Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. is public comment for issues on the agenda. The floor is available for public comments for issues on the agenda. I don't have anyone signed up. Mr. Mundy, you don't have anybody? Okay, thank you, sir. Next on our agenda is rezonings and docket approval. Is there a motion on ordinance number six? Council Member McCord? Thank you. Yes, sir. Do we have somebody here from planning as it relates to the objector? Did we have? Sorry. Bill, it's noted that it was passed 10-0, but there was an objector. How many folks? It was one person representing the church congregation across the street. Okay. All right. I'll make a motion that we put this on without a public hearing. All right. Motion by Council Member McCord, second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there a discussion on the motion? Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Mayor. I move to place on the docket for the March 8th Council meeting. resolutions authorizing the mayor to execute a letter agreement, extension of Kentucky American Water Company, billing agreements, and a customer service and billing agreement with the city of Cincinnati. So moved. Second. Motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed? No. Motion carries. Thank you. Any other motions? Docket approved. Do we get docket approved? Susan, I think you said there was one ordinance that we had. Susan, we got it. Motion to approve the docket as amended. Motion to approve the docket as amended by Council Member Ellinger, second by Council Member Kaye. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. We can move on then to summary approval. Motion approved. Second. Motion by Council Member Beard. Second by Council Member Beard. Mayor. Yes, sir. Council Member Martin. I have a small correction. On page two, it indicates after item L that Council Member Crosby, Martin, and Myers are present. I assume that means that we entered. At the very beginning, on page one of this, it says all members are present except for, and then there's a list. And I'm assuming if I'm not present, I need to be on that list. Because otherwise I could not have entered because I was already here. So I would just simply ask that if I wasn't here at the beginning, I'd be added to that list. I think that's the correct thing to do. All right, sir. We'll make that adjustment. Anything else? Any others? Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Mayor. On number seven, continuing business presentations, and it says Council Members Ford and Lawless are present. I'm not sure. You're suggesting to make an adjustment? Well, we were present. I'm just not following. What action needs to be taken? Well, it's the same thing that Councilmember Martin said, but we were present. Okay. Janette, have you got that? Can you make that? The reason why it's like that is when Mayor Gray opened up the meeting, you were not there at the very beginning. And so that's why it wasn't at the beginning. So when you all came in, I noted in the system whenever you all walk in. And so that's what it is. So I'll make sure that it's when you actually came in. But for all the other votes, that's how you were able to vote because you saw your name because it was there then. All right. Any further, any more comments on discussion? Okay, hearing none, then we can take a vote on the motion. All in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is budget amendments. Move to approve. Motion to approve by Council Member Ellinger, second by Council Member Beard. Is there any discussion on the motion? Aye. All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. Next on our agenda is new business. Motion by Council Member Blues. Second by Council Member Henson. Right? Okay. Beard. I thought I heard Henson. Okay. I'll talk about Council Member Beard. Is there any discussion? Y'all are generous. Thank you. Mayor. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, sir. I have questions on new business items E and K. E being the request for transfer of right-of-way via quit-claim deed for Ham Alley. And giving that property to the property owners on either side, I just wondered the identities of the two property owners. Mr. CAO. Mr. Maloney. Yes, sir. I'm just one of the names of the people that will receive this property. That's all. The property owners on either side. I can find out for you. If you would let me know. Thank you, sir. And on item K, this is the organization that sets up our planning, our new, it has a rather long name, Department of Planning, Preservation, and Development. There's an italicized line at the bottom that says, please see the attached sheets for entire listing of specific individual employee transfers. And I would just like to see that before Thursday night, please. Mayor, thank you. All right. Thank you, sir. Any further discussion? Anybody else? All right. Then we can take a vote. All in favor, please. United Tobacco Warehouse. is the next ornate, but that one you were talking about. Richard, did you speak? Nine is the back of warehouse. Okay, thanks. All right, now we can take a vote. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is presentations and continuing business. We'll take the NDF motion first. Move to approve. Motion by Council Member Ellinger. Second by Council Member Myers. Is there any discussion on the NDF? All in favor then? All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is the presentation on the aquatics management plan. Who's going to present today? Mr. Hankin. All right, sir. My name is Brian Rogers. I'm the Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation, been in that position a little over two years. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Mayor, Council. I appreciate your time. We're here to briefly discuss the management plan for aquatics for fiscal year 2013. We have, with a specific focus on the reprogramming of two pool facilities, one at Berry Hill and one at Constitution. We've been having a lot of healthy discussion in committee, and I wanted to thank Chair Lane and everybody on that committee for their helpful suggestions and feedback. It has been very helpful. Thank you, sir. So we'll start with a brief identification of the locations of our current nine pool facilities, and I'd like you to note here the proximity of Constitution and Berry Hill to two of our aquatic centers, Castlewood Park and Tate's Creek Park. The idea, simply in a nutshell, would be to demo those two pools from budget reductions in the remaining of FY12 and a full budget reduction of FY13. You can see those numbers there. It is a total of $104,000. And then we're going to need to identify funds to construct, one, a softball field at Constitution Park, to a skate park at Berry Hill. We'll start with demolition. Berry Hill, as you can see the pictures there, the cost for demolition is $53.3, and that is to, the plan includes to leave the bathhouse as a bathroom facility for whatever happens there, and including leaving the baby pool, filling it in with cement so that there would be more cement pad for skaters. 53.3 for Berry Hill Constitution the projected demolition costs are now 67.7 we agonized over a way to orient the field in a way so that we could keep the bathhouse at Constitution as well but we just weren't able to do it with the north-south orientation of pitcher and catcher and batter and also some other issues involving retention neighbors, retaining walls, things like that. So that one's $67,700. The demolition summary would be that we're looking at a total cost of $121,000. We feel like we can identify $104,500 out of the aquatics budget for two fiscal years. Remember that that's the remaining 12 and all of 13. And we would need to find 16-5 in order to make up the difference. Jerry and Sally have assured me that we can find the 16-5 out of the park's budget, and so I'm going to go with that. Now we're into new construction. At Berry Hill Park, we would like to move the playground, get it out of that dark corner, bring it up to the new site that you'll see there, and that would improve the site lines. it would require some new sidewalk action and when we demo the pool the current proposal is to replace that with an intermediate skate park knowing that the skate park at Woodland is immensely popular but that community feels like that is a beginner skate park they are extremely happy with it but they would like to see something a little more advanced at another location we're very excited about this plan We feel like this could make Berry Hill Park a destination park again, and it should be very cool. But there is a cost associated. We're looking at $65,000 total to move the current playground up to its new location. That's $50,000 for the new equipment and another $15,000 for the sidewalks that would have to be added. the skate park construction for the proposal that we have is approximately $300,000. So that's a total of $365,000, which we have identified in our capital improvement projects budget for FY13. And you guys will be discussing that later, I'm sure. We did have a public meeting already for the reprogramming of Berry Hill. It was not very well attended. If my information is correct, I believe there were five adults there. Four were con and one pro, but only five adults came. Constitution Park. We know that there is a great need for more field space at this park. The Girls Softball League has outgrown itself. We're very interested in adding ball field space, and as you can see, this is the new layout. It does require the removal of the bathhouse in addition to the baby pool, but we feel that it will be very nice, and it maximizes your dollar because you're not going to have to build the amazing amount of retaining walls that we would have had to build it to orient it another way. Now, the cost of that reprogramming at Constitution, we're looking at $237,500, and that has also been included in the FY13 Park CIP budget. There was a public meeting held on February 28th. This one was very well attended, I'm hearing, and was overwhelmingly positive. I think that we had a lot of the fast-pitch softball community there, and they are behind this plan, I would say, 100%. They need more ball field space. Okay. Here's where it gets a little tricky. This is the 2011 pool season cash flow statement. The committee saw this exact presentation back in November. What you need to look at here is note Berryhill and Constitution. We're talking about a total of about $15,000 in revenue and about $50,000 in expenses. So you've got to keep that in mind. Some other key numbers. We're at a 50% cost recovery, i.e. the aquatic section was subsidized by about $600,000 in 2011. So what we've done, we were asked to come back with a projection on what sort of cash flow we could look at or expect if those two pool facilities were reprogrammed. So we've done a little worksheet here to show you what we've done. It gets a little complicated. we took 75% of the total revenue from those two pools, and that's what you're going to see here, approximately $12,000. Now, you can't stop there because the pools that we are assuming that these 75% of the patrons will go to, Castlewood and Tate's Creek, cost a dollar more per admission. So then you've got to look at how many paying customers you had at each of those pools, take 75% of those paying customers and add $1 per paying customer at each pool. And then we identified additional revenue in terms of concessions at 100% of these paying customers that will be going to the new facilities at $2 apiece. So down below you'll see the recap. There's the revenue from 2011. This is what we expect to transfer to Castlewood and Tate's Creek pools with a net increase of about $3,300, which basically amounts to this concession revenue that we hope to get by the additional customers going to those pools. Okay, so here's the new and revised projected cash flow. and we've taken out Constitution and Berry Hill added the revenue that we just talked about or that I talked about at Tate's Creek and Castlewood and then we have reduced our expenses in line with what we think will happen if those two pools go away we've reduced our non-assigned operating by $5,000 we've reduced our utilities by $16,000 bottom line is our our cost recovery goes up to 54%, and instead of $600,000, we lose $520,000. So we think that our cash flow improves by $75,000, which is basically the budget reduction that we identified, the $71,000, $72,000, plus the additional revenue that we hope to get from concessions and the transfer of the price increase at those two new facilities. So, in closing, Parks would like to propose that we agree to the closing of Berry Hill and Constitution Pools and fund the demolition from FY12 and FY13 combination operating reductions, agree to reprogram those sites to include a softball field at Constitution and a skate park at Berry Hill. We'd also like to permit the demolition of those two pools to occur in the summer of 2012, i.e. here in a couple months. That is what this whole plan that we've been going through for four or five months is based on those numbers. Keep in mind that those numbers are now three months old. We've got our very first lifeguard interview tonight at 6 o'clock. We have begun putting together a plan for repairs and maintenance on those two pools. Last year we didn't hear until June whether they were going to be open or not, and so we are prepared to have those pools open, and that's how we're preparing. I do appreciate your time, and I am now open for questions. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. Thank you, sir. Get the lights back up. Thank you. All right. So the floor is available for council comments and questions. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for bringing this to us. And I just want to say this was one of the best presentations Park's ever brought to us. This is the kind of information a management plan, a business plan, helps us understand what the numbers are, where things are going. I just want to say thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. I was just going to say that some of this information came before the General Government Committee meeting, and we basically agreed that we are in support of closing the two pools and moving forward. At the time we had that meeting, we didn't have as much information with the business plan. I think today's information makes me feel that we should move forward with closing those two pools. Thank you. Mr. Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, thank you to my colleagues that supported these two pools the last three budgets. I know it's been a difficult time to do so, but in fairness to the kids and people in that community, leaving blight in the middle of a recession in a neighborhood wasn't going to help anyone. So I thank you all for having the courage to keep them in the budget. And I also want to thank Commissioner Sally, as I call her. Thank you for everything that you've done since you've been on board to help get us to this process. I appreciate this is really your first major undertaking. besides the parking garages, of course, and we haven't finished that yet, right. But thank you, and thank you, Jerry, for your leadership on this at the two public meetings. I know it's difficult to any time you want to take services out of the community, but I think what we're offering back to our city and to our citizens, reprogramming is the important piece here because if we don't do that and you leave either an empty pool or just a piece of green grass and say, hey, like that and enjoy it, that doesn't speak well for what we're really trying to do and our quality of life for our parks. So having said that, and everyone, and Brian, of course, I don't want to leave you out, but I know that you're over all these operations, so thank you for your hard work and getting into the numbers. As Councilman Martin said, it's easy to make decisions when you have good information. I think that's what all of us up here strive to do. So having said that, I would make a motion to endorse page 14 of our packet and the last page of the slide on the three bullet points there to agree to the closing of the pool, agree to reprogram in those sites and begin demolition as soon as possible so that we can get these places back to full use. So moved. There's a motion and a second? A second. Motion by Council Member Stennett, second by Council Member Myers, with a close run on second by Council Member Lane. Is there any discussion? Council Member Beard. Oh, okay. Well, I just saw Council Member Myers, then Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Rogers, for an excellent presentation. Thank you, Jerry, for awesome work throughout this year. It's been a tough battle the last seven years you've been wanting to get here because of the vision that you had for what we can do if we get here. Commissioner, I call you Commissioner Sally as well. Thank you for your leadership coming on board and helping to move this forward and getting it to this point. I did have one question. This isn't numbered page-wise, but the page that says 2011 pool season attendance cash flow. There we go. Third, fourth column says expense. Down at Berry Hill, we have $26,185. Yes. I always thought that it was about $35,000 to open this pool for the year. So does this number reflect only the 2011 part of the budget and not the 2012 for the second half of the season? That's correct. This is the 2011 pool season. And, George, what I think you want to notice down here, I'm sorry, maybe I should be doing this, is that the utilities are not included up here. They're down here. And so we've made a $16,000 reduction in those for both pools, too. So if you take the $8,000 apiece, we're starting to get close to that number. Okay, because I knew there was water and all those things that happened at the front end and not the back end. So, okay, that makes perfect sense. I, too, want to thank my colleagues for sticking with us over these last years and, you know, in this fight to keep the pools open. but I, too, believe that we've reached a consensus here that this is the way to go and this is the way for the future. We did have two public meetings at Berry Hill. The first one Parks was not involved in, but as a council member, we had that one. We had, I think, about 20, 25 people at that one, and then we followed up with a second public meeting, which actually went out to a two-and-a-half-mile radius around the park. and to your credit sir you've also been at the pool taking input from the public as well thank you if there's one thing I'd add to what Councilman said is that the survey that you did Jerry that showed that I think it was 73% of the respondents said that if you take an amenity from a park and it saves money that money should be reinvested back in there this is my unashamed plug for we're all in agreement to take the money to do the abatement part but then the pool's down, we've got sort of a midterm situation there, but now we've got to get to that $200,000 or $300,000 for the new amenity. And I've always said publicly that we're not expecting the city with the taxpayer to foot the bill for all the skate park, and we've got friends at the skate park that are doing a phenomenal job, and we believe that we can raise $150,000 to $200,000 towards this effort. But going back to the survey results, that 73%, what I'd ask my colleagues and the mayor both to keep in mind that the commissioner did put it in her CIP project list for this next year, but that's going to be debated throughout the budget cycle, that if we could look at just taking a reinvestment of those dollars that we save from closing down this amenity and reinvest them back into this community. And I always say, I'd like five years, but we'll settle for three. Always wanting to compromise and work together here. That if we could get that money, if we could just keep that in the back of our minds and just go through the budget process that, you know, this is the easy part right here, is shutting it down and abating the mechanical part of this thing. But the tough part is going to be, you know, finishing the vision on what we're going to do moving forward. And so I just ask that, as the citizens said, to reinvest that money at a 73% rate, that we're not asking for all that in perpetuity just for three years of it. And so, again, Brian, thank you for a phenomenal job. Thank you, Parks, for coming along and presenting a vision, one that we can actually get behind as a government and pass and promote to the community. And I applaud you all. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, sir. Council Member Beard, then Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Actually, Council Member Myers answered much of my questions concerning the organization who is partnering with us, I guess, for lack of a better term. That's a great question. And I assume that's going to go on ad infinitum. So we can't plug it in. We can't plug an estimate in for 2013 because it's going to be monies that are going to be injected over some span of time. I can't really, maybe forever. Or have you done a handshake with somebody and made the deal? I don't have that. I'm not ready to announce that that far yet. But I do believe that if we put the $150,000 in there for that reinvestment, that as soon as we can get the design done and start construction, that the money will all be there by the time we need it throughout the construction phase. So I look at it. I think they said it's probably 18 to 24 months to do this if we had the money in the bank right now. And I think that we're in a position that if we can get the help from all of us up here, that we will have the rest of the monies to go ahead and finish this project out in that 24-month span. If we had the money, this is really where I was headed. If we had the money, how long would it take to do it? Let's say a benefactor swept in with a check waving. It's 18 to 24 months. It would take that long, a period of time. That's what we've been told by companies that do this work. Okay. I was just curious. I can't wait to see the thing when it is in its pristines and operable stage. Thank you all very much, and thank you, Mayor. Councilman Beard, if I may, you asked a question last time that I was not able to answer. I have a couple quick facts for you. Skateboarding was the fastest-growing sport from 1998 to 2008, and it also ranked in our top 20 of the master plan priority ratings that the public has expressed that they would like to see. Softball is the most popular participant sport in the United States. The American Softball Association registers 83,000 softball teams annually. That's girls' fast pitch, which equivocates to 1.2 million girls. This is somewhat off the subject, but I may have an expert here. So I'm going to use this opportunity to ask a question. Once upon a time, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, whenever, men played fast pitch and women played slow pitch. Right. It's flip-flop now, and they snuck that by me without asking me, I don't know, but they did. Do you have any idea how in the world that happened? no but i found a lot of interesting research about world war ii is when a lot of this goes back to the girls were playing baseball because all the men were gone to war and so they they learned the faster game at that point and i think they appreciated it and and that was when the trend started when when the men came back the women still wanted to play baseball and they wanted to play fast pitch softball and and i think slow pitch sort of fell by the wayside that way Well, I was living during that period of time, but I wasn't in the baseball, softball slash baseball business at that point. But we had national champions here in Lexington of fast-pitch softball. IBM had a national champion. Parkett Drive-In had maybe two different national championships, and there were other entities. And they were unbelievable. It was nine guys standing out there. I guess it was ten on the team in softball. Nine guys standing out there, and then there was a pitcher who could blow the doors right off his room. And they were the heroes, and everybody else just kind of stood around, leaned on their gloves and waited for the innings to be over. But I just was curious how that happened. and maybe I'll Google it and find out. I'll do the same. I've got it right here on my hip. I might be able to do it right now. I'll try to get you in the hall or something. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Sir, Councilman McCord. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to echo a couple of things that were said. I really do appreciate this report because it is really what we're looking for in so many different areas of government, especially as it relates to parks and rec. And, Brian, thank you for all your leadership on this. A couple things just to reiterate from where I sit. I think the reason why this is so important that we're doing this and doing it this way is because if you look at the way that our pools are set up, I've said often, you know, folks who live in my district over by Fayette Mall are not necessarily going to get in their car and drive all the way over to Berry Hill or Constitution to take their kids to go swimming. But if they're into skateboarding or if they are into fast pit softball, if that's what their kids do, and there is a new park that offers that amenity, and especially with a great new facility, we'll drive anywhere in this city to go do that. And what, again, folks have to understand is you have people in our community right now driving every single week, two times, three times a week to northern Kentucky and to Louisville to go skateboard. And also with softball, it's traveling all the time. And if you can put those kind of amenities in our community, keep our folks here and bring folks and their money here, that's a good, good thing. And so, again, I applaud you for what you're doing because this is how we have to look at every park asset that we have, is how can we repurpose it. But the other thing that I've learned in government over these past number of years, almost a decade now, A parks director in Boulder, Colorado made this statement, and I think it's very true. He said, why is it we can never find the money to do it right the first time, but we can always find four times the amount to do it eventually? And I want to just encourage every single person sitting up here and every member of this community to understand whatever it takes to get it done, build it, move it off the list. Don't leave this thing in a state of semi-done or next year's budget or maybe we'll get a grant or whatever. get it done. And so I'm committed, Council Member Myers and Stenet, to seeing this done, even done in this budget if we have to, because this is the right thing and it's an example of how we're going to move our parks out of the somewhat of the stagnation that we find ourselves in and get new monies in here. So I applaud everybody that's been involved in this and all the hard work of Council Member Stenet and Myers. But thank you guys for what you're doing. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Councilman. thank you uh councilman martin thank you i didn't want to i appreciate councilman mccord's uh statement and i just the first thing i said when i came in here is that that a city is only as good as its parks and i apologize to you all that that we've had such bad budget time this has been a difficult couple years for a city as you guys know better than we do and so i although this is my last year on the council i hope that the the council will find itself in better finances so that we can have the best park system in the nation. That people, when they come to Lexington, they will say, God, yeah, but did you go to the parks? Thank you, Mayor. You're here. Thank you, sir. All right. I don't have anybody else signed up. Oh, Council Member Lane. Yes, I would like to say that I think today I would support the capital investment to improve these two facilities. And my rationale is the fact that this is not just for one neighborhood, but the fact that the skate facility can be used by people all over Fayette County, as well as could the softball field. And so if we have a limited amount of money that we can invest in this because our budgets are very tight, I would say this would be a very low-cost way that we could do something significant for the next fiscal year for our community with the idea of keeping our budgets as low as possible. I know the mayor is not really happy about spending capital money, and I'm on the Budget Finance Committee, and I feel his pain over there too. But I think we maybe have to do something positive, and I think this would be a positive step for the council and the mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lane. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Councilman Lane, if you'd like to amend this to add that 150 in there, we could go ahead and do that today. Well, do we need more than 150 if we're going to do both of them? Now, Councilman Myers has committed 150,000 possibly from the skateboard people. So that helps us out quite a bit. How much total dollars do we need to do both of those combined? If somebody's got $365,000 and $237,500. Those are estimates. It's about $600,000. Correct. So what if we amended this proposal to add an additional $500,000 in capital improvement money for the project, assuming that we would get at least $100,000 matched from the skateboard? So I would like to make that an amendment to add $500,000 capital improvement money to this proposal. Second. To motion and a second to amend the motion, the original motion. Any discussion on the amendment? All right. Mr. Farmer? So this would put the money aside to do this this year. Am I correct in my interpretation of this amendment? I'm not exactly sure of what it does. May I speak to that in my anticipation that go into fiscal year 13 budget, just from what I envisioned? Mayor, if I might. Yeah, Council Member Farmer. As productive as the budget retreat was, several of us made our top priority a commitment to our parks infrastructure. I was one of those people. And I appreciate the work in the two districts and the tough decision that we're about to make to close two pools and to reprogram them. I think both are well-founded. I would love to commit the dollars to this project, but I would be remiss in doing that because, you know, I'm working with a very avid group of people who would like to make sure that La Crosse becomes or has a better footing in this city than it does right now. So I'm very interested in all the funding aspects of this, but I'm not so focused that I want to commit it all today to these two projects, perhaps at the expense of another one somewhere else in the budget process. So while I'm completely supportive, I don't want to back ourselves into a corner before we've had the full discussion. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. um i guess everybody's locked out we can't indicate that we'd like to speak can we get that addressed uh and on the uh topic on the floor i'm going to agree with uh councilmember farmer i i i hate to see us a budget on an ad hoc basis i've said this before i hope i won't have to keep saying it, but it seems to me we want to look at every item in comparison to other needs in the budget. I think it's a mistake. I think if this were a recommendation to the mayor for his budget to include it and if he could find the money and et cetera, I'd be more inclined to vote for it. But I don't want to commit to spending money on a particular item no matter how important it is or how appealing it is without comparing it to what else is in the budget. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Mayor. I agree, too, with Council Member Kay and Farmer. Last meeting I had asked when we started talking about what to do with these two properties, it was brought up that we had not discussed with the softball leagues what kind of maybe fundraising commitment they might have or whether or not they would be willing, like our baseball leagues do, to lease the fields and then they would be responsible maintaining them and so on and so forth. So I feel like it's a little jumping the gun until we've had those discussions with them, too, before we determine how much money we're going to have to budget because there's more involved. So I don't believe you've had those discussions yet. I have not, but maybe Councilman Stennett can handle that one. Councilmember Blues. Thank you, Mayor. I would agree with the previous speakers. I think that Council Member Stinnett's motion gets us moving on two important projects here, and it's a good footing. But I think that the discussion of further funding should go through the links process, should go through the full budget process that we'll be engaging within the next few weeks. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Anybody else? Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Mayor. Just to answer Councilman Crosby's question, yes, the Girls Softball League would take over the maintenance of the facility, as they do now at the current field right next door to this existing field, which would save us the operational costs. And obviously we wouldn't have the maintenance and the startup costs of the pool any longer, so we'd actually come out maybe spending $2,000 a year on something. We're already spending almost $50 a year, so we would save quite a bit in the long run. But going to Councilman Lane's motion, I appreciate the spirit of the motion, But I, too, in my marriage to the budget over the years, understand the process, and this would not be a good way to enter that process. I think my motion agrees to repurpose the pools, take the pools out, begin that process, and then work to find the money. I think we can do it. I think it's very different, though, from what Councilman Farmer said. This is not lacrosse. These are existing facilities that we're reprogramming. And that's very different than starting a whole new organization somewhere. And so I think this carries a little more weight when you're talking about priorities in our budget than does starting up a whole new facility, such as the multi-purpose fields of show-toe. Councilman Farmer, is that what you're thinking? Very good. So I think it's a little different. I think we all have that in our minds as we enter the budget process, as well does the mayor. So we'll be happy to have those conversations in. So I would respectfully ask you a draw because I don't think it would be a positive step at this point. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. I will withdraw my amendment. And thank you very much for your comments on this. All right, sir. I'd ask Mr. Myers to take the second out. I'd ask Mr. Myers to take the second out. And I appreciate the spirit of the conversation and everything that was said here today, and I withdraw my second. Thank you. All right, sir. Is there any withdrawal of the amendment, the motion to amend, and the withdrawal of the second? So we're back to the original motion. motion is there any further discussion on the original motion councilman mccord just just very quickly um i think the original motion uh speaks to our intent to find find the money i think that it's not something that uh is in any way just a paper tiger of hey this would be great i think the way it's stated um puts us into a position of really finding it and councilmember farmer I'm with you. Obviously, those fields are in my district and having those discussions with La Crosse. But the other way to look at this, and I would tell the La Crosse folks to watch what's happening here, because this is exactly how you should do it. This is exactly how you get those fields built. Instead of just coming to the government and saying, hey, we need this and here's this need, it is putting this group together, making commitments, looking for large-dollar commitments, and three, four multi-use fields in Shiltoe Park are a lot more opportunity just than La Crosse for us to raise money. And so I think that the key thing is for this council to do this, check it off the list, and for every other organization that has come to us and saying, hey, we want this type of facility or we want to repurpose this park to look at the model of how we're going to do this one. And I think that we can move more through the pipe that way without diffusing our energies. So I appreciate everyone kind of backing up a step in supporting Councilmember Stenitz's first motion. All right. I see no one else signed up, so we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. Thanks for the presentation. Appreciate it. We have no other presentations today, so we can move on to council reports. Please sign on with the council report. First on the list is Council Member Farmer. Mayor, thank you very much. First, I wanted to compliment your leadership last Friday in keeping our city aware of possible impending very bad weather. We really did dodge a bullet. We were very lucky. And then, too, I think it was very good of us to extend the usefulness of our first responders to those mostly in most need. So I wanted to tell you I appreciated both those things. As the outcome of some of the conversations going along with that, I think what I've been made aware of is that Lexington doesn't have enough designated safe places or places to send people when they want to leave their home to find a place safer than their home might be during a storm. And with that in mind, I would like to send to the Public Safety Committee the idea of working out a framework or to put together a list of safe places that people could go to in times of weather or other emergency needs. And I would make that motion so moved. Motion by Council Member Farmer, second by Council Member McCord. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Lawless. Are you wanting the Public Safety Committee to look into it or have the administration put together a list of places that are available already? I think if they could put the list together, we could vet through it and find a way to let the public know when and where. I think there were people who called on Friday looking for a place to go, and we couldn't readily say, go to this church, go to this shopping mall, or wherever. I think we need that opportunity. I agree. I know that we've had situations over the years, and I don't know if there's a list available. Just pull our resources together and see what we can do. Certainly, I agree. Also, on that note, there were so many people that did not heed the warning. I saw people outside, kids outside, and we really did dodge a bullet. And I hope the public will take time to be aware and take shelter. Thank you. Thank you. Since we're on this subject, I see Commissioner Mason making his way perhaps up to the podium. One piece of the conversation in the Commissioner's meeting on Monday and actually over the weekend was an after-incident report protocol that is, of course, already in place and is already underway. And part of that, at Commissioner Mason's suggestion, was bringing some of the frontline work employees who were involved in the management process into the conversation, like, for example, our 311 workers, 311 employees, who were recognizing just that symptom that you're describing. And they were recognizing it at about 3 o'clock on Friday afternoon. So, and Clay, to his credit, had already talked about this after-incident report model and process and expanding that to include some of our frontline employees. Very good. So, and while he's at the microphone, I want to recognize and thank him for going along with our firefighters who were in West Liberty under the direction. Well, Clay, you're up there, so why don't you tell? You were there on Saturday without any encouragement. And I think it's worthwhile, perhaps, for the council to hear. Quick report. command of the entire process there in the emergency operations set up with the state. West Liberty's emergency operations center was destroyed, so they had to set up in a parking lot in trailers, and the state command post got there. Battalion Chief Greg Baer was instrumental in really organizing the entire effort up there Friday evening, all day Saturday, of detailing the hundreds of volunteer folks that were there from various fire departments, from the Bluegrass Emergency Response Team, and really led the charge to include briefing the governor on the status of the circumstances there in Morgan County. As a result of what I saw up there in coming back and meeting with the mayor and keeping him up to date throughout the process, we are going to take a look at some of those things that you're talking about. The emergency management folks do have a concept here of shelter in place, but granted, what I saw up there was that it's difficult to find shelter in place from an EF4 tornado. tornado. But in looking around the community and trying to identify some of the very strong structures that people could go to who were in insufficient as far as storm-ready houses or shops and things like that, we're going to start on that here very soon in looking at Fayette County to address those needs. Right. So we've got a motion and a second. Council Member Martin. Thank you. I wonder whether Council Member Farmer would allow this to maybe expand slightly in scope to include just a look at other sort of ready preparedness things. You mentioned how we notify the public about that. As a part of that, the Herald-Leader had a story and it had a link to, if you want information about emergency preparedness, send it to our website. And yet I couldn't find anywhere on the website where it talked about the program and talked about things sort of generically, but there was no here's what you need, here's where you need to go, and that kind of thing. So that's close to what you're talking about. I agree completely, yes, sir. Maybe we can include that. Absolutely. Thank you, Mayor. All right, sir. Thank you. Anybody else wish to speak to the motion? All right. If not, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. Mayor, just a couple more things briefly. So we go from tornadoes and rain on Friday to snow on Sunday. I want to commend, I know more than Streets and Roads does the work to clear the streets, but I wanted to thank them specifically for their work in the 5th District. And after many years of trying to get a blade to go around part of Blairmore, it did happen the other day, the other morning, and I'm very happy about that. Just a council district thing there. On Thursday, I will be here for most of the afternoon for our Planning Commission meeting, which will have discussions about Kroger wanting to add a fueling station in Shinaway Village and Southland Christian Church wanting to change the imprint they're wanting to make at the Lexington Mall property. So I look forward to seeing interested and involved citizens for both of those discussions. And then tonight, my family and I will be attending the police banquet. I look forward to seeing many of you all there. Mayor, thank you. Thank you, sir. Council Member Lawless. I just wanted to announce that tonight at 6, the historic Westwood Heights Neighborhood Association meeting is at 6 o'clock on Marino Street, right next door to what people call the Solar Building. And the Ellsford Neighborhood Association will meet tonight at 7 p.m. at Woodland Christian Church. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Stannett. Thank you, Mayor. I, too, want to echo the thanks to our first responders, Dean and Fire and Police. I heard some citizens talking on the news, Mayor, in West Liberty. They were excited to see our battalion chiefs there running the command post. So that's credit to Lexi and getting there so fast. And thank you for your press release and letting the employees get out of here at 2 o'clock. That shows a lot of leadership for your first time dealing with a natural disaster. So thank you. It went very well, and we really appreciate it in the community. I think a lot of business owners took heed to that and let their employees off too. So that was a good move. I also want to make sure we all remember next week our second biggest event that we host in Lexington, besides a U.K. basketball game, is the Sweet 16. It will be here in town. So I know it's big for a lot of business owners and a lot of people, and especially our public safety personnel. A lot of people behind the scenes like Laura Houlihan, the mayor's office. I know CAO Maloney and other people have worked very hard in keeping that event here, so let's all enjoy it and make sure we can continue to host that event here in Lexington. I know Councilman Beard is on the Lexington Center Board, so make sure we do everything we can, Councilman Beard, to keep those dollars coming into our city. And then I also want to put into the Public Safety Committee, I have a motion to put an ordinance prohibiting the running at large of horses or other members of the equine family in establishing a penalty for such violation. So moved. Second. And if this could also add to that, be heard at the May meeting. It's already drafted ordinance by our law department. If we can go ahead and hear it at the May meeting, Chairperson Lawless. Thank you. That's not in public safety, is it? Just a second. We've got a motion. We've got a motion. Got a second. and now we're open for discussion. Council Member Lawless. Okay. That is in planning, isn't it? This is animal care and control, so it would be under public safety. Okay. The May meeting is pretty full. I'll see what we can do. This is brief. One page. Yeah. It needs to happen before we go on for it. Public safety, nothing's brief. Thank you. We learned that today. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Oh, sorry. We didn't vote. Oh, boop, boop, boop. I got one more. There we go. Is there any further discussion on the motion? All right. We can take a vote then. All in favor? All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. And, Mayor, last but not least, can we get an update on when the pharmacy will be up and running? Do we have that information? A lot of people keep asking. Can they go ahead and send their prescriptions over? And then also, have we corrected the Humana HSA issue where they're charging our employees to have an HSA account because it's still being debited from their account? I will ask Melissa Luker to come to the microphone. On the first question, the pharmacy, in the contract it's June 1st. They're shooting for sooner. Okay. And I've talked with them. They're going to allow people to send in their prescriptions before the opening date because whenever they first open, their experience has been they get bombarded, so that will help out with that. They're doing interviews this week for the pharmacist in charge position, so things are moving right along. Furniture is going to be installed in about two weeks that they're doing, so things are moving quickly. They've applied for the licensing, so hopefully it will be sooner than that June 1st. On the HSA issue, I got an e-mail this morning saying that it had been fixed. However, when I logged on to my account, I still had some interest earned, and I know one other person did. So I've e-mailed back to ask what the status is, and I don't know if it's just a delay in updating your account online, but I have been told it's been fixed, but I'm not 100% positive. So if you still have the $375 charge, hold off. and then I've emailed them already, so once I hear that it has been officially fixed and it's clear on everyone's accounts, I'll let everybody know so that if they do have problems, they can contact me and I can get back with Humana to let them know that it's not fixed. Excellent update. And if you'll send out an email as to where employees can send those prescriptions, the address and everything, before it opens, you'll send that out and let everyone get on the same page, that'd be great because some people thought we had already opened it by passing a couple weeks ago and just want to make sure everyone understands June 1 is our target. Yeah. No, it's not open yet. Thank you. That will be part of the communications process to get where the prescriptions need to go and when they can start sending. Doing a great job. Thank you, Melissa. Melissa. Thank you. And while you're up here, why don't you give a quick summary of the monitoring that you've been doing with respect to complaints, inquiries, comments from employees through human resources and through your contact office. Okay. So the weekly. Yeah, I've been gathering the calls and complaints that have been coming in on a weekly basis. I'm proud to say that last week was the first week that we had no complaints or issues going on with the health insurance. In previous weeks we've had a couple, and then early on we had a lot of calls and questions coming in. But I'm getting weekly updates from human resources, and I'm keeping the mayor up to date on that and the commissioners. We've got a couple minor issues that we're working out, but everything else seems to be going pretty well. We know, too, that sometimes people may have irritations and they don't actually complain. So the fact that we're perhaps not getting complaints or irritations expressed doesn't mean that everyone's complacent. It means that still the energy level and the attention to details is dialed up, right? Yes, it is. okay okay thank you uh councilman kay did you have a it seemed i thought maybe you had a question may i have a councilman for melissa yeah well just when does the when does the rfp go out for the next next year's rates and so forth as we get ready for for this upcoming year do we know i'm not certain on the exact date i can get that for you i think we'll have to get back with them on that. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Councilman McCord, Council Report, right? All right, sir. Thank you, Mayor. As for our dodging a natural disaster on Friday, you know, we can call it luck or we can call it, you know, God's hand protecting us, but either way you look at it, we were spared, and I think our response has been very appropriate in taking things that we have and lending them to folks who don't have it. And so I appreciate all the folks that have been a part of that effort in helping our neighbors around the state with what is obviously going to be an ongoing recovery that will take a lot longer than a couple days or a couple weeks. And so certainly thoughts and Prayers go out to those in our Kentucky community that were affected by the storm. And, you know, it's a, Council Member Farmer, I think you're right. I think it causes us an opportunity to reflect and see where we need to be and what we have in our disposal, where we were lacking had it hit us. So I appreciate you putting that into public safety. On a lighter note, I want to congratulate all those, Mayor, inside the administration and that have been working with D.C. and Frankfurt on the Legacy Trail Phase 3 and getting funding for it, that key piece that pushes us into downtown and makes that connection to the heart of downtown, out to the horse park and beyond. And so I know that has been a major, major issue trying to get through that, and I'm very grateful for all those that have kept pressing for that to happen. And like Councilmember Stenet said, we're in one of the most exciting times right now because as you move into March and you have basketball teams doing well, it's really a great time to be in Kentucky. But no greater time to be in Kentucky as it relates to basketball is next week. And I would just encourage folks who haven't been to the Sweet 16 or haven't been there in a long time to come sometime between Wednesday and next Saturday. because, as Council Member Sennett said, there's a lot more than just basketball and this event that we host down here that's riding on this. There's been a whole lot of discussion about Rupp Arena, a whole lot of discussion. And folks kind of fall on different sides of that issue. But one thing that is not at issue is that this is a signature event. And the reason why it's at Rupp is because of one dynamic, and that is that the University of Kentucky really plays on that floor, and every high school kid sees themselves running onto that court. And while Louisville will do its darndest to take this event and put it in this new shiny box they've got, there's something very nostalgic and something very cool about running onto that floor, even if it's just for one game. And we have to take a look at these community assets like that and why people want to use them and really leverage them to the fullest. So next week, it's probably my challenge, I guess, I'll just make it that way, to every citizen just to come down for one session and see what happens inside that box and see this signature event. It's unlike anything in America. They've done a documentary on our high school tournament, and it's hosted here. It's in this great season of March Madness, but it's a whole lot more than that, and there's a lot riding on it. And that's why we had this discussion of Rupp Arena and these areas, is because these are such important things and they drive such a key piece of our economy. So with that said, I welcome the Sweet 16 in again. I would just ask that every member of this community, council, administration, that we do everything in our power to keep those types of things here that are signature to Lexington. So I look forward to seeing many of you all down there. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member McCord. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. everybody was right on about congratulating our public safety people for being in the hills, helping those folks in West Liberty and I guess Laurel County maybe, and maybe over into Hardin County. Interestingly enough, and I've forgotten whether it was Saturday or Sunday, There was a little clip on one of the newscasts. Ten students from Vermont were, I believe, in West Liberty, and 20 students from Duke University. I was hoping that it was their basketball team and the managers that they sent, but that's probably not the case. case. But it was far reaching what these folks, college students, the ones from Vermont must have hopped right on the plane or probably drove to get here to be on site as quickly as they were. And they're to be congratulated and thanked also. They'll never get a chance to see gtv i'm sorry for that but anyway we can still wish them our thanks and our state's thanks thank you mayor thank you councilmember beard don't have anyone else signed up is anyone else does anyone else wish to offer a council report all right then we can move on to the mayor's report Second. There's a motion by Council Member Crosby, second by Council Member Myers to approve. Thank you. Is there any comment? Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. Next on our agenda is other public comments for issues not on the agenda. Mr. Mundy, you don't have anybody? All right. Thank you, sir. All right. Then I'll – Council Member Ellinger has a motion. Thank you, Mayor. I move that we go into closed session pursuant to KRS 61.8101F for the discussion that may lead to appointment of an employee. So moved. There's a motion to enter closed session by Council Member Ellinger, second by Council Member Martin. Is there any discussion on the motion? If you're hearing none, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. So the council now goes into closed session. For those of you all who are not familiar with our procedure.