# Special General Government Committee - December 1, 2011 > Auto-transcribed civic record · December 1, 2011 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2270 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2270?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2011-12-01 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 13,588 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The General Government Committee met on December 1, 2011, at 3:00 p.m., with Ed Lane presiding. The committee addressed three agenda items during the session, hearing eight public comments and taking two votes. The meeting included discussion of two management plans. The Golf Management Plan was presented as a continuation of previous discussion and resulted in an informational outcome. The Aquatics Management Plan, also a continuation of prior deliberation, was deferred to a future meeting. The committee also reviewed items currently in committee. Overall, the meeting focused on ongoing policy discussions related to management planning, with one item advanced to a deferred status for further consideration. ## Attendance **Present:** Ed Lane, Jay McChord, Linda Gorton, Steve Kay, Chris Ford, Tom Blues, Julian Beard, George Myers, and Doug Martin. **Absent:** K.C. Crosbie **Late:** Doug Martin ## Votes and Decisions **Motion on Social Media Marketing and Pricing Flexibility** A motion was made by Linda Gorton and seconded by Jay McChord to direct the CAO and administration to meet with golf and parks to develop policies enabling real-time marketing flexibility via social media and pricing adjustments. The motion passed by voice vote [timestamp: 01:04:42]. **Motion on Golf Course Operational Plans** A motion was made by George Myers and seconded by Steve Kay to request that golf course professionals be given the opportunity to develop individual operational plans for their courses. The motion passed by voice vote [timestamp: 01:31:08]. Tom Blues voted against this motion. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed two significant financial matters related to golf operations: **Utility Overcharges Amendment** An amendment was approved to address utility overcharges at Lakeside Golf Course totaling $140,000. The overcharges were related to sewer user fees that had been incorrectly applied to irrigation water. **Annual Golf Operations Loss** An appropriation of $1,200,000 was made to cover the annual loss in golf operations. ## Public Comment Eight speakers addressed the council regarding the city's golf operations and financial challenges. **Business and Financial Approaches** Roz Tender [timestamp: 01:06:21] advocated for a business-focused strategy to address golf financial challenges. She called for setting clear financial goals, allowing course management to develop marketing plans and set prices, and establishing a volunteer panel of business professionals to help build a sustainable business plan for city golf. Kevin Mims [timestamp: 01:20:19] expressed concern that course professionals lack visibility into budgets and utility costs despite being trained to manage operations. He called for empowering them with greater authority and access to financial information. Bruce Thomas [timestamp: 01:17:42] shared personal experience of switching to private courses due to high city fees. He urged the city to create affordable annual membership plans to regain lost golfers and increase volume. **Public Access and Community Impact** Herb McDowell [timestamp: 01:11:46] stressed that public golf provides essential access for people who cannot afford private courses, particularly for youth and seniors. He warned that rising fees would limit participation and undermine the city's commitment to equitable recreation. George Ginter [timestamp: 01:14:58] highlighted the economic benefits of hosting out-of-town golf tournaments, including hotel stays and local spending. He noted that public golf helps students earn college scholarships through athletic opportunities. **Stakeholder Engagement and Support** Sonia Krag [timestamp: 01:23:08] praised the constructive dialogue and called for a follow-up meeting to bring stakeholders together to understand each other's perspectives and co-create a sustainable solution. Susan Lamb [timestamp: 01:25:25] expressed gratitude for the work of Mike Fields and Jerry Hancock and urged the council to preserve public golf courses for city residents and employees. Lynn McCoy Simandel [timestamp: 01:26:49] spoke on behalf of the 5 o'clock ladies league, urging the council to do everything possible to protect and preserve the city's golf courses. ## Contested Items **Policy Restrictions on Social Media and Marketing** Council members engaged in a heated discussion regarding the current policy that restricts Parks and Recreation from using social media and email marketing. Members characterized the existing policy as outdated and counterproductive. The Vice Mayor moved to direct the CAO to develop new policies that would enable real-time engagement with the public. This motion passed unanimously. **Delegation of Operational Authority to Course Professionals** A motion to empower golf course professionals to develop individual operational plans resulted in a split vote. Council members Myers and Kay supported the motion, while Blues opposed it. Blues called for additional time to consider the implications of delegating this operational authority before proceeding with the vote. ## Golf Management Plan – Continuation of Discussion [timestamp: 00:01:00] Mike Fields, Director of Golf, presented a comprehensive plan to improve golf operations through strategic reforms in pricing, marketing, and administration. The presentation addressed significant operational challenges, including a $1.2 million annual loss and substantial fixed costs that constrain the golf program's financial viability. **Key Proposals** Fields outlined several initiatives designed to enhance operational flexibility and revenue generation: - Implementation of pricing flexibility to allow real-time rate adjustments in response to market conditions and demand - Marketing innovations to expand customer reach and engagement - Administrative reforms to streamline operations and reduce inefficiencies **Policy Changes Requested** A central focus of the presentation was the need for policy modifications to enable: - Real-time rate adjustments for golf services - Social media engagement as a marketing tool to promote the golf program **Public Input** Jerry Hancock and other members of the public provided comments emphasizing several priorities: - The importance of maintaining public access to golf facilities - The economic impact of the golf program on the broader community - The value of empowering course professionals to make operational decisions **Outcome** The agenda item was presented as informational, with no formal action taken during this continuation of the discussion. The presentation provided stakeholders with detailed information about the financial challenges facing golf operations and the proposed solutions to address them, while public comments reflected community priorities regarding accessibility, economic considerations, and professional management authority. ## Aquatics Management Plan – Continuation of Discussion The committee continued its discussion of the Aquatics Master Plan, which proposes closing Berry Hill and Constitution pools and converting them into alternative recreational facilities. [timestamp: 00:00:00] **Key Speakers and Participants** The discussion involved Jill Bertelson, Linda Gorton, Steve Kay, and Jay McChord. **Main Points of Discussion** The committee examined concerns related to the proposed pool closures, with particular focus on: * Underutilization of existing facilities * Marketing effectiveness and strategies * The need for comprehensive financial modeling to evaluate the plan's viability **Concerns Raised** Committee members emphasized the importance of developing financial projections before proceeding with the recommendations. The discussion highlighted questions about whether current marketing efforts adequately promote the existing pools and whether underutilization reflects actual demand or insufficient outreach. **Outcome** The committee deferred final action on the Aquatics Master Plan. The group agreed to: * Conduct further review of the plan * Develop a financial model with a focus on the top four high-traffic pools This approach allows the committee to gather additional data and analysis before making decisions regarding pool closures and repurposing. ## Items in Committee Chair Ed Lane reviewed pending items currently under committee consideration. [timestamp: 00:00:00] **Upcoming Meetings and Discussions** Chair Lane confirmed that a special meeting scheduled for December 11, 2011, would continue discussions on two major planning initiatives: * Aquatic Management Plan * Golf Management Plan The Parks Master Plan was expected to be included on the January 2012 agenda for further consideration. **Outcome** No formal action was taken on these items during this portion of the meeting. The discussion was informational in nature, serving to update the committee on the status of pending matters and the timeline for their future consideration. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to direct the CAO and administration to meet with golf and parks to develop policies enabling real-time marketing flexibility via social media and pricing adjustments. - **Motion** — passed: Motion to request that golf course professionals be given the opportunity to develop individual operational plans for their courses. --- ## Full transcript The And this is a special meeting of the General Government Committee. The first item on the agenda is approval of the summary, but that will not be necessary because the summary will be continued because we were unable to complete all of the information from the Parks and Recreation at our last meeting. So we'll add that into the summary for a total for a final approval. That being the case, the first item on the agenda today would be the golf management plan. And you're going to be making the presentation? Yes, sir. Okay. Would you introduce yourself? I sure will. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mike Fields, Director of Golf, Golf Services Manager with Parks and Recreation and PGA Professional. Is it coming up? Oh, there we go. I'd like to thank everyone for allowing me to speak today. I will be finishing the golf management plan that Dr. Meyer began on November 15th. I would like to thank Dr. Meyer for everything that he did and the Parks Advisory Board for their efforts in this matter. As Councilman McCord said, it's important to sit in an educated seat, and hopefully today we can work through that today and all become better in going forward with a unified plan. Our mission is to provide a predictable, high-quality, affordable, service-oriented product to your customers, whether guests of Fayette County or residents. We operate five golf courses, as you know. Meadowbrook Golf Course, Lakeside Golf Course, which we just got the deed from Kentucky American Water. Tate's Creek Golf Course, which together with the pool and ballroom is one of the most used parks facilities we have. Piccadone Golf Course, which I like to call the birthplace of public golf in Lexington and Central Kentucky, has a historical value similar to the Lyric Theater or the Henry Clay Estate. And many thanks to John Y. Brown and his friends for coming forward a few years ago to get that facility renamed to Gay Brewer Junior Course at Picadone. We also operate Kearney Hill Golf Links, which is designed by Pete Dye and is actually protected by a federal land water grant and is the crown jewel of public golf in Kentucky. Golf provides an economic impact. We promote Lexington as a golf destination by partnering with many hotels and by attracting national and state events. In 2012, the PGA Junior Series will return to Kearney Hill Golf Links, a junior event where juniors from all over the United States will come to Lexington for four days and compete. We're scheduled to host the Kentucky PGA. We have Susan G. Komen events scheduled. We also will have the Boys High School Regional scheduled for 2012, and plus many other corporate and charitable events at all of our courses. People that come to Lexington to play golf will stay in hotels and will eat at restaurants. There's an economic impact estimated to be at $200 for day trips and $400 for overnight stays. Money Magazine listed Lexington as the top ten places to retire, and golf was one of the reasons for that designation. Skip the page there. Sorry about that. Public golf provides health and social benefits no one else can. All of our golf courses are ADA compliant. We offer single-rider golf cars that are not available at other facilities. We have 11 high school teams that use our facilities at no charge. Associations like the Fayette Women's Golf Association, the 5 o'clock Ladies League, the Piccadone Men's Association, the Kearney Hill Men's Association call these courses their home. We act as good environmental stewards. Three of your facilities are Audubon certified. That's three of eight in the state of Kentucky. And I'm also proud to announce today that Meadowbrook Golf Course will be getting this distinction very soon. We just did our final submittal. We provide and maintain over 600 acres of green space, and Picadome is home to the largest segment of the Wolfram watershed. As you know, golf has been in decline for many reasons. We believe that with your support, golfers are there to support all five courses. Given the tools and opportunity, we can implement recovery strategies that will bring them back to play our facilities. As a model for moving forward, we need to retain and strengthen our core. We need to engage our lapsed golfers, including women, seniors, families, and we need to drive new players. If you look at this chart, as we did a couple weeks ago, I wanted to point out that as we increased our rates, rounds decreased. However, revenue increased for a period. This is an optimal thing to do in any business. But the last two years, there's been a sharp decline in both rounds and revenue. This is a perfect indication of overpricing for demand. Both can be turned around with corrective pricing and marketing. It's very important to note that golf recovers 77% of direct costs. Per the 2000 Parks and Recreation Fee and Charges policy, golf is delivering on its goals, particularly for the last six years. The cost of golf is relatively fixed. If you look at those from 2006 to 2011, there's not much variance in what our operating expenses is. When you have fixed costs, price loading techniques should be implemented, similar to what the airlines do in hotels. As we look at the P&L, I wanted to point out a couple things real quick. lakeside utilities, you'll see a charge of $266,000 for utilities. $240,000 of that is for water. There's a $120,000 overcharge for sewer user fees on irrigation water. That's something that we're working on and we're trying to recoup. Sewer user fees should not be charged for irrigation. and also there's a reservoir out there that could possibly eliminate water charges at Lakeside altogether. Of the things that we control from a management standpoint, like merchandise, is up 7% per round. Food and beverage doubled from 2010 to 2011. Outing fees increased, and we saved $118,000 in our operating budget. It was pointed out a couple weeks ago that rounds were down 50%. In this economy, a dollar increase can affect play by 10 to 15%. As was mentioned two weeks ago, policy needs to change. We can market to the groups like seniors, ladies, juniors, families, military, and disability. people with disability. We need to be able to market winner rates. By using social media, email, discounting, Groupon, couponing, Golf Now, it can be done effectively and virtually at no cost. We need to reduce our rates. We need to reduce our rates to drive play. When we're losing senior rounds or lady rounds are down 42 percent, seniors are down 28 percent, juniors 16 and overall 15 percent. That's a rate-driven problem. It's also important that we do not compete against private clubs. We feed them. If people play our golf courses enough, they look at how much money they spend and say, I can afford to be at a club. If they're not playing our courses, they're not going to be at a private club. The courses outside of Fayette County like champions are just that. They are outside of Fayette County. We have been proactive. With layoffs, budget cuts, and reduced spending, Avon Golf Course was closed. We currently have 10 civil service vacancies. we are looking at utility cost reductions and further restructuring. In the past four years, we have operated $750,000 under our budget. In doing this golf management plan, we did a survey. As part of this plan, we surveyed 24 similar or like cities, benchmark cities, of which 15 responded. All are experiencing the same issues. Fourteen of the fifteen cities discount and or promote. They all set their own rates. They all use social media and they use email to promote their rates and their courses. The one city that doesn't, they were the lowest in town, it didn't matter. They see themselves as a service. All have reduced their operating costs, and none have any plans of closing any courses in the near future. Part of this survey, we contacted our customers, our golfers. We asked them, how do you choose where to play? 82% said price. 73% said location. We then asked, why don't you play more? 80% said it's too expensive. and 64% said we're doing something else. We have the location. And by lowering our price and creating incentive, buy-in, or loyalty, you would address the two other issues. All of Park's customers were surveyed, and they say 76% said you need the discount. Redesigning or repurposing a course is a bad idea, and 75% said offer in-county discounts. Allow rate variances to discount and leave all courses open. If land is an issue, we have land. Parks has land. Jacobson, Masterson, Cardinal Run North, vacant land. Your advisory board is asking you to support public golf. By motion, the board said, Golf is a public service that should be provided to all citizens and guests. A Fayette County at a reasonable price, and we should measure steps toward reducing cost of the service. And request clear authority of parks to adjust prices to meet market conditions with approval of the CAO. Your Parks Advisory Board strongly recommends maintaining parks golf courses as a public service as all park services are. Allow fee setting flexibility to increase use and encourage the continued cost cutting efforts. Your Parks and Recreation Department, your Advisory Board, and most importantly, the people who pay to use these facilities want them to be part of Lexington and want to have open and reasoned discussions about them. We have the opportunity to help in making Lexington a better place to live, work, play, retire, and visit. So as a service to your customers, the advisory board and Parks and Recreation are asking for your support of this plan. I believe there are several people that may want to speak, and also I will entertain any questions at this time. Thank you very much for your comments. Speaking of that, anybody who would like to ask questions or make a comment, there's a sign-up sheet in the back of the room. If you'd please sign on there, and we'll call you up when it's time for public comment. We're going to restrict the comments from visitors today that sign up to three minutes because we have another meeting scheduled at 4.30, so we won't run out of time. Okay, first off, let me say, are there any council members? I believe Council Member Beard has a question. Thank you, Chair. A couple of questions. There's been discussions. I've been involved in the middle of discussions on one side, and that is the Meadowbrook Golf Course, because I perceive the Meadowbrook Golf Course to be kind of a unique place for seniors and learners and things of that sort. And it's free. The land is free. The Fayette County Public School System owns the land. We don't. We have dropped almost half from where we were at one point as far as number of rounds are concerned. I'm looking at your graph, 88,000 rounds. That's correct. Something of that sort. And it was 170-some-odd thousand. Several years ago, yes. Is it possible to rest a golf course on a cyclical basis? In other words, close the golf course, except for some needed maintenance of one kind or another, but not staff it. and rest it and then next year or next golfing season bring it back to life, so to speak, and rest another one. I suppose it's possible that your operating costs, with the exception of the golf shop, would be exactly the same. To maintain that facility, turf-wise, water, irrigation, chemicals. Would it need mowing as much as it needs? Yes. They need as much chemicals? Yes. As much water? Yes. Of course, water hasn't been a problem this year, I don't think. This is true. Did you say there were 11 high schools? There are 11 high school teams. When I say that, for example, Henry Clay, girls and boys will play Lakeside. I was trying to find 11 high schools in Fayette County. I didn't know whether we were out advertising to other counties to use our golf course for free. And I guess the only other comment, I'll probably want to talk again at some point, but the other comment is that I'm afraid Valhalla is the crown jewel in Kentucky, not Kearney Hills. May I respond? Sure. Valhalla is a private club, $25,000 to join. I understand. Ernie is public, and that makes it the crown jewel. Of public golf course. Of public golf. You didn't mention that. Yes, I did. Yes, you did. Did you? Yes, sir, I did. Okay. I stand corrected then, because I do know they had the PGA there, I believe. Yes. They're having something coming up pretty soon. Yes, sir, they do. The senior PGA will be at Valhalla. Okay, that's all I need. Thank you so much, Mike. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Chair. Even though I'm not on the committee, I do have a lot of interest in this topic and a couple questions. And, Mike, I would add that Kearney hosted PGA events for the ladies a couple years ago. We had the United States Golf Association National Championship Women's Amateur Public Links Championship was there. We also had, in 1997, the Men's Amateur Public Links. Kearney is one of only six facilities in the country that's had the designation of hosting both of those championships. Good accolades for us. In point of interest, Tim Clark, who won in 97 at Kearney Hill, was the co-captain of the President's Cup team in Australia this year. Very good. Going back to some of the numbers, I would say right off the bat, I'm not a fan of privatizing golf. I think it is a public service, and we need to keep some level of golf. But I do want to go back and revisit some of your numbers, because based on the chart that was handed out, we're losing about $1.2 million a year overall in our golf operation. And did you mention Lakeside? You had mentioned why the expenses of Lakeside are so high as compared to the bigger courses. I'm sorry. Lakeside expenses, there are $890,000. That's on par with the expenses for Kearney. It's the utilities. And you said the sewer usage fee, right? Correct. So why does Kearney have that? Kearney does not use city water to irrigate with. Okay. Kearney collects its own runoff and water into its containment ponds, and that's where the irrigation water is pulled from. Is that the same with Tate's Creek? They have to use city water. Tate's Creek is city water. And basically they should be very similar, Tate's Creek Lakeside and Picadone. As you can see, there's a $140,000, $50,000 difference. Yes. And that's that sewer user fee that we have been charged that we are working on recouping. When do we start working on recouping that? We are doing it as we speak. Okay. It seems like that's something we probably should have done two years ago because our sewer fee is two years old now. Correct. On stormwater. I assume you're talking sewer, not stormwater, or both. It's stormwater and sewer tax, as you would call it, that's being charged to water. And irrigation water should not be charged that. That's the sewer piece. That has nothing to do with the stormwater piece. Well, it's okay. Is that where the cost is in the sewers, Jerry? Yes. I'm sorry. And we've never looked at that in all these years? We've just been paying it to be nice? i mean it seems like it seems like we keep uncovering and the more we dig into this we're finding things that we correct how come we're not looking at this or this and you know i am glad to see that we're going to change up our marketing efforts because obviously marketing golf is not like marketing the other programs on parks it's a unique sport and it has a unique client base right part of the problem with the utility and this is one of the things that i talked about two weeks ago i believe with councilman meyer when we had an interaction is that we do not golf parks we do not pay utilities right we never see these bills we didn't know that we were being overcharged now we do and we're working we're taking steps to get that corrected well people soft hopefully will help us uncover some of that you know we spent a lot of money on that i won't go down that path today. No, don't. We've wasted a lot of money on that engine too. So I'm glad to hear that we finally found it. So going back to the marketing that I briefly discussed a second ago, when do you plan out? Are these marketing changes going to be starting in January? We're going to change it up and lower fees due to the local options? That's the direction that we're asking you. We do not have the authority to adjust our rates. We have been restricted in marketing. We've been told not to, especially the social media sites. Even Golf Now, we were requested to be removed from that site. Well, let me give it from one council member's perspective. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I want you to move forward post-haste and give us a plan. What do you want the rates to look like? What will bring Golf Hole? because I'm a firm belief with our aquatics program, too, that golf can be self-funded and self-sustaining. It doesn't have to lose a million dollars a year. I believe it can, too, if we're unhandcuffed. Well, let us know what that unhandcuffing looks like and give us an opportunity to respond because right now, again, this is the first time we're seeing some of these ideas out on paper. Right. But what tools do you need? I think exactly what the Parks Advisory Board has asked. We need complete flexibility in rate control and setting rates and discounting rates. We need to be able to react immediately to the market, and we need to be able to have access to Facebook and to Twitter and to Golf Now. I can give you a quick example. The opening day of Keeneland, we had an outing booked at Kearney. three days prior the outing called and canceled. Something came up. So we had an open tee sheet on a sunny day, Keeneland's opening, and we're three days out. I can't reach out to fill that sheet. So we reacted. I reached out to Golf Now. They sent an email blast to 1,500 customers, and we were immediately directed to pull it off. And so basically the city of Lexington lost $5,000, $6,000 on that Friday. We have to have the ability to react to this. Well, if it's a legislative policy holding it up, let us know what that is. But if it's an administrative policy, obviously working with the CAO would have to correct some of that with council resolution. But going forward, I appreciate the work you and Jerry put into this presentation. Thank you. Trying to help us get our hands around it. It's not an easy topic. I do have one last question. You mentioned briefly that we just got or received ownership of the Lakeside Golf Course, part of the settlement from five years ago. In that deed, does it have to remain a golf course forever? In that part of the settlement and the deed? I'm not an attorney, but my reading of the deed restricts the use of the property to recreational purposes. I just want to make sure everyone knew that who was watching, and there's been a lot of comments out there about lakeside potential and it has to remain a park. Correct. Do you remember the stipulation if it doesn't or what it would take to change that? There's some caveat in the deed. My recollection is that it gets appraised and then we get to pay the difference or something. It will cost the city money if it doesn't say recreation. Right. So I just want to make sure we all understood that, too. Mike, thank you, sir. Thank you. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Chair. I have a couple questions. First, during the presentation, you cited a study of golf users, of the people who utilize golf courses, and I think you quoted 74%. Can you tell us exactly how many people? I saw it on a different packet. I don't have it in here. But can you tell me exactly how many people, one, that you reached out to, and then how many people responded and what the percentage of respondents to total golfers is? because I think the public needs to understand when you say we surveyed our golfers and 74% of them said they want this. Well, I just want to make sure we understand who the total who responded because it doesn't appear to me by some of the numbers I've seen that a very big percentage of your golfers responded to your survey. The survey, and I will have to speak out, the golfnow.com helped us out immensely with this. They have a database of customers who use our facility specifically. They sent the survey out through SurveyMonkey for us, and it was 1,500 emails were sent. And I believe it was 331 respondents. I would like to add that that was only out there live for three days. Oh, okay. and can we get a copy of that survey that was sent out yes ma'am and then the other questions that i have uh relate to first do we not have facebook uh through parks and rec currently and you're not allowed to do any marketing through the parks and rec facebook page i believe there is a facebook page for parks and recreation but i mean i guess i don't understand why golf is any different than any other parks program we do and this is probably more appropriate for jerry because i know that that i receive updates on the facebook page from parks and rec and i don't see why golf isn't being updated on there but other parks programs can be can you explain two issues one go back to the survey mike mike talked about a golf now survey By definition, those are golfers in the region, and we went to 1,500 of them. Separately, we went to all of the current registered users of Parks and Recreation's electronic system called RecTrack. We have 10,000 households in that database. We went out to all 10,000 of those people, and 1,739 of them responded. so we have two sources of data that we've just spoken to. One is all park users, and the other was all golfers that use Golf Now to buy tee times. With respect to Facebook, the administration has told us that one person in parks could become a responder for Facebook and Twitter, which really is not effective given the myriad of different businesses we're in. Mike's golf business is different from Brian's aquatic business and no one person can possibly know what's happening and what's happening tomorrow and all of that. So we have been asked to be restrictive, which we think hinders our ability to respond. By the nature of social networking, it needs to be quick, instantaneous, short and sweet, responding now. One person in golf responding to all of our 10,000 households' needs is cumbersome. We would like more freedom than that. But I think it, I mean, the word I want to use I'm not going to use because it's very strong, but I think that when you say that you don't have the ability to do something through social media, but yet what you're saying is it's not possible for you to have one person who's already doing that with other events within parks to not be updating it for golf too? That just doesn't, I mean, you're telling me, the presentation, you said you cannot do this, but when in fact you can, it's just not possible, is what you're saying, is for you believe one person in parks to head this up? I don't think it's reasonable for one person in parks to know all of the different programs, times, changes, events, weather, rain outs, all the rest of the things that happen that people need to be contacted about. One person is, in my opinion, overly restrictive. If you're not going to respond quickly in social media, it becomes unused. We need more freedom and flexibility and the responsibility that goes with that in order to be able to speak to the specifics of the businesses we're in, golf, aquatics, summer camps, therapeutic recreation, et cetera. I guess my point would be you could have somebody who is utilizing social media, one person, and it's not very hard for them to put a contact for the different divisions within parks to contact with more specific questions. I mean, I guess I'm just a little concerned that as counsel, you're asking us to make these decisions, and you're telling us certain things that you cannot do, but yet they can be done. You're just saying that you don't believe it's in your opinion that one person can do this. And I think some of us might have a different opinion as to how some of these methods could be utilized. I also want to try and get, like Council Member Stenet said, I was not at the last meeting, but I did watch the tape. And I get concerned when you mention you want to have flexibility with fees. Right now, the taxpayers are supplementing, what, $13 per person per golf round when they play golf. And so when you say fee structure, I look out. Is that accurate or not? Can somebody please first clarify? The million two divided by 80,000, that sounds about right. So $13, that's right. So I guess my question is when I look out and I see people who are supporting your plan, are they going to be supportive if you have to increase fees, $13 to cover, per ram, per person, to cover what you need to supplement in golf? I think, Councilwoman, what we're asking for is the opportunity to compete for incremental golfers. Most of golf's expenses are fixed. It doesn't cost us anything to add another round of golf. If we can compete for that golfer during the week or late in the afternoon and get him to come play at our courses rather than go somewhere else, he'll pay us a reduced fee of $25, which we wouldn't have received otherwise. We're looking to reduce the subsidy by half through competing more effectively. But what I see in the budget is every year you suggest that the levels are going to be up here when, in fact, it's declining. So I don't see where that supplement is going to come from or where you're going to make up that difference through this marketing plan. I guess what I would like to see is the fee schedule. I mean, I would agree with my colleagues that it is our duty to provide all types of recreational activities. As a mother of three children and somebody who utilizes many of our parks programs, I just have a hard time when you want to talk about being flexible with the fees. Trust me, I think a lot of us up here would love to turn over you all deciding the fees because it takes the burden off us. I don't want to have to increase fees on our taxpayers ever. But I do have concerns with some of the numbers I've seen in budget after budget after budget where you're making projections of it increasing, but yet what we're seeing is decline in golf and decline in the revenue over the course of every single budget session season I've been here. That's what we've seen. So I can't understand how we keep coming to these higher numbers of what we anticipate is going to come in, and it hasn't happened almost six years. So that's just a comment. I don't know. It wasn't really a question. Yeah. Your time has expired. Thank you. I'll cut back on the board. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Excuse me. I'm out of sequence here. Council Member Blues is next. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Fields, for completing that presentation. Let me just preface my remarks by saying that I, too, am a strong supporter of public golf, and I think we should do everything we can to continue and sustain it. And I'd like the Parks Advisory Board's recommendations. I don't hold to the premise that golf has to be absolutely self-sustaining, and I think it's doing under the present circumstances pretty well, 77%, 78% of its cost recovery. but in these difficult times I know we have to do better and I'd like to just first underscore Councilmember Stenitz's plea for the plan tell us what you need in order to have the flexibility in rate setting in special promotions special events whatever it might be to produce more golfers playing more rounds. And I would also ask whether you plan to consider a more aggressive scrutiny of staffing needs. In the report, it says that you will work on reduction of staff through attrition and reassignment, which is a kind of gradual approach. I wonder if a more aggressive approach and a closer scrutiny of minimal staff needs to maintain the courses isn't called for as well in the advisory board's plan. We have been on top of things as far as scrutinizing our seasonal dollars because we can control when that staff works, when they can't, and that cost. The civil service costs are primarily fixed. Although we had two layoffs in golf the last budget year, and we have had retirements and we've had people leave. So that leaves the ten vacancies that haven't been filled. So we kind of look at the civil service costs are fixed at this point until policies or procedures or things are changed that maybe allow us to look at that differently. But we have been very rigid with our expenses as it pertains to seasonal employment. As I say, I think that we may have to do what we need to do to keep those costs rigorously under control. But I do hope that you'll be able to bring forward that plan so we can look at it and give you the kind of flexibility, the mobility to get more golfers out there playing more rounds, recovering more of the expense. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Finish, Mr. Please. Yes, thank you. Okay. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for coming in this morning, this afternoon, I guess. At the last meeting, when we were discussing this topic, I asked for the information that we brought forward, broken down by each golf course, one of the number of employees by title, description, and salary. I also talked about the name of the employees. We said we'd have to go to HR for that. Has anybody put that information together? It's in the packet, I believe, isn't it? Okay, I was looking at the old packet. Someone asked me, so it's in here? What page is that on? 6, 7, 8? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Let me start with your utilities. When you talked about the utilities, you talked about water. I just gave you a chart that we put together. We just got the information late yesterday and been working furiously today to try to make sense of it. The first line on there, Armstrong Mill Parkway, you've got Duncan and Shiloh or Shiltoe. Do you know what those are? We asked for the utility numbers, and this is all just pertaining to water. And they gave us these line items in there. And for Shiltoe, it has 24,800, 39,051. Was this from General Services? What is this? What was the source? Who was the source? This came out of PeopleSoft. There's no golf at Shiltoe. I understand that. That's why I'm asking what that dollar amount is spent on. Maybe Mr. Caldwell might be able to answer. I put some of those numbers together for them, and it looks like I haven't changed the title on the heading on this. I think these are actually referring to some of the pool numbers. These aren't the numbers we got from you. We got these from Enterprise Solutions. This isn't the numbers that you gave us. Okay, we'll work on that. Let me ask you about Lakeside specifically. When you look at this chart and you look at the colored piece of it, that second column is the total increase annually. And so I understand that you talked about some of the fees that we're being assessed that we're trying to recoup. But if you look at, for example, Lakeside, in 2007, it was an increase of $25,000 in water expenditure. 2008, it increased by another $87,000. 2009, it dropped by 58,000. 2010, it increased by 147,000. And I know earlier that you said that you guys don't pay the bills for utilities. Correct. But when you look at that, it still comes out of your budget, though, right? Correct. So when you look at your budget and it jumps by 147,000 in one year, do you not ask somebody what that is attributed to? We don't see that. When we started work on the P&L and it was realized, you know, I'm looking there and it's $260,000 for utilities at Lakeside. I'm saying that's, you know, about $140,000 or whatever too high. Then the question gets asked. That $147,000 in 2010, 2011 is that overcharge fee. So that fee wasn't assessed the year before because that fee started two years ago, right? Yes. We're still trying to dig through that. As you see, there's a decrease in 2009-2010. Or 2009-2010. Right. We're still trying to, we're working with Kentucky American Water, Ricky Caldwell, and the sanitary sewers to dig that out. Okay. We requested the water bills from Kentucky American Water to see what these charges were going toward, and that's when it was discovered. Okay. Council Member Myers, I hate to cut you off, but we're on a short time frame today. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Vice Chair McCord. Thank you, Chairman. Jerry, if you don't mind coming to the mic, because both of these will be, I guess, to either or. Jerry, can you give me the name? I can't think of it right now. Is it Golf Enterprise? Is that what we call it, inside the budget? There's a term, and is that correct, where there's some employees? Inside parks, the aquatics function, our ESP function, and golf report to a deputy director of enterprise. Okay. All right. Thank you. I couldn't get that square. Just stay right there. A couple questions. When we look at golf, do we factor in the debt service? When we figure the cost of golf, do we factor in the debt service on golf carts that we're paying? Is that following the number? Yes. On the individual golf course P&Ls that you requested and you've received in your packet, The first page of that includes those administrative costs, if you will. Okay. They are included in that million, too. And Mike's salary is in that as well? Yes. Okay. And then we factor in the utility bills, but we don't know exactly what's going on there. I mean, they come out of your budget. I mean, they come out of golf's budget. You'll see the utilities are listed on that sheet as well. Right, but we've got them all over the map. And what Mike just said, you know, we don't pay the utility bills, but it does come out of our budget. Yes, we show utilities in the parks budget in the golf section. It's estimated and budgeted by General Services, and accounting pays the bills. Okay. And then on that. Go ahead, Mike. I'm sorry. The utilities is in the golf, the enterprise budget, but is not broken out per course. That's one of the things that we've requested. The other is through the meetings that we were all involved with, these utilities have been narrowed down by percentages for golf only. For example, Taste Free Golf Course, we're only using a percentage, so pools is not being charged to golf as it was in the past. Thank you. Jerry, if on January 16th, which is a Monday this upcoming year, are our golf courses open? Yes, sir. If the weather's above 50, they'll be busy. Okay, without that caveat, if it's 17 degrees, are they still open? They won't be open to the public if there's frost on the ground or snow on the ground. They're not open at all? No, we don't allow people to come and play golf when the turf won't allow it. Okay. At what level? What's the degree that we cut that off? Our civil service personnel are scheduled to come to work. They come to work every day. If the weather is so that we know that there's not going to be golf that day, they are given the authority to lock the facilities up and go home. The caveat to that is if they choose to do that, they will be using vacation or comp or holiday time. Okay. Now, to finish, our maintenance crews, Civil Service Maintenance, our mechanics superintendent, they are also there. But there are lots of things they can do inside it, especially with our equipment, that they are working. And then who determines whether golf is going to happen that day or not? The weather determines it. I mean, the golf course can be open if the ground is frozen, as long as there's not frost on the blade of the grass. I guess my point is that the state has a policy that says, hey, if it's 35 degrees or below or an impending weather issue, not open. What we've got is somebody's call somewhere and kind of put your finger to the wind and say we're not going to have golf today. So, again, that's a policy issue, again, for us as a council that we need to take up as we're looking at this so that these folks know when are they going to be there and what are they going to be doing. That's a glaring hole. So just a couple quick things. One is you had mentioned, Mike, that you all saved between what you all are doing your part, saving about $750,000. That was over a four-year period. In FY11, we saved from an operations management standpoint $118,000. Okay. And I appreciate every dollar of that, and yet golf still loses $1.2 million, even with all of those things that we're doing and cutting back. We've got an issue with a nationally declining sport, and we've got issues where we need a place to exercise and be physically active. This is a park service that the city does need to provide at some level. And what we're trying to wrestle with is what is the policy going to be? Is our policy going to be do we subsidize golf to $1.2 million every year, and that's okay, that's a good thing? If so, great. Winter golf course is going to be open. How do we measure what we spend and what we take in? Those things are not established, and that's the reason for the meetings that we're having right now and the questions that we're asking right now. Jerry, I guess my question to you, one thing that's bothering me is, as we've talked about not being able to respond through social media, through e-mail, who specifically is telling you you can't do this? I have an email from the head of IT telling me that there needs to be one individual in parks to head up all the responses in social media. Okay. Based on some meetings that were held in the senior administration. So the head of IT has told you there's no way you're supposed to be doing this, and so as a policy group we need to sit down with that person and with the administration and say, what is it that you have said to these folks, what can they and can't they do? because Facebook has been around for five years in earnest, and email has been around since the 90s, and we're not using either one of those. That's not true. We email regularly. Mike has – there are people in parks with their own personal Facebook pages that speak to customers because they understand their own program and their own cancellations and their own needs. We're just not doing it as effectively and as authorized as it ought to be. It ought to be much simpler and easier with the responsibility that goes with that. So other people are doing it on their own time and with their own Facebook pages, but we can't do that. And that's, again, a phenomenal policy. It's led to a million-two that we're losing a year, and we're at 88,000 rounds. So that's what I'm saying is that that's not efficient, and we need to have a discussion with whoever is telling you you can't do those things and change that dramatically. Thank you. Mr. Councilmember Kaye. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Jerry, I've got more questions for you, if you would. The slide that's up now, which is the recommendations from the advisory board, I guess first of all, let me back up half a step and say that like some of the other council members have already expressed, I'm a supporter of public golf. I think it's a part of the recreation program we ought to be providing, and that I think we can do it more efficiently. And I believe that the initial request from this committee was for a detailed plan for how to become how golf in particular and the pools, but parks overall, could become more efficient. So what I'd like to do is ask you a couple questions about these recommendations and what it would take to have a plan developed that would meet those recommendations. So what would it take to allow you, to give you the flexibility to set fees? What has to happen in order for that to be fulfilled as a recommendation? The law department has opined to us that fee setting has traditionally over the last 12 years or so been handled by the city council. that there is nothing in the statutes that would prevent the administration or the chief administrative officer from setting rates or modifying rates, but that historically you all have had that prerogative and have used it. We have brought to you requests for fee increases several different times, and you've approved those. So the historical land says that you are the ones that do that and that there has not been an effort to change that or to take that responsibility back anecdotally and historically. You all have said that. So I think what is necessary is, and what we're asking for and what the advisory board is asking for, is an opportunity for us to go to the chief administrative officer and say, this segment is not being served because they're priced out of the market because the market has changed. Can we change that on a regular basis or a periodic basis or an occasional basis? what we would like from you is a statement that someone in the administration has the authority to modify rates for golf based on market conditions. Okay, so we need a recommendation, as I understand it. Is that correct? A detailed recommendation that lays all that out, that we can either then approve or disapprove. Is that correct? As far as I'm concerned, bullet number two says that. We would like the council to give the chief administrative officer authority to modify gulf rates based on appropriate recommendations and substantiation from us to allow us to change fees. If we're losing out on afternoon play or weekend play or if the ladies get a better deal somewhere else, we need to be able to respond to that. Okay. I think I understand that. The next bullet encouraged continued cost cutting. so again what would it take in order for you to have the ability to reduce the cost of water chemicals and equipment what would it take for you to be able to reassign staff I guess the bottom line is cutting the operating subsidy in half Let me back up. I'm asking it rhetorically, and I don't mean to. I believe what would be useful for this body, and especially for the people who will have budget responsibility come spring, the initial budget responsibility, is a detailed plan that outlines how you're going to go about achieving those economies of scale and reaching that target of cutting the subsidy in half. That's the information that would be useful, I believe. And when I first got on to this question of a plan, perhaps I wasn't clear enough, but that's what I had in mind. And I appreciate the work of the advisory board, but I believe it's the responsibility of the administration to come to council with some very specific recommendations and an analysis of why that's going to result in the kinds of efficiencies that are envisioned. Let me just say that I don't know what page it's on in the presentation, but unfortunately we actually paid for ourselves on direct costs for a number of years. To Councilman Crosby's point, we failed in not foreseeing the economic crash of 2008. The world changed. There are a lot of people who can't afford to play golf. The world has changed dramatically in the last two years. We're at 77%, we say, in 2011 of covering our direct costs. Our fees and charges policy, which you all approved in the year 2000, said that for youth programming, our goals in setting our prices ought to be to recover 50% to 70% of our direct costs for youth programs. We have a lot of youth programs in golf. Our adult programs at the same time that you approved said we ought to cover 70% to 100% of our direct costs for adult programs like softball and basketball. We are doing that. We're doing that. There is no policy in place that says 77% is bad. And, yeah, it's unfortunate that it's a million bucks, but if it had been eight years ago when we lost a million bucks, we might not be having the conversation. But we are having it today because things have changed and our budgets are awful. So what we would like from you is some statement that says, we want you to cut that subsidy in half, and we want you to do it in two years, and we'll give you pricing authority to do that, and we will cut that down in ways that we think are reasonable and prudent through the budgeting process. We have certain rules involving laying off people or moving people around. I mean, there's an environment in which we all employ people that restrict some of the things that we can and can't do. We'd like your guidance. Mr. Kay, I'm sorry, sir, but your time has expired. Thank you, Chair. Well, it's been on the screen. He's been around a couple of minutes already. All right, I'm going to rule that Council Member Martin is next because Ms. Crosby has already spoken. My questions will relate to whether or not I was going to request that we get somebody from administration or IT to come to our meeting. Could you please just make it brief, whatever your question is? No, my comment was going to be could we please have someone come from either IT or the administration who has set this policy so that I can ask further questions. Thank you. Okay. Surely there's somebody in here or they're watching that could come up and rather than us try to guess around who said what and emailed what to whom, where, when. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for coming, and I appreciate you presenting the information to us. can you provide us you may have already done that i couldn't find it in my file but basically a side-by-side comparison of what we charge versus what other people charge i mean we've we've heard a lot today that that we're maybe charging too much and therefore not attracting golfers so that would be helpful i'd i'd like to see every every municipal course and every private course and every non-city public course and it's just so we can have good information about what other people are charging it and if you have a copy maybe somebody can run and make a copy of it or something like that so that'd be that'd be informational and while you're doing that uh you know i just want to say it not notwithstanding my concern about kearney i i do support public golf in the sense that i'm a golfer although i'm a bad golfer and unfortunately i haven't played I can fix that. I'm sorry? I can fix that. I doubt you can. I promise you I can. And I have a sad, lonely set of Calloways in my garage. I can fix that, too. Yeah, I know. But why don't you walk us through this? Okay, this is current rates. Was this about August, I think? It was during the summer. Given the fact that these other courses will sometimes change, ours is basically fixed, but this was around August, I believe, July, August. The Monday through Friday rate on the left, and then weekends, the next column, and it shows the differences between us and them. basically Kearney's probably in the right place during the weekend but as you can see they're $2 higher through the week Gabe Brewer $3 too high during the week and they're close on weekend Lakeside, Tates Creek they're at the top of the list if you get in the senior fees is worth $3, $4, $5, $6 overpriced on senior fees compared to the market. And these are retail rates? Yeah, these are retail rates. Understand that other courses may discount lower than what their standard rate is. And I guess we've done that too, though. Weren't we offering some radio stuff last year? I'm sorry. Oh, we have never discounted a rate on advertising or anything like that. We have offered our twilight rate earlier in the day through golfnow.com. But that's only selling. On Golf Now, you sell slots. You don't sell your entire day. You can offer, like, the 1 o'clock tee time for the 2 o'clock price. So we didn't give golf rounds to radio stations and change for advertising last year? Yes, we did do marketing with radio to market our product. If you could send this around to us, and I'll come back because my time's up, but if you could send that email to council members, I'd appreciate it. I'm sorry. The current rates. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. All right, Mr. Martin, I think your time's up now. Vice Mayor. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. A couple of things, Mike. Thanks for your presentation. You talked about high school usage of the courses. Do the high schools pay to use our courses? They do not for practice or matches. they will pay if they host a tournament. Can we charge them for practice? Is that a government policy? Typically it's been, I believe, and Jerry may be able to speak on this, but typically it's part of the tradeoff between Meadowbrook and use of our facilities. There was some softball, baseball sharing fields. and for me personally, we're promoting junior golf. High schools need a place to play. I understand that, and if it's a tradeoff for Meadowbrook for our use of that, that would be understandable. And then I wanted to go back to Council Member Crosby's comments. You talked about golf course costs. Can you say again, what percentage of the costs are fixed, would you say? Because you talked about fixed costs and ability to raise more. Civil service costs are fixed. Yes. Seasonal costs vary based on our scheduling, budgets, what minimum wage is. We can control all that. If it rains every day, we don't have seasonal as much. as far as operating the golf course, such as utilities, mowing, chemicals, that's all weather-driven. Okay, so those are variable. I guess what I'm thinking about back to her comments and questions is that part of the dilemma is that there are lots of fixed costs, And so if you had the ability, hour by hour, to go on Twitter or go on Facebook to offer a quick special, like when the group canceled, you could raise more revenue but would still have very similar cost. That is correct. Is that fair to say? Yes. You know, the cost of the golf course is exactly the same, whether there's one person playing or 150 playing. Okay. So for us to offset those costs, the more people that are loading that course on that given day helps. Well, it seems to me that a lot of the questions and comments from council members have been about policy and our ability to be flexible in a world that's flexible. And, I mean, we talked about it, Council Member McCord and I both last meeting mentioned the ability to come into the 21st century and use the Twitter and Facebook, and that's an ongoing quick thing throughout the day. So I guess I'm wondering, since the CAO is here, it seems to me the smart thing for us to do would be ask you all in golf and parks to meet with the CAO and bring us some policy recommendations so that golf can be very flexible on an hour-by-hour basis in offering some of these specials that the private golf courses are able to offer and be flexible about. Because if we can't do that, I think that we'll just keep ourselves in the same hole. So, Mr. Chairman, I would move that we ask the CAO and administration to meet with golf and bring us back some policies so that we can upgrade ourselves to more speedy response with our public and our players. We have a second from Mr. McCord. Who was the second? McCord. Mr. McCord. Okay, is there any discussion on that motion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. All right. My final comment is I'm a strong supporter of public golf and public recreational facilities, so I hope we can keep working on changes in policy to make some things happen that are good for our citizens. Thank you. At this point, the Chair would like to suggest that we hear from the people signed up. We have eight people signed up to speak. All of the Council members have spoken once. and would there be any objection from any council member if we went ahead and took the people that came to speak? Okay, without hearing any objection, the first person on here is Roz Tender, and there will be a three-minute time. Thank you. Good afternoon. Would you also give your address and everything to Roz? Sure. My name is Roz Tender. I live at 3145 Blenheim Way here in Lexington. First little information about me. I'm a 30-year resident of Fayette County. I spent 30 years in corporate accounting systems and am experienced in developing business plans and business solutions for corporate size entities. So I'm kind of at home with the conversations we've been having today. I'm also president of Fayette Women's Golf Association, which Mike mentioned earlier. We are a group of over 100 ladies who play the city courses in organized league play and casual play over 2,000 rounds a year. We choose to play the city courses. We have options, but we choose to play the city courses to support the city of Lexington. I sent emails to each of you expressing my concerns that the city has a business decision to make and needs a business approach rather than a knee-jerk solution without proper analysis and a plan to improve the situation. And thank you to those council members who did send replies. I appreciate it very much. I've spoken to numerous golfers, course staff, and council members regarding the economic situation of the city courses and accumulated the following knowledge. Many have opinions and very few have facts, and few, including some council, do not seem to have verified financial information. The city runs multiple accounting systems, which seem to be an underlying issue with understanding the economic situation. Having been involved in accounting systems my entire career, I know that causes nothing but arguments, wasted time, and constant reconciliation. The $140,000 sewer allotment at Lakeside is probably the best example of that. The challenges to close or outsource the management of our courses has come from organizations outside Fayette County and involve private and public course owners. These individuals are touting groundless solutions that are not in the best interest of Fayette County but are in the best interest of those individuals. The Kentucky Club for Growth seems to be a major voice in this pursuit. This is a branch of a national organization with an acceptable charter, however, voices their opinion on subjects on the agenda of every leg of government from local to national, without proper understanding or analysis of the situation. The Council seems to be mired in the minutia of detailed management decisions of pricing, rather than setting financial goals for courses and a timetable to achieve those goals. There are abundant ideas on improving the marketing of the courses and increasing the rounds played, however they have been rejected without cause. Suggestions for your consideration. Council should set feasible financial goals for each year for the next two years to increase revenue and decrease controllable expenses. Allow course management to develop marketing plans and set prices as they see fit. This is their business. They know more than counsel on this subject. Goals of a 10% increase in rounds for the next two years might be considered. How that revenue is gained should be the business of those that know this business the best. The Parks Advisory Board should have oversight of these plans. Evaluate the concept of consolidation of the four 18-hole courses into one entity to allow for consolidation and sharing of civil service and seasonal labor, buying power and other expenses. Labor is the single largest line item on the financial statement, and that's no surprise to anyone. So time must be spent on a creative way to decrease that number. Evaluate the concept of closing three of the four 18-hole courses for three months in the winter. Maybe we can do it. Maybe we can't. And establish a volunteer panel of golf supporters to assist in the development of a solid, attainable marketing and business plan for golf. Many formal organizations that play our city courses have retired or semi-retired professionals that have specialized in business problem solving. Reach out for their help. Ms. Tender, we're running up onto your time limit. Okay. But your points have been very well made, and I think it would be very nice if you could provide your copy of that. We would make sure all council members get a copy. I'll certainly email it to you. And I want to thank you so much. for, Tenney, you can make a closing comment there. Difficult business decisions made on factual basis and done when all attempts to resolve the situation have failed. This has not been done in city golf yet. Fayette County needs municipal golf, and it must be supplemented but not totally supported by tax dollars, as are all the other municipal facilities such as parks, soccer, baseball fields, bike trails, and tennis courts. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for coming. Mr. McDonald is here. You want to speak to golf too, sir? Yes. Okay, thank you. Would you give us your address and name, please, for the record? My name is Herb McDowell, but not Mr. McDonald, but I appreciate that anyway. I live at 904 Redberry Circle, Lexington, Kentucky. I am a long-time resident of 69 years in the city. I was born in 1943. I'm also a retired educator of 27 years, a coach of 38 years. I want to address public course, public golf, very quickly. And I'd like to do it in no way in three minutes, but we'll do what best we can. Some of you I've had as students. Some of you I've had as former athletes and programs. Some of you I've probably coached your kids or your grandkids. And all that being said, there's nothing like public golf. I'll tell you like it was. Here's how it was when I was a kid. You know when I got on a golf course, I was a caddy. That's the only way I can get on a private course. I was a caddy. There was no opportunity for public people to play golf in this city. Now you can bring an end to that or you can tell it. There was a time that you couldn't go to Idoli or if you was a person of color to play. That's why we have public golf. an opportunity for people to play who cannot afford private course fees. Now, that being said, I taught golf for many years at Jesse Clark. I went out and played this past summer. A kid I hadn't seen for 25 years says, Coach, I had you in a golf class at Jesse Clark and I'm still playing. That's what you're providing, an opportunity for people to play a lifetime sport. A lifetime sport. Not baseball, not basketball. we're getting ready to spend $150 million on a basketball facility for 12 guys that's 150 years of golf for the residents of Lexington now I want a new arena that's fine I'm just saying it's all perspective isn't it as a parent I was able because golf was reasonable price for family to teach my kids how to play golf to take my family and play at public golf courses. If fees continue to increase as a senior citizen on a fixed income, those things will not be available. If all private courses cease to exist, there will be no opportunity for public to play. If you're talking about a difference of $5 in green fees between here and High Point for a senior, a senior would rather go there and play four rounds is to play two and a half rounds in a city course. You've got to be compared with those people about us. They're in the same business we're in, and that's just staying off for the residents of Fayette County. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. George Ginter. How are you? George Ginter, 1142 Cooper Drive. I'm a physician here in Lexington, and my kids play for Henry Clay. Some of the parents asked me to come down here because they couldn't. Many of the kids that play in the high school programs don't have an opportunity to work at a private course. Most of our girls only play at Lakeside or one of the other public courses. I do think in looking at Charles' numbers that you do need to consider a few things. Not all of your golf courses are the same. Lakeside offers the only full-service practice facility. It's got better putting greens. It's got a driving range. That's not offered at Picadone or at Taste Creek. And also, Lakeside has the larger invitational golf tournaments that bring in talent from out of town. Many times those parents of the out-of-town teens stay in the hotel, spend a lot of money in town. Last time at Henry Clay's golf invitational, I think we had 35 girls' teams from all over the state. Many of those parents and relatives stayed for three and four days in hotels here. So the economic impact probably is greater than you're going to see on your balance sheets here. Many of our girls get scholarships to go play golf in college because girls' golf is the most underutilized NCAA scholarship out there. So we've had two or three girls that have come through the Henry Clay program. they're now completely playing golf in college for their tuition, books, room, and board. So it's a great asset. This is all made available by Public Golf here. Excuse me. And I've been members of private clubs, and they have exactly the same conversations as we're having here. It's all about cost. But the real problem here is the economy in 2008. Since that time, Champions, a private course, went bankrupt, and Andover's filed for bankruptcy. So this is not unique to the public sector. Basically, it paid for itself until 2008. And if you can figure out some way to kind of get through until the economy improves, I think it will once again pay for itself. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you for coming today. Bruce Thomas. Hello, my name is Bruce Thomas. I live at 1063 Shinoah Road. I've been playing the city courses for close to 40 years. I was on the Mayor's Commission for golf courses for several years. I was president of the Men's Association at Tate's Creek, and I belong currently to Kearney's Men's Association and the Picardomes. I know these courses. I know how they operate. I played these courses all the time within the past couple of years when the rates were increased. With no control, I understand that they have been trying to lower these rates. I've moved a lot of my golfing down to Gibson Bay. They offer $500 a year, and you pay the cart fee. And I know about 16 guys that I play with alone that have taken about 100 rounds a year and moved it to other courses just because the city hasn't offered something like that. I understand they are trying to work on a program like this. It needs to be approved by you all. I wouldn't mind paying $500 in a certain amount of rate each time for the cart fee. There's money in volume. We need to bring back the golfers that have gone to other places. I know the bull. You could go $1,800, get $300 course credit toward the pro shop, have your golf cart, golf balls, and your play for an entire year for $1,800. If the city comes up with some kind of plan that they put together to bring all these golfers, like I said, I know 16 people that have spread out. That's 1,600 rounds a year that you've lost, the volume that you've lost from that. I think we could get those players back. If you do listen to what they have to say, let them offer these deals to local golfers. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming today. I'm not sure about this last name here. Kevin Ulevis? Am I close? I'm close. I should have been a doctor. I should have been doing that. George and been a doctor. Kevin Mims. Oh, Mims. M-I-M-S. I beg your pardon. That's all right. That's not the first time it's been messed up. 47-25 Willman Way here in Lexington. Also the girls golf coach for Henry Clay. I enjoyed a lot of the things that Mike Fields had to say. One of the things that really concerned me when I saw these was, of course, the utilities that everybody's gone over and what has been said. One of the things that seems logical to me is that you've got pros, you've got Aaron, you've got Al, you've got Jeff at running these courses, but yet they have no idea what's going on. Like if they had seen a utility bill that was out of skew, immediately they'd have been on it. I like what the lady said earlier, that they have no control over what they're supposed to have control over. So you've got all these pros that we're paying that are trained to run these courses that are not being given the wherewithal to run these courses. Case in point is the utility bill. And it goes into some nebulous out here and it says, oh, it's just paid for, and there it goes. I guess that's part of the city government type thing is that how much waste is there really in this over a million dollars that you're talking about? What can they control? The other thing that I would like to say is that the weekend rates on these courses is going higher than the weekday rates. My personal opinion is, coming from a construction background and things of that nature, is that you've got these guys that are working all day during the week that would love to play golf. And then on the weekend, they're getting penalized for working all week because on the weekend, they're going to pay a lot more for golf. I understand that from the private sector and how they do that and why they do that. I don't understand that for Lexington. You would increase your play just by lowering those fees. The other thing is that with the high school teams being at Lakeside, I can speak for Lakeside, I know that we have developed things, trees around the scoreboard, all the landscaping rocks donated by Henry Clay Golf. The ice machine that is used at Lakeside was donated by Henry Clay Golf. So there's a whole lot more that we bring to the table and that people that out of their donations to Henry Clay Golf bring to the table for these courses other than just going out there and playing. So you've got people that are coming back year after year after year after year after they've graduated, playing golf and paying to play golf. So you're creating something that down the years 10, 15, 20 years down the road is giving itself back. But my main point is that you've got pros at each course. Why are we not letting them run them? That's my main point there. Thank you. Thank you for coming. I have a couple sign up here, Sonia and Peter. Is that Craig? Krag, okay. Thank you. Hi, I'm Sonia Krag, K-R-A-G-H, and I live in Lexington. Do I need to give the address and all that? Did you want that for some reason? Okay. 1221 Spring Run Road, Lexington, Kentucky, 40514. And my husband is Pete. We've taken a lot of your time, and I have had a wonderful time here today. I was not expecting this. I wanted to take my time to thank all of you for your time as council members dealing with everything. Obviously, it's very complicated. What I like, and I want to thank all of you people for being here too, I heard something wonderful today. I'm a staunch USA citizen. I love living in Lexington. And what I heard today, this is my first meeting that I'm attending, was people who listen and have come up with possible ideas, probable ideas on how to fix things from both sides. And I heard that it has to come together, that there has to be another meeting that would help both sides come up with the actual specifics and understand the specifics from each other's point of view and then come up with the solution. I'm a staunch golfer. It's the only sport that I'm able to play because I am left-footed. You know, I can't do anything else. And, yes, I can play, but nobody can fix it the way I play. I try my best. I still love it. And I love the fact that we have so many courses here and the opportunity to play, and I'm so proud to be a Lexingtonian now. Thank you. Thank you for coming today. Susan Lamb. Ms. Lamb, we know you can speak quickly, so we're cutting you down to two minutes. That's not fair. I'm here on my own time right now. No, I do want to just say that I was over here ready to speak on behalf of the golf courses, and I appreciate the dialogue that has taken place today and the consideration that you're going to still continue to look into things. I think that we do need to do that. I also this past year was able to take advantage of being a part of the 5 o'clock golf league on Wednesday nights, and it was an awesome opportunity. Wellness for the government employees, yes. And I appreciate the staff, Mike Fields and Jerry Hancock. They do a great job for our golf courses. So I hope that we can come to a better decision to try to save the golf courses, and I appreciate everything. Thanks. Thank you, Ms. Lamb. Our last speaker is Lynn McCoy. I believe the last name is Simandel. Very good. I'm impressed. Yes, I'm Lynn McCoy Simandel. I live at 2361 Abbey Wood Road, and I'm going to make this very quick. You're going to be very impressed. I'm co-president of the 5 o'clock ladies league and we've been we would like to go on record saying that we ask that you do everything in your power to preserve our golf courses not destroy them thank you thank you very much for coming in today there is I think every council member has been able to speak and we're right at the end of our time frame Is there any motion or action that a councilman wants to make before we conclude the meeting? Can we have Council Member Myers? Thank you, Mr. Chair. After listening to the citizens' comments, I think that the comments that the Vice Mayor made earlier about coming back with the plan, I think it's one thing we might be able to add to that, and that is that we do have a pro that runs each golf course. And it has been said here that the people who run the courses don't really have any idea what their budgets are or what the outcomes are, the expenditures. So I ask that we look at one other option, and that is just turning over the golf courses to the pros and maybe removing some of the overhead that we have there and letting the pros come up with what they would do to run their golf course and make it effective and efficient and what they think their budget would be to do that. I think that's one thing we're missing. We've got these pros that were trained to run a golf course. They were trained to do all these things. But they're really being micromanaged when you really look at it. When you look at the hierarchy that we have over the top of the pros, and then you hear today that the pros don't even have any idea how much their water bill is, that's where we need to start is to ask these people that we've hired as experts to come up with a plan to run their individual golf course, and let's take a look at that as well. Thank you. So moved. Okay, we have a motion and a second for the golf pros to manage the golf courses, come up with a plan. Any discussion on that? Mr. Blues. Very quickly, I agree that the professionals obviously should have more input and more knowledge of expenses. I'm a little hesitant to give control of the golf courses individually to the professionals. I'd like to have the opportunity to think about that further. So I don't want to support that motion, certainly not at this time. We don't have enough time to give it the kind of consideration it deserves. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Blues. I just wanted to say that I totally support the motion because what we have heard from the professionals is, one, and from the community, is that the places where they golf, that the people who are the experts are not, they don't have the ability to control where they have been put in charge. And we're just looking at a plan. We're not making any decisions by this motion. And Council Member Myers is just asking that the administration, the CAO, can take this into consideration. And I think it's important that they look at all options, this included. Thank you. Any other discussion on that? Mr. Kay? Yes, I would agree that so long as that is part of a larger plan about the management of golf, I would be able to support the motion. Thank you. Okay. Any of Mr. Martin? Could Council Member Myers restate the motion so that can be sort of clear? Because I agree with Council Member Blues and some of my other council members. I'm not quite sure whether we're actually at a moment to turn over things at this moment. I'd love to hear the plan. I'd love to have the professionals have greater responsibility in putting together the plan, but don't know from an administration standpoint how something might work or not work. So maybe you could help us understand that. Yeah, well, my interpretation of where we are on this is that we're requesting for the administration to prepare a plan to use better management practices, better cost controls, to have the professionals get involved in the management and operations and to get a recommendation back from the CAO's office. So I'm sort of summarizing what I see. Now, I don't know if we have a specific thing that incorporates all that. Do you want to modify your? Well, if I start, I want to clarify a little bit. I want to make sure that people do understand. I wasn't suggesting that we turn it over to the pros. I was suggesting that we ask the pros what they would do in operating their individual golf course the way they see fit and the way it's effective and efficient. And so I think the vice mayor had asked for another sort of a plan and some policy changes to bring forward. So I'm not asking for the CAO to do something. I'm asking for the golf pros to be given an opportunity to put together a plan on how they would run their individual golf course efficiently and effectively. But it's only that we can look at it. I'm not suggesting that we just turn it over to them. Okay. Does that make everybody happy? All right. I appreciate that, Claire. Do you feel we need to revoke that, or does everybody understand what we're doing? Okay. Okay, we're good to go. Now, I would like to say that there was one council member, Council Member Ford. You did not get to speak, and you had requested earlier, then you came off the screen. Do you want to make a short comment? Okay. Does anybody else have a? Okay. Excuse me. You're absolutely right. We do have a motion. Okay, so we have the motion on the floor. Is there any other discussion on that? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Okay. I wanted to clarify something. I was told because I had requested the administration come down and talk about the social media policy. It's my understanding that's going to be changed. I'm not going to make a formal motion, but if they could include in their plan that they bring back, I think what we've been wanting for many months is a specific plan. And so if you could also include in your discussions about the new policy that you're going to implement. And also, that's it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Crosby. We are adjourned. Thank you.