When I first saw him standing there, I longed to speak but did not dare. There's something inside that whispered to me, you'd better move in carefully. And then he smiled and turned away, that told me all he could not say. That's when I knew he wanted me to But I had to do some breaking through He's so shy He's so shy That sweet little boy who caught my eye He's so shy He's so shy And he's much too good to let get by Oh, yes he is Now holding him gently through the night Nothing has ever felt so right And I'm so glad I took the time that I had to take to make him mine He can still do things to my heart, just like he did right from the start Each time I see that quality that never stops attracting me He's so shy He's so shy He's really got to go Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome to the end. Hello, everyone. Greetings, and I'll call the meeting to order. This is a meeting of the Council in work session. Just as an FYI, we do have a closed session, I believe. Is that right, Commissioner? Oh, right. We have a closed session at the end of this meeting today. First on our agenda is a public comment for issues on the agenda. I don't have anybody signed up. Mr. Mundy, thank you so much. Next on our agenda is docket approval. Any rezonings? Is there a motion? Motion by Council Member Blue, second by Council Member Stenet to approve the docket. Is there any discussion on the motion? Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. I actually have a walk-on, and Council members should have received Friday a memo and the attached agreement and then received again today, just now at your places, a memo and an attached agreement. And this is an agreement with the Fayette County Attorney's Office, and it has to do with their driver education program. And so I would like to move to put it on the docket and then hear from Larry Roberts if the council would agree to that. so I move to place on the docket the memorandum of agreement with the Fayette County Attorney's Office. Second. Motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, second by Council Member Kaye. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right, here's some more documents, Vice Mayor. So would anybody like to hear from... Anybody want to hear from? All right. All right. The motion then passes. Thank you, Mr. Roberts, for visiting with us. You've had a good role with this, and everybody appreciates it. Thank you, sir. Well, thank you for your time. This has kind of been an emergency to you guys, and here's the reason why. we are going to build a new driving pad right next to the one that is presently there. On the screen you'll see that this is Old Frankfort Pike and New Circle Road right beside the police station, and this is the driving pad that the city sanitation department has used forever to teach garbage truck drivers. The police department use it. When we started this program last year, we were allowed to use that, and we graduated 85 kids in this program. It's a five-day class, four hours a day, and we use that pad to do it. We're growing significantly, and I have talked to people in the community and have raised about $350,000 in kind primarily to build another pad right beside it. The paper that you have there is the drawing for it. Just to give you a little bit of background, when Jim Gray won the election, we were in the process of beginning a driver education program for kids in Fayette County because there isn't one with the school system anymore. The only one that's here is Boone Driver School, and it's a good program. It teaches beginning driving in basically six hours, and you can pass the course. We teach a totally different course than trying to educate kids on defensive driving. And so I won't go into the details of it, but when I waited until the election, because I didn't know who was going to be the mayor. And so when Jim won, we were in the position to then go talk to him and say, could we use this driving pad? And I said, I will guarantee you that I will never ask for any budgeted money from the city. Never will we try to get a federal grant or state money for this program. And he said, well, how are you going to do that? And I said, I think the city will support this, people in the community. and so i told him at that point that to prove that we'd already gone and talked to rick avar at toyota nicholasville and the upshot of it was he said well what can i do to help you i said we need cars he said how many and i said 11 he said i'll give them to you so we have brand new toyotas uh corollas and camrys and we are using about six at this time and then every six months we turn them back in and get six new ones it's a tremendous contribution then that on the main pad there you You see two rectangles. Those are for buildings that were initiated. They're pads for buildings. The small one has our trailer on it, which is like a school trailer that we put in there in May of last year. And we were renting it. We had to get electricity. And so the lowest bid to provide all the needed electricity and so forth was $23,000. I didn't have that. You all won't give me any money for this. So I went to the lowest bidder, who was Doug Dixon at Dixon Electric, and I said, this is the program we're doing. Would you help us a little bit on the cost? He says, I'll give it to you. So he then wired it so that it will be permanent if we ever build a permanent building. And so from that, State Farm has come in because Deborah Hensley knew about this program. She contacted the bigwigs up in Cincinnati who run the eastern part of State Farm. They gave us $10,000, and then this year they gave us $25,000. On the back of the brochure, you'll see people and companies who have already jumped on board to help us. And I know we can do this program extensively to the point that we're going to be going a lot during every day, and eventually, hopefully, we'll get to where we can teach beginning driving. This year, I'll just tell you that we were able to pass in the legislature in Frankfurt a bill to allow the program to be changed dramatically both here and all over Kentucky. Right now you have to have a 21-year-old in the car when you have a permit. So if you're on our driving pad, you've got to have a 21-year-old in the car. Well, that means I've got to pay somebody $25 an hour, like a police, ex-police officer, somebody retired, to work with those kids. And if I've got six cars driving around, the cones and doing it, it's awful. I mean, I can't afford it. So all over the country there are legislation passed where you can have a driving pad that's certified and enclosed from the public where you can have a person with a bullhorn in there to manage the kids driving the car slowly through the cones. So we got that passed unanimously in the House and the Senate, and it's not just for us. It's going to be for every school in Kentucky if they want to do it. My goal is in about five years when we get this thing rolling, I hope the city, the school system will start a driving education program because we're showing it can be done. And when a kid graduates, it's phenomenal. There's a couple of emails there from parents about it, and so I appreciate you all letting us do it. We'll have this thing built in early June, and I'd like for you all to come out sometime and ride with us. It's pretty cool. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Mr. Roberts. Thank you all. Thank you, sir. Council Member Ford, are you signed on for this item? No, sir, not for this item. All right. Has anybody signed on for this item? Want to speak to it? Council Member Farmer? I do. I appreciate the work that Mr. Roberts and his group are doing. I guess my question is more of a background question on the piece of property. Is this a permanent use for this piece of property? Is this something that we've entered into for a specific length of time? Because I think as a community or as a counselor's administration, it's a big piece of property to dedicate over without having a little bit of conversation about it in my estimation. Mr. Maloney is coming to the microphone. This property is not much you can develop on because it's on a landfill, and there's only a few things you can put on that. And we already had a pad on the other side, and they came to us because they needed more time. The numbers have really gone way up, and they asked if they could have the other pad, and we worked with them. And they've got to go through the state to get a permit because the state is doing it, gets out the permit to what could be built on a landfill like that, and they are working on that right now to get that approved. Well, that was just an explanation I was asking for because it's been represented to me somewhere along the way that this would be a piece of economic development property, potentially. So I appreciate the use that Larry Roberts and his group is putting it to. I just, on behalf of the community, since we're having goals and objectives, conversation and e-mails sent to us, if this is a large piece of property that is now permanently not going to be able for us to be used in that capacity. I just want to have a conversation about it before we did it, period. I can address my view on that. I don't think it's going to be a permanent thing. We certainly didn't draw this agreement to be one. And I don't know. I mean, if the new county attorney comes in, if he ever does or she ever does, they may not want to do it so i mean i don't know so it's not drafted that way you all may decide that we're not gonna do anymore and that's it so my hope is that it will and maybe maybe the school system will take something over and you all bulldoze it or whatever for whatever use you want but right now it's right now it's being used very importantly with the police and the fire departments but it's certainly not permanent as far as i'm concerned thank you sir thank you mayor Council Member Lawless, are you signed on to speak to this item? No, sir. I have a walk-on. All right. All right. We can move on then. Council Member Lawless. I move to place on the docket a resolution establishing our residential parking permit, our PPP, for the 1200 block of Castle Road, including 1211 through 1213 on the west and 1216 through 1240 on the east from the hours of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday from September 1st through May 31st. So moved. Motion by Councilman Lawless and a second by Councilman Crosby. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. You can take a vote then. I have a discussion. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Lawless, we did something similar to this last week, didn't we, for you? We did Upper Street last week. And the specific words in this resolution are to waive the provisions relating to the mechanics of designated residential parking permit areas set forth in the procedures adopted by resolutions in 1990, amended in 91, and again in 2006. I guess mine is a policy question. Is it wise to waive these provisions so often? Or why did we have three resolutions setting up how parking permit programs are done? I'm not sure of the history of how that got put in in 1999. It's only the second one of several I've done since I've been in office that any of the provisions were waived. They just happened to be back-to-back. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Anyone else wish to—is there any further discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. No. All right. The motion carries. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Council Members, you've received a resolution from me on May 1st, again on May 8th. And so today I move to place on a docket for Thursday, May 17th, 2012, a resolution amending Section 2.204 of the Council rules to provide that the Council may consider and act on any matter referred to a committee. So moved. Second. It's a motion by Council Member Meyers, second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion on the motion? Me again. Council Member Farmer. Yes, sir. I have read over this and seen it. Please tell me what this is in reference to or why you're bringing this forward. Okay, I'll go back a little bit in history. A few years ago we had a situation where at times we were having difficulty calling, for example, community of the holes. Okay. And so at that point I brought forth a resolution that was passed by the council to amend the rules so that the majority of the council could vote to have a meeting, or actually it was the members of the committee could vote to have a meeting if the chair would not call one. Earlier this year we had a situation where we had something in committee and we couldn't get it to move forward quickly enough. All right. And so this will allow, if an issue is in a committee but it hasn't ever come up to the docket to be addressed, that a simple majority vote of the council can bring it up at a date certain. Could call the issue up from committee for council consideration? Yes. What would be for that committee's consideration? Okay, to place it on the committee's agenda. Yes. One of the issues was that there was at least one member of the council who wanted to hear the issue, but they weren't on the committee. Okay. And so they couldn't impact that decision. And so this would take care of that by allowing the full council to have a discussion about it and move the issue forward. Thank you for your explanation. Thank you. Any further discussion on the motion? All right, then, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the Council, I want to bring forward a walk-on motion regarding the Industrial Revenue Bond Program at Transylvania University and some development plans that they have. So I move to place on the docket for the May 17, 2012 Council meeting an ordinance authorizing the issuance of approximately $10,350,000 in industrial revenue bonds to Transylvania University to finance additions and improvements to its campus and authorizing the execution of the necessary related documents. The issuance does not constitute a debt of the urban county government. So move. Second. Motion by Councilman Ford, second by Councilman Lane. Is there any discussion on the motion? Mayor. Councilman Farmer. I have no question. Thank you. Does anyone else have any questions? This is the time. All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Okay. Okay. All right. Council Member, Vice Mayor Gordon. Yeah, it's... Are there any more dockets? Are there any more? I don't show anybody else for a docket issue. Vice Mayor, for a docket issue? Yes. All right. Council Member Beard. Yes. I have two NDFs that I wanted to go ahead and get into the pipeline. So I wanted to go on the docket for Thursday night. Lansdowne Elementary School, PTA, and Southern Heights Neighborhood Association. That's a motion. That's a motion. All right. Second by Councilman Myers. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Take a vote then. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Vice Mayor Gordon, you have an announcement. I wanted to, if we're finished with the docket, I wanted to ask the Council if they would allow me to introduce and thank Darylman Combs. Would you just stand up, Darylman? Darylman has been our temporary acting citizen advocate. She started November 7th, and her last day is May the 24th, and as you know, we don't have a work session next week. But I wanted publicly to thank you, Daryl, for helping us in a pinch. And you've done a wonderful job in the Citizen Advocate Office, and just wanted to thank you and wish you well, finally, in your total retirement. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Darwin. We need to finish out the motion on the docket approval. We had a motion. We had a second. Without further discussion, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Next on our agenda is the approval of the summary. Is there a motion? Approval approval. Second. Motion by Councilman Beard, second by Vice Mayor Gordon. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is budget amendments. Is there a motion? Motion by Council Member Farmer, seconded by Council Member Lawless. Is there any discussion on the motion? Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to ask about two items. Page 8 in the packet. The first is the adjustment to the Lexington Public Library appropriation. I don't know if page 8 of the packet. If Commissioner, oh, Mr. Barrow. Barrow is here. I understand that this is based on the property tax assessments. I mean the property assessments. Is this $195,661, it looks like it's coming out of the general service fund? It would have a net zero impact. If you remember last year in the budgeting process, we assumed zero growth in assessments. We did have a little bit of assessment growth. So revenue would have went up accordingly when we received the assessments. The appropriation, which is five cents on the dollar that we pay to the library, is going up accordingly. You're only seeing one side of the transaction, but it's a net zero. Okay, that explains it. Thank you. And then while you're there, on journal entry 60294-95, the Scholar Clock Project, But is this donation fund, is it one big fund, or do things go in there, do items go in there designated and then they can just roll to different budget years? It looks like this is from a prior year. Revenue? I wouldn't know the exact accounting answer to that, but in terms of the way we handle it, yes. I mean, there's a designated purpose for a collection that goes into 4003, and then it's appropriated whenever it's going to be spent. So there are no rules about... I guess the part I'm interested in is that it came from a prior year. So are there any rules about how long money can sit in the donation fund? I would have to defer to accounting on that. I can ask Phyllis Cooper and get back to you. I would appreciate it very much. Okay. Thank you. Betty Kerr is here perhaps to help with this. On the sculler clock topic, it actually comes from two years, this current year and the previous year. Okay. It was hard to find money. Okay. I was just curious about the rules for rolling it over. And it's my understanding, although I certainly would not suggest that I have much knowledge of this, but just from what our experience in that account is that we were directed when we started the fundraising project, which was in May two years ago, to have the funds. They are dedicated when people send their donations. Of course, they're dedicated to this project or whatever other project, and then go into this. And that does roll year to year. So it is not one that gets recaptured in a fiscal year. and I'm speaking specifically to the Scholar Clock. I'm not attempting to explain the entire process. But you'll see what this reflects is it has been sitting in reserve while the continuing fundraising efforts occurred, and then now that the total necessary has been raised, it is being drawn from that fund and reflects having been drawn over a 24-month period. Does that help? Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Ms. Currier. I think, Betty, Council Member. I've got a question. I'm not sure exactly what the number is. It may be 8, it may be 10 times the discolored clock's been fixed. What are we doing at this point to make sure that that doesn't occur? I think we were getting Band-Aids before, and this sounds like it's a more significant. I don't really have any, myself, previous knowledge of the nature of what fixes were done over time, other than to tell you when the streetscape project construction occurred and the clock had to be removed, we found it to be in structurally problematic condition and was not operable as a clock at that time. So once we got into it, discovered it had a serious list of needs, including all new works in terms of the clock functioning, as well as the structural repairs. And so the Historic Preservation Committee who took this project on made the commitment to go ahead and do a really full-blown restoration of it and stop if there had been Band-Aid approaches. They obviously hadn't worked. elements of the clock had been lost over time in 1974 a tornado-like wind got it and dumped the head of the clock in the street and architectural parts of it disappeared at that time I'm sure in addition to the works at that point so this is going to be the full-blown restoration of it and it really it will have hopefully a hundred more years it's a hundred years old now and hopefully it will have 100 more years of successful life. I don't know that I can suggest to you the replacement clock works will last 100 years, but I think it will be a very substantive change. And it's interesting, more recent times, it never was working. It sat on the same time for many, many years. It was correct twice a day. I understand. So you will see next week in your packets information that enumerates more closely. All the types of work are going to be done on the clock, and the contract will be in your materials as well. And it tells you more specifically. But we're broadly replacing missing features, having them cast and created to match the missing. We are very fortunate to have a couple of historic images of the clock back in the 30s. And so it was our steering piece to what should be there and was gone. And so that will be all in your information next week. But I think it's going to be really exciting to see this piece return to its true appearance and become totally functional. And it'll have, in the functional sense, it'll have electronically the things to adjust for if the power goes out, it'll reset itself. and it'll have the dimmer switches and all the bells and whistles in terms of being functional in today's time. Wonderful, because it adds character without a doubt to that. It is really, and it's been interesting with the fundraising. A lot of people, while they may not have been able to give very large sums of money, had great enthusiasm, and they all had a story to tell you about their memories of this clock. One couple, we got engaged with our ring from the store right there in front of the store with the clock, and I thought, boy, you bought that ring and got engaged. That was quick. But it really is a touchstone for people, I think, in terms of their sense of our downtown. I can remember walking to lunch and passing by that back when there were two-way streets. I'm sorry, Mayor. Sorry. No, that's – this is – clockworks are in the wheelhouse of the next speaker, perhaps, Mr. Farmer. Mayor, I was just going to comment that having encountered and worked on many pieces of antique and estate jewelry, that there are times where you come to an article such as this, where there are going to be so many pieces that would have to be handmade or specially made for the movement or for the escapement of the clock, that even though you have a beautiful piece of jewelry, there comes a time where you take that mechanism out and replace it in essence with a quartz movement, or in this instance an electronic movement, to replace all the moving parts that were there before with more solid state or less moving parts, it will be more accurate. But it will also maybe, on the interior of it, not be quite as special, but on the exterior it will have all the things that we look for in our downtown. Well, thank you. And actually, the historic clockworks must have disappeared, we think, in 1974 because what is to be replaced now is a 1970s mechanism that didn't last very long at all. But I concur absolutely with your comments, and thank you. All right. Thank you. Council Member Lawless, on this subject of the clock? Surely. Certainly. I, too, got engaged in front of that clock. A plaque could be in order. I think you might need a plaque. So I'm glad to hear you're using modern-day materials to restore the historic clock, and I'll make a donation equal to the number of years that I haven't been married. That works for me. We'll take it. Thank you very much. Seriously, that would be great. And we would say as a last thought, unless there are other questions, one of the things you're going to see come back to the clock are the eyeglasses that are three-dimensional, and they sit, if you've seen historic images, they sit below the bonnet head, the whole round face of the clock. The eyeglasses are at the top of the column, below the head, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, they're going to be, pardon the pun, real eye-catchers, too. They're going to be handsome, and they're lit. The eyes will look at you. And so this clock is going to take on all its personality, and I hope people will enjoy it. And the members of the Preservation Commission that have worked to raise the money have been very diligent and very enthusiastic about this project. Thank you. Thank you. LFUCG, I'll send you the details. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks so much, Betty. I have no one else signed up for discussion on new business, so we have a motion. We have a second. We take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Budget amendments. That's budget amendments, right. New business. New business is next. Is there a motion? Move approval. Motion by Mr. Farmer. Second by Vice Mayor Gordon. is there any discussion Vice Mayor Gordon thank you Mayor just one question on M and that is the local development corporation the two pieces of property on Chestnut Street I guess Mr. Maloney Is Mr. Maloney? Oh, there he is. I just had a question. I'm happy to see that we are adding to our efforts in affordable housing, and I wondered if you know the assessment of those properties. I could find out for you. I appreciate it, because I think, you know, Council members have had a lot of discussion about affordable housing, and in the discussion we frequently don't recognize that LFUCG sometimes isn't giving money, but we're giving property. This is for a dollar, and I think this is another way that we can support affordable housing. So if you don't mind to let me know the assessed value. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. Mine was on the new business item that relates to the distillery district. It's on page 24. I'm not sure what item of business. I guess it's item I. And I'm just not familiar with all the background on the improvements project, but I just noticed that this change order brings, I mean, the change order brings the total change to around 20% from the original situation, and I just was going to ask for a little explanation. I'll answer that for you. This is for the feasibility study that we want to continue to stay in fulfilling the NPA requirements and also maintain our eligibility for future federal funding. And this is a component that we're going into phase two. We're in phase one now, but we want to get into phase two. we want to get to this feasibility to get into phase two. So this money is appropriate. I have Mike here to talk a little bit about it, but is that correct? We're trying to get most of it done before we go into phase two. So what direction do we go? Ask Mr. Bullen to come up. Yep. So is the money for the change order appropriated already in some capacity? No. What this is, the way the project was initiated, and we're trying to follow a certain process, and a process that subscribes to the National Environmental Policy Act. So if you're trying to maintain eligibility for future federal funding, there's a prescribed process. It involves how you evaluate alternatives, some of the considerations collaterally with neighborhoods, with other things like streams, historic resources, things of that nature. So initially, as part of the initial feasibility study authorization, there was kind of this global cursory assessment for the district as a whole, looking at the entire boundaries of the district, both at the stream environmental resources and the cultural historic. Now that we have defined alternatives, there's a secondary component to that, where we actually come in and complete the baseline investigations, the baseline survey. So there's actually got to be, as a part of this process, some cultural and historic, like going out and doing field investigations and searching for historic artifacts, things of that nature on the cultural resources side. And then on the environmental side, we have to do some in-stream sampling because part of this is trying to look at how we can improve the quality of a town branch as a resource because town branch, we think, is a very vital part of the rebirth of the district. So we have to look at that creatively and what needs to be done to help resurrect that resource from the standpoint of the district. So there would be some additional investigations that would be done to evaluate that so that we can better understand it and then incorporate any consequential impacts that that might have on budget and the alternatives themselves. So that, in essence, is what those dollars are earmarked for. So now that we have these alternatives, this is a more focused Phase II. I think Richard used the term Phase II follow-up where we're targeting the final evaluation on these kind of what I call the detailed alternative areas that are actually impacted. And this process was chosen because it basically helped us minimize the total environmental cost to the project by doing it in pieces parts instead of trying to do this global investigation for the district as a whole up front. I appreciate the background and the definitional parts of that very much. Thank you. I guess, so then where does this $83,000 come from? We bonded a couple years ago this project for this study for about $2 million, and it will be coming out of that $2 million that we already set aside for this project. So this type of expenditure was, so at the time we did this bonding for this, did we anticipate this type of expenditure or that we would use this amount of money for this part of that? I mean, since it's a change of almost 20%, I'm just asking for something. Did we anticipate that? In general terms, yes. It was known all along there would be an environmental piece. It just was not known how extensive it would need to be back when the money was set up. And as Mike said, the last thing that he said, it was actually set up in two parts. Because it's such a long corridor, we wanted to see if we could, rather than do all the environmental and cultural up front, and see if we could look at a certain degree of development of the plan and try to reduce that scope needed for the environmental and cultural. And we were able to achieve that to some extent. So is this kind of the first part then, so to speak? The second part. Okay. I appreciate that background very much. Mayor, thank you. Sir, is there any further discussion on new business? All right. Then we can take a vote. Thank you. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is continuing business and presentations. Is there an NDF, or did we get that with Councilman Beard's motion? Did we get it, or have we still got an NDF? This was the special NDF. All right, then. These are a motion for the NDF. That too needs to go to the docket. This was $2,000 out of my NDF to go into the sidewalk fund code enforcement. All right, there's a motion by Council Member Crosby, seconded by Council Member Farmer on the NDF. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Is there a report on Planning and Public Works Committee? Thank you, Mayor. Planning and Public Works met on May the 8th. There is a summary and motions in the packet. There are actually no motions from the meeting. We had a report about the downtown traffic management and revitalization study that Stantec will undertake for the next 12 to 14 months. It will involve traffic model development, existing conditions analysis, future travel demand, alternative identification and evaluation, as well as community involvement. This was on our docket last Thursday night, and we gave it two readings. Next, we had an update on the progress on Oliver Lewis Way. Andrew Grunwald talked about the four phases that are part of that whole development and gave us some background numbers and some dates for accomplishment. There were no motions there. And lastly, we talked about the Todd's Road widening Phase 2 update, and Bob Barrett provided information here. And again, he gave us some times and some dates, and there were no motions. The meeting adjourned at 2.10. My report is complete. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Next on the agenda is a presentation on police and fire pension by Councilman Martin. Councilman Martin, you'll need how much time for this? Fifteen? You've got 15 minutes. I think this is 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes, all right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council members, thank you for the opportunity to present some information we have gathered relating to the rising crisis with the Police and Fire Pension Fund. I've got 15 minutes and a 25-minute presentation, so with your permission, I will not take questions until after I finish the presentation, and I'll be happy to answer any questions afterward. I've given this presentation to a number of groups, including Lexington Forum and the Lexington Rotary Club. As I'm retiring from the council, one of the things I want to do is to bring this and present to this council so that I can say that I did it, and so that I can pass the torch, so to speak. I extend my thanks to Commissioner Jane Driscoll and Susan Combs of the Police and Fire Pension Board, who helped my council aide, and I gather much of the information in the presentation. I especially thank Jonathan Hollinger, my council aide, legislative aide, who prepared this entire presentation. And for those at home, the presentation is available on my council website, and that's www.lexinky.gov slash district 10. So the first slide we have, and I apologize to those at home for the tiny print. So this is basically the unfunded liability. And there are three pieces to this, and I have a pointer here. So this is a historical back to 1997, the UALL. That's the Unfunded Actuarial Crude Liability. That is the pension fund. And so that's the amount of money that we need in order to pay the promises that have been made for our police and fire retirements. And this number is produced by our actuary of the police and fire fund, and they publish reports from time to time. And so those dates are the dates of those reports. And this shows the amount of money by which we are short. You have a pool of money and you put it in the bank, you invest it in the stock market, and it grows at some point. And the amount of money that we need in the bank today to pay the promises that have been made is basically our funding level. We would be 100% funded. To the extent we're short of the money today that would be required to pay all the promises, that is this unfunded actuarial crude liability. That's the shortfall in the pension. And as folks can see, it has increased from approximately, I guess it's $61 million in 1997, and it's currently, as of July 2011, about $258 million. Of course, for those on the council, in 2009-2010, we borrowed $106 million. to try to shore up and catch up payments in the pension fund. And of that, as of July 2011, that outstanding money that we owed was about $100 million. And so as of July 2011, we owed about $358 million between what we were short in the pension fund and money we borrowed that we still have to pay back. for the pension fund. Now, the medical benefits, in 2008, the Government Accounting Standards Board required that cities actually account for the medical benefits that they have promised to retirees. And again, what is the amount of money we would need in the bank today to pay all the medical benefits we have promised? And that number in 2008 was $181 million. The next time that was measured was 2010. And that increased to $211 million, so that's a $30 million increase, about $15 million a year. The number I have for 2011 is a guess, and I have a footnote about that. We have not measured that in 2011. We're going to do that, I guess, hopefully in 2012. And so there's an assumption here, and I want everybody to be clear about that. The assumption is that it increased by $15 million again the way it did the previous two years. Now, I think we all are hopeful that that number is going to go down. The mayor had a very bold initiative to rein in our health care costs. That initiative, the council approved with some changes, will likely affect what we owe for medical benefits for public safety retirees. And so I think the hope is that this number will actually be less than the $211 million it was before. But we don't know. And so this contains just simply a conservative assumption that the shortfall continued, but we're waiting to see what that's going to be. And so as of July 2010, the shortfall was about $537 million. Based on the new shortfall in the pension fund and the estimated shortfall in the medical benefits, being about $50 million between the two, the guess is that our current unfunded liability is about $585 million. But again, this is a guess. And so we're looking forward to hearing what the new actuary on the medical benefits will be. And all these numbers change based on the stock markets and based on retirements and many things, and the actuary makes these complicated calculations. This is the projected pension bond debt. This is a chart that the administration put together and shared with the council at our budget retreat. And the line, the black line, is the 10% bond debt service limit. And so the projections are that over the next 15 years or so, 13 to 15 years, we are going to substantially exceed our 10% debt service limit. Two things that aren't on this chart are, first of all, there are no new shortfalls on the chart. And if you remember from the page before, we're falling short from between $35 and $50 million a year. Those new shortfalls aren't on here. And if that trend continues, if we continue to run shortfalls, then this chart will be worse than it is. This is a chart, the LFECG pension contributions. This is just the pension fund. And these are the contributions made by the city since 1991. In the 21 years that are up here, the city only made its minimum contribution in three years. And so this is a substantial source of the shortfall that we find in the police and fire pension fund. As an exercise, we looked at the money that if we had funded 100% in each year that we were supposed to, and we invested that at whatever interest rate that the money earned that year, we had between $80 and $100 million more in the fund than we do today, just on this chart. So this is a significant contribution to the shortfall. And so in many years, we're looking at 40%, 50%, and 60% funding, which is short of what we were obligated to do under state law. One of the significant contributors to the pension has been this assumed rate of return. And I'll show you on the next page in a second what we're actually earning on our money. But Lexington, until last week, has had an 8% assumed rate of return. And again, I'm talking about how much money you need in the bank today to grow at whatever we invested in, to pay the obligations that we've made, to pay our promises. And one of the assumptions has been that, well, our money is going to grow at 8%. And if you think about it, if your money grows at a great percentage, you need less money. If it's not growing at all, you need a lot more money. And so this rate of return actually affects the stated shortfall in a very significant way. The change last week made by the pension board from 8% to 7.5% is going to increase our stated shortfall. It doesn't change what we owe, but it shows what we write down on paper as to what we owe. But it does bring us in more line with what some other states are doing and what some other agencies in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Now what we actually owe, have made on our money, over the last five years we made about 1.5%, last 10 years 5.5%, last 17 years 8.6%. And it goes up and down, but obviously in 2008 the fund lost about 27% of its assets, which is tens of millions of dollars. That was a large amount of money. And what I like about this chart is that it helps to understand that over the past 10 years, this is from January 2002, 2012, essentially the S&P 500 has been nearly flat and the Dow Jones has grown somewhat. But it's certainly, at the beginning of the period, the Dow was at about 10,000 and at the end of this chart it's a little over 12,000. So one of the major problems in the police and fire pension fund is the fact that we're not getting the market returns that are needed to grow the fund to pay these obligations. And to the extent that there's a shortfall in our market returns, that we don't earn as much money in the stock market, the city of Lexington basically has to make that up out of the general fund. There's something, a new rule change coming on next year. the Government Accounting Standards Board sets accounting rules for government. And there are several rules that are coming on board that may affect our stated unfunded liability. And these are government balance sheets will have to include the present value of unfunded pension liabilities. The funding projections will include different discount rates for each type of pension fund assets. For example, if you have United States Treasuries, they may be earning money at a point and a half or two points. They certainly aren't making money at 8%. And so this new rule will require that annual rate of return to be a blended rate based on the actual assets you have funded. And to the extent you have a shortfall, you will have to assume a borrowing cost because you'll have to borrow the money to make the shortfall. And lastly, the GASB will address funding for retiree medical benefits in the future. That was that column in the right, and so that relates to medical benefits. There are some legislative changes over the last 10 years that have contributed to the shortfall. We already talked about that the city has not paid all of its obligations. The minimum retirement age for police and firefighters was reduced from 50 to 46 in 1994 and then eliminated entirely in 2002. So what this means is folks who get their 20 years of service can retire immediately and start drawing their pension. The cost of living increases were mandated for retirees ranging from 2% to 5% annually. As a comparison, the county employee retirement system, where the rest of the state are governed by, are at 1.5 percent, and this year was frozen. I just was going to say, Councilman Martin, just to gauge yourself, you've got about two and a half minutes left. Beating up. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you. And then there was a 75 percent calorie. Councilman Martin, just a second. Councilman Ray, I will yield time to Mr. Martin by five minutes. Thank you. Well, let's get to the point when he gets to the conclusion, and we'll see if we get a motion to carry forward. In 2005, 6, 7, and 8, there were significant salary increases. I know there was a study early in the decade that showed that our police and firefighters were underpaid significantly compared to their counterparts. But without a question, the raises of 24 percent and 30 percent and the subsequent raises after that have some effect on the pension fund because our contributions are dependent on the amount of the salary. Skip and go to the disability. And another significant issue is the disability rate. We are running in the high 30s to 40s in annual disabilities. As a comparison, CERS has approximately 8%. So here's, and I'm going to have to skip the rest of the presentation, But here's kind of where we are. In order to pay off this $584 million, we'd have to basically try to pay it off over time. If we were to do that over 20 years, we would need about $47 million a year to do that. And so we have several components that we have to think about. Go to the very end. Closing thoughts. So we have several elements. One is we've got our annual payments, and that's been last year about $28 million. And then we have our annual shortfall growth. So if it's still growing and we're not paying that shortfall, then we're falling further and further behind. And lastly, we have to basically pay off our existing shortfall over time. And so while this is a worst-case scenario, there's a lot of things we could do to make, for example, if we stopped a growth, that would significantly change this number. But in order to get ahead and to retire the pension shortfalls and the medical benefits, we're going to need a substantial amount of money. And I guess the lesson is that money alone is not going to fix this. It's growing too fast. And I think we're going to have to look at reductions in pension and medical benefits and somehow meet in the middle so that we can honor the promises that have been made to our police and firefighters who risk things for us. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Martin. Are there any questions or comments? Council Member Lane. Yes, sir. I'm going to ask Council Member Martin a couple of questions that probably most of the council members know, but some of the people watching this on TV may not. And my first question is, how will we be able to make changes in the pension fund in the future? Our pension fund is almost exclusively governed by state law. And so while there are some things we can look at at the city level, A great deal of the responsibility is on the state legislature. Our pension system is governed by the merged government chapter of the Kentucky Revised Statutes, and those statutes would have to be amended to make significant changes. Okay. Our cash flows for the government are very limited at this time. As a matter of fact, our budgets are very squeezed, so we don't have a lot of surplus cash available. and we're currently planning to borrow more money under bonding on an annual basis to make up the shortfall in the pension fund. What will be the effect of that over a period of three or four years? Well, I think back on the chart that had about bonding, we're going to exceed our bonding capacity at some point. Borrowing money is kind of like a snow plow in winter. You're pushing the snow in front of you and it gets higher and higher. And so we already have payments as far as the eye can see. And by borrowing the money, we're pushing payments off into the future and making those existing obligations even greater. And so by borrowing the money, we are essentially making things worse down the road for us. Would you say that perhaps the city of Lexington is in a bad situation and that we have the increasing debt obligations created by the pension fund and at the same time we cannot make adjustments to the plan because it's the state's responsibility to modify pension plans? I think this is the most serious problem facing city government right now. All right. What will be the effect if we modify the plan, the pension fund plan? What effect would it have on current employees in public safety and future employees in public safety? Well, the mayor set up a pension task force that is looking at many types of legislative changes and funding mechanisms. And so there are limitations under state law, which you can do with existing employees. That is being looked at the pension task force. I think the most effect we can have is changing the pension system for new hires. All right. That's the last question. is what are some other states doing, because we're not the only state that has these issues, what are some other states doing to help modify the plan and at the same time protect the public safety workers' benefits? The types of things that states are doing are adopting a blended system, a hybrid system of retirement benefits that's kind of part 401K and part pension. and other types of things they're doing are freezing the annual cost of living adjustments until such time as the pension can catch up, and so they can sort of catch its breath and get back on sound financial footing. Okay, and then my last question is after you've retired from council, are you planning to be a pension expert? I'm planning on retiring from the council. Thank you. Councilman, we'll follow. Thank you very much, Councilman. Thank you, Council Member Lane, Council Member Farmer. Mayor, thank you, and Council Members Martin and Lane, well done there. That was nice. Mayor, I don't want the public to believe that your view on this or that the Council's view on this is merely there's only one answer, and the only one answer is to bond, because I feel like your response to this issue is more than just about having bonds in the budget each year. I think probably it also includes legislative outreach, which just this last Tuesday we saw members of the legislature here representing the new partnership that I think we're forming between this council, this city, and those in Frankfurt who do make budget decisions on our behalf. And two, I think that I had another point, and I lost it because I didn't have the question and answers. Do you have another question for me? Listen, that's not like you, Councilman Farmer. And the work of the task force on this. I think that it's important for the citizenry to know that yours is not just a $31 million. budget every time, or a $31 million or a $30 million bond each year. And I would assume you would tell me I was correct and maybe fill in a blank or two. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. I just had a question about the task force and who's on it and what's the time frame. Thank you, Council Member Henson. I'm a member of the task force. Council Member Stennett is a member of the task force. Council Member Beard, Vice Mayor Gorton, is a member of the task force. If I missed anybody, I apologize. But also representatives from both the police department and the fire department and both unions. And the city has brought a number of its experts and also members of the community. Harry Richards is on there, and Dr. Merle Halfart is on there as well. It is chaired by Tim Kelly, who is a former publisher of the Herald-Leader, and Gene Vance, who is an attorney with Stolkine and Ogden. It is an overwhelming task. It's very complicated issues. At this point in time, the task force has not met in a while because it has formed two subcommittees. One is a legislative subcommittee, which Mr. Kelly has been serving on, and the other is a finance subcommittee, which Council Member Stinnett is leading as well to look at funding options. And that's kind of where that is. And I'm not the leader of the committee, and I don't speak for the committee, but I appreciate the mayors putting it together and putting such folks of high quality on the committee. But it is a terribly serious issue. The numbers are very distressful, and it is a large amount of money, and it is growing very quickly. Thank you, Council Member Martin. I guess I would hope that this task force will not go on like some of our other task forces that have gone on for several years. I do know that it's a complicated issue and a very serious issue. And it certainly needs to be a solution. We have to have some kind of closure to this of how we move forward. And I know that you bring it up as often as you can. And I'm inclined to think that it's not a problem with our police and fire. It is a problem with decisions that folks that have sat around this horseshoe have made in the past. Legislation that was done in Frankfurt that we should have been screaming about, that our city could not sustain that. But what's done is done, I guess, and we need to come up with a good solution as quickly as possible. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Martin, for bringing this forward. I just have a quick question in regards to the pending work of the task force and your pending retirement. Do you intend to bring forth some legislation for the council to consider in addressing this issue, or would you advise us to wait for the hard and ongoing work of the task force that's in progress right now? Well, again, I don't speak for the task force. There are things that this city can continue to look at, and one of the issues is our high disability rate. Well, we have safety programs that are in place and we hope are adequate, but we also have job classifications and things like that that may contribute to the disability rate. the council put in the public safety committee in february of last year the issue about the high percent of disability retirements that we have in the police and fire departments and i'm hopeful that that we can look at those issues and see what what can we as a city do to affect those those high rates of disability council member the question but uh again to and you've put a whole lot of work into this and I think we all recognize that but do you intend to bring some legislation for us not to this is not your burden just asking does an opportunity of leadership there exists is that your intent or we're exploring and I hope to do this to the Public Safety Committee but we're exploring whether Lexington's classifications for police officers and firefighters for example we have I think one classification for all our firefighters whether other cities are doing that whether we're in line with what other cities are doing, or whether this is a standard and we're doing best practices and what we're doing is what we should be doing. And so I don't yet have a recommendation for legislation. It is primarily a state issue. These are the annual cost of living adjustment, the age at which folks can retire, the age at which folks can start drawing their pensions. If you think many governments, through the state government or the federal government, you can retire at whatever age you retire, but you can't start to draw your pension until you're 55 or 60 or 65 or something like that. So those kinds of things are required by state law. But as far as what can we do at the city, we can look at our best practices for safety to make sure that our practices aren't contributing to our high disability rates. We can look at the way we classify jobs to make sure that we keep our police officers and firefighters as long as we can. Because every one of us knows a police officer or firefighter that has had to retire on disability because they didn't have a choice. Because they didn't have any other thing to do. And the department basically told them you have to basically stay or go as far as the disability. And so we have no possibility for partial disability, for example, in the city of Lexington. And so I think there's a number of things that we can look at as far as our practices. I am not an expert at that, and I look forward to learning about it and hopefully perhaps in the next couple of months pursue an ordinance and to do what we can here at the local level to do as much as we can. I think what we also can do as a council is to speak with as unified voice as we can and use our bully pulpit to request assistance from our state legislators and from the General Assembly. The extent we are able to come together and have a resolution of all 15 council members and the mayor that the legislature take a particular type of action, I think that is persuasive. And yet we have not been able to sort of speak with one voice about what we can do and what we want from the legislature. And I think that would be very persuasive to do that. So I think there are a number of things we can do. I don't think we can just simply say, gosh, this is out of our hands. we can't do anything and just sort of leave it because I think the risks are just simply too high. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a simple clarifying question. And it was pretty evident because on the bottom of your presentation it did have Council Member Doug Martin and you also disclosed that this was on your website. But I just wanted to be clear that this was just your individual presentation and that this was not from the committee you mentioned of other council members and police and fire, that this is something I'm just trying to understand. No, you're absolutely correct. This is something that my council aide and I have put together. I have been hopeful that the city can take this up, hire consultants to have better numbers than what we put together. But this is the best that I and my councilate have been able to put together based on our research. I think it deserves a higher level of priority and some funding so that we can give a higher level of expertise in this type of report. But since we don't have that funding and so no one else is looking at this, we have done the best we can. We have relied as much as possible on numbers provided to us by the administration, by Commissioner Driscoll and Susan Combs with the Police and Fire Pension Board. We have relied on numbers directly from the city's audited financial statements. So we have made great pains to make this as accurate an information as we possibly can put together. But I'd certainly like the professionals to do it. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. I think one other issue that we haven't discussed today is the fact that Fayette County, the LFUCG, is the only municipality in the state that is not in the state police and firefighters pension fund. So we're sort of all alone, and that creates sort of a political liability if we don't have a cohesive group of people that are working together to get the pension fund modified so that it will be financially viable for our community and it will provide safety for our public safety workers. So that is one of the reasons that I would encourage us all to try to become more cohesive in our effort to do that. The other concern that I have is that as we continue to borrow, and we have a $31 million pension bond coming up for approval, I believe, on Thursday evening. That's another $31 million commitment our community is making to the pension fund. And as we continue to do that, those bonds are paid out over 20 years. So we're continuing to build layer after layer after layer of debt that will be obligated to pay over a 20-year period. At some point, that's not going to work anymore because we will have expended most of our bonding capability, and our debt may not be as good as it is now because we have more debt. And it also hurts us in that there are other things we need to invest in in our community, and really we're putting a lot of that money right now into the Police and Firefighter Fund. So I mention that because, like Doug Martin, and I want to thank Doug because he's done a really good job of presenting a lot of information for the community to look at. I do feel like this is the most serious problem that we have in our community, and we cannot put it off much longer because every day that goes by we have more debt, more liability, more interest payments to go. And I also want to thank Mayor Gray. I know that he's been working on this, and he set up a task force, and I've spoken to him on a number of occasions. I know he's actively involved in fixing the problem, too. But I just ask for everybody's cooperation, and I thank everybody for the work that they've done. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Lane. I think it's certainly worthwhile also to recognize the effort, the time that's been committed to this by the task force members, as well as especially the two lay chairs, Tim Kelly, you mentioned it, Councilman Martin, Tim Kelly and Gene Vance. I think when you think of words to describe the unfortunate condition that we're in, I think of words like conundrum, double bind, dilemma. We are perceived in this body to have the responsibility to fix these problems, but we really don't have the authority, and the authority does rest in Frankfurt, and it was encouraging that we had members of our delegation to join us here just last week for the report on the legislative session and to hear several of them mention and recognize in their comments the significance of the unstable condition that we're in today. So I have no one else signed up to speak to this matter, and we can move on then to Council reports. Council Member Blues. This actually matters a question for Council Member Martin. Do you have this presentation electronically that you could send us? Absolutely. Certainly. And in fact, Jonathan will send it to each of the Council members. Okay. I think it would be good to have it in the electronic version for future reference. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Blue, so you were not signed up for a Council report, but you were signed up to comment. That's right. All right. Council Member Kaye, you are signed up for a Council report. All right. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. This is an item that goes back to an issue that was before the Council, has been before the Council for a couple weeks, and I just wanted to clarify a part of the conversation. This has to do with the New Life Day Center and the motion that Council Member Ford brought forward to refer a zone text amendment to the Planning Commission. In that conversation, reference was made to the New Life Day Center, which had applied for a certificate of occupancy under the category of a community center. And there's a possibility that people misunderstood and drew the wrong inference about the way in which the New Life Day Center had conducted itself. So I just want to clarify. Steve Polson, Mr. Polson, who is the director of the center, came to the city and said, I'm intending to open a day center for homeless people. and he asked what the appropriate designation should be and how we should proceed to get a certificate of occupancy. And they said there's nothing that exactly fits, but the best fit is a community center designation. So he proceeded under that category to ask for a certificate of occupancy. So there was no intent on his part to use that as a way to basically slide in the back door. and I just want to make sure that people understand that he and they conducted themselves in an appropriate manner and that nonetheless an issue has been raised about whether people who want to open a day center should not have the responsibility of having a hearing before the Board of Adjustment for conditional use and the consequent public hearing related to that. And that's what Council Member Ford's motion was about. that's what the motion before Council was about that referred that to the Planning Commission. So I just wanted to clarify that for Council and for anybody who may have been watching. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Kay. It's a useful clarification. Thank you, sir. Council Member Myers? Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say thank you to the administration for all the help that we had with our Council link. They did a fantastic job attending the meetings and providing information, and we beat the law department up quite a bit the last couple days with some resolutions and motions. They did a fantastic job of getting those to us, Mayor. So to your credit, you've got a great team. We appreciate all their work. I also appreciate our council core staff and council administrator and my staff for their work as well and my two colleagues on our link. We submitted the packet today, and we submitted the wrong packet. So the appendices did not come along with it, but Elizabeth is on her way down right now, and we're going to give everybody on the council a copy of the packet that includes the motions and the resolutions that we have, and then we'll get that out to everybody else as well. So, again, thank you, Mayor, for your team's work and the team's work on the link. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Councilman Myers. Vice Mayor Vorton. Thank you, Mayor. I just had two items I wanted to mention, and I'm a little overdue in mentioning this, but I did want to publicly thank Jennifer Benningfield, who was my legislative aide for two years and did a wonderful job, and as most of you know, she now works for the entire council. This is what happens when you get a good aide. Somebody else takes them. And then to welcome Tyler Scott, my new legislative aide. Many of you have already met him. And he's going to, this summer, be spending some time in the different divisions to get to know division directors and commissioners. And so, Jennifer, thank you for your service in the vice mayor's office. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Mayor. I want to remind people, or if you didn't know, there's going to be a meeting at the Senior Citizens Center on Nicholasville Road at 6 o'clock tomorrow evening that I've tried to pull together for the residents in the 3rd District and anybody else is willing to attend who have been impacted by the blasting that Central Baptist Hospital has been done, who have questions, trying to line up some folks that maybe can answer some of those questions. But that will be at 6 o'clock tomorrow evening at the Senior Citizens Center. So it impacts people in the 3rd District from about Dantzler all the way to Goodrich have been having issues with that. I also want to do a special thank you to Steve Fease, Director of Waste Management. he once again went way above and beyond the call of duty to help a constituent who was having some problems over the weekend and he's done that several times and I want to say thank you to him, a big shout out to him and the waste management workers And so thanks, Steve, a bunch. And I believe that's about all. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lawrence. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor and members of Council. I just want to follow up on Council Member Kaye's comments and want to thank him for his work in the neighborhood and working with the folks over at New Day and Mr. Polson. I concur with Steve that there was no administrative error on Mr. Paulson's part and those of his supporters to open it up in regards to their process of going and working with the city, the administration as well. But the step that we took and we've taken as a council to initiate the zoning ordinance text amendment will improve the process for all parties involved, for folks such as Mr. Poulsen and their group that want to provide services, but also for neighbors in those neighborhoods to be apprised of the process. So, again, I do thank Steve for his clarification, Councilman K. And I definitely thank Council for his support to getting that ordinance text amendment over to the Planning Commission. And we hope that they can get a determination back to us before we go on summer break in mid-July. So, again, thanks, Councilmember. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Ford. Councilmember McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Just two quick things. First off, this past weekend, we had a fundraiser for a local nonprofit, Amachi, which is a mentor group primarily centered around children who have incarcerated family members. It was a disc golf tournament at Shilto. On the one hand, I'm just so pleased to see utilizing that facility and the need for disc golf and the interest in it. and how that day played out. Again, Council Member Myers was there, and I thank you for coming and being a part of that. But I want to say a special thank you to Commissioner Hamilton, to Director Hancock, and to Tim Clark, because there was an issue where we just needed restrooms opened up, and you all went above and beyond to accommodate that, and they were very appreciative, and I wanted to pass that along publicly. Thank you very much. Saturday, this Saturday, is Armed Forces Day, and I just want to publicly say thank you to all those who wear the uniform and who have worn the uniform and would encourage those watching and my council member colleagues to say thank you to those who serve our country. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member K. Thank you, Mayor. Different topic. This is primarily for the people who work within urban county government in this building. I want to remind you, if you haven't seen the posters, that this Thursday from 1130 to 1 will be the first week that there will be fresh produce from the farmer's market available in the lobby of the government center, a first effort we hope that will expand and make fresh produce available throughout the growing season here and in other parts of the government complex. The grand opening will be postponed until next week, but you can buy your fresh fruits and vegetables this Thursday in the government center lobby. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member McKay. Council Member McCord. Along that line of armed services today, I want to point out something, and I was going to wait until Thursday night, but there's going to be an article tomorrow in the paper, and I think it's worth repeating and honoring multiple times. There's a gentleman in our community by the name of James Cecil. James is a friend of mine. He's a World War II Marine, double purple heart, had his ship blown out from underneath him by a kamikaze pilot on D-Day Okinawa, was supposed to go in on the first wave, was fished out of the water after 45 minutes of floating, and was sent in on the third or fourth wave. He was a part of a group that was called the Lexington Platoon, and it was a group that was recruited from primarily Lafayette and Henry Clay High Schools. 70 young men in World War II went into the service in the Marine Corps in August, and they were sworn in on the courthouse steps. The mayor was there, and all these folks turned out for this event. And Mr. Cecil called me a couple weeks ago and told me, he said, I want to give you a name, and I know you have that picture of our platoon. Will you scratch that name off? He said, I'm the last one. And this is the last remaining survivor of a very special group, and we're going to have him in our presence Thursday night, Mayor, and we're going to honor him and honor those men as well. But Tom Ebelin is doing an article on him tomorrow, and I would just encourage you to take a look at the paper tomorrow and just see because, again, this generation, we're losing at a rate of about 1,000-plus a day, and stories like this eventually fade away unless we let folks know who these people are and what they did. Anyway, I just want to point out that tomorrow's paper, take a read for Mr. Cecil, and then please join us Thursday night as we honor him appropriately. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member McCord. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks for the opportunity to speak twice. I just wanted to use this opportunity, Mayor, to ask, if you will, to share some thoughts. I know that I'm noticing the activity in the paper over the weekend and the events that are set to occur at the end of the week in regards to the issue of homelessness. That's kind of what my colleague, Council Member Kay, and I have been discussing in regards to this issue. There's no district in the city, in my opinion, who's been more impacted historically. in our efforts to serve the homeless population. It doesn't isolate to the 1st District. It's a citywide issue, but I'd be remiss if I didn't state that sitting from the council seat of the 1st District. So, Mayor, if you would, if you could share just a little bit of your thoughts or of your intent to create that Commission on Homelessness. I know that, again, this is something that the community has been working on for quite a while. We talked a little bit about the Hope Center during a committee earlier. Affordable housing is a component. You know, you think of the word homelessness and you kind of just think strictly of housing. It's just a component of our efforts there. So, Mayor, if you would share just your thoughts on kind of where we're going, what's our intent, and what we hope to get going. Thanks, Council Member Ford. I think as we all look at conditions or situations, problems and opportunities, we tend to look over time in the long arc of time, and we tend to think that issues, my inclination is to believe that issues over time when we see symptoms, we need to allow ourselves to create the platform for problem solving, for addressing issues. And historically, in the framework of government, we are the convening authority often for problem solving. So my own experience, and I suspect that many of you council members is the same, is that we find an opportunity like this. We create a good problem-solving framework, a template. I like to say simply we create the table for problem-solving, and we invite people around that table. A challenging issue like this one often involves tension, often involves distress, and acknowledging that is an important part of the process. We know that there are many constituencies that are affected by those who are the neediest in our community, those without home and shelter. We also know that there's usually a better path. If we think about continuous improvement, we think, okay, how do we get there? How do we take what strengths we have today, what assets we have today, what resources we have today, how do we bring those resources together and acknowledge the problems that we have and then create action steps going forward? So that's really my own thoughts about it. We've had good success, I think, this council has. As long as I've been on the council, I've seen good success with bringing our community together and addressing issues. Now, we also know that in the course of that, said already, that sometimes there's distress and sometimes there's anxiety and sometimes there's tension. We've all seen that. But as we move forward, then at the end of a problem-solving engagement or process, we generally see progress, even though sometimes it's tough. So that's really the framework. We see the opportunity to address it. We have the resources and the strength. I definitely appreciate that. and complex issue, daunting task. That's going to require us to give more than 100%. It's going to require us to try to convene the best minds and talent, along with committed citizens, to the table, because we're talking housing, we're talking social services, We're talking mental health. We're talking so many factors are at play, and we need folks from all those disciplines to help us to make some headway here. So I look forward to supporting it, Mayor, and I hope that the council will get behind these efforts along with the community. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Council Member Ford. Vice Mayor Gordon. Yes, Mayor. I just had a question about it. I thank Councilmember Ford for asking his question and making his comments. And I wondered if you, a few years ago, and I don't remember exactly when it was, there was a group who formulated the 10-year plan for homelessness. Will this new group review that? Or what are you thinking in terms of that? Commissioner Mills and her staff has already been examining the history of initiatives undertaken and as part of this preparation for the commission, we'll be putting together a summary of that history and examining where we've been and where we are today, the current condition, with a view toward preparing the commission with that history. So thank you for asking about that history and your knowledge of it as well, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Mayor. As we've been sitting here talking through lots of these issues, I was reminded that next Tuesday is Primary Day in Kentucky, and we've got lots of races going on, and I want to encourage everybody to get out and exercise their right to vote next Tuesday. Thank you. Back to Vice Mayor Gordon. I apologize. I wanted to let Councilmembers know Richard Maloney got back with me about those Chestnut Street properties that were on new business that are going to the Fayette County Development Corp. And the one 440 chestnut is assessed at $20,000, and the 445 chestnut is assessed at $75,500. So that's a significant donation for the government to make toward our affordable housing. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. All right. I don't have anyone else, any other council members signed on for council reports, So we can move to next on our agenda is the mayor's report. There's a motion by Council Member Crosby. Thank you. And a second by Council Member Lane. Thank you. Is there any discussion on the mayor's report? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. The motion, thank you, Council Member Farmer. The motion does, however, pass. Thank you. Next on our agenda is public comment for issues not on the agenda. Mr. Mundy, we don't have anybody signed up. All right. All right. We do have a closed session. Is that right? And Vice Mayor Corton has a motion. I move that we go into closed session pursuant to KRS 61.8101C for the purpose of discussing pending litigation. Thank you, Vice Mayor. There's a motion. Is there a second? Is there a second? Council Member, we have a second by Council Member K. All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. We will move into closed session now. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm not alone. How this town shatter dreams Another lesson about a naive fool Came to Babylon Found out that the pie don't taste so sweet Now his guitars and Cadillacs Hillbill and New Day Lonely, lonely streets that I call home Yeah, my guitars and Cadillacs Yeah, building you still Is the only thing that keeps me hanging out