Music Thank you. We'll be right back. the December 4th Social Services and Community Development Committee meeting here at 11 o'clock. Welcome. Do I have a motion on the summary? Motion to agree. Got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Those in favor, vote aye. That passes. And then with the committee's permission, we'd like to change the agenda around so that we can have our distinguished Department of Social Services students from the University of Kentucky go first so that they can get back to class. Is that okay with the committee? Okay. Commissioner? Oh, I'm sorry. Good morning. Good morning. You'll recall that earlier this year we brought forth an agreement with the U.K. College of Social Work and Martin School of Public Policy to develop a comprehensive needs assessment for social services in our community. And that was done in furtherance of improvements to our partner agency process, of course. This item today is a progress update to the committee regarding the study team's efforts over the past several months. They're just wrapping up the first phase of their study, which is essentially interviewing the existing 21 partner agencies that we have. They've completed that. and one of the big purposes for doing that was to collect all of the existing information that our partner agencies have. Next semester, they will be conducting surveys as well as stakeholder interviews. They'll also be working with the Martin School of Public Policy and collecting additional data and doing analysis on that data. So at this point, I'd like to introduce Dr. Diane Leffler with the U.K. College of Social Work, who is leading this effort. Dr. Leffler will introduce her team and kick off the presentation. All right. Thank you, Craig, and thank you, council members, for having us here today. My name is Diane Loeffler. I'm a lecturer in the College of Social Work. I've had the great pleasure of working with the student team. Is that going to pop up? There we go. All right. So let me introduce my team to you, but first I want to say thanks to some of my colleagues who are here with us today. Actually, our associate dean, Dr. Karen Badger, is here to support our students, and we have some additional students in the room supporting their colleagues today. So thank you all for being here. My student team is made up of two, this semester, of two master's students, Josh Nadzam and Rachel Ratliff, and Ronica Ratliff, who is graduating in less than two weeks with her bachelor's degree in social work. And my colleague that's been working with me to supervise the team is Dr. Sarah Beth Luchfeld-Beerman, and she's here today as well. So I want to thank those guys, and I'm going to turn it over to the students to start the presentation. It should last about 15 minutes, and then we'll have time for questions after that. Thank you. Good morning, Commission. We want to thank you again for the opportunity to be here today. First, we wanted to start with a brief background on this process and how it came about. Lexington Fayette County Urban Government has funded partner agencies for the last 30 years, and Council wanted a more efficient, more comprehensive approach to funding partner agencies. So to come about with that solution, they contracted with the College of Social Work and the Martin School to conduct the assessment. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive assessment to identify the barriers to self-sufficiency for residents of Fayette County, and we do have a project completion date of October 2013. Hi, my name is Veronica Whitlock and I'm going to give you guys a brief background on the progress that has been made thus far this semester. The first step was the creation of an assessment tool and I believe that we've provided copies for you guys to look over. This was used to guide our interviews with the 21 partner agencies. We've had many collaborative meetings over the course of the semester. We did attend an LFUCG social services work group meeting for input on the project. We've had many one-on-one meetings between us students and our senior advisors. We've had multiple team meetings with all members present, and we did attend the mandatory pre-application meeting for potential partner agencies, and there we gave a brief presentation of the project that we were doing. We did interview the 21 current LFUCG partner agencies, and during those interviews, it was a student and a senior team member. And all of the input and data that we collected from the agencies was taken back to here and recorded in a central database. Hello, everyone. Like they were saying, my name is Josh Nadzem. I'm a graduate student as well at the University of Kentucky in the College of Social Work. This next slide that we presented is just an overview. We wanted to give everyone a visual representation of the partner agencies and the agencies that we have interviewed so far. As you can see, there are a wide range of agencies that cover a lot of different issues and populations in Fayette County. You have some like the Hope Center, which works with people who are homeless and people who have substance abuse disorders. And then ones like Salvation Army that work primarily with people in poverty, as well as Kentucky Refugee Ministries that works with people from all over the world who have chosen Fayette County to begin their pursuit of the American dream. And one thing that happens a lot is the word poverty is usually associated with social services, and understandably so. That is one of the main objectives of social services is to work with those in poverty. But as you can see, some of these agencies work with issues that do not discriminate based on financial circumstances, such as Kentucky Pink Connection, which works with people who have breast cancer. As we all know, breast cancer does not care what kind of money you have, what your financial circumstances you are. And other agencies such as Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky. Child abuse can occur in any kind of household, any kind of financial situation or socioeconomic group. And also we'd just like to let you know that all the partner agencies have been invited to this meeting and some of the representatives are in attendance today in the audience. So in order to elaborate a little further on the progress we have made so far, the three of the students have chosen one agency that we have interviewed in order to go a little bit more in depth. The agency I chose was Mission Lexington. So Mission Lexington is a free dental and medical clinic that works with those in poverty. So there's two parts. There is the dental clinic, which works with those who are at or below the federal poverty line. And then there's the medical clinic, which works with clients who are below the poverty line. and up to 185% of the poverty line. Whenever I met with Mission Lexington, I interviewed Chris Skidmore, who is the executive director, and one of the things he stressed to me was that they do have a waiting list. They maintain a waiting list usually year-round. At the time of the interview, he said it was 647, which is the equivalent of about a six-month wait for service. One of the problems that he stressed to me was that they often have a problem getting federal grants because Fayette County is perceived to be a wealthier county in Kentucky, so what usually happens is the federal money goes to more impoverished counties in Kentucky. Another issue that he said was very urgent was needing more funds as an agency. they opened in 2006 and every year since they have increased the amount of patients that they have served. So one of the things I said is they definitely need more funds because more and more people are asking for services and they are treating more people. And since opening the doors in 2006, they have given approximately $2,674,000 worth of free medical care. And as we all know, health care is always an urgent issue. So just imagine if they didn't open their doors and give these people, this money would likely come out of taxpayers' dollars. A lot of people without health insurance usually have to go to an emergency room to get service. The agency that I selected to highlight was Bluegrass Community Action Partnership. This is different than Bluegrass Community Action Council. Many agencies fall under this broader name, but LFUCG is a partner with the Elder Nutrition Program. The Elder Nutrition Program provides food for Fayette County senior citizens at three congregate sites, including the Senior Center, free home delivery meals to homebound clients, and commodities in places such as Black and Williams. To be eligible for home delivery, you have to be 60 or above. There is no financial cutoff, but they do give priority to people who are below the poverty line or struggling financially. Something I didn't know before I went to this agency is although they do the same thing as Meals on Wheels, Meals on Wheels does charge a nominal fee, but with the state of the economy and a lot of elderly people living on very low incomes, they cannot afford this fee. So that equals a long wait list for the Elder Nutrition Program. At the time of the interview, there were only nine people on the wait list. But if you look at the length of time that they stay on that wait list, it's very long. It's until someone either passes away or at a reassessment someone suddenly has an increase in finances or health. They also have to be unable to make meals by their self at home and not be living with someone who would be capable of preparing the meals for them. When they have a wait list that has people in dire need, as they often do, they have to use some creative ways to stretch a dollar. They often feed two people for one, which would be someone receiving a meal three times a week, and someone receiving a meal twice a week. And, you know, that's not ideal. People need food every day, but it does ensure that, you know, people are getting at least some food. To me, this highlights the importance of, you know, looking at the most basic needs in our future interviews, you know, not overlooking that there are people who may not have food or shelter in the community. And then following up with the last agency that we're highlighting today, and we just wanted to pick just various choices. These are not the three most pressing, but these were just three different points of view that we could come from. I chose my Kentucky Pink Connection agency that I interviewed. I just wanted to provide some background on that. They provide resources and help navigating the medical system to breast cancer patients. here in the central Kentucky, and they also provide services all the way over to the eastern part of Kentucky as well. They help breast cancer patients access treatment and link them to physicians as well as other resources that can help them meet the needs when they are going through the treatments for breast cancer. Since opening back in 2006, they have served 3,229 clients to date. But just so far from April 2012 until November 30, 2012, they have provided services to 744 patients who are currently undergoing breast cancer treatment. They do everything from providing mastectomy devices to providing support sleeves for cancer patients who may struggle with edema after lymph nodes have been removed and the various surgeries that go through that. They do an amazing job with the limited budget that they've got and provide, again, a very needed support system in our community. So for the next part of the presentation, we wanted to just delve a little bit deeper into our work and demonstrate some of the themes and trends that we have found across the interviews that we have done. So regardless of some of these agencies that we've interviewed, these are the themes that were ubiquitous across no matter what population they serve. One of the main ones that was constantly stressed in each of our interviews was food and utility assistance. Regardless of the population served, it seemed like most of the agencies that we had interviewed were stressing that their clients were needing more food and utility assistance, or just more money to keep the lights on, keep the water running. Another issue that was constantly stressed was funds. As we all know, the recession has been very hard for everybody, but especially for people in poverty. And so a lot of agencies were saying the clients that they are seeing, one of the most basic things they need is just more funds just to get through the day and make ends meet. And a lot of the agencies were also saying that they're seeing more low-income residents, more low-income families, and more requests for services. and this was cut across the board regardless of whether the agency directly served people in poverty or someone like the YMCA, which doesn't necessarily work with just those in poverty. So they were just saying they're seeing more requests for, honestly, just more requests for help. Another issue that was constantly stressed is the wage equity and poverty gap. A lot of the clients these agencies were working with are working, but they still can't meet their needs. They have jobs, they have employment, but it's just not getting the job done. So what came from this was a lot of different directors of the agencies and representatives were saying the need for a living wage and not just a minimum wage. And just to elaborate a little bit further on that, so in Kentucky the minimum wage is $7.25, and the popular adage is if you're struggling, just get a job. you know, that should fix everything. Well, a lot of the people who these agencies are working with do have jobs at minimum wage. So just say, for example, you're working full-time, 40 hours a week at a minimum wage job. That ends up equating to a salary of $15,000, $15,080. And just to put that into a little bit of more context, this is the 2012 poverty guidelines. So as you can see, just say for example you are a single mother with two children, which will make you a household of three, at a salary of $15,080, the federal poverty guideline is $19,090. So even if you're doing everything that you have been stressed and urged to do, you're working full-time 40 hours a week, you are still in poverty. So that was an issue a lot of the agencies were stressing, was that the clients are serving and doing everything they possibly can, everything that they are recommended to do, but are still not able to meet basic needs and be self-sufficient. I'm going to continue with the themes that we saw across all agencies, or at least most of them. One of the things we heard from almost everyone was the need for shelter and housing, and that's across the entire continuum from emergency shelters, transitional housing, quality and affordable rental property, and there was a lot of emphasis placed on quality. There may be affordable rental properties, but they're not really fit to be lived in. More opportunities for home ownership to get people out of that rental cycle. Mental health services, a need for more affordable and quality. We have some agencies that provide that for low-income people, but they're kind of overwhelmed with the need for it. transportation across the continuum, a more accessible bus schedule for women, like Josh was talking about, who are working and trying to get children to daycare and get to work but cannot afford a vehicle. Bus tokens, affordable and accessible transportation for the elderly and disabled. Again, those places that provide this, but they come with a fee usually that some people cannot afford. A need for more education and job training. With the new health care laws, there seems to be a panic, especially among senior citizens, about how this is going to affect their health care. So some education on that, reentry programs for ex-offenders, and also employment programs for dropouts, adult literacy. Substance abuse was recognized just to be detrimental to everything. And non-English speaking clients, mainly Hispanic, but there was also a lot of mention of the growing refugee population in Lexington and the difficulty that that can cause when you're trying to provide effective service. Overall, there's just been an increase of non-English speaking clients, but I did want to highlight something that we found to be interesting, which is evidence of the benefits of serving this population, several of the larger agencies did highlight that they had saw a decrease in Hispanic clients. And this was contributed to the clients that they served before becoming self-sufficient. And now, as new people come into the country, come into Fayette County, they're supporting their own community, and they're not turning to social service agencies. And then following up lastly, continuing on with the themes, is we're looking at having an increase just in Fayette County alone of 100,000 persons over 60 by the year 2030. So we need to look at implementing services to enable seniors to remain in their homes as long as possible. Emergency shelter and services for the elderly. the elderly present a different set of issues to emergent shelter populations. They may need some assistance with daily living skills or they may have chronic illnesses that need some assistance in managing them, whereas a homeless shelter or a domestic violence shelter may not be the most appropriate placement to serve these clients. Access to affordable and nutritious food. families continue to struggle with child care costs on average if you have a three year old you're looking at about a cost of $150 a week and going back to Josh's point on the poverty themes is if you're only earning $15,000 a year imagine the cost of $150 a week for child care again the rising cost of utilities for people who are already struggling financially And now we go on to next steps. Well, as you can see, our students have been very busy. They started out this year by interviewing the 21 current partner agencies to provide a baseline for understanding some of the social service needs and barriers to self-sufficiency in Fayette County. But we recognize that interviewing 21 partner agencies is just a beginning point. We gathered that data and used it to help us figure out where do we go next. So I'll talk a little bit about our next steps. One of the first things we'll do is bring in our partners from the Martin School. Dr. Ginny Wilson, who's here with us today, Heath Rico, who's a Ph.D. candidate in the Martin School, and a team of graduate students in public administration will be joining our team starting in January of 2013. They're going to work with us in the College of Social Work to do a quantitative survey of social service providers in Fayette County. Right now we're whittling down a list from 950 organizations to a more appropriate list of those that provide social services in Fayette County, and we'll send a survey out to continue to learn more about what are those barriers to self-sufficiency in Fayette County, what do our agencies identify as the emerging trends and needs, and what are those issues that are cutting across agencies. No matter what population an agency serves, we are seeing some trends and emerging themes. So that's going to take place here. We'll use some of the information we gathered from these 21 interviews to help formulate some of the questions that we hope we'll get at those important issues that we'll do. So we'll do that this next semester. The Martin School is also going to use their skills and expertise to help us look at some of the existing data that's available to identify and map some of the trends that we see related to social service needs in Fayette County. The Social Work students, we'll have four practicum students in the fall. So we have two practicum students currently. We're going to have two more students joining the team at that level. And we'll have four independent study students. This semester we had one independent study student. We're adding three this semester. Why do we need eight students? Well, we need eight students because we've got a lot to do. We're going to continue to do some analysis of the themes from those 21 interviews to help create those questions for the broader survey. We're going to start to delve into the existing data that we've collected. We ask each agency that we visited, do you have needs assessment data that we could use that we could look at? So from the interviews and from the agencies we've met with, we've gathered a lot of information. For example, we have data from the health department. They do a needs assessment. We have community action council needs assessment data. We have YMCA data. We have lots of data. And we need to figure out how can we use that? Is this valid and reliable data that we can use to help inform what's going on in Fayette County? And how can we use that? How can we integrate that into our report? So that's something that our students will be taking on this semester. And they're also going to continue to work on what we're calling key stakeholder interviews. Our goal is to interview at least 60 people in Fayette County that have been identified as key stakeholders in areas related to social service delivery. And you can help us by identifying some of those stakeholders that you think are important for us to talk to. So we're going to conduct interviews. These will be in-depth interviews, probably an hour to an hour and a half interview. The students will do those, and then we'll transcribe those interviews, and we'll do a qualitative analysis of the themes that emerge from those interviews. So we're identifying those key stakeholders through the 21 interviews we've done, through other conversations we've had, and again through you. You all know our community better than we do. If you know somebody that you feel should be a stakeholder we should interview, we just ask that you get in touch with the commissioner's office, send Craig an email or Commissioner Mills, and they'll forward that information on to us, and we'll add that person to our list of stakeholders. So as we do those interviews, we'll develop a really rich body of qualitative knowledge that we can use to look at, and we can use that in conjunction with the quantitative data that we'll get from the survey that's being done to put together what we think is going to be a very comprehensive understanding of the barriers to cell sufficiency in Fayette County. So we'll do lots of data analysis over the spring and into the summer, and we'll write the report, and we'll do a final report. Our timeline is such that we'll have a final report around October of 2013 with preliminary results, at least from the interview portion of it, available after the spring semester, so sometime during the summer of 2013. So I realize that's a really quick overview about what we're doing, but I want to thank our students. It can be really intimidating to come stand before council, and I think they did an excellent job. And I appreciate it because this is a really great learning experience for our social work students, so we appreciate you having them here today. And we can take some questions if time allows. Thank you very much, Doctor. Excellent, excellent presentation. Congratulations to students. A lot of value there in what you're doing. I want to open up for questions to committee members. And my screen, here we go. Dr. K. Thank you, Chair, and thank all of you for coming and for the work you've done to this point. The only question I had at this point is in terms of who will actually be interviewed. You've talked about the partner agencies. I presume those are the agencies that LFUCG actually provides some funding for. Is that correct? We interviewed the current 21 partner agencies that LFUCG funds, and really we started there because they were a convenient sample that we could use. We knew we would have a contact with everybody in that agency, and it was a starting point. So we started there, and the broader survey that we'll do, that won't be an interview form, but it'll have closed and open-ended questions on that survey, will go out to all social service providers in Fayette County. Okay, that's good. And the follow-up question is, will that also include the services provided by LFUCG? No, we won't be interviewing LFUCG. Part of what the students did this semester is put together for our internal work a matrix of all the services that are provided at LFUCG and identified all the different services. They did it in a lifespan format, so what do we provide from infancy through the end of the life course? And one of the things that we look at is what are the barriers to self-sufficiency we're seeing in Fayette County, and how do those relate to the services being provided by Fayette County? Okay, thank you. I mean, my concern, and you've answered it, is that the information we get be really comprehensive about all service providers, whether they're internal, external, whatever. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor. Councilman Elaine. Thank you, Chairman. I had a question on the interview with the Mission Lexington. Would somebody there address that? Yes, sir. Thank you. Yeah, my concern was if you had 167 people that need dental treatment on a backlog, if a dentist only spent one hour for each one of them, that would be approximately 17 weeks of continual work. When you interviewed this agency, do they have any plans to have some type of maybe get a bunch of dentists volunteer to have a campaign to catch up the backlog of dental work or something like that? because it sounded like that might be a possibility. Maybe you don't get into their operations that much, but I just was curious about that. Yes, sir. It seemed like when I interviewed him, they were in the process of moving their facility. And they were saying a lot of what you're saying. They were looking for different people to get involved, different kind of volunteers. I didn't ask real specific questions about the budget because I didn't want to be too intrusive. I did ask about little general ideas about funding and those kind of topics. But, yeah, he was saying they're always looking for trying to get more dentists and different physicians involved to try to cut down that waiting list and provide to people who do not have health insurance. Do you recall who the contact at Mission Lexington was? Maybe I might call him and talk about him. The gentleman I spoke to? Yeah, his name was Chris Skidmore, and he's the executive director. Okay. All right, thank you very much. Very interesting report. Appreciate it. You all obviously put a lot of work in, and I think it was a nice idea to have each of you present. We got to see each of you in action. You did a very nice job. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Council Member Lane. Are the other council members have any questions or input? Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Chair. It seems like the focus here is barriers to self-sufficiency, where as many of the services provided really don't, it's not self-sufficiency that is the issue. In other words, breast cancer or sexual assault or a variety of other kinds of social service needs that are out there. So I'm a little confused about the title of the report and the focus. Could you explain a little bit about that? Sure. I think when we were thinking about it, we wanted to speak more broadly than just calling it a needs assessment. So in talking about barriers to self-sufficiency, as a team, when the students brainstormed, and Dr. Wilson was helpful in helping us think about this too, if we think about what people need to be successful in life, and we were looking, I don't know if you, I know you are familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and thinking about what are those basic needs that we need to be. We need safety needs, we need food needs, we need shelter needs. We're looking at those basic needs. So that's kind of how we framed it in terms of thinking about self-sufficiency. So safety needs, if you're a victim of intimate partner violence or domestic violence, that's a safety need that falls within, I think, how we're conceptualizing the idea of self-sufficiency. Okay, well, if it was Dr. Wilson's idea, it was a splendid one, I'm sure. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any other Council Members? Council Member Ford. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Professor, and the students who have come down from campus to join us today. It appears that you guys are off to a really good start in your work. The slide on page 53 talks about some of the agency-identified themes. And I just want to get a little reaction in regards to the living wage. I think that as you guys presented in your report, there may be a misconception that members of our community who rely on and benefit from social service assistance really aren't putting their best foot forward, really aren't moving towards self-sufficiency. and I think that we all recognize that that's not true in all cases. Could you speak a little bit about the living wage, the fact that we have many folks that go through our social service processes that are actually working? I think that was, yeah, I think one of the things that was identified by many of our agencies is that we are serving oftentimes people that are the working poor. So we are serving people who are working, who are working oftentimes more than one job, trying to make ends meet, but they're still limited in what their needs, food, shelter, utility needs. Sometimes they still need assistance with those because the wages they're earning are quite low. So that was a theme that we heard recurrently in the 21 different interviews we did was that oftentimes we are serving a population that is the working poor. There's sometimes a misconception in society that services are being provided to people who aren't trying to better themselves or who aren't working. And our agencies all work with people who are, you know, working very hard. And so that was, I think, I'm not sure if I'm articulating it well for Josh's side, but I think that's what we were trying to get across was that oftentimes the people that are being served are people that are working one, sometimes two jobs. I would imagine that that would be the service providers that you guys interview, the many agencies out in the community. I think that they definitely recognize that as they've shared that theme with you guys. It brings a sense, it could perhaps bring a sense of frustration on the part, of course, of the citizen, the recipient of the services. I would imagine it can also bring some anxiety and frustration on behalf of those who are in the agencies. Maybe you guys haven't delved that far into the case, but does it serve as a hindrance in offering those services to, does it make it a challenge, more challenging? I'm not. Will? Does, I'm not sure I quite understand the question, so I don't want to offer an answer that's maybe not what you're looking for. Well, I'm wondering, I think that on hold, I think it's definitely worth providing the assistance to those in our community who are working, but who are earning low wages. But I'm wondering in what dynamic does that alter or impact the service delivery? Well, lots of the agencies, the social services agencies in Fayette County, will have sliding scales for services for people who have different incomes. Some agencies are held to a standard through a federal grant or other funding mechanisms for who they can and can't provide services for. So if we think back to Josh's slide on Mission Lexington, they provide services to people who live up to 185% of the poverty threshold. So if that were a single-family person, that would be somebody who made, I can't do the math that quickly in my head, but in the mid-20s, so $20,000, $26,000 maybe dollars a year, they'd still be providing services to somebody within that range. So we look at what we have a lot of in Lexington, we know, is the working poor, people who are working, but that income that they're making simply is not enough. We know how hard it can be to stretch a dollar, especially in this economy. Professor, thanks so much. Mr. Chair, may I ask another question? Great. Towards the end of your report, you indicated that more folks will be joining your team in regards to social work practicums and independent study students. Give us a segue, if you can, about what we can expect in the fall of 2013. You guys are going to bring us a report and definitely the information that you guys have already presented and will continue to gather for us. I think it's going to be helpful as we study and hopefully try to address some of these issues via policy. But what could we expect that we probably could definitely want to utilize and put on the ground here in government? I think what we hope to have to you all by the end of this process, and when it was conceived of it was a three-semester process for us. You know in the academy we work on semesters, right? We have kind of an artificial timeline. So a three-semester process with this fall semester, spring semester, and then the summer term with a little bit of time at the end of the summer term to wrap up and have a product to you by about October of 2013. So by the end of this process, we hope to have a comprehensive report that our students can proudly hand to city council to say this is our understanding of the social service needs in Fayette County. And it will be a detailed report. We are doing our best work to make sure we remain neutral so that it's an unbiased report and that we provide you with lots of rich detail that you all can then use as you try to better understand the social service needs in Fayette County. Hopefully we'll do a lot of good visuals with that report, lots of graphs of our data and things that we've found, as well as pulling out themes and trends. I don't know what the final report will look like, but I think there can be some room for input in that for what's going to work best for you all. But it will be content from those key stakeholder interviews, the quantitative survey that we do, the interviews that we've done. We'll put that all together. We don't know what that format is going to look like, how we're going to organize those themes, but in a way that's very useful for you. Next fall I'll be here before we know. And in closing, it would be practical firsthand information that you guys will bring to us. all 21 agencies that were contacted, participated in them. Hopefully they were very receptive. Absolutely. We had a wonderful time meeting with the partner agencies. And I know that as a team of students and faculty, we learned a lot too. We spend a lot of time working with these agencies in the community, but it's always really gratifying to go out and understand really what people are doing. And I think you all should be proud of your partner agencies that you have right now because they're doing really good work, as are the other agencies that are not partner agencies. Our social service community in Lexington, we're very rich, and we're very blessed to have the organizations that we have with the leadership that we have, because we have really caring, wonderful people who are coming together around common needs in Lexington. Well, Diane, thanks so much. Very encouraging news, and we look forward to continued work. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Ford. Any other Council Members? Council Member Lawless. Just very briefly, having worked in social services for 30 years, one of the, to address your question, I think it might be interesting as you interview the agencies, is accessibility of the services as far as location and travel. Or is it on a bus line? And if you have a parent who has children and working two jobs, the time factor, when are these services available? And you travel and if you put in taking a bus, et cetera. So I think that's one of the real barriers to receiving services for low-income citizens, regardless of what, if it's dental care or breast cancer or domestic violence or sexual assault. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. And Council Member Kaye's backup. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to follow up on the questions that Council Member Ford asked in his comments. And it seems to me that the question of whether partner agencies or any social service agencies are moving people towards self-sufficiency is one of the distinctions that I think needs to be highlighted in whatever report we get, because anybody who's worked in this arena, I think, understands that if there are not opportunities for jobs that pay a living wage, that there are some people who will need ongoing support. So while the goal is to move all people out of poverty and the goal is to move people towards self-sufficiency, it may be important to recognize that there are some services that will be needed on an ongoing basis simply because people do not have adequate resources and they don't have the opportunity to gain those resources. So I'd like to see that somehow reflected in the report if possible. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Dr. K. Anybody else? Okay, I have a few questions for you. I want to start by saying understanding the barriers to self-sufficiency in Fayette County I think is an excellent title and an excellent focus because it seems to me that what you guys focus on is the outcome that we'll achieve. And rather than a needs assessment, and the commissioner has talked before about, you know, everybody has a needs assessment on a shelf somewhere. That's not what we need, and that's not what we really want. What we want is an understanding of the barriers to self-sufficiency in Fayette County so that we can understand what we can do to attack those barriers and remove them. So that's brilliant, and I commend you guys for coming up with that. Secondly, I saw Dean Adams. He just stepped out. I hope he comes back so I can at least acknowledge him to everyone here. And he played a key role in getting us to the point that we're at today. And I apologize. I didn't see him come in after I came in, but I know he had a 12 o'clock meeting. So he was popping in and out as quickly as he could to get to his next meeting. Okay. Thank you. A couple things. Key stakeholders, before I forget. In full disclosure, my wife happens to be a frisky coordinator at one of the schools for Fayette County. That's the Family Resource Center coordinator. I think that they're a treasure trove of knowledge about really the pulse of where our families are, particularly with kids, whether they're grandparents raising kids or families raising kids, and what they are dealing with in order to get their kids prepared to learn in our school system. And I know that we talked in the beginning when we talked about who you guys would interview and how you go through that process. We brought that up, and I know that you guys talked about interviewing their director. And I understand that there are not sure how many of them that there are, but there's probably more of them than the list of people that you said you wanted to interview at the end of the day. I hope that you guys will consider and find a way to include as many of them in, maybe not interview every single one of them, and I know there are a couple of them that work kind of in a consortium. They've got like ten that work together. and they bounce things off each other. If you could get in front of a couple of those groups and get as much from them as you can, because I tell you, they know a lot about what our families are going through. Absolutely, and I think that's the kind of information that's going to be really helpful to us, and if you can shoot an email over to the commissioner's office as a reminder, as we amass our list of who we need to get in touch with to do those key stakeholder interviews, that will be very helpful to us. Okay, and then when you guys get done with your final report, will it include recommendations based on best practice and on where you guys see? And the other full disclosure, I graduated from the U.K. in undergrad in social work and then went on to Washington and got my master's in social work, so it's dear to my heart. And I got to sit on the interviewing team for the previous dean. And one of the things that we always talked about was how we could get the College of Social Work more involved in our community, and you guys are doing that fantastically, and our commissioners played a role in that, having worked both for us and then UK and then back with us. Will you guys, based on where you guys see social work going and then also social services delivery systems going, and then best practices give us some recommendations? When you look at some of the things anecdotally, like Lexington Missions having 647 people on a waiting list to get help and another group that you talked about had trouble getting funding because of the wealth of Fayette County from federal agencies. Would you help us figure out recommendations on how to address those things besides just giving us a report with a lot of data? Is that going to be part of it? I think what we're able to do really is illustrate the need and explain those barriers and those trends and needs in Fayette County. One of the things we're trying very hard to do, again, I said is stay neutral, because we know that one of the things that LFUCG hopes to do with this is to be able to help better understand funding priorities for that social service funding. But it would be outside our purview to make those kinds of recommendations. Let me clarify. I don't mean recommendations on how we spend the money. Okay. But recommendations on things that we can do to eliminate the barriers that people have. We can have that ongoing conversation. Yeah, I mean, I think let's have that ongoing conversation. I don't want to say yes or no and speak out of turn, but I think there's a lot of opportunity to think about how that final report will be formatted in a way that's useful to the council. So I think actually getting at best practices within agencies is probably outside the scope of this project in and of itself. Okay. My idea would be that we stay on the 30,000-foot look. Instead of best practices within agencies, best practices relates to how social services is moving and the delivery of services is moving. For example, when I was in school, Pi, the person in environment, was one way you looked at things. Systems is another way of looking at things. There's different trends on where social work is going. I'm looking at that level rather than what an agency should do or that kind of thing. I think some of that will be covered in the literature review. That will be at the front end of the report. Excellent. Okay. The Affordable Care Act, will you guys, to the degree that you can at that point in time, do any type of analysis on what that new program is going to do to impact how we do social work and how we deliver things? Probably not. I mean, I think that's, again, probably outside the scope of what we're trying to do. Okay. And then the final question is, who will own the data? You talked about that lifeline, I think you say lifeline, or I forgot how you said that, about looking at the person from... Sure, what we did, Ronica is one of our students, put together an outline of what social services are provided through LFUCG, and she outlined that over the life course, so from birth to death, what services does Fayette County offer, and we have that in the commissioner's office, and I'm sure that that's something that we can share with council. It's a great overview that's impressive to look at what LFUCG is doing in terms of social services. Are you doing that on Fayette County, or is that LFUCG as a government? That was LFUCG. That was to help us internally organize and understand what services are being provided by Fayette County to look at the adjunct needs that aren't being provided by the... Okay, I'm sorry. I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about in Fayette County rather than by Fayette County. Okay. Are you going to do that for Fayette County also? Probably not. I mean, you know, if we look at the number of, if we just, we pulled up through GuideStar the number of social service organizations. Dr. Wilson did that for us, and we started out with 950 organizations that qualify as a social service organization of some type. Our students are working to create exclusion criteria to know who we don't need to interview. Some of those are charitable giving foundations that aren't providing social services. Some of them are no longer in business. You know, there's a lot of different, but we still have a list of 300-ish, of over 300 social service organizations in Fayette County. Again, so that interview that we send out will go out to all of those, but I don't think it's going to be within the scope of work to put together an overview of within those 300 agencies who serves what. I just don't think we have the capacity to do that at this time. Okay. So thank you. Thank you very much. Any follow-up questions from anyone? Thank you, Doctor. All right, thank you so much. And the students and I are going to head back to campus, but we really appreciate your time this morning, so thank you. Thank you. Okay, the second item on our agenda is the Bluegrass Occupational Outlook to 2018. And we have Mr. Ron Crouch. He's the Director of Research and Statistics at the Office of Employment and Training for the State of Kentucky, the Commonwealth. And he is getting ready to come to the podium. He also has a packet that he put together that he is going to pass out. And we've asked Mr. Krause to come today to focus on really a couple of things. What jobs are hot in Kentucky and in Lexington, Fayette County, in really close proximity to Fayette County? What jobs are lifting people out of poverty? and Council Member Ford talked about in their studies talking about living wage and those kinds of things. We want to talk about not a living wage and whether we need to have one and the policies around that, but rather what types of jobs are lifting people out of poverty and then how we target our training dollars towards the aptitudes that once obtained are transferable to other jobs. and one of the examples would be whether or not the training provides a license or the means to get a license for whatever it is that you're being trained to do and how once you get that license you own that and that's transferable to the other things. And then also there's programs that have certifications that are involved which may or may not be transferable. And so we want to talk a little bit about that difference because we want to make sure we're using the dollars the best possible. And then one of the questions I want the committee to ponder is when looking at Lexington's education and career training system, what employment slash career fields are we poised to go after? An example on that is Council Member McCord helped put together that funding with the nursing program. If you remember several years ago, he wasn't able to make it today to talk about that. But we ended up funding an additional 125 slots in the nursing program at KCTCS. And so what kinds of opportunities are out there that we can pursue? So, Mr. Crouch? Okay. Welcome. Thanks for allowing me to be here today. I think the previous presentation sort of fits in with what I'm going to talk about today as well. You've got about six handouts there. I'm just going to go through those very briefly and then sort of talk about the careers and everything. The first is our new website, kylmi.ky.gov. That stands for Kentucky Labor Market Information. You'll see at the top up there, you'll see publications. If you go to publications, you'll find data on each of the ad districts as far as the occupation projections and a lot of our tables and maps. The second handout I think is important as you think about careers and jobs for the future of Fayette County. You've got a handout that has a spreadsheet, and you might find this of interest as you think about the whole issue of poverty and bringing people out of poverty and educating them in jobs of future. This shows the growth in Fayette County between 1990 and 2010. One of the things you'll notice is that Fayette County has been growing fairly significantly. But if you look at the growth numbers, what you'll see is basically the non-spentant white population, like me was less than half of your growth in the 1990s and was less than a third of your growth in the 2000s. So most of your growth now in Fayette County is minority. Not good or bad, but that is an issue as you talk about careers and getting people trained for the future. The latest data from the Pew Research Center shows that the average African American in America has one-twentieth of the wealth of the average white family, and the average Hispanic family has one-eighteenth of the wealth of the average white family, yet the majority of growth in Fayette County is black and Hispanic. What's that mean for your economy and making sure people are trained, educated, and skilled? By the way, you have another, if you go to page number two of this article, you'll see the population pyramids for Fayette County, and this is by race, and you will notice, of course, the U.K. population is very large there in their teens and 20s, but you will notice, actually, you have more boomers in Fayette County than you have children. And if you look, you'll see the Hispanic population, very large Hispanic population of young kids. And if you look at the non-Hispanic white population, you'll see actually it is much smaller, the baby's child's population, 0 to 18, than roughly the population of boomers. So basically what you're seeing is a growing population of black and Hispanic in Fayette County. Actually, you'll see a long-term decline in the non-Hispanic white population as it happens across the country. Not good news or bad news, but a major issue as we face the future. If you go to the last page of that, you'll see in Fayette County, very last column, 88.8% of your population of older people, 85 plus, has gone as many quite, but only 56.9% of your young population under five. So major shifts in the makeup of Fayette County. This is happening across the entire country. Also, the next handout, our two-pager, shows basically a population pyramid for Fayette County. The good news is you're growing. I spoke to CASA, the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents, yesterday. In some counties, that's not true. You certainly see UK there, but you also see your young population is continuing to grow. But that growth in the young population is going to be more and more diverse in the future. And I actually wrote an article with the Courier-Journal on that. This is the long page. You can read it later. It does have recommendations at the end of what needs to be done. And let's go into basically, I guess, the core. I'm just talking about occupational rejection and what's happening. This is the handout here. We publish this every two years. This is the Research and Statistics Department of the Kentucky Cabinet for Education and Workforce Development. This is from 2008-2018. We'll have a new report in the spring, 2010-2020 out. We already have that for the state of Kentucky. If you go to over in the very top up there in the middle, you've got page four, bluegrass highlights, and you'll see a projected gain in employment in the bluegrass area and growth jobs. On page five actually shows the fastest growing occupations in Fayette County. And you'll see athletic trainers, home health aides. But if you notice, this shows percentage growth, but it also shows the average annual openings. I actually do not like this table because percentage growth may be misleading. What you really want to know is where the main job growth is as far as actual numbers. That actually starts on page 7, and this is the top 50 jobs as far as growth in the Lexington-Bluegrass area because we only do this at the ad district level. Now, one of my concerns is certainly I think we need to make sure we're training young people for the jobs of the future. We need to make sure those jobs are there, the training's there, and the educational criteria are there. But one of the issues, and I think this gets overstated today, what I keep hearing is all we have to do is give young people more skills and everything will be fine. Well, if you look at the top 50 job growth areas, number one is waitresses, number two is cashiers, number three is a high growth area, registered nurses as far as requiring education, good pay. Number four is retail trade. Number five is food preparation, service workers. Number six is stock clerks and order fillers. So what that tells you is even though our economy is growing in jobs, most of those jobs really are not high-skill jobs. But they do require kids to maybe finish high school and then also basically be trained in those jobs on a job training. So certainly one of the issues is we need to be training people for the jobs that will be there. and I see it's up there at the top now on your screen, but also we're going to have to have workers who basically are going to be taking jobs that pay less. But then that goes back to Councilman Kaye's earlier thing, how do we have support services to make sure those families can make it? You know, one of my big concerns in this country today is, and this is true in Fayette County as well, we're developing, our big issue is not that we're overtaxed. The big issue in this country may be we're underpaid, and that's a big challenge. You may have seen just the other day talking about retail trade. Vice President Biden went to Costco. For some reason, Costco is able to pay $20.50 an hour, and their employees will only pay 10% of the cost of their health care benefits. It's amazing that Costco can do so well when Walmart can do so poorly, pay their workers minimum wage and very little health insurance. So one of the issues is are we going to develop jobs where we pay people enough to live on? And that will be a challenge we face in the future regardless of training. If you go to page number nine, this is some of the things we have in our packet. And this is page nine at the very top. These are business and financial operations. And on that data, we show the job growth. We also show separation versus growth. Growth is new jobs being created in the industry, separation is people leaving and new people replacing them, and then the average wages. And if you look at some of these, maybe some areas to think about training in. And by the way, on page 19 of the handout I gave you, it lists the educational requirements for each of the jobs. So you'll see basically going from number one, a professional degree, number two, a doctorate, number three, a master's, number four, a bachelor's, number five, a bachelor's and higher, work experience, number five, a bachelor's only, Number 6, Associate. Number 7, Post-Secretary Vocational Award. Number 8, Work Experience. Number 9, Long-Term on-the-Job Training. 10, Modern on-the-Job Training. And 11, Short-Term Training. If you look at page 9, you'll notice, for instance, some of the areas there. You'll see, basically, job openings in person-in-the-agent retail trade. Pretty good pay level, $24.75 an hour. Requires, basically, long-term on-the-job training. Some other areas there, you'll see management analyst, which is 13-1-1-1, requires a level of 5 in education, pays about $20 an hour. And then you've got some financial jobs at the bottom there, loan officers, $25 an hour. That's a level 10 in education, on-the-job training. That may be something for students who do not have college but get training on a job. But that's in the financial business. If you go to page number 10, certainly a growth area is computers. And you'll see various levels of education needed there, most of them in the middle level of education-wise. But you'll see a computer programmer pays roughly $32.94 an hour, pretty good wage. And you'll see the job openings there. You'll see more openings in software engineers, 29 openings per year, pays $38 an hour, level 5 education. and you can keep on going through this and see some of the various occupations and levels needed. Let's skip on over because one issue may be for Lexington Fayette County. And if you go to item number 12, and since we're in a government office, legal occupations. And you'll see certainly the lawyers up top, very high levels of education, the legal support workers. And you'll notice there some of the workers, paralegals, level 6, about $20 an hour. Court reporters, level 7, $24 an hour. But you can see some smaller openings, some larger openings there. Another issue that will be a big growth area is page number 13, health care. And if you looked at those population pyramids a while ago, one of the things you'll notice is most of the growth in this country, also in the world now, is 45 and above. In fact, one of the myths we've got out there is our population is growing. Right now in the United States, in fact, in the world, there's no population growth under 25. By the way, Kentucky is one of the least likely states to have children. So our image of having lots of kids is also false. So we've got actually a shrinking population of young folks, and that's happening worldwide with all our growth now, basically in a population of 45 and above. So we're going to have to have more people working in the health care industry. And you'll see here, these are support health care jobs. You'll notice here basically some of the jobs are lower pain level. Some are higher. Nursing aids, $10.79 an hour. Level 7 education, about 117 jobs a year in the Bluegrass region. So that's a higher growth area. Requires on-the-job training. You can see basically dental assistants, about $15 an hour, level 10, moderate on-the-job training. You see some of the other jobs there. pharmacy aid level seven or excuse me level 11 on a job training pays about $11 an hour but it sort of does give you an idea of the type of jobs and what's happening there as we face the future you've got some other pages in here if you go on if you go to the very last few pages again page 19 shows the education levels but then over in page 20 on you actually have a lengthy list of all the jobs opening in the bluegrass area and you go to our our detailed report this This is just a summary of it and find out each of those jobs, education required, and what the job growth will be. The other thing I should mention, the next to last handout is actually inflow-outflow report for Lexington and Fayette County. This does show that Fayette County is a job creator. Actually, these circles, we have these for every county. You can also get this for a school district or a census tract, whatever. The dark green area outside the circle where the overlap is the number of people who come into Lexington to work. It's about 87,000 people. 86,000 people both live and work in Lexington, and about 38,000 people who live in Lexington work outside of Lexington. So Lexington is actually a job magnet attracting people in. Then you have on the next few pages where they come from or if they come into the county. That's on page 3. And Jessamyn County is the second most. About half the population of Jessamyn County both live and work here. And you'll see basically Jessamyn County 4.7 come in. If you skip a few pages over, page number seven actually shows the jobs by makeup in Fayette County. And this is on page seven of the report at the bottom. And you'll notice your highest employer in Fayette County is health care, 30,178 jobs. That's 2010, the latest data we have on this. You'll see education, 9.8. That's about third, it looks like. And retail trade is 12%. You notice manufacturing is 8.2. And one of the things I hear about Lexington Fayette County is you need more manufacturing jobs. Well, in fact, because of cost of the land in Fayette County and cost of doing business, you're probably not an area that's going to attract a lot of manufacturing. It's going to be more health care, more retail trade, and more education. And those may be your growth areas. And I guess working with your medical communities, working with your universities and your schools, and working with your retail trade to find out where the job opens will be, what kind of jobs and what they'll pay will be important. Let me sort of maybe just sort of close there and maybe ask for comments and questions I can focus on. But I think, you know, you've got two things. One, you certainly need to make sure we have good education levels of your student population. And that student population may not necessarily be 18 to 24 or even your high school age population. It may be something called lifelong learning. Not once a life learning, but a lifetime of learning where people retrain, retool over and over again. I actually feel fairly optimistic about the United States. There's a new book out called Anti-Fragile by the person who also wrote the book Black Swan Talby. And he mentions the future is going to be a future where we create new products, we create new technologies, and we're going to have a high growth in many jobs we don't even know about yet. But certainly health care will be part of that. Also, the whole issue of invention and innovation is going to be very important, very critical of the future, and how we make sure our schools are teaching our kids to look at inventing new products, developing new innovations. If we can do that, we can have a society that does well. The other thing I should mention, too, when I go around this country speaking and spoken to 34 states over the last few years, is that the northeast part of the country is in major decline. The Midwest part of the country is in major decline. Both areas are losing the child population. Both areas actually have major out-migration. The south could be the new economic engine, and that includes Kentucky and Lexington, if we play our cards right and make the right investments. One thing we do have that has helped us economically is we have water, and water may be the new oil. One of the things that Southern California, Arizona, Nevada don't have is water. Also in China and Nidia folks, the water tables are falling dramatically. The water table in China now is falling by 20% a year, or 20 feet a year, excuse me, and you have to go down 1,600 foot to even get the water. So this whole issue of being in a mild climate with water, which Kentucky and Lexington have, could be very beneficial. When I go around the country speaking also, I say that the Southwest, unfortunately, California, Texas, Nevada, and Arizona are headed towards being a new Appalachia. California now is the least educated state in the country as far as high school graduates, followed by Texas. Kentucky is actually in the middle, and Lexington is one of the better areas education-wise in Kentucky, so that's a good policy for us. Thank you, sir. A wealth of information. I'm sure there will be some questions for you. I want to open it up now for council members' questions. While we're still kind of trying to digest some of the things that you said, at the end of your comments, one of the things you said was Lexington could be positioned in a great space as long as we make the right investments. Right. And really why I wanted you to come here today is to talk about how we get our arms around what those are. And I think certainly we had talked about maybe working with community colleges, working basically with some of your other training programs. I would like to see vocational technical skills back in high schools. I think we need to be doing that. Also maybe school to work where kids actually go out and basically understand what work is like, maybe half a day a week. High school students go out to the workplace, work with companies, and understand what the work life is like. Our kids in the past, when I was growing up, we were mainly kids of farmers. We knew what farming was. We knew what work was because we did it. Many of our kids now don't have that experience. They're divorced from work as far as their regular lives because they don't see it. So getting those kids involved, providing some support to keep those kids in school as well is an important issue there. And, again, social safety. One of my issues, Councilman Kay, is my daughter and son-in-law pay $4.50 a week in child care for my two grandchildren, five and three and a half. A minimum wage job now pays $10. Many jobs now in Kentucky pay $10 an hour. That's $100 a week. That is less than my daughter and son-in-law pay for child care for two kids. You know, we may have to think about not even a minimum wage of $7.25, but maybe a livable wage, which may be well above $10 an hour. Now, one of my concerns, and this is a concern about manufacturing, I think manufacturing will come back. One of my concerns about manufacturing is manufacturing may come back, but it may be much more automated, and it may pay much less. When I travel around the state of Kentucky today, I see a number of advanced manufacturing companies that are paying their workers $10 an hour. We now have a two-tier wage system in Louisville, Kentucky, where both General Electric and Ford pay their new workers one-half of the wages they pay their older workers. And those workers qualify for food stamps, according to Jerry Downs, a reporter for the Courier-Journal who wrote an article in October of last year called Working Full-Time Receiving Food Stamps. So that's a challenge we face in the future. how we provide support services, child care, living wages for our families, but then also making sure we're getting the educational levels that they'll need for the jobs that will be growing. But I guess what I'm saying is certainly there are going to be some jobs that require higher education levels, but a lot of our jobs also are not going to require higher education levels, but they are going to require basically people make enough to live on. Okay, so I'm still waiting for council members to... But again, going back to your question, KCTCS, certainly nursing professions, home health care aides would be a lower level but pay fairly decent wages. Basically, dental technologist, occupational aids, occupational therapy aids, things like that. But how do we get first-level careers, and then they can go on and get their education levels up higher and advance as they look to the future? Okay. Councilman Lane. Thank you for coming today, Mr. Crouch. Could you address the trend from the population moving from the rural to the metropolitan areas and how that may impact Lexington and the state at large? Let me just show you something. That very last handout, I didn't really go into detail today, but if you go to that last handout, and this is an article I wrote about the changing face of America. And if you go to page number four of that handout, this shows the world population. And this is the very last handout. It should say Kentucky, United States, trends, maps, and tables. Everybody have that one? Okay. You don't have this in the packet. But if you look at this, basically it shows the population for the world. Look at the big growth in the world's population between 1950 and 2010. Major growth of all age groupings. And again, this is not on the handout on the screen. But notice after 2010, there's no growth under 25, and after 2100, there's no growth under 45. So we're going to a steady state economy where our population worldwide has stopped growing of our young people, all our growth in an aging population. And what's happening is the urbanization. New data just out last week, last Thursday, by the Pew Research Center. U.S. birth rates are at a record all-time low, record all-time low. So one of our issues is we may have a shrinking population of young, and those young have to be educated, skilled, and productive. Skip a few pages on this handout. Just go over to page number nine. I think you'll find this shocking. This shows the growth in the United States population between 2000 and 2010 by region. And notice where almost all the growth was, 45 to 64. That's where our growth is. And, in fact, the population in the United States, 25 to 44, actually shrank. We have to create 150,000 jobs a month to keep up population growth, the economists are saying. I don't think the economists understand demographics. This is on page 9 of that last handout. It's a detailed table. The population, 18 to 44 in America now, is growing by 5,000 a month, and that includes students, homemakers, disabled. So there's very little growth in our population, so we don't need 150,000 jobs a month. But we do need people trained, educated, and skilled. I think the job market doesn't become smarter in many regards. is that people have to finish high school and have to get on-the-job training or education beyond high school. Another thing will be a key issue. Another key issue for you all is if you give incentives to companies to come here, make sure those companies honor those commitments. There's some legislation now for companies where they have clawbacks. If a company does not fulfill the number of jobs they promised and the wage they promised, they have to pay back the money they were given by government to come to the area. I think that's going to be an issue we have to look at. Are companies providing the jobs they're promising? And where will those jobs be? Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Thank you very much. That was a good answer. But that urban population, you know, what we're seeing is now across the entire world, the growth is in urban areas. One other thing I should have shown you on this, just skip over a few pages to page number. And this actually should make us feel good about Kentucky. And let me see if I can find the right page here on this handout. Maybe a few pages back. I thought it was in here. It may not be in here. But on page number 17, this is actually very good news for Kentucky. I'm also saying Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina, Virginia have the most potential to do well. This is growth in counties. All the tan counties or yellow counties are losing population. All the blue counties are gaining. Anybody notice anything about Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia? We're mainly blue. Look at the Dakotas. Look at Nebraska. Look at Iowa. Look at Pennsylvania. Most rural areas around the country are losing population in droves. That is not true for Kentucky. But it is also true that basically our growth is in our urban areas. This is something also, as you think about the growth in Lexington, Councilman Lane. Just go to page number 15. I think this is somewhat of shocking data. that we just analyzed recently. This is the growth in Kentucky between 1900 and 1950. And this is on page number 14 at the top up there. The blue areas have the highest growth, and the green areas have major population losses. You can see Fayette County did very well, grew by 139% in that 50-year period. But look at the big growth. It was in southeastern Kentucky. That's where the big growth took place in Kentucky in that 50-year period. And look at all those counties in the Golden Triangle, which you all are part of. Major population losses. Look at Pendleton, 35% loss. Owen, 44% loss. Counties around you all. Scott, 16% loss. Then go to page number 15 and look at the last 60 years and see the reverse. Big losses in East Kentucky. Not due to out-migration, that's a myth. It's due to low fertility. Women in East Kentucky are having fewer kids than the rest of the state and the rest of the nation. But the big growth now is in the Golden Triangle. So this would maybe relate to Councilman Lane's question as well. You see at Fayette County it continued to grow, grew by 193%, almost doubled. Scott County doubled as well, actually even going down the first 50 years. And then page 16 is the last 10 years, 2000-2010 census. And you have red lines on there, which are interstates. Anybody notice anything about a correlation between an interstate and growth? That's that urbanization issue. It would be nice to have an I-66 route across there as well, which helped Kentucky. But for the most part, Fayette County looks pretty good. You're a job magnet. People are coming here to work. even some surrounding counties. You've had high growth, continued growth. But one of my issues is, do we continue that high growth by making sure we have well-paying jobs where you can have a broad middle class? And one of my concerns is, the latest data is that basically almost all income growth in this country for the last 30 years has been the top 1% only. I think we've heard that in some campaigns. And the newest data out, between the end of the recession, June 2009 and I think it was 2011, 93% of all income growth in the country went to the top 1%, 93%. You cannot have an economy based on losing your middle class. So we have to have the education training for those students so they're trained and educated for good jobs, but also all jobs have to pay enough to live on. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lane. Do you have a follow-up? Thank you. Council Member Lawless? Thank you. This is extremely interesting, and thank you very much for being here. And I look forward to delving into it more. One question I have is, do you see in the urban areas a correlation between the number of children people have and their income? Here's a very big concern for all of our areas. Skip over to, because this sort of relates to what we're talking about now, too. skip over to find the page here to this is the last handout page number 29 and this is the big concern this is the latest data we have from Frankfort, a lot of statistics right now in Kentucky 42% of our kids are born to unmarried mothers, 42% in Fayette County if you look at that you'll notice that it's 42.2 right at the state average and those are basically women in relationships with what I call a poorly educated male and in fact the major criteria for an unmarried birth in the state of Kentucky and I've done the major studies on this for the state of Kentucky is if you're a college graduate your chance giving birth out of wedlock is less than 1 in 20 less than 5 percent if you're a high school dropout it is 59 percent and most of those women who are high school dropouts and have births out of wedlock are not in their teenage years or adult women in their 20s and they have a problem called Bubba White, Joe Black, Jose Brown. Young men who don't have the skills and the jobs to support them. And somehow that's what we have to have to have to address support services for that population. I should mention also maybe going back to the earlier point about this subject, skip over to skip back a couple pages. This does show the job growth. Let me see if I can find the right page here. If you go back to page number 20, these are the percentage of jobs by county. And you notice in Fayette County, and again, a thing to think about, Fayette County, if you look at manufacturing employment, Fayette County is 8.4. Near the very bottom is a percentage of jobs in Fayette County are manufacturing. So that may not be the area you want to go into as far as job growth because manufacturing is becoming more automated. I think we need plumbers. We need electricians. That may be an issue for the technical schools. We need welders. Then on page number 21 is health care. And you notice here Fayette County is a high. So a high percentage of jobs, one of the higher percentage of jobs in the state is in Fayette County in health care. And then lastly, education, phase 22. And, of course, you'd expect, and this is actually a little bit lower than you somewhat expect with Fayette County, with the university. But where the jobs are, so, you know, I think there are a lot of opportunities. I think the Bluegrass looks very good. Lexington is a growth area. But how do you get your workforce in the future, and how do you make sure they have the skills but also support services? One thing that made me go to Yarl's point earlier, I think you would find the last page in this handout of interest, since we were talking about support services in the earlier presentation. One of the big myths we have in this country is we're spending way too much money on poor people. I would say, actually, we probably need to reform welfare and bring welfare back. I'm not a big fan of Bill Clinton because he did away with welfare in 1995. I think a big mistake. We have taken the social safety net out of our programs. We've told a lot of welfare mothers we would give them child care support, child care benefits, once they went off welfare and we'd get them in decent-paying jobs. We've done neither. We've got people on the back waiting list and are going to minimum wage jobs. That's not how you make it. What shows you on page 32, that blue triangle at the bottom, is expenditures on welfare in the state of Kentucky and $2,009 adjusted for inflation. You might notice anything about that last page. Welfare was never very much money and still not very much money, even though Ronald Reagan ran against it as a big issue. Food stamps has gone up in the last 10 years, 2000, 2010, at Orange Dot, because a lot of people are basically qualifying for food stamps. I heard the other day people who are able-bodied shouldn't receive food stamps. The implication was, well, they're able-bodied and therefore they're not working. Well, the majority of people on food stamps are working, but they still qualify for food stamps. Then you've also got unemployment insurance. But look at the health care cost, which is the green line going up there. And then you've also got retirement disability. Our big growth areas are actually money spent on retirement disability and health care. Good news for maybe jobs and health care, but our support services for young at-risk families has never been very much, and the general public thinks that's where all the money is going. The data doesn't support it. I agree, and I certainly hear that a lot from that top 1%. Yeah, I made it. Why can't they? However, the second thing that concerns me for Fayette County is that approximately 80 percent of our general fund dollars come from payroll tax. So this data confirms what I've been talking about for quite some time, and that is if you're on retirement, you're not paying payroll tax. So as our pyramid expands and we have fewer young people working and more and more people retired, there goes our, you know, looking at the next 10, 15 years as people are retiring and aren't paying payroll tax, we're in some serious trouble. And on top of that, too, you know, the point also is if we become a society where we're paying workers less, they're paying less payroll tax. I have heard we're in an economy now where we have to lower wages and lower benefits because we're in a global economy. I don't know if I can say this in the room or not, but I will. It's horse manure. Basically, here's an issue. If basically we're in a global economy where wages are going down because we have to compete with other countries, why aren't CEO salaries going down? And why are corporate profits at a record high? You know, actually Obama, when he said the economy's recovered, he got criticized a lot for that. Actually, the GDP has recovered. Our gross domestic product is the highest it's ever been. The problem is it hasn't translated down to workers and salaries. So that will be an issue, not only getting the skills for the workers, but also making sure those skills pay well. There was just an article in the New York Times last week, skills don't pay the bills. Skills don't pay the bills. You've got to have skills, but you also have to make sure those jobs pay enough to take care of a family. Thank you, Council Member Wallace. So I just want to wrap up and bring us back to center, and that is one of the things that you said is how do we make – we're in a great position as long as we make the right investments. So what I'd like for our committee to look at, and I know that Councilmember Ford put this issue also in the committee, is the workforce development dollars and how we focus those dollars on getting the right type of training for people to get the jobs that pay well enough to either lift people out of poverty or help them sustain their family. And training that is transferable in that. We had Sears, and I talked about this before, Sears sent us an email, and they said that they are trying their best to find workers to fill jobs that are on this list as some of these high-paying jobs, $18, $20, $25, $30 an hour, and they can't find the employees to do that. the Somerset Community College has a lineman training center and I think that we need to look at some of the things that they do I'm not sure if Ms. Gooding, she's here I don't know if you're familiar with them or not I think we need to look at some of what they do and how they do that because part of what they do is make sure that people have the training that's transferable that jobs are available and that they pay well enough to sustain families. So in closing here, we've got about three minutes. Do you have any more input on how we start to hone in on how best to focus our dollars? We gave an example earlier where we ended up putting, I think it was $250,000 in with KCTCS to increase the number of slots in their nursing program by 125 a year. I believe that was five years ago, I think. So we should have the first class having graduated already. When you look at the jobs available, nursing is one of them, and nursing is one that pays well. How can we do things like that? What are those target areas that, based on our economy here, based on the system of training and education that we have here, that we can already put people into positions to learn the things they need? How do we focus on that? And I think, you know, certainly nursing. One of the issues in the past was most nurses only had two-year degrees. Now most hospitals are saying if you get a two-year degree, if you want to keep your employment, you have to continue on and get a four-year degree. So continuing education, lifelong learning. Some other issues, one of the pages on page 14 of the Occupational Outlooks is protective service occupations. What about police? What about firemen? Those are good-paying jobs, and these actually are jobs that have basically benefited middle-skilled workers. And I think we need to create jobs that benefit middle-skilled workers. The high-skilled workers are probably going to get there on their own, but those middle skills are what we need to be creating and getting lower-skilled workers into middle-skilled jobs and jobs that pay enough for them to live on. Certainly, the health care industry is one. I think another issue is, like I say, basically, I want a mechanic who can work on my car and make it run. Mechanic skills. Also, again, going back, heating, cooling, plumbing. We've got houses. We've got to renovate them. We've got to rehab them. So that's going to be a continued industry. Again, I am concerned about manufacturing. I see these sort of wages going down, what I call wage suppression. Those may not be the jobs we want unless we have an ironclad agreement. When those companies come in, they're going to pay the wages for people to live on. They're not going to see the wages go down like they have in other areas. I think my focus is more not trying to create jobs or trying to bring manufacturing jobs here, but it's what jobs are here. How do we get our workforce trained for the jobs that are already here? And that's why Lexington being a major medical center, major medical area, that's going to be a growth area. And continue to train in those job areas. Protecting services, I think, could be a growth area as people leave the workforce and you have to retrain, retool. You're bringing new workers to replace the workers who retire. Education, what about basically working with young people to become teacher's aides? And then basically maybe if they like it and they do well as teacher's aides, We try to get them into a four-year degree program so they can become teachers. And we've got a lot of teachers out there now who are nearing retirement age. Boomers are a big group of teachers, and a lot of them are reaching that point where they're going to leave the profession. So there's a lot of opportunities out there for even at a higher skill level, but also I think both looking at a medium skill level and a higher skill level. Okay, thank you. Are there any more questions from committee members? Thank you very much. I know this is not an issue that you all would be concerned about. I'm joking here. Do you all realize worldwide, according to David K. Johnson, Internet in most countries is ten times faster than it is in the United States, and they pay one-third level for the cost of the Internet? We're not very competitive with the world as far as Internet jobs and jobs of the future requiring technology. How do we make sure our companies are actually charging a fair amount and we're getting a good service. And Internet and technology are going to be very high-growth areas. Thank you very much. The next item on the agenda is the Emergency Solutions Grant, and Director Gooding is here to give us an update on this. The approved 2012 consolidated plan provided $23,174 in emergency solutions grant funds for the Salvation Army. They are turning these funds down this year because of their inability to meet the requirements under the Homeless Management Information System, which is now a HUD requirement. So what we will be doing is a substantial amendment to the plan coming up with another use for these funds. We do have a commitment deadline to meet. The recommendation at this point is that we move the funds to the Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program, which also serves a homeless population as a victim service provider. They don't have to enter data into, in fact, they're not allowed to enter data into the HMIS. So the requirement's not a problem. I will say that going forward, HMIS is a problem for our homeless agencies. This is the only information that HUD is accepting. It's the client-level data. They're requiring it if you get federal funds for homeless services. We have been in Fayette County, our agencies have been participating in the Kentucky Housing Corporation's HMIS system for several years now. However, we don't have any agencies at this point that are fully compliant, so this is going to be an issue going forward. I just wanted you to know that. And then we also may be making some changes to the maximum levels of funding under the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing Program that Adult Services operates. Any questions? That's very fast. Yes. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Irene. I sit on the board with the Salvation Army, and this has been an issue that we've talked about. Can you tell us how we can and how they can work? Because their big issue is they were worried about the numbers that they got were not going to correspond with actual numbers, and they did not want to give false information. That's correct. And they said that I think it had to do with maybe the computer, the way that the data is entered and the way that it's recorded. and is there any way that we can work with them and try to figure out a solution because I hate for them to have to give up the money, and they did too, but they felt like it was just something that they could not justify giving numbers that were false. They have reapplied for the next year's funding, the 2013 consolidated plan, so they've reapplied for emergency solutions. So I think they want to participate. Oh, I know they want to participate. Their staff needs to be retrained because Kentucky Housing Corporation did have some problems in their implementation of the software. They understand that they were part of the problem, so their staff needs to be retrained. And then the other problem is this very time-consuming process for agencies. and there's not a whole lot to do about that except to take the time and enter the data. You know, I think they're going to take part of the problem, but I think there needs to be a better solution because just by hearing from that side is when they would put the numbers in, they wouldn't correspond and that's really what, after the fact, the numbers would be different. Is there a way you, I, and maybe the Salvation Army can meet and we can discuss how we can work with the government better trying to figure out a solution for this? We can do that. This year, for the first time, we sort of decided to kind of throw ourselves into the, because we, this was something that the Central Kentucky Housing and Homeless Initiative, this was an issue that they sort of wanted to own for Fayette County. So we backed out of all of that several years ago. But this year we've decided to kind of get back into that mix. So in our office we've licensed two people for that system so that at least we can figure out what's going on and maybe we can be part of the solution. Good. But we just did that, and we just started getting training. I know there's got to be a solution. I'd just like to work together and try to find the right one. We can talk about it, yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger. Are there any other questions? I've got some questions. It sounds like if there's a data integrity issue, it sounded like you said that this is a requirement. Yes. So if the plan this year is to give this money to somebody else, how do we meet that requirement? Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program does not have to enter data into HMIS because they are a victim service provider. So they don't enter data into a system. They need to protect their victims. So the HUD regulations are written in such a way that they don't have to. Okay, let me back up. Will you explain what the purpose of giving this money to the Salvation Army was and what the data is that they were entering and the use of that data? At the time that we did the 2012 consolidated plan, HUD had not released, or they had just started to release their regulations. so we were a little too far in the process for the Salvation Army to realize just maybe how much of a problem it was going to be. But HMIS has been a HUD directive since 2004, and we've actually had a system in place since 2004, and under the old Emergency Shelter Grants Program, we required our participants to use the HMIS system. However, they weren't necessarily doing it correctly. And I think part of the problem is KHC. But they have been working on that problem, and they're working on retraining people. At the end of the day, who's responsible for that data? What is the data? The data is client-level data. For? For if you are Salvation Army, every homeless person you're seeing, you're entering their data into an HMIS system. Now, it can be locked off so that people can't see personal information, but the data then is used to create a report. and that's the only information that HUD has, the only information that HUD will have about how many people you're serving. So if you can say you're serving 2,000 people a year, but if somehow in the system it shows that you've only served 500, well, you only serve 500. Okay, so HUD uses that data to then determine how much funding should come here, partially. Yes, I think HUD over the years has become suspicious of what they think of as maybe our exaggerated reports on how many homeless people there are out there. So they want to see the data put into a system that they can get a report from. Okay, so are we in jeopardy of being out of compliance with HUD if we do something different with this money this year? Yes. Well, we're always in jeopardy when we take money from HUD and we don't follow the regulations. So we need to make sure, and this is what Salvation Army simply does not want to, and they've written me a letter. They don't want to give us false information. They're not sure how to avoid that. So that's why they would like not to be put in that position this year. Sure. Let me ask you this. So then, as Council Member Ellinger said, rather than give this money to somebody else, can we wait and see if you guys can work something out? We can. It's to where we need to go. We can. We can't wait very long because, again, we have some commitment deadlines to meet. But we certainly over the month of December can meet and talk about it. Okay, well, you say you can't wait very long to work something out, but if you just give the money to somebody else, then how does that solve the problem? If you have a commitment deadline, how does that get HUD what they want if you give the money to someplace else? The domestic violence program serves homeless people. By definition, the clients that they serve are homeless. and I avoid the whole HMIS problem because they're allowed not to participate in HMIS because they're a victim service provider. So if they get the money, what are they going to do with it? They're going to serve the homeless victims of domestic violence. Okay, so when the money was going to Salvation Army, was it to serve people or was it to... It was for shelter operations. They use the money to offset the cost of operating their shelter, buying food, paying utilities, paying security, supplies. Okay, so one last question, and then I'll let you guys see if you can work something out. Will the new group you want to give the money to serve the same people that would have been served by the Salvation Army, or is there going to be a gap in those people not being served now? Salvation Army will probably, I don't foresee that they would not serve all the people they were going to serve. I have a board member sitting next to you who maybe could answer that question. But to my knowledge, they don't turn people away. You want to answer that? To the best of my ability, I think they're going to continue to serve that. They were just not going to accept that money, and they were going to just do it with the funds they had. But they certainly would like to have the money. But once again, they were fearful that the data would be different than what's going to be shown, and they did not want to get false information. And that's where the rub comes in. And at HMIS, we recognize that it's a problem. Okay. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Chair. Irene, thank you for your report. Council Member Ellinger, thank you for bringing us some insight from your service to the board. I have a warning to the committee. But before I make that warning, I'd like to say something that I've learned in my years of grants. I've always said that getting the grant is the easy part. It's the easier part. It's not the easy part, but of all the tasks, getting the grant is the easier part. complying with it often is the more difficult work. So I applaud, as we stand right now, I applaud the Salvation Army for their work and for their recognition of not wanting compliance requirements to impede upon their service delivery. As Chuck has just said, they want to continue to serve, but in the interim as we stand right now, they're willing to sacrifice and forego the award of shelter grants that's been given to them. And so I applaud that. I also want to thank Irene and their staff for, on behalf of government, trying to be responsive both to Salvation Army, Bluegrass Domestic Violence, and those partners that help us, but also trying to ramp up capacity in-house, so to speak, to help us deal with this. You know, he who has the gold makes the rules. And so HUD has come down with some kind of reporting requirement that has presented itself to be burdensome to us. We want to continue to partner with HUD, so we're, again, all parties are trying to find a way to do that. I thank Irene for agreeing to work with Council Member Ellinger on behalf of Salvation Army. My warning is for us not to legislatively try to administer at this point in time. From what I'm hearing, the facts that I'm hearing now is that there's already been a resolution between the recipient of the grant funds of Salvation Army and our grants office. Salvation Army is already, a process is already in place for urban county government, and particularly Lexington, to use these funds now. And I would implore us to go ahead and do that. And then lastly, not to be nitpicky, just grants are awarded. They're not giving. We're not giving money to this person or that person. Let's make the best use of these awards that we can. Irene, is that correct? Am I understanding the facts as we have it right now that Salvation Army is basically, and that happens, Grant recipients do it all the time. They say thanks, no thanks. But we do plan to come back and petition and seek funds in future times. Right. They've written me a letter. Thank you, Irene. Thank you, Chair. I think I want to give Councilman Elliott a chance to respond to that. Just in a quick response, I know when we had our last board meeting, and actually the last couple, that Major Ashcroft really had trepidation in trying to work out this because she did not want to have to give this money back, knowing that they have limited funds, and any time you have a grant, you try to make sure you use the money because the services are still going to be provided. And it's a big loss to the Salvation Army not to have this money. That's why if there was any way that we could work within the guidelines, We certainly wanted to do that and still would like to do that if there's any way to do that. We could have another conversation about it. But she was concerned that, you know, her giving funds up would mean that we'd get to use it elsewhere in Fayette County. That was a concern. Thank you. Dr. Kay? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Irene, for bringing this forward. Could you remind us how the HMIS system has worked in the past and what changes were made in it and how it works now? I don't operate the HMIS. That comes out of KHC, and we're a participant in KHC. The agencies in Fayette County are participants in KHC's HMIS. was a directive from HUD in 2004 that everybody had one across the nation. In Fayette County, we elected to participate, or the agencies that were affected elected to participate in a statewide system. We thought that would be more efficient for everyone. It's big software. It's ServicePoint, which is, you know, we've all gotten familiar with big software, and it's difficult to implement. KHC has staff that operates it. They train people. We have required, since 2004, we've been requiring that agencies that accept emergency shelter grant funds participate in this system. But we also took their other data as well, because that other data is what we entered into IDIS, which is HUD's online data system. is where we report all of our information, where HUD creates a big federal report. But starting this year, no longer is HUD letting us put any homeless data into IDIS. All data comes through whatever HMIS system has been in place. And we, you know, every year we would get their real data, then we would look at the report that they ran, and they didn't match. So it was always a concern that they didn't match. But now, you know, it's become an absolute. You have to do it this way. There's no other way to submit the data to HUD. And that requirement isn't just for the emergency solutions funds. It's for the entire continuum of care. No, HMIS is only for homeless. It is for the Emergency Solutions Grant, and it is also for something out there that you may have heard of called the Continuum of Care Grants. These are the Supportive Housing Program federal funds that we are not a pass-through. We're not an entitlement or a pass-through for it, but they are funded directly to Hope Center, Chrysalis House, Bluegrass Regional Mental Health, Community Action Agency, Housing Authority, agencies like that to serve homeless people. So if they have this homeless label on them, and once they have the homeless label on them, then the HMIS is a requirement. And can you explain the ways in which the Salvation Army's data did not meet the requirements? they know how many people they served and they know what the report reads and they're not in any way and i don't know unless you're standing over them as they're entering data i don't think you have any idea what's going wrong and i'm not standing over them we just acquired licenses this year so that we could at least look at it because we never could look at reports you have to be a licensed user to look at the reports. And so we bought licenses for two of our staff members this year so that we can at least see what's going on. And, well, none of the agents, Salvation Army isn't the only one with this problem. Other agencies who are using this software also have the problem. But at this point, other agencies have not put their funds in jeopardy through a discrepancy between the data they have and the data they've submitted to the HMIS? Right. We have recast the agreement, the written agreement, sent it to Hope Center. They assure me they've signed it and sent it back to me. but they'll have to give us monthly reports out of HMIS, and they will have to be accurate reports or we won't pay them. So their funding could be in jeopardy too. Because what we're saying here is that we're not paying you unless your report is accurate. And the timeline for satisfying HHS requirement for this particular agency? We have two years to expend all the funds. And that would have been from, I'm not sure what, well, it was actually technically July 1st. Two years to expend all the funds. At this 90 days after we're awarded the funds, we at least have to notify people that they're funded. So we've done that, but we don't have this $23,000 under contract. I guess my question is, at what point in time would that money, if it's not reallocated, have to be returned to HUD? I'm thinking if HUD came to do a monitoring visit and we didn't have it allocated, it would be a finding. And a finding is possibly a return of funds. Since it's a new program, I believe they would give us an opportunity to do a corrective action. So I don't really have a date for you. I just don't want to find myself with a monitoring visit coming up, and we haven't actually committed all the funds. The reason I ask is that there's been a request to review this and try and reach a different resolution. I'm trying to figure out how much time you have to do that. A month, two months, three months, six months? We should not take six months. I don't have a specific date, but it needs to be done soon. Because we're really past the commitment deadline, but we have people, we've notified them in writing that the funds are available, except now I have notification from Salvation Army in my file that they don't want the funds. So I have a letter that unallocates $23,000. Okay, my last question. The plans going forward for ensuring that the relevant agencies are in compliance with the HMS requirement? Are there some other plans to make sure that this does not happen in the future? I don't think that all we can do is require compliance. I mean, if you're asking, are we doing anything to make sure they comply? I mean, it's incumbent upon each agency to comply. There's nothing. We simply have to assure that our sub-recipients are in compliance. And we do that by checking their monthly reports. And again, what we've forewarned is that we won't pay you. So everybody's funding could be in balance. Yeah, could be. Actually, I have one more question, if I can. Is it fair to say that each agency should know whether its reporting is in compliance with the HMS system or not? It should, yes. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Dr. Kay. I have a couple of follow-ups. It sounds like there is at least one other agency that's out of compliance, and you've worked out an arrangement with them so they can continue with their awarded money and provide a monthly report so that you can juxtapose the numbers so that you know they're right. Is that correct? Well, Hope Center has an agreement that says that they have to be in compliance. But you're allowing them to make monthly reports. What will happen is that they're going to send us a monthly report along with their invoice for reimbursement. If their monthly report is incorrect, then they will not be reimbursed. So will you give them a chance to correct that report? If they can correct the report or going forward, they can get in compliance. Okay, then here's what I would suggest. It was stated earlier that money is not given as granted, and that's right. This money was granted to the Salvation Army. If we give it to somebody else, we're giving it, not granting it, because it was already granted to the Salvation Army, and that process has ended. And so what we're doing is we're giving it to the Salvation Army.