Music Thank you. All right. As soon as Council Member Martin makes his way up, we'll call the meeting to order. How's that? Sir? Yeah, we're just going to pace it here. We know that you all have had a long meeting. We have a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Yeah, all right. All right, I'll call the meeting to order. Call the meeting to order. Thank you all very much. This is a meeting of the work session of the Council, February 28th. And first on our agenda, public comments for issues on the agenda. Floor is open for public comments for issues on the agenda, but I don't have anyone signed up. So we can move on to item number two, which is docket approval. We don't need that today either. so we can move on to item number three, which is approval of the summary. We have a motion by Council Member Stenet and a second by Vice Mayor Gorton. Is there... Wasn't it Stenet? Wasn't? Oh. Beard. All right. Let's write them on that. Council Member Beard made the motion. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, we can take a vote then. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda are budget amendments. No budget amendments today. and next on our agenda new business all right we're going to have a debate over that one that was kind of close council member ellinger made the motion second by councilman myers is there any discussion on new business no discussion all right we can take a vote then all in favor please say aye Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda, continuing business and presentations. We have a – you want to come back to social services? All right. How about an NDF motion? Give us a motion. Motion to approve by Council Member Ellinger, seconded by Council Member Myers. Is there any discussion on the NDF? Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. We have a user fee billing and collections presentation by Commissioner Driscoll and Revenue Director Bill O'Mara. Thank you. Thanks for this opportunity to go through a process that we have been engaged in for some time in terms of implementing a user fee collection system. As you know, and we reported some time ago that there would be a change based on a direction that Kentucky American advised us that they wanted to go in terms of their business, in terms of no longer collecting fees for us. So I just wanted to kind of set the stage. You know, we've been in front of you on this. We wanted to catch you up on where we find ourselves with the project. I also want to take the opportunity to thank Bill O'Meara and his staff for the process they've gone through with this major undertaking. And also, this effort is led by Bill, but also Todd Slayton in purchasing and Brad Stone, Candace, Dentinger, Cheryl Faulkner. It's really been a team partnership. In addition to IT folks have been brought into the process. and then some of you as we engage the RFP process for the selection of the vendors that are helping us make this happen, as well as budgeting. I don't want to leave out budgeting was instrumental in this process as well. So Bill's going to go through. I just wanted the opportunity to publicly thank them as we, again, go through this major undertaking. So, Bill. Thank you. As Commissioner Driscoll said, we had come to you at different stages throughout the end of the calendar year and wanted to give you an update as to what's happened and where we are and where we need to go. As background, Kentucky American Water Company has provided billing collection services to LFUCG since 1995. They started doing sewer user fee back then, added landfill user fee, and then finally water quality fee. To give you a sense of scale, the sewer user fee is generating about $45 million. The annual fee for billing and collections is about $848,000. Landfill is at $6.8 million level with annual collection fees and billing fees of $319,000. Water quality, about $11.5 million with total fees of $423,000. So we're talking about about $64 million worth of dedicated fees with billing and collection service fees of about $1.6 million, or about 2.5% of revenue. As Commissioner Driscoll said, in September 2011, Kentucky American Water presented us notice to cancel our service agreement effective 3-31-2012 due to a strategic business plan that they are pursuing. So then in October 2011, we engaged a third party to assist us in drafting requests for proposals for both user fee billing and collection services and project management expertise. In November of 2011, both of those RFPs were issued, and in December the billing and collection RFP responses were due. we received eight responses and went through a process of coming out with two finalists. In addition, the project manager RFPs were reviewed and a project manager was selected, and they immediately started assisting us with the evaluation of the billing and collection RFP responses and presentations. January 2012, we had billing and collection vendor presentations. Each was a day long. We had technical for the first half and then an all-encompassing presentation in the second half of the day. And then we also made a selection from those two finalists. And in February 2002, Kentucky American Water agreed to extend their billing and collection services through August 2012, a significant event giving us six months to implement a replacement billing and collection vendor. The selected vendor is Greater Cincinnati Water Works. They have provided outsourced services such as these since 1948. They have a AAA rating with both Standard & Poor's and Moody's, applying private sector best practices to public sector environments. About 600 employees, and they support over 242,000 accounts. They have 84 services currently being provided to 53 entities. The ones that are most relevant to us are the billing service contracts that they are currently administering. They bill and collect for sewer with three contracts, water quality or storm water with three, landfill or solid waste ten contracts, and they have a contract for maintenance fees with another entity. The relevant entities that they support the billing services that we're interested in are listed there, what they do for each, as well as the volume and number of accounts that they do. So you can see that they serve as small to large entities. We're about 115,000 accounts, so we'll be their largest third party other than Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati. The agreement with Greater Cincinnati Water Works, they received the highest ranking by the RFP committee that was evaluating the responses. They were the lowest bid. They proposed a unified per-bill pricing. And if you include mailing and postage, it's $1.66 per bill. There is no upfront implementation fee. They will collect the money daily and remit that instantly into our bank account. They are leveraging agreements that they have in the Cincinnati and northern Kentucky area to bring retail payment locations to Lexington, such as Walmart and Shell stations. They have an industry leader customer service call center. They have extended hours. They have 24-hour recording. They have IVR, which is interactive voice response. They also are introducing chat so that they can communicate via the web, as well as other communication services. We're entering into a four-year contract. The estimated fee is about $2.3 million. That will come out to be about 3.5% of revenue. Going into this process, we actually didn't know how big the universe would be for people that would furnish what we call soup-to-nut services. They maintain the customer database. They maintain the billing. They do the collections. They have the history and the transactions. They create the bill, the return envelope, stuff it, mail it, as well as the customer service after the bill has been sent out. So we feel this is a very competitive price. As I said, it was the lowest bid that we found of the finalists. Our next steps is we're looking at a six-month implementation. From our research, that's very aggressive, but it has been done. We're finalizing contract negotiations this week. We will go straight into system specifications and system design. There will be a major effort in data conversion, taking the information from Kentucky American Water, who will be working with us in that endeavor to create customer accounts for everyone. There will be system testing. We're talking about a public education program this summer to let the public know they will have a separate bill for these user fees with a go-live Labor Day weekend, September 1st. So we're here today to ask for your approval. Next council meeting, next work session a week from today on new business will be the approval of the Greater Cincinnati Water Works contract as well as the Kentucky American Water Extension Agreement. We will ask for budget amendments to cover the RFP consultant of $10,000 and project management to help us do this and do this right the first time of $420,000. All of those will be part of the docket next Tuesday, and we will ask that you give two readings next Thursday night so that Friday morning we're off and running and start our six-month project. After we get started, we'll have one more contract that we need to bring to you. We will have an ongoing contract with Kentucky American Water to furnish us data, water usage that we will use to compute the sewer user fee, as well as an ongoing shutoff service agreement. That draft has already been received by Kentucky American Water, and as soon as we finalize the contract with Greater Cincinnati Water, will be working on that and finalizing that to bring it to you. Questions? Council Member Beard, then Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. Bill, a couple of things. One is to get in on the apples-for-apples basis. Kentucky American was letting us piggyback our billing on their billing. Correct? That is correct. So if you're looking at 2.5% versus 3.5%, it's not an apples for apples because they're going to be mailing just to us our bill. It's not on top of Cincinnati, obviously, their bills. I want the public to understand that, that it's a better deal from that point of view because of the posting situation. It is not an apple-to-apple. Kentucky American Water was giving a unified bill with their water bill, which means they were already sending out a bill, they already had an envelope, they were already printing a bill, there was already postage. Our costs were incremental to that bill. The arrangement we're entering into with Greater Cincinnati Water is a stand-alone bill solely for LFUCG and their user fees. So we incur all of the costs, both the calculation, the printing, the envelope, postage. Okay, one other question. It's a two-part question, which makes it three questions in total. I'll try to keep that. Is it possible to send messages of any sort to the citizens? Like Merry Christmas or pay your taxes or whatever? It is possible to? It is LFUCG's bill. Yeah. So if there's information that we want to attach to the bottom of that bill, as long as it is part of the printing, we have that latitude. If there are inserts, if we want to stand alone, there are additional costs that we would like to incur to do that. And is it going to be a customized bill? Are we going to design something that's going to be spiffy and it's not just going to be a blank sheet of paper with something typed across the top of it. Well, I would say it's somewhere in between a blank piece of paper and spiffy. We're going to control the cost, but it will be self-designed by us and will meet the specifications that Greater Cincinnati Water Works can support in their current environment. All right. Okay. That's all I need to know. Thank you very much, Bill. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, sir. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. So we're going to be paying an additional $700,000 in fees, correct? There will be additional cost of that much in order to bill and collect and process the user fees. Okay. And I have one. They don't have an online bill pay service. actually we are going to implement EFT or electronic funds transfer we have to create that from scratch that banking information is is confidential with Kentucky American water so we actually have to build that that's part of the project but we will offer that to customers and we'll be communicating that to the public prior to go live as well as after go live September 1st And so the public will understand now, and instead of getting one bill, they're going to get two, correct? We have an education process to make that clear between now and September. Okay. So September will be the first month that that will occur. That's correct. And do you anticipate the online bill pay will be set up by September? We will. Now, whether we will be successful in getting everyone who's paying online with Kentucky American to have given us all the information to go live with the first bill, we'll just have to live through that and see how well we get with that response. But each month I anticipate more online payments to be incorporated in the process. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. Bill, thank you for your work. I know you all have worked really fast on this because it kind of came upon us quickly. What's the breakout of which fees and taxes will go where from the water bill to our bill? I mean, there's more than one thing that's billed on the Kentucky American bill now. What will come off of that onto what we're going to bill for? We will be billing for the sewer user fee, the landfill user fee, and the water quality fee. Those are the three user fees that we have engaged Kentucky American Water to bill on our behalf. We will now take that and have Greater Cincinnati Water be our billing processing vendor. I enjoyed the use of your term incremental earlier because I've had people bring me their water bill and point out that the fees and taxes were more than the water bill. So I anticipate there will be some interesting conversations as these things separate. I know it's been really a good partnership. I know that from this presentation it's going to cost us basically another point for these people, for the new folks to provide this service for us. One of the things in using Kentucky American to collect this for us was they were able to collect a rather high percentage on our behalf. Any idea what that percentage will be with our new situation? In other words, before we were getting, I'm guessing around 99%. I don't know. You probably, I'm sure no, probably to two decimal places. I'm just wondering, what do we anticipate with the new system, so to speak? Let me emphasize the word anticipate in my answer. Well, you used incremental already, so go ahead. And fuzzy with my answer. We had a very high collection rate, a very successful partnership with the water service. We have talked to other municipal services, sewer districts, that type of thing, to see what kind of collection rate that we can expect and maybe shoot for under this arrangement. And so we, quite frankly, do not think we will obtain a 99% collection rate, but we're hopeful that we can still have a very high and respectable collection rate. Part of the ongoing service agreement that we're going to have with Kentucky American Water is, unfortunately, a water shutoff agreement for those accounts who are very delinquent and nonresponsive to our other collection and delinquent collection programs. We're working with Greater Cincinnati Water to have a protocol and a progression and escalation as the fees get delinquent. And we will work very hard with those programs before we go to Kentucky American Water for a shutoff request. You were both judicious and fuzzy. Thank you. I would just say to you, I think we understand, or I understand from that answer, that we really don't know probably exactly where we're going to land in terms of the amount we're going to collect. I just think it's incumbent upon you and the people that you work with to keep us informed and look for opportunities for ways for us to help you increase that back towards what it was before, because those are tax dollars properly accrued and certainly owed. The fact that we are being forced to go to a different collection situation is beyond our, I mean, that is something we don't have a control over at this point. But we do have a control over the opportunity to make sure that what is accrued does come into the storehouse. So I look forward to finding what that number is with you as we move forward and increasing it, okay? Thank you, sir. You're welcome. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Bleece. Thank you, Mayor. Just a quick follow-up to Council Member Henson's question about electronic billing. As the number of people in Fayette County using electronic billing increases, does that have any effect on the rate that we pay for the service? In other words, might it cost us less the more? I'll have to look at the details of the RFP. Greater Cincinnati Water Works is offering leading-edge technology that we can develop into. I don't remember a decrease in the billing rate. Their efforts in order to calculate the bill and track the bill and collect the bill are the same, regardless of the delivery mechanism. So I'll have to verify. I don't remember a discount if electronic billing reaches a certain percent. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Director O'Meara. My question is on the similar lines. I guess there's two different ways of billing, right? The e-billing would be one is online where I go to the website, put in my credit card information, pay it that way. Is the second one going to be that I can do electronic fund transfer and set up where it comes out of my checking or savings account automatically each month? You're going to have multiple ways. We are going to develop multiple ways. The first way we're offering is electronic fund transfer. You furnish to the government. You're banking a canceled check that has the routing and the account number. We do what's called a zero bill to make sure that it's going through the banking system properly. and then the bill is then automatically deducted from your account X number of days after the issue. Right. It's a business standard, and we're going to follow that business standard and the checks and balances, the security and everything is delivered in the Greater Cincinnati Water Works service model. Okay, yeah, I'm familiar with that. My question was going to be that with those two different and then the other ones that you're going to bring online, Is there a way that we can incent people? Like normally if you get your utility bill, some of them anyway, if you pay it by this date, it's less than if you pay it by the second date. Are there ways that we can incent people to use the e-billing so that the cost of billing is lower for us? I need to defer to my friends-in-law, but I would think that under current ordinance, I don't have any latitude to offer an early payment discount. And if there was legislation to that, then we could implement it. But I'm speaking out of my field right now. Okay. Can you look into best practice and if other municipalities are doing that and if it's an advantage to them, one, in increased collection rate, and two, in savings and billing the other way? Sure will. And if that's the case, will you come back and present to us and then I'll offer some legislation and see if we can get that done? All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. Bill, go back to the ability to pay through electronic means. Is there going to be a fee for that? Because right now I think there is with Kentucky American. Will there be, under our new system, still be a fee that the customer will pay? Let me answer your question. You got to the very end, and there is no cost to LFUCG. There is a convenience fee to the customer to pay online. And do we know what that is yet? I do not. Okay. Now, when I say pay online, I'm saying go on the Internet, click, click, click. That's separate from EFT where it's already set up and automatically taken out of your checking account each month. And that will be free? No additional charge. For EFT and online bill pay? No, no. EFT, I do not know of any convenience fee for that. Okay, there you go. Because when I'm paying online, there would be a convenience fee to the customer for sitting in the family room in your pajamas with a cup of coffee and paying your business. When will you know what the fee will be? I do not have a date certain. It would probably be June. June is when we're supposed to have all specifications totally mapped out. Because I'd be interested in knowing what Councilor Myers was alluding to, that if you do get your bill online and pay online, maybe there's a way we can either not only reduce our costs but compensate for that convenience fee so it's a wash for the customer. And that would be incentive enough for a lot of people to receive that bill electronically. All right, I'll get back with you. And did we say what Cincinnati's collection rate history has been percentage-wise? We did not. Do we know? We do not know. However, I'm not sure that there is an apple-to-apple Cincinnati Water Works bills has the capacity of turning water off for failure. So I do not know their collection rate. Very good. Thank you, sir. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much, Bill. How many companies responded to the RFP? We had eight responses. Eight. And how many of those were municipally owned? One. Cincinnati? Mm-hmm. Okay. And what area does the Greater Cincinnati Water Company serve? I trust it's more than just the boundary of Cincinnati. Is it a pretty big? Well, the greater Cincinnati area would be the way I would describe it. They serve both contiguous municipalities and counties around Cincinnati and then do services in selling water as well as billing services in northern Kentucky. In northern Kentucky? Okay. And then on your chart, current billing service contracts, I think that's page 28 in our packet. I was curious about there's one entity where they, I guess, send a bill for a fire hydrant. Is that a fire hydrant fee that the citizens pay? I believe so, yes. Okay, so... The difference between Kentucky PSC and Ohio, I would presume. Mm-hmm. So that's a fee, those thousand-some accounts, where that community, Lincoln Heights, pays their fire hydrant fees by directly billing the customer? Or subsidized. I do not know the details. Okay. Have you heard of that before? No, ma'am, I have not. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Director, you said something earlier about there being a convenience fee associated with at least one of the types of e-billing methods. Is that in our control? Is it in our control? Well, let me say the best practice model in offering online payment through the Internet is through convenience fee. And there's a lot of advantages to that. You are hiring someone to offer the portal, be responsible for all of the security. We do not receive the Visa card number, any of the personal information. That's all handled by a third-party payor, and their model is to charge a convenience fee to the customer. So is that a revenue neutral deal? I guess here's the thing. In my other job during the day, that's the case, And that's the biggest complaint we get is when people want to do electronic billing that they've got to pay a fee to do that. They don't understand how that's a convenience fee because normally it saves the company money if you're doing it that way. I don't pay my license plate online because they want to charge me $5 to do it. It doesn't make sense to me. If they did that, instead of having these long lines over there every month, they could have less employees and find efficiencies in their budget. But instead, they want to push a $5 cost out to me for doing it online, so I don't do it. But to me, we are providing a disincentive for people to bill that way if we hit them with what we call a convenience fee. And if we know that electronic billing will give us a higher percentage of people paying their bills on time and paying their bills each month, it seems to me we would be doing everything we could to get them to go that direction and not disincentivize them or de-incentivize them to do that. I understand what you're saying. There's a cost associated with having a third party do that. I guess maybe I would ask if we could figure out what that cost is and make the convenience fee neutral so that if it's $2.50, then we charge $2.50 for a convenience fee instead of $5. I can research that. What I'm hearing you ask me to do is to take on more transaction costs and higher cost of processing as LFUCG's cost of operation. You find a way to do it neutral. So if it doesn't cost $5 for that fee, then we don't charge $5. We charge whatever it costs. Just like if you're saying there's not going to be a cost to doing EFT, how come there's no cost to doing EFT but there's a cost to doing the online? Again, there's more overhead to do that online transaction. And I can't remember the acronym for the – there's a federal standard for exchanging financial information. Maybe you all know the acronym better than I do. We don't have to get into that business. We don't have to invest the infrastructure. We don't have to have the risk of someone coming into our server in order to get that information. Let me ask you this. What if we did PayPal? or some service like that rather than? I can research payment methods. We're one week away from having a contract signed with a model that was piggybacking best practices through greater Cincinnati water. So I hesitate committing to anything in a one-week time span to give us time to truly vet out all of the alternatives and the downstream cost and ramifications of that. Okay. Well, do whatever research you can, and then maybe if we can't do that in this contract, then we do it next year. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. This kind of goes along with Council Member Myers. I pay all my bills automatically. They're automatically withdrawn from my checking account, which is why they get paid on time. Is there any ability to do that, or do you have to respond if you want to pay electronically? I mean, is there a way that people could sign up to have their monthly bill withdrawn from their checking account automatically without them having to do anything? Not without them having to do anything. We have to communicate with the customer, and they have to tell us what their bank account number is. We don't know what it is. Well, I mean, we'd have to do that. Yes, and we will be working to do that prior to September 1. Okay, so I wouldn't get a – I could get an electronic bill if I wanted to look at it or not, but it would automatically be paid no matter what it was out of my checking account if I signed up for that. That's correct. Electronic fund transfer. Thank goodness. Appreciate that. Sure. She's getting tired. She's getting tired. She's getting tired. You both have done. I'm sorry. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. Was there any consideration given to maybe billing two months at a time and reducing the amount of bills from 12 to 6? There would be a couple of benefits. Obviously, it would cost less money. And, you know, for the customers to have to send in less checks and all that or make less payments, that's also good, too. I believe the water company also estimates the water usage on some of their bills so that there is some kind of adjustment during the year. So we would probably, since our rate for sanitary service tied in with water usage, we probably have that issue to deal with anyway, just an idea. We did not pursue that because we currently have monthly cash flows, and we have had monthly influx for quite a while. Prior to billing monthly, the water company and the sewer user fee was a quarterly bill. And both the water company and LFUCG converted to monthly billing. And we have had our budgets and our cash flow based on monthly infusions of cash with a monthly billing cycle. Well, couldn't we do something like bill two months at a time and bill half of them on one month, half of them on the other month, your cash flows would be the same, but we just reduce the cost substantially and eliminate the number of checks to be handled? We have a precedent showing that it is based on actual readings rather than estimated readings without a process of constant reconciliation. But the only fee that is on usage, I believe, is sanitary sewer. That's based on water consumption, and I don't think the water company reads the meter every month. I may have been mistaken, but it seems like they read it on a regular basis, but not every month. I just saw that as an idea because we could save a million bucks or $500,000 or whatever. It would be a substantial savings and less paperwork, less billing. If you did alternate months, half one month, half the other month, still your cash flows would be the same. And the customers might even like that. That's just an idea. I don't need to say more. We can model it and see if there's an advantage. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Round two. I want to walk through this so that everybody understands it as well as I think I'd understand it. But I personally pay all of my bills electronically. I get paper bills from various and sundry sources. And when I first get a bill from whomever, and I want to add that to my list of people that I'm paying, I go in and I put account numbers and I put an address in case it's a paper bill, because sometimes it is a paper bill. Some people don't have the capability to accept electronically. And then at that point, when the bill comes in, it has a due date on it. Prior to that due date, and I get to select when that prior date is, just so long as it gets there by the time it's supposed to get there. I sit down and fire off whatever the bill says electronically to the various and sundry vendors who have graced me with the bill for that month, Kentucky Utilities, for instance. KU charges a late charge if you don't pay your bill within seven days or something of that sort. But that's nothing that automatically happens. It's something that I trigger by not paying on time. They still will accept my normal payment, and they'll just add the late charge, I would guess, onto the next bill whenever that comes. I pay nobody anything no convenience charge no nothing I pay nobody anything because the bank where I had this process that is Hanley in this case Chase Bank is happy to have my account and they know that if in fact they don't offer that service or they want me to pay for the service I'll just go to one of the other 390% of the banks in the United States that do it the same way. Now, of all the iterations that I've heard here, have I hit on one that you can work with? Nothing will change. If you have an arrangement with your financial institution to pay bills on your behalf, that can continue. There will be no change. It's just a matter of where the payment is made. Right. And so there is no convenience charge for that. That's between you and your financial institution. And that's the most typical way that people do online banking, actually. So for my colleagues who are concerned about that convenience fee, that in that case is one way to get around that convenience fee. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Thank you, and thank you to the public for listening again the second time. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Martin and Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Mayor. Bill, thanks for all the hard work that you and your team have done to put this together and to step into an unexpected need under difficult circumstances and put this together. I just don't think this is rocket science. We've had a vendor that decided not to do it anymore. We had to go out and find a new vendor to do it. We don't have the expertise in the House to do this. We have practically no online services at the city in-house. And I think what you put together, which has found a very capable vendor in the business to take over this service rather than have us sort of scramble through something that we don't know how to do, I think this all makes complete sense. I think it would be a tragic mistake for us to try to do this in-house. unless we somehow wanted to get into it in a very big way. I just don't want to pick this apart. The vendor has certain requirements, and if we don't like those requirements, we can always rebid it at some future time, find someone with different requirements. So I just want to say thanks for putting this together. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Martin. Council Member Wallace? I agree. I think you've done a great job. As far as billing people every two months, there are so many people in our community that are struggling paycheck to paycheck. And getting their bill for two months instead of one, while it may not seem like much to some, would be a great hardship. So I think the plan you have billing people monthly is excellent, and I think it would be an undue hardship on many of our citizens to have to pay it two months at a time. Thank you, and thank you for your work on this. Thank you. I'll footnote that as well, what others have said, and thank you and recognizing the effort that went into this. And I think it's also appropriate to recognize that our city is going to another city's utility to get this work done. and it's at best a compromise, and this compromise is occurring at the cost of our citizens. I don't think anybody up here likes it. I know I certainly didn't, and we're paying more. and I think it still begs questions about our relationship with Kentucky American, that we can't, as a city and as responsible officials, ignore. I think we need to hear more from Kentucky American more regularly, and it's not just a public service commission issue. It is an issue that, as leaders of our city, we need to be responsible in asking questions regularly and routinely. Having said that, we have taken the issue that was presented to us, and we've tried to work through it and address it, and worked with Kentucky American in addressing it. And for that cooperative spirit that they provided, Keith, we thank you for that. But the policy issue doesn't change. Our city and our citizens have lost in this. And that needs to be declared clearly, in my view. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Mr. Director. Next. All right. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Social Services. Social Services and Community Development Committee report out. The committee met on February 14th, Valentine's Day. and during that meeting we received an update from Commissioner Beth Mills on the current state of the Department of Social Services. She did a fantastic job. She had her directors there, Christina Stamball, Division of Aging and Services and Disability Support, gave an update on their program. Connie Godfried is Acting Director of Adult and Tenant Services and she gave an update. Joanna Rhodes, the Director of Family Services, and Stephanie Hong, Director of Youth Services, both gave updates as well. One of the things that we learned in those updates was that there may be an opportunity to increase revenue into the government through two programs, a state treatment center and family care center, by increasing the census. And the commissioner is going to look into that and look at how we can do that in a budget-neutral way because we'll also have to hire employees to staff up those two programs if we do that and bring that back to our next meeting. Additionally, our next meeting will, on the docket, have a discussion and overview of the Partner Agency Social Services Committee recommendations for the FY 2013 funding budget. And that meeting will be on March 20, 2012. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Myers. All right. That's all of our presentations for now. Council Member Stenner, is this for Council Report? Yes, sir. All right. Ready, Freddy. Yes, sir. We are now ready for Council Reports. Thank you, sir. Just want to announce once again our public meetings tonight for the Constitution Pool Rehabilitation Project. That's the new official name. And so at 6 p.m. at Spensiering College, any residents in that vicinity or in Lexington that want to participate and understand what we're doing with our pools and the future of Constitution pools specifically, please come again 6 p.m. at Spensiering College. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks, Council Member Stenet. Let me insert one thing quickly, if I may. unless, Kay, are you all planning on leaving before the council member is over? All right, then. If the council members who are lined up for council reports will allow me very quickly to introduce, we all know Kay Sargent, our director for our sister cities commission, and she has visiting with her today, Ann O'Keefe, who is from County Kildare, our sister city. She is visiting for a week on behalf of the Kildare Council. So we welcome you, Ann. I know that Vice Mayor Gorton has visited you all, and some other council members may have, but Vice Mayor, would you like to speak for just a minute on that journey and how much exciting it was? Well, Ann comes from a beautiful place, I will say that. And County Kildare, we have been a sister city to them for 25 years plus a couple. We celebrated our 25th anniversary of partnering a couple of years ago. And they have the most delightful people, and it's a wonderful, friendly place. And so we hope next time you come, you'll bring more County Kildare friends with you and give our best wishes to the folks in County Kildare. Thank you, Vice Mayor. All right, back to Council Reports. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to say how much I enjoyed the Fire Department Awards Banquet on Saturday, and wanted to congratulate those that were recipients of awards and promotions, and they also recognized retirees that were present. and April 28th there's going to be a Valley Park stream clean which is part of the Great American Cleanup and I wanted to request that our little scuba diver superhero rescue hero that was there with his cape and his scuba diving equipment I would love for him to come to the Valley Park stream clean He was so hilarious, but I thought that that would be, the kids would absolutely love him. That's a great idea. Okay. You're going to check with the chief. And if you'd like to come, Mayor, and clean the creek out, that would be good. Oh, hey, there we go. Yes, ma'am. Whatever you say. It's good therapy. Whatever you say, Councilman. And one other announcement on next Monday the 5th at 630 is the Pine Meadows-Mason-Headley Annual Neighborhood Meeting at Piccadome Golf Clubhouse. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Hanson. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Mayor. Just a brief reminder, I will be meeting, having an open meeting at the public library tonight in Congress Room B, starting at 7 o'clock this evening. No specific agenda, just an opportunity to talk with constituents. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, sir. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. The Southland Association will hold its annual meeting tonight at 630 at the Olinka Shrine Temple. Stop by for an update on the most exciting projects happening in the Southland area. a review of last year and refreshments donated by Good Foods Co-op, Donut Days, and Old Kentucky Chocolates. Last year, the strawberries were amazing. I'll talk about what's going on down here. The council and CDP engineers will provide information about the Southland Bike Lane project. I also just want to make a brief statement. Last week, the council approved a new firefighters class, I believe it was, without really knowing how they were going to pay for them. And I watched the Finance Committee today, and I still did not hear from the administration how we were going to pay for this new class. I certainly didn't hear how the council intends to pay the $300,000 per employee pension obligations that will be incurred when each of these individuals are hired. Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. And I think to anybody who's watching the finances of the city, we're in for extremely dire times. And if we don't retool and readjust the way we're operating, we are going to find ourselves more than $1 short. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Martin. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. Tomorrow night will be the meeting in the 2nd District for Neighborhood Association and Homeowners Association presidents and or their representatives. We'll be meeting in the Arrear Center in Douglas Park, social hour from 6.30 to 7, and the meeting's starting at 7 o'clock. Hope to see all the leaders there. We'll start off with an update by the project managers on the Leastown widening and the Citation Boulevard construction projects. The second event on our agenda will be an introduction of the three candidates for council in the second district. And finally, Patricia Knight from the Keep Lexington Beautiful Commission will talk to the neighborhood leaders about what they can do to help their neighborhoods improve the appearance of our city in the great American cleanup. So I look forward to seeing a number of people there tomorrow night, and I think it will be an informative and useful meeting. Thank you, Mayor. Excuse me. Thank you. Council Member Blutes. Council Member Wallace. First of all, I want to congratulate the Wildcat women's basketball team who won the SEC tournament for the first time in 30 years this weekend. And there was a big celebration at Memorial Hall. It was really great to see the president of UK there dancing and rocking to the excitement and cutting down the nets. So that's a really big deal. Thirty years is a long time, and they've had such an incredible team this year. So a big shout-out to the Wildcat women's basketball team. And it was a really fun celebration with lots and lots and lots of fans there to greet them. I also was going to announce the Southland Neighborhood Association annual meeting tonight at Alika Sharan Temple, and the WGPL Neighborhood Association has been invited to join also. Southland Neighborhood Association and WGPL are both in the 3rd District, and Southland is in Council Member Martin's district. So it starts at 6.30, and I hope people come out and not in here about the food. So I'll be there for sure. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Wallace. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Just a reminder that this evening at 6 o'clock, the Lyric Theater will be hosting a community meeting. Again, that meeting starts at 6, and it shall extend until about 8 o'clock. We're hopeful that this won't be the only opportunity that members of the public will have to come and learn more about the Lyric Theater. And then lastly, and I'll announce this in future times as well, but the monthly board meeting of the Lyric Theater Board of Directors will now be held on the fourth Tuesday of each month, beginning at 530. I look forward to seeing everybody tonight at 6. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Ford. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor, last Tuesday night we had on February 21st our second public meeting on the situation for the pool at Berry Hill Park, and we had about five people come out and discuss their concerns. And we had people on both sides of the issue. But people came out, and Jerry Hancock, the director, did a fantastic job presenting the issues, how we got to where we are, what the plans are for the future, along with Michelle Kassini actually did a fantastic job as well. I want to commend them. The commissioner came out too. I want to thank my staff, Elizabeth, for coming. and we also had this past Sunday the fundraiser that Friends of the Skate Park had their first first fundraiser I think they raised about $2,600 gross had about 300 people come out and I took my two kids out towards the end of the evening they had a fantastic time great turnout and I want to thank Elizabeth again for that her participation in that as well as Friends of the Skate Park and all the things that they're doing. So things are looking good on that front. And last night we also had our 8th District neighborhood presidents meeting and got everybody up to speed on some of the things that are going on in the 8th District and had a great turnout. Some new neighborhood associations come on board since the redistricting, and I look forward to a strong year with them. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks, Council Member Myers. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. So by way of recapping tonight, I can go to the Lyric Theater at 6 o'clock. That's right. Or I can go to the library. That's at 7 o'clock. Southland. And Southland at 6. And food at 6 o'clock. I am so glad I asked for a recap. I mean, it's been a great day. It started early for me in the 5th District. We had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Huntington Bank that is located just in the parking lot adjacent to McGee's on Main Street. Kevin Atkins from the mayor's office was there. New bank for the city of Lexington. New jobs for the city of Lexington. Very nice offices they had there. I was very pleased to be part of that this morning. i've received a fair amount of email about the planning commission is going to have a hearing in a week on the 8th and one of the items they'll have on their agenda will be the possibility of adding a fueling station to the shinaway kroger there at shinaway and creekwood i had some neighbors very interested in not having that happen so we've had some flyers hung up and handed out and had some input on that, so try to be very representative of the people and their feelings out there and look forward to seeing them all here for the Planning Commission meeting next week. To my colleagues, just before we had started in the Council report, I've handed out a memorandum asking you all to consider serving on a subcommittee of the Planning and Public Works Committee that potentially would deal with, and I hesitate to go into this, the keeping of pot-bellied pigs, pygmy goats, chickens, and horses, both standard and miniature. We'll focus on the development of regulations that speak to the allowable number of these animals, the amount of land required to harbor the same, and the best practices to limit negative impact on neighborhoods within the community or not. There's been an increasing amount of public comment about this. I thank Council Member Kaye. Were you on the radio about maybe one of these issues today? This morning? Congratulations, sir. So I look forward to working with members of the council and the community about the potential of some, none, or all of these. because I think it's a, I will just tell you, I've never received such a broad type of input from very positive to absolutely very negative on a, I will call this a group of issues. So I look forward to your all's help with this in a subcommittee format because I think we need to spend more time on it than what a regular committee meeting gives us the opportunity for. And, Mayor, that concludes my comments. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. I, too, want to congratulate the Lady Cats on winning the championship. Oddly enough, for those of you who may not know, however, there's another basketball team that has UK attached to it that has only lost one game and is number one in the country. And we're anxious to see where they will go from there. This is the first time, however, that any given school, the second time, I think LSU did it also, where you've had the ladies and the gentlemen both win the conference championships. And while we're at it, as a Terencey graduate, I'll have to say that they're going into the Division III tournament, and they get to play their first game at home, which is always nice to have a little home cooking. And other than that, basketball is doing well in Lexington and in Kentucky in general. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Beard. There's no mayor's report this week. Mr. Mundy, nobody signed up? All right. No one signed up. Motion by Council Member Stenet to adjourn. Second by Council Member Ellinger. All in favor, please say aye without discussion. Opposed, no. Motion carries. We are adjourned.