# Social Services & Community Development Committee - October 16, 2012 > Auto-transcribed civic record · October 16, 2012 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2732 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2732?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2012-10-16 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 9,386 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 Social Services & Community Development Committee met on October 16, 2012, at 11:00 AM, with Myers presiding. The committee addressed two agenda items during the meeting: a Summer Youth Employment Follow Up, which was approved, and Committee Referral Items, which were deferred to a later date. The committee took three motions to a vote and heard two public comments during the session. ## Attendance **Present:** Henson, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Lawless, Stinnett, Crosbie **Absent:** McChord, Lane **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions **Summer Youth Employment Program Participation Goal** [timestamp: 1:07:49] A motion was made by Ford and seconded by Henson to establish a baseline participation goal of 300 participants in the Summer Youth Employment Program. The motion passed by voice vote with no opposition. All seven members voted in favor: Ford, Henson, Ellinger, Kay, Lawless, Stinnett, and Crosbie. This motion sets a policy standard for future planning and does not require any funding commitment. **Senior Citizens Center Needs Assessment Update** [timestamp: 1:09:21] A motion passed by voice vote to move the update on the Senior Citizens Center needs assessment to a work session. All seven members voted in favor: Henson, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Lawless, Stinnett, and Crosbie. No members voted against this procedural motion. **Adjournment** [timestamp: 1:10:09] A motion to adjourn the meeting passed by voice vote with all seven members in favor: Henson, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Lawless, Stinnett, and Crosbie. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included an appropriation of $225,000 for the Summer Youth Employment Program in fiscal year 2013. This funding, directed to the Department of Social Services, is designated to support employment opportunities for 225 students. ## Public Comment Two speakers provided public comment during the meeting, both addressing the Summer Youth Employment Program. **Jamie Peck** [timestamp: 0:32:12] shared a positive experience with two Summer Youth Employment Program students. Peck noted the students' reliability, work ethic, and enthusiasm, and expressed support for the program's continuation through the Bluegrass Area Development District. **Debbie Sharon** [timestamp: 0:25:45] testified regarding the Bluegrass Technology Center's participation in the Summer Youth Employment Program. Sharon highlighted the program's value for students with disabilities, emphasizing their growth and engagement through the initiative. She also noted the mutual benefits the program provides to both the technology center and the participating youth. ## Contested Items **Expansion of Summer Youth Employment Program** A proposal to expand the Summer Youth Employment Program generated debate during the meeting, though the core motion achieved unanimous approval. [timestamp data not available] The council unanimously passed a motion to establish a 300-participant baseline for the program. However, this decision masked underlying disagreement about how the program should be implemented and funded. The primary areas of contention included: - **Funding mechanisms** — Council members disagreed about how to finance the expanded program and allocate resources across competing budget priorities. - **Administrative capacity** — Questions were raised about whether existing staff and infrastructure could adequately manage a program of the proposed size. - **Program focus and direction** — A significant point of disagreement centered on whether the program should shift toward more career-oriented job placements that align with local industry needs, rather than maintaining its current structure. Despite these disagreements about implementation details, the council voted unanimously to move forward with the 300-participant baseline, indicating broad agreement on the program's expansion in principle even as specific concerns about execution remained unresolved. ## Summer Youth Employment Follow Up [timestamp: 06:01] Maddie Morton presented data on the 2012 Summer Youth Employment Program to the board. The program served 153 youth participants during the summer, with a per-student cost of $1,000 funded through general funds. The presentation covered several key areas of program performance: - **Participant demographics** and recruitment efforts - **Job placements** achieved through the program - **Employer evaluations** of youth participants - **Youth outcomes** and program results Discussion among board members—including Ford, Kay, Lawless, Lane, and Myers—focused on program expansion and improvement. Key topics included: - Expanding the program to serve 300 participants annually - Increasing and strengthening employer partnerships - Better aligning job placements with individual youth career interests and goals The board approved the Summer Youth Employment Follow Up presentation and the initiatives discussed. ## Committee Referral Items [timestamp: 1:08:20] The committee discussed several items related to committee referrals during this portion of the meeting. Key speakers included Ellinger, Ford, Henson, and Crosbie. The discussion centered on referral items related to the CDBG Consolidated Plan and Section 108 loan program. Both of these items were removed from the committee list without dissent from the members present. Additionally, the committee agreed to move the Senior Citizens Center needs assessment update to a work session rather than address it during the regular committee meeting. **Outcome:** The items were deferred, with the CDBG Consolidated Plan and Section 108 loan program referrals removed from the committee list, and the Senior Citizens Center needs assessment update scheduled for discussion at a work session. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Establish a baseline participation goal of 300 participants in the Summer Youth Employment Program - **Motion** — passed: Request that the update on the Senior Citizens Center needs assessment be moved to a work session - **Motion** — passed: Adjourn the meeting --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Welcome to today's October 16th, 11 o'clock a.m. Social Services and Community Development Committee meeting. Do we have a motion for the summary? So moved. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? That passes. Next we have a great occasion to have a follow-up on the summer youth employment program. We had a spectacular program this year. More youth than ever, I think, applied and were accepted, increased the funding, and so today we're going to have Ms. Maddie are you going to do the presentation? Okay I didn't know who was going to do it so Ms. Maddie is going to come up and do the presentation to kind of share some of the great outcomes that we had it's all yours there you go that fence is right there okay thank you Okay, we've done an update on the Summit's Employment Program with some data from the last time we came. And I do have a business that is supposed to come and present today, and we could not get a youth because most of them are in school at this time. Okay, this is how we selected our youth, and we just went through and gave you a little overview about the selection and the selection process, which we have them to do applications online and turn in documentation to us, which is birth certificates, Social Security card, and a picture ID, and household income. The income eligibility is based on the federal guidelines for free and reduced lunch. We use the same ones that Fayette County Public School uses. We have some participant demographics in here. We have a list of our work sites, some youth experience, work site experience, some documents on our supervisor's evaluation, some comments from our employers, and some information about our high school graduates. We had 369 youth to apply. 225 of them turned in complete applications. That means they returned in everything that we required of them. 26 of these youth were placed on the waiting list just because we had nowhere to place them or we didn't have the funding to add that many more youth. 199 of them were invited to orientation with 41 of them not attending. We had 158 youth who were invited to the job fair with 9 of them not attending. And we pulled some of the youth from the waiting list based on the fact that they were either too young or too old or did not complete their applications. This is the income eligibility guideline that we followed, which is the same as Fayette County School. The one in the pink is the guideline that we used, and that's the category that most of our youth fell in the guidelines of, which is 185%. Here are some demographics of the participants in the Summer Youth Employment Program. From this, we broke it down by districts, and as you can see, the largest district is District 1, and these are the districts in how we received the applications. And based on the participants who turned in their applications, This is the number of participants we actually received, which is in the blue, and the applications that we received are in the red. And as you can see, District 1 is still where we get most of our applications. And this is the applicants who became participants in our program based on their age. So 14, 15, 16, and 17, seeing that 15-year-olds was our highest category this year of participants in our program. These are the schools that were represented, and these are the number of youth or percentage of youth that came from each school. And as you can see, Bryan Station was where a majority of our youth came from. Okay, sorry about that. Jumped off somewhere. Okay. Okay, when we were looking at the, and I hope I explained this right, Stephanie done this for me, but when we were looking at the free and reduced lunches, lunches. We figured based on the participation that we can receive, we thought maybe from the schools in the pink line is what we thought our participants should look like based on free and reduced lunch at each individual schools, but the purple line is the actual number of kids that we got from each school. So as you can see, Brown Station far above the poverty level of free and reduced lunch, and we feel like maybe next year, maybe trying to recruit a whole lot more, which we do equal recruiting, we think, in each area, but focusing a lot more on, like, Leastown and Southern because we're, like, under what their poverty levels are. Around 30% of our participants previously participated in the summer youth employment in the past, and over 90.7 of them successfully completed the program this year. These are the work sites that we had this year. The ones with the checks are return work sites from previous years. And on the side is the jobs that they had available on their sites. Thank you. The job types, these were the available jobs that we had available for the youth this year. And as you can see, the large portion was childcare and office receptionist. And these are the jobs that the youth were requesting, which basically falls under the same category. We feel like we would like to see more with animals. We basically just had maybe one or two sites that dealt with animals, but we do have a lot of youth that are requesting, wanting to work with animals, but we didn't have a lot of sites that dealt with animals. And this is a breakdown of the type of organizations that were involved in the summer youth employment. And as you can see, the largest was our profit businesses. and this is some of the youth reporting on their experience in the Summer Youth Employment Program. And some of the skills that the youth stated that they learned, and I won't go through all of them, but we did do them in their own words, and they felt like they learned about money management, computer skills, some time management and organization, how to spray paint cars and clean engines, use scanners and copiers and fax, clean windows and use a water hose, listening skills, how to act at work, how to deal with difficult people, hard work, leadership, working with others, responsibility, patience, being on time, assertiveness and confidence, how to help the community, how to make the bus on time, and we did use their own words in case some of it doesn't sound right, how fun at work and following directions to serve food and clean, inventory and orders, and keeping a job and creating activities and filing and respect. These are some of the things in their own words that they said they learned. From the worksite evaluations, this is the evaluation that we sent out to all the worksite, or the youth that were on the worksite, I'm sorry. And this is what they said, they gained knowledge that helped them with their careers, and over 92% of them felt that they did. 97% felt that they learned what was expected by the employees at the work site. 91% enjoyed their work experience. 85% learned new skills at the work site. 95% received help and advice from the work site supervisor. 75% found the work site interesting. 77% of what they learned at the workshop will help them improve their experience at the work site. 80% wants college and 15% continue probably just focusing on getting out of high school. Out of the six workshops, the youth found that financial literacy and budgeting workshop was the most helpful and the career guidance was in second place with 24%. When asked what topics they would have found use for most listed college and financial aid, scholarship advice, and internal resume practice, interview and resume practice. We didn't do a lot on resume practice, which we'll incorporate next year. In college and financial aid, we did a little on that. But most of these were completed before we had a college and career fair, so they learned a lot about colleges and were to get scholarships at our college and career fair. And this is the experience from the worksite supervisors. and some of them just listed some of their experiences on the evaluation and I'll just go through some of them. This was our third year and we have enjoyed training young minds to be ready for the real working world. Those who display the sincere desire to work will become our next generation of leaders. It's a privilege to work with them. Then we have one at least six or seven years that I think it gives the kids an opportunity to learn job skills and responsibilities before they get in the real world. It also helps the community, giving the kids something productive to do over the summer. And I've been doing the summer youth employment program for six years, so this participant probably hasn't been involved since the beginning. and then you can read some of the other ones but for most part most of the work sites had a great experience as well and these are other comments for some of the work sites and I don't think we had any negative things I think some of the work sites with some of Their youth might have been a little bit more mature, but for the most part, they got what they expected from them because of age. You still have 14 through 17-year-olds, not necessarily 14 being the most immature, but some of them may have expectations that were beyond what a 14-year-old could do. But in all, our evaluations from the worksites were very good. And as you can see, most of the work sites participate once they come in three and four years, six years. So we pretty much keep them when they come in. The only work sites that usually pull out for a little while is usually something going on within the organization at that time that they have to pull out for that year, but they usually come back the following year. maybe going through new management or something like that, or had some layouts and don't want to feel like they replaced youth with employees. These are more comments from some of the workshops. And these are some of the comments the supervisors did on the youth. And these are the evaluations that we give the supervisors to evaluate the youth on, which is punctuality, attendance, attitude, self-discipline, initiative, adaptability, understanding, problem-solving, interpersonal relationships, supervision, communication skills, social skills, appearance, task performance, assignments, quality of work, and expectations. And they were asked to rate them satisfactory, unsatisfactory, improve when needed, meets job standard, exceeds job standard, and outstanding. And these are where the results. Out of 149 participants, we received 73 of the applications, the evaluations back, and these were the results of those. The areas that they list of improvement was initiative and self-discipline, and the most successful areas was quality of work, social skills, and understanding. And these are some of the comments that some of the employers have made on some of the youth that participated in the program. And Mini Movers was a child care facility, and they really enjoyed the participant that they had. And then Gainesville Community Center, that was a summer camp program. Bluegrass Technology Center, they focused a lot on computers for working with people with disabilities. And Fresh Approach did food and they had a lot of people who have disabilities to work on that site as well, but they served food throughout the community. And then downtown Lexington is a business. So we had a variety that responded back and made comments about their youth. youth. And this is a comment one of the youth made. He worked at William Dwells Brown, and these are actually three of them, and made comments about their experience with the summer program that you can see. And we couldn't get youth here because of them being in school today, but we wanted to post at least some of the comments that they made about their experience in the program. And Jalen Thomas is a repeat of Youth Florida program. Well, actually all three of these worked in this program last year as well. And their future aspirations, as you can see, they had planned on going to college, which Jalen did go on to go to BCTC this year. Quiz basically wants to graduate and then he plans to attend college as well. And Sidney plans on going to BCTC and then transferring to another university. Hopefully Tennessee or EKU, she said. These are the high school graduates that we had this year and where they went. As you know, most of our kids are 14 and 15 year olds, but we do have 16 and 17 year olds and some graduates. This year, these were the graduates that we had in the program. And Alexis went on to the University of Alabama and she attends the field of social work. She worked in my office this summer, helping us with learning different social work skills. Michelle worked at Day Treatment. She wants to do training, medical assistant, and attend Sullivan University. And she started, actually this month, she started her at Sullivan, and she wants to be a medical assistant. Lakeisha, she went on to BCTC, and she forgot to tell us what her career goals were. Stephen Berry, he actually attends Georgetown he's going into engineering, he's done his placement with White Terrence and Cone's law firms, actually he did it for two years because they kept requesting him back Jalen Thomas with William Wells Brown, he wants to do welding and Jasmine James went on to Louisville And we do have one of our sites, or maybe both of us, sites here if you want to hear from some of the work sites. Okay, we have Debbie Sharon from Bluegrass Community Technical. Just a little piece. Hi, I'm Debbie Sharon with Bluegrass Technology Center for People with Disabilities. Here in Lexington, we're about a 22-plus year agency, non-profit, and we've been participating with the Summer Youth Employment Program for over six years. Each summer, we've been taking more and more student placements, and we're excited to be able to have that partnership with Maddie's program. We enjoy working with the students, letting them experience their first-time employment situation. We, too, have had repeat students that ask to come back to our job site. We help them figure out some, we work with them on career opportunities and try to tie that back to what their goals in life are. Staff, I have a certified teacher on staff. I have an IT specialist, so we are able to give them a wide variety of job placement opportunities to further their career goals and also just to have fun and enjoy things and also benefit the folks that we serve. Without them, we're not able to provide as many services. They get to experience our clients who come into the center. We may look a little different. We may learn a little different. So I think we give them a wonderful opportunity and exposure to folks they may not normally get to see and participate with. So I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you, Ms. Sharon, for coming in. Council Member Lane? Yes, sir. Thank you, Chairman. I had a question on the presentation. And let me say thank you. It was very well done. My question had to do with page number seven regarding the income eligibility. And I just wondered if you could explain that in a little bit more detail. This one right here? Yes, ma'am. We utilize the same federal guidelines that Fayette County Public Schools uses, and based on the area that is highlighted in red, the majority of the families fall under those income guidelines that we serve. So the numbers where it says federal poverty guidelines, those are dollars, I take it. Yes. So that means if you're a family of two, if your income is less than $15,130, then that would be one of the guidelines. And then your eligibility for reduced-price meals would then be 185% of that number? Am I translating that correctly? Okay, that answers that. The other question I had for the cost of the program for this last go-around, how much was your budget for that? and then how many actual students participated. I'd just like to try to get an idea of how much the cost per student was that participated in the work program just to see what that cost was because I think it would probably be a pretty good number since there's a lot of volunteers and jobs were created. Right. We took in 153 students and they averaged about $1,000 per child. Okay. Very good. Now, the $1,000, is that a grant or does that come out of our budget? Where does that money come from? It comes out of general funds. Okay. And then in addition to that, then the students would, do they make, do we co-op with the worker to pay part of their salary, or is this the cost of administering the program? That is the cost to do the program. We pay the salaries 100%. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mattie, for your presentation and bringing this forward. I'll keep my comments brief, members of the committee. I'm speaking in favor of this program. I know we had a good discussion at our last meeting about the role of government. I'm very appreciative that the last two years I think we funded for about 150 students. Since the current budget year, fiscal year 12-13, we are allotted an additional $75,000 for 75 more students. So the summer of 2013, we'll be able to place 225 students. Is that correct? Correct. Maddie. And that recommendation is in concert with what came forward from our Commission on Youth Development and Public Safety. there was another follow-up recommendation on the Youth Commission's work, which was to ask for 75 positions, additional 75 positions in summer of 13, and then also an additional 75 positions on top of that in the summer of 14. And to that end, I would like to speak in favor of that. If it's the committee, I know we have to go through the budgetary process, and that's going to start in earnest here very soon. and then also the social services link that Councilman Beard and Councilman Nellering and I serve on. But I think that ought to at least be a baseline. I propose that we are able to fully fund the Summer Youth Employment Program. And historically, that's been about 375, 400 students. but in consideration of where we are budgetarily, I do still think the importance of having a baseline of 300 students from the summer of 2014 going forward would be a pretty good indication of our commitment to the summer youth. So I just wanted to bring that out. I'm going to bring a motion perhaps here very shortly, Mr. Chair, but I wanted to throw that out for a basis of discussion for the committee. Thank you, Maddie, and thank you, Chair. you're welcome we do have a representative from bluegrass area development here also sure we'd love to hear from them thank you councilmember floory hello my name is jamie peck i'm with the bluegrass area development district we have had students for a couple years now this is the first time that i've been able to assist with the program we had two that this year that were just absolutely remarkable they come into the program we give them the tasks that they need what we expect of them they follow through and with filing assistance is basically what we were looking for this year it does get repetitive it can get boring but they came in each day they checked in with us let us know they were there and they continued their work they were happy to do anything and everything we asked they always had a smile on their face they were very helpful with our programs we were able to catch up our work because we do get behind. And they were just amazing. And I was with a similar program 16 years ago. And it was absolutely amazing then for me. And if they take what I learn, and each student in this program takes what I learned, then they will definitely go very high. Any questions? Okay. Thank you. Councilman Lawless? I, too, feel like this is money well spent. When I was at the Rape Crisis Center many, many years ago, we had a couple of students. and for many of these young people they have been in transgenerational poverty they don't know, they don't believe, they don't see that there is another alternative, there is a way out and a way up and when we look at what it costs down the road for young people who stay stuck in that cycle of poverty. It's, like I say, money well spent. It's an investment in our future and in our community. And the other comment I'd like to make is it seems that, well, and a large number of them work for the Fayette County government, which we certainly can use. One thing I'd like to bring up is looking at some of the private nonprofit businesses to see if they'd be willing to bear a portion of the cost, private or nonprofit. But I think that's worth asking for them to partner with this, so to make it attractive but still generate some income. So that's my suggestion is that we do solicit the private businesses to look into this. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Loldis. Council Member Kay? Thank you, Chair. I also had a couple questions about the presentation, mostly having to do with the selection process, which was on page 6. I guess before I ask my questions, I also want to thank you for the presentation. Very informative. And to also register my support for the program in general and what it does for the young people in the community in support of expanding it if possible. but my questions really have to do with the recruitment process and the numbers and kind of what they mean. On that slide, it says 369 youth apply online, and then 225 turn in all required applications. So the pool that you were basically anybody, any student who turned in a complete application was included in the program? Yes. What happens is when they apply online, they still have to bring in a birth certificate, social security card, and a picture ID. And some of them fail to, and we request household income, but the household income part didn't hold them back. We still had to have birth certificate, social security card, and picture ID just to be able to put them on any kind of payroll. And so if they did not bring those things to us, then their application was incomplete and there's nothing we can do about it. But we would send reminders. If, you know, what I did this year was went through whoever applied and sent an email out to say, these are the things we need by such and such date, don't forget to bring them. So everybody that applied got some kind of reminder that we needed these things. plus all the flyers that we put out told them what was required and what documentation they had to bring to us. Okay, and then 41 students did not attend the orientation, which then left them out of the program, I presume. Is that correct? Uh-huh. The orientation is where we actually do all the paperwork to put them in the program. We explain the program. We complete all required forms, tax forms, all of that kind of stuff. And so, no, they did not show. Okay. So it says without explanation. So it means no call, no show up, no nothing. Okay. Have you done any follow-up with those students to try and understand why they might have put an application but then not shown up for the orientation? No. Some of them will call, and if they call us, because they get a letter about the orientation. Everybody gets a letter. And so if they do not call, do not show, we do not follow up, because with 150 slots and 199 showing up, you don't really have anywhere to put them anyway. Okay. So where all these questions are leading is if there were funding for another, an additional 75 students, would you be able to identify, recruit, and identify enough students to fill those slots? Yes, because we would follow up with them then. Right now we don't follow up because we know we can't put them anywhere. But, yes, we would be able to follow up with them to find out why they didn't show. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member K. Are there any other questions? Oh, here you go. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Chair. And to piggyback on Council Member Kaye's and Ms. Morton's response, I think definitely if we have this opportunity, we will want the students that are the young folk that initially express interest to be able to go through the process and be awarded the opportunities. But you really hit the nail on the head when you mentioned that. that going into the summer, we truly know that we only have, in years past, funding to support 150 slots. So fortunately, from the 370 to 400 students that express interest, the reality is that we can only get 150 young folks, and this coming summer to be 225. Would I make a motion? Could you wait? I have a couple questions I wanted to ask. Gladly. Yes, sir. Okay. I'm with you. I'm going the same direction you are. But I had a few questions. How much are we paying the kids? Is it a salary or is it an hourly wage? Hourly wage. They get minimum wage, $7.25. $7.25? Okay. And on the employer return surveys, do you know how you might be able to get more employers to, it looks like about 50% return their survey? Is there a way to get more participation in that? She did get more after she completed the survey, I mean the PowerPoint. So she did get some more to come in. They sort of slowly come in. Okay. Okay. And also we've gone to SurveyMonkey since this because that was paper survey or electronic we sent out. So now the department does SurveyMonkey. Okay. So that may help. And then are you going to do, and you may already do this, but like a pre and a post? So particularly the new companies coming in, kind of get what their expectations are, that kind of thing, and then after the summer's over kind of get a recap on what they thought? That might be a good idea. We didn't do a pre. We did the post. We did something to find out what their needs were at the beginning, and then we did the post survey. So pretty much getting their needs at the beginning is what we've done. Okay. I'm going to ask a couple questions about do you guys work by chance with the school counselors or anybody in the schools to help? I guess when I look at page, in our packet it's page 19 and 20, when you look at the type of jobs available and the percentage of participants requesting each type of job, if we try to move this more towards working with kids in the area that they want to go into, either into post-secondary education or into employment later on, that might change from requesting 40% child care to requesting other types of things and then allow you to go out and seek other employers that want those kind of jobs filled as we beat the number of kids that we put into the program. So do you work with the school counselors at all in terms of them already working with the kids on career track and that kind of thing? No. Okay. Have you considered, because one of the things that we might do to get an immediate increase in the number of students that can participate, is that the employer would pay a portion of the salary, maybe 50 percent or something like that. Has that conversation come around? No. Okay. This website, Elizabeth Chatterton, my aide, was talking about this website today to me. 20 Kentucky occupations with the most annual job openings, generally requiring bachelor's degrees. And this website kind of goes through different types of jobs and then what type of education is required in most cases to obtain that kind of a job. That might be something else that you can work with the kids and the school counselors on. I want to see this program grow. I've got some ideas. I don't know if they'll work or not. I'm not sure if they even wanted. But my thought, you know, a couple years ago, the previous mayor talked about doing a scholarship program. And I said at that time that Boeing and Microsoft in the state of Washington, when they first got started years and years ago, they couldn't find enough graduates coming out of their high schools to fill the jobs that they needed to grow their businesses and have the math and the science that they needed. So they worked with the school system to create a math and science curriculum. But the really cool thing is that both of those companies said in the beginning, they don't do it anymore, but they did it in the beginning, if you are a high school student and you do an internship with our company all four summers for your high school career, we will guarantee you a four-year scholarship wherever you want to go in the country and then guarantee you a job when you come back. And I realize that's a big goal now. We're probably never going to get there. but my thought was we have several different organizations here that do an IDA program, and I was just wondering if we worked with the companies and said, you guys have some skin in the game, and you pay maybe 50% of the salary, and then we go out to these organizations that do the IDAs, and we try to get a match with the kids from that perspective, and then we say to the kids, when you come through the program, you've got to put a certain percentage of the money that you make this summer in to match the IDA program. And as we continue to focus on companies that would maybe do that one, two, three, four-year internship, that those kids will start to put money back and they'll have mentors in those companies that then they go on to college and they use that IDA match and the money that they put back from the income they made, and they're off on their way to college. or to trade school or whatever it is that they want to do. So as we look at growing the program and the number of slots in the program, this might be an option of doing that, certainly having the employees pay part of it, but then maybe also getting an IDA match so we can help these kids with their education after they graduate from high school. That sounds good, but you have to think, too, a lot of these kids are putting money back. I don't know if that will happen. I mean, because you get a lot of them probably helping parents pay a bill or putting food on somebody's table or basically getting cell phones and shoes or whatever for themselves. But even though they open up savings accounts, and most of them may save through the summer and feel good about it, but once school sets in, you know, they spend it rather quickly. Sure. And I know that you have, and you might want to talk about some of this, you have various seminars that the kids go through throughout this process. Maybe everybody doesn't know that, but they have financial literacy and how to become bankable and a lot of things like that. So certainly I wouldn't want to make that a requirement where that kids who need that to help their families throughout the year wouldn't be able to help their families because they have to put it in this program for education or something further down the road. But those who could take advantage of that, that just might be another opportunity to help them out in the future. Right. So with that, those were my comments. Great job on the program. I look forward to seeing what you come up with and look forward to hearing a motion from Council Member Ford. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll make the motion and then I will kindly request a second to the motion to allow for discussion and for me to expand upon the motion. But I make a motion that we, the Irma County Government, establish a baseline participation goal of 300 participants in the Summer Youth Employment Program. So moved. We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your patience. I got the motion out in order to get the motion on the floor. and now I'll expound upon it. I'm asking the council to pursue a policy standard. At this time, I'm not asking for a funding commitment at this time from council, but I'm asking to allow Commissioner Mills and Ms. Morton and her staff to begin some planning efforts to get us where we ought to be. Again, I think that 300 participants each summer at a bare minimum is where we should be, In years past, we have funded, it's been a program that's solely funded by general fund dollars. So we've had 150 in years past. This coming summer, the council and the government have stepped up and we're going to have 225. Ideally, summer of 2014, we will have 300. What my motion is asking for is that we establish that baseline of 300. So, for example, if we do have members of the business in the community that wish to support this effort, they'll know what the baseline is. And, again, I'm not asking for a total funding commitment from the government at this time because we can only speak, just like everybody else economically these days, from year to year. And we've already spoken to fiscal year 13. We want to fund 225. But this will gear us up to pursue and set a policy standard that these are the number of participants that we want. And again, Ms. Morton really hit it on the head. The site supervisors are providing an investment through their training and exposure of the young folks that participate in the program. Many of the young folks, because of the income guidelines, I know I worked when I was a teenager, and it was out of necessity, to tell you the truth, to be able to force some of the things that I wanted as a teenager. I would imagine that some of the same realities apply here. Opening up the pie for more participation is what I'm asking from a policy standpoint and at this time not from a true funding commitment. And I'd be glad to answer any other questions if Council members have questions. Thank you, Council Member Ford. Council Member Crosby? Thank you. I guess I see what you want to do with this and what your intent is, but I don't know without the funding if it's – they almost have to go hand in hand because they're meeting the standards of getting the applications online. You're getting well over 300 applications, and then they're weeding out through other things. But until there's a commitment with the funding, I mean, it doesn't appear that the kids applying are the issue. It's the issue of the fact that we aren't funding it enough, which I'm not sure I'm in favor unless we have partnerships. Oh, go ahead. Yes. I'm sorry. If you can clear it up for me. I didn't mean to jump in, but you make a good point. Yeah. And I think that $225 is what we've committed to for this summer. And looking at this, we're going to have to market in a different way. You're exactly right. But we do know that we have $225. When you, while we're speaking, I think we probably ought to start a big advertising campaign saying it costs $1,000 a kid to do this. And market businesses and people and say, can you contribute? You know, not actually ask people to pay at this point, but there may be some business that will step to the plate because Toyota does offer scholarships through Partners for Youth. So I'm sure that there may be some interest from people who can't afford it. You're right. But I think we ought to start with $225 is what we've got. And then if we move to $300, if that account could be flexible, If we only get $210,000, then maybe that $15,000 could roll to the next year rather than closing out at the end of the budget year. If we could fund summer youth in that way some way rather than closing it out at the end of each budget year, then we could fund the number of kids that we can attract because we're going to need more sites. The other thing I wanted to bring up before I sat down was that personnel is a huge issue. We're famous in social services for saying we can do everything, but we never increase the staff. And I know how hard Maddie works. She does not have an administrative assistant. So if we grow the number of kids, all these kids go through the payroll in urban county government. And time cards have to be kept up with. Applications need to be kept up with. So that's something else that we would need to consider. That's another cost. All my staff donates in-kind time. We do not pay Maddie extra money for doing this or any of the folks that work with her. I mean, it's just part of their job description. But it's a real chore to manage 175 people clerically. So as we get to 225 and 300, we're either going to have to hire some temporary help for Maddie or put an administrative specialist in the Department of Youth Services. So there's some things like that that would need to be worked out. But I do agree that we should advertise this with businesses and see if they can help contribute. Well, and I totally agree with that. And I also agree with Council Member Ford, even though I'm a little confused on the formality of the motion because it appears that maybe the plan needs to be where you come up with a plan and reach out to people and see what kind of feedback you get. And then, I mean, I'm not going to be around to see any of this, but maybe then it would be appropriate to look at what's realistic for the amount of children that we can serve with the program. So it's not that I'm not in favor of expanding the program to more kids. I'm just not sure that this is the way to do it through this motion. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member McCrossey. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Chair. Well, it seems to me that the intent of the motion is very positive and that if we were to pass this motion, it basically sends a message to social services that says, think about stepping up. Think about ways in which you can ensure that we'll have more kids in the program. about things you might need to include in your budget that would accommodate the additional need for personnel or whatever. But it seems to me that the signal we want to send is this is a program that benefits youth directly and benefits the community greatly. It's an opportunity that we ought to offer to more children if we can do it. And so I would support the motion, again, with the understanding that what we would getting back from social services and the budget cycle is more detail about how you would do the recruit, how you would get more kids, how you might get more money into the program. Otherwise, the administrative support you might need, those kinds of things. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Kay. Council Member Lane? Thank you. Yeah, I think this program's got a lot of potential to be even bigger and better, and I think it's important based on some prior experiences. I was in a couple, like Junior Achievement Program, for example, and much of their outreach was into schools where children were from lower-income families. And the concept of Junior Achievement was that one of the ways to lift yourself out of poverty and to have a better life for the next generation is through entrepreneurism and knowing more about business, too. And so I think this sort of addresses some of those ideas. I was going to suggest that maybe when you work on this program, you restructure it somewhat, that maybe you could have like maybe ten seminars that would be given during the summer or eight or some kind of number, and that if the students participated in a certain number of those, like four or five or six, during that period of time that they would receive a bonus for going to that. And then you might be able to get somebody like Junior Achievement or some other organizations to actually come over and put on a program about the economics issue. And then the one other idea that I had is that if the students had a 100% attendance at their job, they would be eligible for a bonus there too because that teaches punctuality and performing. And so the little incentives like that, and we could do it without maybe increasing our budget. And I also like the idea of asking people, businesses, to co-op the cost on that. I mean, I think that if you're paying minimum wage and you ask the employer to pay $3 an hour towards that for that person to work in there, The company is going to get some benefit, plus they're helping educate that student. But that means that we could take those dollars, and by co-oping with somebody we could get even more people involved. Just a couple of ideas, but I think this is important because you have to teach people to be independent, entrepreneurial, to earn their own money and see what the options are out there. And it appears from the numbers or data that many of these students are the types of students that are interested in going to post-secondary education, getting better educated, so it would be more practical for the workforce. So I think this is very good. I know you wanted to say something. Thank you for being indulged. Let me finish my comment. Thank you. Yes, I was going to say they participated in six workshops during the summer. And we did this past summer utilize the junior achievers curriculum. And so they got that this past summer. Well, good. I can kiss you way ahead of me. Thank you, Council Member Lane. They're going to put an e-mail up on the projector here. There we go. The Council Member's will recall we got an e-mail from Sears, the company Sears, the retailer. It says Sears Employment Opportunities in Lexington, Kentucky. Dear Mayor Jim Gray, and it's got a bunch of people in government, council members listed, I'm emailing you on behalf of Sears in regards to positions that we have open in Lexington. In our efforts to fill these positions to keep our business staffed at an optimal level, we're also trying to bring jobs to the city of Lexington. However, our efforts have fallen short due to either a shortage of qualified candidates or not enough candidates in the area, or maybe just a lack of awareness in this area. Upon utilizing all of our normal recruitment efforts and resources, we are requesting assistance to see if something can be done to help us fill these positions. We're looking for residential home appliance repair technicians and refrigerator repair technicians. If there's something that can be done to help out, please contact us via e-mail and the phone number. And the reason that I put that up there is because I'm all for doubling, tripling, quadrupling this program, but I think that the outcome needs to be something that's more career-oriented or that's going to help lift people out of poverty. And I'm not knocking anybody that's in the program or any of the jobs that are offered or any of the kids who wanted to go into certain areas, But if 28% is office and receptionist and 40% is child care, it just seems to me that we need to turn that around. Councilman Lane talked about entrepreneurship. We've got people like Sears that are trying to find employees for these kinds of jobs. And not everybody's going to go to college. Not everybody's college material. Not everybody wants to go to college. One of the most important books I think I've ever read is Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Richard Kiyosaki. and he really talks about the two different tracks. You can go to college and get an undergrad degree and then you start making money and you start accumulating debt and you get married and get a house and all those things and so then you go back and get a master's degree to make more money to pay off your bills and you go back and get a PhD. And there's the other track that he had and actually if you read that book, his rich dad is the one who didn't have the college degrees. The poor dad was the one who did have them. And what I'm really trying to say here is that I think that this is an excellent program But I think that as we restructure it and build it and grow it, we need to work with the guidance counselors and different people to try to get, you know, instead of having 3% of the jobs or employers be law firms, maybe we can flip that and get engineering firms and architectural firms and law firms and all kinds of other companies that will create an opportunity for a young person to then be mentored by somebody in that business. And I was talking with, actually, Elizabeth and I were meeting with Bill Farmer from United Way a few months ago. And Liza, and I can't recall her last name, but she's the president of the PTA for Fayette County. And we were talking about a situation where a child was in a mentoring program, and there was an architect there that knew Liza, and he said to her, that child gets it. That child really gets it. And when I heard that, I started talking about my idea to do all these different things because it's that child that gets it and the connection from that adult that sees the child gets it that builds that relationship and forms that bond. And then if they can come back year after year, who knows, you may even have a company that says, this person's come to my company for three or four summers. They know our corporate culture and we know them. we want to offer them a scholarship or a partial scholarship to go to school and then have a job waiting for them when they get back. So I really encourage us to move in the direction that Councilman Ford has taken us but also look at structuring these things so that we have more opportunities for kids that are going to lead to jobs like these that Sears is talking about and things like that. And so that's my comment. and Councilman Ford, can I go to Councilman Lane for a second as a follow-up? Thank you. Yeah, I was going to say like the President, he took my five seconds. I'm just going to concur with what Councilman Meyer said, but one of the things that maybe we could do would be to serve. I like the idea of surveying the students and see where their interests are, But we have, like, technology companies here, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Xerox, Lex Mart, Rocky Martin, Belcan. And if there were students that had interest in those areas, maybe we could help place them at a job like that. Or, like, I represent a lot of farms, the horse industry, and there may be students that are real interested in the equine industry or in cattle or just working at an association that's located up at the horse park that manages equine groups so that if we found out what people were looking for, we could go and contact some of these groups and say, could you all help underwrite a student for four to eight weeks or however long they would be working. And then the beautiful part about that is if the students have something they really like, I think they would be more enthusiastic about participating because it would be something they're interested in. And they may end up that they could get a permanent job. If they do a really good job, maybe the business would keep them on because they need them. So I see a lot of potential. So I just wanted to reiterate what you were saying, Council Member Myers. And I think this is a good, good idea. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lane. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be brief as before Prylant's taking the vote, but to survey some of the comments that my fellow committee members have made is that the intent of my motion is just that it is to provide an endorsement of this program and also to send a signal to the Department of Social Services that at a bare minimum we want to be able to provide 300 slots. Now, this is not an unfunded mandate, however. I think that this sets a goal and a challenge and allows the department to have a plan of action. So let me give you an example. We know that we have 225 slots for this coming summer, and probably for all intents and purposes, the work has already begun for the summer of 13. But now this gives the department, I'm hoping I'm speaking correctly, Commissioner, a head start. There may be business leaders or folks that are watching us, our deliberation and our policy decision today, that may say we can contribute to that. So, for example, if we serve 250 students in the summer of 2013, Irma County government has committed to serve 225 of those, and the business community or others, based in response to what we're doing today, may cover that additional. So let's forecast to the summer of 2014, and let's say that our budget outlook requires that we stay at that funding level of 225 with general fund dollars. We still have the goal of serving 75 additional students. Now we've set a policy that gives the commissioner and her staff the ability and wherewithal to go out and make that sales pitch on behalf of our youth. So that's the motion. I hope it gets us started, and I appreciate the committee's consideration. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Ford. Can I ask a follow-up question? As a part of that motion, and maybe it's getting ahead of ourselves if we do this, Commissioner and Ms. Morton, you can speak to that. would you be willing to also entertain that idea of asking the companies to pay a percentage of the salary? Because if they paid 50% of the salary, you could immediately double the size of the program right there. Well, this is my thought, Mr. Chair, is that, again, not sending an unfunded mandate, but I do want to leave the administration some flexibility in how they designed the program. I contend that, and I'm not discounting that, I'm not saying it's not an option, but I contend that the site supervisors now, it's a challenge, and I'm so grateful that they've stepped up to do it. It's a challenge to bring on a teenager to your work site, to your environment. So they are investing in covering a training cost and an exposure for us. But again, the intent of the motion is basically that this urban county council says, not demanding, but we're saying we want to service at a minimum of 300 students a year. Budgetarily, we've committed to a portion of that, and it allows the department the creativity and the administrative wherewithal to design a program to give us the end result, a productive end result that we need. Okay, thank you. Is there any more discussion? Okay. All those in favor, can you restate the motion just one more time, please? Yes, sir. I think the motion is for our summer youth employment program to have a baseline of 300 summer participants. So moved. And is that for 13 or beginning in 14? That is, that is. Say 13. 13. 14. 14. Okay. I think that's 14. You need more help. That's right. Okay. Okay. All those in favor? Those opposed? That passes. Thank you very much, Ms. Morton, Commissioner. Is there any more discussion on that? Okay. We move to the next item on our agenda. which is committee referrals, items referred to committee. And I believe we have one item on there, the last page of your packet, and that is the Vice Mayor appoints a task force to look at the need for a new senior citizen center. were we going to get an update the next month? okay so we're going to get an update at the next meeting so actually if there's nothing else that's placed into this committee and all we're looking for is an update from the administration on this are you guys amenable to that going to work session and that if we don't have any further items referred to the committee, that our work may be done for the year. Okay. So if you've got a motion and a second on the floor, that we would request that the update on the needs assessment for the Senior Citizens Center go to work session rather than this committee. All those in favor? Or is there any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Those against it? That passes. Do I have a motion for adjournment? All those in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. Thank you.