# Council Work Session - May 29, 2012 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 29, 2012 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2539 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2539?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2012-05-29 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 27,250 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Urban County Council met on May 29, 2012, at 3:00 p.m. in the Council Chamber on the 2nd Floor of the Government Center, with Mayor Jim Gray presiding. The council addressed nine agenda items during the session, including public comment periods, zoning matters, budget amendments, and various reports. The body took 10 motions and votes throughout the meeting and heard 1 public comment from citizens. Among the items approved were requested rezonings, a summary approval, budget amendments, and new business items. The council also received informational presentations and reports, including continuing business presentations, council reports, and a mayor's report. The meeting concluded with a public comment period for issues not on the agenda. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on May 29, 2012: * Mayor Jim Gray * Council Member Beard * Council Member Blues * Council Member Gorton * Council Member Stinnett * Council Member Kay * Council Member Crosbie * Council Member Lane * Council Member Farmer * Council Member Myers * Council Member Ellinger * Council Member Martin * Council Member McChord * Council Member Henson No council members were absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions All motions were decided by voice vote. **Approval of the summary from the May 29th, 2012 Work Session** [timestamp: 0:01:33] Motion by Council Member Beard, seconded by Council Member Blues. Passed. **Approval of budget amendments** [timestamp: 0:06:19] Motion by Council Member Gorton, seconded by Council Member Myers. Passed. **Approval of new business items** [timestamp: 0:06:51] Motion by Council Member Gorton, seconded by Council Member Beard. Passed. **Motion to hold a Council Workshop on item K (proposed new jail fees)** [timestamp: 0:07:22] Motion by Council Member Stinnett, seconded by Council Member McChord. Passed. **Motion to place on the docket for first reading a transfer of $750.00 from Council Member Kay's Neighborhood Development Funds to the Department of Parks and Recreation for the Better Bites program** [timestamp: 0:07:22] Motion by Council Member Kay, seconded by Council Member McChord. Passed. **Motion to approve the Neighborhood Development Fund (NDF) list** [timestamp: 0:43:53] Motion by Council Member Beard, seconded by Council Member Myers. Passed. **Motion to approve the Mayor's Report** Motion by Council Member Crosbie, seconded by Council Member Blues. Passed. **Motion to enter closed session pursuant to KRS 61.810 for discussion of pending litigation** Motion by Council Member Gorton, seconded by Council Member Lane. Passed. **Motion to return from closed session** Motion by Council Member Lane, seconded by Council Member Beard. Passed. **Motion to adjourn** Motion by Council Member Martin, seconded by Council Member Blues. Passed. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting authorized the following financial actions and contractual agreements: **Project Closeouts and Change Orders** - Authorization (L517-12) to execute a Mutual Release Agreement with Gershman, Brickner & Bratton, Inc. for $45,000 to close out the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) Project and the Waste Management Routing Project and resolve all related claims. - Authorization (L521-12) to execute Change Order No. 1 with VanHook Enterprises, Inc. for $5,830.18 for additional work on the West Hickman WWTP Solids Building HVAC and Odor Control Improvements Project. - Authorization (L545-12) to execute Change Order No. 1 with Sensabaugh Design & Construction for $3,275 for additional work on the Police Pole Barn Storage Building. **Service and Maintenance Contracts** - Authorization (L536-12) to renew a contract with Group CJ for $209,000 for stormwater education and outreach services for one year beginning July 1, 2012. - Authorization (L542-12) to execute Professional Service Agreements for landscape architectural services with Barrett Partners, Inc., M2D Design Group, and Perkins Landscape for yard restorations as part of Sanitary and Stormwater Projects. - Authorization (L550-12) to execute a contract with Verdin Company for $25,415 for restoration and re-installation of the historic Skuller's street clock on West Main Street. - Authorization (L566-12) to enter into a lease agreement with West End Community Empowerment Project of Lexington, Inc. (WECEP) for $11,717.58 for space within the Black & Williams Neighborhood Center at 498 Georgetown Street. **Grants and Programs** - Authorization (L548-12) to submit an application to the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services and accept an award of $314,247 for continuation of the New Chance Program for FY 2013. - Authorization (L549-12) to submit an application to the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice and accept an award of $16,183 under the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Program for FY 2013. **Additional Authorizations** - Authorization (L532-12) to execute an agreement with Marathon Pipe Line, LLC granting right of entry and right to utilize pond water for pipeline testing at the West Hickman Wastewater Treatment Plant. - Authorization (L546-12) to execute a modification to an agreement with the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management under the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. - Authorization (L563-12) to accept the Collective Bargaining Agreement with Bluegrass Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 4 on behalf of Police Officers and Sergeants Unit. - Authorization (L567-12) to enter into an agreement with the University of Kentucky to create a sponsorship Paramedic education program known as UK/LDFES Paramedic Affiliation. - Authorization (L555-12) to amend Section 24-51 of the Code of Ordinances relating to inmate medical fees at the detention center. - Authorization (L569-12) to adopt a resolution allowing an amendment to Lexington Christian Academy's Industrial Revenue Bond based on obtaining a more favorable interest rate. - Authorization (L570-12) to amend Section 2-180 of the Code of Ordinances to add the Commissioner of Finance as an ex-officio voting member of the Board of Commissioners of the Lexington and Fayette County Parking Authority. ## Public Comment [timestamp: 2:38:49] Mr. Corey Dunn, a former inmate, addressed the board regarding the proposed inmate medical co-pay policy. Mr. Dunn expressed concern that the proposed $15 medical co-pay and $35 booking fee would create an unfair financial burden on the families of incarcerated individuals. He noted that most inmates are unemployed and depend on family support to obtain funds, making these fees particularly difficult for families to absorb. ## Contested Items **Inmate Medical Co-Pay and Booking Fee Ordinance** Council members engaged in a heated discussion regarding proposed increases to inmate fees. The debate centered on raising the inmate medical co-pay from $5 to $15 and the booking fee from $20 to $35. Council members expressed concerns about the fairness of these increases and their impact on indigent inmates and their families. Rather than reaching immediate resolution, a workshop was scheduled to allow for further discussion of the proposal. **Franchise Fee Increase** Council members expressed surprise and concern over a proposed increase in franchise fees from 3% to 4%, representing a 33% increase overall. The contested issue was not merely the increase itself, but the lack of transparency surrounding it. Council members questioned the rationale behind the increase and noted that it had not been clearly communicated during the budget process, raising concerns about the decision-making procedures and public notification. **Reallocation of UDAG Repayment Funds to Charles Young Center** A procedural dispute arose regarding the proposed reallocation of unused UDAG repayment funds to the Charles Young Center. Council members raised concerns about the lack of public input and transparency in this reallocation decision. The core disagreement centered on whether the city had followed appropriate procedures for redirecting funds from one purpose to another. Council members called for the establishment of a formal process or ordinance to govern such reallocations in the future, indicating that the current approach was viewed as insufficiently transparent and accountable to the public. ## Public Comment - Issues on Agenda No public comments were made during this portion of the meeting regarding items on the agenda. [timestamp: 0:01:02] ## Requested Rezonings/ Docket Approval [timestamp: 00:01:02] No rezoning requests were presented during this agenda item. The docket was approved without objection. ## Approval of Summary The summary from the May 29th, 2012 Work Session was presented for approval. Council Member Beard and Council Member Blues participated in the discussion of this agenda item. The summary was approved without dissent. [timestamp: 00:01:33] ## Budget Amendments The council approved a series of budget amendments during this agenda item [timestamp: 00:02:15]. The amendments addressed adjustments for overtime, personnel recovery, and grant funding. **Key Participants** Council Members Gorton, Ford, and Crosby participated in the discussion of these budget amendments. **Discussion and Concerns** Council members raised questions about revenue sources and the impacts of the proposed projects during their review of the amendments. **Outcome** The budget amendments were approved. ## New Business New Business items were presented and approved during this portion of the meeting. [timestamp: 06:51] **Items Approved** The council approved several new business items, including: - A contract for stormwater outreach - Street clock restoration - Modifications to the jail fee ordinance **Jail Fee Ordinance Discussion** The proposed modifications to the jail fee ordinance generated discussion among council members. Rather than finalizing the changes immediately, the council scheduled a workshop to allow for more detailed discussion of the proposed jail fee changes before final approval. **Key Participants** Council Members Lawless, Stinnett, and Myers were the primary speakers during this agenda item. **Outcome** The new business items were approved as presented. ## Continuing Business/Presentations During this agenda item, the council received presentations on three main topics: the Environmental Quality Committee report, franchise agreements, and a collective bargaining agreement with the Fraternal Order of Police. **Key Speakers and Presentations** David Barbary, Don Crane, and Richard Moloney led the presentations during this segment, which began approximately 48 minutes and 31 seconds into the meeting. **Topics Covered** The presentations addressed: - Environmental Quality Committee report - Franchise agreements, including discussion of a franchise fee increase - Collective bargaining agreement with the Fraternal Order of Police, with particular attention to contract savings **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action items resulting from the presentations. The council received updates on these continuing business matters and the related financial considerations, including the proposed franchise fee increase and identified savings within the police contract. ## Council Reports [timestamp: 1:51:24] Council members provided updates on upcoming community events during this informational segment. Council Member McCord and Council Member Farmer shared information about two significant upcoming events: * **Bike Lexington** — An upcoming cycling event was highlighted by council members * **Bluegrass State Games kickoff** — A kickoff event scheduled to take place at the airport runway The reports were presented as informational updates to keep the council and public informed of upcoming activities in the community. No formal action or debate was recorded for this agenda item. ## Mayor's Report The Mayor's Report was presented as agenda item VIII and was approved without dissent [timestamp: 0:00:00]. **Speakers** Council Member Crosbie and Council Member Blues participated in the discussion of this agenda item. **Outcome** The report was approved without opposition from the council. **Summary** The Mayor's Report included updates on city operations and initiatives. No specific details regarding the content of these updates or operational matters were documented in the available meeting materials. ## Public Comment - Issues Not on Agenda [timestamp: 2:38:49] During this portion of the meeting, one citizen provided public comment on a matter not listed on the agenda. Mr. Corey Dunn spoke about the proposed inmate medical co-pay. He argued that the policy would unfairly burden families of incarcerated individuals. This item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve budget amendments - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve new business items - **Motion** — passed (0-0): hold a Council Workshop on item K, relating to the proposed new jail fees - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for first reading a transfer of $750.00 from his Neighborhood Development Funds account to the Department of Parks and Recreation to support the Better Bites program - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Neighborhood Development Fund list - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Mayor’s Report - **Motion** — passed (0-0): enter into a closed session pursuant to KRS 61.810 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): return from closed session - **Motion** — passed (0-0): adjourn --- ## Full transcript And we need a couple seconds, right, to make that transition. A couple minutes. All right. Okay. All right. I'll declare the work session to order. And first on our agenda is public comments for issues on the agenda. Floor is available for public comments on the agenda. No one signed up, Mr. Mundy says, so we can move on to number two. There's no docket this week. And to my knowledge, no rezoning requests. So we can move on then to number three, which is approval of the summary. It's a motion by Council Member Beard. Thank you. Second by Council Member Blues to approve the summary. 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. There's a motion on the budget amendments. Move approval. Motion by Vice Mayor Gordon to approve, second by Council Member Myers. Is there any discussion on the motion? Mayor. All right, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to ask a couple questions on pages 8 and 9. Most of the budget amendments have the source of the revenue, and I'm not sure who would answer this question. But on budget, journal entry 60549-50, the second one from the top of page 8, this is the once upon a story. Is there someone here who can? Jane's here, and maybe after we get the question, we'll know who to ask to come forward. I want to know the source of the revenue, the source of the funds. This was a library project, correct? Once Upon a Story, and so... Yes, it is from the organization that put on that program. Coming to us from the library? Yes, from that organization that put on the Once Upon a Story. Okay. And then on page 9, the fourth entry down, 60509, the Kirk-Levington Park skate park, I just had a question about that as to whether the neighborhood was involved in that change. and maybe Council Member Beard, you know, changing the basketball court to a skate park. Is that actually what happened? Jerry? This is to provide for some entry-level skating equipment from a donation from Cricket, who gave us $15,000, and we have moved that and placed purchase orders against it for equipment, and we're resurfacing a little-used basketball court to place that equipment on. There's not an active neighborhood association per se right around the park, but we have met with a number of the skaters and tennis players and young people there in an effort to gauge interest, and there seems to be an interest in that. Okay, thank you. And then my final question is page 12, the fifth journal entry down. It has no number yet, but it's a $250,647 amount for senior citizen 2013. Mr. Maloney, do you know, or what is that? Is that a grant? Or has it been, have we already got the money or we're making way for the money? This is for the 2013 Senior Citizens Grant that you've already approved us submitting the application and accepting. So Grants and Special Projects has prepared budget amendments for those grants that we typically receive every year that you have already given us approval. Okay. So you're just establishing the time. Yes. All right. Very good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Mayor. My question is on page 9, the last two journal entries, 60366 and 60367. I was just curious. They're exactly the same thing for the same amount, same purpose, and I was just curious why this is or why it's as two separate items. Thank you, Elizabeth. This one may be a typo on my part, but I'll double-check when I go back. But I think they're just the credit and debit for the same item. Okay. But I'll verify that. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Croucher. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to note that I'll be recusing myself from the vote on today's budget amendments. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. Thank you. All right. Does anyone else wish to speak to the motion? All right. If not, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say... Motion, Mayor? Pardon? Can you repeat the motion, please? The motion was to approve the budget amendments. All right. No one further discussion? Then we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is new business. Is there a motion to approve new business? Second. Motion by Vice Mayor Gorton to approve. Second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Ford? Are you up for it? Okay. All right. Council Member Lawless? And then, Council Member Blues, you've signed up. All right. Council Member Lawless? I have questions about this item K, I think. Yes, K on page 6. And the ordinance is 41, on page 41. concerning the billing of inmates for medical treatment. And my question is, is this something that would be better put into a committee to look at? For instance, if people put money into their canteen or whatever, is that money then taken out for medical purposes? Is their insurance bill, do they have Medicaid? So is this a, I'll ask Commissioner Mason, it looks like you've got some help here from our director. The particulars of the program, Director Ballard can address in terms of the mechanics of how it works. This ordinance, I think, was, what, 10 or 12 years old that we are adjusting some prices on is what it is. We anticipate about an increase of about $200,000 in revenue out of this adjustment of booking fees and the co-pays and the medical co-pays. So is this, I mean, many, the way I read it, it can go into the negative. So are they, what do you do? I mean, there are people in jail who haven't been convicted yet and are waiting for trial. Many of them are indigent, which is why they're there. well, one of the reasons for their behavior that got them there, and will there be a separate fund if, say, family members or attorneys or whoever puts money into their canteen fund for stamps or whatever so they can communicate with them, will it be taken out of that? Will there be a separate fund? I mean, this seems, you know, I certainly would be in favor of people who can afford it, that they pay for their stay while they're in jail at the full cost of being an inmate. But the majority of the inmates probably aren't in that category. So that's why I'm wondering if this would better be, might be appropriate to refer to committee to look at statistically what's being done now. How many of them have insurance? How many of them have Medicaid? Are those billed first? if they're only there for four days and they need medication and their co-pays $15. Is that a 30-day supply or is that a four-day supply? Thank you. First and foremost, the Kentucky General Assembly in 1999 passed the legislation in KRS 441 that allowed governments to recoup some of their fees from those who are using our facilities. First and foremost, nobody will be denied medical care, whether you have money on your books or you don't have any money on your books. But as an example, currently our copay to see the doctor is $2.50. I think those of us in the room pay a copay much higher than that. Last month, our commissary sales were $65,000. Of that, $18,000 was on the cold cart, which is ice creams and Cokes. An additional $22,000 was off the hot cart, which is their sandwiches. So roughly they spent $40,000 last month. All we're asking is that if they have the money to buy those items, that they also help offset the cost of the taxpayers by paying a more fair share. Your booking fee was passed in 2000, Mayor. It was $20 when the law became a law. We're asking to go to $35. The doctor visit is $2.50. We're asking to go to $15. Prescription is less than $14.99. We'd ask that the emate pay the actual cost. Over $15 will be the co-pay. But let me reassure you, nobody gets denied medical treatment. They all see it. If they have no money, they run a negative balance. So what happens when they get out and they have a negative balance? We are in the process of working with our vendors to develop electronic banking so that when the invaderie comes back into our establishment, brings his cash into the institution, if he has money on his book, we'll reclaim that money to apply to his negative balance, which the law currently already allows us to do. So, like I say, if they're there for three or four days and they need medication, is it a 30-day supply they're getting or do you all bill insurance and Medicaid? First of all, very few of our inmates have insurance or Medicaid. First of all, when they become incarcerated, Medicaid and Medicare does no longer pay for any of their stay. We pay for that out of the government's pocket. Because we don't know how long they're staying, yes, we'd order a 30-day prescription. The good news is, though, when the M.H. release, we'll give him his prescription to take with him and continue taking it when he leaves the institution. Okay. So if a family member or somebody puts money into their canteen for, or whatever it's called, so that they can communicate with them for stamps or et cetera, Would that money be taken out for their medical care before they were allowed to get stamps, for instance? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And has there been any discussion about people who, the few people that end up staying in jail for a while, who have money and are wealthy paying for their stay? Run that by me again. I didn't quite understand the question. For instance, in the last couple of years, there was a person of great means that was there for quite a long time. There are precedences for asking them to pay, if it costs $75 a day to keep an inmate, for them to pay for their stay. our current ordinance we're asking is not to charge a booking or per diem fee to stay in the jail we're asking for a booking fee only that's when you come the initial door the first time and then for the medical copay and the prescription there are some jails around the commonwealth that do charge a per diem and charge you there to stay each day we chose at this time not to present that okay um i'd still like to make a motion to put this in committee Yes, I'd like to make a motion to put this in public safety. It's a motion, and there's a second to place the issue in public safety. Do the others who want to speak on this issue wish to speak? All right. So we've got the motion on the floor then, and we'll continue. discussion. I'd like to speak to the motion, which I support. It does seem to me that this comes directly from the administration to the full council and I think that there are questions about these amendments to the ordinance that merit discussion. The $15 raise in the booking fee, Is that the appropriate? How is that calculated? And so on. So it may well be that this is a perfectly appropriate adjustment in the way that or in the amounts of fees that are collected. But I think they also ought to be looked at in the context of, you know, other expenses that inmates are charged and what is done with those funds. So I support this motion. I think it should be vetted in committee. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Council Member Crosby. Well, I have a question that doesn't relate to the motion, so I'll save that. But I also wanted to ask our public safety link if this was something that was discussed during the budget process, if this changed. Or maybe Commissioner Mason, do you know if this was presented? to the public safety link? I don't think it was in terms of specifics of this revenue stream. And we're fine with putting it in committee. That's not a problem. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Director Ballard? Yes, sir. I want to say thank you very much for coming in with this. We didn't get to hear this during our budget link, so I had no idea that you were wanting to do this. However, I think rather than necessarily putting it in committee, would it suffice if we just had a presentation to the full council? Because I, for one, like this. More detail would even be better, but I like what you're doing here. I like the fact that you took the initiative to see how to, you know, $250 for a co-pay is ridiculous. And if we can recoup part of the booking fee, particularly since the Friday bookends, the weekend bookends are what's creating a lot of problems at the jail. You seem to have solutions here for some of the things that are happening out there, so I commend you on bringing this forward. Maybe we could change that from putting in committee, which may take a while to hear, to just hearing a full presentation of the full council at the next work session so we can keep this moving forward. I'm fine with that. I was surprised it didn't go through the link, the public safety link, and it may be very appropriate. I'd just like more information and some discussion about it. Okay. Yeah, I'll let the director speak to why they chose not to bring it through the link. I'm okay with that. I'm just glad to see it come forward. So great work. I look forward to your presentation. I apologize if I went out of the normal routine business. I'm still in my third month here. My mission, as you saw, was to look at increasing revenue, which I thought was fair and equitable to the inmates that I'm in charge of taking care of. Sure. And look out for the taxpayer. Thank you, sir. Council Member Lane. Yes. I, too, I think this is a pretty good idea based on the preliminary information I have. I'm not on either one of those committees. I'd like for it to come in front of full council so we could all hear about it. And if it's something we need to move on pretty quickly, that would accelerate the turnaround response from the council. Thank you. All right. All right, Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Director, thanks for bringing this to us. I am not going to support the motion because I appreciate that you're trying to get things done at the jail, and we have the ability to adjust those fees should we deem that necessary at some future time, and that's probably a pretty easy thing to do. So I would like to go ahead and approve your fees so that we can get those in place, and that way the sort of bureaucracy that happens up here doesn't impede what you're trying to get done. I appreciate your initiative and your ideas for improving things. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor? Yeah, Councilman Lawless. I'm glad to withdraw my motion and just ask for a presentation before we put it on the docket. And like I say, there may be other places that we want to up fees. So I'd just like more detail and more information and a better study of it and more conversation. All right. Thank you. So Council Member Lawless, withdrawn the motion. Is it satisfactory with you, Council Member Beard? You seconded it, didn't you? Who seconded it? Yeah. All right. Okay, so we don't have a motion on the floor. We have had discussion about possibly having a presentation. I have several others signed up to speak on the issue. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. I was just going to suggest, and thank you, Director Ballard. I think this is what we are looking for out of our administration and making changes at the jail. And I thank you for bringing it forward. And don't feel like you have to apologize, because even though we have processes in place, there are times that the 15 of us don't always follow them either. So don't feel like you have to apologize. I appreciate your frankness and your impressive responses up here today, because that's what we've been looking for. So thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Mason. I would suggest this go before a workshop on the fifth floor, the same way we did on Rupp Arena, with people that want to attend can attend versus having it down here in the chambers. It gives you a little more opportunity to ask a little more in-depth questions and have an open discussion about the different and various fees. So I'll make a motion to have a workshop on this. And Vice Mayor, if you could schedule it at the Council's calendar leisure. Second. motion by council member stennett second by councilman record to schedule a workshop related to the this issue is there any discussion on this motion i have council member beard signed up vice mayor gorton do you want council member beard well as far as a work session versus um or workshop rather than the whole council. That's fine with me. I had another question, though, concerning the handling of this. I might ask Director Fowler to come up a moment. The people who can pay, pay, and some of that $35 booking fee, for instance, goes to cover the booking, the internal costs of booking, and not only for the person that can pay, but they're also riding the backs of those people who can't pay. Is that correct? Yes, sir. And that carries over into the medical issue also. What is the net in relationship to those that can't versus those that can and the dollars involved? I'm not sure if I can break it down in dollars. What I can tell you is they have funds for Snickers, Twinkies, Cokes, potato chips, and candy, but they don't have the funds to pay for their medical costs. I think, being prudent, it was my job to bring to you to tell you I think there's a way to be fair and have them help pay some of that cost. Now, the statute does allow for that funding, after they've had a year to pay us back, to turn that over to a collection agency to try to recruit the money. That's been tried in many counties around the Commonwealth. That's very difficult because our population is so transient and we can't locate them. Well, I'm sure that's the case. I just was wondering, for the operation as a whole, we're getting a revenue stream and there are expenses involved, whether there is a net one way or the other, and I assume that probably we're in the hole on the whole operation because the numbers of inmates would probably dictate that. We're already collecting the $2.50, so the mechanism to collect the fund is already there. So you're already doing all that. You're collecting the money from the inmates when they come in. You're paying the $5 to see the doctor, the $2.50 for the prescription, and you're collecting the $20 from the booking fee. The only thing this will do is change the amount they owe us. The mechanics and the workload at my operation will not change. Only the dollar amount that's collected will change. I understand. But does that cover, by raising those prices, does that cover those people who can't pay at all? Well, we're always going to run a negative balance. There's going to be a group out there we never do collect. In fact, we'll end up having a larger negative balance than those that are actually collected. Well, I would assume so, too, but I don't know what is that number is the question. Is it $20,000 or $200,000? In the course of a couple of years, it's probably millions of dollars. That's fine, too. I'd just like to know what that is. But we'll work hard to collect it from everybody, but we'll collect it from those that we have the funds to collect from. But at the end of the day, there is a point where we have to look and say, maybe we need to raise it to $50 for a booking fee. If you're asking the people who can pay up to cover the ones that can't, maybe the booking fee needs to be $50 or $100, and you get to a net zero. or come close to getting to a net zero. But if we don't know what that is, it's hard to even determine. You just pick a number out of the air, and it's a 75% increase. We don't know whether that's valid or whether that's just a number that got picked out of the air. And, you know, you maybe are not prepared to answer that right now, but I would like some answer at some point. And I don't know if I can drill down to get you the exact dollar amount. The only thing that I'm here to tell you is that looking at the projected bookings from last year, based on what we booked and what we collected, we're looking at increasing our revenue of over $200,000 just by this ordinance. Okay. That's fine. If you can get that detail to me, I'd appreciate it. We can. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Director Ballard, thank you for bringing this forward. Is there, Council Member Stennett made the motion that's on the floor, which is to schedule a workshop, and I'm looking at our calendar. And I want to know from you, is this a timely issue? Because the council, the first Tuesday that we could have a workshop would be 8 a.m. on the 12th, before our budget meetings, or we could do it on the 19th of June. Is that a problem in terms of hearing it before then? No, ma'am. We can hear it any time at your convenience. What our intent was was try to get the ordinance in effect by July the 1st. Okay. Well, if we have our workshop on the 19th, we can do that. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Dr. Ballard, one more question. Council Member Beard was asking some questions that kind of centered around how you arrived at different levels of increase. And this might be helpful, maybe not. Could you look into, before your presentation, how our courts set court costs? If you think that will help inform the conversation. What, the breakdown of the court costs from what we've had? How they set it. because it's an interesting point that some people will be able to pay this and you'll collect from them and others won't. But if I get summonsed to court, I'm going to have to pay my court costs or I'm probably going to end up in jail to come and see you anyway for contempt for not paying the court costs. So to me it raises kind of an interesting question. If the courts can impose a court cost on people and exact that from them, whether or not there's a way that you can do the same. And it's a completely different jurisdiction, I understand. But maybe if you could just do a little bit of research on how they come up with their court costs. I can. That might help. But I can tell you they're having a difficult time collecting their fees today. That's why the administrative office of the courts is struggling, because they can't get all their fees. That's why you saw so many show-cause dockets when they've gotten the DUI, first-defense DUI. They can't pay it. They end up in jail. The fees we collect wouldn't land anybody back up in jail because they can't pay. Right. We're not going to go get somebody rearrested when it's costing me $72 a day to house them for a $20 medical bill. This is just why they're in our care, custody, and control. And the courts have ruled that once the money is put on the commissary account, it's no longer that person's money. It belongs to the inmate. And that the jurisdiction can then do with that money as set forth by the ordinance. But let me reassure you we're not going to be increasing our numbers to try to get the $20. Sure. Thank you. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a quick question. When we have the workshop, could you provide us the numbers of percentages collected, like the amount of money that has been billed compared to what was actually collected? And I know it's not 100 percent. Not all the inmates have commissary money, right? That's correct. Okay. So if you could provide that in the workshop, and then maybe we could compare later on a year from now to see if this increase affected that percentage. Thank you. Thank you. No one else has signed up to speak on this issue, so we can vote on the motion regarding new business or any other issue if there's new business. All right. Councilmember Blues, you wish to speak to another issue on new business? All right. Councilmember Blues and Councilmember Farmer. Did you want to vote on Councilmember Stenner's motion? Oh, the motion to, yes. Good idea. All right. No further discussion on the motion to have the workshop. All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Now, Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. Other new business issues. I have a question on D, and that's the renewal of the contract with Group CJ for stormwater education and outreach. And my question is whether for these public education programs, which can be very important regarding stormwater, whether we have any way of measuring how effective a particular program actually is. Council Member Blues, our public outreach and education program has two objectives, and that's to raise awareness of the stormwater issues in general and then to educate the public on things that they can do to improve water quality and protect our water quality. As you all recall, we did a baseline survey back in the fall of 2009 to gauge what the public knew and found that generally there wasn't a very high awareness level of the stormwater issues in our community, nor the sources of pollution. What we do to monitor that, we started the public education campaign in 2010, is we do multiple surveys. We survey at workshops that we sponsor, as well as public events like the watershed festivals. We also have a survey ongoing with the current contract we have for public outreach and education, and we constantly do that to see where we are and so we can adjust our message. And just to share with you just a tidbit of what we've learned so far is that from our workshops, we know that 69 percent of the people reported that they had seen a stormwater message or read an ad for stormwater within the past 12 months. So that's pretty good outreach at 69%. The Keep Lexington Beautiful Commission also does a litter survey annually. And comparing the 2011 to the 2012 litter survey results for our community, we saw a 21% decrease in the amount of litter we have, which is a positive indication, because litter prevention is one of the outreach efforts we have there as well. Of course, ultimately, improving water quality is the ultimate standard by which we'll be judged. That's why we're doing this. And we are monitoring the water quality and reporting on that annually so we can monitor our progress. And, of course, we have a number of folks in-house in environmental policy working on these issues and on the outreach efforts and organizations like Bluegrass Pride and the Kane Run Watershed Committee and so on, is there a way that we can say, well, the consultant we've contracted with, in this case, Group CJ, that we can say that because we've hired them, because they're doing this work, we're making this kind of progress? Well, in judging changes in public behavior, that's a little more difficult to measure than measuring increased sales or something where you have a hard number. We do rely on the surveys and public knowledge, and we are seeing a lot more activity. You see a lot more community cleanups. We get a lot more calls about people blowing grass into storm drains. So I'm seeing a general awareness from the public, and surveys really is the way that we have to do that, Council Member. Well, I'm very aware that education does not produce quick turnarounds. But I am concerned, I guess, that we make sure that the expenses that we pay with public dollars. And I recognize, too, that we're required to do the outreach by our MS4 permit. But I'm just hoping that we can have some benchmarks and so we can know when we renew these fairly substantial contracts every year that our community is getting a real return in terms of environmental improvements, stormwater cleanups. And at the same time, I recognize that we've got so many initiatives going in the public sector as well that it's very difficult to separate these things out. but I think it's something we need to, to the extent possible, we need to do. And we also do track the number of events, more the mechanics of it, what I call more bean counting, obviously the number of events that we attend and the brochures that we put out and the number of newsletters, but the more finer details of what the public is doing and reacting to, again, we use the surveys. And we are reaching out on a much broader scope than just this one contract. Obviously, we do a lot in-house, and we do a lot with the schoolchildren as well. So at some point, I think it would be helpful to have a report, maybe to Environmental Quality Committee, about what actually Group CJ does. and maybe look at that in relation to some of the results of the surveys that your department has done. We'd be very glad to do that. That would be a big help. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Blues. Thank you, Susan. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. I have questions on, I guess, first on item P, which is to change the... P as in Paul? P as in parking. This is about the changes to the parking authority itself. And this really may be more a question for law. When you're changing the number of people on the parking authority from five and you're adding a sixth as an ex-officio voting member, does that work when you have an even number rather than an odd number? You could potentially get in a tie situation, I suppose, by having an even number of people. And we'll just let them work that out? Well, I think we were only directed to add one person on there, so that's all we've done. Thank you very much. Then I just wanted to call to the council's attention new item E, which is to add professional service agreements for landscape and architectural services in yard restorations, specifically to provide technical assistance in valuing yard restoration scheduled to be excavated during stormwater and sanitary sewer capital improvements, helping negotiate yard restorations and using predetermined schedules for homeowners who wish to contract on their own, and a general overview and consultation regarding potential aesthetic improvements to our capital project designs. And I think this is a real turning point in how we're handling stormwater and sanitary sewer infrastructure changes because we're bringing expertise from the outside that is recognized by the neighbors who will be involved as a third-party, in essence, arbitrator to make sure that when we have started and then completed some of these infrastructure projects, they will look as good as they can possibly look. And that's one of the pledges that we have to make to our citizenry as we begin to change both our stormwater and sanitary sewer systems. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Farmer. I hope Charlie Martin was here to hear that. He is. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. I suppose item L, the collective bargaining agreement with the Federal Order of Police, I had a question on that. Would Mr. Mason or Commissioner Graham prefer to speak? Council Member Lane, you might want to, since we've got the presentation, we've got a presentation on that later. Okay, I can wait till then. That'll be fine. Have the questions in for it? That's good. Thank you. That was what was being considered for that. All right. Vice Mayor Gordon. Mayor, just a process question. Since we're having the workshop on the item about the detention fees, did we need to pull Kay? Has Kay been pulled off? It should be. I move to remove Kay from the new business. Motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, second by Council Member Beard to remove item K from new business. Is there any discussion? It was Council Member Blues, wasn't it? Did I say Beard? Oh, sorry about that. Any discussion, Council Member Martin? Council Member Martin? Thank you, Mayor. As I said before, I'm not going to support this. I think we can make the changes to it at any time. I appreciate it. They say no good deed goes unpunished. So I appreciate our new director showing some initiative and bringing forth some good ideas. We can tweak these fees at some time in the future. Things tend to get sort of bogged down in council. So I'd like to see it go ahead and get in place, and we can make adjustments to it later. Thank you, Mayor. Councilman Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. I agree. I think it can proceed on. We've got over three weeks before we actually vote on it. I don't see why it can't precede its course. We do this all the time, have the workshop, and if we want to stop it at that point, we can always table it or postpone it at that point. But going ahead and docking it doesn't prevent us from having discussions. And they're also trying to get it done before July 1. So that's the big thing. If we don't have two council readings, that won't be accomplished at all. So I would vote to keep its course and not have a pool today. Is that what you're going to say? That's what I was going to say. All right. Okay, there's a reconsideration emerging by Vice Mayor Gordon. Well, I'll withdraw my motion since we could have the first reading the 7th and the workshop the 19th and the second reading the 21st. So I'll withdraw my motion. All right, and that's acceptable to you, Mr. Beard? It's acceptable. Thank you, Councilman Blues. All right. If there is no further discussion, then we can take a vote. All in favor of the motion to approve new business, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Now we can move on to continuing business and presentations. First on our agenda is a motion needed for the NDF. Is there a motion? Motion by Council Member Ellinger, seconded by Council Member Myers. Is there any discussion on the motion for the NDF? Hearing none. We can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion to be. Sorry. Council Member Kaye. I'm sorry, I had a walk-on. Is it appropriate right after new business, or can I? Oh, okay. I didn't have that showing on my schedule. It was a late decision. All right. That's all right. Is it related to new business then? Yes. Okay. It's for the docket. Let's dial back then. Yep. So it's a resolution to add an NDF allocation to the docket for May 29th for the upcoming council meeting. Okay. There's a motion to add to the NDF. Council Member Kaye, is there a second to the motion? Second by Council Member McCord. 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, Council Member Kaye. Next on our agenda is the Environmental Quality Committee report by Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. This is a report on the May 15th meeting of the Environmental Quality Committee. There were three principal agenda items that day, the first one being an update on the Sanitary Sewer Capacity Assurance Program Task Force. Water Quality Director Charlie Martin updated the committee on the recently appointed CAP Task Force, charged to bring forward by September of this year a capacity assurance plan acceptable to the Council and for submission to the Environmental Protection Agency by the deadline date of January 3, 2013. As chair of that task force, I will work with my colleagues and staff and consultants and the law department on the most appropriate way to bring these recommendations to the full council for consideration. Second item was an update on the Capacity Management Operations and Maintenance Plan, or CMOM, which is another component of the EPA consent decree. Director Martin explained that 150 implementation elements of the plan are under the direction of the urban county government with the assistance of nine subcontracting firms. He pointed to several of the various aspects of CMOM, including self-assessments, sewer overflow responses, the fats, oils, and grease reduction program, pump station power outages, and gravity line preventive maintenance. He also described the information management system in operation to collect and analyze the data and, in general, to keep things straight. The third item was a report on the infestation of the emerald ash borer, presented by John Saylor from the Office of Environmental Compliance. He informed the committee that the insect has been in Fayette County since 2009, putting 50,000 ash trees in our city under threat. 6,000 of that number are street trees. The urban county government is treating trees in our parks at a cost of $10 to $16 per trunk diameter inch, and these trees must be treated every two years. It's a serious infestation that threatens our tree canopy. We are taking what measures we can to treat trees, to inform citizens, and to encourage them to treat the trees. Often, even though it's expensive, it's less costly than replacing a tree. no motions were brought forward as a consequence of these presentations and the meeting adjourned at 12 35 p.m. on the 15th thank you mayor that's my report thank you council member blues all right next on our agenda is a presentation regarding the franchise agreements and i'll ask David Barbary, Mr. David Barbary, if he will lead this presentation. Thank you, Mayor. I'll be brief. I have about a five-minute update on the franchises. I have represented the utilities. I wanted to double-check who's here. I think I have Kentucky Utilities, Bluegrass, Columbia. Is Delta here? Okay, Delta. And I'm not sure about Clark Energy. But we are currently, as you all would recall, about a year ago, you asked that prior to embarking on longer-term franchises, we make the utility representatives available to you all at a council meeting so that you all could ask them whatever questions you all might have of them. We are currently negotiating two different types of utility franchises, natural gas. There's two natural gas utilities in Fayette County, Columbia Gas and Delta Natural Gas. and the electric utilities. We have three of those, Kentucky Utilities, Bluegrass, and Clark Energy. The proposal of the administration on the longer-term franchises is going to be to raise the franchise fee by 1% from 3% to 4%. We have spent a great deal of time over the last several months working with the utilities that were audited. We had audits performed for the first time in recent memory of the largest three utilities, those being Kentucky Utilities, Columbia Natural Gas, and Bluegrass Energy. And that was a very good exercise. For one reason, it had not been done recently, and it verified a couple of things we already thought we knew. Very positive results on actual the accounting of the monies that were coming in. In other words, almost virtually all of the money that was being tariffed was actually being collected and returned to the urban county government. there's a small amount in unreconciled collections with Kentucky Utilities that we're working with them on to give you an idea of order of magnitude I think that's approximately $45,000 out of the tens of millions of dollars that we've gotten over the past three years on the franchise from them we are still comparing Columbia Gas's footprint in Fayette County just to make sure we haven't missed any addresses where we haven't been collecting for some reason. Most of the audit issues we've had have involved differing interpretations of what you could include in gross revenues. The recommendation of the administration has been we do not feel that it would be worthwhile to pursue retroactive amounts associated with this broader definition of gross revenues. We do think it would be a valuable exercise to pursue a limited number of additional categories of broadening this franchise definition going forward. I'll give you an idea of some of these retroactive amounts. The two largest categories were something called fee-on-fee. That's where the franchise fee applies on top of itself. As a practical matter, instead of being like a 3%, it would end up being a 3.09% on the franchise fee itself. That apparently is the practice in some other jurisdictions jurisdictions nationally. We could find no other Kentucky cities that do that, and it did not really strike us as making a great deal of sense to have, essentially, a fee apply on top of itself. So that's something we were not interested in pursuing, either going back or going forward on. Another big category was late fees. The franchise fee did not currently apply, although our auditor suggested that it could, to the late fees, and that's another category where we're not really interested in pursuing that going forward. Some of the ones that we were interested in pursuing specific to different categories of utilities, we are interested in potentially trying to recoup some monies for pole attachments from the electric companies. And there's a significant amount of money, and it's going to be a very difficult issue to try to work out, with third-party gas. We have a number of large users that do not purchase their gas through the utility itself. They purchase it on the market, and the utility does not bill it either. So there's hundreds of thousands of dollars that we lose in franchise fee revenues that are attributable to that, that we're trying to come up with a solution going forward on how we might capture that on the franchise fees. the franchises are set to expire shortly ideally we'll advertise and enter the new franchise prior to council break that's probably overly optimistic I think realistically we're probably talking about entering into the new franchises the first quarter of next fiscal year once again 3% to 4% is a major highlight what we are proposing is that the franchises would be for up to would be five years in length. Right now they're three years in length. And we would have the ability to exercise unilaterally the ability to extend them up to two additional periods of five years each time. You'd make that decision in year four, whether you wanted to exercise that option or not. So you could realistically have a franchise, if everything was going well, that lasted for up to 15 years. We are going to require that utilities appear before council and provide information related to franchising services upon request. and I think this comes up regularly and maybe some of the focus with some more recent construction projects. You all probably realize this from some prior information we gave to you all, but the permitting and right-of-way issues are separately addressed in Chapter 17C of the Code of Ordinances. I think there's going to be some suggested changes to that that will come forward to you all to consider shortly, but just so you all know how those work operationally, those are incorporated into the franchise and our franchise requirements. So whatever additional changes you all would make to that would make their ways into the franchises automatically, and they would be required to comply with that. I think four of the utilities provided background information of a general nature in your packet today. I think the thought, because of the timing, was it might make more sense to just kind of open the door up for you all to ask questions of which other utilities you might want to ask questions of. And I think they'd be happy to go over their PowerPoint presentations with you, but because of your time, I didn't know if that made the most sense for you all to want to do that or not. We'll see where it goes and how much time we can commit to it. I have two council members signed up. We do have several members from the utilities here, right, David? You might want to introduce who's here. And Councilman Martin has signed up. Sure, I have David Freiberg from Kentucky Utilities. I think David brought some other people with him. Is that right, David? No, just yourself. All right. Is it Mr. Smothers from Bluegrass? And I think he has a couple people with him. Herb Miller from Columbia Gas. And is it Jeff Steele from Delta? Okay. Okay, thanks. Councilman Martin. And then Councilman McKay. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate everyone coming today. I think it was my request that we have, and the Council has an opportunity, so kind of kick the tires before we have new franchise agreements put in place. And so my intention was that there be some meaningful information provided to the Council about what a new franchise agreement would have, how the agreement differed from previous agreements, and really meaningful information about how the franchise was providing services to the citizens. So if we're going to renew folks for another five or ten years, we should know how we're doing. And so I appreciate everybody being here today. I'm not sure just having everybody come in one meeting. I don't know about my fellow council members, but I didn't know you guys were going to be here today. But I know some folks may have some questions. I hope the administration will also, if and when we have to approve a new franchise, and I understand the gas company is coming up almost immediately, that we actually have a substantive presentation about how the new agreement is different than the old agreement and some information about how we're doing so that the council can be provided a meaningful role rather than just trying to rubber stamp something that the administration has negotiated. So I appreciate folks coming together. Right now, I don't have any information with which to ask questions about any of these agreements because they're not provided to us. So, Mr. Mayor, hopefully at the time that the new agreements are presented to us, we could maybe have a presentation about the agreements and some information about how they're different than the ones that previously existed. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Mayor. David, I've got just a quick question about the Chapter 17C. I want to be sure I understand. Yes, sir. The way it reads, it sounds like any changes to that, which the utilities would then be subject to, is able to be determined solely by urban county government. Is that correct? I think that the utilities would be part of the legislative process. But, yes, generally speaking, the way the franchise reads, it would be 17C, as may be amended by you all going forward. Okay, so any changes in if we have concerns about the ways in which specifically the right-of-way is being handled, we have the ability to make those decisions, certainly with input, but the final decision rests with council, and then the utilities are bound by that given their franchise agreement. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Mayor, the recommendation to raise the fee from 3% to 4%, that's a 33% increase in the tax. Has that come out of administration, or where did that come from? I wasn't really aware we were going to be raising taxes. I think Ryan's here and Jane may be here. This is related to what has been described as our broken streetlight fund. Jane, if you want to elaborate on it, we can. Can you? I'm sorry, Mayor. We were discussing an item. The question was related to the question that Council Member Lane asked had to do with this fee and the context for it. And I said some of this has to do with our street light fund. Well, as we were reviewing the budget and reviewing all the revenue sources, the franchise fee was proposed to be raised, the 1%. and we talked about also the filling the need that we had in the street it's not dedicated to but filling the need for the additional dollars for street light for the street light fund which is out of balance currently so the that would provide funds for us to pay for the street lights the operating as well as the capital. This is part of our budget. The Street Light Fund is not a franchise fee, though. That's why I'm saying that we were just talking about in terms of dollars. It's not this increase isn't dedicated. It goes to the general fund. What's your estimate of the revenue generated by the franchise fee for the either for last fiscal year or maybe you've got an estimate for this year? I don't know which one you have available. We have both. Bill, do you have the go ahead? I didn't bring that with us, but it's an additional $2.5 million for the 1% increase for this year for FY13 budget that we're discussing. Are you saying that? If you want, we'll get those totals for you. Yeah, I mean, I'd just like to know what the increase is going to be because somebody's got to pay it. And it would be nice if that's a 33% increase when you go from 3% to 4%. It's a 1% increase in the rate, but a 33% in taxes. You know, and I would just like to get my arms around those numbers. If you could give us maybe the last two or three years franchise fees, and we could look at those and then estimate what the rate will be with the new higher percentage. Just give us a moment. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Martin. Thank you, Mayor. I guess I would like for the folks who brought presentations to maybe make those, because I know that we are running close on the gas company franchise. And, Mr. Barber, is there a plan for how that's going to get approved? Historically, what we do is you all approve an ordinance and give that to readings, and they go out and bid on it. I'm sorry? Historically, you all approve an ordinance, and they bid on it. Okay. And the ordinance contains the guts of the franchise. And we have not been in a position to provide you a final draft because we're still working through some of the audit issues that I mentioned earlier. So that's going to come up like? Well, if we can get past the audit issues, it will come up before you all go on break. If we can, it will come up immediately when you all get back from break. And if you all want a presentation, I'm happy to give you all a presentation on the differences, but the way it's lining up now, the highlights that I gave you all earlier are going to be the major differences from the last franchise. It will be 4% rather than 3%. It will be the duration of the length will be more significant. They will be required to come before you all to present information on the franchise or any questions that you all have about their services. And then you all still have in your back pocket, because I know you all have had issues permitting otherwise, you all will be able to build those in going forward. Whatever changes you all make to the permitting process in Chapter 17C would automatically make their way into the franchises. Well, rather than just have this show up as a docket item to be voted on at some point, I guess I'd, I mean, I don't know whether fellow council members want to have the gas company present this to us, but I think I'd like to hear it. But at some point before we have to vote on this at the last minute, I'd like to sort of get some information about it. Thank you, Mayor. You might, you know, add a consideration of that issue. issue. Just a second. Mayor, since these items are on the docket for the agenda today, I think we need to vote. If you don't want to have the presentations, maybe we should vote to take them off of the docket. I'm not following the question. What we did was put this on to, in order to, I'm hearing it too, so. I think the presentations are general information presentations. If you all want to hear them, I'm sure they'd be glad to give them to you all. But I think that was the gist of the presentations. I don't think they're focused per se on the contents of this franchise. They're just, you know, they haven't been in front of you all in a while was one of the issues. And I think they wanted you all to put a face with a name kind of thing. And then they can give you general background on what services they're providing and where. And if you all had general questions about that, then they're here to answer those for you all today, similar to the request that you all had, I think, for regular updates from them if you had questions on the franchises. Well, you know, all I can go by is what was presented to me is with our docket today, and these were copies of the presentation, so I assume those were on the docket and should be presented today. I think technically if we were not going to see the presentation, we ought to vote to modify the docket and take them off because it is on the docket. All right. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you. I just have a quick question. Are the franchise fee increases built into the fiscal year 13 budget as presented to the Council? I believe they are to a point. I think they are not anticipating that they would be built in until the second quarter of next fiscal year. If I, yeah, second quarter of next fiscal year. But yes, it is built in for gas and electric. For gas and electric. And so they would not take effect then if the council passed this, they would not take effect for a full quarter? Is that what you're saying? I think that we were anticipating not having them finalized until that point in time, but if you all had a desire to not have that happen, for instance, if we had these ready to go sometime next month, then if you all wanted to keep that from going into effect until a date certain, that would certainly be something we could build into it, where it would not go into effect until that point in time. Okay, so depending on how all this goes, the council will need to consider that also along with the budget considerations. Thank you. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Mayor. In terms of the information that would be useful to council, I'll speak for myself, useful to me and I think useful to council, it's as much as I appreciate the overview of what the various utilities do, I don't think that's what's at issue. I would like an opportunity to have the Council raise specific questions that the franchisees could then respond to rather than give a general presentation. I think that would be more useful and more on point for what we're here to do. So I think Council needs that information, but it needs to be much more focused specifically on what the issues are in the franchise agreement. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Council Member Kay. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to know, just logistically, we'll be having temporary franchise agreements come forward to cover any time span between those that would expire before new ones would have been negotiated and passed by the Council? I think that we would anticipate operating under a license until we enter into the long-term franchise. Just kind of using the current? Yes, very good. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Council Member Farmer. I'm just judging from the conversation that perhaps since there's a precedent for questions like this or opportunities like this where the council wishes to have more conversation on an issue, maybe perhaps the workshop model that's been created might work. Council Member Kaye? If I can just follow up with that, I think a workshop model is useful if the agenda is focused enough. And I think that has to be a matter of consultation between the administration and council to construct an agenda that raises the issues that council would like to see addressed. So I agree. A good suggestion then would be if you would, those who wish to encourage the workshop and more questions on it, get with Mr. Barbary, and would that work? Yes, thank you. Dave, does that work for you? Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. I don't have anybody else signed up for the comments or questions on this presentation item, so I guess we can move on. All right? All right. Thank you. Our next. Just to get closure on that, I'll take it then that Council Member K, you, and maybe Council Member Lane will get together with Mr. Barber to arrange a workshop. You'll need to coordinate it with the Vice Mayor, the issues with regard to a clarity of the agenda. Right? Okay. Suitable to me. Mayor, I'd be happy to help out, but when we're raising the taxes, I think that there should be more transparency and more of an open meeting to discuss that issue as opposed to doing it in a workshop. And, you know, I'm a little bit surprised because I don't believe I heard anywhere during any of the budget that we were going to plan to raise the franchise taxes sometime in the fiscal year. Maybe it went by me, but I was not aware of that. I see Commissioner Driscoll coming to the platform, which I certainly appreciate. Thank you so much. Sure. It was a part of the budget presentation. I believe, Mayor, you mentioned it a few times. We talked about it in our overview because we talked about what the amount, what our assumption was about when it would go into effect in 2013 and what the full year would be. And I've got some of that. I told you we'd get it. I just didn't have them with me if you want to go put it in context or you want to do that at the workshop. I'll leave it up to the mayor if you'd like to have that question. Well, I think what she's saying is that we have been talking about it. We've brought it up today because we're talking about it more. And as the council, at its discretion, as it should, is asking for even more questions, which is fine. But it was my understanding, maybe I misunderstood this, that we'd already put some of that revenue in our budget starting in the second quarter. And we talked about that. And I don't know that that was, I'm aware of that. I understand sometimes I'm not hearing things when I'd like to be. We, in our revenue overview, we talked about the assumption that the new rate would be effective September 1st of 2012, that the fiscal year 13 increase would be approximately $2.5 million. And we did it the day of the revenue, when we spoke about revenue. I know specifically that was one of the times that we went into detail about the franchise fee and talked about what it would be annually after that for a full year. We gave you the annualized figure as well. And we did talk about it being electric and gas changes. Well, when I reviewed those numbers when we were working on the budget, there have been some rate increases for most of the utility companies. There's the EPA requirements on the electric, and then there's also the water company because the new pipeline had increases in the pipeline, no pun intended there. So I was expecting that those increases in revenue were not related to a rate increase, but just your forecast that utility costs would be up and we would automatically get an increase in revenue from that. But, again, I think I'm just sort of caught off by surprise on the increase. I was not aware of it. We may have been discussed as a possible option, but I don't know that anybody, I don't recall seeing anything on that in writing that we're going to raise the rate from 3% to 4%. Now, I'm not saying I couldn't have missed something, but I try to stay on top of all the correspondence that comes out. Thank you. the effect it's going to be so there's no questions like when we're sitting here and we feel somewhat surprised by it i mean i think probably just spelling it out for us might be the best way to to do that not again i'll you you may have said those things that you just you just cited but in my mind and at least one other council member's minds we didn't understand what the intent was or what you meant by it or you just that's all i'm saying thank you mayor Maybe it would be helpful to redistribute the handouts that we had on the revenue day because it clearly is on those pages where it talks about that increase and what the cost would be, the increased revenues would be used for. I don't think we're denying that you've said there would be an increase in revenues. I think we just didn't understand that it was a 3% to 4% increase. And if that's on there, fair enough. Some of us may have missed it. But like I said, we're being. I guess, no, I just so you that you can have that information. Thank you. We can redistribute that. And from my point of view, the reasoning for this is the hole that we have in the streetlight fund, everybody knows about that, and we're trying to fix it. And does this represent all of it? Perhaps not all of it, but a substantial amount of it. And it might be helpful. Am I wrong about that? No, sir. We might also redistribute the recommendation. I know that Susan Bush presented to the Council as that being the recommendation of the administration moving forward. Okay. All right. All good questions. We understand the question. There's always anxiety about any kind of any suggestion of fee increases. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. An ancillary question, David. Why are, and I think I may know the answer to this, but I'll let you stick your neck out. Why is Insight and Windstream not treated the same way as other utilities? We look at them as utilities. And they just go unfettered. They buy and sell each other and raise prices the time they want to. Well, we still have franchises with all of them. The major distinction I'm aware of, now Cable is a little different because they're regulated only federally. They're not regulated by the PSC at all. Well, about six or seven years ago, the legislature passed a bill that created an excise tax in lieu of a franchise fee. So we no longer collect franchise fees from a telecom or a cable company. We still have franchises with them for other reasons, but the money goes to the state, and it's disproportional to the amount we used to historically collect. We were in a lawsuit over this, and we got some of the money back but not nearly enough of it. And what happened was the legislature underestimated the amount that both the local governments needed from that as well as itself. So until such time as they see fit to raise whatever amount of that tax is that's applied to them, we won't see any additional monies out of that particular fee. That's part of the deal. Well, the other is their ability to be able to change rates on a whim almost. Well, the cable ones are regulated federally. We have some control over the base rate for cable, but I don't believe they've raised that in recent memory. They normally raise the other ones. They don't need to, I promise you. If you saw my bill, you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you, Council Member Beard. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. And, David, I was going to actually ask what Council Member Beard alluded to, but are you going to include in our workshop discussions the water franchise as well? We can. That's on a different time track. That does not expire until 2015. Yeah, just in helping us think down the road and prepare us, I mean, they're in that general discussion with the other ones as well. So if we can have a little bit of information on that. All right. And then just to add to a couple of the points that have been made, we did have that revenue discussion on the change in the franchise fee, and specifically it was based on the streetlight deficit that we're currently facing here in our community. As you know, there are several neighborhoods that have been promised streetlights that are waiting, waiting, waiting. So that was part of the premise in our discussion and getting into that in the budget. So we did have those discussions. Councilman Merlain, sorry you missed it. No, I remember us discussing increasing the income for the streetlight fund, but I don't believe that I've heard anywhere going from 3% to 4%. And this is in the budget process. I don't know that I remember anything about that. We did discuss something earlier in the year. We can talk about it again next Thursday during our updated revenue discussion. But it was announced day one when the mayor gave his speech. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Stinnett. Council Member Farmer. Just for my own personal clarity, when you gave the budget address, you talked about raising the streetlight fee at that time, did you not? Or not. Thank you, Mayor. That's been about ten weeks ago. Yeah. I don't think it was called the streetlight fee exactly, was it? I don't know. I'll definitely go back to it. I've said many times that I'm not a know-it-all. I didn't have to be the smartest kid in the class, and I'd love to have perfect memory on it. But I certainly thought that we were there with it. I just thought you had addressed this subject in your budget address. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak on the franchise fee presentation? All right. I don't have anybody signed up. then we can perhaps move on. Next on our agenda is an equally exciting presentation about the collective bargaining agreement. And present today with us is Mr. Don Crane, who is an attorney with Frost, Brown, and Todd, who represented the city in the negotiations. I also see in the audience today Mr. Mike Sweeney and Rob Sarantonio is here, representing the Fraternal Order of Police, who, along with others, participated in these negotiations. And on the city's behalf, Ed Gardner, Ashley Case, Ryan Barrow. I see Assistant Chief Dwayne Holman is here today as well, who participated on behalf of the city. So, Don, if you have the floor now, if you can summarize for us where we are. Thank you, sir. Mr. Mayor and members of council, good afternoon. My name, as you mentioned, is Don Crane. I'm a partner with Frost Brown Todd in one of our Ohio offices. You may recognize the name of the firm because we've had a 50-member office here in Lexington for quite a few years. On behalf of myself and the firm and Joe Schaller, who has assisted with these negotiations, I want to thank all of you for the opportunity to represent your community at such a crucial time. Over the past five years, your community, communities all over the United States, and most of our state and local governments have suffered through one of the worst economic periods since World War II. It's been a time of challenge and a time of sacrifice, and I commend the mayor and council for taking this risky but appropriate action of seeking concessions from your labor unions in their collective bargaining agreements. This approach is never popular, it's never easy, and it is fraught with risk. The alternative is layoffs, which wreaks havoc on employees' families and morale, negatively affects public safety and takes dollars out of the economy when it most needs the financial boost. You can be very proud of the contract that I'm about to describe to you, as well as the previous contract settled by your corrections officers and firefighters by Mr. Schaller, Mr. Gardner, and our respective staffs. The urban county government should also be very proud of the public employees and unions in these negotiations because they have stepped up to the plate and did some very difficult things by giving the government, over a three-and-a-half-year period, approximately $11 million in labor contract concessions. The savings afforded by the Fraternal Order of Police and the new contract totaled almost $5.5 million in the first three years, and that's not counting the wage freeze over the contract's original expiration date and the new begin date of the contract, which is July 1, 2012. In the final year of this new four-year contract, the employer grants approximately $1 million in step schedule increases, which approximate the cost of an increase of about 2%. So the total savings over the life of the contract, which is four years, is $4.475 million. I am very, very proud and thankful to the management negotiating team, which the mayor mentioned, who worked tirelessly during these negotiations. They include Ed Gardner, who is not here today. He is away for the marriage of his daughter, which I understand is a very expensive proposition. He's from the law department. Ashley Case from Human Resources, Ryan Barrow from Budget, Dwayne Holman and Ron Compton from Police Administration. We also received valuable leadership and, in particular, strategy assistance at critical times from Mayor Gray, Jeffrey Reed, Jamie Emmons, and Commissioners Janet Graham, Jane Driscoll, and Clay Mason, and help as well from Bill Amara from the Budget Office. Your negotiating team was successful because they were supported by the administration. We were given clear direction, and we maintained an overall positive relationship with union leaders and the union bargaining team. But this positive relationship existed long before Frost-Brown-Todd came to your negotiations. It's been ongoing and is still good. As I said earlier, you should also be proud of your police officers and their union leadership. I have great respect for these individuals. The union's bargaining team stepped up when it was critical for their community, and they sacrificed more than they probably wanted to or expected when they began negotiations a while back. This was not an easy process. It wasn't easy for management, and it certainly wasn't easy for the union. in particular to take a concessionary package back to an unhappy membership. At the end of the day, it is my personal assessment that this contract came together because there was an understanding within the FOP leadership that it was necessary for the benefit of the community. And after all, that's why government exists, to serve the people. In my humble opinion, this contract serves the citizens of this community very well. and our team and the administration recommend it for your approval without reservation. If you will turn to the summary sheet of the changes to the police collective bargaining agreement, I will then highlight some of the items that are shown in bullet points on these two pages. These are the key changes to the contract. We have also supplied comparison agreements which compare this agreement to the previous agreement, which you can look over, if you wish, between now and your council meeting on Thursday. And if you have questions, of course, I'd be happy to answer them. But in some cases, I'll have to seek the assistance of some of my team members who are more knowledgeable of certain issues. The first two pages that you have set forth the cost, the final two pages set forth the cost summary of the police collective bargaining agreement with a total approximate savings, as I mentioned, of $4.475 million over the life of the contract and the first three-year cumulative savings of $5.5 million. Ladies and gentlemen, would you like me to go through the contract itself and talk about some of the highlights? I'd be happy to do that. I'm seeing some nodding, so I'll go ahead and do that, Mr. Mayor, if that meets with your approval. In the area of lodge business, there was an adjustment to the number of members that can attend the Kentucky General Assembly meetings, down from four to three. That resulted in a savings of about $42,000. In the area of promotions, we made some clarifications to the testing process for promotions, including accessibility to test questions and results, making sure that those were only on a need-to-know basis and at the appropriate time, and for certain tie-breaking procedures. It also specifies that the promotion to lieutenant shall require a bachelor's degree. That's something that was generally in place already, and we're seeing more and more communities throughout our bargaining areas going to that model. It also provides that the eligibility list for promotion shall remain in effect for two years unless the list is abolished by the director, and that's a very common rule in this industry. In the area of disciplinary procedures, it provides for the authority of the chief to meet directly with the members who might be under discipline or consideration for discipline prior to actually recommending discipline. And this allows for early informal resolution of issues before it gets into the complicated administrative process. In the area of overtime, the contract changes provide for the payment of time and a half for overtime hours reimbursed to the government by grant, regardless of the total hours worked in a week. You have a very favorable contract in terms of the overtime provisions, and generally overtime is not available unless the member is actually working 40 hours a week. But you receive some grants to pay officers that would include overtime, and so the contract provides for an exception in the event of special events where the grant provides for overtime such that the member can receive overtime regardless of whether or not he or she has met the threshold in that particular week. It's very complicated, but in general it makes sense, and it won't cost the government any additional money. Also, the contract provides for the minimum of three hours' pay at time and a half for pre-planned special events for work outside the normal work schedule, and that's a common benefit in the industry. It doesn't have a lot of additional cost. Under paid and unpaid leaves, swing holidays, which are essentially floating holidays, something that's been in your contracts and in your government for several years, has been suspended for two years. That's essentially 16 hours a year, 32 hours over those two-year periods. And also, vacation leave accruals are reduced by two hours per month for two years. So essentially another way to look at that is that's like a week of furlough days. In other words, a week that you used to pay for that you no longer have to pay for, and that's a big item. That was essentially over those two years $1.38 million, and that's similar to firing corrections. They also agreed to those changes. the contract does increase the total leave accrual permitted for vacations and holidays to 400 hours that's not unusual in the industry and based on the contracts that i've negotiated it's relatively low as far as the amount that they can have on the books to draw down from if they have an event or need time off Under clothing and equipment allowances, this is a big item, saving essentially $684,000 over the life of the contract. The parties agreed to implement a corner master system for uniforms and equipment. It's similar to what fire and corrections are doing. An RFP has gone out. It's a way to save a lot of money and also be more efficient. In that same category, there are some provisions for reductions in uniform allowances for a certain period of time during the contract. I believe it's something like $100 a month. Physical fitness incentive, and this was a union proposal to save money. It wasn't proposed by management. It suspends the benefit for two years. It was a union proposal. It saves approximately $320,000. Now, you may be concerned that all of a sudden your officers are not going to be in shape. Our experience with this is that most of the folks that take advantage of physical fitness incentives are fitness folks themselves, and they're not going to go off the wagon just because this goes away. And for those that do, they'll come right back at the end of two years. In the area of vehicles, there was considerable savings here. This was an idea that came from budget. Originally, we were proposing to do this outside the contract, and there was a lot of consternation as a result of this. So we negotiated at the table. This was, in final, a union proposal to restrict the use of home fleet vehicles only to and from work, except for off-duty employment in Fayette County. It also provides for the use for off-duty employment permitted with the payment of $50 a month. And it also specifies that out-of-county commuting is limited to within 35 miles of the Fayette County border. I was in the room, and I was around for the discussions of what this would save, and quite frankly, I think Ryan Barrow has been somewhat conservative with this number. So it's a good number. And if you just look at the mileage that would be saved on your fleet times the IRS rate, you're in this ballpark. So it's a number that we believe will hold up. And finally, on salary, there are no steps or structure movement in the first two years of the agreement. So everything's frozen for two years. And then at the end of the third year and at the end of the fourth year, there is a $500 structure increase in the rates and $1,000 in the rate in the fourth year. So there's $500 at the end of the third year, the last pay period actually, and at the end of the fourth year in the last pay period, those movements are changed. And that's approximately a 2% increase if you want to put it in those terms. But it's a change to the salary structure. If you're already at the top, you get nothing. There is also an additional step increase at the end of the third and the fourth year. So the contract is for a total of four years. It begins July 1, 2012, and ends July 1, 2016. And there's something significant that I want you to understand about that last year and about this contract in general. When we began as your council and looked at your budgets, you were dangerously low in your reserves. and beginning with essentially the wage freeze that went into effect last year and essentially is in place with some of these reductions over the next three years with the unions we've settled with and with the FOP now going out four years, you essentially have a flat wage cost as far as wages over that period of time. Not many communities can say that in this country. You have done a very good job of setting the bar high, and it's been met by your unions. With the FOP, we did not have the leverage of layoffs. You already have a staffing issue. You did the smart thing, and you accepted a COPS grant, which precludes layoffs. But instead, you can bring in officers. It's paid for. You get up to speed that way, and your labor cost is relatively flat over that period of time. So it's a great accomplishment that we have here with the assistance of your unions and your employees. They had to want to do this. There wasn't anything you could do essentially to make them do it. So you have my congratulations and full support for this settlement, and we're very happy to have had this opportunity to serve you. And let's hope that over this period of time where you have these flat labor costs, that the economy comes back, that your jobs come back to the 2008 level and beyond, and we will be in a position, you will be in a position at that time, to bring your wages to where you wish them to be. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Crane. We have some council members who have signed up for comments or questions. and beginning with Councilmember Stinnett. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Crane, thank you for coming today and giving us an opportunity to go through the agreement. Thank you to our FOP members for being here and representing getting this contract finished and finalizing to the men and women, both sworn and non-sworn in your office division, for helping get this done as well, as well as the administration, because we all know how long it took and it wasn't an easy task. And thank you for your leadership on there as well, Mr. Crane. Just a couple. I want to make sure these numbers are correct, because I think there may be a typo on the cost savings that was handed out to Council. You said that the approximate savings over four years is $4.75 million, correct? Yes, sir. And then what is the cumulative savings? Because I see on our sheet we're tallying as we go, but yet we get to the end, and the cumulative drops back to $4.7 million. Yes. What it amounts to is if you turn to the first page of the cost savings, They accumulate year by year. Year one was $2.2 million. Year two was $2.5 million, so you're at $4.5 million. Actually, $4.7 million, I guess. Year three, it goes up again to $5.5 million. But year four, you spend a million dollars, so it comes back. So we're giving it back. You're giving it back, yes. Again, the value of that fourth year you can't underestimate because with the other unions, that will operate somewhat as a governor on what you need to do. So it's basically back-end load. I want to make sure we are reading this the correct way. That's what it's called. That hopefully in four years our revenues will have turned around and we'll be prepared and be able to budget accordingly to make up that additional. And it looks like if I do the quick math, the home fleet savings is $3.2 million over four years. That's 72% of our savings in one item. $800,000 a year for each of the four years. That's true. So I'm just trying to, you mentioned that was a good number, IRS calculated, and we used some of their terminology to calculate that $800,000. How are we going to track it? Well, you'll have to direct that to someone other than myself. I don't know if you don't have the ability to answer. I think you're the one that came up with that approximate savings. I'm trying to figure out, because that's 72% of what we have to hit. So I'm really interested in how we're going to physically track that number at $800,000, because what we're talking about is a program that many of us do support and would want to continue to support. And I understand the union's rationale for getting it or accepting those terms. But I'm just curious how we're going to track and make sure we meet that. Well, in terms of how the numbers drive, obviously there was a whole plethora of numbers, and we worked through it as a negotiation team. I think it's important to articulate that number's three components. It's both gas, wear and tear, and insurance costs associated with that. So if you just take the $800,000 as a quick smell check, that's about $1,400, $1,500 per vehicle. You know, the IRS regs on what a vehicle for personal use would be, $5,000 to $10,000. So in terms of that number, it was derived based on an assumed personal use driven and assumed insurance pro rata share. In terms of how that's tracked and administered, I'd defer to administration on how we ensure that personal use doesn't happen. But obviously through the billings of the wear and tear, we should see that almost within the first year. Because obviously if you drive the car 3,000 miles less, you're going to have less oil changes, less tires associated with that. Gas should be an immediate budgetary impact. Insurance is a little tricky. We self-insure. So the self-insurance savings, you know, as we litigate and work through the insurance process, you know, that's not going to be instantaneous. Some savings will be instantaneous, but we'll see that trickle in over years because we self-insure. If we fully insured, we'd see it instantaneous. I was going to ask how you plan on saving on insurance since we are self-insured, but you just answered that because obviously our policy covers them, whether they drive it home, here, everywhere. There are some claims that are personal use, and if you don't have personal use, you don't have those claims costs. So we don't know who's going to track it. Commissioner Driscoll, do you know who's going to be watching this? Because it's a large number of the savings, and it would be really good to know who we can go to to get updates on this and the accountability of it. We should be able to track that through our claims program, Risk Master, that tracks the claims yearly. So we should be able to give some updates on that periodically. There's obviously fuel you can track and things like that. I guess my follow-up is to Commissioner Mason on this issue is, what happens if this doesn't work? What happens if we see a spike in need for these officers to respond off-duty as we've utilized in the last several years? Are we in a position to pivot to making changes, or are we stuck for four years and nothing can be changed on that policy? I think that with mutual agreement, contracts can be amended. And so that's not out of the question to do that if we perceive that this one particular clause of contract is not working out well. And I assume yourself, will you work with Chief Baston to monitor that? Yes. If there's an opportunity, we'll take it to put it back out there, because I know I've seen them a lot of times stop in their street clothes with their families. I understand. It's been very valuable these last several years. And then my last question is for Commissioner Driscoll. We had budgeted in this current fiscal year a savings for this contract. What was that number that now we have to find somewhere else in the budget to finish the end of the year balanced? Or do we have to cut somewhere else and make up? Do we know what that number is? At this point, Council Member, we are looking at the budgets in total and working through the personnel overages. Actually, there's some other savings within the department that in the additional money, for example, that was put in there for the class was eaten up by current costs, but that has helped in working towards a balanced budget with police. But we're still getting the expenses for police in particular, but we're looking at the government as a whole because we do have that. We talked to you about the personnel costs where we are out of balance because of things like the fire payouts, et cetera. So we're working on it. We're looking at it globally now. Yeah, I think some of our discussion, though, is what piece do we have to make up for police and what other areas of government will we be pulling that money from to make it up? And that's why I was trying to get to a number. Is the salt money, for instance, going to be used to offset this? Is the money we received from other sources here recently be used? Again, our last review with police. police's budget in total is looking fairly strong in terms of being balanced. We may be able to keep it within police itself. That's what our target is. Okay. Very good. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Stinnett. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Crane, thank you very much for coming. Just sort of 50,000 feet. I'm trying to understand the different years. as far as raises because the employees of the city they hear this and they want to know how this is comparing to what i'm making because our city employees have only not gotten raised in many years i think we gained one percent i think maybe in this budget so in year one is there as i understand there are no raises for compensation in year one is that correct that's correct and there's none in year two. That's correct. In year three, approximately 1%? No. There's no across-the-board raise whatsoever. At the end of year three, in the last pay period, there is a $500 increase to the pay schedule. So each step in the pay schedule goes up $500. Actually, even at the top, I think I misspoke before. So the entire pay schedule moves up $500. And that would be, just a quick calculation in my head, about .067%, something like that, on average for everyone in the police department. That is in the last pay period of year three. Okay. And that's quite a bit of time from now. No, I understand. I'm just trying to understand. And then the same thing, and then there's a step increase that occurs also during that period of time. It's a restored increase. In other words, it's a step that was not given in year one. So how much did they get in year three? Yes, sir. So how much are they getting in year three? I'm not sure what the actual step increase is, but it's probably. But they're getting a raise. Yeah, they are. Well, what's the amount of rates? Well, it's $500 plus a step, whatever that step is, and I'm not certain what the amount is. It's probably around 4% for those that receive steps, those at the top of the range, which is probably 40%, do not receive a step. You said 4%? 40%. There's quite a few folks that are at the top of their... Brian, can you help? Don, you've got these numbers. at a pretty granular level, don't you? In terms of what the percentage increase, it's not uniform. There's steps throughout the entire category. The actual step increase is not a uniform percentage. And same thing with the $500. You just couldn't give it a uniform percentage because people on the low end of the scale would be a different percentage than the people on the high end of the scale. I mean, we could run numerous Excel spreadsheets and show you the actual percentage by steps through all the various categories within the department. Can you ballpark it? I'm just trying to understand how much we're doing. Not off the top. I mean, the steps. So it's different than your regular employees because when we give them a 1% raise, it's 1% across the board? So it's different than that. Is that right? Yes. The collective bargaining with the steps is substantially it's apples and oranges relative to employees like myself. So how do we measure it then? Well, I think the question is, while you're thinking, Ryan, the question would be over time there is an average associated with the raises overall, right? Yes, sir. I was going to say, actually, we've run that. It's a very cumbersome process, and I believe actually you've used those numbers in the past that we produced on last schedules. So assuming this proceeds and is approved, then we'll run that cumbersome calculation and get you a uniform number. But it's not just a simple percentage. Okay. The additional step increase at the end of year four is the same as this. So they just get two step increases. One in year three, one in year four. Okay. Brian? Well, Mr. Crane, actually, maybe you can answer this. Okay, I'll try. Some of these numbers are, when we look at the, when it says savings, what we're talking about is not spending less than we did last year, but not increasing. Is that true? No, I think they're actual savings. In other words, you're spending less than we did the year before. You're spending less than you did on that item. But the step increase wouldn't be that, would it? Actually, no. In years one and two, there's a step that's due many of your officers. They're not receiving that, and that's essentially delayed two years. So they're not getting the increase. That's correct. So they're holding flat. Right. So from a revenue standpoint, we need the same revenue for that item than we did the last year. That's correct. In year three and four. On years two and three. Year one, two, and three. No, I would agree. I think it's year three and four, actually. So in other words, years one and two, there's no step increase. Right. So if we can just stop right there. So we're using the same revenue before this contract as we're using in year one and year two? That's correct. Okay. And so we're not decreasing the amount of money we're spending. We're not following a schedule of regular pay increases. That's correct. Okay. Mayor, I appreciate your – it's very complicated, and I appreciate your expertise, but there's a lot of numbers, and I'm trying to sort of put them in a way that I can understand them, and that can be more difficult some days than others. Glad to help, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. Thank you. All right, I have no one else signed up for questions. So, Mr. Crane, thanks very much. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Good luck to you. Next on our agenda is a council report. Council reports. The floor is available for council reports. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of things. One, I want to thank those who have served our country and serve our community as we celebrated Memorial Day yesterday. Just the opportunity to thank those who made the ultimate sacrifice to our country and to our communities. And I think that's something that rather than just one day a year, we ought to look at and be thankful for every single day. A couple of announcements and a couple of things coming up. This Saturday on June 2nd is the Bike Lexington event where we close off roads for eight miles and have a family-friendly bike ride along with all kinds of other things that day. And we encourage all citizens to come out to that. And then the following weekend on June 10th, the second Sunday of June, we're closing the airport runway, the general aviation runway, the 4,000-foot runway, for, again, a second Sunday event, unlike anything that happens in America where folks are using a runway for physical activity. This year it's a little different in that the Bluegrass State Games became a partner. They're using this as the kickoff to the Bluegrass State Games season. and their corporate partners are Subway and Chevrolet. And so Jared from Subway is coming in, and Chevrolet has a static car display and so forth. And it's just another example of how looking at what we already have in a different light and leveraging that brings in new community partners and new goodwill. But it's free. It's from 1 to 5. I would encourage all my council colleagues and those watching to come out. And not only will you have the runway to blade bike, walk, push a stroller on, but you'd also have planes and fire trucks and a police helicopter, Black Hawk helicopter, all out there for kids to be around and participate with. So, again, we'd encourage you to come out on the second Sunday on June 10th. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Corden, I think Council Member Crosley has a question. I just wanted to clarify, Dave, because I think you said Sunday, June 2nd. Is it for the first event? Is it because the third is Sunday? And I just want to make sure. So it's Sunday, June 3rd or Saturday, June 2nd? Saturday, June 2nd. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Council, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Just one thing, Councilmembers, regarding the detention fees that we talked about earlier. I'm going to go ahead and set the workshop on that. as requested by Councilmember Stennett for June 19th at 9 a.m. on the Council fifth floor conference room. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. First, I wanted to thank the administration and specifically Commissioner Driscoll for coming out to Chevy Chase today for the ribbon cutting for the McAllister's Deli. I think all parties were well served. Secondarily, if you look at the FY 2013 Mayor's Proposed Budget summary information dated April 24th, at the bottom of page 12, the FY 2013 Mayor's Proposed Budget includes a proposal to increase the franchise fees for two franchises, gas and electric, whose contracts are up for renewal. The increase in fees will be transferred to the Urban Services Fund to offset the cost of streetlights. It is my pleasure to report on behalf of the mayor. Thank you. We always appreciate help. Thank you, sir. Anything else, Mr. Farmer? That's your report? All right. Anyone else wish? Council Member Lane. Okay, mayor. Mayor. No, actually, I did a little bit of research, too, and you did mention raising the fee in your, I guess, state of the merge government address or the budget address. And then I did look at the budget, and there is a two-point-something million dollar increase in that line item. So you did get on the record on that. However, I would like to say that tax increases is one thing to say you're going to do one, but it's another thing to actually do it, and it is a 33 percent increase. However, it appears that it's only going to apply to some of the utilities, and not all of them as far as it's going to apply to every utility that we have. Do you know the answer to that? Well, I think that Commissioner Driscoll has his... I'm sorry, Jane. Gas and electric. Yes, it's the two that David spoke about being up for renewal at this time. May I ask a question? In lieu of raising the fee, in other words, there is a tax charge for providing the neighborhood lighting. Would it not have been better to increase the tax on that as opposed to have put it on the franchise fee? I mean, the fact that this was mentioned some time ago, but I don't know that we've discussed this much. I just wondered what was the rationale for that. And we did have a discussion on a presentation. Again, I don't have it in front of me, but we looked at the property taxes and what the impact would be on the property tax and the franchise fee when we made the recommendation, the administration's recommendation for the franchise fee increase. And, again, I don't have that with me, but we can provide that because it went through the impact of those rates. And I believe if it is the 1 percent, if you have a, well, 1 percent bill, you left me. Oh, he's right here. You want to talk about the bill, the impact on the bill, the 50? Right. A 1% increase in either the gas or electric would be illustrated by if you had a $50 electric bill, it would be increased by 50 cents. If your monthly electric bill was $100, it would be an increase of $1. The increase in the property tax that is currently assessed, there's House Bill 44 from the 70s, I believe, that has a 4% increase. It would take about 13 years of 4% increases in order to cover the current annual shortfall that we're running each year in the streetlight allocation. So that didn't seem to be a 13-year lead time to cover today's costs. It didn't seem a viable option. And that had us move to the two franchises that were up for renewal. then 2015 the water franchise would be also up for renewal that could then match that 4%. Thank you very much. Good explanation on that. Okay. Thank you. House Member Stenet. I was just going to add to what that discussion Mr. O'Mara just said. The other issue is we're paying the same company that's doing our streetlights and maintaining them and charging us for the electric. So just keep that in mind, too. All right. I don't have anybody else signed up. So, Council Member Lane, will you complete with your report? Council Member Lane, you're finished with your council report. All righty. Motion to approve Mayor's report. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Council Member Blues, for the second. I would like to bring one issue up, but we can go ahead and approve the Mayor's report. Is there any discussion? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. It was at the work session two weeks ago when we had the discussion and the vote regarding Charles Young. Irene Gooding is here today, and Richard is here. Richard was here. He's here. Oh, okay. Richard's here, too. He wanted to, Richard wanted, our Chief Administrator of Austin, Mr. Maloney, wanted to address the questions that came up that night, or that, it was at night, it was a council meeting, wasn't it? And Irene wasn't able to be here. She is able to be here today. And so I'm going to ask Irene if she will share with us. First of all, I'm really sorry I wasn't at that meeting because I think I could have answered your question. It would have gotten everybody out of here a little bit earlier. But there are two sources of funds in this project. The first one was the one that I talked with you about last winter, and that's the Community Development Block Grant Program from the Recovery Act. That's $173,000. When they started design, as I guess is pretty typical with a lot of our projects, it was going to cost more. So we had funds that were budgeted in something called the UDAG repayments program. These were funds that were budgeted for Third Street development. They'd been budgeted for three or four years, didn't have a project. so our proposal at that time was to use some of those funds for this project. I can't really answer any questions about the design of the project or the bidding of the project, but that's the source of funds. It's the UDAG Repayments Fund, which are repayments, and let me explain just a little bit. But they are repayments from very old projects from the late 70s and early 80s. We had four UDAG projects. They are HUD-funded projects. Most of them had CDBG funds in them as well. Satoner Street townhouses, the 80s building up the street, Victorian Square and Festival Marketplace. and all of these programs because they're urban development action grant programs, they're economic development projects. They provided for repayment. Of course, some of those projects did fail, but especially for the Festival Marketplace project, we were able to get some funds through a court settlement, and those funds were budgeted for primarily downtown projects. The design of the streetscape for the downtown streetscape coming from this project. The Ann Street acquisition relocation of residence. Ann Street is the new street that comes from Bluegrass Aspendale and actually goes right past Charles Young. We used funds for Gratz Park improvements, Bell House, Habitat for Humanity, needed a water line replacement. We did some ADA compliance for the government center. And then the Georgetown Street Development Project, which you know is Rain Garden Way, came from this program. However, most of the funds from UDAG repayments is used for match for the Home Investment Partnerships Program. UDAG repayments can be used for any project that would be otherwise CDBG-eligible or UDAG-eligible. They are not included in the consolidated plan, and they don't have a citizen's participation component. Do you have any other questions? Thanks, Irene. Council Member Myers has signed up. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Director. I have a few questions for you. How much money is left in that UDAG account? PeopleSoft. Now with PeopleSoft, we have the available budget at this point is $737,528.84. And how is that accounted for in terms of if I'm a council member or whoever, how do I find that money? How do I know that money exists? Council budgeted it. So like all budgets of the urban county government, council approves all budgets. there is no particular area in which we report this budget or how the expenditures are made. At least we don't report it to Council that I'm aware of. So if, like all budgets, Council approves the budget but you don't report it to us, how do we approve it? You approve the items on the budget. So, for example, the item that came through the other night, and we were told that it was CDBG money, and then there was kind of a confusion, that's why you're here today. How would a council member ever figure out if that's UDAG money? I'm not sure that you would know without asking. I'm not sure what information you get on the bids. I've never seen what the bids look like from your side. Okay, so when you say that the council approves it, if we don't know when it comes through here that it's UDAC money, how do we know we're approving UDAC money? Or do you just mean that we're approving that expenditure when it comes through on a Thursday night? These funds, whenever the budget was done for these program funds, and they're budgeted as grant funds, they're not budgeted as federal funds, they're not budgeted as state funds, they're budgeted as other grant funds. So you would have seen this budget at that time, like all other grant funds. Okay, so then we'd have to back up to the original use of this money, which I think we were told it was to rehab some houses for affordable housing. The CDBGR program was originally budgeted for those otherwise infeasible houses under the single-family housing rehab program. Okay. Not UDIC. This was budgeted for a Third Street development. Okay, so let's go to the project that's not being done, because I thought we were told on Thursday, I could just be incorrect. I thought we were told Thursday that originally this was going to be used to fund the rehab of some houses, but they couldn't be done by September, and we were going to lose the money, and so now we're moving this to a different project. Right. Last winter when I stood here and I said that this is a potential source of funds, because we would not be able to complete the project that had been originally planned for those funds. And that was the energy efficient rehab for the otherwise infeasible houses in our single family housing rehab program. Our single family housing rehab program, the limit is $25,000. The idea here was that we would be able to assist houses that were going over $25,000. If the amount over $25,000 was energy-efficient rehab, we would use that from CDBGR program. There are some structural problems any time you take a house over $25,000 with federal funds assistance. All pre-78 houses are suspicious of having lead-based paint, which requires not only much more money to abate the property, the lead-based paint, but it also takes a lot more of our time. We have to get other contractors. We have to get special abatement contractors. There are no lead-based paint contractors in Lexington. We have to get them out of Louisville. We have to get them out of northern Kentucky. It seemed last winter, it seemed that we would not be able to complete that project as planned. That's when I proposed the use of those funds for Charles Young's Center. Okay. Well, my time's going to expire. I've got several more questions, but I guess I just have to wait until this goes into committee. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Irene, for being here with us this afternoon to answer some questions. I guess the thing I'm stuck on is you said there's no process for public input for the reallocation of funds as there is for the original grants. grants. How are the decisions made? How do you, now you know you've got some money, this was in the winter time, how do you begin to think about where that money might be used best? Are you talking about UDAG repayment funds or CDBG funds? I may be speaking of both of them. With the CDBG funds, we did do a public process. We had a public hearing. I mailed several hundred letters to people. I put it in the newspaper that we were proposing this budget change. Anytime we amend our consolidated plan to provide for a new project with CDBG funds, we will do a public hearing. We put it in the newspaper. We also mail several hundred letters to churches, organizations, individuals, neighborhood associations. Okay, and that information basically says we have X amount of money and we're proposing. This project. It's not going to be used as proposed originally, but we have a project that we're proposing. Mm-hmm. My question really is, how does that project get proposed to be proposed for this process now? Most of the time it comes from the administration. And how does that happen? Usually, in the past, what has happened is that sometimes projects will crop up during the year that are possibly eligible under CDBG, and we will look at the budget. I mean, I honestly don't come up with the projects. In the past, for the most part, they have been driven by the administration. Okay, so I think both the direction of Council Member Meyer's questions and my questions are pretty much the same, and that is that it seems that if you're a council person, you're not aware until something is proposed that there's actually funds available that might be eligible for something that you or constituents had in mind. The way the government works is if the council member would like to see a project funded, that council member probably should talk to the mayor. Okay. It has been, for the most part, I admit that it's somewhat of a political process, but it's, you know, the administration proposes, you know, or at least in the 20-some years that I have been here, you've had mayors who've proposed projects. and a lot of that, honestly, it comes from council members as well because council members are asking the mayor, they have this project they'd really like to see funded, could he think of some way to fund it? Okay, so perhaps still waiting for that event to occur, by the way. I'm sorry. Yeah. So my last comment. It seems to me it would be useful if we had more of a process for letting people on council and others know that there are funds that are potentially available so that we could think about projects or if we knew something that needed to be done, as opposed to the present structure, which is a single project gets proposed and we're now in a position to vote it up or down with available funds. We don't have, there's no opportunity to compare it to other projects that might have been better or worse. So I think that's something for the administration to think about. And also, every fall we start the process, the annual process for the annual action plan. All of you get that notice. And if you have a project, we should hear about it. I agree. Thank you, Irene. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Stendet. Thank you, Mayor. Irene, I have a couple other questions. I think, you know, to label it a political process, it may be a little bit unfair, but I want to just really build on what Council Member K said about we need to change the process, and there really should be an ordinance, such as we do on bond funds when we reallocate them. There should be an ordinance that has to come back to this council and identify those funds and give us an opportunity for full discussion. I know we put things in newspapers and things, but we don't have the kind of discussion we're having today on the use of those funds. And that's really what it boils down to. And not to pick on Councilman Ford, but he did the right thing. He had a project. He sought it out. We've all done that. But the question is, how did he know to go get that money? That's the real question. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but he knew that money existed. Well, he used to work in our office. Well, I wouldn't say that either, but my point is, when you have a project and you want to go get it funded, we all should have the same opportunities. And I know Councilman Myers has asked for a list of where that money's been spent over the years. I think that's very critical. And you had mentioned the UDAG money, the balance of $700,000. And what is that earmarked for currently? It's budgeted. Part of it is still budgeted for the downtown streetscape project. I don't know if it's still needed for that. Okay. Over $300,000 of it is still budgeted for grant match for the home program. Let me see. We still have more money in the Third Street project, and that would be most of it. There's change in other areas, but that's for the most part. And do we not get a check in the last week or so on additional UDAG repayments? We do have a check, yes. Well, how come that money is not included in your 7-year-old? It has not been budgeted yet. Well, how much is that check for? I didn't bring that information. It's the final balloon payment on Victorian Square. So it's approximately a million dollars. So you'll bring that to council to budget? Is that what you're saying? I will do the budget, but I'm not, I don't have, I would not, the only part of the, the only part of those funds that I would propose any budget for would be grant match for the home program. Well, let me go back to what I first said. The problem here is the process. It's not fair to say it's up to, we've got to go to the mayor. It's not fair to put him in that position. It's, what's fair is this whole council has the same opportunity. We know when these checks come in. We know what the balances are. And we put all the projects out there so everyone can have the same opportunity to get good things done for our city. Because this is not about, hey, I don't want to give it to Chris or whoever. It's because he had a good project. That's okay. And we all should be on that same bandwagon. If we have good projects, let's utilize the money and fund them. So it seems like we need to have that discussion and create an ordinance or whatever it may be to utilize that to assist your area in picking those. because it shouldn't be a political process, and hopefully we can get this done soon through committee. Thank you. Political process is a real bad choice of words, all right, because these funds haven't been here. they are, as Irene I think described it, they have reoccurred. They were invested as federal funds more than 20 years ago. Some of those funds have reoccurred now, and that's what she's describing. And if the routineness of this reoccurrence is rare, then not having a process should not be described as political. Mary, I did not describe it as that. I know you didn't. I was trying to describe, I was trying to frame it in a way so that it does not have so much octane associated with it. and everyone jumps on that regular bandwagon to claim that there's something behind the curtain when there's not. Okay. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Irene, for coming. Mayor, I appreciate you and Richard and Irene for following through on behalf of Council to continue this dialogue. I just want to make a couple of points. Two funding sources, and I was, Irene, the other night I said I didn't want to speak out of school. I was correct on one source and unaware on the other. The one source that I was aware about was the block grant recovery funds. $173,000, that's the funds that you came and spoke of. I said at that time that those funds won't come again, in my opinion, but I didn't share with counsel why I don't think that those funds won't come again. The United States Congress will never authorize a program such as that before. The hero funds, I think President Bush passed those. The recovery funds President Obama passed those. Nonetheless, the United States Congress in the foreseeable future will not fund what's considered recovery or stimulus-like funds. Just my opinion. Hence the September 30th drop-dead date. The night that we came in here for Charles Young Center and for that initial, that was the first time that I was aware. The first time Richard was aware. The first time Mayor was aware. and in my belief it was because of good grantsmanship from my grants office to bring a shovel-ready project and not to return unused federal funds to the government. In regards to the UDAG repayment that makes up the balance that goes to the cost acceleration of this project, those funds were for Third Street development. And as Irene, I understand Irene, have said that those funds have sat there for a few years. That's how long 3rd Street has sat there in the condition it's in. And so we have a pot of funds with UDAG repayment from a budget line item that says 3rd Street Development. If Charles Young Center is not 3rd Street Development, what is? So again, in my assessment, the Grants Office utilized grant funds where they should be going. The other question I want to have for Irene just quickly is, aside from the additional funds for Charles Young, how much money, give or take, is still left in that Third Street Development UDAG repayment? Do you know that right now? $135,000. After the Charles Young project. There's $135,000 still left in the Third Street Development UDAG repayment fund. Political process, if it is, if it's not, I go on record to say that I would like for that $135,000 to go to an area over close to the 3rd Street redevelopment project. A parking lot to complement Charles Young on the Ann Street footprint comes as an idea, but again, the council has said it must be a process. It's been a comment made that Mr. Myers has made in the past about why we aren't finishing projects. It takes people to administer projects. The mayor knows that. Many of the folks around this council know that. And I won't feel ashamed at all for my experience as being a staffer at this government. It helps me professionally and it gives me background to represent the constituents of District 1. When I left the council office, there was a management audit report that basically says do away with community development and all these other bright ideas they had. So when I left administering the housing rehab program, if my memory serves me correct, there was an 18-month period before the division was able to rehire and fill my position. Did the work go away? No, it did not. But we were not able to invest in the administration that's needed to keep projects going. It's not an easy thing that Irene just mentioned about having infeasible projects. This is all our money. The original $173,000 council was for energy efficiency to make infeasible rehab projects feasible. How easy does that sound? Not easy at all. And so, again, it takes strong staff support to get able to do this. At the end of the day, I'm thankful that we have these funds for Charles Young Center. it's a relief that we have UDAC funds to support our Match for the Home program. And I always support whatever processes the council feel necessary to make sure that we have open government. But I think that there's nothing wrong with it in regards to the grants management as it pertains to this Charles Young project. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Irene. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Mayor. This is clearly not something we're going to decide tonight, and there may need to be a process for it. I'm aware of these funds because of my previous profession, and there are a lot of great projects that have been done with them, like the Lexington Board of Realtors realtors and the builders association and their repair affair. And so, yes, maybe we need to think of a process. And yes, does it need to be an ordinance? Probably not because they aren't all recurring funds. But it's certainly something we're not going to do tonight. I would like for us to move on, and I would like to thank Irene, who does an excellent job at keeping up with all these funds and grants and is understaffed. I think it would behoove us to move forward and think about putting this process into something that we can all be comfortable with. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Lawless. Councilman Myers wishes to speak again. I will say in closing that the reason that I introduced the subject was that in the last meeting when Irene wasn't here, we weren't able to get sufficient data and information, which leads often to a level of closure on issues that are abstract. I think it's always, at least for me, it's always a touchstone to remind myself that this government, in ways that are, we hope, efficient, and I think Council Member Ford just described levels of efficiency in terms of project management and projects execution, we invest almost half a billion dollars annually, 500 million, including transfer funds and all fees and all buckets that we utilize in our government. And in that process, we all work, I suspect, very rigorously to engage the work in a transparent and a meaningful and an efficient way. and that's what we're talking about today, and that's the reason that I wanted to bring it back up. All right, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Ms. Gooding, I asked you a second ago how much was left in this fund for UDAC, and you said $777,000 and some change. Council Member Sennett asked you if there was any more money that had come in. You said there was a new check that had come in that hadn't been recorded yet for another million dollars. And I guess that's where my problem is, is when I asked you how much was in there, You didn't include the million dollars in that number. And so my point and the point that I tried to make the other day is that we don't get the information we need to be able to make proper decisions. And so I guess one of the things I'll say is that projects aren't getting done, and we're going to look at that in the committee so you'll have more time to talk about that. But the problem I have, one of the problems I have is that there needs to be a vision. The mayor just said that we spend a half a billion dollars or invest a half a billion dollars a year. My problem is when that year is up or five years down the road or ten years down the road, I want to be able to go back and look at what we did with all that money. And if we continue to have projects that are brought before this body that are voted on to be done, and then they don't get done at the last minute, we have things brought before us, well, this project's not going to get done in time, so now we need to divert the money over here to do this project. There's no vision behind how this money's being used at that point. And there's no way to look back five, ten years down the road to say, collectively, this is what we wanted to do from a vision standpoint with this funding, and here's what we were able to accomplish. And if you go back to what we tried to do in Social Service Community Development Standing Committee earlier this year or last year when we talked about bringing in a grant writer and these different things, it was to try to figure out what all we're doing, the results of what people are doing, so that we could go after additional funding. Part of the reasons why some of these projects aren't reestablished at the national level, at the federal level, is because maybe they don't get back the feedback that says, we invested all these billions of dollars across the country, and we don't really know what the outcome was. So one of the things that I asked the other day that you could put together is a list of spending for all funds and all projects for the last 10 years. And you're going to have plenty of time to put it together because the next meeting is not to have to get off break. But the other thing that I would say, there's been talk about whether or not we do an ordinance or not. One of the things I'd like to have happen, and if I need to do a motion, I will, is that from now on as the Commissioner of Finance does her monthly report and update to the Council, that we have these funds included in that update. Because, and I have one question for you, that million dollars that hasn't been recorded yet, what were you going to do with, you said it hadn't been budgeted yet, what was the process you were going to take for letting the council know about that million dollars or what were you going to do with trying to get that budgeted? When I had projects, I was going to propose a budget. So again, instead of this body being able to look at what needs to happen with that money, it's whoever gets to whoever with the project, and then that's what you bring forward for us to prove. It would not. Again, it comes from the administration. There you go, Mayor. You're under the bus again. Okay, well, what I think all of us are talking about here. We're suggesting here that there's something routine in discovering a million dollars. No, Mayor. It's not. And I think that's what is relevant. Mayor. Councilman, you're speaking for me. That's not what I'm doing. I said I was interpreting that. No, that's a misinterpretation. Okay, okay. I'm not trying to say there's anything nefarious going on whatsoever. I'm simply saying there's a million dollars there that this body didn't know about, and if Councilman didn't ask the question, we still wouldn't know about that money. That's not a reflection of you. Okay, great. I'm not trying to say that your administration is doing anything underhanded or anything else. Okay? I'm simply saying we need a process. Well, I'm talking about a process, and you're talking about a process. Right, because. A process is generally created when there is actions that are repeatable and predictable and routine and occur routinely. And what Ms. Gooding, what the Director is saying is that these funds have not occurred routinely. And now so we're discovering something perhaps new. And then you're suggesting, and I'm not disagreeing with it, that we can examine that. All right. Council Member Ford, I think the three minutes has expired. That's because you used part of it. So if I could respond, please. No, I think you were right ahead of me on that. If I could respond, please. I think I agree with everything you said except for this. In this situation, the council is responsible for approving budgets. And so when that million dollars comes in, the council needs to be aware of that million dollars so that the council budget process can take place. That's where I differ with everything you said. Okay. We'll certainly discuss that. Well, we're going to address it in our committee, and we'll come back with a recommendation for the full council. Mr. Driscoll is here, and you can. That's great. All right. So, Mayor, do you ask to speak again, Council Member Ford? Mayor, I asked a question. Can the Commissioner of Finance add these funding sources in their monthly report out so that the council has an update on these funds monthly? Commissioner Driscoll? May I ask a clarifying question? Yes, ma'am. Are you talking about the funds that are left in the remaining projects or what? I can get data on the side and figure out what the best way to do that is. But similar to what we did in our link report out, we asked you to include some of the revenue from code enforcement into your monthly report out. So it's similar to that so that we're aware of what's happening when new monies come in or when money comes up that's not budgeted that we're aware of that. Okay. We need some further discussion because money coming in that's not budgeted could be, I mean, typically those would come like in your budget adjustments, the amendments that come for donations. So I just want to make sure we focus this. Yes, specifically on CDBG or on community development. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. So you did get the questions that you needed. I did. Thank you. All right. Yes, sir. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. My only thought on this as we close is that in the grand scheme of things, this government does an outstanding job in grants management and grants administration. There are communities in the Commonwealth of Kentucky who have horrendous records of performance with HUD. In the same city that the state HUD office is in, not to identify our sister cities, but we over the years have always done a good job of managing our projects. And if anybody who's been on this council longer than I have can attest otherwise, it'll be a surprise to me. The request for information, Mr. Myers, I don't have any problem with that, but what are we going to do with the information? What is the intent to do with the information? Is the intent to enhance the operations of the grant office? to ramp it up, to help our partner agencies out in the community to spend those funds best, because it's not just the grants office that spends the funds. It's the partner agencies on the street who we scrutinize just as heavy as we scrutinize Irene in the grants office today that are actually getting the work done. So again, we've sat around here today for 40 minutes and talked about $115,000 in the grand scheme of things. We spent a similar amount of time last week. In regards to Charles Young, I think we have a good understanding of the funding sources. I ask that we move on. I ask that we be thankful and we try to do as best we can to support our grants office. and wasted time is wasted time. Do we want our grants office to administer or do we want them to run in circles at our behest to get information that's going to be useless? Forgive my frustration, Council. Thank you, Mayor. Can I respond? Council Member Kay, I think he was speaking rhetorically, but we'll come back in just a minute. Council Member Kay wishes to speak. Thank you, Mayor. I feel compelled to add a word or two because I think there needs to be some clarification. I don't think anybody is suggesting that the grants administration is not effective. And I don't think anybody is suggesting that the way in which these monies have been used is inappropriate. Nonetheless, there's a feeling that it would be useful for Council to have more information about unallocated funds when they become available. No one is suggesting that the administration has tried to do something behind everybody's back. and the question of how much time we spend on this, it has to do, in my mind, with having a government that acts as openly as possible. If I want to be careful how I say this, I don't want to suggest that the government has not been acting openly, But what I do want to suggest is that there are times when, by virtue of habit or custom or the way in which things have developed, it appears that everybody has not had a chance to see the same information in order to make a decision. I think that's what's at issue here. That's what prompted my questions about the process. That's what prompted my suggestions about ways to make it better. And I regret that at times these conversations in council get off into what seem like unfair recriminations and basically people choosing to interpret what other people have in their minds. I wish we would do less of that and more of staying with the facts. Thank you, Mayor. Well said. Does anyone else wish to speak? Council Member Myers? Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, it's interesting that people get defensive when you ask questions because there's really no reason to, and I don't think anybody here has implied that any employees in our government have acted inappropriately or been less than efficient. I also would say that when you add up the million dollars to $777,000 and change, and the $240,000 that has been moved from other projects to the Charles Young Center, it's not merely $115,000 that we wasted all this time on. It's actually $2 million that we've used this time to try to get an understanding of how taxpayer dollars are being spent. So I think that this has been an important discussion. and I think last Thursday some very key questions were raised. I appreciate the mayor for having Ms. Gunning come in today. Obviously, we've already put the issue in committee, and it wasn't going to be settled today, but I don't think this was a waste of time, and the conversation it will have ensuing in committee won't be a waste of time either. Thank you, mayor. All right. Thank you, sir. Okay, we can move on now to public comment for issues that are not on the agenda. And we have one citizen signed up, Mr. Corey Dunn. Mr. Corey Dunn. Corey, if you'll just give your name. You know the routine. Name and your address. My name is Corey Dunn. Thank you, sir. Address is 3185 Pimlico Parkway. Just moved. One, I would like to say that you guys being frustrated, Mr. Stenet, Mr. Myers, Mr. Ford, it's quite interesting because the way you guys feel about not knowing about this money is how the community feels a lot of the time about knowing about half the stuff that's going on within the government. and we feel as though a lot of people in the government, I mean the residents feel that we aren't notified about a lot of stuff. So the frustration that you guys have, we share it. So I mean it's kind of comical to see you guys upset about the money because we feel like this on a regular basis. One of the things that I didn't know about because I'm speaking about something that is on the agenda actually, but I came a little too late and didn't get signed up or whatever. I would like to discuss this co-pay, the jail co-pay that everybody was discussing in depth. I don't know much about Mr. Ballard, but I know that he said he's been here for three months. Well, I just happened to have a chance to spend three months within the county jail. Not recently, but, you know, I have spent three months' time period in the county jail. With that being said, I was unemployed. I did not have a job. I did not have any source of income. So what everyone is proposing is, hey, yeah, let's get this $200,000 because it's money. But where's the money coming from? Because the inmates, in my opinion, do not, I know for a fact, I know this for a fact. If you ask Mr. Mason or maybe you can get with Mr. Ballard and ask how many people in the Fayette County Detention Center are employed or receiving monetary compensation while they are there, then I guarantee you it's a very small percentage. When you talk about the $35 booking fee, that's one thing because you do got a lot of young people, people coming with alcohol-related charges, they'll come on the weekends. The people who seek medical attention, however, are not those weekend warriors. They are the people who are stuck there until their release date. So if I don't have any money, which in the three months' time that I was incarcerated, I did not generate a single penny worth of income. Every single dam that came on my books came from my mother, my father, my brothers, my friends, my girlfriend, whoever. So basically what you guys are proposing are to tax families of criminals. Because the criminal commits a crime. I committed a crime. I will admit that. However, the money that went to the cold cart, and it went to the cold cart simply because the food in the institution, institution food is institutional food. And everybody's fully aware that institutional food is not the best food on earth, best tasting. So if my family says, Corey, you're getting skinny because you're not eating this, for lack of a better term, slop, it was what they call it in the facility, then my family will put money on my books to provide for food, hygiene, name brand deodorant, effective soap and toothpaste or whatever. So my concern is that you guys are proposing to take this $200,000, which is great, but it's going to be at the cost of the families of the incarcerated and not the incarcerated themselves. But that's my time, sir. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Dunn. All right, no one else has signed up to speak, so I believe we have a motion for a closed session. Thank you, Mayor. I move that we go into closed session pursuant to KRS 61.810.1F for a discussion that may lead to the appointment, discipline, or dismissal of an employee. Second. This is a motion by Vice Mayor Gorton, second by Council Member Lane, to enter closed session. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. We will now enter closed session. So I have. Thank you. Thank you. Friday night I was walking you home when we got down to the gate But I was dreaming of the night Would it turn out right Now as the years roll on Each time we hear our favorite song The memories come along Older times when the six Spending the hours reminiscing Hurry, don't be late I can hardly wait I said to myself when we're old We'll go dancing in the dark Walking through the park and reminiscing guitar solo Thank you. I'm out. To the song that's playing on the radio Let's sway While the color lights up your face Let's sway Sway through the crowd to an empty space If you say run I'll run with you If you say hide, you'll hide Because my love for you would break my heart in two If you should walk into my arms Tremble like a flower Thank you. This way, you could look to the heights. This way, under the moonlight, the serious moonlight. And if you say run, I'll run with you. And if you say hi, I will hi Because my love for you Would break my heart into Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo Remember, nobody's waterproof. Wear it. Goodbye Joe, you gotta go, me old my old You gotta go for the hero down the bar Five on sweetest one, me old my old Son of a gun gonna have the fun on the bar Well, jambalas and a coffee pie, big a gumbo Cause tonight I'm gonna see my Michelangelo Picky-tops with a jar of Miguel Son of a gun gonna have me one more about Thank you. I'm sorry. Sometimes the better thing you're looking for is the one thing that you can't see. Sometimes the snow comes down in June. Sometimes the sun goes round the moon. Just when I thought a chance had passed, you were saved the best for last. You went and saved the best for last. Yeah. I'm not a man. So don't try very hard to ease me But what you know should be easy Well, this could be the last time This could be the last time Maybe the last time I don't know Oh, no Oh, no Well, I'm sorry, girl, I can't stay I don't feel like I do today There's too much pain, too much sorrow Cause I feel the same tomorrow Well, this could be the last time This could be the last time Maybe the last time I don't know Oh no Oh no This could be the last time This could be the last time Maybe the last time I don't know Oh no Oh no Well I told you once And I told you twice Someone have to pay the price Here's a chance to change your mind Cause I've been gone alone all the time Well this could be the last time This could be the last time Maybe the last time I don't know. Oh, no. Oh, no. Last time ever. Last time ever. Last time ever. I don't know. Well, I don't know more. Well, I don't know more. I don't know more. I don't know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no We can never know about the days to come But we think about them anyway And I wonder if I'm really with you now Or just chasing after some finer day Anticipation Anticipation Is making me wait It's keeping me wait Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey When I was thinking about how right tonight might be Anticipation Anticipation is making me late It's keeping me waiting Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dinner and tomorrow We might not be together I'm a prophet Lord, I don't know nature's ways So I'll try To see into your eyes right now And stay right here Cause these are the good old days These are the good old days And stay right here Cause these are the good old days These are the good old days These are the good old days These are the good old things These are the good old things It's hot up to Memphis A young boy in my prime I thought that a big old city Could ease my Georgia mind After just one hour I met this southern girl She said to call me the queen of Memphis Then she took me around the world And I saw stars dancing on the water I heard elves singing blue sweatshirts That old muddy river was my witness The night I fell in love with the Queen of Memphis I woke up the next morning a prisoner of her charm She showed me things I'd never seen Back there on that farm She sent my soul on fire She filled all my dreams A boy became a man that night In the arms of the Memphis Queen And I saw stars dancing on the water I heard elves singing blue sweatshirts That old hurry was my wind day Tonight I fell in love with Queen of Memphis Just half that old man river She keeps rolling through my mind And you know I won't get her, cause she was one of a kind I saw stars dancing on the water I heard elves singing blue suede shoes That old muddy river was my witness Tonight I fell in love with the Queen of Memphis I am still in love with the Queen of Memphis I hear rules to grow it It's a frosty morning I can almost see the sign Going so fast I can't stop I'm just a stone's throw from Little Rock Heading for that Missouri line Don't need a mime to get there You can get there from anywhere When you're going in your head I can see the arms out reaching Just like the day I was leaving It's been oh so many years Let me get on the Frisco Silver Dollar Line Take my time See all I can see Hitler, Rosen, the people We'll have our own Ozark Mountain Jubilee If I can't be your favorite son I'll be the prodigal one Cause I've been gone too long Oh how the years have flown by Oh how I realize How much of me is gone Let me get on the Frisco Silver Dollar Line Take my time See all I can see In the rosin' love you're bold We'll have our own Ozark Mountain Jubilee Ozark Mountain Jubilee Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Look at me I'm as helpless as a kid in love dreaming I'm walking on the clouds I can't understand love I miss the cold in your hand Walk my way And a thousand violins we can't play All about to hear the sound of your hello That music I hear though I'm a misty phone that you need You can say that you're leaving me on But it's just what I want you to do Don't you notice how hopelessly I'm lost? That's why I'm following you Should I wander through this wonderland? No, never knew my right foot from the left My head from the blue top I'm misty too much in love You can say that you're leading me on But it's just what I want you to do Don't you notice how hopelessly I'm lost That's why I'm following you Should I wander through this wonderland long Never know when my life could come with My head from my glove I'm misty and too much in love Too much in love Too much in love Too much in love I remember the 35 sweet goodbyes When you put me on the Wolverine of Duan and Depp It was still September When your daddy was quite surprised To find you with the working girls in the county jail I was smoking with the boys upstairs When I heard about the whole affair I said, oh no, William and Mary won't do now Well, I did not think the girl could be so cruel And I'm never going back to my old school Holy Anders Going outside her door Soon they're gonna be in bloom I can't stand her Doing what she did before Living like a gypsy queen in a fairytale Well, I hear the whistle but I can't go on Take her down to Mexico Oh, she said, oh no, what a horror won't be Well, I did not think the girl could be so rude And I'm never going back to my old school Thank you. Thank you. California Tumbles into the sea That'll be the day I go back to India Tried to warn you A patacino and daddy cheese But I can't seem to get to you Through the U.S. man Well, I hear the whistle, but I can't go on, go on Take her down to Mexico, she said, no, no What a horrible Well, I did not think the girl could be so rude And I'm never going back to my own School. We'll be right back. Thank you. From a distance, the world looks blue and green And the snow-capped mountains white From a distance, the ocean makes the stream And the eagle takes to flight From a distance there is harmony And it echoes through the land It's the voice of hope It's the voice of peace It's the voice of every man From a distance we all have the love And no one is in need And there are no dogs, no mounds and no disease No hungry mouths to feed From a distance we are instruments Marching in a common land Playing songs of hope Playing songs of peace They're the song of every man God is watching us God is watching us God is watching us From a distance From a distance you look like my friend Even though we are warm From a distance I just cannot comprehend What all this life is for From a distance there is harmony And it echoes through the night And it's the hope of those It's the love of those It's the heart of every man It's the hope of those It's the love of those This is the hope of every man And God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us from a distance. Oh, God is watching us, God is watching, God is watching us from a distance. This one will never sell They'll never understand I don't even sing it well I try but I just can't But I sing it every night And I fight to keep it in Cause this one's for you This one's for you I've done a hundred songs from fantasies to lies But this one's so real for me that I'm the one who cries And I sing it every night And I fight to hide the tears Cause this one's for you This one's for you This one's for you Wherever you are To say that nothing's been the same Since we've been apart This one's for all the love we once knew Like everything else I have This one's for you I've got it all it seems For all it means to me But I sing of things I miss And things that used to be And I wonder every night If you might just miss me too And I sing for you I sing for you This one's for you Wherever I go To say the things I should have said Things that you should know This one's to say that all I can do Is hope that you will hear me sing Cause this one's for you This one's for you Wherever you are The same as this business Since we've been far This one's for all The lovely ones who Like everything else I have If you leave me now, you'll take away the biggest part of me Ooh, no, baby, please don't go And if you leave me now You'll take away the very heart of me Ooh, no, baby, please don't go Ooh, God, I just want you to stay Love like us is love that's hard to find How could we let it slip away We've come too far to leave it all behind How could we end it all this way When tomorrow comes and we won't be fair The things we said to wait A love like ours is life it's hard to find How could we let it slip away We've come too far to leave it all behind How could we end it all this way When tomorrow comes and we'll be there The things we said today If you leave me now You'll take away the biggest part of me Ooh, now baby, please don't go Ooh, girl Just got to have you by my side Ooh, baby, please don't come Ooh, mama, I just got to have your love Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Get around, around, around, I get around Get around, around, around, I get around I'm getting bugged driving up and down the same old strip I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip My buddies and me, you're getting real well known Yeah, but that doubt is no us and you leave us alone Get around, around, around, I get around Get around, around, around, I get around Get it round, round, round, I get it round Get it round, round, round, I get it round Get it round, round, round What was What was We always take my car, cause it's never been beat And we've never missed it with the girls we meet I love the guys go steady cause it wouldn't be right To leave the best girl home while it's Saturday night I get around, I get around I get around, I get around I get around, I get around I get around, I get around I get around, I get around Round, round, get around I get around Yeah, get around, round, round I get around Get around, round, round I get around Get around, round, round I get around Get around, round, round I get around Get around, round, round I get around Get around, round, round I get around Get around, round, round I get around Get around, round, round When I see my baby What do I see? Poetry Poetry in motion Poetry in motion Walking by my side Her lovely locomotion Keeps my eyes open wide Poetry in motion See her ghetto sway A wave out on the ocean Could never move that way I love every movement, and there's nothing I would change. She doesn't need improvement, she's much too nice to rearrange. Poetry in motion, dancing close to me. A flower of devotion, a swaying gracefully. Poetry in motion See her gentle sway A wave out on the ocean Could never move that way I love every movie, and there's nothing I would change. She doesn't need improvement, she's much too nice to rearrange. Poetry in motion, all that I adore. No number nine love potion could make me love her more. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh How many times must I tell you, baby How many bridges I've got to cross How many times must I explain myself For I can talk to the boss For I can talk to the boss How many times was that said