# Council Work Session - May 8, 2012 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 8, 2012 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2508 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2508?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2012-05-08 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 20,503 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council met on May 8, 2012, at 3:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers on the 2nd Floor of the Government Center. Mayor Jim Gray presided over the meeting, which included 10 agenda items and resulted in 27 motions and votes. The council heard 12 public comments from residents during the meeting. The council addressed a range of business including requested rezonings and docket approvals, budget amendments, and new business matters, all of which were approved. The meeting also included informational items such as public comments on agenda issues, continuing business and presentations, and public comments on issues not on the agenda. Additional approved items included council reports and the mayor's report. The meeting concluded with adjournment. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on May 8, 2012: Chuck Ellinger, Kevin Stinnett, Linda Gorton, Tom Blues, Julian Beard, George Myers, Bill Farmer, Jr., Diane Lawless, Steve Kay, Doug Martin, Jay McChord, Ed Lane, Clay Mason, David Lucas, Richard Moloney, Sally Hamilton, Janet Graham, Tamara Walters, Ryan Barrow, James Ballinger, Judy Taylor, JD Cheney, Bob Dameron, Kelly Flood, Kathy Stein, Carroll, David Stevens, Kristen Chilton, Les Fryman, Patty Howard, Judy J.J. Jackson, Jessica Gies, Jennifer Bennefield, Paul Schoeniger, Brian Wood, David Stack, Keith Gaines, Brian Monro, Chris Redmond, and Brian Matone. No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included 27 motions, most of which passed by voice vote. **Procedural Motions (Voice Votes)** The docket was approved on motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, seconded by George Myers [timestamp: 00:05:08]. The Summary was approved on motion by Linda Gorton, seconded by Julian Beard [timestamp: 00:06:12]. Budget Amendments were approved on motion by Linda Gorton, seconded by Chuck Ellinger [timestamp: 00:06:42]. New Business Items were approved on motion by Linda Gorton, seconded by Chuck Ellinger [timestamp: 00:43:29]. **Ordinance and Planning Matters (Voice Votes)** An ordinance amending Section 2-87(a) of the Code of Ordinances to include a member from the Masterson Station Neighborhood Association on the Masterson Station Park Advisory Board was placed on the docket for first reading on motion by Tom Blues, seconded by George Henson [timestamp: 00:05:08]. The 2012 Comprehensive Plan Goals and Objectives were placed on the docket for first reading on motion by Bill Farmer, Jr., seconded by Linda Gorton. The 2012 Comprehensive Plan Goals and Objectives Dashboard document was placed on the docket for first reading on motion by Bill Farmer, Jr., seconded by Julian Beard. The Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment for the Adult Day Care Definition was placed on the docket for first reading on motion by Bill Farmer, Jr., seconded by Linda Gorton. The Fencing Ordinance Text Amendment was placed on the docket for first reading on motion by Bill Farmer, Jr., seconded by Steve Kay. **Roll Call Votes** Text changes amending section 7-2.1(a) of the Code of Ordinances passed 8-7 on motion by George Myers, seconded by Diane Lawless. Voting in favor: Chuck Ellinger, Kevin Stinnett, Linda Gorton, Tom Blues, Bill Farmer Jr., Jay McChord, Steve Kay, and Doug Martin. Voting against: Julian Beard, George Myers, Martin, Diane Lawless, Richard Moloney, Clay Mason, and David Lucas. The Lextran budget as presented was placed on the docket for first reading, passing 10-1 on motion by Steve Kay, seconded by Tom Blues. Martin voted against. A motion to table the Lextran Budget failed 2-9 on motion by Doug Martin, seconded by George Myers. Bill Farmer, Jr. and Jay McChord voted in favor. A motion to instruct Steve Kay to report on the Golf Program subsidy passed 11-1 on motion by Jay McChord, seconded by George Myers. Diane Lawless voted against. A motion to refer the Fire and EMS Task Force issue back to the Public Safety Committee failed 7-8 on motion by Doug Martin, seconded by Ed Lane. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting authorized multiple contracts, grants, and financial actions totaling millions of dollars across various city departments and services. **Contracts and Service Agreements** The city approved an amendment to the facilities maintenance agreement with Meridian Management Corporation for courthouse facility management services at $3,500.00 per month (0348-12). A contract with The Prudential Insurance Company of America for Group Life Insurance covering all LFUCG employees was authorized for $747,000.00 (0436-12). Cassidian Corporation was awarded a contract for public safety grade 800 MHz digital trunked radio infrastructure totaling $4,762,236 (0438-12). The Lexington-Fayette County Health Department received authorization for a Fiscal Year 2012 contract addendum for the Home Network Project at the Family Care Center in the amount of $41,208 (0452-12). Stantec Consulting Services Inc. was approved for a professional services agreement regarding the Sanitary Sewer Capacity Assurance Plan for $1,012,500 (0460-12). A lease agreement with NAMI Lexington (KY), Inc. for space at 498 Georgetown Street was authorized at $3,918.66 per year (0465-12). Tactical Energetic Entry System, LLC received $39,500 for dynamic entry training for the Division of Police (0472-12). Claunch Construction, LLC was approved for Change Order No. 1 for Meadows/Northland/Arlington Public Improvements Design Phase 3D in the amount of $21,239.80 (0479-12). **Grants and Awards** The city accepted multiple grant awards: $2,006,685 from the Commission on Fire Protection, Personnel, Standards, and Education for firefighter training incentives (0454-12); $2,120,336 from the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet for Police Training Incentive Grant for FY 2013 (0453-12); $460,000 from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet for ITS/CMS Traffic Improvements Project for FY 2013 (0471-12); $294.79 from the U.S. Department of Justice for bulletproof vests for the Fayette County Sheriff's Office (0474-12); and $49,495 for the Neighborhood and Community Sustainability Grant program (0477-12). Authorization was also granted to submit an application to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for $629,600 under the 2012 Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program for ladder truck replacement (0473-12). **Bonds and Other Actions** The city approved issuance of taxable general obligation pension funding bonds, series 2012A for $31,000,000 (0491-12) and general obligation refunding bonds, series 2012B not to exceed $10,000,000 (0494-12), with authorization to advertise for bids (0495-12). Additional approvals included internal advertisement of vacant positions through December 31, 2012 with no budgetary impact (0469-12) and street name and address number changes to support the Enhanced 9-1-1 system (0475-12). ## Public Comment The meeting included remarks from state representatives, council members, and city officials addressing a range of legislative, financial, and community matters. **Legislative Updates** Judy Taylor provided a report on key legislation passed during the session, including bills related to foreclosure, property maintenance, metal theft, and economic development, emphasizing collaboration between local and state governments [timestamp: 00:07:14]. Representative Bob Dameron highlighted pension reform and praised the passage of House Bill 1, the Pill Bill, which addresses prescription drug abuse with implications for public safety and corrections budgets [timestamp: 00:33:19]. Representative Kelly Flood commended funding for the state road plan and emphasized continued investment in public education, particularly higher education, for long-term economic growth [timestamp: 00:37:53]. **Financial and Infrastructure Concerns** Council Member Martin expressed strong opposition to issuing $31 million in pension bonds, warning that it represents a risky financial strategy that could lead to bankruptcy due to speculative investment and unsustainable debt [timestamp: 00:44:07]. Council Member Lane requested a presentation from the Police and Firefighters Pension Fund to review historical earnings and future projections before finalizing the bond issuance [timestamp: 00:59:22]. Council Member Stenet requested detailed bid information and RFP criteria for the public safety radio system, emphasizing the need for transparency in the decision-making process [timestamp: 00:52:02]. Council Member Beard raised concerns about standardizing one-digit street addresses to ensure compatibility with the 9-1-1 system [timestamp: 01:12:24]. **Community Matters** Council Member McCord publicly thanked Chris Redmond of Redmond's Garden Center for a donation of 24 trees to multiple city parks [timestamp: 02:08:03]. Council Member Lawless presented a motion to amend the residential parking permit program on the 400 block of South Upper Street to allow 24/7 access [timestamp: 02:11:23]. Council Member Henson reported on a successful neighborhood meeting and announced a cleanup event on First Hills Road [timestamp: 02:15:39]. Council Member Blues announced two upcoming neighborhood meetings: a candidate forum for the Second District Council office and a discussion on renaming a community center [timestamp: 02:16:46]. **Tribute** Mayor Jim Gray paid tribute to Brian Matone, assistant county attorney, who passed away, expressing condolences to his family and honoring his dedication to public service [timestamp: 02:19:07]. ## Contested Items The May 8, 2012 meeting included three significant areas of disagreement among council members. **Pension Bond Issuance** Council Member Martin and others opposed a $31 million pension bond issuance, raising concerns about financial risk and speculative investment practices. Despite the opposition and calls for further review, the motion passed, though the vote reflected significant dissent on the council. **Emergency Care Unit Staffing** A heated discussion arose over a proposal to reduce Emergency Care Unit staffing from three to two personnel. Council members debated the safety implications, costs, and operational consequences of the reduction. A motion to refer the staffing issue back to the Public Safety Committee for further consideration failed on a 7-8 vote, meaning the proposal did not receive the support needed to return it for additional review. **Public Safety Radio System Bid Transparency** Council Member Stenet raised procedural concerns about the Public Safety Radio System bid process, requesting full bid details and RFP (Request for Proposal) criteria. Stenet argued that the decision-making process lacked sufficient transparency and that more detailed documentation was necessary before proceeding. ## Public Comment – Issues on Agenda [timestamp: 00:03:00] During this agenda item, council members welcomed members of the Fayette legislative delegation and acknowledged their support for the city. Public comment was brief, with no speakers present to address the council on issues listed on the agenda. Mayor Jim Gray and Ed Lane were the key participants during this portion of the meeting. The outcome was informational in nature, with no formal action taken. ## Requested Rezonings/Docket Approval [timestamp: 00:05:08] The docket was approved during this agenda item. Key speakers included Vice Mayor Gordon, Tom Blues, and George Myers. A motion to add an ordinance amending the Masterson Station Park Advisory Board was passed without dissent. The item was approved as presented. ## Approval of Summary The summary was presented for approval during this agenda item. [timestamp: 00:06:12] **Outcome** The summary was approved without discussion or dissent. ## Budget Amendments The budget amendments were discussed and approved without dissent. [timestamp: 00:06:42] **Key Speakers** Linda Gorton and Chuck Ellinger led the discussion on this agenda item. **Items Discussed** Several financial matters were addressed during this section, including: * Bond issuances * Grant awards **Outcome** The budget amendments were approved unanimously with no opposition raised during the discussion. ## New Business [timestamp: 00:43:29] The council addressed several new business items, including contracts for insurance, radio systems, and infrastructure improvements, all of which were approved. A significant portion of the discussion focused on a $31 million pension bond issuance, which generated contentious debate among council members. Key speakers in this discussion included Linda Gorton, Chuck Ellinger, Doug Martin, and Tom Blues. The pension bond issuance proved to be the most debated item during this section of the meeting, though the specific concerns and arguments raised by individual council members are not detailed in the available information. **Outcome:** The new business items were approved. ## Continuing Business/Presentations [timestamp: 00:16:57] This agenda item included three presentations and discussion of a staffing matter. **Presentations** The meeting featured updates from multiple speakers: - Judy Taylor provided information on the General Assembly - JD Cheney presented the Fire and EMS Task Force Report - Bill Farmer, Jr. delivered the Property Valuation Administrator's annual message **Staffing Issue Discussion** The body addressed a matter concerning emergency services unit staffing levels, specifically the question of 3 versus 2 EC unit staffing. A motion was made to refer this issue back to the Public Safety Committee for further consideration. However, this motion failed. **Outcome** The presentations were informational in nature. The failed motion meant the staffing issue was not referred back to committee at this time, and the matter remained unresolved through this agenda item. Key speakers during this section included Judy Taylor, JD Cheney, Bill Farmer, Jr., David Lucas, and David O'Neill. ## Council Reports Council members provided updates on neighborhood activities and municipal initiatives during this agenda item. **Reports and Updates** Council Member McCord, Council Member Henson, and Council Member Blues reported on neighborhood meetings, park improvements, and upcoming community events. The specific details of these neighborhood meetings and park improvement projects were discussed during this portion of the meeting. [timestamp: 02:11:23] **Residential Parking Permit Program Amendment** A motion to amend the residential parking permit program was presented and voted on during this agenda item. The motion passed. **Outcome** The agenda item was approved. ## Public Comments – Issues Not on Agenda [timestamp: 02:18:31] No members of the public provided comments during this portion of the meeting. The public comment period for issues not on the agenda was held, but no speakers came forward to address the board. ## Mayor's Report The Mayor's Report was presented and approved without discussion [timestamp: 02:18:31]. Mayor Jim Gray delivered the report to the assembled body. During this agenda item, a tribute was paid to Brian Matone, assistant county attorney, recognizing his service and contributions. The report was approved by the body without further debate or comments from other members. ## Adjournment A motion to adjourn was made and passed, concluding the meeting [timestamp: 02:20:09]. Chuck Ellinger and George Myers were the key speakers during this agenda item. The motion to adjourn was approved, formally ending the meeting. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Docket - **Motion** — passed (2-87): place on the docket for the May 10, 2012 meeting, first reading of Ordinance amending Section 2-87 (a) of the Code of Ordinances related to the Masterson Station Park Advisory Board to include a member from the Masterson Station Neighborhood Association - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Budget Amendments - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the New Business - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for the May 10, 2012 meeting, the Horses Running at Large ordinance as passed by the Public Safety Committee - **Motion** — failed (0-0): refer the Fire and EMS Task Force issue back into the Public Safety Committee so they can explore the wisdom of 3 vs. 2 on an Emergency Care Unit. Lane seconded the motion. The motion failed 7-8 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for the May 10, 2012 meeting, a resolution amending the Residential Parking Permit Program for the 400 block of South Upper Street, from 7:00am to 5:00pm Monday through Friday; to 24 hours per day restriction 7 days per week; and waiving the provisions relating to the mechanics of designating residential parking permit areas adopted by Resolution NO. 168-90 and amended by resolutions NOS. 450-91 and 433-2006 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve Mayor’s Report - **Motion** — passed (0-0): adjourn at 5:16pm --- ## Full transcript Music guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. All right. It worked. Greetings, everyone. Welcome to the work session, the council work session, May the 8th. And before I ask for a public comment, I'd like to welcome members from our Fayette legislative delegation. Representative Flood and Senator Stein are here, and I believe others are joining. and I'd like to ask, before we do public comment, Council Member Lane has a motion. Thank you, Mayor Gray. Since we do have several members of the General Assembly with us today to accommodate their schedule, we'd like to move the General Assembly update to the position between budget amendments and new business. So moved. Motion by Council Member Lane. Second by Council Member Myers. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. All right. First on our agenda today is public comment for issues on the agenda. Mr. Mundy, I don't have anybody. We're okay there. All right. Next, I ask for a motion to approve the docket. Move approval. Motion by Vice Mayor Gordon. seconded by Council Member Myers to approve the docket. Is there any discussion? Yes, Council Member Blues. I'd like to add an item to the docket. Council Members, earlier I sent out an e-mail with a draft amended ordinance from the Masterson Station Park Advisory Board. And in the last revision of that ordinance last October, one of the membership slots was inadvertently left out, so this corrects that error. I move to place on the docket for the May 10, 2012 Council meeting under first reading of ordinances, an ordinance adding a member from the Masterson Station Neighborhood Association to the Masterson Station Parks Advisory Board. So moved. Second. It's a motion by Council Member Blue, seconded by Council Member Henson. Is there any discussion on Council Blue's motion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Back to discussion on the docket. Is there any further discussion regarding the docket? Okay. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is approval of the summary. Is there a motion? Move approval. It's a motion by Vice Mayor Gordon. Second by Council Member Beard. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. Next on our agenda, budget amendments. Is there a motion? Move approval. It's a motion by Vice Mayor Gordon. Second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote on the motion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Thank you. Next on our agenda, according to the motion that was passed earlier, we will move to the presentation, the General Assembly update, update and here today representing representing the city is Judy Taylor and JD Cheney who has worked closely with cities across the state including Lexington representing the Kentucky League of Cities so miss Taylor and mr. Cheney thank you all very much for being here and you're gonna you're gonna take get from here. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, members of the Council. Let me again acknowledge, and Senator Carroll has come in, former Governor Carroll, and we're just delighted he is here, and of course Representative Kelly Flood, Senator Kathy Stein. And I think the first thing that we would say is that this is a report about what they did. It is not about what JD and I did, It's about what our delegation and the other members of the General Assembly did, and we want to make sure we acknowledge that. J.D. and I don't get to vote. They're the only ones who get to vote, so we appreciate every single thing they did for us. And Representative Dameron is coming in. He said he would be a few minutes late. He had a meeting in Frankfurt, and I can't tell you how important it is that we have a member of leadership from this area. It's crucial to us. If you look at the handout, we tried to not list everything. We gave it to you in hard copy, but on these PowerPoint presentations, we did not list everything that we gave you in the other. I do want to reiterate that we work very closely with KLC. J.D. Cheney, who is to my right, has been just wonderful. I had a little bit of a learning curve, learning about cities and all the things they're interested in, and one of the things I found out, as you all already know, is they're interested in everything. So without J.D., who has an exceptional knowledge of city law and that kind of thing, I would not have been able to work diligently and, I hope, successfully on your behalf. One of the bills of interest that passed, Senate Bill 40, an alcoholic beverage bill, and it means that no longer will you have to have an opening to your bar on the first floor. Now, there were some concerns about that, and we understood that, but from an economic development point, it was very, very important that that particular piece of legislation passed. Pseudo-ephedrine, it is not all done by prescription, but there is a limitation now on it. And if you go over the grams, then you would have to get a prescription for that. Deed in lieu of foreclosure. J.D., I'll let you handle that one. House Bill 62 was a bill that was brought to the League Board by several cities about issues related to identifying property owners. When a property owner surrenders their mortgage to the mortgage holder and says, please don't foreclose. I'm just going to turn over the deed to you. I give up and walks away. We found that in several communities, the banks were holding on to those deeds rather than filing them with the county clerk's office. That made it difficult for cities that were wanting to enforce their nuisance ordinance or other abatement orders to tie it to the appropriate property owner. House Bill 62 is a small measure, but our code enforcement officials assure us that it's a very helpful measure in requiring mortgage holders to file the deed in lieu of foreclosure with the county clerk's office within 45 days of its execution. That will help the city identify the responsible party when there's a property maintenance code or other ordinance violation. And House Bill 396, which is expedited foreclosure. House Bill 396 was a venture between cities and the Kentucky Bankers Association to help, as it says, expedite the foreclosure process in some instances. We found it to be difficult in a number of communities, and I'm sure Lexington's not immune to this, where a property set in foreclosure, the property owner essentially surrendered the premises, quit taking care of it once that foreclosure process took place. We thought if we worked with the bankers in a situation where property has been abandoned or walked away from, if the bank could prove to a judge that the property has actually been abandoned, had been vacant without a legal residence for 45 days and had other evidence of abandonment, and could prove that in their foreclosure complaint, the judge could order an expedited foreclosure process. the sale would have to occur within 70 days of the order. The benefit to cities in that, not just from the mortgage company's standpoint, is the faster that property's turned and put back into productive use, hopefully the less resources that a city government has to use of the public's resources in maintaining and abating property nuisances. So hopefully this is one of those pieces of legislation where you reap the benefit from that as a city government and the public will reap the benefit from that without the city really having to take a lot of action on that when the mortgage companies use that expedited process. House Bill 390 was metal theft, and I know some members of the council have a particular interest in that, and it's a beginning measure to try to deal with what is costing businesses and homeowners lots of money from people stealing metal. House Bill 189 was merged governments, and here was a very good example of working closely with KLC. This is a bill they've worked on for a couple of years, and obviously it was very important to them that it be passed. Councilman Henson, you had a piece of legislation that you were interested in about civil penalties for littering as opposed to making everything criminal. We asked, originally we were going to put it on one piece of legislation. That piece didn't go very far. I asked J.D. if he would let us put it on their bill. He said, yes, we worked very closely together to get it on the bill, get it passed, and so now it is law. And that's a very good example of being able to work together to do something, yes, that benefits this city, but it also benefited all the cities. The merged government bill, the underlying bill? It relates to charter county governments and unified local governments, which wouldn't be a concern here in Fayette County since you're already an urban county government. But we have a number, believe it or not, we have a number of other communities that are exploring their merger options and consolidate a local government like Louisville. An urban county government unfortunately aren't a realistic model for many of these smaller communities to embrace in considering merger options with county governments. So we had some clarification procedures in those, hopefully, that will accommodate some of the interest out there in the rest of the state in a merger process. Those discussions are going on in a number of communities. House Bill 277 was the Occupational License Tax Form, and a lot of businesses had complained that it's very difficult if you do business in numerous jurisdictions to fill out all the different forms. So this was an effort. We worked with Bill O'Meara. with different people, not only just in Lexington, but all over the state. And J.D. and I worked very closely with these people in trying to come up with something that's workable with the understanding and the underlying premise that this was not a beginning of centralized collection for occupational taxes. We made that very clear from the outset of this that we were not interested in discussing that issue in any way, shape, or form. House Bill 265, which was the budget bill, was the suspension of retirees COLA. It did not include the Lexington Police and Fire, but does include civil service retirees. Again, we will be glad to answer questions at the end of this if you have them. House Bill, let me go down here to House Bill 265 again with the Lexington Downtown Redevelopment Project, which is the Rupp District. We were given, at a time when almost nobody got any money, we were given $1.25 million each year of the biennium with a match from local match so that we could begin planning on this project, which is one of the most important economic development tools we could ever have. So we hope you'll be supportive of that. I'd like to back up to House Bill 378, which is the public advocacy bill. By statute, Jefferson County and Fayette County's judges are set by law. If you exceed those, you have to pay the cost of the public advocate's office. We were very close to exceeding that. So the bill says that you do not count family court judges in that calculation, and that saved us $2 million. By the way, it was the last bill that passed. It went to the governor's office at four minutes of midnight. Bills of interest that did not pass. Annual safety inspection for vehicles. Lest you be concerned, we already do inspect our vehicles. This would have just been additional paperwork and additional things that were not necessary. Increased workers' comp benefits for firefighters. The cancer presumption for firefighters. Expansion of the police bill of rights. Mandatory collective bargaining. 9-1-1 legislation reducing local revenues, the occupational license tax limitations, and the health care mandates. Those were bills that, now there were many more, and J.D. was kind enough to bring along the Kentucky League of Cities report that talks about these bills in great detail. But if you have questions, we will attempt to answer them. Thank you so much for your patience and your courtesy. Oh, we have one last slide. Yes, we do. And this is just a beautiful thing. It has real money, and it's for roads and bridges. and I will tell you that I am not really good with the road plan aspects, but I do understand $115 million in this year, not next year, this year, $78 million in next year, and $54 million in the following year. Folks, this is a major coup, and we thank our delegation for it because without them it would not have happened. Thank you, Ms. Taylor. Thanks, Judy. And I saw it arrived in the back of the room. Speaking of transportation, from District 7, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, is our Chief District Engineer, James Ballinger. And James, if we have some questions that relate to the road plan, maybe you can help us with that. Is that okay? Thank you, sir. All right. So we do have some council members that have signed on for comments or to speak. And then at some point in time, when it's appropriate, if any of our legislators, and I see that Governor Senator Carroll has arrived as well, and our caucus chair, majority caucus chair, Bob Dameron, has just arrived as well. So if anyone would like to comment, any of you, we would welcome that. All right. I believe, Mr. Mayor, that Representative Dameron missed our comments earlier about how important he was to what went on for Fayette County. Why don't you? Thank you, Representative Dameron. I think we would happily allow you to repeat that, Ms. Taylor. I said that without his help and without his leadership that we would not have received the things we do, and he is crucial to the success of this county. I think since you've said that twice, we might allow applause for that. Thank you. All right. I think we can bring the house lights back up now. Vice Mayor Gordon has signed on. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, I want to thank our state legislators. We place a lot of faith and trust in you and the work that you do on the state level. And also thank you for being here today. That's a large statement for us. We really appreciate that you're here. And Judy and J.D., this is an excellent little booklet for us to study. and I don't recall in the past if you've last year or in previous years done this, but I think this is really helpful for the Council to review and see just what kind of legislation did get passed and to help us understand that as far as our local folks are concerned. So I thank both of you very much. I don't really have a question. I just really want to tell you how much I appreciate this. Thank you, and thank you for allowing me to serve Lexington and Fayette County, because it's an honor to do so. I live here, and I'm proud of what I do. Thanks, Vice Mayor. Council Member Hanson. Thank you, Mayor. I don't have any questions, but I did have some comments and wanted to thank our state representatives and senators that are here for the work that they do. and I want to really thank Judy for being my communication to them. So I thought it was fun this year to work in this process. I'd only sent one other thing to Frankfurt before, and I think it's kind of like the horse race where the horse is in the back and it's still running. So I don't have a clue what happened to it, but I do appreciate your work. It's very much appreciated, and we can move forward. And I think, you know, the items as far as foreclosures, those two things as a council member can really help with some issues I hope that we have in our district. And, of course, the littering being put onto the merged government, that is going to hopefully be a big help, and I can bring something forward to the council and we can maybe take a different route with littering. So thank you very much. Our pleasure. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Delegation, thanks for being here. Senator Steinem, I particularly appreciate that you're here and not hundreds of miles away. I'm sorry that I think my prohibition on private transfer fees got passed and didn't make the list. So that may be next year. As far as foreclosures, we all get a lot of calls about foreclosures. And something we desperately need is a new mechanism so that the court system can collect a fee in connection with the foreclosure process to take care of these properties. I just got an email just minutes ago about a chronic property that's been in foreclosure that they let go again. The grass gets two feet high. The city doesn't have any really resources to do that because we put a lien notice on the door, and they just ignore that because there's nobody really responsible for it in no man's land. So I just beg the legislature to help us sort of fix that because these houses are bringing down property values. And it is a constant source of communication from constituents. And I think it's something that only really the legislature can fix. I don't think we have a mechanism for doing that. I can't pass up the opportunity to talk about pensions. And so the fact that the rest of the state got relief from COLA adjustments and we didn't is very disheartening. Our current pension shortfall is about $585 million. It's $258 million for the pension fund, about $100 million where you own bonds, and we're going to talk about that again today, and about $228 million in other post-employment benefits, basically medical benefits that we have promised for the lifetimes of our police and fire employees. And this amount has been increasing for the last three years by $50 million a year. $50 million every year that number goes up. And so we are desperate for a solution, and we can't fix this ourselves without the General Assembly helping us. I think I have bird-dogged everybody out there about this at one time or another, but it is so desperate. We don't have $50 million a year just to stand still, let alone to make our annual required payments and also catch up. And if Lexington ends up taking bankruptcy because of this, we all are to blame. And so I just beg that you help us with this because it is dragging Lexington down into a dark, deep pit. And I shouldn't talk about this with our bond council here, but such a serendipity. So thank you for coming and thank you for representing the citizens of Lexington. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Martin. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. I want to personally thank Representative Fudd and Representative Dameron and Senator Stein and Governor-Senator Carroll by name because you're in the House. And I want to encourage you to keep coming back and hearing some of the concerns that we have because if we don't work together, then, as we say, some of these issues kind of catch up to us. But I want to thank you for your work on our behalf and on the citizens of Lexington's behalf. And just know that there's a number of things I think that we can do together. And what I would really love to see is for opportunities to interface us together. How can we support you and how can we communicate better to you? Because there's a great deal of frustration when we don't see you. And there's a great deal of frustration when constituents are asking these questions and we're saying, well, that's a Frankfurt issue and that's not really in our purview. And so anything that we can do now that the session is over just to work together, I would be happy to help facilitate in Commerce Lexington as well. But at the end of the day, I want to thank you for your service, and I want to personally thank the ones that are in the room and the ones that aren't here. But especially those in the room, it means a lot to me personally for you to be here today. So, again, thank you for your work. And thank you also for this road plan. and those real dollars, because at the end of the day, there is a huge need for infrastructure improvements in our roads, and for you all to help us pull those kind of numbers is duly noted, and especially by this council member. So thank you all very much. Thank you. All right. That's all I have signed up to speak today. If any of our legislators, we would welcome any members of the delegation to speak. if you would like to. Thank you, Senator. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the Council for your very warm welcome. We really appreciate it. This past session, as Judy and Mr. Cheney can certainly would agree, was the most difficult session. Everybody needs more money. We need to solve these lingering problems that we have had, Councilman Martin, with the pension issue. And I do believe that with the work of the task force that has gone on in this community regarding the pension, and it's getting together with the Fayette County delegation, there's bound to be a solution out there somewhere. We're all reasonable people, firefighters, police officers. We need to work in unison to get this done, and I believe we can. The road plan is pretty cool. To actually have those things and not have them jerked out at the last minute was quite a nice thing to happen. I'm going to bring something up that I would like for you all to seriously consider. About a decade ago, I was working with the League of Cities, and this is when I was in the house, of course. I believe that this county desperately needs a local option sales tax. Think of the revenue we could raise with that here in Fayette County. A former administration was, well, not only was not supportive, but was very opposed to that. However, from the clapping of hands here, I believe that we might be able to get together to discuss that. Fayette County is different. Fayette County, Jefferson County, some of the larger counties, we are not as fearful about that three-letter word as some people are, and it's a local option tax increase. So I would be very interested in trying to assist to make that happen if it would be the will of the majority of the council here to get that done. Do you all have any questions of me? Those are just the brief comments I wanted to make. Thank you, Senator. Thank you. Thank you. Governor, happy to have you here, sir. Have you been here ever before? Mayor Gray and members of the Council, it's difficult for me to pass up an opportunity to speak. You would understand that, Mayor. I want you to know what a pleasure it is that my district includes a large portion of Fayette County. Also, for those of you that may not be aware, I represent all of Franklin County, all of Woodford County, all of Anderson County, and about a third of the territory of Fayette County, basically everything north of Circle Drive. And so it's a pleasure for me to be here today. My schedule doesn't often give me the opportunity, but I was glad that the mayor's office called me and reminded me that they'd like for me to be present, and it's a pleasure to be present. I want you to know that I have a lot of personal interest in Fayette County and Lexington. For those of you that do not know, this is my former home. as a graduate of the University of Kentucky Law School, and I spent several years here, and I have a great affection for Lexington, which I tried to exhibit when I was down on the first floor when I built Rupp Arena, which now has been a few years ago, and we need to build it again, I guess, not only by this time. But I have tried very diligently always to look at the problems in Fayette County, and the one you mentioned regarding the pension fund is the problem that we have in state government as well, as I'm well aware of the problems that you have here in Fayette County. I want you to particularly know, and I say this from a personal standpoint, what a pleasure it is for me to talk to my friend Kathy Stein and coming out of the House and coming over to the Senate. I have a great pleasure in working with Kathy as well as, obviously, the other members of our delegation. But we've established a longstanding personal friendship, as I have with Mayor Gray. If you permit me just to say a moment, Mayor Gray's family and I have known each other since I ran for lieutenant governor back in 19. and 71, which has been a few years ago and even before the birth of some of you on the council. But I'm here to answer, rather than take up your time, I'm here to answer any issue that you have that you'd like to share with me or any other legislator. But otherwise, Mayor, it's been a pleasure to visit with you today. Thank you. Thank you, Governor. Representative Bob Dameron. Well, it's a pleasure to be here with you and many of your friends, and we've known each other for a long time. I'm not quite as old as Governor Carroll is, so I don't remember when Abraham Lincoln was president, But I certainly have been a longstanding member and actually a resident of Fayette County for several years before I moved to Jessamine County. It was an honor to work with the mayor during this session and with his staff and commenting to us and also hearing from you. I know he kept us informed of the direction that you all wanted us to go, and we tried as best we could to do that. I will take a little bit of credit from the standpoint from the House Democrat side is that I think every bill that probably J.D. and Judy talked to you about originated in the House, and they were sponsored by members of our caucus. So it's something that Kelly and I are very proud of, the direction that they took. I think pension reform, I would agree somewhat with Kathy in that it's going to have to be a solution that everyone is at the table. From a state standpoint, we need to have not only our current and active employees, but our retirees at the table so that they fully understand that we're trying to work to solve a problem. And, Doug, you're right. It's an issue that if we don't resolve at some point in time, fairly shortly, we're not going to have the ability to resolve it. So we're working on that, and I think we'll continue to see that effort in the 2013 session, and hopefully we'll find some resolution. I want to mention one bill that probably wasn't mentioned to you that I think was one of the most important pieces of legislation that passed during the session, and that was House Bill 1 during the special session. None of us like to go back to Frankfurt. I don't think there's a single legislator here that was happy that we had to go back for the five-day special session. But if there was ever a piece of legislation that I believe justified those five days of expenditure of both our time and the taxpayers' resources with the passage of the House Bill 1, otherwise known as the Pill Bill Bill, I'm sure that Chief Baston as well as Chief Bovin and Chief of Nicholasville Police will tell you that 85% of most of the crime, or 85% of the crime committed, has some relationship, Bill, to drugs. and if we can begin to get a handle on how we deal with prescription drug abuse in this state, the amount of time and effort that was spent on finding that resolution in House Bill 1 I think was critical. And of all the things that we did and all the road projects that we were successful in being able to fund in Fayette County, I think the impact of that legislation to Fayette County, to your budget going forward, to the budget of the corrections department in Fayette County to the budget of the police, and our court system will be dramatic. It will take a little while for it to phase in, but if we don't get a handle on dealing with prescription drug abuse, all the rest of it won't matter. And so with that, I just want to tell you how much we appreciate your comments, and again, I want to thank the mayor for his involvement in staying in contact with me and the members of the leadership and our caucus and what was important to you. The only way that we can continue to work together is if we have that open communication back and forth. The legislature tries to stay out of local government and letting you all make the decisions that you need to make here as best as possible to give you the tools, try not to restrict you any more than necessary from a standpoint. and I hope that this session was a success in meeting that goal and I hope that the future sessions as we move forward in 13, 14, 15 and so on we can continue to work on that and Doug I look forward to continuing our dialogue about pension reform but we do have to bring all the parties together both retirees and actives and find a solution that we can move forward that our taxpayers can afford to pay for but I'll be glad to answer any questions you all might have again and thank you very much for your support. Thank you so much, Representative Dameron. And Representative Kelly Flood. Council members, thank you for this invitation today. I was very glad to get it and look forward to future visits. Several things I just wanted to add in addition to my colleagues is that we very much have Representative Sannie Overly from Paris, Kentucky, at Bourbon County to thank for the work that was done here in Fayette County. She is, of course, not only an attorney but an engineer in charge of overseeing the House's plan that's put forth on the road plan for the state, and she's done a remarkable job of ensuring that what's in the two-year and then the subsequent four-year out road plan has funding behind it that can sustain it. And that, to me, is one of the most significant shifts we've made. She set a tone and a process that ensures that that's how we move forward. So bravo, and let's make sure we recognize Sandy in that work. I also wanted to say that I felt it was critical the number of times that the mayor showed up in Frankfurt as well. I respect Councilman McCord's comments for that very reason, because the mayor was in Frankfurt numerous times and advocating for the key issues that mattered to this region of the state. And I think that's an important way that he approached many things. While he always was advocating for Lexington proper and many of the things that you all sent him down there to advocate for, he connected it to the larger economic impact in the region. And we know that while it's often spoken of in loose terms, the golden triangle, when it comes to recognizing where dollars right now are bringing this state out of the Great Recession, we are a part of that tripod, and we need to recognize it, own it, claim it, and make it work for us, as I know that you are doing. And I would say about the pension reform, I've been a voting person in this wonderful place now for 23 years and now a legislator for four and understand a lot more clearly how complicated the issue is. And it is going to take leadership, and there's plenty of leadership in this room. It's going to take us thinking outside the box. We've all sat down at the table before. That's happened. So how are we going to get down to the table and actually work a deal out? remains to be, and usually to me the component that's missing for that to occur is urgency. I would suggest $50 million a year is all the urgency we need in these times, but perhaps it isn't. And that's the question we have to ask ourselves. But any table that's joining forces to sit down, know that I'm willing to come and be a part of that solution. But if it's solution making that's going on. and I would also say that one other important issue on the horizon for this city but of course collectively across the state is to pay attention to an early seeded conversation around the funding of the state support for public education and especially for higher ed. There's just a hint of a beginning of an understanding of how to reframe that picture that I think we need to be paying attention to again And since the University of Kentucky is one of the greatest universities in the state, but also receiving the largest amount of dollars, we need to pay very close attention to that conversation and how it proceeds because we are under threat for stepping too far back in our educational commitments and the reforms we've committed ourselves to over the past 30 years to let a restructuring of funding turn into really what's in fact a flatlining of support. So let's pay attention to that conversation over the next few years as well. It's in its earliest of stages. It's one where we can impact how it is that the state and local governments support our education for all of the people in Kentucky. So thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here. Representative Flood, thank you so much. I want to say again to Caucus Chair Bob Danman, to Senator Carroll and Senator Stein, and to Representative Flood, I think I feel sure that I speak from all the way over here to my right, Council Member Farmer, all the way to the left to Council Member McCord, that we have been honored that you all would join us today and inspired as well. Thank you all very much. We know that the federalist system has us, in a sense, at the lower end of that spectrum, at the cities, and then moving up to the state and then to the federal government, but we also remember what the late Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, said when he said, all politics is local. So somehow or another, we all land right here, don't we? Thank you all very much. Judy Taylor inspires me. She's on the very top of the ball. There we go. Thank you. You know, where is Judy Taylor? Judy, hold your hand. And as many council members know, it doesn't take much of a tour to Frankfurt and around the Capitol to recognize and realize what Senator Stein just said. Judy, we thank you very much. And J.D., thank you. And James Ballinger, again, thank you very much for being here with us today. Thank you. All right, you all may, yes, we did this. just rearrange the schedule for your benefit today. Thank you all again for being here with us. All right. Now we can resume our schedule, our agenda. Item number five on our agenda is new business. And I'll accept a motion for new business. There's a motion by Vice Mayor Gordon to approve new business. There's a second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion? Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Item Q, and this is where we are. Are we here? Item Q is the pension bond fund for $31 million. And as we go back in time to the fiscal year 2012 budget discussions, I was opposed to this, and I voted against the budget because of it. And I feel compelled to have a few comments at the moment. We have difficult decisions that we make every day, and this is a very difficult one. there's an article from march 26 that i sent around to council members on the baltimore sun and it says it better than i ever could and so i'm just going to cover a little bit of it so struggling to pay employee pensions local governments are increasingly borrowing money to cover their obligations exploiting a loophole in federal law that allows them to issue taxable bonds without seeking voter approval i'm going to skip down if the pension funds make smart investments with the borrowed money, the returns can help pay the interest due to borrowers and sometimes even spin off some extra cash to pay pension costs. If they don't, the bonds can create additional costs for taxpayers, put the retirement funds of teachers and firefighters in jeopardy, and in the worst case scenario, force municipalities into bankruptcy. Municipal finance experts are sounding alarms about the practice, saying that local elected officials are taking unnecessary risk because they are afraid to anger voters by raising taxes. There is also the risk of instigating powerful public employee unions if pensions are cut. There are communities that just do not want to make the hard choices, even though it means the choices in the future will be worse, says Robert Doughty, a municipal finance consultant in Sacramento. They are just going to dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. I'm almost finished. Some municipal finance, and the article goes on a little bit later, some municipal finance officers realized in the 1980s that they could use these investment portfolios to do a form of Wall Street speculation that involves borrowing money at one rate with the hope of investing it and earning a higher rate. Congress made it illegal in 1986 to issue normal tax-exempt municipal bonds for this type of speculation, but municipalities and their outside advisors realized they could get around this by issuing taxable bonds, like corporations. These bonds come with higher interest rates, but many local government officials have believed they could earn enough from investments to come out on top. And the article basically goes on to talk about Sacramento, which lost a quarter of a billion dollars in basically speculating. So the idea is that we're going to go borrow this $31 million, and we're going to invest it in the stock market in hopes of somehow recovering an 8% rate of return. But that's just impossible, because our interest rate on the bonds is going to be 4% or 5%. And so in order to net 8% after this interest cost that we're going to incur, we would have to basically earn 12% or 13% on the bonds. It's like putting your mortgage on your credit card, and it's a telltale sign that the city of Lexington is living beyond its means. We cannot afford to borrow our way out of our annual pension funds. It's not really catching up. It is taking one form of obligation and trading it for another. We still owe the money, and we still haven't paid it. And so I appreciate it, Mayor, but at this point I cannot support item Q. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Martin. Councilman Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. I, too, had a question on item Q. Commissioner, can you tell me on the bond on item Q what the annual payment is? Commissioner Driscoll. Or Ryan, I think Mr. Barrow is up front. All right, Ryan, if you're... And what interest rate will we borrow the money at? Obviously, the market fluctuates. These are preliminary numbers. We're looking at $2,165,000 annual payments. And for how long? About 20 years is our standard amortization for pension bonds. The tick on the deal is estimated right now at 3.6%. Okay, and then why the 10% up or down? Is that on the issuance number? Standard practice in the industry. When you put out a preliminary offering statement, you typically adjust. You reserve right to adjust up 10% and down 10%. So we're talking $3 million either way on the bond issuance. And tell me the benefit of doing this bond now and then next fiscal year, July 1, being able to do another one. Why not do it all at once? Is there not an advantage of savings there? Well, there's a couple of issues there. The Pension Board votes on the annual required contribution rates. So in this fiscal year, we're required to make that cash contribution or a bonded contribution. And then for investment of proceeds, you don't want your managers to have to incorporate $60 million all at once. It's easier for them to get cash in and invest in securities and not make substantially large portfolio purchases for our investments. And what was the voted-on pension contribution for this current fiscal year by the board? It was, well, the actuarial is calculated. Don't quote me, but I think it was 44.67. So part of that's in cash, obviously, in our budget. The 17.51% is cash-funded via annual appropriations. And then the balance plus a little for catch-up is what the $31 million represents. And since the last time we've put bond money in the pension fund, Have we changed the investment strategy so that we're not just getting what we're paying for the bond, but we're actually a little more aggressive? Is that correct? I'm probably not the best person to comment on that, but having watched the pension board, I know that they have retained a consultant. There's some changes in investment policy. There's some emerging markets that they're now looking at. So I believe that's the case. I don't know for a fact. Do we know what the average rate of return has been in the last year or two? I presented the assumed rate of return and the actual rate of return at the pension task force. I can resend that comment. For the fund? Yes, for the invested money. Commissioner Driscoll has those numbers because we were just talking about them earlier. Last year was 8% change, wasn't it? Yes, and I rearranged the schedules. That was the year before, I believe. Yeah, but if you could just send it to us, you don't have to tell us today. We don't have to have the exact number. I'm just curious, since the last time we put the money in, the thing I'm trying to make us understand is we've changed how the money is invested once we put money in there. If we kept going it the old way like we did two years ago, you're right. I mean, that money would never, never reap a return. We wouldn't hedge our bet, basically, on putting that money in there. So the important thing is the policy has changed, I hope, for the better. Yes, and in reality, some years we beat the projector rate return, some years that we've been substantially low. You can give us the actuals for the last couple of years. That would be great. Thank you, sir. And then I also had an item. This is on the new public safety radio piece, especially for the police on item C. Commissioner Mason, before Thursday night, you don't have to come up today, but can you send to all the council members a copy of each bid amount by each vendor, the vendors that bid on that, and then a copy of the RFP that was sent out to get those bids. Is that possible to do before Thursday? I'm looking for Todd right now. We can do the R. We've got the R. It's actually a competitive bid that we put out. I can send that around to you. And you want to see the total bid package as far as? No, just if there's three, four, five vendors and what they bid on, and who is the low bidder and who is the high bidder. That's going to be a little tough, isn't it, just without commentary? Well, yeah, there's a lot of, you know, these are 600-page technical documents that we received. So, I mean, we can give you the base bid with our extrapolated costs, and we'll send that to you. How we made our decisions is what you want to see, right? Well, I'm just curious, that too, but also what the bids were based on the RFP and what was in the RFP in terms of how you weighted each component of that RFP. Okay. How did the bid? I've got a summary form, and I'll send you all the information, and you may have some questions, but we'll be glad to answer them for you after you look through them. So I gather, just while you're at the center, since you came up, this was not the low bidder that we're choosing to go with. Well, I mean, we did a best value bid where we had 50% of the score was attributed to price. We had 15% for robustness of coverage. We had 15% for their willingness and their ability to meet any FCC fines. There was a value-add portion, but we had basically 50% price, 50% several other, like, technical-related items. Including a guarantee? Yeah, the company that we selected, in their submittal, they were willing to pay any FCC fines, no questions asked. But what I'm getting at, rather than have this dialogue right now, we could either have a presentation about the project, But if you just submit the numbers alone without commentary, that will not adequately explain the decision-making process of why a litter was selected based on the attributes, the criteria you just described. You're correct. Right? Okay. So that's not going to be fully informing. So I think we're either going to have to talk about it today or talk about it on Thursday, in my judgment. Well, again, I'm asking for a copy of the RFP that we put out, that people bid on, and the criteria, and just what those bids are. That's all I need for mine. And you're free to ad-lib in how you get to your decision, but I'll have more questions on Thursday. I would just like to have it before Thursday. Okay. Thank you. Okay, and what I'm saying is that what I'm suggesting is that it would also require, would need a commentary associated with it. Okay. Okay, a narrative. Do you want to have that for Thursday night or? No. Council Member Stenet wants it before then, and I suspect other council members will as well. You just want something written in that format. Okay, I got you. Does that work? Okay. Okay. Council Member Crosby, about this? Yeah, it's about this. Come back. Can we get also, because I don't recall off the top of my head, but I believe that this is significantly lower than when we first discussed this several months ago, and it might be helpful for us to compare what we were looking at in the past to now, because I know this is quite a fit of savings. It is a dramatically different scope. This is for the infrastructure. It's not for the actual radio units. That will be done here in the very near future. So this is a very different approach to break it out into two pieces. Oh, so the first one was included, both of them, right? Yes. And so, hence, that's why this looks significantly lower. Correct. And when do we have to do the second piece of that? It's coming out very soon. Okay. Okay. I can tell you, as Councilmember, I don't know that I was aware that that's why this had been... We made a presentation on that as we went forward. I think we're still saying it's because we changed the way we approach this to save money for the government. Well, and part of the answer is that it's lower because we changed the way we were approaching it In terms of number of towers and some of the expensive infrastructure, we've lessened some of that as a requirement, but it still gives us the same amount of coverage. So it is a very different approach than what we did last year. I think that was more my question is comparing the approaches. But I guess I'm a little surprised because I didn't realize that that component was not included in this and that we're probably going to be asked in a month or two to add those on to this. So thank you. Chief Stack, would you want to – I think while we're on this, we might as well talk about it, because if we're going to be voting on it on Thursday night, there's no – then we're going to need to allocate either time then or time now. Pardon? The first reading. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. All right. Good, good. Would you want me to comment on Council Member Cross? I think so. Just so I don't leave that question dangling. The scope is significantly different from what we approached last time. First of all, and I asked Chief Lanner from Bluegrass Airport to be here today, we went back and approached the two entities that we were basically paying for in totality to come along last time, and that was UKPD and the airport, and said, listen, we need you to carry the ball for yourself. And they both agreed to do that. Bluegrass Airport is going to carry its infrastructure costs to an entirety. We're going to have an MOA with them that we will take care of the maintenance over time. They will pay us to take care of the maintenance for them. That's a dramatic departure from what we brought you just seven months ago. The University of Kentucky Police Department is ready to enter into negotiations with our vendor that we've selected. They would like to come on board our system. I asked Chief Monroe to be here today. Chief Monroe's opinion is, as soon as this council acts, we're ready to act. We'll wait and see what your council does. The difference here is we were going to pay for all of their equipment under the last proposal. I can't give you an explanation for why we were going to do that. But under the approach we're taking, we want to sever the original agreement that we entered into with UK approximately 10 years ago, where we were responsible for bringing them along. So this is a dynamically different approach from anything we've done before. when it comes to our radio system. And it's going to save this urban county government quite a bit of money. Thank you, Chief Stack. That was what I was asking. Thank you very much. All righty. Thank you, sir. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. I want to go back to the issue of bonding for the pension fund. And one of the thoughts that I was having is that the Federal Reserve has a monetary policy to have extremely low interest rates. This is not only keeping the debt for the federal government down, but also the interest that people receive on the money they lend to the government and the rates that are paid in banking institutions. That gives me some angst about borrowing money and the bonds and then reinvesting it with hopes that we're going to earn a higher rate in the future. So I would like for us to maybe reassess our By the way, Mayor This is your attention too, I think The point I was going to make is I feel that the policy that we're borrowing the money to invest in the bonds is a serious decision And before we have a final vote on it, I'd like to request that the Police and Firefighters Pension Fund make a presentation to council, either work or council meeting, to give us a briefing on the earnings that fund has earned in, say, the last three or four years and the projected earnings in the future, and look at the money that we've invested already, which is, I believe, over $100 million in bonds in that fund already, and to see what impact that's had on the long-term accrued liability that we have in that fund now. And we do have the most recent CAFRA available that has the official numbers in there going through July, actually June 30th of 2011. But this is, to me, a major issue facing our community. And I agree with Council Member Martin that it could ultimately drive us into bankruptcy if we don't do something about this because we can't keep on going like this for too many more years. Thank you. And I'd like to make that a motion, or will you just ask for that report? We can arrange that. Yes, sir, I think. Thank you so much, Mayor. I appreciate it. So, Commissioner Driscoll, did you hear the request? Do you want to speak to it, Jane? I did hear the request from the council member, But I would note that we did approve this bond issue in the budget last year. I know we have another one proposed for this budget. We do have a timing issue in terms of contributing proceeds in this fiscal year in order to meet the obligations that Mr. Barrow spoke about. I have no issue with the board presenting that information to the council. So I think that would actually be very good for you to hear that information, and particularly moving forward. We talked a lot about this when we were formulating the mayor's budget in terms of requesting an additional bond for the current year. And we agree it's not a sustainable way to fund the pension going years into the future. but we looked at this year as a transition year in terms of the pension task force that actually our state legislators spoke about and that the mayor put in place and that many of you all are members of that task force, that this is a transition year in order to, before we're able to get some of those changes that are being proposed in place, that this was action steps that we could take between now and then. So, one, this bond issue you did approve in the budget last year. Two, we have another one proposed as well as additional cash going into the proposed budget for this year. So I just wanted to make those points. I think that's worthwhile that you do. I appreciate that. I don't think you're going to... I have a question for a follow-up. Am I correct, or maybe I misspoke, that we've already put $100 million in, or will this $30 million you're talking about be a total of $100 million? There's $103 a little over. It's already issued. So would it be $130 million approximately? Is that what you're saying? I'm sorry. If we do the additional $31 million. This will be additional $31 million. They add it to the $103 million. Okay. Approximate. All right. Thank you. 144 to date. And then the proposed bond issue in the new year is 34. Right. All right. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I thought it was $106 million that we issued combined in 2009-2010. And I think, as I mentioned in our workshop, the shortfall on the police and firefighters pension fund is now about $12 million worse than it was when we borrowed the $106 million. So that $106 million is gone now. It has been eaten up with new shortfalls. I brought down the rates of return for folks. This is from Callen Associates, and this is the investment advisors to the pension fund. So in 2011, they earned 2.59. 2010, 2009, good years, about 14.5 each. 2008, a phenomenally bad year, minus 27%. And so, as investment folks can tell you, the bad years, minus 27 and plus 27 don't equal the same thing, because you've got less money to grow. So, anyway, I just thought that would be interesting. So something Council Member Stinnett said that I wanted to highlight, I guess, And correct me if I'm wrong, Council Member, that you asked the pension fund trustees, the board, changing their investment approach in order to get better investment returns. And that is why borrowing is so risky, because it encourages investment funds, pension funds, to take greater risks in order to cover their interest costs. That's the risk. That's why it's so bad. Years ago, pension funds used to invest their money in stable, safe government bonds and treasuries. But now we're taking this money, taxpayer money, we collect from taxpayers, and we're betting it in the stock market. And so to the extent that the Pension Board is considering derivatives and other exotic financial speculations, I think that's a phenomenally bad idea. And so borrowing money to put a great risk through these types of investments I think is extremely unwise. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilman Martin. Before you turn that off, I do want to say in preface to this that I routinely acknowledge the value of the voice that illuminates issues that we need to be aware of. And sometimes we characterize it as the dissenting voice, but there is a lot of value in that. Having said that, I think it's also worthwhile to remark that, for example, in 2008, when the loss was 26.84%, which of course contributed to the effective loss of what we contributed. But nevertheless, the S&P at the same year was down 33%, I believe. I may be off on some basis points there, but I believe it was down 33%. So the fund has actually outperformed the S&P. But that's exactly what I think illuminating these issues is what Council Member Lane is asking us to do and confirm. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor, and I appreciate those comments. One thing that's hard to see, and I've got a different chart that shows the historical performance of both the S&P and the Dow Jones over the last 10 years. And that's obviously where you measure it from. But for the most part, it's been flat, whereas our pension fund assumes that we're growing at 8%. And that is a fundamental problem. By requiring these high investment returns to keep our payments low, It's encouraging speculative investing. And it creates an unreasonable expectation that we're somehow going to achieve that. That's one of the reasons we're falling further and further behind, because we're not keeping up with our investment projections. So thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. Council Member Lane. Yes, sir. Just one other, I think, note here for the people that might be watching today is that in order to make changes in our pension fund, this is a state statute that sets the fund up, and therefore the General Assembly has to make the change. And this is the frustration that the former mayors, the current council members, former council members have had. If we can't get the legislature to act on this, then we really can't change it. And if we make a change in the pension fund, it would only apply to new people going into the fund. It would not apply to those who are currently in there and would not change their benefit plans under the current state law. So I just encourage everybody to think about we need help from the state legislature to get this done, and we need help from the police and firefighter unions and members to revise this plan so that in the long haul it will be financially sound for decades to come. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lane. All right, I have no one else signed on to comment or to speak. Is there any further discussion? Council Member Farmer. This is still on new business, Mayor. Yes, sir. It's the first item of business. Item A, the authorization to amend the facilities maintenance agreement. I'm just wondering if Meridian Management Corporation is a local company that's doing the maintenance services for the Fayette County courthouses. That's item A? Yes, sir. Okay. Do we have someone who can speak to item A? I don't see an identified. Oh, sorry, sir. Thank you. Commissioner Hamilton stepped out. No, they are not a local company. Of course, they do have offices here locally and manage the maintenance of the facility. I think their home office is in Florida. Actually, this is a management company that the city has used since 2001. I noted that in the background material. I just wondered where they were from. You told me. Thank you very much. Mayor, thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Council Member Beard. a minimum of two digits and a maximum of five or whatever. I have a street in my district that has got one digits and lots of them, lots of one digits all the way from one through nine and then switches to two digits. and as long as we're going to fix whatever we're going to fix is technologically to be able to handle two digits, we probably ought to go ahead and handle one digit also. Mayor, point of order. No, this is regarding specific streets within different, yeah, specific addresses. I'm sorry? This is regarding specific streets in certain districts that they're requesting a change on the name, like Tate's Creek Road to Tate's Creek Pike or something. There's like three or four of them. They're listed in the packet on like 30-31. I guess what told me was when they were talking about eliminating problem addresses. I think that's on the docket for Thursday. So, well, anyway. Okay. Whether it is or it isn't, there is an issue floating around out there that we're going to have to handle one digit also. Right. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Beard. Thank you, Council Member Crosby, for clarifying. Anybody else wish to speak on the new business? All right. Don't see anybody signed up, so we can take a vote then. All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Mayor, I'm voting no on item Q. Yes on the rest. Okay. Jennifer, you noted the item Q as a no by Councilman Martin, right? Got that. All right. Thank you, ma'am. All right. The motion passes. All right, we can move on to item number six then, continuing with presentations. Is there a motion on the NDF? Second. Motion by Council Member Ellinger, second by Council Member Myers. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. I've got Council Member Lawless, do you have an update for us on Public Safety Committee? Yes. You can find the summary on pages 44 through 47 of your work session packet. The Public Safety Committee met at 1 o'clock on May 1st. There were three items on our agenda. The first agenda item was the chronic nuisance ordinance. Keith Gaines, retired police officer, presented the draft ordinance. Mr. Gaines went over the complaint process, abatement plans, and fine structure. Committee members asked for clarification on citation versus report, notification to property owners, and clarification on the designation of a chronic nuisance property. It was decided to keep the draft in committee, and a motion was passed to have the Commissioner of Public Safety as well as representatives of police, fire, building inspection, and code enforcement work together to come up with a list of nuisance properties as they exist today to present at the next Public Safety Committee. Next item on the agenda was the fire and EMS report. The draft task force report can be found on pages 48 through 51 of your work session packet. Council Member Farmer made a motion to report out to the council at the May 1st work session. The motion passed without dissent. The last item on the agenda was the horses running at large ordinance in honor of Derby, I believe. It can be found on page 47 of your packet for your review. It was passed as presented thus. I move to add to the May 10th docket the horses running at large ordinance as passed by the Public Safety Committee. Second. That's a motion by Council Member Lawless, second by Vice Mayor Gordon. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. In conclusion, this completes my report of the May 1st Public Safety Committee. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. Next on our agenda is the Fire and EMS Task Force Report. I believe that's... Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Farmer. I appreciate that. Yes, sir. I appreciate the Council referring that from last week to this week because of the lateness of the hour. We've also just handed out all the appendix material that will go along with this. The actual task force report appears on page 48 of today's packet. In the introduction, it gives, I think, the formative background that this task force was formed by Vice Mayor Gorton in November of 2011. The charge of the task force was to examine the issues of women and minority recruitment in the fire department, the issue of paramedic staffing levels, response times for the emergency care units, and the issue of giving preference points to those applicants trained as paramedics from places outside of Fayette County. I'm going to skip over the specific background area on pages 48 and go to the findings area on page 49 because I think this discussion kind of encapsulates the background as well as our thought process. The task force found that emergency medical transportation response times have increased over the last several years. In 2007, 90% of the emergency care incidents were responded to within eight minutes. In 2011, only 87 percent of emergency care units were responded to within eight minutes. The task force also found that the number of emergency care incidents had increased substantially. In 2007, there were 27,910 incidents that required an emergency care response. In 2011, the emergency care incidents had increased to 36,696. The task force found that there is a direct but negligible relationship between the number of responses and the response time necessary to answer an incident. The task force found that of the nine current emergency care units, ambulances, five made over 4,000 runs during the last calendar year. The goal is to keep ambulance runs at a maximum of 3,200 per year to remain consistent with national standards. All of the emergency carry units had over 3,600 emergency runs in 2011. The task force found that paramedic training was formally offered from 1977 through 2008. However, there were no classes offered from 2008 through 2011. The task force also found that the most recent collective bargaining agreement provides for annual paramedic training classes for the next two years. The task force found that the preference points for new applicants are presently being given for paramedics 10%, firefighters 5%, and military 2%. The task force also found that the application process is being rewritten and that only military preference points will remain. The task force found that while there has been improvement in the hiring and retention of women and maternity recruits, there is still a need to pursue avenues that will encourage women and minorities to apply for positions as firefighters. Women account for over 51 percent of the recruitment age population in Fayette County. In addition, minorities account for approximately 25 percent of the recruitment age population in Fayette County. However, women account for 2.3 percent or 12 females of the Lexington Division of Fire, and minorities account for just 6.7 percent, 35 minorities, of the force. And then to the recommendations. The task force agrees that the EC units should continue to be staffed by three firefighters with a combination of two paramedics and one EMT. The task force agrees that paramedic training will be held annually for at least the next two years. The task force recommends that the LFUCG purchase two additional emergency care units and hire the necessary personnel to staff both units. Because of the investment, this recommendation should be phased. The capital cost associated with the two additional emergency care units is approximately $800,000. The annual personnel cost to train and hire 23 staff for the two units is approximately $1.3 million. It is estimated that the Division of Fire will lose approximately 20 staff due to service retirements annually for the next several years. It is therefore recommended that the LFUCG continue to annually maintain staffing levels to ensure that response times meet or exceeds national standards. The task force agrees with the administration proposal to discontinue preference points with the exception of military preference points. The task force supports the concept of discontinuing preference points where they inhibit our diversity efforts. And finally, the task force recommends that the Lexington-Payton Urban County Government increase its efforts to recruit women and minorities through several different strategies, including recruitment in military bases, recruitment at local high schools and community colleges, assignment of a staff member to the role of diversity recruiter by examining firefighter and paramedic internship or mentoring programs and examining the potential of incentives for the current firefighter paramedics to recruit minorities and women. And this is a report that is tendered unanimously by the members of the task force that included myself as chair, fire major Kristen Chilton, Fire Captain Les Fryman, Patty Howard, who is a Ph.D. RN, and Judy J.J. Jackson, who is also a Ph.D., two outsiders that really added a lot to our discussion and made it more full, former Council Member David Stevens, a member of the public, Dr. Stephen Stack, who really brought a lot of expertise directly to the issues that we were talking about, Fire Major Brian Wood, Vice Mayor Linda Gorton, 3rd District Council Member Diane Lawless, and 8th District Council Member George Myers. We were staffed by Jessica Gies, Jennifer Bennefield, and Paul Schoeniger, and that is the report as tendered by the task force. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Farmer. Council Member Martin, on this subject? Yes, sir. All right. Yes, sir. Council Member Farmer, we had a brief discussion. I sent you a copy of the management partners report from 2008. Was that discussed to any degree in your task force? I don't believe that it was, sir. If I might make a few comments. Please. I think the better we allocate our resources, the safer our citizens will be. And the question is, is it safer to have three personnel on ten buggies or two personnel on 15 buggies? I would support the expenditure to buy another five buggies if we could reallocate our personnel. The 2008 Management Audit by Management Partners recommended that the city reduce the number of employees on each ambulance from three to two. They looked at some comparable cities, and this was a 2008 study, I think, done during the Newberry administration. Cincinnati, Louisville, Toledo, Augusta, Corpus Christi, Colorado Springs, Santa Ana, Madison, Wisconsin, all basically had two per buggy and we had three. The statement in the report says that based on industry practices that are nearly universal in our experience and developed to assure the best medical care protocols, staffing three persons per ambulance is a needless expense, adding nothing to the quality of patient care. Now, I'm sure that there's disagreement among our public safety folks, and I respect that. But I think it's also good to have a conversation about what the city's consultant told us a while back. And I think that, but that really is our choice. Do we put three to a buggy and have fewer buggies, or could we put two to a buggy and have more? And I would support the more buggies because it's going to reduce our response time. It's going to mean more times that we're having an ambulance with paramedics show up as opposed to a fire truck. And so I think our citizens are safer with more emergency units to get to the scene and with two paramedics. I would welcome a conversation that would examine exactly what different level of care we're getting. I've certainly heard a lot of the conversations about it. but since fiscal year 2002 the fire department budget has increased from 32 million to about 52 million that's 60 percent increase so we're set we're clearly putting money into fire safety so i think what we need to look at though is the way we're allocating it because if we allocate our money better we can get more people on the scene more buggies more runs and and and actually fewer runs per buggy because I know that our folks are really overworked. So I just ask that maybe I guess I'll make a motion that this issue be referred back to the Public Safety Committee so that we can explore the wisdom of three versus two. So moved. It's a motion by Council Member Martin, seconded by Council Member Lane. I have several folks that have several Council Members who have signed up. Council Member Crossey, you wish to speak to the motion then. Well, yeah, this will relate to the motion. Okay. I really don't know how we can have a presentation on this because it's part of the collective bargaining contract, as I understand it, the number of people who are staffed on the buggies. And so, I mean, we can have a presentation, but it doesn't change that it's part of their contract, and we can't change that at this point. And then, two, I'll just comment on the management partner study. And I know that you were not a council member at the time, so you didn't have the benefit of sitting through all the hearings we had regarding specifically their report on fire. But pretty much it was discredited at the time just because they did not have anybody with expertise who had looked into our Division of Fire who worked on this report. And we had many hearings and meetings on it, so that will be my comment for this. Thank you. Mayor, if I would, I realize that there's a provision in the collective bargaining, but that doesn't last forever. In fact, it expires a year from July 1. And so I think looking at this policy is something that's certainly within the scope of the Public Safety Committee and can examine policy decisions for something that takes place down the road. It might take us a little while to get to it. I've had things pending in the Public Safety Committee for more than a year and a half. So by the time we get to it, I may come in as a private citizen. But as far as this study goes, no one has, you know, I appreciate Council Member Crosby's comments on that because I wasn't here at the time that the management partner study came out. But no one has produced any evidence or any backing at all for this decision that this committee, this task force came up with. They just concluded that three is better than two. There's no testimony. There's no evidence. And so I'm not sure what we have to counteract that. So my motion is simply to put it in the committee, and if and when we can get to it, we can talk about it at that point. Thank you, Mayor. All right, there's a motion and a second, and we're in discussion now. Council Member Lawless. First of all, I would like to thank Council Member Farmer for his leadership on this and everybody who participated in the task force and the findings. There is, I think, Council Member Martin, if you look, So there is empirical data that shows that it is safer for there to be three people on a buggy. One's driving. If you have someone who is in the back of the buggy who is having trouble controlling the person, or they have severe injuries and need more than one person working on them, it is very dangerous because the person driving obviously can't intubate somebody. So the members of this task force were very well-respected volunteers with extremely high levels of expertise in emergency medicine and trauma that consulted. So we have a contract. The contract's good for several years. The Public Safety Committee has a lot of issues we try to get to, and it seems I won't support this because it seems unnecessary at this time to put it into committee when we already have our contract. and I think that an enormous amount of work and a lot of volunteer time went into this task force. Thank you. Council Member Blase. Thank you, Mayor. I think it's reasonable to agree that three is better than two, all things considered. But we have to look at these things in context, and I think that we have to consider whether the circumstances enable us to have three instead of two. And I think we have to look seriously at the question of whether more buggies with two is a better way of protecting the public than with fewer buggies with three. I don't know the answers to these questions, but I agree with Council Member Martin that the answers have not been put forward. And I'd like to see more evidence on these questions. How many people, how many personnel, in response to a call, what's a minimum number given our resources that still provide a reasonable level of protection? So I will support this motion. I think it's something that we really need to look into and dig deeper on. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Crosby, you signed on again, right? You want to speak to this again, right? I wasn't really done. I still had time on the last one to finish my comment, so I had to come back on because Council Member Martin answered me during my time. So I just, you responded to my comments. And so now, and I, yes, okay. But I didn't get my full time, and I'm going to finish my time. So thank you. And what I wanted to say to his comments was the fact that you cannot compare apples to oranges when you look at the staffing with these trucks. If you have, I think it is totally unreasonable to put something out of a study up there that, one, you weren't here when we looked at the study and saw that it was flawed, but, two, this doesn't tell the whole picture because oftentimes in these cities, the engines have more people riding on them, and so there is the same amount of people. So you're not really comparing apples to apples. You're really comparing apples to oranges, which is not a fair assessment. I agree any time we can look at something and look at ways to do things better, that's a great opportunity, but I think we have to be fair when we do it and look at it in totality and not just putting up one slide like this that doesn't tell the whole picture with what the engine companies in these towns do as well. Thank you. Council Member Gordon. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. And just one other comment about the motion. The EMAB, the Emergency Medical Advisory Board, has looked at this in depth over the years, And one of the things that happens in cities that only staff with two on an EC unit is then they pull people off the engines to help with the EC units when they have the advanced life support and other issues that require three. and this has been studied in detail by our folks who are carrying out the life support, the basic life support, the advanced life support, and, you know, when you pull, I mean, the thing that they have told us is when we pull people off the engines then to help with the EC units, that takes the engine offline sometimes. So there are other issues that do impact this. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to respectfully correct the record. I started out on the task force, and after the first meeting I got off, so I wasn't a product of this report. and I guess I would just say that I think that we need to look at everything and I don't know that it would hurt to put this into committee get some more information from those other communities and find out exactly what they are doing and if they are pulling people off engines and those kinds of things to make these numbers here work then that's something that we can find out at that point so there's nothing wrong with with new information being provided to reach the most logical and the best decision for our community. So I'm going to support the motion. Thank you. Council Member Lane, have you already spoken to this issue? No, sir, I have not. All right. Aren't you sorry? No, no, no. Not at all. Well, the first thing I want to say is that I'm not an expert on EMS services, but I was just thinking about it. If I were in an accident, I had a heart attack, a stroke, broke my leg or whatever, I would rather have two people come in an ambulance and get me faster right away, having more services available than to have three people come. And then I also was thinking that it's been our policy to have a first responder go to an accident. And so if you had a real serious matter, one of the first responders could join the buggy the buggy and go to the hospital and give assistance in that kind of situation. But here again, I am not an expert. I'm not saying do this or do that. But I am saying I'd like to get a better education on what other communities are doing because times are not easy out here. And we want to put all the money we can afford into public safety, but we're already putting quite a bit in there. And we have huge liabilities on the pension funds. So we've got a lot of factors working against us, and we need to work smarter and better and try to be most efficient in the utilization of our public safety staff. And I want to just say while I'm here that I have always supported public safety. I still support it. I'm just saying I think to look at the issue and maybe we can make a definitive decision finally of where we are on that, and I think that would be good. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. You know, all this works well until we have the first individual die in transit to the hospital. And then we go back to three immediately, probably within an hour or so. We did vet this pretty heavily at the time. when the management partners presented their findings. As I remember, there were 242 suggestions or findings, and we have maybe done 15 of them, 20 of them at the most. I did a little investigating and management partners was not very well thought of by like people in Cincinnati for instance they hee-hawed the idea of us using management partners but at the same time it doesn't hurt to discuss this I would say however that I would hope that we wouldn't wait a year and a half to discuss it, that we would put it somewhere a little closer to the top so that we could get it resolved as quickly as possible. I wouldn't vote against putting it in the Public Safety Committee, but I do think that it's an issue that needs more immediate attention than a year and a half. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Beard. Council Member Hanson. Thank you, Mayor. I had a question for Council Member Farmer about the task force and how in-depth discussion did you have regarding the number of staff on an EC unit? Well, I think it was fairly in-depth. I mean, we had everyone at our disposal and all information for our opportunity. And I think that if you look at what is truly recommended, when we ask that force, those men and women, to show up, to do it correctly, six people need to show up. Now, they can come three on a buggy, three on an engine, two engines, whatever. but I think the point has been subtly very well made. If you're the one laying in the back and one person is driving and there's two things wrong with you, you're very glad to have two people there to work on you. And this is the focus of the discussion right now, and I can appreciate that. But you have to remember that one of the things that brought us to this task force was the fact that we had done no paramedic training for three or four years. and we need to do that each and every year. And we really, I mean, both of these forces, police and fire, are like going through school. People start through, they're in the middle, and then they graduate. In this instance, they retire. And basically because we had no new paramedic classes and we really hadn't added to either of those forces appreciably over the last several years, we've had some problems. And what we're trying to do here, or what the unanimous report from this task force group was to say, we want to get this in front of the council during the budget consideration time, because there's just some baseline assumptions that need to be made in terms of how we staff, who we look for, and what we do with those folks. But I think, you know, back to the actual discussion that we're having right now, To have the right personnel there, you have to have them there. And we understood the numbers involved with this in terms of not just employees, if you will, or servers, but the people who end up in that, I mean, the difference between that 90% getting service in 8 minutes and 87, or just a step back further even. What I would say is just the ratio of what must be burned out people. The idea that you're supposed to have a national standard of 3,200 runs a year and we're topping out over four grand, that's a lot more runs. That's a lot of people who, if it were just two, I don't think we'd have people to staff them. At three, there's an opportunity. And really it pointed out the fact that for the urban government that we are, we need more emergency care units closer to where people are. I mean, the thing that we have really avoided in all this discussion is, with brownouts, with problems in terms of overtime, a few things happen, and all of a sudden whole neighborhoods have a drastic raise in what their insurance is because we're not given the coverage that we need to give. This is a stab at saying to perform to the standards that this city needs, this is what we need to do to do that. Now, we can discuss as a council family here how many it takes to do that, but underneath all this, for this very specific issue, it's been negotiated and it's been set. Now, if we want to try to undo that, that's a whole different ball. But this report was tendered with the idea that we're trying to do the best that we can and give the mayor and this council the best background to say we're all making tough decisions. We're trying to do more with less. This is not the area to do less with. I hope that answers. There was a whole lot there, but it's something you said. Thank you. And I guess that's my point. It's a matter of do we want to save money or do we want to have a better chance at saving lives? and typically anything that's put in committee, I support it. I think we should look at things, but when you've had an entire task force dedicated to EMS, Doug, I'm not going to support the motion, but I appreciate where you're coming from, although I think it's just a matter of deciding which route would we want to save money. Right. Also, well, I'll just leave it at that. Thank you for your work, and I will have another question, but it's not related to the motion. All right. Those who haven't spoken, who are signed up to speak, include Council Member Ford and Council Member Kay. And I believe Council Member Lawless, you have spoken and Council Member Myers has, so then we'll go back to you all for comments. So first, Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. I'll be briefing my comments. I want to echo the comments that were raised by Council Member Crosby. I wasn't a member of council when a management partner presented their report. I definitely didn't study the issue in regards to fire and EMS, but on whole I was not impressed with their work. And I think they represent an observation on what matters here in Lexington from somebody who really couldn't offer a valid opinion of it. With that being said, I do value and appreciate very much so the work of the task force. in concert with those in our fire and emergency services who are trying to do the very best they can under trying times. I agree with Council Member Farmer. While there are economic implications on the recommendations that the task force makes, we are trying to provide the very best service to the constituents of Fayette County. And if the practice is recommended by those who know, I will honestly acknowledge that I am no expert by any means in regards to fire and emergency services. So I have to rely on the expertise that is in our Division of Fire. And I have to value, again, the work of this pretty impressive list of task force members who sacrificed their time. So to that end, I would ask that we would support the task force report that is brought forward. That does not mean that we cannot individually or offline, if you will, keep this issue of two versus three in mind. But again, I think that we have some other pressing issues as a council to address. And likewise, the M.S. has some more pressing issues, which is to keep our citizens safe. So at this time, I can't support the motion. I will endorse, however, the task force report. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member K. Thank you, Mayor. A question for Council Member Farmer. Yes, sir. Most of the conversation has been about this one question. Can you help me understand what's going to happen with the rest of the recommendations? And then I want to make a comment about that issue. Well, I really just tendered the report. I reported it out. I really did not make a motion for the Council to accept it or to place it into committee. I kind of felt like we had fulfilled our obligation as chartered by the vice mayor by doing the work and making the report. I think the extraordinary thing here was in the haste to get it before the council in full during the budget process, we actually reported it with the unanimous consent of the public safety committee. We reported it out to the full council without having conversation about this report at that level. I guess that's the only thing that I would say was different than what would usually have been done. We would have discussed this report there, but in haste moved it forward to the full council to take action on or to be aware of last Tuesday. We ran out of time and rolled it into the presentation stack for this Tuesday. So unless there's specific motions about any pieces of the recommendation, this is just for council review and there's no further action. Yes, sir. That would be true of the issue of the question of whether there should be three people or two people on the buggies. Is that correct? Correct. I tendered the report without motion. I'm sorry. I tendered the report without motion. Without a motion. And now a motion has been made on that particular issue. Yes, sir. So I've listened to the discussion, and I haven't been able to easily figure out where I wanted to stand on the issue. But where I end up is the belief that that particular aspect of the report, at the very least, requires more information for counsel and perhaps an attempt to answer some of the questions that have been raised today about whether the data we have really tells us what we want to know. And I don't mean in any way to disrespect the work of the task force so far. But on balance, it seems to me that this is a question that's going to continue to be before council. I understand that it's a part of the negotiated agreement. But we have the opportunity to renegotiate at a later time. I don't feel like I know enough to make a judgment about whether there ought to be three or two. I need more information, and so I will support the motion. I will add one other thing. This has budget implications, as do many things that come before Council. And we've already had earlier conversations today about large obligations that the government has. And my take on what we're doing at this point is not funding adequately the services that we are presently receiving. That is, we're building up debt in many different ways. The pension is obvious, but there are other ways in which essentially we're not presently paying for the services that we're actually getting. And so we're making decisions about the level of service we want, but we're not being realistic about the funding that needs to go in back of that. So I think that's a larger issue that has to be addressed. It seems to me it complicates almost every issue that comes before Council. would like to have Cadillac service. We don't know if we can afford it. So I just kind of wanted to add that as a part of my comment. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Kay. Council Member Lawless, then Council Member Myers. I would just like to say that we have had presentations by Dr. Stack and the members of the EMAB, Linda, Vice Mayor? That's it. EMAB Board. They are emergency room physicians from our heads of the emergency departments of several hospitals that donate their time to just this issue. And they were represented on the task force. We've had presentations by them at the meetings. The report was unanimously passed by the entire committee or task force, and it was heard in committee, in the Public Safety Committee. I'm not, if you all want to put it back in there, but I'm really not sure how many ways we can beat a dead running at large horse. So that being said, maybe there are individuals that would like to do some research on their own, but it wasn't me. I mean, I just listened and tried to absorb it, but they've come and spoken to us. We have a contract, and one of the issues is what it takes for someone to take somebody, put them on the stretcher or whatever they're called, load them into the ambulance, and load them back out, the burnout. And so the issue with the three versus two, the three's in the contract. Now, what the question really is, from my perspective, is are we going to provide some more paramedic classes so more people can be qualified to do these runs and we don't have the burnout that we have or the injuries that we have. So if people want to hear it in committee again, we can hear it in committee again, but do we do another task force with different people? I mean, so that's what I have to say about it. Thank you. Councilor Myers. Thank you, Mayor. I guess from my perspective, the reason I'd like to hear this in committee is because every time this issue comes up, we hear the same old thing, and to me it's fear-mongering and sacred cows, and there's three issues that I've heard today. life expectancy, number of runs, and insurance rates. And people are always quick to point out that if we change our formulas around, everybody's insurance rates are going to go up. So one of the things I'd like to have done, and I'm one of the members on this council that sell insurance for a living, I know that that's not going to be the case in any proposed changes that anybody's talked about. So as part of this, when it goes into committee, What I'd like to have is somebody do the research so that we can take that off the table so that people can quit saying to the public, if they make these changes, your insurance premium is going to go up. Secondly, we talked about the number of runs. We talked about burnout. It seems like one of the things that Council Member Martin talked about was if you send a buggy out with two people and you have more buggies as opposed to three with less buggies, then that would be less runs per person. that would be less burnout. Life expectancy. You know, we talk about this task force and the expertise that is on this task force. One of the things that I look for is factual data about what's really happening in real life. When you look at other cities around this country, other cities have two people on their buggies. Now, if it's a situation where they're taking someone off the truck to fill in to make that third person, that's something that I don't know. That's one of the things that we ask for. But the fact is that there are cities all across this country that have two people on their buggies, and I don't think that their communities are screaming about people dying in the back of their buggies because there wasn't a third person. And so rather than act as though that's going to be one of the cases here, all of a sudden if we change this down to two, the first person that dies in the back of a buggy, all of a sudden we're going to go back to three. Let's really look at what other communities that are doing this are doing and what their outcomes are. And let's look at the research to see life expectancy with a buggy that has two people versus three. Let's look at response times. Let's look at the whole gamut instead of just saying that, you know, this group of people are experts and they say this and so that's what it ought to be. Let's look at real time, real life, what's happening in other cities, and then we start to make better informed decisions. So I hope that my colleagues aren't afraid of information, information as a knowledge, and that they at least want to put this in the committee and look at this maybe from a perspective, because I don't think any of these things were addressed in that task force. And so if they were, I'd love to get that information. But if there were studies that show life expectancy on a buggy that has two people as opposed to three, those kinds of things, I'd like to see that information in terms of insurance rates, all those different things. So I hope that you guys will support putting this in committee and hearing it and getting a solid vetting on what's really happening rather than just what experts say. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Myers. Nobody else has signed up to vote so we can take to speak, so we can take a vote on the motion. All right. All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye, and you can vote electronically. All opposed, no. All right. All right. Motion fails 7 to 8. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Farmer, for your report. Yes, sir. Next on our agenda is a presentation by our Property Valuation Administrator, Mr. David O'Neill. Welcome, Mr. O'Neill. Council members, thank you for giving me a minute to do this. It's not so much a presentation. I'll bring the slides next year. I'm sorry. This is my annual message to you, the announcement that the 2012 Real Property Tax Roll is now open for inspection. The open inspection period is set aside by statute every year. It begins the first Monday in May, which was yesterday, and runs for 13 consecutive days, including Saturdays, and ends Monday, May the 21st. An open inspection is when any property owner can come in and conference with me if they don't believe the assessment of their property is fair or equitable. So if they come in and conference with me and still don't feel that their assessment is fair or equitable, they may appeal their assessment to the local Board of Tax Appeals. Local Board of Tax Appeals will be impaneled and will meet beginning June the 18th this year. and the last day to file an appeal with the local board is Tuesday, May the 22nd. The requirement to file an appeal is that you must conference with the PVA's office prior to filing the appeal. So any time from now through Monday, May the 21st, any property owner who feels like their assessment is neither fair nor equitable, which is what we're shooting for, and required by law to assess every property at 100% fair cash value, we're looking for fair and equitable. and if they don't believe that's what their assessment is, they do have the right to come in and conference with my office and challenge their assessment. I'd also like to remind everybody that my office administers the homestead exemption, and that's for homeowners who are 65 years of age or older. I know that we're still not at 100% participation in the homestead exemption. There are applications available on our website, fayettepva.com. You can also contact the office and we'll mail an application. You can get the application in to us the year you turn 65. Don't wait until your birthday. Go ahead and get it in now so we can get it properly on the tax roll. Otherwise, we could end up having to issue refunds. If you're over 65 and you're just now learning about the homestead exemption, I can go back two years and issue refunds. So, again, I know that not everybody who qualifies for it is taking advantage of it, So help me reach out to those who qualify and make sure that your family, friends, neighbors, so forth that are 65 and older have the homestead exemption in place. Also, just to let you know, for budgetary purposes, it looks like that we're going to be relatively flat again on property tax revenues from last year. I believe that we'll have a slight increase somewhere a little south of 1% over last year. and currently the property tax roll is at a little under $23 billion, with the B, dollars. So does anybody have any questions? Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. O'Neill, thank you, sir, for coming to see us once a year as you normally do. We appreciate the good news that we're going to have a level, I guess, revenue stream. Obviously that's important to a lot of things here in our community. Just had a question on the assessments. How do you randomly go back and reassess an area or a neighborhood? Is that reporting from residents asking you to? Is that your staff? Have you mapped out the whole city? Because we get asked that a lot because one neighbor could be $60,000 to $100,000 difference in property tax they're paying, and people are trying to figure out what's the rhyme or reason. I know it's different previous PBA administrators, and you may have a different take on it, How do you all go through a neighborhood or every four years, how do you do it? Okay. There's a quadrennial plan that you referred to, the every four years, and the way that works is we're required, we PDAs are required by law to physically inspect every piece of property once every four years. So in Fayette County, there's about 110,000 parcels of property. We're required to physically look at that property once every four years. So historically, that's when a reassessment would happen. there's not a similar requirement that says that we have to perform a reassessment every four years. The requirement is we have to inspect the property. The law, as the Constitution says, is that we have to place 100% fair cash value every year. But historically, the way that would work is when we perform the physical inspections, that's when a reassessment would happen. We have the county divided up into a little over 300 residential neighborhoods, and they're spread around the county. So every year we're reassessing, but we're reassessing just a fourth of the 300 residential neighborhoods. The way that my office is measured by the Department of Revenue is they perform a ratio analysis on the sales in Fayette County. So once a year I send the Department of Revenue a list of all the houses that have sold, and I also send with them the PVA value that was on that house at the time it sold, and we're required to be within 90%. The PVA value must be within 90% of the sale price on average countywide, and if it's not, they will require us to perform some emergency reassessments. We shoot for 100% on that ratio, but we're required to be at 90. So what we're doing right now and have for the past several years during the economic crisis is we're applying that same ratio analysis to each of the individual neighborhoods. So not every neighborhood is being reassessed right now. In fact, no neighborhoods were reassessed in 2010, 2011, and I reassessed one neighborhood in 2012 based on their ratio being pretty far off of 100%. So you do it by the whole neighborhood, not by the street, et cetera? That's right. It's done a neighborhood at a time, and then we use sales within that neighborhood to arrive at new assessed values. So is downtown with the new residential unit, is it a neighborhood? How do you break up downtown? Well, condos and townhouses are in their own neighborhoods. The neighborhoods are divided by single-family residences. That's what is comprised of a residential neighborhood. And then condos are in a neighborhood. Townhomes are in a neighborhood. Farms are in a neighborhood. So there will be an assessment this year, starting back again. You said there wasn't one in 10 and 11? Well, I'm saying that there weren't any neighborhoods that I went into and raised the entire neighborhood based on sales that we had. Okay, so you just did individual. Right. And sales, typically when a house sells, the sale price becomes the new assessed value. And we also reassess if somebody does an improvement to their home, if they take out a building permit, put an addition on the house, or do a remodel, we follow up on the building permits, and that will cause that particular house to be reassessed. So when we do mass assessing, which is mostly what we do in the office, it's done a neighborhood at a time, but a sale or an improvement, or if the taxpayer asks us to reassess their house, then it can be done on an individual basis. Sir, thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilor Stenick. Councilor McKay. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for your report. And I just wanted to take the opportunity while you're here before Council to let the Council know that a problem that's been kind of kicking around for years about getting a good list of vacant and distressed properties. It's been something that planning has done at certain points but has never been able to update due to budgetary constraints. And in the last year, our PVA joined the Infill and Redevelopment Committee, and he's been working with planning. And between them, they are, I guess you're close to having that, but at least the process has started. And so something that is valuable to the realtors in particular, but to government in general, which we haven't been able to generate before, we're now doing because the PVA's office is cooperating with us. So I want to thank you for that. And you may want to comment. Thank you. It goes back to what I was saying a minute ago about the physical inspections that we perform on the property. It's basically what that is. It's a windshield inspection of the neighborhood. So we are working with the Department of Planning so that we can incorporate some of the things that they want to know to identify whether a property is being underutilized or not, so that we're being a little bit more efficient instead of having two groups of people out there looking at the same properties. Thank you, Mayor. Sir, thank you, Council Member Kaye. Anyone else have any comments or questions for Mr. O'Neill? All right. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. Thanks for being with us. All right. Okay. Next on our agenda is Council Reports. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Just very quickly, I wanted to express my appreciation to a couple of folks. Over the last couple of years, we've been developing a number of parks in the 9th District, Shilato Park, Wellington Park. And over that time frame, there's been a number of things, not only the dog park being put in and the trails and so forth, but also a couple years ago we put in a sensory garden into Wellington Park, the first of its kind really in this area and really the first of its kind in the state, the way we've done it. And during that time frame, we knew that parks probably couldn't manage it as well as it needed to because it's very labor-intensive. And that began a discussion with a longtime friend, Chris Redmond of Redmond's Garden Center, about their involvement with that park. And Chris is a friend of mine since junior high, and he grew up in Stonewall, and he kind of caught the vision of what we were trying to do and some of the needs that we had in the city where government just can't do it all. That's continually what I keep saying over and over. And so as that conversation started around a garden, it sort of expanded. And Chris called a couple of weeks ago and said, hey, I want to make a donation to the city. And I just wanted to publicly thank Chris Redman and Redman's Garden Center for the donation of 24 trees to not only Wellington Park, but also to Shiltoe and to Jacobson Park as a legacy for his family and for his business as well. But I also wanted to thank within parks Brian Billiter who worked with us to kind of get those things installed the right way and all the folks in our parks department and Commissioner Hamilton. I wanted to publicly thank those folks and just tell them well done. This is just another example of how public and private can really partner to meet the needs of our citizens, improve our properties, improve our services, where the government didn't have to spend extra money or be things that it couldn't be. So, again, I just want to specifically thank those folks, but Chris Redmond as well, for his most generous gift of these trees that will be there for quite a while as a great legacy. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Councilman McCord and Councilman Stenett. Thank you, Mayor. As my colleagues know, on Thursday night we'll have the second reading of the scrap metal ordinance. And also we did have an opportunity the last several days to meet with the scrap metal dealers, and I can report back to you that there's been a lot of headway made in these short three days and a lot of concessions on both sides to do the right thing for our community and to put together an ordinance that not only would benefit us today but benefit us in the future long term so that we can work together to better curb the epidemic that we're all facing and the copper thefts. So I'll be passing around some changes to that ordinance that will require a new first reading on Thursday night. I should have that back from the law department tomorrow and be able to distribute to my colleagues tomorrow via email and make the necessary motions Thursday night. And it will just be first reading. It will not be two readings Thursday night to get everyone enough time to go through it. But this is a much better approach in working together with our local businesses versus being in an adversarial situation so that we can work together to curb the problem. So I hope my colleagues will agree with me and look for that new ordinance tomorrow. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Mayor. The major thing I want to do is I'd like to move to place on the May 10th docket a resolution amending the residential permit parking program for the 400 block of South Upper Street, changing the times to 24 hours per day, restrictions seven days per week, and waiving the provisions relating to the mechanics of designing residential parking permit areas adopted by Resolution No. 168-90 and amended by Resolutions No. 450-91 and 433-206. And there is the Michael Sanner signed off on this, and the appropriate number of petitions were obtained by the residents, and this is the resolution. So moved. Motion? There is a motion by Council Member Lawless. Is there a second? Second. A second by Council Member Blues. Is there any discussion on the motion? Mayor. Council Member Farmer. What were the previous parking restrictions before this change? Previously, it's kind of a long story, But previously, it was an experiment of doing, I believe it was 8 to 5. And because of the tremendous change in the area with more businesses along that area in the U.K., it really didn't work. Many of these older houses in this area don't have driveways. So when they get home at work at 5 o'clock, the residential parking permit has expired, and they have no place to put their car. So that's why the 24-7 in this area. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. I just had a question about waiving the provisions relating to the mechanics of designating the residential parking permit. What's the rationale? Why is that in there? For some reason, and at one point I knew but can't recall, they had a restriction that a street had to be 300 feet long to get a permit. so originally they were going to go for the be wrapped into that complete area but it wasn't written that way and this was passed without that so it would be allowing them they don't have quite 300 feet on that street it's not quite 300 feet long that makes sense thank you All right. Any other discussion on the motion? Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. Thank you, sir. That's all I have. Yes, ma'am. All right. Let's see. Next, for a council report, I'm showing Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to take an opportunity to publicly thank everyone, government employees, Mayor and Richard, that attended the meeting last night. It's the East Gardenside Neighborhood Meeting, and they don't have an established neighborhood association. So just in an effort to address some issues that they may or may not have been having in the area, but we had a huge turnout and a lot of government employees there to address and answer anything. So I just really appreciated that, appreciated the attention. And then also, First Hills Road is having a cleanup this weekend, coming up Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m., and we will meet at Hillcrest Cemetery at 10 a.m. So if you want to come join. And, Richard, you do live on First Hills Road, I believe. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Council Member Hanson. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. I have two meetings to announce. The first is tonight at 7 o'clock. That's the Meadowthorpe Neighborhood Association. They'll be meeting in the community center at 333 Larch Lane. And the main agenda item will be a candidate forum for the Second District District Council office with the primary election coming up two weeks from today. This is a good opportunity for the Meadowthorpe neighbors to be introduced to the candidates, hear what they have to say on the issues, and make a more informed choice on May the 22nd. And then tomorrow night, Wednesday, May 9th at 6 p.m., St. Martin's Village Neighborhood Association will meet in the community center in Whitney Young Park. I believe they'll be discussing some traffic issues in the neighborhood and also the question of changing the name of the community center to honor one of their important citizens. So that'll be an important meeting. Again, 6 o'clock in the community center at Whitney Young Park tomorrow night. Thank you, Mayor. That's my report. Thank you, Council Member Blues. I don't have anyone else signed up for a council report, so we can move on to the next item on the agenda, which is showing public comment for issues not on the agenda, I think. Mr. Mundy, nobody. All right. And next on the agenda is the mayor's report. Is there a motion to approve the mayor's report? Motion by Council Member Blue, second by Council Member Kay. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you very much. I would like to add before adjournment, I know that all Council members share in the tragic loss of Brian Matone, the assistant county attorney whose death occurred last week and whose services will be held tomorrow at Christ the King. I know everybody and anybody who knew Brian and who worked with him just had enormous respect for him, for his work, for the commitment to public service that's really rare. and I know that we all share in the loss and we send our sympathy out to his family who is a remarkable family in our city. The visitation is tonight and the services are tomorrow at 11 o'clock. Does anyone else have anything to offer before we adjourn? If not, then I'll accept a motion to adjourn. Council Member Ellinger has offered a motion to adjourn. Is there a second? There's a second by Council Member Myers. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. We are adjourned. Thank you. Outro Music