# Council Work Session - February 21, 2012 > Auto-transcribed civic record · February 21, 2012 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2410 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2410?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2012-02-21 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 17,553 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 Urban County Council met on February 21, 2012, under the presiding leadership of Mayor Gray. During this meeting, the Council addressed 12 agenda items, took 11 votes, and heard 2 public comment periods. The Council approved several significant items including requested rezonings and docket approvals, budget amendments, new business, the NDF List, and the Mayor's Report. The Council also received informational presentations on the HealthFirst Business Plan, the LFUCG Fire & Police Staffing Update, and a Council Report. One item—the General Government Committee Update—was deferred for later consideration. ## Attendance **Present:** - Mayor Gray - CM Ellinger - CM Blues - CM Farmer - CM Beard - CM Henson - CM Stinnett - VM Gorton - CM Lane - CM Myers - CM Lawless - CM McChord - CM Kay - CM Ford **Absent:** - CM Crosbie - CM Martin - CM Myers **Late:** None reported. ## Votes and Decisions **Approve the docket of requested rezonings** [timestamp: 0:05:37] Motion by CM Ellinger, seconded by CM Blues. Passed unanimously. **Approve the summary of the 2.14.12 Work Session** [timestamp: 0:06:07] Motion by CM Farmer, seconded by VM Gorton. Passed unanimously. **Approve the budget amendments** [timestamp: 0:07:41] Motion by CM Beard, seconded by VM Gorton. Passed unanimously. **Approve the new business items** [timestamp: 0:08:13] Motion by VM Gorton, seconded by CM Ellinger. Passed unanimously. **Motion to remove item A from new business and place into Council Links** [timestamp: 0:16:37] Motion by CM Lawless, seconded by VM Gorton. Failed by roll call vote with 1 ayes and 10 nays. CM Lawless voted in favor. CM Ellinger, CM Blues, CM Farmer, CM Beard, CM Henson, CM Stinnett, VM Gorton, CM Lane, CM Myers, and CM McChord voted against. **Recommend that Dept. of Finance, Div. of HR, and Dept. of Law review ordinances on pay raises for non-union employees** [timestamp: 0:32:11] Motion by CM Lane, seconded by CM Myers. Passed unanimously. **Approve the NDF list** [timestamp: 0:32:42] Motion by CM Myers, seconded by CM Ellinger. Passed unanimously with 1 abstention. CM Ellinger, CM Lane, CM Beard, CM Henson, CM Stinnett, VM Gorton, CM Lawless, CM McChord, CM Kay, and CM Ford voted in favor. **Approve the Health First business plan** [timestamp: 1:01:59] Approved as an informational item. **Place the issue of H-1/ND-1 building permit extensions into the Planning and Public Works Committee** [timestamp: 1:53:39] Motion by CM Lawless, seconded by VM Gorton. Passed unanimously. **Approve the Mayor's Report** [timestamp: 1:55:20] Motion by CM Beard, seconded by CM Henson. Passed unanimously. **Adjourn the meeting** [timestamp: 2:00:40] Motion by CM Stinnett, seconded by VM Gorton. Passed unanimously. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included three financial actions totaling $2.6 million in amendments and appropriations. **Recruit Class Funding** Two amendments provided funding for public safety recruit classes: * Fire recruit class: $700,000 * Police recruit class: $700,000 **Health Services Appropriation** An appropriation of $1.2 million was approved for primary care operations using health tax funds. Health First Bluegrass was designated as the recipient of these funds. ## Public Comment Two members of the public addressed the Council during this meeting. **Patricia Muhammed** [timestamp: 0:02:02] spoke regarding the Lyric Theatre & Cultural Arts Center. She raised concerns about the lack of community inclusion in the Lyric Theatre board and expressed concerns over discriminatory practices in funding and access. Ms. Muhammed urged the Council to ensure equitable governance of the organization. **Corey Dunn** [timestamp: 1:56:26] addressed the Charles Young Center Advisory Board application process. He questioned why the application deadline for the advisory board had been extended and raised concerns about fairness and transparency in the process. ## Appointments VM Gorton was appointed to the ZOTA Tourism Work Group. ## Contested Items **Removal of Item A from New Business** Council members voted on a motion to remove item A from new business and instead place it into the Council Links process. The motion failed with a vote of 1-10, revealing substantial disagreement among council members about the appropriate procedural path for handling this issue. The lopsided vote indicates that the vast majority of the council opposed rerouting the item through Council Links, preferring to maintain it within the new business agenda. **Health Tax Usage and Relocation Expenses for Health First** Council members engaged in a heated discussion regarding health tax usage and relocation expenses associated with Health First. The central concern focused on financial responsibility: specifically, whether the urban county government would bear the costs of relocating the current tenant at 913 Georgetown if HRSA funding was not secured. This uncertainty about funding contingencies and the potential liability to the county government created significant tension during the discussion, as council members grappled with the implications of proceeding without guaranteed federal funding for the relocation. ## Public Comment – Issues on Agenda [timestamp: 00:02:02] During the public comment period for issues on the agenda, citizen Patricia Muhammed addressed the body regarding the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center. Muhammed raised concerns about community exclusion and discriminatory practices related to governance and funding of the facility. Her comments focused on how these practices may be affecting community access and participation in the institution's operations and financial decisions. This agenda item was informational in nature, providing an opportunity for public input on matters under consideration by the body. ## Requested Rezonings / Docket Approval [timestamp: 00:05:37] The Council considered the docket of requested rezonings during this agenda item. CM Ellinger moved approval of the docket, with CM Blues providing the second to the motion. The Council approved the docket of requested rezonings without dissent. ## Approval of Summary The summary of the February 14, 2012 Work Session was presented for approval [timestamp: 00:06:07]. Council Member Farmer moved to approve the summary, and Vice Mayor Gorton seconded the motion. The summary was approved unanimously. ## Budget Amendments The budget amendments were presented as agenda item IV and were approved unanimously [timestamp: 00:07:41]. During the discussion, CM Stinnett raised a question regarding the current vacancy balance in the Division of Community Correction. Stinnett noted that information about this vacancy balance had been promised for Thursday night. The key speakers involved in this agenda item were CM Stinnett, CM Beard, and VM Gorton. The amendments were approved without objection. ## New Business [timestamp: 08:13] The Council considered new business items during this portion of the meeting. CM Lawless, VM Gorton, and CM Ellinger participated in the discussion. A motion was made to remove item A from new business and place it into Council Links. This motion failed with a vote of 1-10. Following this, a separate motion to approve the new business items was brought forward and passed unanimously. ## General Government Committee Update [timestamp: 00:26:26] CM Lane presented an update from the General Government Committee, which included discussion of an aquatics management plan for Berry Hill and Constitution Pools. The committee requested that the Parks Department provide a follow-up presentation regarding pool closures and renovations. Commissioner Hamilton participated in the discussion of this agenda item. The matter was deferred, with no final action taken at this meeting. ## NDF List The NDF List was presented as a resolution item during the meeting. [timestamp: 0:32:42] CM Myers and CM Ellinger were the key speakers on this agenda item. **Outcome** The NDF List was approved unanimously. CM Myers abstained from voting due to a conflict of interest. ## 1 HealthFirst Business Plan Dr. Rice Leach and Mr. William North presented the HealthFirst business plan to the meeting [timestamp: 0:33:13]. The presentation was informational in nature. The presenters discussed several key components of the business plan, including: * Patient demographics * Revenue projections * Challenges related to Medicaid * Electronic medical records implementation The presentation addressed the operational and financial aspects of HealthFirst's business model, with particular attention to the challenges the organization faces in managing Medicaid services and implementing electronic medical records systems. This agenda item concluded as an informational presentation with no formal action taken. ## LFUCG Fire & Police Staffing Update Chief Bastin and Acting Chief Jackson presented staffing updates for the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government's police and fire departments [timestamp: 1:02:40]. Chief Hoskins also participated in the discussion. The presentation addressed several critical staffing challenges facing both departments: **Key Issues Presented:** - Attrition rates within both departments - Recruitment challenges in filling vacant positions - Concerns regarding response times - Equipment aging and maintenance issues The chiefs highlighted the impact of staffing shortages on departmental operations, with particular attention to how reduced personnel levels affect emergency response capabilities and service delivery to the community. **Outcome:** This agenda item was presented as informational, providing the council with an update on current staffing conditions and operational challenges rather than requesting a specific decision or action at this time. ## Council Report During the Council Report section, council members made several announcements regarding upcoming public meetings and initiatives. **Upcoming Public Meetings** Council members announced public meetings scheduled on three topics: - Constitution Pool - Gainesway Pool/Skate Park - Tourism zoning **Tourism Work Group** VM Gorton announced the formation of a work group focused on ZOTA (Zone of Transition Area) tourism. **Speakers** The following council members participated in this informational segment: CM Stinnett, CM Kay, VM Gorton, CM Farmer, CM Lawless, and CM Myers. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with council members sharing announcements about upcoming meetings and the new tourism work group initiative. [timestamp: 1:41:26] ## Mayor's Report The Mayor's Report was presented as Agenda Item VIII during the meeting. Following the presentation, CM Beard moved to approve the report, and CM Henson seconded the motion. The report was approved unanimously by the council. [timestamp: 1:55:20] ## Public Comment – Issues not on the agenda [timestamp: 1:56:26] During this portion of the meeting, citizen Corey Dunn raised concerns regarding the extension of the advisory board application deadline for the Charles Young Center. Dunn questioned the decision to extend the deadline, citing a lack of public notice about the extension and expressing fairness concerns related to the process. The item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken during this discussion. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Approve the docket of requested rezonings - **Motion** — passed: Approve the summary of the 2.14.12 Work Session - **Motion** — passed: Approve the budget amendments - **Motion** — passed: Approve the new business items - **Motion** — failed (1-10): Motion to remove item A from new business and place into Council Links - **Motion** — passed: Recommend that Dept. of Finance, Div. of HR, and Dept. of Law review ordinances on pay raises for non-union employees - **Motion** — passed: Approve the NDF list - **Motion** — approved: Approve the Health First business plan - **Motion** — passed: Approve the Mayor’s Report - **Motion** — passed: Adjourn the meeting - **Motion** — passed: Place the issue of H-1/ND-1 building permit extensions into the Planning and Public Works Committee --- ## Full transcript Music Hello, greetings everybody. This is a meeting of the work session. Looks like we have a quorum. So I'll call the meeting to order. And first on our agenda today is public comment for issues on the agenda. I don't see anyone signed up for issues on the agenda. So next on our agenda is for issues on the agenda. Okay. Sorry. Get that right here then. Ms. Muhammad. Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. You have signed up for issues on the agenda. Three minutes. The podium is yours. Three minutes. Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon, council members. you see on your dais a handout from the Historic East End Community Association of Patricia Devine Muhammad of the Historic East End Community Association we were here about three months ago as friends of Colonel Charles Young in the Historic East End Community Association we're still waiting on that we have not been brought in about friends of Colonel Charles Young we ask to be humbly brought in Today we wanted to talk about the agenda on the agenda, the Lyric Theater and Cultural Center. We sent a letter to each one of you all, and just briefly, to hit those highlights, those points, We have the African American community of Lexington rigorously and long lobbied for the establishment and the refurbishing and reopening of the Lyric Theater. We hope that our children could perform on those stages and polish themselves, become the new Duke Ellington and Dorothy Dandridge's of the world. also that our artists could display themselves there. We have talked many hours and lobbied with persons there. We have received no answer. We met in December with Ms. Yedda Young, the executive director. We made three contentions. First, that our observation is that the collective action is the use of community development and other public funds to create a private domain. Second, the charging of rental fees and excessive is in violation of the intent of any community development funds and is simply used to justify what we consider discriminatory, social, and class discriminatory actions. Third, we feel that the Urban County Council ordinance, which created and established the board of the Lyric, is in essence directly, indirectly, excuse me, performs class and social discrimination and that members of our community, because of the way that ordinance is written, would not be eligible largely to be on that board. It seems that continuously that our community members can come and think about this, but we never can be brought in. Lastly, we just simply say in conclusion that if this council and our governing body cannot govern an arts and entertainment building, how can they be trusted to develop an arts and entertainment district? Thank you. Thanks, Ms. Muhammad. That was in relation to item L in new business. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right. All right. Next on our agenda is docket approval. Is there a motion by Council Member Ellinger to approve the docket? Is there a second? Is there a second? Second by Council Member Blues. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is approval of the summary. Chair will take a motion. A motion by Councilmember Farmer. Second by Councilmember Beard. There is a motion. Did we get a second? Second by Vice Mayor Gordon. All right. Is there any discussion? All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Beard. Next, we have a motion on budget amendments. Council Member Beard. And a second by Vice Mayor Gorton. Is there any discussion? Mr. Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. I have a question on the first item, 58-263. What is the current balance of the vacancies in the Division of Community Correction Sworn Salaries? Can you ask me the question again? What is the current vacancy balance? Since we're taking money from vacancy credit dollars, what is that current balance? We're taking half a million dollars. I'll ask for some help from Commissioner Driscoll if she has that answer. If she doesn't, then... I don't have that with me, but we can bring that back down. Before Thursday night? Yes. So we understand the total impact on that? Yes, there is. Obviously, there have been a number of funded vacancies for a majority of the year, but we'll get you that balance. Okay, very good. And with this, the $500,000, so we're out of overtime dollars, I assume, in that budget line item? That is the estimate, and Commissioner Mason may want to address this more fully, but when we looked at the analysis and the estimates working with the department, this was what we thought would be sufficient for the remainder of the year. Remainder, so all the way through June. Okay, very good. If you can give me that information. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. All right. Any other discussion or comments on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Aye. Aye. Yes. Thank you. All opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Y'all are in good shape today. Move approval of new business. This is a rowdy bunch today. All right. We have a motion for approval of new business by Vice Mayor Gordon, seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Lawless. We didn't have committees to tell this. I have several questions, and then I may have a motion. How long have these positions been vacant? All right. Let me ask you. A. I'm sorry. Item A. I'll try to call up the person that we think is appropriate. it. So question, like Commissioner Graham? Council Member Lawless, these positions vary. Some of them have been vacant a really long time. Some of them have never been funded. So we could try and there's about 200 of them. So if there's specific ones you need to know about, we could try and get that information for you. Is there any intention of creating new positions? Well, to give a little background about this one, because I know this might be confusing for folks, this is a cleanup ordinance related to this year's budget. when the mayor gave his budget speech last April during the budget process for this year's budget, we talked about taking vacant and unfunded positions off of the books so that we could all operate from a uniform knowledge of what's there and funded. Because right now in our HCM PeopleSoft system, there's variations between what one division thinks is funded and another thinks is funded. So we're trying to get to a uniform base before we go into the next budget cycle for fiscal year 13. I'd like to make a motion. There's a motion on the table. And so is it appropriate for me to make a motion to amend or to? Yes. I'd like to make a motion to remove item A from new business items and place it into the council link for consideration. These are a lot of positions, and we don't have a lot of information about how many of them were funded recently, et cetera. and this motion will give an opportunity for council to hear the needs of each division, wait against the list received from the administration, and gives an opportunity for council to study this issue throughout our in-depth look at the divisional and departmental needs via the council budget link process. And we're so close to getting ready to do that, it seems prudent to put this off. So that's a motion? So that's my motion, yes. All right. To remove item A, remove business. I think Commissioner Driscoll wishes to speak to it, but I'm going to ask him for a second. Is there a second? Second. All right. There's a motion and a second. All right. Now the floor is available for discussion. and can I ask Commissioner Driscoll to speak to it? I just wanted to make the point that this is simply the technical cleanup of the system from the budget that was enacted. And we talked about that we were going to do this in the budget process. We didn't fund those positions, and we indicated that these would be the positions that are abolished. So it's in an already approved budget. It has taken us some time to work through and technically match, as Commissioner Graham mentioned, the ordinance matching the system, matching the list that agencies work from. It's taken us some time to do that. but just wanted you to be aware that this is the change that was reflected in the budget process. And for us, the timing is critical now in order to give you better information in the upcoming budget cycle. So we, again, have been working on it over the course of some months, but it is critical for us in terms of timing to give better information and to be used as a good budgeting tool and fiscal tool. Okay. I have several council members signed up. Is that to speak to this issue? All right. Council Member Beard. To the amendment that's proposed, right? Yes. Okay. Yes. Clarify for me. You want to refer this to the links? Yes, sir. because it's taking these positions out of the code of ordinance, and we're getting ready to go through that links process. I'm not sure it's appropriate to assign something to the links, to tell you the truth. Why not to a committee? That's our general route. and the committee then brings it to the council. The links is a totally different process altogether, and it just doesn't make sense that this would be assigned at this point. The only reason I suggested the links is because we're in the process of getting ready to start that. I understand that. And it crosses so many different divisions. But it would be more appropriate to put in budget and finance. I'll ask the parliamentarian his opinion on it. He's next up anyway, Mayor, so he can agree. I'll surrender to... Okay, Council Member Stennett. Mr. Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. No, I was just going to add that these have already actually been through the link process last year, and that's how we got to this number. So I think you are correct, Commissioner, in that this is just part of a budget we've already passed. We've already studied these positions. This is just cleanup, so I don't think there's anything new here because there's no budgetary impact if we don't pass it because they weren't funded anyway. It's just a matter of the biggest question is if we abolish these now and we need one of these positions back, how long do we have to wait legally? I think it's a year. If we want to recreate these positions, we would have to wait a certain time frame on any of them? No, it's only if you abolish a position based on economic necessity. Well, it is. Well, I don't think we'd have to wait a year before we created them. I think we need to be sure of that because we've had this issue in the past where we abolished it for budget reasons and then found out we needed it and we couldn't add. I mean, I think some of these are. The year that you're referring to applies if we're laying someone off. But because these positions are all vacant and unfunded, if we needed one back, we could just go back through and credit at any time. And how many of them are on this item A total? It was 214, I think, in the budget. I think it was 214. That's exactly. I haven't counted them. They're all in here. I just didn't feel like counting them all. That's right. Okay. So 214 total. All right. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Farmer. Well, mine really is on the business item rather than the amendment itself. So I may just step aside until we've disposed of the amendment. All right. Does anyone else wish to speak to the amendment? Then we can take a vote. All in favor of the motion to amend, please indicate by saying aye. Those opposed, no. Motion fails. All right. All right, we're back to the motion on the floor. Who wishes to speak? All right. Council Member Farmer was up. So, Council Member Farmer, may proceed. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. On item A, what is the meaning of all the pages and pages and pages that are attached to this in the packet? The pages that are attached, are you looking? If you look at the column that's on the left, that shows you the authorized strength that we're saying we currently have. If you look to the right, the column that's on the right, it's showing you what we are going to. So say, for example, that first position that says accountant, we currently say that the authorized strength is five, but there's one position that is unfunded, so we're changing the authorized strength to four. And so that goes by department and division. So that's why there are so many pages. Okay. That's exactly what I'm after. Okay. So if you add up all these pages, it's 214. Now, I haven't actually counted them. I have. Okay. I went page by page. And if these are supposed to be some sort of elaborate T account or accounting for however many positions we currently have and don't have, and there are no duplications in here, if you add up all these pages, it's like 800-something positions. Well, I can tell you that when we were looking at what's in the packet today, some of your pages are duplicates. Well, that's my question. And that was a copying error. So if you counted all those without recognizing that some pages were copied twice, then you're going to have more positions than what we're actually talking about. You're right. I've got nothing else on that one, Mayor. All right. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. On item A, just one question on page 13. I'm not sure it's about a specific position. I'm not sure who you would like to answer that. I would say that the... Item A. Why don't you answer the question? I have a question about a specific position that's being abolished on page 13. All right. And you may not know. It might be we need someone from revenue to answer it. but there is a position called revenue compliance, and maybe Auditor Senior is attached to that. And some years ago, some council members will remember through the LINCS process, we were told that revenue needed more people to collect our taxes so we could get a higher rate of return. and is that one of those positions that we put in just a few years ago for collections? And is it now, I know it's not funded this year, but... I have to check if this is one of those specific positions. I'd have to go back and... Bill is actually at another meeting, so I'll give that information to you. But I can tell you we did look through an analysis of all finance positions when we went through the budget process, and we were looking at other ways, particularly the systems within that department, to make some adjustments to that. Collections. For collections, yes. But obviously the compliance piece is important, but what we'd like to do if we were able to refocus some of our folks that are collecting on some compliance issues, that is technically the direction we'd like to go. Okay. If you don't mind to find out if that is one of those positions we just fairly recently added, I would appreciate it. And then, Mayor, I also had a question on item H, the Red Mile TIF development area. I just simply wanted to ask on page 8 the actual item H itself to amend and reenact. What is the reenacting? Are we having a play? Mr. Atkins. Or is that just a reactivation? It is. It's just to reflect. You remember a couple of weeks ago we had the public hearing on the expanded area, and it's just to reflect that new area as part of the TIF area. Oh, okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Vice Mayor. All right. Don't show anybody else signed on so we can take a vote. Okay. Mr. Stenet. I'm sorry, Mayor. I didn't know we were going through the whole list. I thought we were still on A. Item G, this is the, I assume, the dollars to get the fire recruits underway. Is that correct on item G? Mr. Mason, can you help us with that, please, sir? It is? Yes. And we found the money. I think we were looking for $12,000 or something like that. And whose budget did it end up in? I do. The psychological. Is that HR money, I think? Yes. HR money. So it is HR money now? Yes. Good. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Commissioner, would you wish to comment? I was going to add one thing on G, just so you all would understand. We're changing the ordinance to comply with some HIPAA regulations on asking for health information before you make a conditional offer. That's the other part of that. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Speaking to item number L, we had public comment just a little bit earlier, and I felt that as a council's designated to the board of directors of the Lyric, it would be appropriate for me to provide just a little bit of information that was provided earlier. I think that the board of directors is working very, very hard, and I think that the resolution, excuse me, the ordinance amendment, I personally don't have any problem with it. I think it will definitely go towards allowing greater accessibility and community involvement at the Lyric. Several things are occurring over there. Just so you guys will know, next Tuesday, February 28th at 6 p.m., the director, Ms. Yedda Young, and the board of directors is going to have a community meeting. And we've been working long and hard on finally getting this scheduled. And it's basically going to be to let the folks in the public know how to do business with the Lyric, how to access the programmatic offerings and the other opportunities there at the Lyric. That's next Tuesday. Another thing that I've championed personally, and I'm very glad that the Lyric Board has supported this, is that we have moved our monthly meetings to evening meetings. Historically, for the first year, all board meetings of the Lyric were held on the first Friday at 1130. Now those meetings, starting on March 27th, will be held the fourth Tuesday of the month, beginning at 530. We was hoping that's going to allow more folks to come out and observe what's going on. With the service projects, I think, that are going on with the little addresses, so that's one of Yetta's, excuse me, Ms. Young's initiatives that she's brought forth has garnered a lot of support. I was very excited last year to help support our employees at the Division of Waste Management to host their Pride Day, MLK Pride Day activity there last year, and Mayor Gray joined me. and I think we're going to do it again this year. So I say all that to say, council members and members of the public, is that can we do things better at the Lyric? You bet we can. And I think there is a concerted effort to want to improve that. So the ordinance that's before us I think is a small step that will get us along that way. Thank you, Mayor and council members. Thank you, Council Member Ford. All right. I see no one else signed up, so we can take a vote now. On the motion, all in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Mayor. Council Member. Yes on all, no on A. All right. Duly noted. All right. Yes on all, no on A. All right. So I'll... Motion does carry. Jeanette, did you get those votes? Okay, thank you. All right, next on our agenda is continuing business and presentations. Item A is the General Government Committee update by Council Member Lane. Council Member Lane. Good afternoon, Mayor. Thank you. We had the general government meeting on February 7, 2012. Here's a brief summary. The aquatics management plan was reviewed by Brian Rogers, Deputy Director of Enterprise, and this was a continuation of a presentation from a prior meeting. At that presentation, Mr. Rogers estimated the demolition cost for the Berry Hill pool to be $53,300, an estimate for the demolition of the Constitution pool to be $67,700. The combined operational savings by closing these pools for part of this fiscal year and all of the next fiscal year would create a savings of around $99,500, which would offset a substantial portion of the demolition cost. The total reprogramming costs at Berry Hill were estimated at $50,000 for a playground location, $15,000 for sidewalks, and $300,000 for an intermediate skate park. and a group called Friends of the Skate Park is being formed to assist in fundraising with the public meeting schedule actually today. The total projected capital costs for the proposed ball field at the Constitutional location were estimated at $237,000. So Council Member Myers made a motion to adopt the aquatics management plan that was seconded by Councilmember Beard, and it was passed without dissent in committee. However, we do not have a motion to present to the Council this afternoon, and what I would like to ask the Council to approve this, that the Parks Department would provide a short presentation for the next work session of how these two pools would be closed and renovated and to show the latest budgetary information so that we could review that and perhaps put that on the docket for approval. Would someone from Parks like to speak to that issue at all? Commissioner Hamilton, did you hear the whole thing? All right. Okey-dokey. I thought if not, then we could. I don't think there's anybody here from parks, but we are meeting to go over. I've seen one budget, and we will be glad to present this at work session and go over all this. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks. Okay. In addition, the director of the Division of Parks and Recreation, Jerry Hancock, provided the committee with an update of the parks master plan. And one of the quotes that he made, which I thought was significant, He said that many aspects of the plan are outdated and lack vision. He proposed that parks come back to the committee over the course of the year with ideas on how to transform the old and traditional into something extraordinary. That being said, the other item on the committee had to do with cost of living and salary increases for LFUCG employees. and Glenda George made a presentation on the cost of living and salary for non-union LFUCG employees from FY06 to present and she clarified that many employees think that pay raises are mandatory by ordinance, but this is not the case. Ms. George also explained that the MRSA system was not properly funded and that that merit pool never went into effect. So in response to a question to the Director of Finance, Jane Driscoll, she stated that a 1% increase for non-union personnel would cost approximately $950,000 per year. As chair, I made a motion to recommend to Council that the Department of Finance, the Division of Human Resources, and the Department of Law review all ordinances relating to the evaluation and giving of pay raises to nonunion employees and to recommend appropriate ordinance changes to reflect best personnel practices and current economic conditions. That was seconded by Council Member Myers, and that motion passed. So I would like to bring that motion to Council today for approval. So move. Motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? Would you like for me to restate the motion for you, Mayor? Yes, sir. Okay. The motion is for the Council to have the Department of Finance, the Division of Human Resources, and the Department of Law review all ordinances relating to the evaluation and giving of pay raises to non-union employees and to recommend appropriate ordinance changes to reflect best personnel practices and current economic conditions. So move. All right. Motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. That concludes my presentation, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lane. Is the motion needed on the NDF? Is there a motion? Council Member Myers makes a motion. Second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Excuse me, Mayor, I need to abstain. One of the recipients is a client. All right. So that will be noted. Thank you. Next on our agenda is a presentation by Dr. Rice-Leach and Mr. William North regarding the Health First business plan. Dr. Rice? Dr. Leach? Yes, sir. Dr. Reed? Mayor Gray, Council members, thank you for the opportunity to present information to you today. Let me just say that we worked with the mayor's office for a little while trying to put together a space, a location that would make sense on the north side of Lexington, and have also worked with Councilman Blues, Councilman Ford, a few conversations with them about just what this entails and what the specific opportunity would be for us to serve the residents of Lexington Fayette County. I can go through a number of items and give you a brief presentation in terms of the budget, the business plan, what some of our expectations are. I would certainly defer to your questions, or if you'd like a presentation, I can do that as well. Thank you. I'm sorry, Mr. North, was that a question, or were you just telling us? I can give you perhaps a five-minute presentation on the business plan, if that would be acceptable. I think that would be appropriate. Very good. Let me just speak to a number of items. We used the Census Bureau's 2010 American Community Survey information in identifying some of the following numbers. The population in Lexington Fayette County at or below 200 percent of poverty is 27.5 percent, or 109,000 people. The uninsured population is 47,197, just less than 20%, and that includes 9,500 individuals who are currently employed. Health First sees about 43%, or 10,000 of the uninsured, identified by the BUILD Coalition as those individuals being seen currently by health care providers who serve uninsured, underserved populations. They identified 24,600 individuals, and again, we serve about 10,800 of those individuals. Currently in Lexington, children under the age of 18 who live below poverty, 16,326. I give you those numbers because that's what drove us to develop the business plan that we put together and the operational decisions that were made by Health First in identifying locations for services. I do have a map of the Lexington area, and it identifies by zip code our current patients. Half of those patients currently reside north of Highway 60. Half reside south of Highway 60. So that's about 9,000, a little over 9,000 patients live north, and a little over 8,200 patients live south. The target we had identified in terms of a second location for Health First was closer to the south side of town. We identified that because there's a density of population in the southwest section that meet the demographic criteria that Health First has. Currently, that number is identified as about 40,000 individuals. On the north side of town, it's about 27,000 individuals. And there's also a number we use we call the penetration rate, and all that means is those individuals who are currently seen by a community health center and FQHC. And on the north side of town, the penetration rate is about 39, just under 40%. On the south side of town, it's 32%. So in identifying the need in Lexington and where the patients currently exist for Health First Bluegrass and where the potential for the greatest opportunity to meet the need, We identified retaining a location on the north side of town and looking at a location on the south side of town. In the business plan, the idea of identifying two sites really came from the fact that in order to generate enough revenues to sustain the operation over time, what we need is to increase the volume of patients we serve. And those patients include uninsured. Currently, 56% of our patients are uninsured. Medicaid patients, about 35 percent or 32 percent are uninsured, or Medicaid. Medicare, about 5 percent and 7 percent currently have insurance. So identifying the opportunity to serve an uninsured patient base is really the primary focus of our activities. The business plan really has several challenges to it. The first is Medicaid managed care. As you're aware, the state on November 1st moved to a managed care operation, and payment for services has been challenging at best over the last several months. I think we are beginning to work that out with the state, but it's not just the payment. It's also the number of individuals who are seen by Health First. Over the years, that number has been as high as 6,000 or 7,000 individuals. It currently is just under 4,000 individuals, Medicaid recipients who receive services from Health First. So a main objective of ours is to make sure that all of the children in Lexington County are being served. We also need to attract new patients, and identifying additional locations meets both the Medicaid as well as the uninsured location and allows for patients to be seen in a location closer to where they live or work rather than just on the north side of town. In terms of collection, the Auditor of Public Accounts identified in a report to the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department that collections was a significant issue. We've undertaken quite a few activities to make sure that the collection on accounts receivable is working well. I think the key issue in terms of the Health First Business Plan is do we have the ability and are there patients to be seen? How will we attract new patients to us? And the key issue there has to do with relationships that we have established or are in the process of establishing with health care providers, hospitals, medical specialties, other social services agencies, and the free clinics in town. And just recently we were able to establish, I think, a long-term relationship where patients will be seen in a system of care moving forward once we're able to put the new facilities in place. Thank you, Mayor, Councilmembers. I'd be glad to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. North. Is Dr. Leach going to speak now or later or take comments from Councilmembers? Okay. I'm here because there were some questions about the use of the health tax, and I think you have with you some information on that. But what I wanted to do is catch everybody up as to how all this happened very briefly. We submitted a grant in 2009 to do this construction on the grounds of the Bluegrass Mental Health Organization, a combined mental health, public health operation, or primary care operation. But the funding agency at the federal level said, no, you can't do that. You've got to have it only for the primary care world, which is now Health First Bluegrass. But when that happened, the mayor's office and others got involved in trying to help find a place where we could do that, and that has been quite an ongoing saga. But we did get started with that effort. Lexington is the only place in Kentucky where we have one of these federally qualified health centers associated with a health department. And up until about a year ago, the Board of Health was completely in charge of the primary care center, but the HRSA people, HRSA being the funding agency, came in and found out that we were basically in violation of the conditions of the grant because the primary care center has to be autonomous, but the Board of Health has oversight. The Board of Health is the applicant. The Board of Health and the Health Department get the grant, but the conditions of the grant are such that the co-applicant, Health First, must run it. And that's new for Lexington, but that's common in other parts of the country, including Mobile, Alabama, Lake County, Illinois, and now Louisville, where health departments and primary care centers have been able to work things out. Mr. North mentioned that we had the state auditor. I called them to come in and take a look because there was so much consternation about what was going on in the health department a year ago. And among their findings was Health First and the health department need to get together and figure out how to make this work. They had more eloquent language than that, but they were basically saying, Fellas, you've got all this money to build something. You've got this money to run something. If you put this thing together properly, your community will be better off. And he and I, Mr. North and I, have spoken at length about how to accomplish that, and we have had several meetings with representatives of both boards to figure out what could work. There are questions, legitimate questions, about what's the right mix of services and who ought to be doing what for whom. But between the two of us, we've got $30 million almost that we ought to be able to get more mileage out of for Lexington and Fayette County, so we keep working on that. There were some problems a while back trying to make this transition because of rules from the state health department. But the fact that 20 local health departments are upside down, as the commissioner in Frankfurt describes them, has led them to relax the rules, which makes it easier for the health department to do business with anybody, health first or anybody else. And then the final comment I would make is that there were plans four years ago when I had the job Mr. North has now to expand into the south side of Lexington, but for a number of reasons that those never materialized. But the idea of taking the primary care world into the south end of town where a lot of WIC residents, WIC being the Women, Infants, and Children's Nutrition Program, a lot of lower-income people live, and a lot of clients who come to the north side live. So I just wanted to pass that on to you. Now, if there are specific questions you have about the tax money, I'll be going to answer them. But in general, since this health department got into primary care business in 1980, Lexington government funds have been used to support the primary care world. The first allocation was about $100,000 in 1980. We got the grant about 1984 or 85, and the amount of money has grown as the operation has grown and revenues have grown and expenses have grown to last year, which was a bit of an unusual year. It was about $1.9 million. When I was running that program, it was on the order of $1.2 million to $1.5 million. But that is a long history, 30-some-odd years of helping. Thank you, Dr. Leach. Council Member, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Dr. Leach and Mr. North, thank you very much for being here. I do have a few questions. My first question is about the health tax, and I guess, Dr. Leach, that might be for you. On page 81 in our packet, it's the health tax breakdown dated February 1, 2012. I wonder if you could tell me, on the far right-hand column, percent of primary care tax usage, it has varied from 15% to 27%. How is that determined? Up until very recently, the administration of the health department kept the tax payment in reserve and used it to offset deficit spending during the year. So it would go up and down depending on the volume of patients that would come through the primary care center. This last year, the 27% was so high in part because the Health First organization was adapting to the electronic medical record, and they had some physician turnover, so they didn't have as many doctors. It was like trying to cross the Ohio River in Louisville. That electronic medical record just slowed everything down, and they didn't have the patient volume, and they did not have the revenue, but they had the expenses, so the health tax dollar was used to supplement and subsidize the difference. So that's the kind of thing that's went on for several years. I noticed in the budget fiscal year 12 through 16 projected on page 83 of our packet that the health tax appropriation is planned to be flat at $1.2 million a year. So I guess I'm wondering, since it's varied quite a bit since fiscal year 2006, is that just a number that is plugged in there because it's not really known at this point? No, the Board of Health in March or April or May, in response to the fact that we were going to split the organizations, asked that we get the average amount of tax money used over the last five years, and that turned out to be $1.2 million. So the Board of Health voted to assure Health First of at least $1.2 million. There is some discussion that goes on within the Board of Health as to what the long term ought to be, but that is how we came up with 1.2. So he had something to plan on as he became his own accounting entity and things like that. That makes sense. I do have some more questions about that budget. I do not know if they would be for Mr. North. On page 83 of the packet, there is a, under revenues, there's a line item, patient revenues, and that goes from fiscal year 12 of $6.455 million to fiscal year 16 of $10.005 million. What did you use as your basis? What we have is an increase in space where we will be doubling the amount of clinical space we have available. During that time, because we are operating somewhat inefficiently now because of the conversion of the electronic medical record, I did not want to suggest that our revenues were going to double or our ability to serve a higher number of patients that have Medicaid or other services. So I kept it at only one and a half times in terms of the increase. So even though our clinical space will double, our revenue base and our operation is expected to not double, both on the revenue side and on the expense side. And then you took your bad debt down. You must be very optimistic it goes from $1 million to $700,000. There's a couple things, if I may. I'd like to go back to the health taxes. In fiscal year 2011 for the health department, there were three items that inflated that number. The first had to do with the fact that we were implementing the electronic medical record, and there was a local match associated with the grant dollars that we received, and that number showed up as part of the health tax funding. We also had two other grants, a capital improvement program grant where we renovated some lab space and an increased demand for services grant where we were able to bring on some additional staff. So I think that number in 2011 is inflated somewhere on the order of $400,000 or $500,000, which would be one-time expenses that were incurred in 2011 but would not be repeated into the future. Both the health tax and the federal grant are flat over the five-year period of time. The expectation of the federal government is that we will leverage those dollars, any local funds or any grant dollars, to expand services. So it's not unusual to see that in this instance the federal grant, which is about 20 percent of our budget now, and the health tax dollars, which is about 10%, would both go down as a percent of the total budget as we grew using mostly patient revenues as a source of funding. Relative to the patient revenue bad debts account, one of the things that I have been working on over the last several months, some in response to the Auditor of Public Accounts report, had to do with collection of accounts receivable. And one of the issues that has surfaced is the fact that a number of our patients were not being screened for eligibility for specific programs. So we have worked diligently to move those individuals into Medicaid or into the sliding scale system that we use. By doing that, a number of those individuals who previously would have shown a bad debt or an amount not collected is now part of a sliding fee adjustment. So though we will collect more in terms of our accounts receivable, the reason the bad debts is going down is that those are going to be moving. It's a reclassification area. Those will be moving over into a sliding adjustment versus a bad debt amount. Okay. Mayor, my time is out. I have a couple more questions. Since no one's on the list, may I? Go right ahead. And I think I'm not sure they're for you or for Dr. Leach. Generally speaking, I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist. So I want to know a couple of things. This is a new day for you, splitting out primary care. And so in the event that it does not work out exactly how you had planned, first of all, do you have a plan B? And second of all, is the health tax appropriated monthly so that if things don't work out exactly the way you planned them, what happens to the health tax that goes to primary care? Let me answer the second one of your questions first. So we disperse the health tax monthly, but we get it in what amounts to an IV push dose. Once the sheriff gets the money, gives it to the city, and the city gives it to us. So between November and January is when we get a surge in that tax base applied to the health department. But the idea is he knows he's got that much money each month. Now, Plan B. There are all sorts of ways the thing could fail. The reason I think we're here has to do with some property on the north side of Lexington. If that property is, if it can be acquired and used, then failure would have to do with will it make enough money to stay in business. If for some reason we're not able to acquire that property, There was some discussion last night at the joint committee about what could we do with the available real estate currently owned by the Board of Health. And one of them is the health department building that's been up there for a good while. Another one is a building at 1065 Newtown Pike, which I'm told was the original Applebee's corporate headquarters. And another one is a building out on Regency Road, a fairly small clinic, as big clinics go, but a perfectly usable clinic. So we own those, and that has the capability of being used as we work through other things. It is quite possible that there will be an opportunity to put a larger facility on the south side of Lexington, but that gets into Mr. North's realm. But fail safe, at least what we've got, assuming that the Board of Health goes along with the idea and that the rules of engagement with data collection and how we could move state and federal money around are such that we could make this work. Well, I'm very hopeful that it will work and appreciate all of the work that you've all done on this in both the Primary Care Governing Board and the Board of Health, and I appreciate your being here today. My last question, I guess, Mayor, maybe I don't know if it's for you or who it's for. Have we worked out the moving expenses? That would be for Mr. Birch to move out. That was one of the issues that came up when this originally was addressed. It is, Vice Mayor. We received that information early part of January. We've been working through with a project officer at the Health Resources Services Administration, Bureau of Primary Health Care, around allowability of those expenses, the timing of those expenses, whether or not we would be able to charge those to the grant and what impact that would have. We have some preliminary information about what's possible, what we're capable of doing, and what we're working on now is understanding what exactly that amount is and when the timing of that would occur as to whether or not we would be able to meet those requirements with the Bureau of Primary Health Care or not. So I guess a long answer of saying I don't have an absolute definitive answer for you at this point in time, that we've got it worked out completely. But it's looking like, I mean, I think the thing that concerned me was that we would ask the tenant to pay to move out when the tenant didn't ask for the move. So you're working on a solution that might possibly address that. I think that's correct. I think there's been a grant requested in addition to what we're working on. So I think the question that needs to be answered is whether or not there's funding available to pay for that relocation expense and what amount that would be. I'm sure we'll stay tuned on that. Thank you very much. Does anybody know anything differently? I don't. That's why I asked. Is Jeff here? Is there anything to add to what Mr. North just said? No, I think this is primarily a process that needs to go on between Jack Birch and his folks and Mr. North. And they are in the process of meeting and discussing those things. And there are no city dollars that are going to be envisioned to pay for this. What we're talking about are dollars that might come from the HRSA grant. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. That's my, I share the sentiments expressed by Vice Mayor Gordon. That's my one concern as we go forward is in regards to whether or not this government will be burdened by the relocation of the current tenant at 913 Georgetown, which is the Community Action Council. I hope that not to be the case. I take Mr. North and Dr. Leach and Jack Birch and Jeff and everybody who's been involved, that they're going in the direction to have the relocation expenses borne to the grant. But I think we need to be very honest with ourselves that absent of that, if that were to fall through, the responsibility would be that of this urban county government. And if I'm wrong, I would gladly ask somebody from the administration to correct me, because we own the facility, and the current tenant is our tenant. And if they have to relocate, it would be more to us to accommodate that. So I'm just as optimistic and hopeful that this project can proceed forward. And, again, I think it was duly noted that as a government, as an administration, we are definitely doing the right thing in regards to taking leadership on bringing two community partners together to try to make a win-win. So this is not our project. so say, however the relocation is our responsibility. So let's hope for the best that we can get those funds through HRSA and also through other avenues that the Action Council may be able to bear. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Blues? Thank you, Mayor. I think it may be a bit premature to suggest that should HRSA not accommodate the transition, that the urban county government would be obligated to do so. So I think the question at that point would be, would there be a transition? And that is to 913 Georgetown Street, or whether another location might have to be found. I think that's a question that I think we all hope that we don't have to come to, but I do think we need to be, all of us, ready to respond to it if it does come to that. I think that ball at this point is in Hersh's court, if I'm not mistaken. So we'll see whether those funds will be, whether the grant will permit those funds to be taken from it for the move. And if not, then we'll go from there. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Does anyone else wish to speak? I don't have anyone signed on, so thank you very much. Thank you all. Thanks, Mr. North. Thanks, Dr. Leach, for the presentation. Next on our agenda is item D, which is a police and fire staffing update. And I'll ask Commissioner Mason to introduce the presentation, please. We were asked a few weeks ago by Council Member Henson to present an update on where we are with police and fire staffing. We're here prepared to do that today. Chief Bastin is going to go first with a police report. As you all are probably well aware, the numbers for the police department are not dramatically different than they were. last year in terms of retirements. However, the fire department did incur quite a bit larger number of retirements than was anticipated. So they have a PowerPoint presentation to show, kind of walk counsel through some of the staffing issues and kind of a roadmap on how they prepare for each day. So first I'll have Chief Batson come up and talk about the Division of Police and then Chief Jackson. Good afternoon. Today the Division of Police has 508 sworn officers. And as you know, we have 25 recruits that are in the academy to make a total of 533. The recruits that we have in the academy that started at the 1st of January will not have their training completed and be off their field training officer phase until October. So they will not really be available to take calls or we won't realize them until October. The average attrition that we've had since 2007, yearly attrition, has been 24 officers. The 2011 attrition was 24, was right on the average. 2012 attrition thus far has been 12 officers. We're also anticipating two additional retirements in March for a total of 14 since January 1st. The number, as the Commissioner said, we were fortunate not to experience the same level of retirements with the Division of Police as the Division of Fire had in January. We look at a number, one number that we rely on very heavily internally as we plan to make adjustments and so forth in movements, is a minimum number of staffing for patrol officers. When the number of patrol officers drops below 219, we know from experience that we have problems getting people relief, getting folks, giving them, approving the time off that they earn each year, and we also have to backfill with overtime. So that's the magic number that we operate from in order for things to balance and to be able to meet those needs. Today we're at 216 on patrol. We haven't panicked yet. We haven't, as you know, we haven't initiated transfers from other units inside the police department to patrol. And the reason for that is we're hoping that the numbers may get just a little bit better. And the reason that we hope that they get better is that we have a number of folks who are still on military deployment. We have 11. And we're hoping those folks come back and join our ranks sometime very soon. We don't have actual dates yet, but we've been told that some are going to be coming back. So that's a positive sign from our perspective. We also have a number of folks, and a higher number than normal, that are on modified duty. Right now, today, we have 17 officers on modified duty and three officers on disability leave for a total of 20 bodies that we can't use. So we're hopeful that those officers will heal quickly and we'll get them back into the ranks. If we have positive results from both folks returning from deployments and from healing and getting back to work, that should offset any need at this point to make transfers from the remaining folks in specialized units, as we did last year prior to going into the summer. It is likely that before the summer is over, we may have to make some adjustments and we'll watch our attrition and make the decisions as we move forward. And we look at that 219 number. As we've said before, the first priority has to be patrol. We keep patrol staffed so that folks can, when they call for service, that we can come in a reasonable amount of time and our people who are working can be safe. Our second priority to maintain staffing is investigations. When people report crimes, we have a responsibility certainly to investigate those. Third priority would be traffic and traffic enforcement. At present, there are only 23 officers that are assigned to specialized functions that aren't directly assigned to enforcement functions. So that's the pool that we would reach into in the event we do need to make some transfers to adjust those patrol numbers to stay at 219 or higher. We're hopeful that we can find a way to start another class at some point, and we're looking at some ways to possibly do that and looking at sources of funding. Without additional resources in the pipeline, though, since our process takes so long, 11 months roughly, If we don't have folks in the pipeline, knowing that we're going to experience approximately 24 officers leaving in attrition each year, if we don't get some folks in the pipeline by 2013, we'll have to look at a very intense restructure. Thanks, Chief. while you're what's preferred to take questions or to hear both presentations I think we'll go through both presentations while we're on the clock and then handle questions good afternoon council mayor today we'll give you another overview of our current status based on our current manpower. In this PowerPoint, I brought Chief Hoskins, who's our senior battalion chief, who will give you an overview of how he gets it done every day in reference to manning the apparatus and ensuring that we provide the service to the community. So I'll turn this over to Chief Hoskins at this time. Thank you. Just walk me through the top one. Just walk me through the top one. Okay. What we're going to do is just kind of review how we go about staffing your fire department on a daily basis. Every day we staff 22 engine companies, 7 ladder companies, 9 emergency care units, our heavy rescue company, and our hazardous materials team leader. That's not the one. All right. Each fire company is staffed with a minimum of three people, an officer and two firefighters. That's on the ladder and the engine companies. Our emergency care units have two paramedics and at least an EMT, and the heavy rescue is staffed with a company officer and two firefighters. We have five district officers, rank of major and a battalion chief, and we are the supervision for each platoon or shift. I'll use the term platoon and shift kind of interchangeably. Our hazardous materials team leader is a single officer. He rides out in a suburban, and he coordinates the activities of our hazmat companies. We have six or seven hazmat companies, which are just simply ladder and engine companies who have people who are trained to address hazardous materials issues. We also have an administrative aide. When you have an organization as large as ours that goes every day, it takes someone to help keep the operation moving. And this is an officer who runs out of Station 1. That person is also a paramedic. When we run out of ambulances, which happens almost on a daily basis now, he is the medic that is assigned to our surge ambulance that runs out of Station 1. He also makes sure that all of the specialty trailers, trucks, the bus ambulance, all of those pieces of equipment are ready to go on a daily basis. I mentioned our special operations company. They've kind of taken a hit recently. Some days we need one person to keep a complete engine company or ladder company on duty. So on those days, we may take the third firefighter, or actually the second firefighter, off of Rescue 1 and reduce that to a two-person company. Also, that 210 unit that I just spoke of, that person can come off. We will deploy them out into the city somewhere to make a second person that may keep a company on duty. There are days where we need three people. Occasionally, through our rotation, our rescue company and our hazmat team leader will combine them to make a three-person group that we can assign throughout the city. So we reach into every part of our operation to try to keep all of our engine and ladder companies on duty. Okay, when we talk about the magic number, and I know you've seen this before, but it's a very valuable planning tool for the shift commander and the district major on a daily basis. And all this does is it tells us how many people do we have assigned to each shift, what's our minimum staffing, and can we meet our minimum staffing needs. So it takes what we have available, compares to what we need to meet our minimum, and tells us how we deploy those folks. Now this is the top half of one of our magic number sheets, if you will. This happens to be my platoon. I dated this on the 23rd of January, so it was accurate numbers as of that date. And all that shows you is that on a daily basis, we need 124 people to minimally staff a shift. Now at this particular point in time, when you look at the assigned column, you'll see that we have 77 people assigned to engine companies where we're only required 66. So that gives us a total of 145 people assigned to the shift and a margin of 21 people. Now, what do we do with that 21 people? All right, I need to back up if I can. Go back again. One more. No, back. That's going the other way. One more. All right. Apologize for that. With our shift margin of 21, unfortunately there's always people. As Chief Bastian mentioned, that we have on light duty, disability leave, modified duty, military deployments, they're just unavailable to be in a fire truck. On this particular point in time, I had three firefighters on disability leave or family medical leave, maybe deployed with the military. If I take that away from my margin, that would have given me a magic number of 18. Now, I added in this particular sheet our on-duty paramedic class. You all know that in an effort to preserve overtime dollars, we are now training medics nine students at a time, and they're doing it on their duty day. If they're in paramedic class, they are not available to ride an engine company or a ladder company. So that takes my magic number down on any given day to nine. So what does that magic number mean? That's how many people that we can let go on vacation time or holiday time, their benefit time, and still maintain our minimum coverage. Now, the collective bargaining agreement mandates 21 benefit slots for firefighters, lieutenants, and captains, three for the majors and battalion chief. The bargaining unit also has the opportunity to use up to four comp time slots. So if you add all that up, that's up to 28 people that we, if requested by contract, we have to allow to use that benefit time. This is a sheet that I use on a daily basis to help me track how many slots I'm using. I went into June to pull this sheet up because it shows all 21 of our benefit slots are filled. Now, people in November of each year, they look forward and they schedule days that they can use and they can rely on that they can be off on those days. So if you look, if all these 21 of these people elect to use their benefit time, we put in three or four light duties. That takes me up to 24. Add a couple of comp times or my command slots that are off. You can see that number can grow. So if my magic number is nine, you subtract my magic number from that list of people, and that's how many people short I am to staff the company or to staff the entire fire department for the day. So if my magic number, if you remember, was nine, and I have 21 people off, that's 12 people that I'm short to make work. Twelve people relates to four fire companies when you put three people on each company. another thing that happened to us in uh when we did our retooling back in july of 2011 is we cut all of our our staffing to the bone one of the things that we did is we took away any provision to have a cushion for people who may call in sick on a daily basis who may encounter family emergencies we have 124 people minimum to make the shift work it's kind of unrealistic to We think that we're not going to have one person that either is ill, has a family member that's ill, who has some other kind of emergency, or they get hurt during the day, and we have no way to cover that other than remove them from a fire truck. My goal every day is to try to make sure we minimize the number of units that are out of service. There's a lot of things that lead to companies being out of service. Obviously, insufficient staffing. When we've got more requests for benefit time than we have our magic number, we've got to take that from our on-duty companies. I mentioned the on-duty paramedic class. Our nine people that we're sending on this paramedic class daily is the equivalent to three fire companies. We also lose companies sometimes during the day for maintenance of their equipment. You know, we rely on machines to work, so they have to be maintained. We've gotten pretty creative with that lately in that we try to schedule preventative maintenance and training at the same time. If I have an engine company that's going to go to the training center, say, for a four-hour CPR refresher, that's the time we send them to the garage to let their equipment be maintained. So we're trying to get creative as much as we can. We're running into problems with emergent repairs, though. There are times where our apparatus are breaking down. They're getting old. Our fleet is aging very quickly. And the older they get, the more mechanical issues we have leads them to be out of service. We also take companies out of service simply for training. We are required to have a number of 100 hours of training per year for fire training. Our technical rescue companies have technical rescue training they do. Our hazmat companies have to maintain their certification. EMT training medics, there's a multitude of hours every year that we have to have training for. Much of this is done in the house. In other words, it's done on the station level. Companies are available. If a run comes in, they leave. Much of that also, the other part of that, though, has to be done in a structured setting where we have a hard time pulling those people out of those classes and addressing, say, a storm comes through and we have just a quick increase of calls. So our training puts a demand on our staffing. When our margin was better, we were able to take people and send them to training and complete their training without worrying about hurting our service levels. However, when our magic number gets as low as it is, that doesn't happen. We can't afford to take people off the company simply to send a training. And that's all I have other than questions. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Okay. Floor is available for questions. Councilmembers, Councilmember Lane. This is for Chief Hoskins, please. Yes, sir. Thanks for your presentation. It was very good. I had just a couple of questions about equipment. You were talking about personnel, but what about equipment? Do you have surplus equipment or backup equipment? How do you handle that? We do have a reserve fleet. They are typically older apparatus that we have removed from service, obviously because they were getting less than efficient, let's say, to keep in front-line service. We are going through them fairly quickly. For instance, today we have no reserve ladders. We only have had two reserve ladder trucks. We have wrecked one of those in an accident on the interstate back in July. We've been unable to replace that. So now we have a front-line company that is operating in a, I believe it's a 1987 model truck. Okay. Where do you, do you have a storage area for surplus equipment, or do you have different locations? Much of it is stored in empty bays and stations throughout the city. Some of it is stored at the training academy where it is used when we do have a recruit class. Some of it is kept down at Station 1. Okay. Thank you very much. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. I think I'll go back to Chief Bastin for a second, if you don't mind, and appreciate both of your presentations. It's the kind of update we need on a regular basis, so we appreciate your staff's time in preparing this. Going back, Chief, to your numbers, you have 508 currently. What is your sworn strength, total strength that we budgeted this year? Do you know? I think 539, I believe. Jane can probably help me. Is that correct? 539, I think, is funded strength. So the recruits have started 25 recruits, and we've kept all the recruits. We're still at 25, or we lost some? We started at 31. We've lost some recruits in the process. But we're still at 25, right? We're at 25 today. So I guess the budgeting question is, where is the lapse money at? Is it still in your budget? Because if we budgeted 539, we're at 508. That money was from January 1. And then we also put in $700,000 for recruit class. I'm going to ask for some help on that one. There were 539 positions, but don't forget we budgeted a turnover rate, so 2.5%. So if you took the funding, so we didn't fund the full 539. So you'd have to take the funding for the total number of positions and assume the turnover of 2.5% to get what was funded. So the funded position level is a little lower. But I know you're working on that math for Thursday night for fire. Can we also get that for police and see what that difference is in their budget and what's left over based on who left this December 31st? Okay. Because there's a surplus on both budgets somewhere. There should be, because we also put an additional $700 in police for the new reclass, and then we have the grant, hopefully, when that comes through. Okay, police is a little different. With fire, because the retirements were double what was anticipated, the payouts, there's not a surplus. Well, we just need to see it. So can you get both of them before Thursday? Yes. Individually, the budgets, we can look at those positions, but we're still working on the global picture. all of government to bring back to you. But we can give you that analysis. Yeah, just on those two devices. I know the third thing with police is the bargaining contract. And obviously that's taking money away as well. So I understand the global picture. But I'm just saying we strictly look at personnel. And if we really want to get to my next point, I'll talk to Chief. But if we really want to get to where we want to be, we need to see what the numbers are working out as right now. Okay. So thank you. And, Chief, I know we did this back in 2006. kind of created a plan to go forward and how many officers we need to add. I think we wanted to be to 650 by now. Obviously, times have changed. We've been through one of the worst times ever. Have we gone back to the drawing board and worked out a plan today that we can get our staffing back up in a reasonable level with knowing what's happening in the economy? Do we have one developing? Well, honestly, the history has been that we've looked at how we can get by with the resources that we have available. And I think we've done a good job. Our folks have done a very good job with that. We are reaching the point, though, where we're going to have to make some plans to pick a level or come to a level to where we feel very comfortable that we can sustain for some period of time until we get into a growth mode at a later time. Yeah, and I think we all need to agree on that as part of our policy, what level we're not willing to go under and start funding it. Because I think, to your point, in two years we're going to have a serious issue in our community, especially on the police side. It's not like you can brown out an officer or patrol. I mean, you've got to feel that. Fire's a little different. They have, hopefully, enough coverage. But we're still not sure on that end. So thank you for what you've done. I know it's been hard on your command staff and we hear your officers out there. But I've gotten several nice compliments from citizens lately on the calls you are responding to and the way the officers are handling the calls. I just hope they don't beat up on us too much on the staffing issue when they do respond. But that's human nature, but I've received a lot of good compliments, so thank you. But anything we can do to help develop that plan, especially for apparatuses and equipment, I know cars and everything, that costs money too. But as we move forward, we need to figure out a minimum service level in this community and stick by it because I'm not sure how much lower we can really go. Thank you. Chief Jackson. Yes, sir. I know the – thank you, too. You've both done a great job in managing what you've been given. But as we look at capital, I know a year or two years ago, we fought hard just to get one new engine vehicle built. Where are we standing on our capital needs on fire? Are we working to bring some new pieces online this next budget? Have you presented that in your budget meetings yet? Yes. My focus has been on EC units, which is our primary, our first choice. And then in the budget that we're requesting, three EC units, two ladders, and the final will be the engine companies, which is five. Correct? Five. And in terms of staffing, and you hit on a key, over the next several years as our population ages, because EC units seem to me become more valuable, or the need has really increased for those. So those three, are they just replacements, or they would be three new companies? No, they would be replacements. So we're not, you know, even at this point, we're just trying to maintain what we have. We're just trying to maintain what we have, yeah. So I would encourage yourself as well to work with this council, develop a policy about what our minimums are going to be. I mean, I see constantly nine ambulances that we have are out at once in our community. Yes. So we have engines responding. So I don't think we can sustain that level of service. I think we need to help these guys out because they're getting burnt out, and those guys on those buggies are really run hard. I mean, just to answer your question and reference to that, we had a command staff meeting on last Monday, and one of the requests of the staff was to prepare to be proactive in that measure and figure out how we can look at some ways of leaving that issue before it becomes a serious issue. And then we're having an executive staff meeting tomorrow, and that's going to be one of the topics on our agenda. So, I mean, I've never BS'd you yet. Almost said that. I've never BS'd you yet. And so those are things that we are very proactive in preparing for the future. Thank you. I like to hear those words, and I think that's where we should be today, given the money times. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chief. I appreciate your presentation, and I was trying to look back at your numbers. Do you all have any firefighters deployed right now? So that would, do you know how many? Currently we have seven that are deployed currently, and we have five more that will be deployed in September, August 10th, when I'm going to Africa. So that? And I know those numbers because I'm a soldier. That makes you even, are they included in these numbers? Yes, yes ma'am. Okay. Now, and then you'll have a class, a training class of 26? We're hoping to get the funding for a class of 25. 25. Yes, ma'am. So I think when I look at these numbers, do you feel like with that training class, then you would have a sufficient number? Well, let's look at our numbers. Last year we were at 545. Now we're at 526. As we talked about a few minutes ago, we're funded at 97.5% of that, which is 513. And if we look at where we are right now at 483, 484, is not a sufficient number. Okay. But with the 25, we're making it work now. Is your response times, have they decreased at all? Not currently, ma'am. We're continuing to maintain at the level. I would think that would be a big factor if your response times began going up. Right, and we have a mechanism of tracking that currently. So if the times go to a certain, there will be a time when we will have to come back to the council and discuss it. That's a very serious matter because we try to maintain the national standard. But right now, we are at or below. Thank you very much. I have one question for Chief Baston. I thought I'd heard someone say about that you won't be doing any promotions for a while. Is that right? Or did I hear? We made some promotions this week, actually. And I was looking for some idea and seeing it. So I was just wondering if that, you know, because I've asked this question before about promoting. and then that would take away from the patrol end of it. But I don't want to keep anyone from getting promoted because I know there are some officers that are up for promotion and they work very hard and deserve it, but it does reduce the patrol numbers if we've got more. I understand where you're going. We made the promotions that we felt like were necessary to keep our functions staffed properly and so forth, but we did choose, after the first of the year with some resulting retirements, not to fill some promotions. We have not filled a deputy chief, one assistant chief, one commander, one lieutenant, and one sergeant for a savings of about $550,000. That's probably where I heard that. As the numbers of patrol officers have gone down, it's appropriate that we slice off an appropriate part of the agency to go along with that. Have we looked at a city our size? You know, I would think that different things would come into play, demographics or whatever, but as to the number of officers that are needed for a city this size, what's the norm, and then the ratio on supervision. Yes, very interesting you bring that up because I just happened last week to run across one of the best studies I've ever read about police staffing based on one of our benchmark cities, Madison, Wisconsin. approximately the same size, has a major university. And a group went in over about a nine-month period and did an analysis of Madison's patrol division of their police department. And the numbers that they came up with were remarkably similar to what we're running in terms of ratio of supervision. And what we have to keep in mind is sometimes the ratio of supervisor to employee varies depending upon what kind of activity they are involved in. And with paramilitary response-type organizations, there needs to be more of a supervisory, hands-on opportunity than in a boardroom or in an accounting firm or something like that. So the national standard that was mentioned in that report for patrol officers is one supervisor for every 6.2 patrol officers. And we're very close to that ballpark here in Lexington. That's good. That's good. Thank you, Chief. I appreciate your word. In terms of overall police staffing, it's a very complex formula. And there's not really a formula. There are recommendations by a couple of different groups. The FBI has one. The International Association Chiefs of Police has recommendations. Okay. So it's a very complex thing in looking at. I guess I wanted to make a point to many citizens have expressed a very, very fear that we don't have enough officers for our city. And I do see, it seems to me that there has been more crime in my district. There's been more property crimes and so forth. Crimes are up everywhere. Yes. The economy and metal prices going in inverse directions has complicated that matter specifically, I think, as Council Member Stinnett can attest in looking at his metal. Of course. Yes. So there's a couple of dynamics there that that one particular area of crime is almost exclusively accountable for the increase in the crime statistics locally. Thank you. Councilmember McCourt. Thank you, Mayor. A couple things I want to reemphasize from where I sit that I believe Councilmember Stinnett said, and I think it's probably incumbent that in this year this body take a look at actually creating policy around a couple of things as it relates to public safety. One is what is the policy of this government going to be as far as minimum staffing levels? What are we actually going to say? This is the bottom line number. We won't go below this no matter what. we don't have that and so we continue to go down. And as we say, we've kind of gotten into a place that's straining the system is maybe an understatement. The other thing is, from a recruiting class standpoint, having a fall and spring semester, for lack of a better way of saying it, so that these folks can actually plan the wasted money we have in this government over putting people into the system and letting them sit there for months on end to get a job in this while we figure out budgets and we cut this position and we drop this and so forth and so on, that's a number that really bothers me and it's bothered me every year that I've set up here, is that we've really hamstrung these folks to do their job as far as recruiting and actually putting people through the system. And I don't, frankly, from where I sit, I don't really care if we've got two in a class. If you know that you've got a class in the fall and in the spring and we're putting some people into the system versus this, just not knowing and maybe we'll stretch this to May so that we can spread it out into the next budget year and those type of creative things that we do budgetarily each year, I don't think that's a very wise way to do it. So I would be in favor of this body taking a long, hard look at minimum number policy and a recruiting class rotation policy, whatever that may be. And then the other piece that we don't really talk about, we're starting to see it a little bit in fire and police, is the number of people eligible to retire. We're in a five-year window that is monstrous. I forget the numbers. I used to have them, but it's a big number. And so the harder this gets, the more strain that's put on these folks, the more tempting it is to retire. We've got a lot of folks that meet that criteria. And not only does that cause financial issues, but it also, when you put someone brand new in a place of somebody that has been there, done that for a long, long time, that causes another set of issues that is just tough. So I think that we need to be very cognizant of all the pieces and parts of this. Chief, if you don't mind, I want to just ask you a question. You know, for a couple years there, we were on the public safety link, and I was chairman of that link. We were talking about how much money, how creative you all got in giving money back and so forth. And I think what I want to make sure that is not ever lost on anybody here or anybody watching is the work that you and your staff have done to give money back to the general fund. Can you just give a little bit of a thumbnail sketch of how much the police have actually given back? Goodness, I don't have that figure in front of me. I can say that our folks have done a very good job in trying to be efficient with tax dollars and the resources we have. It's been an effort I've been very proud of. For the last four years, I know we've come well within budget and turned funds in at the end of the year, those that we didn't need to do what we needed to do. Well, I want you to know how appreciative I am, and I know that it's generally about a million dollars a year that gets put back in, somewhere in the hundreds of thousands, if not over a million, and it's not lost on this council member, but I think that people in the public should know, I think people in government should know, that you and your staff have done a lot of creative things to not only manage within budget, but actually to return money. And so I'm very appreciative of that. And, Chief Jackson, I've said it before, I really appreciate the work you and your staff have done to cut overtime and to really rein in some of those costs. So I want to thank you both publicly for your leadership in those budgetary issues. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. Thank you, Councilman McCord. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Chief Bastin, Chief Jackson, thank you very much. Chief Jackson, you know on Friday we had our Emergency Medical Advisory Board meeting. And I was just thinking that it might be helpful for Council members to see the two pages of the report where it has year-to-date EMS run summary and the monthly summary. Council members, the numbers are pretty astounding, back to what Council Member Stenet was asking about the EC units. For example, in 2007, the total runs were 30,650. In 2011, they were 35,136. And we just keep having the same number of EC units. And eventually, we've discussed this at the EMAB, we are going to have a crisis. And many of the, I think if I recall, all the units now do over 3,000 runs a month. And there are now two units that have done over 4,000 runs a month. That's a huge number. And I'm very concerned about it. And I think that maybe if these two pages where we have the month and the year runs would be helpful if someone could email them to council members just to see the progression in the past few years. It's not going down. You know, as our population grows, our number of runs grows, and yet we have the same number of EC units. So eventually something's going to give, and I think it just helps us to be educated on what we're talking about. So thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. No other council members have signed up. I want to express my appreciation as well to the Chiefs, Commissioner Mason, and the staff who supported these presentations. It's been a very useful and beneficial conversation. That's one of the merits of the body that we have here and the commitment of these council members and the commitment of you all and all of your people. So thank you all very much. Next on our... Next on our agenda is Council Reports. And so the signs up. Everybody's signing on here. Council Member Stennett first. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to announce a public meeting. Council Member Lane spoke earlier about the plan for redoing Constitution and Berry Hill Pool. I know Berry Hill's meeting is tonight. The Constitution Pool meeting, again, is next Tuesday night, February the 28th at 6 p.m. at Spenserian College. So I hope everyone that lives in that area can come out and give us your feedback and ideas on what to do with the Constitution Pool area. I know the mayor is going to include it in this year's budget, so we have plenty of money to redo that. So, Mayor, I also invite you and any of your staff to come out. I know Commissioner thinks you're going to try to come, but we'll have all-in administration out there. So I just want to make sure everyone knows next Tuesday night, 6 p.m. at Spencerian College in regards to constitutional pool rehabilitation. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Stett. Council Member Cady. Thank you, Mayor. Just a brief note, I will be having an open meeting on Tuesday, February 28th at 7 p.m. at the downtown branch of the Public Library in the lower level of Room A. Just an open conversation about issues facing the Council. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Kay, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Just one thing, I wanted to give Council Members a heads up. In the last few months, one of the issues that's been discussed publicly and before the Board of Adjustment has had to do with tourism, and in that particular case, tourism opportunities in the rural area. And since then, I've been thinking about that a lot. And so a lot of the comment along the way was that we should have a look at the zoning ordinance and look at necessary text amendments to look at how our recreational activities mesh with tourism and see if we have what we think are the appropriate necessary zoning ordinances. So with that, I have appointed a work group which will be discussing this and whose job it is to come back to the council by August 30th. with some recommendations that the council can use to initiate a text amendment to go to the Planning Commission. And these work groups have a good history. Our agricultural market text amendment was done through a work group. Our bed and breakfast text amendment, our quarry text amendments, there are several over the years. There are 14 people appointed to this work group. And there's representation from the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Fayette County Farm Bureau, the Commerce Lexington Home Builders, the rural residents, the Fayette County Neighborhood Association. And I appreciate he's not here, but Councilmember Ed Lane is going to serve as well as myself. So I'm really interested in this and think it's a proactive way to go ahead and address these issues before they come up one at a time for the next several years. And, Council Members, you should have the packet in your email and in your mailbox. Did you have a question, Council Member Farmer? You look mystified. Thank you, Vice Mayor. What's the subject matter again? The subject matter is, I'll read you the purpose. Thank you. The purpose of the work group is to study the need for and develop recommendations for the Urban County Council and the Planning Commission concerning amendments to the zoning ordinance regarding commercial and non-commercial recreational activities relating to tourism. It's kind of a long. It's broad. It is broad, but then the zoning ordinance might require that. So I don't know what the group will, what the end result will be, but I think that the case before the Board of Adjustment really clarified for me that this work needs to be done. That was the land use for the zip lottery. Yes, it was. and there's a member of the Board of Adjustment who will serve and there are two members of the Planning Commission who will serve. You're not limiting their scope. You're just asking them to look in general. Yes, that's right. No, it's not about any specific idea or project. We will watch closely, Vice Mayor. Stay tuned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, ma'am. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate it very much. First, I want to make a request of administration or the commissioner. On item A, I would like to see one list of the 214 rather than a misguided list in our packet that doesn't add up to the 214 jobs. I just would like one list where it's all there and I can add it up and see it. Because I went back through after it was pointed out to me that it was listed double or triple or quadruple, and I'm still a stickler for a while, and I know we built the budget around these. I would just like to see it concisely done correctly. Well, to get to your point, I've been texting since your question and Council Member Stenet's question, and the list that I got sent, which I have a very short, well, kind of a list, has 214 jobs, and I was texting saying where is all this other stuff coming from. I think my understanding is that there are 210 someplace to 214 jobs being eliminated that weren't funded as of this year's budget. Apparently, as part of this cleanup process, they're going back and looking at positions that have been not funded for a whole bunch of years. So what we'll try and get for the council before Thursday, I'm trying to get a clarification about how many in each category. And I wanted to be sure and tell you that before, to tell you that there are more than 214 in the to and from list that you have. So I wanted to clarify that before Thursday night. So I don't know how many it is yet, but we'll get that information. And we're trying to, I don't know, I think we'll have to work with budgeting to see if they know how long each classification position has been unfunded. I don't know what level of detail we can get on that. Well, I just know that certainly I'm supportive of eliminating the jobs per what we did to balance the budget. And I'm also wary of voting on something where we're not really sure what all the outcomes are, and I would just like to see it just broken down. That's all. And we'll try and get that for you. And, again, the list of unfunded ones that I got from budgeting had 210 to 214, so I didn't want anybody to think I was misleading on that. Thank you very much. Okay. Secondarily, today is Mardi Gras. Happy Mardi Gras to everyone. Although it actually technically falls into Council Member Lawless' district, I know that the fine gentlemen at Bourbon and Toulouse are providing enough entertainment for most of Lexington this afternoon and this evening. So I look forward to seeing some or all of you after we leave here. In that same vein, this coming Friday evening, the 24th, there's going to be a chili cook-off and a movie night at the new Lexington Hearing and Speech Center. And this is to support raising money to move the playground equipment there on the property. So they're going to have the chili cook-off from 5 until 6.30, then they're going to have a movie night from 6.30 until 8. And you can bring your lawn chair or blanket or beanbag chair for the movie, which I believe will be indoors. and the chili cook-off is $5 per adult and $3 per children and there's going to be a little bit of a silent auction and Councilman Bill Farmer is the celebrity judge of the chili cook-off so I already have a small entourage who's going to meet me there and any of you all who would like to come, this 5 to 6.30 chili cook-off great organization, great group Later that evening at my home, I'm going to be having a Tums and a Mylanta tasting. Any of you all want to come to that? So I encourage you to go to the Lexington Hearing and Speech Center on this Friday between 5 and 8. Can you give the address? The address is at the Lexington Hearing and Speech Center cafeteria at 350 Henry Clay Boulevard. Thank you. Council member Beard. it's at the lexington hearing and speech center which is now where julia ewan used to be on henry clay boulevard yep and then there's a movie after the chili cook-off now i won't be doing anything with the movie thank you mayor all right thank you sir councilman lawless Thank you, and I heard you were starring in the movie, and it sounds like a heck of a lot of fun. There are quite a few Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, whatever you want to call it, events in 3rd District downtown, Parley Social, Bourbon in Toulouse, Sound Bar. so check it out, come downtown, have a good time and tomorrow you can abstain until Friday's movie and cook-off. I'd also like to make a motion. I move to place into the Planning and Public Works Committee The issue of H-1 or ND-1 is relating to extensions of building permits within those zones after they have been issued but not started and after those overlays have been passed. In other words, briefly, someone goes right before it goes into effect. They get a building permit. No work is done. They go back six months later, and it is not required by building inspection at this time for them to be under the scrutiny or the guidelines of the ND1 or H1. So it's a way of kind of skirting the system. So I would like to put that in Planning and Public Works Committee. Second. There's a motion and a second. I don't know if I can repeat the motion. I made the motion. Yep. Okay. There's a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? No discussion on the motion? All right. Ready to take a vote? It's to place an issue into planning. All right. All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Councilman Lawless, are you finished? Councilman Lawless, are you finished? Yes, I am done, and I hope everybody has a good time this evening, and please be safe. Okay. Councilman Myers. Thank you, Mayor. I just have one announcement. Tonight, we are having a public meeting at Victory Baptist Church. It's at 2261 Armstrong Mill Road tonight at 6 o'clock p.m. It's our second public meeting in reference to the closing of Berry Hill Pool and reclaiming that pool as a skate park. The last meeting we had, we did a circumference of 400 square feet around the park as notification, which is what the Planning Commission uses. This time, under the recommendation from Jerry from Parks, we decided to double that to do 800 square feet around the park. So we look for a lively conversation tonight. We ask all the citizens that are interested to come out. Again, that is 6 o'clock tonight at Victory Baptist Church at 2261 Armstrong Mill. And all the council members are invited, particularly the at-large, if you'd like to come out and the mayor, if you'd like to join us, it would be fantastic. I wish you could. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Nobody else signed on for council reports, so we can move on to the mayor's report. Is there a motion? Move it. There's a motion by Councilmember Beard, second by Councilmember Henson. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, we can take a vote. Thank you. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. Next on our agenda is a public comment for issues that are not on the agenda. I don't have anybody. I have Mr. Mundy. Okay. Cory. Mr. Dunn. All right. Yes, sir. You were on the issues on the agenda earlier, but that's all right. It's good now. It's good. That's why I missed it. Thank you, sir. All right. You know our rules on it, right, Cory? Yes, sir. Three minutes. Thank you, sir. I had that unpopular role of timekeeper. I do have a question. If I have a question as opposed to a comment, if anybody's up here able to answer it, will it be answered? Sure, we'll try. Okay. Or somebody else might. Earlier, Vice Mayor Gordon, you said you're optimistic, but you're realistic. Well, I feel as though I like to be optimistic, but I'm realistic too, which brings me here. We've been coming time and time again about the Charles Young Center, which I know you guys aren't surprised if that's what I'm here to speak about. But it's been brought to my attention that recently the deadline has been extended. It had a February 1st deadline. Everybody who's interested in being on the advisory board for the Charles Young Center submit an application, do the process by the 1st. Well, the deadline has been extended, and my question is, why extend the deadline? It's my understanding that at least 15 applications have been received, which it only calls for nine individuals on the board. So I'm asking, I'm curious as to why that particular deadline is extended, whereas in other places it wouldn't be. For instance, if you were running for council and you didn't have your 100 signatures turned in by the first or the second, whatever day it was, then you wouldn't get an extension and say, well, only two people are, or only three people are running for, say, the seat in District 2. So we need to extend the deadline so we can get, you know, 50 more applicants because we're not satisfied with the individuals or the actual applicants. So my question is, one, what benefit is it to extend the deadline? Who does it benefit and how? And three is, how come there wasn't, or was there any notice, public notice that I missed? because publicly I've looked on the government website, I've looked at other places, and I haven't seen any public notification letting the masses know that, you know, there has been an extension. So that's just my question about the advisory board or the establishment of the advisory board. Yeah. I'm unfamiliar with the issue that you're asking about, Cora. Maybe somebody else. Chris, do you have any? Okay. Yes, sir. Mayor, I try my best. Thank you. And, Mr. Dunn, thanks for coming. My understanding is that, to date, the mayor's office has really gone out of its way, and I'm appreciative, Mayor, to let neighborhoods know of the opportunity to apply. Mr. Dunn is correct. The initial date was February 1, which in and of itself was an extension, I think, beyond what we initially had hoped to have the board seated. but that February 1 deadline was an attempt to ensure that most folks know. And so, of course, our office also chimed in to let folks know of that extension. Again, my understanding is that 15 or so folks have applied and that the administration is currently going through the process, as it would with any appointment or application to a board and commission, to screen those applicants who have applied. and I'm certain that the due diligence is being taken and the administration is definitely certain of the urgency and the anticipation of the community at large to have folks appointed to the board. And I recognize that Chief of Staff Jamie is here and I don't know if Jamie wanted to add something as well. But again, I know that the board has nine appointments and in an ideal world, we would have all nine folks seated at the same time. but I'm not certain if that's going to happen here or now. So that's my understanding, and, again, I'm confident that the attention needed to each of the respective applicants thus far is currently being given and will be given until we can get folks appointed to the board. Thanks, Rick, Chris. I didn't hear everything you said, but I will say that there was no deadline extension. We only received 15, 16 applications, and they all came in before February 1st. So those would be the people you're choosing from? Yes. Correct. All right. Okay. Thanks, Mr. Emmons. Thanks, Mr. Dunn. Thanks. Thank you so much for coming. Appreciate it. All right. I have no one else signed up for public comment, so the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn, motion by Mr. Stenet. Second, Vice Mayor Gorton. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. We are adjourned.