# Council Social Services and Community Development Committee - April 30, 2013 > Auto-transcribed civic record · April 30, 2013 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2969 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2969?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2013-04-30 - **Last revised**: July 16, 2026 - **Length**: 14,761 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Social Services & Community Development Committee met on April 30, 2013, at 11:00 AM under the presiding officer Ford. The committee addressed five agenda items during the meeting, including approval of the Committee Summary from January 22, 2013, and informational presentations on Adult & Tenant Services Overview and a Social Services Needs Assessment Update. The committee approved the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board Interlocal Agreement and deferred Committee Referral Items for future consideration. Four motions were voted on during the meeting, and five members of the public provided comments. ## Attendance **Present:** Ford, Akers, Ellinger, Kay, Stinnett, Scutchfield, Myers, Beard, Clarke, Henson **Absent:** Lawless, Lane **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions **Approval of the March 19, 2013 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:03:03] A motion by Stinnett, seconded by Ellinger, to approve the March 19, 2013 committee summary passed unanimously. **Recommendation to Sign the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board Interlocal Agreement** [timestamp: 1:10:47] A voice vote on the recommendation to sign the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board Interlocal Agreement passed with no recorded opposition. **Motion to Remove Workforce Investment and Training from Committee Referral Items** [timestamp: 1:25:45] A motion by Kay, seconded by Ellinger, to remove Workforce Investment and Training from committee referral items was withdrawn and did not proceed to a vote. **Motion to Adjourn** [timestamp: 1:33:01] A motion by George, seconded by Akers, to adjourn the meeting passed by voice vote. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included consideration of funding for a senior citizen center project. An appropriation of $5,000,000 was allocated to support the initial phase of the senior citizen center. ## Public Comment Five public comments were made during the meeting, with Council Members addressing funding priorities, agency collaboration, and the sustainability of existing programs. Council Member Kay spoke twice during the meeting. In the first comment [timestamp: 0:34:44], Kay emphasized the need for the administration to use needs assessment data to generate funding scenarios and recommendations, questioning whether the current process reflects the actual needs of the community. Later [timestamp: 1:00:03], Kay raised concerns about the council's current policy of funding only innovative programs and suggested a reevaluation of whether the council should fund ongoing agency operations. Council Member Lawless addressed the sustainability of existing programs [timestamp: 0:48:16], raising concerns about the lack of funding for ongoing programs and urging the committee to balance innovation with the sustainability of essential services. Council Member Mars called for a comprehensive evaluation of the current funding model [timestamp: 0:54:04], suggesting that a 30,000-foot review was needed. Mars proposed creating a new structure that encourages collaboration among agencies and addresses systemic inefficiencies. Council Member Myers advocated for a formula-based approach to partner agency funding [timestamp: 1:30:12], stressing the importance of collaboration among agencies. Myers urged the committee to consider long-term funding strategies informed by the needs assessment data. The comments reflected a shared concern about aligning funding decisions with community needs and the sustainability of essential services, while also exploring structural reforms to improve agency collaboration and efficiency. ## Contested Items The April 30, 2013 meeting included two significant areas of disagreement among council members. **Funding Model for Partner Agencies** Council members were divided on the approach to funding partner agencies. The core dispute centered on whether funding should be limited to innovative programs only, or whether it should also support the ongoing operations of agencies. Several council members advocated for a reevaluation of the current policy to broaden its scope. This disagreement resulted in a split vote, indicating that the council remained unable to reach consensus on this funding direction. **Collaboration vs. Competition Among Agencies** A heated discussion emerged regarding the structure of agency funding and its relationship to inter-agency dynamics. Some council members argued that funding should be structured to encourage collaboration among agencies, suggesting that shared funding pools could serve as a mechanism to drive cooperation. This proposal was contested, with the debate reflecting different views on whether competitive or collaborative funding models would better serve the council's objectives. ## Committee Summary (1.22.13) The committee reviewed and approved the summary of the March 19, 2013 meeting. [timestamp: 00:03:03] **Action Taken** The committee unanimously approved the meeting summary. Stinnett made the motion to approve, and Ellinger seconded the motion. **Outcome** The summary was approved without objection. ## Adult & Tenant Services Overview Connie Godfrey, Director of Adult Services, presented an overview of the division's programs and initiatives [timestamp: 00:03:37]. **Programs Presented** The presentation covered several key service areas provided by the Adult Services division: - Emergency assistance programs - Relocation services - Burial assistance - Newtown Pike Extension Project **Discussion and Questions** Following the presentation, several participants engaged with the material. Stinnett, Kay, and Akers raised questions during the discussion period. A primary focus of the questions concerned coordination between Adult Services and a proposed homelessness office. Participants sought clarification on how these entities would work together and coordinate their efforts. Additionally, questions were raised regarding data on service recipients, with participants requesting information about who the division serves and the scope of its client base. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, providing the council or board with an update on Adult Services operations and programs. ## Social Services Needs Assessment Update Dr. Diane Roffler and student researchers from the University of Kentucky presented preliminary findings from a needs assessment examining barriers to self-sufficiency in Fayette County. The presentation was delivered by Dr. Roffler along with student researchers Emily Underwood, Alex Hoover, Rachel Ratliff, Josh Nadzen, and Evan Holcomb. [timestamp: 0:19:24] The research identified eight emerging themes related to barriers facing residents: * Poverty * Employment * Transportation * Housing * Health care * Mental health * Substance abuse * Language access The presentation provided an informational overview of the preliminary findings from the needs assessment. This item was presented for informational purposes rather than for discussion or decision-making. ## Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board Interlocal Agreement [timestamp: 1:08:01] Chief Administrative Officer Sally Hamilton presented the administration's recommendation to sign an interlocal agreement with the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board. **Discussion and Concerns** Council members raised several important considerations during the discussion: - The importance of becoming an active partner in the agreement - The need for proper representation at Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board meetings - Accountability mechanisms to ensure effective participation and oversight Council members Myers, Akers, and Kay participated in the discussion alongside CAO Hamilton. **Outcome** The interlocal agreement with the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board was approved. ## Committee Referral Items The committee discussed two referral items during this portion of the meeting [timestamp: 1:25:13]. **Items Discussed** The committee addressed referrals concerning a senior citizen center and workforce development initiatives. **Committee Actions** For the senior citizen center item, the committee voted to leave the matter in committee rather than advance it at this time. Regarding the workforce development item, the committee chose not to remove it from consideration. Members agreed to await further guidance from the administration before taking additional action. **Key Participants** The discussion involved committee members Ford, Myers, Kay, and Akers. **Outcome** Both referral items were deferred, with the senior citizen center remaining in committee and the workforce development item held pending administrative direction. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Approval of the March 19, 2013 committee summary - **Motion** — passed: Recommendation to sign the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board Interlocal Agreement - **Motion** — withdrawn: Motion to remove Workforce Investment and Training from committee referral items - **Motion** — passed: Motion to adjourn the meeting --- ## Full transcript Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, boy. Welcome to the April 30th meeting of the Council's Committee on Social Services and Community Development. I'll call the meeting to order. We have a packed agenda, so let's begin. The first item is the approval of the committee summary for March 19th. Is there a motion to approve the summary? Motion by Councilman Stinnett, second by Councilman Elliger. Any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. The motion passes. I'd like to welcome Commissioner Beth Mills to come to the podium. At our previous meeting, we didn't have the opportunity to hear from the Division of Adult Tenant Services, but we're glad that their director is here this morning. And, Commissioner, if you would provide introductions for us. Certainly. I really want to thank the council for this opportunity to committee. Council Member Ford and I have talked about there are a lot of programs offered in our division that you're going to get constituent calls about. And a lot of times they filter to my office, you all can't know everything possible. There's a handout for you all to keep in your office with your aides that Connie Godfrey provided. One of the programs that you will get the most calls about probably are the programs that Adult and Tenant Services handle. Basically, they do anti-poverty programs and subsidies for a lot of our public works programs. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce you to our Division Director of Adult Services, Connie Godfrey, and she's going to give you some detail on what goes on in adult and tenant services. Good morning. Thank you, Beth. And it is an honor to be here to talk about adult and tenant services. We have a magnitude of services that we do every day. So I'm going to attempt to let you know what we do on a daily basis there. I want to... Okay, my clicker. You have a clicker. You have a clicker. You have a clicker. You have a clicker. You have a clicker. You have a clicker. You have a clicker. It's a little one. It says little buttons down here. Okay. The small buttons. Okay, the small buttons. I see it's right. I see it's right. I hear that. I hear that. Oh, it's not cool. Oh, it's not going to have a PowerPoint? We do have a PowerPoint. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Well, take your time. We understand technology. Yes. It can be a challenge at times. And then I sent it on a phone call. I don't intend the services. I don't intend the services. Did you not bring it? I got one. Yeah, I got one. Did you bring the PowerPoint? Yeah, I sent the PowerPoint to Paul. Did you bring it on the stick? No. You don't have it? Okay, I can start talking. You have it? Electronically tuned to me. Committee members, Ms. Godfrey will just follow, and your agenda packet pages 5 through 13 can serve as the guidance. And I believe we're going to try to attempt to put some of the slides on overhead. So, Ms. Godfrey, we'll just proceed on. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. I'd like to talk about our mission statement first. We provide specialized social services program, a case management for eligible adults in the city. And we'd like to cooperate, collaborate with other agencies. Oh, there we go. Thank you. To empower our clients to maintain independence in the community. Oh, okay. All right. And let me go to the first program that we have. And the acronyms will be EFA, which is emergency assistance that we have at adult services. And this was an allocation of funds, and that was a merger between an ordinance given with Lexington and Fayette County in 1972, the merger of the counties, 1974. I'm sorry. And with that program, we help with rent and utilities. And if an individual has an interruption of income or a reduction of income or sick days or if you think their Social Security is decreased, any of those interruptions, we're able to help with services. Now, on this services, the individuals would sign a repayment plan, which they may pay $10 or $5 back a month, but it's not totally mandatory. But they feel like they're contributing if they are able to pay back. We also have the Land Fear Sewer Program. And that was an ordinance for low-income residents that we help provide with payment for landfill sewer. And if you see that 30%, 50% reduction in landfill sewer, I have on your handout, you have a key over there. when I say 30% or 105% of poverty, you will look at the income level on the side there. For one individual, it may be $16,000 that they will make a year in order to qualify. But I thought that would be a handy little key for you if you'd like to look at it. An additional program that we have is the hot water heater program. That is a wonderful program that we have with Office Depot. And we repair and replace water heaters if they are eligible for our program. Now, this is not a cost to urban county government. The only cost, thanks to council, is the $45 fee for the plumbers to install. So we have local plumbers that are volunteering to go to these homes and put in a hot water heater, which I thought was an excellent program. We also have the relocation program. Relocation assists individuals if our code enforcement condemns a place not the fault of the resident, but the fault of the landlord. and we provide deposit and the first month rent for those individuals because they were not at fault. We have two of those programs, and one is another program. It's the rezoning program for relocation, and that is for multiple units. It's no fault of the landlord, or if it's a rezoning that those individuals will have to move out. we will assist with that also. The ESG is the Emergency Assistance Grant, and that is for many homeless individuals that we're supplying help with. The first one is rapid rehousing. And those individuals that are currently homeless, those are individuals that are living in shelters, sleeping on the street, or in a place that is not fit for human habitation. We help with that. The other part is homeless prevention. Those are individuals that are living in an apartment, and there's a reduction of income. They're fleeing for domestic violence, and we're able to help with the security deposit, up to three months of rent, utilities. And that is a longer-term program to help individuals get on their feet. Because if you're coming out of a shelter, you don't have money for deposit or rent and so forth. So we're able to help with those. All those individuals do have employment when they come to us. Now, when I first came here, I came, I think I was director for a couple of days, and I was before you and talking about Newtown Pike. and that is one of, all of them are my favorites, but Newtown Pike is a wonderful program down on DeRody Street, and it's funded through the Federal Grants Program. And what we do, and I think many were not aware that we have a social worker stationed there to help these individuals to move to a home ownership type mentality. And we address different issues, such as personal challenges, financial education. There is an array of problems, such as substance abuse. We have that. Assist with employment, and we help with transportation. And just a gamut of case management that we help with these individuals because they are being displaced. and their neighborhood is being disrupted, and how do we keep them intact. So we're down there to help with that. On the back, we have the burial program, and I know we're in the process of letting the coroner take that over, but this year I'd ask for an increase because we're only budgeted $75,000 for burial. Now, as you see, each year from 2010 to 2013, that has increased. I've asked for $120,000 to help supplement that. But with the coroner taking that over, I think he can do it more appropriately with our funds. But what we were doing, how we sustained ourselves, we were borrowing from the EFA, basically borrowing from the living to assist with the incident burial. So with the coordinator taking this over, it would really assist us in doing that. I hope I explained it most appropriately to understand what we do, but that's what we do at Adult Intended Services. Those are where your services to help a person continues to be independent. And they're very stressed because, you know, if they don't have rent and utility money, how do they sustain themselves of an independent nature? I thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garver, for your presentation. Questions from council members? I think I see Council Member Lawless. I think I... Okay. Thanks, Council Member. Council Member, we're working with technology today, I tell you. It's a good start to the morning. Council Member Stinnett. Now that we're awake, I'm ready to go now. Just a couple things. One, and thank you for the work you do. Sometimes, at the end of the day, we have different divisions in the government, but arguably you're probably one of the most important front-of-the-line defenses for our community, and so thank you for the work you and your staff do. A couple of questions. In this budget, you mentioned one change with the coroner on the burial issue, and hopefully that will help you all as well. But the other change is to create an office for homelessness. How will your emergency shelter grant program work with that or merge into that new office and be administered by that office? Have you all had discussions on how that will work? I have not had discussions on that. But we would be happy to assist with that. But I haven't had any discussion on it. Okay, and I'm just curious on how those monies will flow with the homelessness prevention and the rapid rehousing. Excuse me? The rapid rehousing, how will that play into that department? Will that department oversee that going forward? Still, I'm not for sure. Now, what we have done with this database that we have to enter into, and we're working with that, which is called HMIS. And all the agencies that are here that has this ESG fund work in collaboration with that. But I'm sure any agency that is out there, I'm open to working with them with that. Yeah, I was just trying to see how a new office in government would work with your office and how that's going to happen. Oh, it will work 100% with us. So you'll still keep that under your umbrella? Yes, it will be under our umbrella. We won't relinquish that. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair. Again, thank you for the presentation. I had a question about the same programs. You may not have this off the top of your head, but I think it would be useful for council to know at this point, both for rapid rehousing and for the homeless prevention, the numbers in the past year or two, maybe a couple of years, numbers of people that have been served and the actual funds spent. Well, when I came along and I looked at that too and I thought I brought it with me because those are important questions and I thank you for that. We're looking at, from last year, we served about 55 to 60 families with the monies that we have. And we have, we were given $31,000 for the rapid rehousing. There was another $54,000 for prevention off the top of my head. So don't hold me to those numbers concretely. But you're looking at around 55 to 65 families that we are helping at this time. And were there people who were either eligible or who applied for the assistance who you were not able to provide their assistance to? Yes, that's what worked so wonderful. Those people that were not eligible for the rapid rehousing, we look at FBFA, and they fall under that category. And we're able to help most of the time with that because it's not as so stringent as the 8 HUD funding for ESG. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Kay. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. On the Newtown Pike Extension Project, it says that it's funded through a federal grant. Does that mean that the social worker position is funded also through the federal grant? Yes. Yes, it is. And where exactly is that social worker? Their house is at the Carver Center that we're renovating, but she's there. So we like to embed her in the neighborhood so that it has ease accessibility to her office, and she has ease accessibility to them. And how long will that position be funded, or do you know how long the grant? We have about two and a half to three more years, which goes with the time frame of the project being completed. Okay. Okay. And who, I guess, is there an administrator that oversees that project, or is it just a social worker? Would it be Beth or Commissioner Mills? I'm the one that directly oversees her. Okay. With that, she's under the auspices of Adult and Tenant Services. Okay. All right. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you, Council Member Akers. Ms. Godfrey, we appreciate you coming and sharing and your patience from the last meeting. Council members, again, this was just to highlight one of the three divisions under the Department of Social Services. I'm certain that if you guys have any additional questions, Ms. Godford would be willing to talk with us. Yes, I left my telephone number so that you can take that sheet with you so you can call me at any time. I'd be happy to. Okay. Thanks, Ms. Godford. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Council members, next on our agenda is the Social Service Needs Assessment. I would like to invite to the podium Dr. Diane Roffler of the University of Kentucky College of Social Work to introduce us and introduce those that are here. Welcome. All right. Thank you so much, and thanks for having us today. It's a great pleasure for me to be here today to introduce to you our student research team, and they're going to talk with you about the ongoing process that we're engaged in in the understanding the barriers to self-sufficiency in Fayette County. We presented to you all last December and updated you on the first phase. We'll give you some reminders about what we did then and tell you what we've been doing since then and how we plan to finish up the project in the coming months. So it's been an exciting project, and really I just want to give you a heartfelt thanks for giving our students the opportunity to be engaged in this process. It's been really fun to see how much they've learned about local government, nonprofit organizations, and community engagement. It's been, I've worked with so many students all year, and I'm really proud of their work. So I'm going to turn it over to the students to get started. Good morning. My name is Emily Underwood. I'm a graduating senior in the College of Social Work at University of Kentucky. And first of all, I want to go ahead and introduce our team. The graduate students that we have on our team are Faith Calhoun, Evan Holcomb, Josh Nadzem, Rachel Ratliff, and Monica Whitlock. And then our undergraduate representatives are Sarah Duffy, Alex Hoover, who's right over here, and myself. Our academic and LFUCG advisors on this project are Dr. Loeffler from the College of Social Work, Jenny Wilson, and Heath Rico from the Martin School, and Commissioner Beth Mills and Craig Benton. So to give you guys kind of some background for anybody who wasn't here, LFUCG has funded partner social service agencies in Lexington for over 30 years. And for this project, they contracted the College of Social Work and the Martin School of Public Policy to get a better understanding of social service needs in Lexington. The goal of this project was to provide you all with comprehensive information about the barriers to self-sufficiency in Lexington so that you guys can continue to make good policy and funding decisions about social services in the area. Good morning. Like Emily introduced me, my name is Alex Hoover, and I'm a junior with the College of Social Work. I'm going to provide a little bit of background information from Phase 1 of our project, which took place last fall. We began with the creation of our interview tool, and then we then interviewed the 21 currently funded partner agencies. The 21 partner agency interviews provided us with a comprehensive list of social service needs in Fayette County. And this list before you is just a reminder of what was presented in December. And you will also see a lot of overlay with what we present today. Good morning. I'm Rachel Ratliff, and I'm a graduating senior from the graduate program at the University of Kentucky. So one of the first things that we wanted to do is kind of let you know how our spring semester rolled out. After we completed the 21 funded partner agencies interviews in the fall, we were given a list of approximately 70 other key stakeholders in Fayette County that provide social services on a regular ongoing basis, whether they're working with homeless, clothing, food, shelter, all of those types of things. Because we wanted a very broad assessment of Fayette County. We just didn't want to go on the 21 partner agencies that you guys were able to fund. We really wanted to look at it. So what we did was we had completed 55 key stakeholder interviews, and we asked them questions about their programs, their clientele, as well as Lexington and Fayette County on a very broad range. So we did not want them to have a narrow focus on Fayette County. and some of the people that we interviewed throughout this semester are provided up here on this slide. We talked to child care providers. We talked to first responders. We talked to police, fire, EMS, detectives, of course social services because social services does provide a lot of services here in Fayette County. We also included family resource and youth service centers because who else has a better pulse on what's happening with our children and our families here in Fayette County? Fayette County, other than the people who care for our children every day. We included religious leaders, mental health, substance abuse community centers. We really tried to touch every pulse that we possibly could in Fayette County during our interviews. So just to recap how we did this, out of 70 identified potential key stakeholders, our team was able to complete 55 interviews with different key stakeholders in Fayette County. Each one of us completed about seven or eight on average. Interviews took anywhere from about 45 minutes to an hour and a half. We recorded those notes by hand because we wanted it to be a very intimate, very relaxed kind of conversation. We felt like people may give us a little bit more information if we weren't very sterile in our approach with them. So through that, this student research team has provided 110 hours of direct interview and information gathering on the services in Fayette County just in the spring 2013 semester alone. So as you can see, these students have put a lot of work in. In addition to those interviews, we've had team meetings throughout the semester. We created the interview tool, which you have in front of you there, that we used with the key stakeholders. We had lots of ongoing meetings about the themes that emerged and what was going on in the process. So they've worked really hard this semester. Where we are right now is that we have started the preliminary data analysis with those 55 interviews. So as Rachel indicated, the students took notes, really copious notes during the interview process, came back and uploaded their notes to our database. And we're in the process of coding and summarizing these notes, organizing, understanding the themes and how those themes are interrelated. What we're going to present today is the emerging themes that we see coming out of the preliminary analysis. And then what we're going to do as we move forward in May and June is do a deeper read-through and coding of those themes and do some qualitative data analysis with those 55 interviews. And so we'll further sort and summarize those and be able to give you more detailed information about those as we move forward with this process. But again, these students have worked exceptionally hard. The next two students are going to tell you about the themes that have emerged, those eight themes that have started to emerge in the report. Good morning. My name is Josh Nadzen. I'm a MSW student in the College of Social Work. And next, as Dr. Leffler said, we're going to present to you our preliminary findings of the themes that we found after looking at all of our interviews. Basically what we did is we examined every interview, we scrutinized all of them, and tried to pull out some major themes. We broke it down into eight themes, and on this slide there's three, then on the next slide there's going to be three, and then on the next slide there's going to be two. So the themes on this slide were poverty, employment, and transportation, and then underneath are some subheadings that each of the interviewees described to us or some of the challenges that they found. One in particular that constantly came up was transportation. It seemed like no matter who the interviewee was or what kind of social service they provided, it seemed like transportation was something that came up no matter what the client was trying to obtain. But again, I want to stress that these themes, they're not in any particular order or anything like that. They're just more, pretty much all equal to each other. And then three of the other themes are housing, health care, and mental health. One of the things we noticed was that all of these themes and all of these issues all are interrelated to each other. There's none that take precedence over one another. But it was, no matter who we were interviewing, this is what came up. and one of the things that I thought was really impressive was the interviews were very impartial so I could really tell they were genuinely concerned about the needs of Fayette County as a whole rather than just trying to campaign for their particular service because at first we would ask them, can you tell us a little bit about your social service, the services you provide, and then can you also tell us about Fayette County as a whole. So I could really tell that they understood that this wasn't about funding, that we were strictly objective, that we weren't trying to raise funding for anybody. We were just trying to be as impartial as possible. So I thought that was really important. And one thing we even tried to clear up, this came up a couple times, is there's a little bit of confusion. Some people thought that we were asking, what does LFUCG, Department of Social Services, do? But then we stressed that this is Fayette County as a whole, as in the entire community, not just Fayette County government. Hello, my name is Evan Holcomb. I'm completing my first year with the University of Kentucky's College of Social Workmasters program. The final two themes emerging from this needs assessment was first, addresses the barriers individuals face when seeking substance abuse programs. And for instance, because of the lack of transportation or the distance in the location of these services. Furthermore, in terms of substance abuse as a concomitant issue to mental health services, we can see how these barriers are related. The last theme pertains to the increasing presence of individuals with English as a second language. This is understood concretely by the existence of over 90 different languages that are represented in Lexington alone. On a professional level, we notice that we are continuing need for cultural competence and for the awareness of diverse needs for this diverse population. These findings magnify the potential for a single subgroup within the entire population to experience each of these eight barriers as they seek social services or services in general. What emerges then is a complex interconnectedness between these identified barriers indicated by the presence amongst the different stakeholders that we interviewed. At a basic level, these can be attributed to the increasing poverty rate, as well as a general decrease in the funds available to these services. However, we notice that on a local level, these individuals that are seeking services are blocked by the dispersion of providers over a large geographic area, or of information that is confusing in a system that is difficult to navigate. Thank you. So as we move forward with our analysis, I'm going to tell you what's coming up next. As I stated before, this summer we're going to continue to look at this data and analyze these emerging themes. I have the pleasure of two of my social work students continuing with me over the summer. Emily Underwood, who graduates on May 5th as an undergraduate, will continue with me as a graduate student in the summer term. And Ronica Whitlock will continue as a graduate student in the summer. So we'll work on this qualitative analysis piece and we'll work in partnership with the Martin School. The Martin School is taking on a lot of work this summer, a really impressive plan for what they're going to do. Dr. Wilson and Heath Rico are going to lead their team, and they have students who are working with them on three separate projects that they're working on as a part of their internship project. They do 400 hours for their internship, and they'll also use some of this towards their Capstone Master's project. So they'll do a data inventory. Elva Zhao and Ellie Song will be working to use existing data, be that the census POMS data or existing reports generated, things that we have access to like the health department's five-year assessment plan, things like that. We're going to engage in a quantitative survey of social service providers in Fayette County. We're using GuideStar to create a convenient sample, and Ellie Song is going to be working on that part. And Dr. Wilson and Heath Rico are working on a spatial analysis. They're doing some mapping and have already started that process to do some mapping and visual representation of what we see here in Fayette County. So a brief note about the survey that we're going to be using. We're using GuideStar, and I wanted to give you a little background about what GuideStar is. There's just a quote from GuideStar's website. That's their mission statement. So GuideStar gives us access to all the IRS-registered nonprofits. Our Social Work students have culled through those service providers in Fayette County and have generated a list of about 400 service providers that are nonprofit social service providers, We're going to send out a survey to those social service providers to access more information to complement these qualitative interviews and those key stakeholder interviews that we did last fall. So you can see we're really trying to do a comprehensive assessment and understand the needs in Fayette County. We'll continue to ask those same questions. What are the barriers that you face in your agency? What do you think the barriers to self-sufficiency are in Fayette County as a whole? And again, I think we're going to continue to see some of the same themes that have emerged thus far. So looking ahead, in about October of 2013, we'll have a combined report from the Martin School and the College of Social Work. And what we hope that we give you is a really comprehensive assessment of the needs in Fayette County related to self-sufficiency. If we take and we think about the child poverty rate in Fayette County, it's 19.1% right now. The overall poverty rate in Fayette County is 17.9% right now. I was looking last night at where we rank amongst all the counties in Kentucky, and we're not among the wealthiest counties in Kentucky. We certainly have some challenges that we face, and again, in this budget climate, both federal and state, with a competition for services. What we want to do is provide you with the most comprehensive data so that when you're charged with those policy tasks of deciding where social service funds are allocated, you can do so with a wealth of information that our students have put together for you. So, again, I can't stress how proud I am of these students for the process that they've engaged in and the learning that they've done and the professional way that they've conducted these interviews and have taken this on as a real job. They're a really wonderful representation of our university. So at this point, we'll entertain any questions that you all have. Thank you, Dr. Lauffler. And thank you for your students. for providing this information council member k thank you chair and thank you all for all the hard work that's gone into this and i'm waiting with great anticipation the final results i do have a question and this really is more for the commissioner than for you if i can ask commissioner Mills, not to oversimplify or cut to the chase, but my understanding is that the reason we're doing all of this is so that council, when it begins to look at the many requests that are made of us for support, will have not only data, but a beginning sense of how that data actually impacts our decision. And so my question really is whether we can expect that your office will take that data and will generate a starting place for looking at priorities. And I'll just say one other thing before you. Because I ask the question because I don't believe that council as a body is in a position to make that preliminary determination. We have to make the final determination. Sure. But I, as one council member, would be looking for a refinement to the application process that reflects that data, a recommendation to council about how to use that data then to make basically qualitative decisions about the various categories of funding. So if all that makes sense, what are you thinking about? I think we would probably give you all some scenarios to choose from. Those of you who have sat on the committees where we've decided funding, and some of you all have done that, we usually come in with five or six scenarios and say these are some options that you can look at. And we give council that starting place to grapple with, because ultimately it is your policy decision, but we understand it's a lot of information to synthesize. So I would assume that Craig Benz and I will probably sit down with Dr. Wilson's team and Dr. Lefter's team, or at least with them, see what we're looking at, and we will come up with three or four different scenarios, bring them to you all as a starting point. You may choose one. You may do a combination of one or two. The challenge that we have is we always do the application for partner agency funding in October. They're due in January. So if we don't move those deadlines, we may have to start this process in August. If we want to wait until both of these parties are together, we may have to move the partner agency, which is going to give them a shorter time to get the applications in. So there's a lot of moving parts to this thing because of the timing. But in reality, we're not going to have the final product until October for you all to grapple with. So those are some decisions that you all are going to have to make. So in one possible scenario about our process, process, it may be that we don't have sufficient information in a timely enough fashion to change the process for the coming year. What would be fiscal year 15. Is that correct? Possibly. I think what we need to do is look and see what we have in August when we get the report back from the Martin School. We may have enough at that point to make a conjecture for the coming year. Of course, it can be changed from year to year. I would like to have something that stays in place for quite a few, I mean, at least three to five years, though, to keep the moving target from running around with agencies. So I think what we may have to do is have some special call meetings, but we'll have to see what we have in August, really, Council Member Kay. I just don't know. Okay, just one more comment, if I may, and that is that while I think scenarios, a few may be helpful, I would also be looking for your judgment about which of those you think is really the one we ought to be relying on, and I hope you'll be willing to do that. I will certainly be glad to give you a recommendation for you all to deal with. I would like to say, first of all, and I would like to say this, just because I am so proud of this process, I want the council to remember how much money we sometimes pay for consultants outside of Lexington to do this kind of work. Needs assessments are extremely expensive, and there's this old saying that experts come from 50 miles away with a suitcase. case. And I think these professors and these students have given us a very quality project at a very inexpensive price. And in addition, it's been a great learning experience for them. So I'm glad it took us a while to get to this path, but I'm so glad that we chose to do that. And if I can, I said one more, I'll do one more. And that is that I think it's a great example of the way in which our government and the university can collaborate to the mutual benefit and I wish we were doing more. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Commissioner Mills. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner, thank you so much for your leadership here. Dr. Reffner and Dr. Wilson, excellent, excellent work. And as a graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Social Work, I'm thrilled and excited at this partnership. And it's long overdue. You guys have so many resources. Both of these colleges and schools at the university have so many resources that our community and our government can rely on and I thank you so much for what you're doing here. First I'd like to say thank you so much for listening because it's clear in your presentation that you're taking input from everybody, even this committee and one of the things that I thought was very important that you guys do was interview the FRC coordinators because of the wealth of knowledge that they have and my wife is one full disclosure and um i you know i hear so many of the needs that they deal with on a daily basis my mom's best friend is one as well so i'm always in in the loop on what's going on so they have a vast amount of information and you guys have that now in your in your portfolio so that's awesome i also want to say that commissioner made an excellent point about consultants and how much we pay them and you remember i was the one who was saying adamantly the students need to be paid for the work that they do because they are providing a value to this government and this community that we would otherwise have to pay for if we got. And it's my understanding, I think, that they are getting some stipend because it wasn't originally set up that way, but some changes are made, and so they are getting some type of a stipend. We were able to take the stipend that was for a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Social Work when we didn't have a Ph.D. candidate to come in and fill those shoes this spring semester. and divide that within the college amongst three of the graduate students. So we were able to provide a little bit. I'll get up on my soapbox and tell you all that it would be great to see more of this kind of relationship between urban county government and the College of Social Work and the Martin School. The Martin School, they are able to pay most of their students for internships, and you all want to get those students and use them and use their knowledge and their wealth of knowledge and the Social Work students. So, you know, we would be glad to have an ongoing conversation with you all about other projects that could, you know, follow in the footsteps of this one. Absolutely, and build on the success that you have here. One of the other things I'd like to make a point of is the commissioner, when she talked about the consultants, also, and Dr. Kay also alluded to that, One of the goals that I hoped that we would get and gain from this whole process is that at the end of the day, there is something that informs this council and administration on why we need to put more money into partner agencies in funding these kinds of programs and services. And it's my hope that what we end up eventually with is some type of formula. I don't know how the best way to do it is, but that's a part of the discussion we need to have when you get your work done this first year. is that we as a government come up with a formula that says based on our general fund dollars, we need to factor in the work that needs to be done and then a percentage of the budget or whatever. I'm not sure how we do that, but I'm looking for a way that we can come up with an analytical way of looking at how much funding we need to provide for these programs and services and how we continue to do that on a regular basis. And there's one other thing I was going to say. oh also Commissioner as you look at this and you're going to make a recommendation to us this first year I'm all for moving the timelines around so you can do that in the best way possible and want to give you all the leniency to do that but also can you take into effect what we used to call the Katrina effect and if there's never going to be enough money but if there's something that you guys see in your data and in your interviews coming down the pike that we really need to get out in front of and address that maybe that's something you come to the council administrative with that says, we need to do these things over here, but we've got this other thing that's coming down the pike. And whether that's working with seniors, we've got 10,000 seniors retiring per day, baby boomers retiring a day across the country. But we need to put this other pot of money aside and invest in this Katrina-type situation that's happening and then also not take away from the other work that we need to continue to do. So the analytics behind this are going to be fantastic. Thank you, students. Thank you, doctors, for the work you're doing. Thank you, Commissioner, for your leadership. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. And Council Member Myers, I recall you being one of the lead supporters for this type of innovative partnership. So thank you for your leadership. And from one social work alum to another, I'll go to Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Yes, as a also graduate of the bachelor's and master's program at UK, I just want to commend Dr. Leffler and Commissioner Mills and all of the students as well as the Martin School for this great qualitative and quantitative research. And when I was in the graduate program, there weren't a lot of students who were interested in research and policy. And so I'm really excited to see that there are upcoming generations who understand the importance of policy work and how it really does trickle down to every client that is served in the direct level of social work. I guess, Dr. Leffa, I'll start with a question. And you mentioned that following this collection of the qualitative data that you all will later use census data and local reports. And so I wondered if you have looked yet at the census data at all. First, I'll ask that. Not specific to this project, but the Barton School students are going to use the PUMS data and really look at community data for Lexington and overlay that on the qualitative data. So we'll hear about that from their presentation in August. And that's where I was going. I saw that one of the emerging themes was increased poverty and increased child poverty and those kinds of, I guess, probably qualitative statements. And so I just wondered if the census data for local communities matches with those feelings or sentiments. We know child poverty is on the rise, so we can quantitatively look at that. So we'll have to look and see how those match up qualitative and quantitative. And Commissioner Mills, if the applications, and maybe I may have misheard, but if the partner agency applications are due in October, then could we use the findings from the needs assessment to make the funding decisions when they come about in January, is that what you say? They're not really due in October. We have a mandatory pre-application meeting. And if you want to apply, you have to come to that meeting. You miss that meeting, you're not allowed to apply. And we try to give people a lot of notice. So we have traditionally done that meeting in mid-October. And at that point, they first get the application. They get the instructions, and we tell them what priorities are going to be funded. So we give them all of that. Oh, I see. And then they have until January to get it to us, which is fabulous, because in most federal government, you know, you get a two-week deadline to get a grant in. We have been giving them three months. So if we want to spend some more time on giving the information on the front end, they're going to have a shorter deadline to turn around. The January deadline is harder to move because the mayor's proposed budget comes to everyone in April. Right. And we have to have reviews. So I think we have to stick with January, but we may have difficulty giving agencies three months this year. I think that's something that you all can help give us direction on. Okay. And one last thought. I also want to, again, like you said, it's excellent that we have this resource here locally and that we don't have to hire outside consultants. We don't have to spend $50,000 or $200,000. I don't know how much they cost, but a lot of money for people to come in from the outside and tell us what we need here in Lexington. And so as someone told me a long time ago that if the problem is in the community, then the answer is also in the community. So yay to all of you for helping do this work, and especially the underpaid social work students. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Akers. Council Member Lawless. It was on purpose that time. I don't know what's... Okay, I'll try it again. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Wilson and the Martin School. I got an undergraduate degree from UK's College of Business and Economics back in the olden days and a master's from UK's Social Work. So thank you all. One of the things that, and I so appreciate all the work you all have done and Council Member Myers for being the engine that drove this train, and all my colleagues and all the social workers on council get put on this committee. One of the things that I find a little bit disconcerting with the process is the requests for new and innovative programs. And my experience as the CEO of Executive Director of a nonprofit agency and grant writer for 30 years or something, is that we would constantly, there would be proposals out there for new and innovative programs, But then there's no follow-up, and that money isn't available to sustain the programs that are already essential to those agencies, to the community, those services. So if there's some way to balance that, as well as looking at oftentimes the grants that are out there, federal or state or other communities, their match grant, they don't pay any administration. I know we're looking at funding programs, but if you have a federal grant for, you know, $300,000 and they won't pay any administrative costs, the only way to do that, there are very few places you can get administrative match grants for those kinds of programs. So that's money that leaves the community unless they can do private fundraising, which is, of course, in these times very difficult and more difficult for some people than others, you know, depending on what the issue is. So I wonder if in this process we could factor in, how can we sustain the programs that we have deemed important and the data backs up that they're appropriate and much needed and effective without constantly saying, let's add a new program that's innovative and we'll fund those and leave the others hanging on a limb. Are you following me? I think so. And, you know, again, we can't make those determines about what gets funded as the committee. But I think what we can, Dr. Wilson and I had a conversation just Friday, and one of the things that we talked about, including in this survey of the service providers, was not only asking what are the greatest needs in Fayette County, but tell us concretely about the needs that your agency faces. So some data may come out of that that's helpful to understand what do our service providers need in Fayette County, particularly our small nonprofit service providers. I think you have a wealth of experience with fundraising and development and program management. You understand those challenges. And so to hear that from the respondents to the survey will provide another layer, I think, as we look at this as a really multidimensional project to help us understand what nonprofit service providers need to sustain their services. So that may help get at some of that. Thank you very much. And I think maybe if, Dr. Wilson, do you have something else to add to that? I only have 38 seconds, so would that be okay? Oh, yes. That's fine, Council Member Law. I'm Jenny Wilson from the Martin School, and I really appreciate the council and the College of Social Work for including us in this study. And I think just to respond to your question, one of as we design the survey instrument to go out to this broader range of social service agencies, what we also hope to ask them is if they have ideas about ways in which city government can help them in non-monetary ways. So it's not just about giving them money to do things, but as they look to empower individuals to become self-sufficient, we'd like to understand if they have ideas that the council can help empower the agencies to deliver services. Transportation was an issue that arose, and are there coordination functions that local government can develop or continue to provide for the agencies themselves so that they can be more effective and efficient with the money that you give them? And so I hope we won't only be thinking about funding decisions, but also about other kinds of support that government can give. Awesome, Dr. Wilson. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. Council Member Mars. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Wilson and Dr. Leffner, if both of you could come up for just a second. And I want to follow with what Council Member Lawless was saying. And I think that we'd really be remiss if we didn't take this to the next step. And I realize that when we first got this process started, you guys are giving us raw data, and you're not going to make recommendations for funding. I realize that. But if we were to go back to what the commissioner said. Commissioner, could you come up also? When the commissioner talked about consultants, if we hired a consultant to do this work, we would more than likely ask that consultant also to give us some advice on what we need to do moving forward. And Dr. Wilson, you just made that comment about how can the government help the agencies help the people that they help. I think that's something we would ask as a consultant, if that makes sense. And I realize we didn't ask that of you. What I'm saying is, can we include in this scope sort of a 30,000-foot evaluation to help the commissioner bring something to us that says this might be some type of new structure that you implement moving forward? And I talked a minute ago about the Katrina effect. I want this community and this government to get their hands around the fact that we're not spending enough money in this area. We're just not. And there are some things that we might be able to do to really move the needle for a whole lot of folks if we get out of the box that we've been in for all these years and look at a new way to do it. Commissioner? We have certainly had those discussions already, and there are a lot of community service providers. I have this grand notion, and I don't even know if this is the place to announce it, but... Sure it is. Suppose we decide to fund substance abuse, and you cannot apply for substance abuse funding or programs unless you apply with three other agencies. Then we have four agencies that are addressing substance abuse, and this one's going to do this part, and this one's going to do that part, and this one's going to do this part. There's nothing that will make people collaborate more than sharing a pot of money. It's very practical. That's one thing that I have always thought of. I don't know how in reality we may be able to get there. But I'm assuming that's the kind of thing you're talking about. Or you may have categories. We could have funding and services for new agencies, funding and services for existing agencies and 5% for emergency needs as they come up. That's another scenario. These were the kind of things I was thinking about with the data we have. But I think collaboration is going to be the name of the game, this idea that agencies are competing for funds, and how do you compare services for children against services for aides against services for seniors? You cannot do that. That's right. and we are not going to make good use of our money until we get past this idea that we're funding agencies, that we're funding problems and programs, and we have to get there. It's hard. It's a very hard thing to do, and it's a new idea, but I think that should be the focus of the council if it were my recommendation to you all. And I think that if we have our two outside partners sort of bring a little bit of framework around that, then it helps you make your point to us, and it helps us take the point, because at the end of the day, that framework will help us then have that conversation about how much money do we really need to start putting towards these issues. And I will say as long as it's in their scope of work, because this is a small RFP, and if it's going to cause an additional work, then we need to do an addendum and pay for those services, just like we would any consultant. Absolutely. And we had a consultant who came back not long ago and got another $9,000 for a minuscule piece of work they did. That's right. So absolutely, and if that's what it takes, I would love to see that happen, and I will carry the water with my colleagues to get you the money to be able to do that. Because I really think that's the real strength and value of this, not just a stopper. We all said this was sort of a jumping-off point, and then what do we gain from that and how do we move forward. And I would also like to see that we include in that a stipend for our students. Thank you. I will shut down now. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. If I could just follow up to Council Member Myers. I think what I hope that we bring from the academic side is that we can help to make this translation from the academy to practice. We talk a lot about translational research and translational science, and I want to see that what we can do is help inform what's being done with the innovations that are being vetted and written about and understood from the academic side so we can bring those resources and share those and create a dialogue with you all about what's going to work best and what are some of the things that are proven to work and what doesn't work. And I think one of the things that's going to come up over and over again is that we're going to find that there are more agencies asking for more funding to deal with more complicated problems. And so as this group of council members, I just really charge you to think about what that means to us and where our resources need to go in Fayette County and how we need to make sure that we are looking at those barriers to self-sufficiency and using our resources wisely and allocating more resources as needed. If I could say just one thing, I know my time is up, but all of this will help us get to that point of being able to say, if we change the way we're doing this, these outcomes will change along with that, which then allows us to stand on why we're putting more money into it. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair. I've got, I think, a couple of comments, but the first one is a little bit irreverent, but I can't resist telling a little story about some work I did as one of those professionals who came from a little bit away. But I was working with a set of state agencies about 15 years ago on a program called Impact, which provides wraparound services for children with severe emotional disturbances, and that involved helping them develop a way to collaborate among social services and the courts and mental health and so on and so on and so on. So we were struggling in the early phase of that, and one of the participants came up to me at the end of a meeting. She said, I finally figured it out. I know exactly how to describe collaboration. It's an unnatural act among consenting adults. so it's not easy but there's a big payoff with collaboration but um it's not always easy to do um on a more serious note uh getting back to council member lawless's comment um and some other concerns that have been expressed i believe the council has um made a policy decision that we are not now in the business of funding agencies for their ongoing work. What we are in the business of funding is innovative programs and projects that move that work forward. Now, we're beginning, I think, to see the results of that policy, and we may find that it's not completely adequate to meet the needs that we see in the community. But I think the Council has, and this would be a good conversation to have in this committee, has an obligation to look at that and make some decisions because we can either continue what we're doing, which does have some negative impact on operations in a certain sense. We can change the application so that it reflects more points for ongoing work of any agency, or we could split our funding in two parts and we can say we're going to do an analysis of existing agencies and how effective they are, and we're going to make some allocation of funds based on that, and we're going to fund innovative programs. But those are, I think, policy questions for Council. This data will help us a lot to make those policy decisions. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Kaye. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Just one follow-up question that I thought about as you all answered Council Member Lawless's question. Of the 400 nonprofits that are registered with the IRS on GodStar that you found, did you look at or do you plan to look at agencies whose services overlap and provide any recommendations pertaining to potential duplication of services or if that exists in Fayette County, as I imagine it probably does? Well, what we're going to do with the 400 agencies, These are all nonprofit agencies, private nonprofit agencies that file reports with the IRS. We want to learn about those agencies to see what they're doing. I'm sure many of their services do overlap, but they're free to do what they want to do because they're largely self-funded. We want to bring that information to Council and let the Council take that into account as they decide funding for partner agencies. And again, I think my background was working with the General Assembly and with the budget process there. And of course, the Budget Chair always said if you had them by the budget, their hearts and minds would follow. And I think that the point is that the Commissioner and the Council can choose to change the priority and the working arrangements of agencies as they choose how to allocate funds. And I think going back to Council Member Meyer's point that what role we would try to provide for you, we cannot tell you what the needs are because needs are value-based decisions. You know, I really need a new car. I'd like to have a convertible. I really need one. But needs, so you have to make value judgments about needs. What we want to do is bring you information about the various types of reasons that people can't seem to function themselves, themselves, whether that be, in the case of the rape crisis center, whether that be violent crime that's perpetrated on them and they may need short or long-term assistance to get back to a self-sufficient functioning, normal life. It could be poverty, it could be health issues, it could be age. We want to help you understand all of those systems, but you have to decide where you want to go. If you decide what your priorities are, I hope that the information we provide for you will let you choose your route, how to get there best, but we can't help you decide where to go. I just think, and maybe it's not part of the report, and if it's not, it's not, but I think it would be helpful going forward for us to know, especially with starting potentially a proposed office on homelessness, how many agencies in Fayette County are providing housing services? How many are providing food? How many are providing child care assistance? How many are, you know, so that we kind of understand there's 17 that are providing housing. Well, how can we maybe streamline that process or connect those different agencies to be more efficient and to be more financially efficient? To the extent that the agencies choose to respond to our survey, of course, it will be voluntary. And it's randomized, correct? No, we're going to do it's actually a population. We're trying to identify all the agencies that are listed with the IRS, and we want to contact all of them and elicit their information. To the extent that they provide that information to us, we will summarize it and certainly categorize responses according to what kinds of services they deliver, what kinds of clients they encounter and where they fit according to their own image. Then we also are going to attempt to elicit their opinions about how government, how local government, how the Urban County Council can help them move forward to deliver those services. And, again, to see if we get the same kind of information about these barriers, the transportation, substance abuse, language, are they encountering those same kinds of problems? Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Akers. Thank you guys for your report. For Dr. Loeffler and Dr. Wilson and Commissioner, thank you for representing our government in this partnership. We look forward to the final report that will come this fall. And I just want to say on behalf of the committee how impressive the students, the scholars, and hopefully in some cases future practitioners were. And we value what you guys have done and what you will continue to do. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Committee members, the final item on our agenda is the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board Interlocal Agreement. I will invite CAO Hamilton to the podium. And as she comes, I will just segue. This is an issue that I asked to be studied in committee, I believe, dating back to last fall. And since that time, we've had presentation several times in regards to the Workforce Investment Board. And at our last meeting, we asked Sally to bring us back information on the perspective of the administration. And so Sally, welcome, and tell us what you found. Thank you. As you said, at the last meeting, the request was to talk and give you a recommendation of whether we should sign this agreement or not. since quite a bit of time had passed. What we did was I had, we asked Commissioner Beth Mills of the Workforce Department to come over and talk to us. And, excuse me, not Beth Mills, thank you. Got my best from, Beth Brindley. And she did, and we had an excellent conversation with her, and she basically confirmed most of the things that Daryl Smith had said at the last meeting. And that is the real crux was that there is no set aside of money anymore since the federal law was changed. And she didn't come out and make any recommendations, but of course she left with, I've known her for years with, you ought to sign this agreement and move on. we then went with the mayor Kevin Atkins and myself over to the Bluegrass ad and they requested the meeting with the mayor and the executive committee there was with Daryl Smith to talk about this agreement and to urge the mayor to sign this agreement at that meeting we left with just saying that thank you for a great conversation, which we did have, and that we would come back and then talk to council about this. It is our recommendation that we sign this agreement. It has been a long time. We need to become an active player in this in order to really get our share. And I'm going to give you just my opinion and what I advise the mayor. We're not going to get anywhere sitting in the corner. We need to get back at this table and proceed. So our recommendation is going to be to sign, and we are going to present that to Council by blue-sheeting that agreement immediately. But I did not want to do that until we came here today and sort of told you what our findings were. I think the meeting we have with the Executive Committee of the ADD and the Mayor and Kevin, And I think Kevin just, if you don't agree with anything I'd say, just stay back there. But I think they got, we had a really very good meeting. And they wanted us to take part. They wanted us to come to the table with them. It was a very inviting and positive meeting. And that was our results. Thank you, Sally, for that. I have some questions. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, CAO Sally. I'm used to calling you Commissioner Sally. I like that better, the way it sounds and rolls off. Thank you for coming forward with the recommendation. When I spoke last time about this and said that we need to either sign it or not sign it, but we needed to make the decision, I think you hit the nail on the head. But what's important to me is not necessarily this agreement. If everybody had to sign the same exact agreement and it can't be modified, that's fine. But the real work, as I said, now that the AG has made his determination that they cannot do anything in our community or any other community without this government first initiating it, that to me, when you talk about becoming an active player, is what's important. Sign the agreement, move on from that, but then we become an active player. We begin to go to those meetings and vote. we begin to express the needs and concerns of Fayette County, and we need to put forth a vision to these groups, whether it be the web board or the ad, on what we want them to do for us and how we want the resources that they have that belong to this community utilized in this community. So my hope is that this is just the starting point and that once the agreement's signed, then we become an active player, and whether it's this committee or economic development folks, whoever it is, we start attending those meetings and we start saying, this is what we want you to do for our people in this community. So my question would be, after we sign this, what is the next step and how do we do that? And will the mayor be attending the meetings or will he send a proxy that can vote? Because I think in the past we've sent someone to the meetings, but they haven't allowed that person to vote. Is that? Kevin, I'm going to sort of talk about two meetings here in just a minute. But first of all, Commissioner Mills and I are going to make an appointment with Jennifer Compton to talk about, we need to talk at the staff level about what kind of role we can play at that level and really to get our foot in the door. Kevin Atkins, of course, is the mayor's representative on Bluegrass Ads Board. But I intend to go to the WIB meetings along with Commissioner Mills. I think it would be good for us to attend and our presence to be there. So we intend to do that. Can I ask a question real quick, Mr. Atkins? are you going to be the mayor's proxy can you vote, do they allow you to vote in those executive meetings right now? That's actually one of the things that came Council Member Myers out of the meeting the other day at the direction of Judge Wilson from Garrett County he'll be the chair next calendar year we're going to look the ad board is going to look at the possibility of allowing proxy voting, which would allow me not only to attend the meetings, and they've been great. I've been involved in the closed sessions but not able to vote if it had been a closed vote, but they're going to examine allowing a proxy vote on our behalf, which will require a change in the bylaws. I'm sorry? Very supportive. Okay, so until that happens, the mayor is the only one that can vote? Is that how it's set up? That's correct. Okay, and obviously the mayor has a lot on his plate, and he can't always be at those meetings, and I don't think the expectation is that he would have to be at all those meetings. But I guess you keep him informed, so if there's something that's important going down, hopefully his schedule can be adjusted so he can make that meeting and vote. Yes, we get the agenda ahead of time, obviously. And plus, we have conversations with the ADD staff and board beforehand. Okay. Well, once this agreement is signed, can we get someone from the ADD to come, or can you, Commissioner Mill, whoever, come to this committee and talk about, and maybe you, Kevin, to the Economic Development Committee, talk about the resources the ADD has so that we, as a local government, begin to understand what's available to us, and then we can start to put a vision and a plan around how we utilize whatever they are. Yeah, I think I would be glad to. And I think Jennifer and Daryl would both be glad to come and we do one presentation on everything that is available there. That would be awesome. Especially if Sally and Beth are going to be our point people on that as well. Okay. And then will someone be given the counsel, whether it's through work session or through the different committees, updates on what the ad's doing and, you know, what opportunities there are for us to instruct them on how we want people served? I think we can do that, and I think we can build it in with our contract with them. That is just an ongoing requirement of the funding that we give them. Okay. My time's up. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Sally and Commissioner, if you guys can come in. I have a few questions and comments to make, so I'll ask to turn the chair over to Council Member Akers. Sure. Thank you. This is an issue that I recognize as being a longstanding issue in regards. I think the absence of our signature on the interlocal agreement dates back to 2007. I believe somewhere is in there. So this is a six-year, somewhat void of active participation in the workforce. And I think that the last few years have really seen a need with the economic downturn as such, a real need for us to be a part of the game, as Sally has mentioned earlier. With the Bluegrass Area Development District and their stewardship over the Workforce Investment Board, I recognize the importance and the value of regionalism. I think the mayor was in Georgetown with their president, Will James, and other dignitaries maybe a week or so ago. and we've got a lot of folks that come in the region to work here. So how the Bluegrass region goes, how Central Kentucky goes will impact us. But I think it's also important that we balance that with the need for the job training and the empowerment of Fayette County residents proper and specific. And I'm hoping that we can be able to do that. But in our packet, the interlocal agreement is not a long document, I think three pages. And Darrell Smith, the chair of the board, came and talked to us about the difference between the Historical Job Training Partnership Act, I believe it was, JTPA, and what we now have with Workforce Investment Act. And I think we all get a good understanding that the set-asides are a thing of the past and those kind of things. But when I look at the signatures of the other 16 county judge executives, the honorably elected officials, and I see an absence of our mayor on behalf of this county, I think it speaks volumes. So if the recommendation is for us to enter to the agreement finally, I'm going to ask for some changes and recommend some changes and some accountability. I want to talk a little bit about how can we be more of a managing partner in this effort. One of the one-stop shops is in our building at 1055 Industry Road, out in Winchester Road. I think we need to examine that. And then also on the western side of town with the Bluegrass Community and Technical College going over to Newtown, I think that may provide some convenient resources for Fayette County residents. But like George mentioned, just to sign it for convenience is not going to help Fayette County residents. I'm more interested in how we strengthen workforce development. If you guys can talk a little bit about it. What I would like to say about that, you're exactly right. The one-stop shop is an ideal opportunity for us. There are four agencies in that building, and ideally one-stop shops. We learned a lot about this from Beth Brimley. Her meeting with us was great. There needs to be shared management in that building. We have shared office space in that building, but the management kind of functions are like who's mopping the floors and who's repairing something. We have our adult and tenant services, Connie Godfrey is there. the unemployment office, and that's not the correct name for it anymore, and it's my apologies, workforce. It's a state-run office. And then we have the web there as well, and we have the veterans office that's there weekly. If those four people could sit down every time funds are available or opportunities are available or learn from Kevin what kind of businesses are coming to Lexington, there's so many advantages because we're all in one building. Same thing with BCTC, Black and Williams Neighborhood Center, that social services runs is right around the corner. I think one problem we have, we do not have a point person to look at all this, but we do have a way to get this thing started and see where it goes. I certainly see workforce fitting hand in glove with the Homeless Commission Office and their recommendations. The way for people to have a sustainable housing is to have a job. So that may be a function that morphs into something that we can give some duties to this new homeless office that we're doing as well. But I think we do need to have conversations. That's why Sally and I have talked about meeting with Jennifer Compton saying we want to be a real managing partner in the One Stop. And when web funding becomes available, I think everybody ought to be at the table to say how is all this being spent, even if it means other counties as well. But we need to be there. Thank you, Commissioner. I will assume the Chair is Council Member Akers. And Council Members, thank you for allowing me to comment. and Council Member Myers has signed up. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Commissioner and Ms. Sally. And I agree with what our chair has stated, too, that if we go back to the AG's ruling, they can't do anything unless we initiate it. So I suspect that our managing partnership is going to have a substantial change in the way that it's currently set up. And I think that if you guys who work with them, whether you're on the board or you're going to those different meetings, if you guys can bring back to the different committees or to the council what dollars, what services, what programs are available, then I think that's then when this government, administration and council, can determine what it is we want done with those resources that are available. And that's when we go back and say, you know, we want to initiate this as the way the AG said, we initiate and then they partner with us to get it done. So I think there's real room for us to determine how these dollars are spent and what happens to make a positive impact on our community. So I look forward to understanding what they do and what monies are available and then us work as a government to put something together that we say then partner with us to make this happen. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Council Member Acres. Thank you, Chair. I just want to reiterate what Commissioner Mills alluded to in that I think it's so important as we look at all of our social service funding as well as workforce investment that we consider that all these agencies and divisions within government consider what is the best needs of the client and the citizen we're serving and not necessarily the best interest of the nonprofit or the division. And so if collaboration is, to me, a no-brainer, a common-sense approach to serving clients, that if they need a home, we need to connect them with home services, if they need a job, if they need transportation, those all go hand-in-hand, and so we shouldn't be afraid to jointly apply to grants and apply to funding across agencies and across divisions. And so I think that that is the future of nonprofit services, or should be if it isn't. So I just wanted to make a comment. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Akers. Sally, are there any, is there any other comments you'd like to make? We appreciate the leadership that the Mayor's office and your office has taken on our behalf and being responsible to our request. Any further thoughts on this issue? Now, I will start the blue sheet process very shortly for your consideration. Thank you. The agreement. Any other questions from committee members? Okay, thank you guys. As we wrap up, doing very well on time, the last agenda item is committee referral items. You'll see it on page 33 of your packet. The first item is in regards to the senior citizen center. We understand in the mayor's proposed budget he is proposing an allocation of $5 million for the initial phase to get that started. Should we leave this item in committee? What is the thoughts of the committee members? Okay, we'll leave that in. Workforce investment and training is the second item. I believe, again, going back to last fall, I believe at this point that we've studied this issue, and I'm satisfied somewhat that the administration is capable of charting us forward. I would encourage additional updates as they become available, but I think that the committee's work is done here. So if there's a motion to remove, I would entertain one. Second. There's a motion by Council Member K, a second by Council Member Ellinger, and there's discussion. Is there discussion? Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will follow your leadership, but I think that you brought up some very good points on understanding the two different areas that you talked about, the one stopover by off New Circle and then KCTC. I think it's okay to leave this in here and wait until we hear something back after you guys meet, after the administration meets with Jennifer, and then have that first discussion on how we go forward with what we want to come up with as a plan for making sure that these resources are utilized for our community. So I think there's room to continue to discuss it. Okay. Is the mover and the seconder willing to? I would withdraw the motion. Okay. Thank you, Council Member King, Council Member Ellinger. Council Member Myers, thank you for that, and we will leave this item in committee and look for the administration's guidance. I think that is a diligent thing to do. Thank you for your support there. As we wrap up, committee members, it won't be but a minute or so before we go, the conversations that we've had today with the topics, I think, will start us an opportunity to provide us some additional items in committee. Just a few ideas. The Adult and Tenant Services discussion brought up questions in regards to the impacts that it will have on the homelessness issue and the Homelessness Commission report, so there may be an opportunity for some of those recommendations to come to this committee. The NEES assessment spoke a lot about how we prioritize future funding, And I would hope that we would work with Commissioner Mills to reexamine that process. And I think that from a policy standpoint, as has been mentioned, our committee may want to examine that. And I'm speaking of the funding application process, Resolution 555-2012. So that may come back, and I'll work with committee members. Just two examples of issues that may come to the committee. Any other thoughts of Council Member Kay and to Council Member Myers? Just to kind of follow up on your suggestion and my own comment earlier, I think it would be useful for this committee to look at the larger question of how the impact of our present policy is being felt by the various agencies that we fund. It would be good to hear from them. and to think together while we have the luxury of a little bit of time. I'm not looking necessarily to make changes for the follow-up that might be possible, but just to reiterate what I said, I think the underlying question is, do we want to be in the business at all of funding agencies and the work they do overall? And if so, what would that entail in terms of our own analysis? What would we need to do in order to make good judgments about that? and how does that fit with our present policy of saying that we're really in the business of only funding new and innovative projects. I think that would be a useful conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Kaye. We'll look forward to bringing that issue to committee. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And to kind of go along with what you were just talking about, items that may come into committee based on the information we heard today and then also Dr. Kaye's statements that he just made, And I would like to ask, Mr. Chair, if you would entertain putting into this committee for a little bit down the way a conversation about how we come up with some type of, whether it's a policy or whether it's a formula or whatever it is, for how we move forward with funding partner agencies. Because I still believe with everything in me that the information that they're doing in this needs assessment is going to inform us that we need to put more money into the pot. Okay? And with their analyses and with the work that they're doing and the great work that the agencies are doing, we're going to begin to get some analytical data that will help us go after funding from other foundations and other sources, but also to be able to tell the story to the taxpayers here and the council and the administration why we need to put more money from the funds we're already taking in to address these issues. because they're not going to go away unless we can have the agencies partner and collaborate and do all those things and streamline, become more efficient, but still more dollars are going to be needed. And I think that we need to begin to have the conversation about how we determine how much more money is going to go in and how that is going to determine what else goes in. And so I know I keep being a dead horse, but I think that that's something we really need to do. Well, I think, Council Member Myers, I think both your point and the point made by Council Member Kay go to the issue of partner agency funding. And I know I'm looking in the audience at Craig Benz of Commissioner Mills staff who, when he was here last month, he talked really about how the process was a year-long process that really started in 2011. And it most likely will be again going forward. So I think that there are ways that we can marry both of the comments that you guys have made as it pertains to the part of the agency funding application. One last item, and then we'll quickly move to adjourn, I think, is the item of this is a social services and community development committee. and we've talked a lot about social services, but a community development aspect that might be well entertained in this committee is the issue of small area plans implementation. And I've had a brief conversation with the folks over in the planning staff. We see the value of small area plans, but a lot of folks in my neighborhoods and perhaps in yours have interest in these plans and more so about how we actually get them implemented outside of the administrative and regulatory expertise of our planning commission and planning staff, but how do we make our neighborhoods better. So hopefully we'll continue on this good work that we started with these conversations, and I would say in the interim of our next meeting, we will be able to maybe refer some items in to build up our docket. Our next meeting is scheduled for May 28th. I'm not looking at my calendar, but that sounds like the Tuesday after Memorial Day. And then we'll be prepared there. If there's nothing else further before the agenda, is there a motion to adjourn? Moved by George and seconded by Councilmember Akers. All in favor, signify by saying aye. We stand adjourned. We'll see you on May 28th. Thank you.