to see what they're discussing, but I know that just from the push-to-talks of a number of channels that are used during that period of time, they do a lot of traffic between the buses. We all are subject to playing with toys when we have them laid out in front of us. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Councilman Myers. Thank you, Mayor. David, just a quick question. What is the difference between the cost that we would incur if we went with Phase 2 right now instead of Phase 1? The current system that we're negotiating with Harris, we can upgrade to Phase 2 for about $823,000, and we can do that next year. We can do it in six years. We can do it on our timetable when it's needed. We requested in the bids for Phase 1 upgradeable to Phase 2, and we asked for the cost to go there to be locked in, and so we did that. We can choose to do it or not to do it at our leisure. So if we wanted to go Phase 2 right now, it would be another $800,000? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Councilor McState. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to end it in asking, what are we going to do with the old radio system? You may want to elaborate on that. Well, we have two old radio systems once we get this new one in. The first old radio system is at the police. It's VHF. We are going to narrow band that, and we are going to use the 250 units that we can upgrade, and we're going to use that for parks and recs, solid waste, sanitary sewers, other people in government. So we will use the system we already have and make it also be used for our sirens, which will require VHF. So that one we're going to upgrade and salvage and use. The old one at the fire, we will migrate off that eventually once we get everyone on the new system. And it already has an end of life, so we are going to get off before its end of life. And what's the cost to do the change to the police so we can still use it? $1.5 million, and it's incorporated in the budget that we have included. Very good. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor. Councilman Crosby. Thank you, Mayor. I do not have a question on your item. I was trying to let everybody get their questions out of the way. I'll actually, so nobody has to come up on P, I think Council Member Stinnett maybe chaired this, and he probably can answer my question pretty easily if that is, did you chair this committee? Do you remember or recall if we got a draft copy of the ordinance in your report out? We only focused on building inspection, but historic preservation also had the same issue, so we didn't draft anything for them, but we knew that piece would have to come eventually. I'm just curious because in the packet for today, I just want to get a copy of it, if law or before Thursday night. Thank you. That's all I want. Thanks. Thank you, Councilman Crosby. I'm not sure anybody else is wishing to speak on new business. We have a motion and a second. If nobody else wishes to speak, we can take a vote. All right. All in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Mayor. Want to? No on O. Okay. Okay, so maybe we should vote electronically, and then if you wish to object or to vote no, just identify yourself, please. So. All right, and Council Member Farmer, your vote was no on O. Right. Okay. No on O. All right. Has everybody voted? All right. All right. Council Member Beard? Okay. So, Council Member Beard, also no on O. And that goes for me as well, Mayor. McCord, no on no. Councilman McCord, no on no. No on no. Councilmember Martin, no on no. All right. All right. Okay. All right. Then the motion passes on both, on all. All right. I want to thank everybody for that discussion. It's a very big issue and a very big purchase, and it's that kind of questioning that we need, especially today. Thank you all. Next on our agenda is continuing business and presentations. at the suggestion of Councilmember Ellinger with many members of our audience here for the discussion of the task force report on the Charles Young Center. We'll move that to first on the presentations. And that presentation is being offered by Councilmember Chris Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Vice Mayor Gordon and fellow members of the council, it's my honor to stand on behalf of the Charles Young Community Center Redevelopment Task Force. I want to reference my remarks on the report that everybody received a week ago on November 22nd. Also, the many members of the community who have followed our work and who are on our distribution list have also received a copy of the report. And then lastly, the report was kindly placed into the work session packet today. Again, I want to start by introducing our task force members. A lot of effort has gone forth in providing this information for the council to consider today, and we have a few task force members who are here present. I want to start by recognizing my fellow council colleagues, Council Member at Large Steve Kaye and Councilwoman Peggy Henson. Also in the crowd we have today, and if you'll stand, Mr. Carl White, Mr. Charles Fields, Mr. Glenn Brown, the Mayor's Office. And I don't recognize any other task force members that are here present. Thank you so much, gentlemen. But also on the task force was Kim Bayard, James Coles, Gwen Godfrey, who resigned, Ryan Cook, Sherry Maddock and Billy Mallory, who also resigned, and Mr. Thomas Tolliver, last but not least. We'll go to the next page, Chris. The purpose of our task force was to assist the urban county government on behalf of the urban county council in developing a comprehensive community-oriented study to initiate the redevelopment of the Charles Young Center and its part area. Our scopes of work incorporated five tasks and you can reference this on page one. I'll be bouncing back and forth. The overhead has just a few pages that I'll reference from time to time, but I'll try to keep you guys posted as to where I'm reading from. The scope of work on page one is to evaluate the social and economic service needs of the ECN neighborhood. B, to identify the preferred utilization and programmatic functions of the center. C, to calculate the approximate structural needs and renovation costs of the center. D, to identify potential public and private funding sources to support renovation costs, and E, to integrate principles of local planning efforts within the proposed redevelopment area. Next slide, please. Just for context, this is listed on page 8 of the report. It's just an area map which identifies the study area. The study not only is the community center, which is located at 540 East 3rd Street, it is also the adjoining green space parkland that incorporates the park, and then it also incorporates what the task force identified through its work as the Ann Street green space footprint, which is to the west of the Shropshire Extended. That is an area that just a few years ago was the home of single-family residences. So we are studying in our report three pieces of property which incorporates our study area. The history of the community center, as we understand, was erected in the mid-1930s, and it was dedicated as the first indoor community facility for African-American residents of Lexington and Fayette County. We also know that it was named in honor of Colonel Charles Young, a native Kentuckian who holds high stature in the military ranks of our community, being only the third African American to graduate from the military academy at West Point. The community center served as the social hub and cultural hub of the East End Community of Lexington, having hosted a myriad of community events, socials, and other cultural activities. Its most recent and its former use was as the Charles Young Community Center, a component of the Urban County Government's Division of Parks and Recreation. It served that role until the summer of 2008 at which time it was closed and it has been closed and unprogrammed at that time. I quickly want to talk about the process. Pages 10, 11, and 12 in your report, and they're not listed above on your overhead, incorporates what we attempted to do as a task force to seek citizen input, to involve residents into the process, to keep an open and transparent process as we study this very, very important facility and area in our community, and we hope that we were successful. On behalf of the task force, I think it is very and definitely safe to say that many of the recommendations incorporate suggestions that were made and obtained through the public comment process. So the public played a very vital role, and we're thankful for it. We had 14 meetings dating back to the first meeting in March. We concluded our work in late October. At every meeting, we incorporated on our agenda public comment. We also seeked other input from e-mails, surveys, signature petitions. And then most importantly, we hosted two community forums. One was held on June 22nd at the Charles Young Community Facility, which was perhaps the first time that we had a large gathering there in quite a while. And then the last community forum was held September 7th at the Shiloh Baptist Church and thankful to their graciousness to host us there. Next page please, Chris. I'm going to attempt to be brief in the remainder of my remarks because I know there may be questions from the council as well as comments from task force members and the citizens. But I want to talk about our recommendations. get quickly to our recommendations and then also go to the backgrounds and findings which led us to those recommendations. You can find those recommendations on page 18. There are five distinct recommendations. Number one is to establish a Charles Young Center Advisory Board to prioritize and govern community-based programs and services at the Charles Young Center. Recommendation number two, Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government shall retain ownership of the Charles Young Center and shall partner with the community to house preferred activities and or programming. Recommendation number three, LFUCG and the recommended Charles Young Center Advisory Board to initiate a formal process by soliciting requests for qualifications, otherwise known as RFQs, from any and all interested parties for programmatic and service programs to be facilitated at the center. Recommendation number four, urban county government to appropriate $173,000 for preliminary short-term facility capital needs at Charles Young Center, including handicap accessibility slash ADA compliance measures. Furthermore, the Community Development Block Grant, or CDBG, is the recommended funding source. And last but not least is recommendation number five. It's to incorporate the quote Ann Street green space footprint, approximately one acre, into the official Charles Young Park land plat for the purpose of redeveloping off-street parking and other recreational uses. So those are our five recommendations. Just a few background points and the findings that led to those. On page six of your report, you have the renovation costs. And I want to say to Mayor Gray and to the Council, the administration and our division directors and leaders have been very responsive and helpful to the task force over our nine or ten months or so of work. And so Jamshid, former acting commissioner of general services, was very helpful in compiling some numbers. But he's identified $173,000 of base costs, which will be needed on the facility management side. We want to notate that our renovation costs and budgets are not programmatic in nature, because as of right now, it is yet to be determined exactly what operating and programmatic functions will be housed at the facility. But the basic things that are needed to allow the community access to the facility are incorporated into these numbers. It's also important to note that since the time of our work as a task force begun, Urban County Government has invested approximately $42,000 in the environmental remediation of the facility of that asbestos removal. and a great portion of that $42,000 cost was represented in man hours that our government has invested, approximately 1,250 man hours. When I walked into the facility right after my election in December, I'm not certain what I expected for a facility whose doors were closed for three or four years, but what I found and what we found through our discussion and examination is that we have a structurally sound building. perhaps as any building could be that dates back to the 1930s. Our preferred uses, one of the things we also did as a task force is we recognized that our work to a grand scale was not original. There has been a lot of activity that has occurred in East End Lexington and a lot of support that this government has placed in the East End. Planning efforts such as the East End Small Area Plan, the Charles Young Center Feasibility Report, social service needs assessments gave us a guide as to a sense of what the community wanted. There was never any doubt that the community wanted the center to be used for public and community-oriented purposes. What our task was was to zero in, to kind of zero down, if you will. there's not quite enough space to accommodate all of the wishes that have been identified in those previous planning efforts. We do foresee that there is enough room at the facility, at the green space, on the footprint, to accommodate multiple uses. But we attempted to zero down. We identified five preferred uses. A recreational facility, a community center, workforce job training, senior citizens, and youth and teen activities. So five preferred uses. Three of those are somewhat very much similar, those being a recreational facility, the community center, and the youth and teen activities. Those were our preferred uses. In consistency with the previous planning efforts, we also found it to be wise not to exclude uses other than those preferred uses that I just mentioned, because there may be uses that are consistent with the East End Small Area Plan that may provide value not only to the center but to the area. Quickly, I'd like to turn our attention to page 15 in your report, which is the RFQ, and you'll see a scoring criteria grid there. Excuse me for just a second. In the previous planning effort identified as the Charles Young Center feasibility report prepared by EHI Consultants and Mr. Ed Holmes, one of our local experts on planning and also a former resident of the East End, It recommended the use of an RFP, a request for proposal to help the government identify potential owners, potential persons that may be interested in purchasing a Charles Young facility. What the task force did was we investigated and examined the use of the RFP, but we modified it. We modified it to place a focus on facility uses as opposed to ownership of the facility because, again, one of our recommendations is for the urban county government to retain ownership. So what you have there is our attempt to provide a criteria by which this government, on behalf of the community, could allow for a fair and equitable process. Any and all interested parties, everybody would know what the score sheet is, so to speak. what criteria will be evaluated for the proposals that will come forth. And that's what you have there. Number two are the core values, and it weighs the highest of this 100-point scale. It's approximately 35 points, and it's the core values. And those core values are consistent. Those core values, in fact, are the preferred uses of the facility that I just mentioned. The RFQ process as it is incorporated now was worked on in the last few years prior to my term with the help of the Division of Central Purchasing. And Brian Markham, its director, was also very helpful to us at that time. It talked about the use of a selection committee to evaluate RFQs as such. This topic generated perhaps the most interest and discussion amongst the public at our task force meetings. And there rose to the level of great interest to expand upon that customary process, which for the most part is viewed as internal and government-driven, to allow for community input and sustainable involvement in the selection and prioritization process. So with that, the recommendation arose, which is the first recommendation, which is to establish and appoint a Charles Young Center Advisory Board to participate in the process. Having discussed, requested the information with our Department of Law, we were able to provide for your reference in Appendix D of the report an ordinance that's already on our books as an Irvine County government, which pertains to neighborhood center boards. and that ordinance is Article 9, Section 2-41 of our Code of Ordinances and it calls for how to establish advisory boards at our neighborhood centers akin to many of our boards that exist now. The Dunbar Advisory Board at the Dunbar Center, the Carver Board, the Carver Center and one of the more involved and successful boards, the Black and Williams Center on Georgetown Street. So we use that as a reference, as a way to recommend that we have sustainable involvement into this process. The Community Development Block Grant, as such, we found to be an eligible funding source for this government to consider in a time that we recognize as trying on our general fund. The last thing I have for your review is the flow chart of how the development roles will work. And so in lay terms, if I could describe what our task force recommendations are, it would be a three-pronged approach. Urban County Government will basically serve as a facility manager. It will maintain ownership of the facility, and it will take care of the basic facility needs at the facility. It will lean heavily and involve itself in a partnership effort with the advisory board, whose charge is going to be great. There is a lot of work to be done from this point forward in working with our members of our community. The advisory board will seek out interested organizations, programs, and services and inform them and hopefully recruit them to garner their interest into the facility to bring the services and programs that we know the East End neighborhood deserves. Lastly but not least is that we will want to see the need to rely upon third-party service providers. In the last year of this operation, in fiscal year 2008, the Division of Parks and Rec invested, had a budget rather, of approximately $140,000 to run that facility as a community facility. We understand that we're in trying times now. But from what we've heard and what we believe to be true, there are many, many interested, able and willing members of our community that would love the opportunity to provide services at the Charles Young Community Facility. So they will be our service providers. Our challenge is twofold, in my opinion, stepping aside as chair of the task force, is to provide a commitment as the owner of that facility for that area in my district. And then secondly, to have a fair, above board, even kill process that any and all parties can apply and express interest. So, council members, thank you for your attention to the report. I have not covered everything, but I feel confident and hopefully that everybody has read the report. I do know that there is one task force member that would like to speak, and I would like to invite him to the podium if that's okay, Mayor, at this time. And then any questions that the council may have, I'd be glad to try my best at it. This gentleman is Mr. Carl White. Carl White is one of the lead organizers of the East End Family Reunion that's held in August, and he's a long-time East End resident. Honorable Mayor Gray, Councilmembers, Councilman Chris Ford, I was just thinking about what I would say if I got a chance to speak here today. And since the development of this task force, as you peruse through this redevelopment report, I just want you to think about one thing, and it just came to my mind yesterday. when I was going over this again, and I said, the one thing that stuck out to me is a movie that came to my mind, which was Roots. And I'm quite sure everybody probably saw it. If you haven't seen it, you might want to go to the library and check it out. And a certain part of that movie was when old Fiddle, old master called Fiddle in and told Fiddlers to bring you Fiddle. And the master took the Fiddle and took it over to the fireplace and broke it up and threw it in the fire and burned Fiddler's Fiddle up. and that just hit me like this is basically the same thing that was going to happen to Charles Young but you see we don't need a new fiddle we might need some strings so that's what we need our help as with the strings not the whole fiddle we love this building, we love this park and I just hope that you'll read our task force report and vote to let us have our park back. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. White. Thank you, Council Member Ford. Chris, we've had several folks that signed up, I suspect, I believe, to probably speak to the Charles Young. Yes, sir, Mayor, and I want to thank the residents who have come and patiently allowed us to take care of our business for the previous hour. But if we could alter our agenda to let them speak, and then if there are any questions from the Council in regards to the report or comments raised, I'll be glad to answer those as well. It's okay with Council members that we take the public comments. So I have signed up Corey Dunn and Patrice Muhammad and Bruce Mundy. And Carl's already spoken, Carl White. Oh, it's Patricia, not Patrice. Mayor, may I approach the bench to give handouts to those council members? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Is that okay? Thank you. Well, now somebody could give you their time if they wanted to do that. Maybe. Mr. Kenya will give me a few minutes. Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor Gray, Councilmembers, Councilmember Ford, and citizens. I'm Patricia Devine Mohammed and I'm with the Friends of the Colonel Charles Young Community Center. I like to respond to the findings of the task force. We, along with the Historic East End Community Association, which is an advocate for the interests, concerns, and concerns of Lexington's African American community, we have a vision. And on the first page of your handout, our vision is to promote the continuation and the restoration and the preservation of the facility that is the Colonel Charles Young Community Center. And we have a vision for educational, social, and cultural activities which are reflective of the best of its historical role over the decades as more than an icon but a testament that witnessed the great moments of the history of black Lexingtonians during much of the 20th century. Toward that end, we have four goals, and I'll just try to be brief with them just so the citizens at home could understand what we're talking about. We want to restore the Colonel Charles Young Community Center and reinvigorate its community spirit as an important setting where unity in the community can be forged and strengthened. As a result of the unity, community members can enjoy social, cultural, and economic benefits, including harmony among them by means of creating a supportive network of neighbors. This neighborly network can build an economic base for self-reliance, including businesses and financially successful enterprises. Our second goal is to implant the genesis of education and cultural institutions that can draw out the best thoughts, attitudes, customs, and behaviors of all individuals. We would like to have personal growth and create character and children of character and stable families. And briefly, the third goal is to create the Colonel Charles Young Community Center as a place for discussion and community dialogue where ideas and intellect are valued and integrated as the basis for community planning and talent and energy are cultivated and channeled for positive achievements and character building. Our last goal is to foster a sense of shared worth and responsibility that results in an increased civic involvement, citizenship, participation, and community and national service. And as you see on page two, we are building a membership that can provide for the long-term financial sustainability of Colonel Charles Young and not be just dependent upon the government. Let me direct your attention to the bottom of page four and continuing on to page six. We envision having three types of programs. The Colonel Charles Young Community Center can house original programs, cultural and social programs, as well as be a meeting space for the community organizations. And just to focus in our short time, one of the programs that we would like to do is the Colonel Charles Young Military and Leadership Academy. And we believe that these classes that we can hold at Colonel Charles Young Center can transition into a charter school and eventually into a boarding school. These classes we are simply focusing on is because I want to acquaint you with Colonel Charles Young. Patricia, Ms. Mahabert, my time's up. Oh, no, you've got another two minutes and 20 seconds. Mr. Kenyon's time. Okay, two minutes of Mr. Kenyon's time. Okay, I just want to focus on that Colonel Charles Young was born in Kentucky. And also that the reason why we love this center is I have some handouts from the United States Senate resolution to Colonel Charles Young. Also, there is a petition, a national petition, to honor Colonel Charles Young and give him the rank of Brigadier General. Next to the last page, you see Fraternity Omega Psi Phi this summer honored its honorary member, Colonel Charles Young, at his gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery. And then the last page, Colonel Charles Young's signature was always for race and country. And we envision having a monument on the site facing Midland Avenue. And this monument will be based on the photo that you see here. Its theme will be America Salutes Colonel Charles Young. and we think that this will bring in tens of thousands of visitors to Lexington as well as bring in about a million dollar in tourism money to Lexington so that the center is a valuable place to the citizens of Lexington. And simply to just kind of tell you the reason why we're here is because we want to see in our communities programs that are more than just parks and recreation, just dancing, just crafts. We want to see programs that develop a holistic community. And we also want to be very much involved with the development of the Colonel Charles Young Community Center because other programs, such as the Lyric Theater and others, they opened. They were supposed to be for African Americans, and we never had any programs in there in more than a year. So the community wants to be very proactive in the development of the programs at this center. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kenyon, for your two minutes. Thank you, Ms. Mohammed. All right, sir. Mr. Dunn. My name is Corey Dunn. And your address, yes, sir, please. 117 West 6th Street. Basically, the scope of work for the Charles Young Center, well, first of all, I'd like to thank the task force and Chris Ford and all you members because, whew, it was a process. But the scope of work was to calculate the approximate structural needs, identify potential public and private funding sources, and then integrate basically the East End Small Area Plan. With that being said, I mean, it's cool. We basically support everything that the task force, all the task force recommendations, with the exception of recommendation number three, which is the one that Councilman Ford spoke about earlier. The RFQ process is a good process. However, in a community center like Charles Young, I don't know if it's going to help the community because the RFQ process with the point system and the scoring and whatnot, it's weighted towards older, larger corporations. So if you have an older company with plenty of money and a 20-year track record, you have a lot better chance of getting in through the RFQ process as opposed to, say, a person from the community who's never done anything per se, but he knows people in the community and he's able to help. So it's like the larger companies with the RFQ process will have the upper hand, whereas the people from the community who know the needs of the community the best will probably be shut out because we won't have the money to sustain Charles Young Center. We won't have the history of some of the larger companies or corporations. And also, as a community, we want multiple entities in there because it's people like PAL, it's people like mentoring programs and some of the things that Ms. Muhammad spoke on, that the community is interested in having them inside that building, yet with the RFQ process, if one person submits a proposal and they score 100 on the RFQ, they get the building. get the building, if they decide to add in that RFQ process, if I'm not mistaken, if they decide to say we want to include purchase or complete control of the building and they awarded that, then how does it help the community? So what we want to do is go with everything on the recommendations with the exception of the RFQ process. Because if we can set up a neighborhood center board similar to what Councilman Ford was speaking of, then we as a community can control what goes on, who goes in, and we have a better feel for what is going on in our community as opposed to having companies who don't know. Because Charles Young is a five-minute walk from downtown. Five-minute walk from Main Street. So that's prime real estate. You've got all these companies coming in and the gentrification process in the East End area alone is ridiculous. The East End small area plan is, I mean, it is what it is. They plan on putting all this stuff in place in our community that's historically been ours, however, it'll push us out. So what we want to do is maintain control of Charles Young. That way, we as a community can best, I guess, say what the needs of the community are and make sure that they're met. Thanks, Mr. Don. Mr. Mundy. Bruce Mundy, also known as Brother Bruce, 1839 Donco Court. It's really easy to be up there this afternoon because I brought my young people with me. I'm indeed pleased that our young people have felt empowered, that they have met, organized, and decided to speak for themselves. And so I don't have to speak for them. I step back from that, and I take pleasure in stepping back from that. So I won't speak for them, but I'll speak to you. For those who know me and those who don't, I say this quite often, know you haul behind the hearse. Meaning that we can take nothing with us, but we can leave a lot. Let me say that again, if you did not hear me, know you haul behind the hearse. Meaning that we can take nothing with us, but we can leave a lot. We had a sister who here the other day went through what we call a transition. Her name was Sister Barry. We appreciate her because as she was going through transition four weeks ago, she stood up in Shallow Baptist Church and very vehemently talked about how it was important to save Charles Young and more than that how it was important to save our young people. Let me say this also. All people are African. So I don't just stand up here for people who are huge like me. We all came from an African man and African woman. I did not come up with that. If you want to do some research, you will find out that there were geneticists that had done the study of the RNA and DNA coding of ancient people and found only one thing that us modern day men had in common with them, and that was that we had a common genetic code. So we're all African, okay? So when I stand up here and talk about the children, I'm not talking about my children. I'm talking about our children. Eleven shot, one dead in nine weeks. Okay, let me say that again. Eleven shot, one dead in nine weeks. If one of those people was shot, was in critical condition, you can just about bet that his medical expenses was half a million dollars. You can just about bet that he did not have any insurance. You can just about bet that the other 11 people didn't either. Because violence a lot of times happens in areas where there's poverty, where there are people who are unable and unequipped to have those things. And so what is the cost of not having a health facility like Charles Young could be? What is that cost? What is that cost as an end? What is that final medical bill told up to be? And so as we do this, and we'll be back, my young people are coming back. I won't have a lot to say anymore. As I said, we'll be back. As we do that, council people know U-Haul behind the hearse. Thank you, Mr. Bundy. Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you very much. That's all. I have signed up to speak. Open the floor. The floor is available for Councilmember comments now. Is that good? Councilmember Ford? Yes, sir, Mayor. All right, sir. Councilmember Henson. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say as a task force member, I consider it a pleasure to serve on this task force. And Council Member Ford, I think you did an A-plus job organizing us and keeping us in check. But I truly fell in love with the East End, and I think I have not seen more passion. And throughout our community, places I've been, I haven't seen more passion out of people for the Charles Young Center. So I would just hope that we can find the funds that are needed to renovate the building and that we move forward with these recommendations. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member Henson. Thank you, Council Member Henson. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Ford, thank you very much. And I want to also thank the task force members, each of whom said yes to serve. And I really appreciate your report. I think there's lots of good information in here for the council to work on. I also wanted to say, and I don't know Patricia if you were the one, at the first public meeting, someone distributed a history of Charles Young. It was several pages. And I would just urge council members, if you've never read the history of Charles Young, Colonel Charles Young, it's very inspiring and very interesting, and I'm sure he can be Googled. and he really had an impact not only on Lexington but way beyond Lexington in the world and it was very inspirational to me to read that. I had not read his history before. And so, Council Member Ford, thank you very much for chairing the task force and for bringing us this report. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member K. Thank you, Mayor. As a member also of the task force, I want to express my appreciation not only to the task force members and to Councilman Ford, but to all the members of the community who came out in great number repeatedly to provide both information and inspiration to the members of the task force. The challenge that I see is that the East End, let me back up a half a step. I live right on the edge of what's officially the East End. I live on the other side of the street from Elm Tree Lane, and I've lived there for 25 years. It's officially in the East End, but I believe the people who live in the East End kind of draw the line right there. So I'm not quite in the neighborhood. But I am familiar with it, and I've watched it, and I've cared about it. And I think the difficulty with this process is that the East End community, if I can make a broad generalization, has good reason not to trust government. They've not been treated well. They have a long history of not being treated well. And how to kind of rationalize what has happened historically with what we're now trying to do I think is a difficulty. Government has structure, it has processes, it has formality, all of which have a place, because the East End, although it's its own neighborhood, is also a part of the larger community of Fayette County. So I think there's some challenges for us. And the challenges are how to meet what are clearly the expressed needs of the community and to do it in a way that respects the structures and the procedures that we have as a government. I look forward to that conversation. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman McCoy. Anybody else? Any other council members? Councilman Stinnett. Thank you, Mayor. Councilman Ford, thank you for bringing this to us. It's probably long overdue after we had these discussions back in 2008 and made the difficult decision because of budgetary reasons and the current conditions of the center to close it in. there were other things that have happened since then. I'm just trying to figure out how that played into your conversations with the task force. This council has invested about $10 million in that area, in the Lyric Theater and in the new elementary school with the community center there. So tell me what the thoughts were of thinking about how the Charles Young Center needs and the programming would be different from what we're offering at the Lyric or could offer there or the new community center. Because, again, we put in $10 million. and trying to figure out how this plays into all that scenario. Very, very good question. Very valid question, Council Member Stanton. And I think if you're referencing your report, we have a section, Section 2, which talks a little bit about development, redevelopment, the recent past activities that have gone on in the East End. And I think Council Member Kaye is correct in his sentiments of the East End residents. All of those great things are long overdue. What we see as while all those things were occurring, there was still a void at the Charles Young Community Center. It left a void. That void still yet remains. And I think what Council Member Sennett is referring to is that when the Charles Young, and it references in the report, when the Charles Young Center ceased its programming via parks and recreation, those programming dollars were transferred just up the road, maybe two or three blocks, three blocks, to the William Wells Brown Community Center, which is a part of the Design Community School, right there in the heart of the former Bluegrass Asmendale projects. Elementary school on one side, community center on the other. That community center primarily, in my view, serves great accessory to the elementary school more so than it does to the general community. And so the access to that facility, while we manage that facility with our parks and recreation dollars, we do not have the access. The community does not have the access that was proposed originally. And what we also try to do, to be very honest and be very candid in this process, again, Council Member Kay is right. There are scars. There are issues of distrust. they won't go away very soon but we can work to improve them. But what we try to do with this task force is not necessarily to harp on all that has gone wrong and continues to go wrong. So I say that to say this is not to necessarily say that the William Wells Brown Community Center is not an asset to our community. What we're saying is that it does not fill the void that the Charles Young Community Center had and that it can have in the future. For example, what we're proposing with the Charles Young Community Center are multiple uses, and I'm just going to throw some things out. These XYZ Boys and Girls Club, ABC Senior Citizen Activity, J, I don't know my alphabets too well, but another activity. But what we're hoping for Charles Young is a sun-up to sun-down venue where we can have multiple uses that this community can be engaged. So that's just the answer. Does that answer your question, Councilor? It does. I thought some of the premise of redoing the Lyric the way we did it was to allow for meeting spaces, allow for clubs and groups to be able to congregate for the cultural activities. And the same way with the school, we want a place for kids to come and learn and after-school programs to educate and give opportunities. And that's what I'm trying to figure out. How does this piece fit into those two that are already there? And have we not done the right thing with those two? Do we need to talk about programming there? So those are some things I'm just thinking out loud, and I think that should have been. And that's why I'm asking, was that part of the discussion of how we mesh these three together? Well, what I will say, and if I can for the council, I know the hour is going, But there are two members of our staff that I would ask that have participated that I would ask to join us. One thing that you will find out in comparing the Charles Young Community Center with the many other things, with the community school, millions of dollars in investment, the government and public schools. The road that we built on Shropshire Extended, we had to buy homes, move people out, disrupt lives. $2.5 million. Delirious right down the street, $6 million. But just as Mr. White said, we don't necessarily need a new fiddle. We have a sound, structured building. So as such, I would like to ask by Karen Mayor, ask Jomsheed to come and just briefly discuss the facility structure of the, because it pertains to the report on page 6, Mayor. This may shed some light in regards to the comparison of the need in investment and feasibility of the redevelopment. Council Member. Councilman Crosby had signed up for a question. John Sheet, how much, what sort of time? Just a couple of minutes. A couple of minutes? All right. I'll be brief. A while ago we did a complete condition assessment on the facility, identifying any shortages in regard to codes, ADA, and so forth. Found the facility to be structurally sound. As CM Ford mentioned, it's in pretty good shape. the biggest items that we identified that requires immediate attention if the facility is going to be reopened would be ADA, accessibility, and a few other code-related issues. So the cost breakdown that you see in front of you pretty much identified every one of those items that we've looked at and came up with what might be the cost. I want to remind you again, this is what we call a short-term repair. Obviously, down the road, depending on the type of programs, occupancy, and so forth, those items can be adjusted. But this is the very bare minimum that's required. Thank you, John. I'm sure. Council Member Crosby, before I call on Council Member Crosby, if I could just mention that I'm going to ask, if I may, if the council is okay with the council, I want to ask Vice Mayor Gordon if she'll take over the chair. I've got to excuse myself for another meeting. But I also want to thank everybody who's participated in this task force, those who are coming out today. Glenn Brown, who sits a couple of desks over from me, there are many nights when we'd be downstairs in the office, and Glenn would say, I'd say, well, where are you headed? He's putting his coat on. He'd say, I'm headed to a task force meeting. And, you know, and he would always come back with reports of how hard, you know, how much effort and how much work has gone into this, how inclusive it's been. and how passionate folks have been about it and the attachment. And I think, as Council Member Henson said, you know, that's been inspiring for many, and it's been informing for many. So thank you all very much for what you've done. So, Vice Mayor, if you could take over. Thank you very much. Thanks. I think Glenn may have wanted to speak, too, if you get a chance. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. You said you wanted to speak, a couple people to speak on the facility, and we still have two council members. I would graciously take questions from council members first, and then I just have one more. We have Council Member Crosby. My first question is, Council Member Ford, are you making a motion today on what you've presented? Do you plan to have a motion come out of this, a formal motion today? No, ma'am. I do not have a formal motion that will come forth today. But with our council meeting that will come on Thursday and in our last council meeting on next Tuesday, I do plan and do recommend that we take action and address some of the recommendations that we've brought forth. I think the time for action is now, and it's important for us to do this as we head into the next calendar year. In fairness to the council members, having gotten the report last Tuesday and having this discussion tonight, didn't want to put the council on the spot tonight, but to get the information out there so we can pass legislation, hopefully take action before we recess next week. Well, I appreciate that, and I appreciate the work you've done as the task force. It was a very thorough report. However, I have, since hearing some of the comments today, I do have some questions that have come up, particularly when I look at Ms. Mohammed's suggestions about financial sustainability, long-term goals with this building. And I see actually some conflict between these two reports. So it concerns me somewhat that I see conflict with what some of the citizens have proposed and what the board came up with. And so those are things that maybe I can just ask you later to maybe clarify, because as I look through these two different presentations and hearing comments from how we maybe did not make certain other projects in the East End accessible to the citizens there, I would have concern that we would move forward on something where I'm already getting conflicting information within this meeting. So that's why I would not be prepared to vote on any motions today, but I think by next week we could clear that up. I'll just ask you my questions later. I'll reserve them and ask you later. Thank you. Thanks so much, Council Member Crosby. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My question is, have there been any efforts for fundraising, grant writing? I know there was a park maybe in Councilmember McCord's district that got a $50,000 Pepsi Challenge grant. And Kaboom is another one of those that funds projects up to, I think, about $50,000. And they're geared specifically to recreation. And, you know, so, you know, I think that there are ways that possibly private sector and grants, et cetera, could be aggressively looked at. And I think that any time we can do that, we need to do it. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. If I can just, Vice Mayor, definitely appreciative of the attention and dialogue that Council is giving us as members of the task force in the community. But in regards, if you would turn your attention to the flow chart on page, what page is the flow chart on? 16. 16. If you would turn your attention to the flow chart on page 16, I'll summarize it by simply saying we all have a role to play. And towards the top of that flow chart, Chris, what we've done as a task force, and I would also say to Council Member Crosby, is that the report that we've presented is a report that was commissioned by this council. And we've done our very best to get citizen input. I want to be clear that our citizen input has not excluded any citizen input, but we don't want it ever to be mentioned as the only citizen input that can be attributed to this process. So I actually, while I have not read Ms. Muhammad's report, very much interested in reading it, because I believe it can fit in the part, the third party role. Our role that we're really focusing on today as a council in regards to the actions that we will take as a government is to be a good facility manager, a good trustee of our property, and to have an accessible building that all of our citizens can walk into. And that's $85,000 of the $175,000 that we need. Also, the Charles Young Center Advisory Board is going to be critical to address some of the issues that Mr. Dunn raised. And his concern about the RFP, we don't disguise. That was a concern and a real conversation and reconciliation that we had as a task force in the community. But we feel that the establishment of that advisory board is going to be very critical to ensuring that the community has sustainable input. So the third-party fundraising for programs is going to be so important. What we're proposing is not the funds needed to operate programs. We're proposing the funds that will be needed to get the building in code. And what I would do, if I can, I would like to, the last government employee that I'll call on will be Ms. Irene Gooding to come and talk about our funding mechanism. Because I know in our times, that's what council is concerned about right now, as we should be. How will we pay for it, and does the funding source, is it eligible to pay for it? So I would like to, just to discuss the proposed funding source in relation to the needs, facility maintenance needs that we've identified in the report. And that is a lot of what things like the Pepsi Challenge and Kaboom do is the bricks and mortars of the playground, if you will, or the building. So anyway. Right. I think the question has to do with whether or not community development block grant funds can be used for this facility. As long as it's a community facility with a low-income benefit, it is an eligible activity. The government, through the administration, can suggest the allocation of these funds for this purpose. It is eligible. Well, that wasn't my question because we only have so many of those dollars. I'm just saying it would be really helpful if other dollars could be, I mean, it costs nothing to, you know, turn in a proposal to Pepsi Challenge or Kaboom. And, you know, so. And I'm certain from what I'm understanding from a recommended Charles Young advisory board, friends of Charles Young, the general community at large, we know we have a lot of work to do. And we definitely recognize that that is a part of it. Thanks, Council Member Lawless. Thank you. Council Member Crosby. Yes, when I heard my name mentioned, I thought, well, I'll listen here and see what has to be said. I think my point was, first and foremost, you said we're worried about the dollars up here. That's the bottom line is we're worried about, one, making the investment, than, two, how that investment is going to affect years down the road. And then we're hearing from community members about the programming, that buildings that we already own as a government are not accessible. And so in my mind as I'm listening, I'm thinking what's going to be different because we are going to still own, even though you have a board who's responsible for making decisions on programming, at the end of the day, we still own the building, And that's not different than some of these other spaces that you're discussing. So that was my point was how is that going to tie in with what's already there? I think back to what Council Member Stinnett was saying is, one, how is this going to be different? Because you're still asking LFBCG to make the investment and own the property. Council Member Crosby, the only thing that I can say is that it's identified in the report, is that this is a complementary investment in peace. The Lyric Theater is a theater and cultural arts center. It's not, and we own it, we do, but it has a board that governs and does just that. It's responsible for its programming dollars. The William Wells Brown Community Center, we do not own. The Fayette County Public School owns that facility, but we used some of our budgeting dollars to program there. What we're saying with Charles Young is we have an opportunity. We own the facility. The biggest thing that we didn't mention in the report is that it is feasible for LFUCG to renovate it. It's feasible. And what we contend is that with some hard work still yet to come, this facility will be an asset for us once again. there will be value to us having a facility. Summer will come again, and with all the concern that we've had for youth and the need for their programming. But those are valid questions, Council Member Crosby and I. And I still want to be able to have time to ask, I guess, too, did you all look at, you mentioned several different types of programming opportunities, but also I heard today that there's also going to be costs associated with that. Will the RFP process that you are looking at, will that include ongoing costs to maintain the building? The RFQ process as we envision it, that's a great question, very great question. The RFQ process as we envision it will be based upon facility use. For example, again, folks that want to come in and propose to provide services. those services will be borne to those organizations. They are operating costs. This council just passed a facility usage policy, which we sure, and we're not asking for this facility to be exempt from that policy. So the agencies and organizations that come into Charles Young will have programming and operational costs. They'll also have facility usage costs that will help us maintain it. This is one thing we did discuss. We recognize that the facility has $175,000 worth of needs. So it was discussed why not burden, for lack of a better word, the interested parties in doing those things. Our contention is that, again, as a good trustee, we own the building. We should make it accessible. And if we have the funding source, such as the Community Development Block Grant, we can burn those costs to make the improvements so that the agencies that come in can share those resources in providing programs. Now, whatever program they offer in that facility, whatever paint color, whatever fixtures they need, those will be born to them. Those will not be born to the Irma County government. That answers my question. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thanks, Council Member Crosby. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I know one thing that I brought up at the task force meetings was that, to me, the Charles Young Center is a historic building. That needs to be preserved where it is. And there had been talk in the past of it being demolished and developed and so forth. And to me, that would just be just horrible if something like that were to happen. And the people that live there, the people that live there and care about this structure are the people really that own it. It might say government, but really they are the government. We just represent them. So, I mean, that is truly the way I see it. And I think that maybe because it is a historic structure, maybe we could find funding for it in that manner, Council Member Ford. I'm not sure. But, you know, the control of this community center needs to be handed over to the community, in my opinion. They're the ones that are going to care for it more than anyone in government, any government employee would. So, you know, I'll fight tooth and nail, I guess. $170,000 is not a lot of money compared to what we put into the Lyric. and William Wells Brown and the accessibility, the control from the community, the needs, all of that was taken away from them. So I would hate to see that happen with the Charles Young Center. Thank you. Are there other council members who want to speak? If not, Mr. Glenn Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just real quick, on behalf of the administration, I guess I wore two hats sitting on this task force because as a child I played. I lived two blocks away from the Charles Young Center. So, you know, being able to wear two hats was, for one, very difficult because I've got to thank government. I've also got to think about where I came from. But in light of that, I would just like to take this opportunity on behalf of the administration to thank Chris for all the hard work, long nights that we all put in, but he's the one that had to read all the reports, compile all the information in addition to his assistant. But in front of you, I want to compliment him on behalf of the administration, and I'd like to thank also everyone in the community that came out every night, the night they stood out in the rain and we had to go other places. but this was an opportunity for government and community to try to work together to try to reach a common cause. We know that the common cause is still yet to come, but it was a fascinating experience, and it was led by a fellow council member, and for that I want to say thank you. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Council, for your time and your confidence. Thank you, Council Member Ford, and thanks to all who came today to hear the report. And thank you again to task force members for serving. Thank you. Our next item is the report from the Procurement Task Force, and that is Council Member Howling. Vice Mayor, I would say, I would ask some, I apologize for, if we go ahead and do the parks graffiti, we have employees that are still here, allow them to get out of here. I hate to say it, but I was trying to be nice to allow them to go. We have employees here that also are waiting, too. On the procurement? Yes, we do. So I've tried to give up some of my time, but I think we do have people here waiting that I need to go ahead and do this. Thank you, by the way. If you'd like to go ahead and leave, feel free if you'd like to. If you want to stay, you obviously can stay. Or stay. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Vice Mayor. The Procurement Task Force, on October 4, 2010, Crittler-Elling sent a letter to the Mayor. It was an examination allegation of potential fraud and other related issues regarding procurement practices at Lexington-Fayette-Urban County. And in it, it talks about the consistency and transparency of the procurement policies. The mayor, in January 2011, put a task force together that was looking at the state auditor's report related to procurement. And in that, if you would put the task force composition. There you go. Thank you. I want to publicly thank all the members. There's many times I am not the smartest person in the room, most every time. And in this time, I was by far the dumbest person in the room. And it was always nice to have a lot of experts in there helping us out. We have some task members here that have stayed throughout the day, and I want to thank them. And after we get through here, I think we'll probably hear from some of them that have some comments that they'd like to add to it. I'd also like to thank the law department for their help and also Shannon, my aide, who staffed it. On the task force meetings, we have many meetings that we met and worked through. These are the meeting dates and what we took part in of the meetings. The goals of the task force, we have basically three goals. We address the state auditor's report findings. We analyze and evaluate the COA policy. Number one, evaluation of professional services, and we incorporate the evaluation of professional services into the LFUCG procurement regulations. The state auditor's fines, which are finings 7, 8, and 9, they were the procurement policies have no clear hierarchy or authority, occasionally conflict and have not been approved by council. I think after we discussed later, they actually were approved by council. We found out later. and the no consistent procurement method was used for purchasing insurance broker services, and the third one is LFUC does not use a quantitative scoring method for competitively bid vendor proposals. The state auditor recommendations and comments related to procurement, the CAO policy number one creates a conflict, as we said, between the authority of the Division of Central Purchasing as designated by the Charter and the Office of the CAO. establish a quantitative scoring method for competitively bid vendor proposals, disclosure of quantitative scoring method in all RFP documents to improve transparency, and professional service policy should dictate the responsibility to assemble a selection team to evaluate all proposals. The recommendations of the task force first repeal the CAO policy number one and replace with a new regulation governing the procurement of personal professional service to maintain consistency and transparency. Two, adopt the proposed regulations, including the framework of the process procedure, and Mr. Markham will be discussing the regulations later, establishment of a process that would require notification of words to Council in lieu of formal Council approval. The funds have been previously approved through the budget process. This was not part of the findings, but this is something Task Force thought needed to be done. We sent the recommendations off to the State Auditor's Office, and they signed off. That's one reason why it's taken a little while. We waited a while to get their sign-off, and they did sign off on it. Some of the issues that weren't addressed we talked about, but we did not come with any conclusions or recommendations because it was not the task in charge of the task force. But we did discuss them briefly, was vendor preferences, source procurement, and change orders. I know these are issues that the council had talked about, and if they would like the task force to reconvene and go over these, then the task force talked about doing that. but we need to get some guidance from the council if you'd like us to do that. With that, I will open up for questions and allow Mr. Markham also. He'll probably be the one who will be helping me answering the questions. And also we have committee members here who would like to discuss some of the issues, and also I'll pass out, along with the recommendations, we have 13 recommendations, regulations, but we also have number 14 and 15, and we didn't include these initially because these might be a little more controversial. We will make sure the council wants us to do this, but we would like to discuss these and add these into them if the council sees so fit. With that, Vice Mayor, we'll open up for questions from the council. Okay. Thank you very much. And I thought maybe if we could ask task force members who are here to at least stand up and be recognized. Certainly, if they would, please. And I think some had already left for the length of the meeting today, but I certainly want to thank them because they were a big help. Like I said, we had the best experts in the Commonwealth that came and worked, and it really was very helpful. We were able to get things done very quickly. Thank you very much for your report, Mr. Markham. Did you want to say something before we have questions? Well, I was just going to say it was a privilege to work with this task force board. It's always a privilege when you can get together with your peers from across the state who hold these positions that manage a lot of processes and procedures and be able to bounce thoughts and ideas about our processes. And really what we found in that whole process is that ours isn't that bad. There were some things that didn't need to be addressed. But the task force members that are here, John Burkhart, retired executive of Ford Motor Company, William Harris, who is the director of purchasing at the University of Kentucky. I'm kind of disappointed that Don Spear couldn't be here. He is with the state purchasing office because he pretended to be the light of our discussion. But I just wanted to thank those guys for taking time out to assist us. Okay, thank you. Councilmember Crosby. Thank you. I want to thank the task force. I think, actually, before we go, would you want to run through the regulations and go through those? I think it might help the committee. I don't thank the task force yet. I will. I think it might help if we just did a brief summary of the regulations that went along with the recommendations. Okay, the main issue that we were trying to address was the fact that there was two levels of authority in the purchasing process. So the CAO policy in 1996 had given the CAO the authority to assemble and make recommendations on professional services. And within that policy, there was some gray areas. There was different limits and levels, $25,050, what came to council, what didn't come to council. And it was somewhat difficult to manage that process. So what the new regulations do is they bring all those things under the director of purchasing. They bring the professional service selection under the director of purchasing. They establish a limit of $20,000, which matches our existing bid limit. And anything over 20 would require an RFP. It doesn't exclude things under $20,000. The divisions still have the ability to ask us to assist them with those or get proposals on their own. But really the sticker was at what level would we actually have a formal process dictated so that we had consistency, transparency across government. It also, and we've been doing this for some time, but it also dictates that in the proposal scope and specifications themselves that we will clearly identify the evaluation criteria and the quantitative scoring method or the value that's going to be placed upon those criteria so that when we're finished, we can compile a summary sheet. Those summary sheets will be kept in our office in the file, and we'll use those for debriefing the people who did not get the response. So that's basically the gist of it. It's my responsibility to assemble the committee that we'll get together to decide. Basically, at this point, we'll use the same structure that's in place. It's just up to us to have those people come together and be convened. Thank you very much. And I was kind of having a little tiny sidebar with Council Member Ellinger. The council, I don't believe, approves CAO policies. The CAO simply puts them into place, so the CAO would simply need to withdraw it, correct? That's correct. Has he done that? Not yet, but actually this has been draft form. This is draft form, and so this is the actual first public copy. Okay, very good. Okay, very good. Okay, now, Councilmember questions. Councilmember Crosby. Thank you. Now, thank you. Thank you very much. I had a question. Well, first I have a question about the amendments that Councilmember Bralinger handed out. Were those also presented to the state auditors? Those were not presented to the state auditors because they're actually, especially item 14 really is a totally different way of thinking for government. It's actually asking that you guys consider evaluating not having a formal approval process for everything but having an informal type process where items would be brought to you at a work session as a report out, you would have an opportunity to ask questions, and then you could have the opportunity at that point to say, no, we want more information on this or we're okay with moving forward with this. And I think a couple of the other committee members want to talk about that because it really was a high level of discussion is the length of time that it takes us to complete something compared to ICMA standards. And I think Mr. Burkhardt from Ford Motor, if he wants to talk a little bit about that, he can do that at this point or later. But I gave him some numbers, and he asked about the number of bids that we maintain in a year. We have 190 ongoing contracts that are yearly contracts that are renewable. We have about 250 bids that we do every year. Now, those 190 are within that, but we're constantly bringing items that you guys see all the time that are general in nature, that are operational supplies and things like that. So we really wanted to be able to open up a discussion with you all about looking at the possibility of what some other cities do, and they have threshold dollar limits that you could consider for if it's above this amount, then we would require approval. So, no, we didn't run that by. That was just a task force discussion. Okay. And, Adam, the other amendment is a legal amendment, which is kind of a precarious situation because what we'd like to do is we still would do the RFQs and everything, but we don't know at the time that we have a list what we're going to use and who we're going to use. So, basically, we would like to present a list to you And with the understanding that the law department may need to solicit services at a moment's notice, and they would brief you, as they always do, in their reports out on how much money we've spent with a law firm, but they could pick anybody off of that pre-approved list and move forward with it. Or if it was an exception, somebody wasn't on the list, they needed an area of expertise, then they would have the ability to do that and then come back to you and report out about it. And that would be normally an emergency situation, one that just occurred recently with the health care and had to go to get a stay on the injunction. So that would be a situation that that would be necessary. Thank you. And, Councilman Rellinger, are you looking for us to make a formal motion also to the other items that were not, that are listed on the report out that you all did not look at, for example, sole source providers? And are you looking for a formal motion from Council that it's our wish that you all pursue? I think if you would like us to look at those three items that wasn't included in the audit, but you would like the task force to look at that in the future, I think we'd like to have guidance on that and probably have a motion if that's what you'd like us to go back and do. At this point, the task force was charged with the issues that were in the audit report, and we tried to answer 7, 8, and 9 with what they had brought to us. But we talked about that, and we said if the council would like us to go back and come back with recommendations in that, then we would certainly do that. But we weren't going to do that until we had a recommendation from the council to do that. Well, I think clearly with the caliber of this task force and the fact that they are willing to take on these issues and look at them, I mean, I would like to make that motion because we repeatedly hear, and in fact you all discussed it enough because, and Mr. Markham would probably agree, that those are the types of questions, too, that come up routinely during our meetings, or why is there a change order? And so I would like to make that motion that you all perhaps meet and look at those three additional items and report back to us. I don't have a timeline. All I would ask is that we would go ahead and go forward with this, and then if we want to go back and look at those in the future, that would be easy. I'm saying a motion separate and independent from this report, that you all would look at that in the future, but that we will deal with this right now. Second. Thank you. We have a motion on the floor and a second to ask the task force to look at the three items on page 37. Is there any comment on the motion, Council Member Lawless? I agree, and I want to thank the task force for your generosity of time and talent. I know it was a lot of hard work, and I totally support this motion. But there are also a couple of other issues that I think if the task force was willing to look at would be great. And one of them is giving local vendors some kind of preference, some kind of grading, because I think we often shoot ourselves in the foot by saving $1,000 or $2,000 by going out of our community or out of the state for something that could simply be done here. And the other issue is, and I talked to Brian about this just the other day, I got on there. I was trying to look at a bid, an RFQ that was on there, and you have to be pre-approved. You have to sign up, and so you can't even look at it. And so people, unless they're signed up for specific types of work, they can't see it. And so I think looking at that also might be a good idea. Did you want to amend the motion? I was going to say, I could just include that. Yeah, I was going to say, if it's okay with the council and Council Member Myers, who was the second, if we just add those in, I mean, we may not agree with what comes back. These are just recommendations for them to look into. So I'd be happy to include those. Thank you. Thank you. Well, so the other one then, which came from budget and finance, was the minority business enterprises. Just include all. I think we'll include all those in there, and we'll look at those. Okay. Okay. So now the additional six items for them to review. John's not smiling. Okay. Can you let me know what the other three were? The local vendor preferences, the sole source procurement, change orders, minority business enterprises, and the open bid review. Thank you. So, yeah. Okay. Now, other discussion on the motion? Council Member Stennett? Well, I was going to bring up the MBE and WBE requirement, but did you all discuss that in the point system that you're recommending here? Because if you haven't, then we may not be able to pass that piece because that's a piece of the point system now as we do it now. And if we're going to explore that as an extension of this task force, I'm not sure how you can look at the point system without including the MBE, WBE points. Well, at this point, the point system itself is a structural component that is fluid, depending upon each solicitation. So it may change, those values may change each time. So we don't have specific points, so each time we have a scope that comes forth, we reevaluate those points and place them. I understand what you're talking about as far as the minority piece is actually not a component within our list of evaluation factors, but we didn't specifically list all the factors here. We left that open in this policy. So when you say you all left it open, is the administration going to decide based on each RFP what the points are? Or are you asking this council to give you what the point criteria should be? No, I think that would not be prudent on our part to ask you guys to do that. I think it would be up to us to say, okay, if we have qualifications in this one, how many points does it have comparative to degree of local employment, to fee structure, and look at those things each time because sometimes we're not even going to have fee if it's a QBS selection. So we're going to have to change the scoring criteria each time. So with the help of the division and with my division, we will establish those each time. They're going to be pretty standard on engineering contracts and things like that, the way they have been, as you've seen them on some of the things you've sat on. But as far as minority at this point, it is not an evaluation factor, and that's what we need to further discuss. And that's my point there. Let's not get ahead of ourselves on the developer point system. We haven't even had the conversation about what this body or this government wants to weigh and why ask about an MBE or a WBE if we're not even going to consider it? It doesn't make any sense because we are considering those factors, and when we're making our RFP selections now, it needs to be formalized and put into that system somehow, and hopefully that's the discussion we can have if we can add that to the work or extension of work or the task force. So I would say that would be an evaluation of the ordinance that was passed in 1991 that established 10% minority goal because really that whole policy that was established back then needs to be revisited. Absolutely. Thank you. So we still have a motion on the floor. So, Council Member Henson, did you want to speak to the motion? Be sort of. Or we could also have questions later. Either way. I was just curious about the minority business. Do you, through affirmative action, you also look at the makeup of the businesses? Yeah, there's a workforce analysis form that they're supposed to submit with their proposals. It basically shows the breakdown and the makeup of the company, and you can tell from that. But back in the day when there was an affirmative action officer that dealt with that, they would review those things and say, you know, they would comment back to whomever you need to work on this policy, you need to improve that policy and things like that. So technically, we don't have that review anymore. And did we ever get, I know you and I have discussed, including in that, individuals with disabilities. Yes. Yes, that would fall in that category as well. Thank you. Okay, Council Member Henson. I mean, Council Member Crosby. I have a question on my motion. By you all reviewing what's been in budget and finance and what's kind of all this piecemeal stuff, do you think that will make it easier for purchasing to streamline all this where this task force reviews everything? I think I was the one who made the initial motion. A lot of it came out of the audit report, but yet we had all these different issues going on with procurement. Not issues, but you know what I mean, like questions with procurement like sole source and so on. So will that help you streamline all these different issues if this task force can just, like, rather than having it in budget finance and having them do their own thing, it appears that this kind of streamlines everything. It does. Okay. But the thing you need to be prepared for is that we may come back with recommendations because we've had sidebar discussions about these things. and how does a vendor preference play into what happens locally and how does that affect us and other bidding markets and how do other bidding markets come here and then they lose and then they go somewhere else. So those are all things that have to be thoroughly vetted. I think we'll come back with, okay, here's some things to consider and here's the ramifications if you go down these roads and what could happen in your bidding environment. Well, I think that's what we want you to do and that's what we're asking you to do because, one, you already have a task force that's looked into many of these things or has expertise in these areas that we don't as a body, but when you bring it back, clearly then it's up to the body to adopt what we may or may not adopt, I guess, what you all recommend. So, okay, I just thank you. Okay, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Ryan, for coming in, Mr. Markham, for coming in, or Director Markham, I guess. What is the task force looking for this body to do now? Are you looking for a motion to move certain things forward? Yeah, we really would like to adopt these task force recommendation regulations here. We want to consider Amendment 15. I think it was 15 specifically today. 14, I felt like probably would give you guys more heartburn to put in there, so that's why it was pulled out. We really want to vet that compared to what other municipalities do in their processes. So you can understand that when we have a 100-day turnaround time on a project, it could dramatically impact the pricing that we're receiving from companies because of volatility of components of those projects in pricing. So we really want to adopt this for sure so we can have this guideline going forward and put it in place. We would like Amendment 15 to be included in this, which talks about the legal services, because we don't need any glitches in that one. We may need legal services. Fourteen, I would consider that we should put it in some sort of a committee or budget and finance or something for discussion. And I think with that, Mr. Burkhart, would you like to talk on that one? I know that was a big issue for you about the time it takes compared to best practices. Do we want to dispense with a motion on the floor first? That's fine. Not to interrupt Mr. Burkhart, but the motion on the floor is to ask the task force to look at local vendor preferences, sole source procurement, change orders, minority business enterprises, open bid review. Is there any more comment on the motion? Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Now, Mr. Burkhart. Welcome, and thank you for serving. I think before the meeting you didn't maybe realize you were going to be asked to continue serving. Well, this isn't nearly as much fun as the Charles Young Center. Well, Brian has covered this pretty much, and I guess I'm the fly in the ointment. But the proposal was unanimously agreed by the members of the task force. I've got a little laryngitis. I'm sorry. But the proposal is that the Council would no longer approve competitive bid contracts, but instead the Council would be informed of pending bids, and then Council members could choose to review and approve a contract on an exception basis. Now this came up in the context of the State Auditor's comments with respect to best practices. According to the ICMA Center for Performance Measurement, and Brian has mentioned this, it takes Lexington more than 100 days from requisition to purchase order for formal bids. But by comparison, Bowling Green, Kentucky does this in just a little over 30 days, and Elgin, Illinois does it in 10 days. It also takes an average of 80 days to approve a contract for competitive bid. This proposal would reduce that process by 14 days. This long process that Lexington has has a couple of more than one disadvantage. First of all, it discourages your best suppliers and contractors from bidding. The best companies won't hold capacity open for this length of time, and Ryan mentioned the fact that prices change, so they price that into your contract. The second thing is that this long process ties up the professional staff. It doesn't allow time for high-value added work, which is really the key to reducing costs. And it creates a queuing problem that guarantees inefficiency. And my own view is this whole process should take about 30 days. As a practical matter, this proposal represents hardly any change from the point of view of the council. you'll still see all the contracts, and you can still approve contracts that jump out as potential problems. Our crack staff attorney here, who supported the task force, did some checking and reported that he could not find a single case in the past where the council changed the decision on a winning bid, a winning competitive bid, that is. He also reported if the council overruled a winning bid after it had gone through the rigorous bidding process, particularly after it's been improved by these recommendations, that the council would be open to a lawsuit that it would likely lose. Thank you very much. Are there any questions of Mr. Burkhart and what he had to say? Mr. Markham, did you have anything else? No, I think that it's important to realize that that was our recommendation and that we talked about the impact of staff, our ability to look at things that we may have savings in, areas that we may have savings in. It makes it very difficult. It makes it difficult queuing up projects because we always have urgent projects that come forth, and when you have three or four things already in the queue and you're trying to time that around council meetings and things like that, especially during breaks and stuff like that, sometimes due diligence cannot be accomplished. And so I think that there's several reasons why it should be considered. What limit or what level? And the reason we probably should leave it out of the professional services is because it crosses bid contracts and bids as well. So it probably should not be amended into these things. It should just be discussed as a separate topic after I've talked about it and David talked to me a little bit about it. It's just something that needs to be considered. And, you know, if we follow a process that's been set forth and we present that to you and we give you the option, that was a comfort level that we hope would help you with it. We understand that it may not be palatable or it may be difficult. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I agree. I think that this is a great proposal. I like 1 through 13 and then 15. 14, I would say that we actually had a situation earlier this year where we did go through the process. The council backed up on it and put it out for bid again. There wasn't a lawsuit associated with it, but actually we saved, what, about a half million dollars in that process. So I think that we ought to put 14 into committee. But I would move that we take 1 through 13 and then 15. and then recommend those on to the full council for passage. So moved. Okay. The motion is to recommend numbers 1 through 13 plus 15 to moving to the full council for approval. I presume that's to move it on to the docket. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And second by Councilmember Lawless. And could we, as part of that motion, put 14 into committee? Let's do a separate motion, if you don't mind. Is there discussion of the motion on the 13 plus 15 recommendations? Actually, you'd be a third. No, that's okay. We can take them all. Okay, if there's no discussion, all those in favor, please say aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, that motion passes. 12-0. Now, did you want to make a motion about 14? Yes, ma'am. Can we put 14 into, would that be general government? Would that be the best committee? Or do you want to put it in budget and finance? Maybe. If we put it in budget and finance, the same chair that chaired the task force, I think that would be great for consistency. Okay. Is that okay with you, Mr. Chair of General? Gov. Okay. Sorry. So the motion is to place number 14 into Budget and Finance Committee for discussion. Is there a second? Second. Council Member Kay seconds. Someone said that it's already in General Gov. Pardon me? Someone said that it's already in General Gov. Is that the case? Lane. No, I don't touch. Yep. This is what we worked on, your first meeting as chair, the change in what comes on the docket and what doesn't. That's what we're talking about here. What council sees and what we have to approve, that's already in your committee. We didn't do anything with it. It just sat there. The specific one isn't in there, but it would be embedded in the issue that is in there. So does your motion, do you want to put it in general gov or in budget? I'll leave it as I stated. In budget and finance? Yes. Okay. And the seconder is good with that. Okay. Discussion on the motion of placing 14 in budget and finance. Council Member Lawless. If my memory serves me right, we're talking about the same thing. What we did is passed it but said we wouldn't enforce it until the new software was available. Is that a different thing? Okay, thank you. Other discussion of the motion? No? All those in favor, please say aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, that motion passes. I want to thank, oh, yes, Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I was going to do what you were getting ready to do. I just want to thank the committee members on the task force. I thought I said goodbye to them, but it looks like we might be saying hello again. So I will get back with them, and hopefully we can work on the issues that the council has asked us to do. But thank the committee. It was a pleasure to serve with them. Thank you. Councilman Rehlinger, thank you. Task force members, thank you. Support staff, thank you very much. Okay. Our final presentation is Parks and Rec Graffiti Abatement. Do we have anybody left to give that? Tim Clark and Sheriff Park. Okay. I just want to give an up. Thank you all very much, and we'll go on to the item C. I just want to say this was in the General Service Committee, and we had the parks and recreation, and somehow we miscommunicated, but there were also a lot of questions asked what Park does and what the sheriff does, so we asked to bring it to the council to hold. So I've asked Park to do their presentation first to tell what they do, and then I thank the sheriff for being here and do their presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Maloney. Okay, Tim Clark from Parks and Rec. Welcome. Thank you, Vice Mayor and Council Members. I know the hour is getting late, so I'll try to run through this presentation I've got rather quickly. I'm here to talk about graffiti abatement program. In 2006, parks, we realized that we need to do a better job of getting graffiti removed in our parks, So we took a number of steps to make it more efficient. We brought graffiti back in-house. Prior to that, a decision had been made sometime previously that the sheriff's office would do the graffiti abatement in parks. But we made a decision. We'd bring it back in. We established a policy. A copy of that policy is actually attached in your packet. We created a graffiti team, and we were fortunate. We were able to obtain a grant to purchase an air compressor. Again, all these things were done to increase the efficiency and speed up the removal process. Our graffiti policy, some of the highlights, all graffitis would be reported to the maintenance superintendent's office. That's my office at South Base. We receive Lex call, e-mails. We receive calls from the citizens a number of places. They all come to my office. Our goal, and it's stated in the policy, is to remove the graffiti within 24 hours of notification. We want to remove any offensive, racial, sexual type graffiti as quickly as possible. for obvious reasons, and we involve the police if we suspect that the graffiti is gang-related. As I said, our goal is to remove it within 24 hours. We pretty much reach that on most occasions. However, there are times when we don't, and there was one noticeable time that we did not. It was at Acton Park earlier this year in April. and we had some internal communication issues and it took actually about a month to get all the graffiti removed. It was all over the place. We thought we had all of it, but come to find out there was some on one of the Frisbee golf tee pads that didn't get removed and that caused some problems and I know it caused some problems for Council Member Myers and I just wanted to say publicly to him that I take full responsibility for that. So I don't know where he is. But anyway, there you are. So anyway, that is our goal again. Our graffiti process, again, we report it to the superintendent's office. We do an initial assessment. If it's gang-related or we suspect it is, we'll involve the police. We'll take pictures of that, create a work order so we can track it, And then we will remove it depending upon the type of surface that it's on. Our removal methods that we have found to be successful include basically just painting over it. We do have sandblast equipment. We use chemicals, graffiti remover on signs, playground equipment. And on walking paths, we found a blacktop sealer works pretty well. Here are some pictures of graffiti. that we've encountered. And like the picnic table there, we'd simply paint over that, the sign at Valley Park, which got hit again this past weekend, but it has been removed. We would use graffiti remover on that sign. That's a masonry concrete block, so we can paint over that if we can get to it, or we'll use the pressure washer or the sandblaster, I mean. That's a dugout. Again, we'd paint that. And that's a brick dugout that we would use the sandblasting equipment on that. That's an electrical box at Woodland Park. And sometimes we'll paint those if the graffiti removal will not work. The last three years, 2011 is through November 11th of this year. That's a total graffiti incident. And I classify an incident as a report that has come to us. It could be that five things in the park got tagged, but that would be one incident. Graffiti incidents by park. The park that gets hit the most is Woodland. and some other statistics there. Again, that information, I believe, is in your packet. Some observations that I've made through the years. We feel like quick response and removal actually deters graffiti. We think that the graffiti artists like to see their work, And so when we get it removed quickly, we feel like that they don't want to come back and tag that area. They'll move on, move to the sheriff's office area. So these are things that we've seen that the ordinance that you passed in 2008, and it was helpful, the arrest that the police have made. These are things that we feel like have led to a successful refeed abatement program in parks. Thank you very much, Mr. Clark. And will you introduce yourself? Welcome from the Sheriff's Department. Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I'm Jennifer Miller, Director of Administration with the Fayette County Sheriff's Office. Please excuse my voice. I'm just getting it back after about a week without it. I'm here today to talk about our graffiti eradication program. As you all probably know, our office is a strong believer in partnerships, And we found that most successful projects come from successful and strong collaborations amongst agencies. The Graffiti Eradication Project is one of those projects that has come from group collaboration. It started in 2005 from Project Ceasefire, which is a coalition of agencies including the Commonwealth Attorney's Office, the Sheriff's Office, U.S. Attorney's Office, ATF, ICE, Division of Police, County Attorney's Office, and other public safety agencies. These agencies originally came together to discuss cases involving firearms, but from that collaboration came the Graffiti Eradication Program. Under Sheriff Witt and Commonwealth Attorney Ray Larson's leadership, we started this project again in May 2005. The Graffiti Eradication Project is driven by inmate labor, and our office, of course, is a strong advocate for inmate labor. And because of that, we do believe that both the inmate and the Lexington community benefit greatly from this program. Inmates are able to develop job skills, and they remain productive while in custody. custody, and the Graffiti Eradication Project uses inmates that are classified by the jail to be on a community service detail. Most of these inmates are convicted of substance-related crimes like DUIs or failure to pay fines. Some are in arrears of child support or other misdemeanor crimes like low-level theft-related offenses. These inmates are accompanied by deputy sheriffs at all times while under our supervision, and several of these inmates actually have trade experience in painting and can offer insight into more efficient and effective ways to eradicate graffiti. We find that inmates take pride in their work and in the outcomes of their projects, which oftentimes can lead to pride in their community and effectively more positive energy towards their community once they return to society. Approximately $12 billion is spent in the United States to clean up graffiti on an annual basis, according to the Department of Justice. With inmate labor, our office is able to reduce taxpayer costs to clean up our Lexington community. The Office of Sheriff absorbs the cost of providing law enforcement supervision in order to utilize inmate labor in our community. Approximately 1,800, at a minimum of 1,800 law enforcement hours are dedicated to the graffiti eradication program annually. and this project additionally faces the cost of supplies that are necessary to clean up graffiti. Private property owners who have been targeted for graffiti supply their own paint so that our graffiti team can clean up the graffiti, but obviously city property is a big target of graffiti also. The Office of Sheriff partners with many community businesses to obtain necessary supplies to clean up the graffiti. Many businesses donate supplies on a regular basis, but obviously we find ourselves in need of supplies on a regular basis as well. We do occasionally have the ability to absorb some of the supply costs on our own, but we do have the need of supply costs on a regular basis. The graffiti eradication team uses a variety of methods to remove graffiti, including color-matched paint, chemical paint removers, pressure washing, and concrete fillers. The graffiti team also recognizes that some properties have been recognized as historical properties, and so special consideration has to be given as to the proper method of cleaning up that graffiti in order to preserve that property. The graffiti team attempts to remove graffiti tags as quickly as possible because we do recognize that quick removal can help deter crime. And so it's our goal also to remove within 24 hours. However, cleanup turnaround is dependent upon several factors, which include the volume of graffiti reports that we're receiving at one time, the availability of eligible inmates, the availability of supplies, and, of course, the outdoor weather conditions. Graffiti comes in to us in a variety of ways, but primarily through phone calls and email reports of graffiti from citizens in the community, from the Division of Police, LexCol, other community agencies, and of course our own deputy sheriffs that report it when they're out in the field as well. We find that graffiti obviously occurs throughout Lexington. There's not one area that seems to be targeted more or less. But we do find that we've cleaned up graffiti on church property, rural property, high-end subdivision property, inner-city schools, government property, privacy fences, overpasses. The list goes on and on. We've found graffiti in many places. We contemplated bringing additional photographs today to present to you all, but we felt that the content of a lot of the graffiti probably wasn't appropriate. There's a lot of offensive language, photographs, possible gang tags, so we chose not to share those photographs with you. But we catalog all of the graffiti that we clean up, and we have thousands of photos. As a law enforcement agency, obviously the priority of our office is keeping the Lexington community safe, but we also are pleased when we have the ability to participate in a program like this that allows us to help clean up the community as well. Since the beginning of the program in 2005, we've removed over 100,000 graffiti tags from our community. We clean up a minimum average of 12,000 graffiti tags per year. Again, each of these tags are photographed and cataloged, and they're shared with Division of Police on an as-needed basis. This project is obviously an evolving project, and it's one that we're proud of, but one that we know needs more funding, more supplies, and we give to it as much as we can. But again, we are seeking additional partnerships with other community agencies in order to continue this project in the future. Thank you very much, Ms. Miller. And if you and Mr. Clark will stick around forward, there are a few council members who may have questions. Thank you for coming. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Clark, for coming in, Ms. Miller. And you were too gracious in taking the credit for everything that happened. And I appreciate, though, we had a couple long conversations and we've got things worked out, and I think we won't have that problem in the future. And I really appreciate your leadership in stepping up on that and help and explain how it happened so that we really understand what the shortcomings were so that we've got the holes filled in that gap. So I guess that's really all I want to say is just thank you very much for that. And for the sheriff's department, thank you for what you guys do as well. You did say I was going to ask the question, do you guys catalog the tags or different types of graffiti so that you can later go after arrests and things like that, but it sounds like that is what you do. We catalog the photos and share them with Division of Police for investigative purposes if they need those and haven't already received those specific locations, but the Division of Police does handle investigations for that. Okay, thank you. Mr. Clark, one last question. Do we still have someone in the parks that if we have graffiti, say, if we get a call from a constituent or if we're in a park and we see it, we can call and it will be taken care of the next day? And then the second question is, do we have someone that still goes through the parks each day and pick up trash and then look for graffiti, like on the playgrounds and things? We do. First question, answer to the first question, you can report that information to Lexcom, or you can call me personally, or you can call my office. But we will get on that immediately. And then secondly, as far as the trash and looking for graffiti, yes, We do have people in the parks every day, every park every day. Our workforce has dwindled a little bit, but we just have to manage that and make sure that we do get somebody out there. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Ms. Miller, not only for these reports, but also for the work that both of your departments do. I've had various occasions to call on parks and on the sheriff's office. Most recently when I called the sheriff's office, needed a very quick response for a particularly loathsome instance of graffiti, and it was taken care of almost immediately. And I appreciate that. I think all the residents of the area appreciated it as well. I think graffiti does have to do with public safety. Graffiti degrades the public landscape. It's serious property damage, whether it's public or private. I wish we could get to the roots of that sort of disgusting behavior. but since we seem not able to do it since it is so pervasive, I really appreciate the work that both of you and the folks you work with do. It's extraordinarily important. I do have one quick question for Tim. Why is Woodland Park so much more prone to graffiti than our other parks? That is a good question. I'm not sure I can answer that, but I can give you my observations on that. I believe it's one of our more prominent parks in an area of town that gets a lot of use, a lot of activity. Although we do have a residential area around there, it's a park down around the college town. We have a lot of late-night activity through there. So the skate park has quite a bit of graffiti in it. So I think it's on a major thoroughfare into the downtown area. A lot of our parks are not. You know, they're out of the way. So that's what I surmise. Well, I do appreciate, again, the work that you do. Thanks so much. Appreciate your comments. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Tim and Jennifer, I really appreciate your work. I just wanted to thank you very much for everything, and I agree with Council Member Blues that I think graffiti is a public safety, especially gang graffiti when they're tagging over each other and they're challenging each other and so forth. It can lead to violence. I was curious, Jennifer, in the graph that Tim has, it shows how it has declined, which is a good thing. But I was curious if you've seen similar numbers in more than the private areas. We haven't done an analysis of the graffiti from 2011 yet, so I wouldn't really be able to compare to that 2011 figure. Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Are there some popular places that continue to get re-tagged over time, or do you know? I would probably say on both of our ends that there are several places that are continuously being re-tagged. Sometimes, especially during the height of the summer, we might find that we'll clean something up and it's back the next day. But if we continue to do that, even if we have to do it ten times, then it stops for a while, at least a while. So, yes, there are areas or surfaces that continue to be re-tagged. Traffic boxes on the corners are usually a target. Those are tagged quite often. And we find ourselves having to re-clean or re-paint those surfaces on many occasions. but we also haven't done a specific analysis on specific locations as to how many times we've gone to clean up at each location but that's something that we may look at doing in the future to find out what the ratios are of the different locations. Well, that kind of leads to my second question and that is, has there ever been occasion when we've caught somebody in the act? and detain them? Whipping post? You know, whatever. I do know that that has happened. And I believe, but I couldn't speak to it, that the Division of Police has somewhat recently caught some folks in the act, if I'm not mistaken. I don't believe our agency has during the course of this project, but that's not to say it wouldn't happen. And, of course, if it did happen, we would absolutely take the correct procedure to prosecute for that. Thank you very much. We appreciate everything you've done so far. And it looks like it's one of these things that will go on forever. Councilmember Henson, do you mind if we hear from Councilmember Lawless? She hasn't spoken yet. Just real quickly, there was a pilot project about either paint and art on some of the utility boxes in the district that had been hit a lot, and then the spray paint stuff that won't. Has that happened yet? another concern about whether or not they would heat up or we're both aware that of that pilot project we both attended a meeting a couple weeks ago where they spoke about that i recall a representative who mentioned doing that but if i'm not mistaken i believe that was going to start in the first quarter of next year i could be mistaken, but we're both aware of that project. Okay. And maybe the police department that's doing that? Right. Okay. Okay, thank you. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just quickly, I know, Jennifer, you were at the commission meeting, Keep Lexington Beautiful commission meeting. Tim, were you there? Okay. Because I thought it was very interesting, the officer that did the presentation about the artists in town that are really doing art, but it's graffiti because they don't have permission, obviously. But I don't remember his name, but I thought that was just, I didn't know it existed, but it evidently goes on throughout the country. So thank you. Okay, are there other questions? I want to thank you, Ms. Miller, and thanks, Mr. Clark, for your presentation. Now, council reports. Does anyone have a council report? Mr. Farmer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Appreciate it very much. First, I need to make two announcements about the two working groups or task force that I'm chairing. The first one is the Goals and Objectives Task Force working group. We've scheduled a meeting for next Monday at 3 o'clock. I'll make sure that everyone has all the information in their boxes as quickly as possible. I'm just trying to get a first meeting in before we are gone for the holidays. Same thing is true for the EMS task force, trying to have it on Tuesday during the afternoon. I'll make sure you have all those things in your boxes also. I had two other things I wanted to pass along. I will be at the opening of the new Fork Bank on Tate's Creek Road, standing in for the mayor and the vice mayor. there's a great piece of public art in the front of this bank that is a fork that's stuck into the ground. It just really is just fantastic. We're glad to have the new bank in the district, and we'll all be there to make the first deposit. And lastly, and just kind of more importantly to the district, we had our meeting last night with the residents of Acton Park. And for all the years we've talked about the consent decree and the EPA, And one of the first big projects that will happen starting in, well, basically from last night on, will be a huge sewer project that will encompass the entire neighborhood area around Ecton Park. There will be a dig and replace component where we are going to go in and put a much larger main sewer pipe in place. There will be a lot of cured in place repairs as well as point repairs. And we're trying to set the standard for other projects that will come behind this in each of the districts in terms of information as is distributed from the engineering group on down to the individuals in whose backyards we will be, what's going to go on, when it's going to go on, and how it's going to happen. But it's really the first time that we're going to be doing some of the projects that will begin to stop manholes from overflowing. and this particular project will be a little over $2.5 million. So it's one of the biggest things that our engineering area will be working on next year, and I look forward to keeping you all posted and up-to-date on it because the best practices and the way we do this here will set the tone for how it goes on in other districts, and we want it all to be as efficient and transparent as possible. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Vice Mayor. At the request of the Administration, I do have a walk-on motion, which is to place on the docket for the Thursday, December 1, 2011 Council meeting an ordinance abolishing and creating various positions within the Division of Water Quality as part of a divisional reorganization. So moved. Second. Motion by Council Member Blue, second by Council Member Henson. Any questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Thank you. Anything else, Council Member Blues? No, thank you, Vice Mayor. That's my report. All righty. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. In today's Social Services Committee meeting, we had an issue come up, and the commissioner is going to be able to bring some information back to our committee during the next year's budget process. They can't get it done by the 13th of March, which is our regularly scheduled meeting according to the proposed calendar. But they could have it back to us by the 20th. And so I spoke to Chairman Blues, the chair of Environmental Quality Committee meeting, and he said it was okay with him if we switch times. Both meetings are at 10 o'clock. 11. Oh, that's right, because this has been amended. I'm sorry. Okay. So both meetings are at 11 o'clock. So the proposal is I move to switch environmental quality to the 13th and social services to the 20th in the proposed calendar. So moved. Of March 2012? Correct. Okay, so the motions to amend the calendar, moving social services to March 20th, and environmental quality to March 13th, both at the 11 o'clock slot. Any discussion? Vice Mayor. Council Member Stennett? You'll actually have to do this motion Thursday night because it's already on the docket, and you can't change it once it's on the docket. For first reading. Right, so you'll need to change it Thursday night. So can you bring your motion Thursday night? Yes. Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Parliamentarian. Thank you. That's my report. Okay. Council Member Lawless. I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. I spent mine in New York City, and it was 65 to 70 degrees the whole time. I came back here, and it's freezing. So anyway, I want to remind people that tomorrow night, Wednesday the 30th, well, it's actually breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's AVOL AIDS Volunteers Annual Dining Out for Life. 25% of the proceeds of any of the breakfast, lunch, or dinner meals you purchase at a very long list of restaurants goes to AVOL. and you can go to avalky.org backslash dofl. I'm sure if you just went to avalky.org, you would find information on it. There's an event that is free. However, there's a suggested donation of $15 to benefit the East 7th Street Kids Cafe art program. And that is Saturday, December 3rd from 6.30 to 9 at the Tusca Museum at the Breakers, 147 Old Park Avenue. They're going to have guest speakers and fun. And it's a great, if you haven't ever been to the Tusca Historic Home Museum on Oak Park, it's really, really a great experience. And also there are two public meetings on Rupp Arena Arts and Entertainment District. one is Wednesday I think tomorrow from 6 to 8 at the Children's Theater and then there's one Thursday from 12 to 1 at 1.30 at Buster's so you might be interested in I think there was an article in Business Lexington. That's bizlex.com if you want more information about it, but an opportunity to hear about it and get feedback. So thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Don Jacobs, Jr. is a resident of the 12th District, and his Volkswagen dealership just donated a 2012 Beetle emblazoned with the words, don't text and drive. And this was given to the Lexington Police Department as a public safety item to remind drivers that texting and driving at the same time is dangerous to your health and also a public safety issue. I'd just like to thank him for his contribution. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I make a motion to approve the NDF list for Thursday night. Second. Motion and a second to approve the NDFs. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay. Does anyone else have a council report? I have just a couple items. Council members, you received the agenda, and I wanted to just remind council we have a quarterly committee of the whole on Thursday, December 1st at 430 in the fifth floor conference room. and there are several items on that agenda. And then you should have received an email regarding a budget retreat that we've been working on with Commissioner Driscoll and Councilmember Ellinger as Chair of Budget and Finance. And the date is January 26th from 9 to 1 at the Lyric Theater, and the budget retreat is mainly for the council, the mayor, the commissioners, and budgeting and finance folks, and the council administrator. And there will be an outside facilitator who comes in, and it will enable us to have some real detailed updates and discussions. And if you have recommendations of items you want on that agenda, for that retreat. I hope you will email them to me. Yes, Council Member Stenet. You said the mayor, commissioners, CAO? CAO. Okay. It's all CAO. It's not meant to be like the workshop. That's what I'm trying to get you. The workshop at the Phoenix building where we had a lot of partners and LFUCG staff. it's meant to be a real working retreat with council and administration. So I'm sorry I left you out of that, Mr. Maloney, but you did get the email. Okay. Thank you. There's no mayor's report. Is there any public comment on issues not on the agenda? Second. Motion to adjourn. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Thank you all so much. Thank you. Tonight's the night we're...