public comment. Has anybody signed in, Mr. Money? Okay. Let me make a quick announcement. I am sure that many of the council members who routinely read the newspaper and the press and follow the press have followed the reports regarding our health department and Health First. I just wanted to share with the council that on that issue that have developed recently, it's been reported in the press, I have had a conversation with our state auditor, Adam Edlin, and discussed my concerns. Adam, the state auditor, shares those concerns. He has those concerns as well. and he has requested documents from Health First related to the 425 Southland Drive transaction. State Auditor Eadlin says he will be reviewing them, and as soon as he determines the next steps, he will let us know, and I will share that with the council. If anyone wishes to, if anybody has any questions regarding that, What I can address, I would. Jeff Reed has also been involved in considering these issues and assisting with them. All right. If not, then we can proceed. Mr. Mundy says no one here for public comment. for issues on the agenda, so we will move on to requested rezonings and docket approval. Is there a motion? Motion by Council Member Stennett to approve the docket, second by Vice Mayor Gordon. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right, then hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. I think there, oops, you've got to walk on, Council Member Ford. We should have gotten that before. I do, Mayor. Thank you. I was going to wait until Council reports, but I can do it now. I can do it now, Mayor. That would be fine. Per the request of the administration, Council Members, I bring forward the following motion. I move to place on the docket for the May 2, 2013 Council meeting. a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a memorandum of agreement with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet for LFUCG to operate and maintain traffic signals and electrical traffic control devices on the state primary road system in Lexington Fayette County, for which LFUCG will receive up to $330,000 per state fiscal year. So moved. Motion by Councilmember Ford, second by Councilmember Beard. Is there any discussion on that motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. So that will be added to the docket then. It allows us to move on to the approval of the summary. Is there a motion regarding? Approval approval. It's a motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, second by Council Member Beard. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on the agenda is budget amendments. Is there a motion? Move approval. Second. Motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, second by Council Member Farmer. Is there any discussion on the motion? Budget amendments. All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Moves us on to new business. Is there a motion by Council Member Ellinger, second by Council Member Lane? Is there any discussion on new business? Council Member Farmer. Is it? Yes, sir. All right. On new business. I got it right then. Thank you. Mr. Martin, there's two or three items in the new business that have to do with easements being released and or changed on Richmond Road that cover a couple of three different items in here. And I was wondering, could you give us a summation of all of those? Because it looks like C has to do with releasing an easement. And then when you come further on in, you've got a map on page 16, but then as you move further on back, there's actually another one that is another easement change that's pictured on page 30. On item C, that is the accepting of an easement at no cost to the urban county government related to the relocation of the sanitary sewer around Southland Christian Church, i.e. the former Lexington Mall. As you recall, the old line went under the old mall, and so in preparation of their redevelopment of that property, we relocated the sanitary sewer such as that it went around the structure rather than under it. This is just cleaning up now to where we're actually writing the easement description around where the pipe actually is to where it will be finalized. And South and Christian Church is granting us that easement at no cost to urban county government. So that's really a public improvement project. Item M is kind of a standard fare of what happens. you get a lot of times developers or other parcel owners who will make a request to urban county government that they want to reformat their parcel in such a way because maybe they're redeveloping and stuff. And so they make a request to the law department about releasing easements, and it gets circulated throughout government, including my department. Everybody looks at it, reviews it, and signs off of it, and then it goes back to law, and this is one that law has processed. So this is kind of both parts at the same time. The other one, I think, is actually a different location. Yeah, as I look at the map, you can tell from the relocation, the line does come out from under this apron. I was looking at the map on page 30 with the cross-hatched area, which I guess... If it's the same map, because I didn't even print that one out, since I'm not the one who orchestrates those things, they come out of law. But if it's the same one, yes, then what they're doing is releasing the existing easement under the mall because we don't need it anymore. Actually, this was penned by Ed Gardner. You're correct. Yes. I mean, if it is the Lexington Mall site, it is the release of the sewer easements that are being abandoned because of the relocation. Well, then I may have a question more for him than for you, which I probably should have asked offline. But I thank you for your expertise. Okay. Thank you. And then, Mayor, I just had one on, I guess it's item B. B. B, the item B. And this has more, I'm just wanting to confirm, this is a request to execute an amendment to the agreement with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet for the Lexington Traffic Movement Revitalization Study. Is this the so-called two-way street study that we talked about recently in the planning committee was my question. Mr. Commissioner, Mr. Paulson. Yes. It is. And this is just a performance just giving us a little bit more time, no cost extension. Okay. So when we talked about this committee, I guess, two weeks ago, were we not contemplating extending it then? Maybe that just wasn't part of our conversation that day. I was not at the committee meeting, so let me see if Chris can answer. Thank you. This is basically pretty standard grant stuff. We had a very aggressive timeline, and it's tied to the grant period, so it's pretty much a pro forma extension that is typically granted for these, but we do have to formally ask. I appreciate you being here to say that. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. councilmember farmer vice mayor gordon thank you mayor um kevin wenty i just had a question about item n which is the purchase order for the resurfacing and being an at-large councilmember i have not been in the nitty-gritty of the district discussions but on page 35 i just wondered are 100% of these roads rated at 65 or below? That were submitted for the bond resource? Each 35. What we're actually allocating per district, is that all 13% of the roads were 65 or less rating? Correct. Are all of these monies being spent on 65 or less? No, they are not. But it actually really bears witness to the location of the roads. And sometimes if there's a split, even if a road segment is slightly higher, it actually makes sense for us to go through and just resurface at that time. It's actually a cost savings when you look at the big picture. But to answer your question, no, they're not all under that 65 threshold. But the ones that aren't, do they all fall in that continuation? At this point, I can't answer that. I think in large part they do, yes, but maybe not in total. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Vice Mayor Gordon. All right. No further discussion or comments on the motion. We can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Now as us to move on to continuing business and presentations, is there a motion regarding the NDFs? Move for vote. Second. Motion by Vice Mayor Gorton, seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is a summary of the Planning and Public Works Committee meeting. That was held on April 16th by Council Member Chairman Bill Farmer. You have progressed to a point that I wasn't ready. All right. So we met on April the 16th. You'll find this on page 38 of your packet. The first item on the agenda was so-called right of entry. director Chris King came to the podium and made a presentation on this that he had done some research and related to a certain code of the ordinances 16-112b which establishes the right of entry for sewer inspections which we extrapolated in conversation for the opportunity to provide at reasonable times and for the purposes of inspecting ascertaining and causing to be corrected any violations of the zoning ordinance the director can be under this 5-1a right of entry, the Director is hereby empowered to prescribe, adopt, promulgate, and enforce reasonable rules, regulations, and our guidelines pertaining to administrative inspections for properties of zoning violations which are not otherwise inconsistent with zoning ordinance and unconstitutional restrictions of unreasonable searches and seizures. As you'll see, that is the actual right of entry ordinance that is in the packet there. We had conversation about this. Council Member Henson asked a question. Council Member Lawless asked a question. And David Barber made a couple responses. Council Member Clark made a question. And then we previously had had a motion by Vice Mayor Gorton to approve and send to the full council the modified draft of 5.1.a, which is on page 38 here. And we ultimately had a motion to pass without dissent. So therefore, on behalf of the committee, I move to place on the docket for the May 2, 2013 Council meeting an ordinance amending Article 5-1A of the zoning ordinance to provide for the right of entry and administrative warrants related to zoning enforcement. So moved on behalf of the committee. Motion by Council Member Farmer, seconded by Vice Mayor Gordon. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next, we took up the Downtown Lexington Traffic Movement and Revitalization Study Two-Way Street Project Update. Again, Director King said that the whole idea of converting the one-way street pairs to two-way streets began around 2006. The two-way street concept was supported in the downtown master planning process. That concept was also supported in the 2007 update of the conferencing plan. However, the Downtown Development Authority, the DDA, said that the issue required more study. In 2009, the Council passed a specific resolution directing the government to proceed with the investigation of a possible conversion. In 2011, the LFUCG was awarded a grant to do a more detailed traffic improvement study. The project has been ongoing, and Mr. Creasy was here on behalf of Stantec, would be giving us the update which followed in the meeting. If you drop down to the bottom of page 39, the Stantec deliverables for this are, one, a safety analysis, two, a traffic signal system review, three, a hazmat overview, four, a multimodal level of service analysis of existing conditions, and at the top of page 40, an eclipsing analysis, which has to do with what people do and don't see on a one-way street. And then they had broken this up into several study areas. Item six is the North Area Analytics Technical Memorandum. That was part of the draft that was delivered to the technical or the policy committee the next day after our meeting. Survey of downtown business. Summary report is number seven. Number eight, a core area analysis technical memorandum. Number nine, south area technical analysis memorandum. And then finally, number ten, a mobility plan. This resulted in quite a bit of conversation among council members, but resulted in no other motions. We did attach, on the back of this draft or of these minutes from the meeting, the actual members of the Technical Advisory Committee and of the Policy Advisory Committee, which during the discussion during our meeting, there was a little bit of commentary about whether or not there were enough neighborhood folks involved in those two bodies. At this point in time, we did not have time to take up the exaction fee or the B-1 over the ZOTA, which we had returned to committee previously. We did have a motion by Council Member Gorton to remove the right of entry item, and that passed without dissent. And we also made reference to the fact that during our May meeting, we will take up adult daycares. That is the item that had been in committee and taken out and placed back in there. And after that, we were adjourned. That is the committee meeting. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Councilman Farmer. That takes us to the next item on our agenda, which is a presentation by LexTran of its fiscal 2013-2014 budget. And Mr. Rocky Burt, LexTran General Manager, will be making the presentation. Rocky, you plan on, what, about a 15-minute presentation? Yes, sir. No more than that. and then Q&A, right? Yes, sir. Q&A comment, correct. All right. All right, sir. Thank you. Well, everybody's interested in it, so I don't mean to suggest that it should be abbreviated or truncated. Thank you, sir, and thank you all for letting me be here today. Seeing you all again. This is, as the mayor mentioned, my once-a-year visit here for sure to present my budget to the council, which is required by us to do that. So I'll take you through this, and then we'll do little question and answers at the end. And my director of finance, Nikki Falconberry, is here to assist if I need some help. So we'll get started. One of the first things I wanted to do was just share with you some of the accomplishments that we've made this past year. The first thing on the screen you can see is we've, with some technology improvements, put in an integrated voice recording system. For example, those are new bus stops that you can see going up all over the city. And what this will allow our passengers to do is if they're at a stop, they can call the number on the signs, key in the bus stop location, and they'll be prompted through a series of questions, and they will be given real-time arrival time for that bus stop. That information is also contained on our website, and a phone application will be due real soon. We'll have that. So this is kind of one of the neat things for us. We've been slowly rolling this out and getting quite a few phone calls to this system every day, so it's working real well for us. Next thing I'd like to point out, one of our very own, our assistant general manager, Jared Fort, was selected as one of the top 40, under 40 professionals in our industry this past year. I am very, very fortunate to have him as my assistant. You know, it's one of those things that everybody knows what their strong suits are and what their weaknesses are, and Jared really compliments me. So we have a great team together. The next thing on the screen is you can see where our partnership with Keeneland continues to grow. This past year we had about 15% growth in ridership, and I'm happy to report that with the spring meet just concluding, it was even better than last year's. And I think part of the reason is we've really fostered a great relationship with those folks. With their marketing efforts and ours, it's been working real well. so more and more people are using our bus service to get out to Caneland. Of course, one of the big things that everybody wants to know about LexTrans is how's your ridership doing. It's been pretty good this past year. You'll see a little bit later on in one of the charts, we're down about 0.9% overall ridership. And, you know, that's a number that I'm not absolutely confident with because one of the things that I've said to you all last year, we put a lot of new technology on our buses. And in years past, we had no real analytical way to determine ridership. We used fares, collected, and used a formula to determine our ridership. And since this past April, we've been able to have real data from our electronic fare boxes and passenger counters. So when we get our April numbers in, we'll begin to start comparing apples to apples rather than the old system to the new. But having said that, with the system that we have, we're down about 0.9%. We try our best to participate in lots of community-wide events. We go out and do lots of how-to-ride presentations. This one you see on the screen was to the Mayor's Youth Council. Also, part of this technology project, we've got some new LED signage at the Transit Center where we can put important announcements up for passenger information, detours, buses running late, new service coming out, route modifications, whatever it may be. So this is some new, very good information that we've got down there for everybody. Again, some more community service projects, God's Pantry, Salvation Army, and a lot of the other community organizations. We've sort of adopted God's Pantry as something we do at Christmastime for sure, and Salvation Army Angel Pre-Project. We do that every year. Okay, turning to our fixed route ridership charts. You can see, you know, as we go along each year, the lighter color is prior year and the dark being current year. So we're going from April through this past March. Again, the April numbers aren't in yet. And that simply reflects that 0.9% decrease in ridership. Now turning toward the financial piece of the presentation, I show you this chart every year, and it simply is depicting where our revenue comes from. 68% of our revenues come from the mass transit tax, which is the 6% property tax that we collect. Another big chunk is the Federal Transit Administration formula money that we get, and from time to time some state funds are sprinkled into that. And then, of course, the total passenger revenue, which is the money we actually collect out of the fare box, is about 9%. So that makes up our revenue. On the expense side, you can see that, like in most organizations, Fringes and wages is about 54% of our budget, followed by our purchase transportation line item, which is the expense item for the Red Cross Wheels Paratransit Service. And then fuel is also another big item for us, which is a real moving target for us each and every year. And then you can see the rest of the line items. You can see, but those are the big three, wages, fringes, purchase transportation, and fuel. Okay. Sorry, there we go. So this is just a depiction of what I want to show you on the capital and operating budget. It's pretty much what you saw a minute ago, but these are showing the real dollars. Best transit funds collected, or what we're projecting for this coming year, is about $16.5 million. dollars. We're keeping that flat from this previous year. We've talked to the PVA, David O'Neill, and he suggested we keep it at that level. The federal assistance at $4.2 million. It's real close to what we got last year. And then our other revenue is a little over $3 million, and that consists of primarily U.K. subsidy that we get. Nikki, help me. What else is in the other category there? Passenger fares and advertising. Yeah, passenger fares and advertising. So that all equals about $23.9 million. And then down on the capital side of things, we're having a real light year on capital. We don't have any buses to purchase. So what we're doing is taking the lion's share of that federal and state assistance that we get, which is totaling that $5.0 million and applying that primarily to purchase transportation costs and capital costs of maintaining the buses. And then some money has to be spent on shelters and benches and amenities and the like. so just some key budget assumptions that we went through and we built this budget wages and fringes i've taken it up about 10 percent which is 12.8 million dollars of the budget and the reason that's that increase one of course you know we have the labor agreement amalgamated transit union. So there's a 3% increase included in that. And then the way the bus operators work, they have progression rates. So as they progress in seniority, they get pay raises along the way. And the fringes, a big chunk of that is health insurance costs. So we're projecting a 15% increase in health costs this year. Wheels cost, that's paratransit. That's 3.2% increase. That's primarily based upon the rate increase per trip by the contract, some increase in ridership and fuel costs. And then the diesel fuel price at $3.50 a gallon, we're keeping at that. That's what we budgeted this past year, and our suppliers have suggested we continue to keep it at that point. So those are really the key budget assumptions we built this budget. So this is just another way to say what I've said to you. The top section is our revenue. So you can see it's $23.9 million. At the end of this year, we're expecting to be just a little over $23 million. So it's about a 7% increase over a year-end projection and a 4% increase over last year's budget on the revenue side. And down on the bottom, again, you can see the major cost categories, and I just went over that with wages and fringes, but those are our major categories that we have. The footnote at the bottom, if you remember last year, to balance our budget, I said that the expenses were outpacing the revenues. We projected about a $1.3 million shortfall last year, and we were going to use the cash reserves to do that. Fortunately, we don't think that's going to come to fruition. We've been pretty frugal with our money this year, and we're not going to have to dip it in cash reserves. But again, to build this year's budget, we're projecting a $1.2 million shortfall, and hopefully we'll find ways to not have to do that again this year. But that's the footnote there and explanation for that. And this is just simply the capital plan that I briefly mentioned to you a minute ago. So not a whole lot in there, no buses to speak of. Most of it is benches and shelters and spending money for a capital maintenance plan and paratransit costs. So with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have. Thanks, Rocky. Let me call on the vice mayor. She reminded me that the protocol is for the Council and the government, or the government through the Council, to confirm or ratify your budget through a resolution. So I'll ask the Vice Mayor for a motion, and then if we get a second on that, we'll go into a discussion and comments on your budget. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, I move that we place on the docket the approval of the Lex Tran budget as presented. Second. Motion by Vice Mayor Gorton, second by Council Member Kaye. And now the floor is available for comment and discussion. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. Rocky, thank you for your annual update on the Lex Tran tax and your budget in general from the operation budget on down to the Capitol. I appreciate the detailed numbers. Just had a couple follow-up questions. You mentioned that the property tax you're projecting is flat. But in our budget and other budgets around the city, we're projecting a 1% to 1.5% increase. So explain the rationale of why you feel it would be flat. I think, do we collect your tax and then send it over your way? So, I was going to say, we may skim off the top a little bit. Is that fair? Oh, we hope to get it all. When we were building the budget, you know, a couple of months ago, and, of course, you know, we had to get our board of directors to approve it, in talking with the PVA, David O'Neill, he suggested that we keep it flat, so that's what we built the budget on. Okay. I mean, just a thought, because one and a half is a pretty good chunk of change. Right. And I hope that comes to fruition in that $1.2 million. Well, if we don't make ours, we'll ask you for some help. On the 10.1% increase in fringe, where is that coming from? Did you say health care? 15% of it is health care costs. Where does the other 85% of that 10% come from? It's pretty big. You want to come up and talk about fringes, how we build the fringes? Wages, yeah. There's the 3% pay increase plus the progression rates that he mentioned. And when we budget, of course, for that, that affects overtime. And the FICA, workers' comp, all of those that fall in line with the raises. But the largest increase is the health insurance, which is 15% increase. But we're hoping it doesn't come to that, but we budgeted 15%. I understand. And then how much is in the reserve balance? $13.2 million. Okay, I couldn't remember. $13.2 million. Now, having said that, going back to, I guess, your first fiscal year when the tax was created and voted on was fiscal year 06? It started in 2005. For that fiscal year, 05. Okay, because I know it was voted on 04 in the fall, so July 1 of 05. Okay. Can you give us a snapshot? I don't think you probably can do it today, but after this as a follow-up, what it looked like then, the budget, and what it looks like now, as well as the number of buses on the street then and number of buses on the street now and ridership, those three things. Yes. So we can kind of give a snapshot in time of here's why we did it, here's how we did it, and here's why it works. Do you mind doing that? Is that easily done? Yes, sir. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Stanton. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for coming in and making a presentation. Many of the same questions that I had, Councilman McStinney had already presented it to you. I would add one to that, though, and that is your reserve balance is at 13.2 right now. Yes, sir. Do you know what it would be projected? What's your projection for the end of FY14 for that fund? We think it will be very close. we of course budgeted to take about 1.3 million dollars out of the reserves to balance last year's budget we don't think we're going to have to be able to do that this year so we think it'll be really close to what it is was last year okay so just as a commentary um to me you guys offer a service right so you have to get the people who live in lexington to buy your product, which is transportation from A to B. Yes, sir. And when we get the numbers back from what your ridership was before the dedicated tax to what they are now, and I realize that you're doing a different type of measuring that, so it's not going to be exact. This is what it was. This was growing to be. But you said you were down 29%. Is that what you said? 0.9. 0.9. I'm sorry. Yes, sir. Almost 0%. I'm sorry. Okay. That's good. That's a great start. Okay. So when I look at the service that you provide, if I wanted to ride the bus, what you have to do before I can buy your product is get me to where I need to be without me having to get up two hours earlier than I would have to if I took my own vehicle. And so my question is, and I like the way that you're branching out and you're trying to do some things in contiguous counties, but this county is the one that's paying that dedicated tax, so we've got to take care of home base first. So what is your vision long term to getting? I know you're never going to be self-sufficient without that tax. That's not the question I'm asking. But what is your vision for getting the ridership up to the point that it's significantly higher than, what was it, 9% of your total revenue? Yes. Because to me, that's how you measure whether or not your business is successful, is how many people you're going to attract to take your bus service. I guess there's a lot of things I can say to that. And one is we tried to draw a lot of comparisons for the size of our community that we serve, the service area, compare it to other cities. And in most categories, we do better than most with the service that we provide. In other words, the passengers per hour, passengers per mile, we are as good or better than a lot of our peer cities that we have. The reason that the 9% is such a small portion of our budget is we have one of the lowest fares in the United States. Most of our peer cities will charge at least a base fare of $1.25, $1.50, and charge for transfers. So that's probably one of the biggest things. So I wouldn't say that the ridership number is out of order. But to answer your question, again, what do I want to do? What's my vision for creating more ridership? We do lots of surveys and analysis. And what we've found is that for the most part in this community, we're serving all the major generators of transit and where people want to go, hospitals, shopping, et cetera, et cetera. But, again, trying to be more efficient and making people's commutes much shorter is the thing that we're trying to focus on. You know, a lot of people can get where they want to go in 30 minutes. But if you have to transfer once or twice because of the pulse system that we have, then obviously that can be upwards to maybe an hour for you to get someplace. So we're focusing on that piece of it right now. Okay, so if you changed your fare to match comparable cities, do you think your riders would hold with you? Yes. As a matter of fact, we just did what the Federal Transit Administration requires us to do if we are going to do a fair increase, and that's a fair analysis. So we had some consultants come in. They rode buses. They interviewed lots of riders that we've got. And, of course, as you know, our ridership is mostly transit dependent, which means they don't have cars and their income levels are very low. In taking it up to as much as $1.50, the consultants said that it would not have a significant impact on our ridership. They would continue to ride. Now, obviously, there's a tipping point where if you get it too high, people can't ride. Right. My time's almost up, and I'm going to have to come back my second time after this. So are you comfortable where things are then? Are you saying that your business model is working and everything's fine the way that it is? What I would say to you right now is that we're continuing to tweak what we have. If the world was perfect, rather than having the pulse system, and we had lots of buses and a lot more money, if we could put a grid system in where you could run maybe twice the amount of buses that we have and do those things, people's commutes would be very short, and it would be a more encompassing bus system. But given what we have today, it's a pretty efficient system. We'd like to have more choice riders riding our bus, and we'd like to have commutes on the bus a lot shorter. But for now, it's what we do. We haven't proposed a fair increase because we've not had to dip into our savings account, so to speak. So we're making things work right now. Okay, my time's up, so I'll thank you, and I'll come back after this. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Rocky, for the presentation. And I guess I look back where we were and where we are today. I mean, I think things are certainly improving. But I wanted to comment that I know in social services committee meeting today, they had the needs assessment and transportation was on that listed as a need. It wasn't really defined, so I'm not sure. but I thought it might be worth your while to get with Commissioner Mills or whatever and find out, because I know you're always interested in what you can do to improve things. And I know that our ridership is not going to be, you're not going to have 100%, because it's just not feasible. But one simple question, and I think this has been discussed before, is possible fuel alternatives, cleaner fuel, fuel that's less. And I think you've been working some with John Sheed and planning ahead for the future. Yes, ma'am. One thing that we currently do, obviously, is we use the cleanest diesel fuel that we can use. Number two, we purchased some hybrid electric buses. But more importantly, I think moving forward, our board has voted to move the entire bus system to using compressed natural gas. So that's our plan. And as we find the opportunity to build the CNG infrastructure, we can begin to order the buses that are CNG fuel. And that will be a huge savings for us. financially and then also much cleaner fuel than diesel is today. So compressed natural gas is where we're headed. And we have had many discussions with the city to kind of see what synergies are together and partner. Yes, ma'am. I think that's a real good idea. And I do appreciate, I think, when I first came on the council, I didn't think that there was a real sensitivity to people with, from Lex Tran I should say, for people that were low income, people with disabilities, but now I feel more, you know, I know it's there. It may have been there before and I didn't see it, but I just wanted to compliment you on that on that and i appreciate jill serving on our commission and i feel like everyone's doing a great job so thank you yes ma'am thank you council member lane thank you mayor uh welcome this afternoon and you know i have a just a few thoughts on this i remember when i first came on council and we did not have separate funding for the transit authority, and we did not really have that good of a service for the mass transportation. So I think that having the separate funding has definitely been a good thing for the community. And I think the services really improved a great deal. So I'm not trying to be negative here, but it did bother me a little bit to see that your costs were escalating and your revenue stream is sort of static, not really increasing that much. And this is a time when the economy's been bad, and it's sort of been my understanding maybe the ridership should have been going up more in a bad economy because people can save money or they don't have a car or whatever at the time. The other thing that concerns me is that your wage issue, and that can spiral out of control over time and really push your cost up. Do you have any sense about maybe having to restructure your long-term contracts, or do you feel like they'll be coming up for renewal and you'll be in a different negotiating mode at that time? Our current collective bargaining agreement expires in June of 2014, So next, not this summer, but next, we will begin the process of negotiating a new contract. And wages are always on the table, as well as fringe benefits is probably the number one issue. Typically, work rules and things like that aren't issues for us. It has to do with the fringes. Well, are you having any much turnover or vacancy, or do you have many jobs that need to be filled now? What's your condition? We have a turnover issue that's worse than I would have hoped for. And one of the reasons, we interview everybody when they leave, and part of it is just simply the duty cycle and duty day for a bus operator. If you're a junior bus operator and recently been hired, you are subject to two or three pieces of work, and you don't get to pick up your shifts. And some people simply don't understand that when they get hired, even though we try to best explain that. But as far as average wages and things like that, we're very competitive with, again, our peer cities, Louisville, Cincinnati, northern Kentucky, those kinds of things. Okay, well, good luck in the coming year. I realize it's a tough environment to be operating government or transit authority in at this time, so just watch your dollars carefully. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Lane. Councilman Breakers. Thank you, Mayor. Hi, Rocky. Yes, ma'am. Thank you for the presentation. It was definitely informative to me, and I want to commend you all on the phone system. I think that's excellent progress, traveling to other cities. I've seen that, and so I think that's good for our riders. I'm also glad to see that you all participate in the community service projects. I didn't know that you all did that, so that was a positive. And I guess I, too, have some questions to echo on the follow-up on what Council Member Lane asked. When I see, like, 3 percent raises and overtime costs that you mentioned, I assume that you can't really adjust that you all have that set in contract or something with the raises as standard? Yes. When we do the labor negotiations, you know, of course, that's always a big part of it. That's what the employees want is more money. Sure. So those rates that we have are negotiated in there as well as those progression rates that we talked about. And overtime, are there efforts to reduce that? We work really, really hard on that. And, of course, what we see every year in our budget is that our line item for fringes and salaries is usually way under budget, and overtime is way over because of the turnover issues that we just talked about and absenteeism, whether it be for work comp claims or people simply sick, FMLA, typical of any big business. That's what employees are off. Do you have anyone specifically designated to work on advertising revenues? They seem to me to be less than they could be. Is that a position, or is it just sort of an ad hoc kind of work? We, of course, Jill Barnett, who's with us today, she is a director of community affairs. And so the advertising piece is under her department, but we have that contracted out. And, you know, the advertising revenue that we get is primarily off the buses that we have. And, again, that's one of those things that, you know, the people that advertise, you know, it's the norm for that type of advertising. Honestly, there are no free space on our buses today, so we keep that sold out completely. So the only way would be, obviously, to increase those rates. When you do that, people will find other places to advertise. But we have a company that I think they're based out of Cincinnati that does it, but they have a local sales rep and office here in Lexington that does that for us. And we bid that out. And your conversion to CNG buses, I know we talked about this when I was first elected. What is the timeline for that, and is the savings account that you've mentioned going to be used to buy those new buses, or what is the savings account for? Well, first of all, let me talk about the timeline. That's kind of a moving target for us. As I think you all know, we've been trying for a few years now to find a new location to build a new headquarters, which would be the office space for the administrative staff, the maintenance garage, and the bus parking for operations. So once we find that location and seal the deal and get this built, part of that will be that CNG infrastructure will be part of that facility. So, for example, if we closed today on a deal, it would probably be 18 months later when we could be into the CNG business. And, of course, we've got to coordinate purchasing these buses, which sometimes have a lead time of 12 to 18 months with the CNG. So it's a real complicated formula, if you will, to do that. The second part of your question on the savings account that we have, the $13 million, Yes, part of that money will go toward buying these new buses. In addition, part of that will more than likely go to helping pay for the new facility that we're planning to build one of these days. Is that new facility just an office base? I mean, have you all considered a second transit center to follow up on Council Member Myers to shorten the time that people might have to travel between stops? That is something that's always part of the conversation when we talk about the future and what are we planning on doing. But for right now, the facility that we're talking about building is pretty much to replicate what we currently have at Loudoun, but just make it bigger so that we're not crowded and we can be more efficient. But to answer your question, at some point in time, the logical thing would be to put more transfer centers around the city so that not everybody would have to come downtown, that it couldn't be transfers at the end of the line and things like that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Akers. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Mayor, and welcome, Rocky. Also, as a former board member of Lex Tran, I want to welcome the Lex Tran senior staff, the family that's sitting out here, and Tyrone Tyra, a board member who was on when I guess you came on when I was still on. and you're hanging in. So thank you for that service, and thanks to the whole staff for the job you do. I want to go back to a couple questions that were asked and give you an opportunity to amplify. What I remember from the years that I was on the board is that ridership was increasing those years pretty much steadily, 6%, 8%, 10%. Has that continued to be the case in the last few years, or is this flattening out? Did it happen before the shift to the new technology? It has started to flatten out, and the reason being is we've not added much new service. As a matter of fact, some of the service that we have, we've had to modify because of it being underutilized. So because of that huge gap between expenses and revenues, we've been looking to try to become more efficient. But what we've seen is a lot of things in the city have changed a lot. For example, the number of university students that use our bus system has increased dramatically. So we're seeing lots of upticks in ridership in certain areas and others, you know, it's starting to drop off. And some of that's because of the way we've rerouted buses. It's just becoming more efficient. And, again, part of it, too, could very well be the technology and our ability to actually measure ridership. But that would be just this year. Correct. If you looked at last year, year over year, it was starting to flatten out already? Yes. Okay. Then to get back to a question that Council Member Myers asked, you mentioned choice riders. Would you say a little more about what that phrase means so that I think people may not understand fully? Typically, in any public transit system, you have two classes. You have transit dependent, which means people have no other choice but to use public transit. They don't own a car, no other form of transportation. The choice rider is that person that does have other forms of transportation, but they choose to ride the bus. So that's part of our service that has always been a little bit lacking, in my opinion. So you're always trying to find ways to get the person who owns a car or has another way to get to work to use the bus. And part of this technology that we're talking about, at least a person having some sense of knowing when that bus is going to be there, might get them to jump on the bus and ride. One of the other things that we've done this past year, we've instituted a guaranteed ride home program. For example, a lot of people have said to me, well, I would ride the bus, but what if I have an emergency at home and I can't get there? Well, we're going to plug that gap for you. We're going to give you a ride home. We're going to find a way to get you to your house. So that's another thing that we're trying to do to get choice riders to come out and try the bus. A lot of people that typically haven't used the bus before are now experiencing the trolley. So they're seeing that and how it works. So, you know, we're really working hard on that element of our population, if you will, in Lexington, to get a choice rider. And you may not have this number off the top of your head, or you may not have it at all, but if you had to estimate the percentage right now of choice riders as opposed to those folks who basically have no option, 10% choice, 15%, 20%. You know, at this point in time, you know, probably about 60%, 65% of our riders are transit dependent, and they're using it for employment reasons. You know, there's probably another 25% of our other population that are students riding the bus. So, you know, what's left, we're thinking that's obviously our choice router. So not much, but 10% is probably a pretty fair guess. Okay. Some people, including myself, think that if the frequency of service were increased, even if you stayed with your pulse system, let's say the frequency is now essentially 30 minutes on most routes. if the frequency were increased to 15 minutes, it would make it much easier to make a plan. It would take you less time to get across. But from what I understand, it would take a huge investment to do that. Is that correct? It would. That just means more buses and more operators to do that. One of the things that we're looking at is we're planning for the future. A lot of systems have what they call their super routes. For example, the Versailles Road bus, North Limestone, North Broadway. It could be that at some point in time we increased the frequency on those routes to 15 minutes because of the demand, but not system-wide and those kinds of things. But if you all remember back in the days of 2005 and before, most of the routes were an hour in service, frequencies. So we've continued to make those headways shorter and shorter. But typically the next jump is that 15-minute headway. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Kay. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Rocky, for this report. It's very interesting. The first time I've really seen it, and I understand what you're presenting here. And I have a couple of questions, but I want to make a quick comment first. I think it's important that we keep the rates as low as we can. I think that's important to the people who need to ride the bus, and so I would support that, and I think if we can keep that, it would be good. Two questions. My first question is, do you have a chart, a breakdown of your personnel expenses? We're around, I would say, $13 million in personnel, obviously. Is there a breakdown in who those people are and their salaries? I don't mean specific individual salaries, but in general how many people and what it costs for administration, what it costs for mechanics, how many drivers do you have, what it costs. Do you have a chart that we could see that would break that down? Yes, we do that. We have to obviously, you know, what you showed today is simply a pretty high-level summary of that. I understand that. Each of those categories is really drilled down deep to every operator's salary. I'd love to see something like that if you could provide it. I think it would be very interesting. I appreciate that. Also, I want to ask if there's some danger of losing some federal funds. At this point in time, I would say the answer to that question is no. So, you know, the MAP-21 is the funding mechanism that we have right now. It's a two-year bill, which expires next year, I believe. But typically what's happened, there's usually been a continuing resolution. But the beauty of it is, you know, we're lumped in with all transportation projects. So as long as I've been in this business, there's always been funding for public transportation formula funding. Thank you very much, Rocky. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Clark. Council Member Myers will come back to you. Council Member Lawless, then Council Member Farmer, then Council Member Myers. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. First of all, I want to thank you and you and all the bus drivers and all the people that make the wheels go round and round. Thank you. One question I have for you is there's capital cost of contracting paratransit. Yes, ma'am. Could you talk to me a little bit about that? That is the paratransit service. This is the service that Red Cross provides for people with disabilities. And this formula, federal formula money that we have talked about, Councilman Clark was just referencing, we're allowed to use a portion of that to pay for that service. So that's why it's called the capital cost. Okay, so that's basically the Red Cross Wills program. Yes, ma'am. And there are accessible vans or vehicles that a cab company has? Yes, ma'am. There's another special grant program that the Federal Transit Administration offers, and we're the recipients for almost all public transit funds in Kentucky. So one of the programs, we took proposals. We advertised that we had this money for public transit projects. And one of the things that came out was money to provide to a taxi company or cab company to purchase these vans. So that went out, and the yellow cab got that contract. So we have funneled that federal formula money to them to buy wheelchair accessible vans. Are there supposed to be any restrictions on the use of those vans? I don't know the answer to that question. I know that what we do is we require them to report to us the number of wheelchair passengers that they pick up on a monthly basis. But I don't know that there are any restrictions on regular fares and things like that. I don't believe there is. Okay, because that would be interesting because it certainly, the taxi cabs have been an issue. I've been very concerned about over time. And then when you say the U.K. student ridership has increased, is that the Cat Cruiser or the Cat? No, the Cats Cruiser was the late-night bus service that went in, I guess, a couple of years ago. I'm abundantly aware. It is not doing as well as it did when it first started. And, of course, the U.K. manages that program, and we just simply provide the drivers and buses. I just wonder if that was part of your... The ridership increase that we're talking about is primarily the Route 15, which serves Red Mile, Alexandria, that sort of thing. And then even the ridership on campus is huge for us now. And lastly, is there any fee for the Colt Trolley taking people to Keeneland and those kinds of events, or is that? No, ma'am. That's regular route service, and there's no fee for that. And is there any thought of putting some kind of fare to that? I think it's a great service, and I can't imagine anybody would not ride it if it was costing. Right. The downtown trolley service, and I may have misstated, when we go to Keeneland, we charge a regular fare for that. I'm sorry if I didn't answer that. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Yeah, we do. We charge a regular fare for that when it goes to Keeneland. But when they ride the trolley and things like that downtown, it's free service. Okay. To Keeneland, it's a regular route service. They pay a dollar. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you so much, and I appreciate all you do. Yes, ma'am. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. Rocky, thank you and everybody who makes, as the council member said, all the wheels go around. Everything that you do makes Lexington accessible for so many people who, on a regular basis, could not get to and from work or to and from a visit to a doctor or to a friend. So many people drive by bus stops and don't recognize what part of Lexington is served by that. I had recently there in Chevy Chase, I had gone into the Chase Bank, and I stopped. I actually took a picture of the bus stop. It had seven people at it there. I think it's something that becomes part of the background, part of the wallpaper for people, for so many people in Lexington, but it's the lifeline for so many others. I can't tell you how much I appreciate what you all do. As would be my prerogative, first I'm going to ask you about compressed natural gas, because you know of my great interest in that. Yes. And I think a savings you can have both for your budget as well as for our environment. Just give us a brief update on your potential involvement there, if you would. We are pressing ahead with that. Our board of directors, by consensus, indicated they wanted us to move in that direction. So what we're trying to do is when we get this new facility underway, we will build the C&G infrastructure at that time and begin to purchase our buses to coincide with that. We continue to talk with the city to see where they are in the project with their solid waste vehicles and building a station, and hopefully some synergies can work there. For example, it could be that maybe we do go ahead and order some buses, and if it's something that we can do and make it work, you know, use your oil station if it was built first and vice versa. If ours is built and we can get it done and you can bring vehicles by and fuel that. Our plan is also, when we do this, to provide public access to it. Okay. So that, you know, we have on one side of the fence it's ours and plummet so that there's a dispenser on the other side and figure out a way that anybody in the city, any private government, other government agencies could use it. Well, I appreciate that you have done these types of conversions in other markets and that you bring that background and those successes with you. So we look forward to that. And then, like others, I'm a big fan of the trolley system and certainly the extent that it has, and I've appreciated more recently the advertising to go along with that. And I just hope for success. Can you give me good numbers there? I didn't really look for them in your report, but I'm assuming that there's some utilization opportunity. We have mixed results with the trolley right now. I'm sorry to hear that, but I understand and agree. I see the trolley go by, and I wish there were more people on it because it's free and it goes everywhere you want to go. We don't do real well with ridership at the noon hour, but in the evenings, trolley ridership is very good on the weekends. And, of course, we've started that back up now on Thursday nights, but Thursday night live being going again. So evening service is good. We continue to evaluate the ridership. We're working with a number of people. Of course, Group CJ is doing the advertising campaign for us right now. I just got a briefing from a group of University of Kentucky architecture students that took this project on. So they've come up with some other alternative routing and things like that. it might work. So we, again, just continue to evaluate the service and look for ways to make it better. You know, lots of more and more people are coming on board wanting the service. You know, for example, some folks from Alltech have talked to us about trying to figure out a way to do that. More involvement with the Convention and Visitor Bureau, trying to focus a little more on that segment of the city, you know, the tourism piece of it, rather than just the people who work downtown and use the trolley. It's a really special part of what you do, and I'm glad to of all those different opportunities you're trying to bring to it. Last year, a small group of several couples, we had left Chevy Chase and we rode the trolley ultimately to its furthest point at West 6th Street and back. And we happened to be on the trolley the night that it was pirate night on the trolley. And I immediately became part of that without looking like it. But I've already received an email from some folks who are going to do that again this year. So I know that there are folks who look forward to what the trolley can do for them, especially on those nighttime weekends that it's out there because it gives people the ability to be much safer and to go out. So I appreciate all of your all's work. I think one of those UK students yesterday said they were trying to figure out a way to make the trolley a destination. Well, you put some pirates on there, I'll tell you. That's right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Farmer. Councilmember Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Rocky and to your staff and to your board members that are here, we appreciate this information. We know that you're here somewhat on assignment, you know, your annual visit with us, but this accountability is needed, and I hope that it serves a benefit to you guys as well as it does to us as a council. I wanted to talk a little bit about your financial standing, and I'm personally, as many of us are, I'm very excited and eager about your capital improvements that you'll be making with those federal funds coming our way. I would guesstimate that your financial standing, your fund balance, and the accountability that you have for government, our local government, via those tax dollars, hopefully will put you in a good position to implement and actually bring that project to fruition. I always say it's easier to get the grant. it's often harder to comply and actually put the grant to action. Tell me just briefly about your thoughts about that and the position that you guys are in to bring that resource. Very good point. The grant that we have, we have a little over $8 million in the grant. And, of course, there are lots of strings attached to grants when you have that. But we have worked hand-in-hand with the Federal Transit Administration Regional Office in Atlanta. to make sure that we're doing all the things that we're supposed to do to ensure the grant doesn't lapse and those kinds of things. And, you know, the project is moving along. It's, you know, been through other departments that's required by law. So right now there are no issues. And, of course, you know, the project, you know, we won't more than likely have enough money in the grant to pay for everything. But because of our financial standing, we are very confident that we can go through either a bond program or conventional financing through a bank to make this thing work. So we've explored all those avenues, and we're confident that this will work. We just need to seal the deal with buying the land. Right. Well, very good. Well, compliance is good, and capital is just as good. But we hope, I know that you have a good relationship with the mayor's office and his council, how we can continue to be partners one with another. Thanks again. Thank you, sir. Councilmember Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple quick follow-ups. Who did you say your peer groups were? Help me if you can, Nikki. But we typically, you know, South Bend, Indiana is one that's very similar to us. Tank and TARC, just because they're local. That's the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky, Tank. And TARC is the Transit Authority of the River City, Louisville. Knoxville, Tennessee. Those are typically the four or five that we do things. And one of the other things, as you all know, I work for a contractor, Veolia. So we have, you know, hundreds of properties around the United States. So we typically measure ourselves against a lot of those systems as well, but I'm not recalling any off the top of my head. But those I just gave you for sure, we always look at the ridership numbers, their cost per passenger, revenue per mile, things like that. Typical standard performance indicators for public transit. Okay, thank you. I spent some time in Evansville, Indiana. That's not too far from here, about two hours, two and a half hours. Where was that? Evansville, Indiana. Oh, yes. One of the things that they did, they only had one transit center. But instead of having a situation where you take the bus all the way downtown and transfer back out someplace, they developed partnerships with the local malls, the different shopping centers, where they had designated drop-off points. So instead of having to ride all the way downtown or having an actual transit center, you could go to the shopping center at Park Hills and pick up a bus there. or you take a bus there and then transfer out so that it cuts down the time that it takes you to get from where you are to where you want to go. Have you looked at doing some of that as opposed to just building another facility? No. Yes, that's, again, another one of the options and alternatives that consultants will typically want to talk about when they come in. I guess it was five years ago when we had our last comprehensive analysis of our public transit system, and we typically always ask them that question, what works best for Lexington? And, of course, the things that they take into consideration are places like how many malls do we have. Where would be a logical transfer point if you could do that? They look at the highways. The thing about Lexington is that when you've got those major corridors, that being Nicholsville Road, Richmond Road, Winchester Road, Broadway, those kinds of things, the pulse system, and, again, this is way before my time, but that's the way the bus system was built, supposedly to be the most efficient. But to your point, and one of the criticisms that I hear more than I like is just what you're talking about, how can we design the bus system so that people don't have to always come downtown? It works well for some folks, but... Let me interrupt you real quickly because I only have two minutes left. So I understand you can't redesign the entire system, but you talked about maybe at some point looking at certain routes and increasing the frequency of those particular routes. Can you look at just doing certain things with respect to transfer points along, say, Manowar, for example? If you could do some transfer points on Manowar between Hamburg and Nicholsville Road, that might help a lot. Yes, sir. We can do that, and it's something that we continue to look at. That's the thing that I hear from, you know, you only have 10% choice riders, but they're the ones that are paying the bill, right, because they're the ones that own property and they're the ones being taxed. The reason they don't want to ride it is because of the inefficiency. It's not a negative. It's just it's not as efficient as their vehicle is. And so if you could change up your transfer points and allow it to be more efficient for people to use it, then you might pull some of those choice riders in that you otherwise wouldn't pull in. I agree. Good point. The facility you're going to build, how much is it? Well, right now, the latest estimates that we have, and again, it all depends on where we go, because a significant portion is site development costs. Right. But giving all that, $20 million is a nice round number that we think is probably going to be give or take. Okay. That $13.2? What percentage of that? Is that grant, the $8 million grant, is that part of that $13.2 million? No, sure. The $8 million is totally separate. It's grant. The $13.2 million is LexTran money. Okay. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you, Councilman Myers. All right. We have a motion on the floor regarding the ratifying of the LexTran budget. If there are no further questions, we can take a vote. All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you all very much for joining us today. Thank you, board members and others, staff. Thank you all for being here. All right. That allows us to move to council reports. If council members will please sign on electronically for the council report. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. As you know, Council is now in its budget meetings, and the budget links have begun, and there are a lot of moving parts to that. And there's one motion which came out of the Committee of the Whole last week, which has not been reported forward, and I'd like to make that motion to place the reserve accounts. This was in relation to the fund balance discussions. The reserve accounts, their usefulness, how they are funded, and other details into the Budget and Finance Committee. That was a motion by Mr. Farmer. Second. I'm reporting it out. Second. All right, that's a motion by Vice Mayor Court. Second by Council Member Lane. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right, hearing none, then we can take the vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. We all received this week an internal audit report in regards to the vision of waste management expenditures. I'd like to put that report into the Environmental Quality Committee for further discussion. So I move. That's a motion by Council Member Stenet, seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. And then secondly, we had an opportunity this weekend to attend a unique day of service here in our community. It was located in the Eastland area, which is, as most of you know, behind the former Continental Land property between the Eastland Drive area. We were approached by a church there. And I want to give thanks, starting off with the Vineyard Church. Many of you know that church was looking for a home a couple years ago and was fortunate enough for us to find a home in the Eastland area. And on Saturday, they organized, along with four other churches, a day of community service for that area. Now, when I say a day of community service, I mean they're going to individual people's homes and helping them with their yards and do yard work, whatever is needed at that area. So on Saturday, we had over 100 volunteers with faith-based churches as well as the Neighborhood Association. I want to thank Park and Recreation for sending out two excellent representatives from our department, Jeffrey Giles and Zach Johnson, who helped us plant 20 trees alone. And you can see there are large trees in the Eastland Park area, as well as the Auburn Arbor Society. I can say that quickly. Auburn, Arbor. There they are and posing. They came out to help plant trees as well. You can see there are large dogwoods. It was a great day. and seeing, just taking a tour in the neighborhood and seeing all the groups of people picking up trash, edging sidewalks. They did all the mulch in front of Dixie Elementary, cleaned up Dixie Park, Eastland Park, went into people's backyards, helped them chop up a fallen tree, pressure wash for senior citizens. I mean, it is truly a day of service and a day of need, which gives me pause on an idea to bring back to this council for next year, next April. An opportunity, just imagine, and yes, I actually did dig a hoe. Actually, three of them, and I'm still feeling it today. Next year, just think if we did this citywide. Think about if we had a volunteer in each neighborhood organize this in every single neighborhood on the same day. Now, I know we've done Great American Cleanups, and I know we've done some tree plantings in spots, but just think if every neighborhood did this, we promoted and organized it, And at the end of the day, we all got together and celebrated the work we did in reaching out to our friends and neighbors. Because not only does it do community service, but it gets neighbors out and talk to one another once again. It provides fellowship. We had neighbors that hadn't seen each other in years that came out and said, wow, you still live here. I mean, this is an opportune time to get people out in the neighborhoods and to get it back to the community we all love and enjoy. But I will bring this idea, bring some parameters to it. But it would be great to have this in every neighborhood on the same day next year to see if we can get a lot of work done. Because we all know funds are limited. We can't mow every park every week. We can't clean up every sidewalk and every piece of litter. But having the community get out and help their own neighborhood is a big deal. And there's something I know we haven't tried this before in the past, but I'll bring some parameters to council. But I just, again, want to thank the Auburn and Auburn Society, Park and Recreation. And Jerry Hancock and Chris Cooper-Rider did a great job of getting everything there to site for Eastland Park tree planting. The Auburn Society donated eight trees to also be planting in there as well. But Vineyard Church was the leader in this, and they deserve all the credit. Having over 100 volunteers is amazing to see all those people just spread out and they wouldn't go to work for a whole day on a Saturday. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Stenet. Councilmember Akers. Thanks, Mayor. I wanted to share that tomorrow night there will be a public presentation at the Downtown Arts Center from 5 to 6.30 p.m. with Kate Orff of Landscaping and Architecture, who won the Town Branch Commons Design Competition. They will present the details of the competition as well as answer questions from the public. I think it's a great idea for anyone interested in that project. and also Friday, food truck will be food truck Friday again from 11 to 2 at Cheapside Park. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Akers. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. First, I want to compliment Council Member Stennett for getting those Auburn arbor trees because I tried to get in on that action real early, but lost out. Well done. He who has the shovel does the best. And following along in that same way, Chris, if you'd put that up, on Saturday we had our community garden planting at the Victory Christian Church. That was something we worked with out of the council office. So this is, just hold for a second. So that's the back of the Victory Christian Church. This is the corner of Owsley and Kramer. And the whole neighborhood has become, back to your point about civic engagement, sir. This brought the whole neighborhood out because these are long beds. The seed leaf folks were there to help. Now go forward. And you can see one day they did the beds, and the next day they came back to plant them. There in the upper part in the center, you'll see that their pastor, Rochelle Snellgrove, is doing what I have had fun referring to as the blessing of the mounds because this is the time and place to start a community garden, to plant it, and to enjoy it. So we're looking forward to a lot of civic engagement there and a lot of really good community, positive things there. And this outreach alone has turned into a similar situation where the Eidl Hour Neighborhood Alliance wants to do the same thing. So I look forward to that same kind of opportunity out there. Now, if you'd put up the other one I'd given to you about the economic contingency balance, and I'm just going to talk to fellow council members just for a moment. On Thursday night, there will be the second reading, number five, which has to do with appropriating funds at the Council's request into the economic contingency account based on our meeting last Tuesday. What you see before you or up on the screen or in your hand here is the progression of the economic contingency fund balance since FY96. And you'll see it started out with $4 million, and then before we amended the ordinance in 2006, it had kind of some meager attending to it. It didn't really get all that much money. After we changed that to the minimum plus part of the fund balance, you can see that you had $2.2, $3.6, $1.3, $1.2 until at the time of the economic downturn. It was suspended for a couple of years. Then when you come up to that third from the last number there, that's the original number that the mayor placed into the budget, $4 million in and of itself, other than the initial funding, the second highest single increase to the economic contingency fund itself. You'll see that the next item up is an additional $1.37 million, which that came from our budget retreat, which we had a week ago Monday, where we re-ranked, at least in the council's mind, what our fund balance was based on looking at the numbers themselves, which I think all of us agreed there was certainly room to add the other 1.3 in there, which that would make the economic contingency go up, what, $5.3 million. Then at our meeting last Tuesday, we had an initial motion to add another million to that and then quickly a follow-up motion to add another 1.7 to that. And certainly, like all here, are interested in excellent public policy and certainly financial policy. I'm also interested in the opportunity that funding can be for us in still what is a tough, tough economy. And I'm just asking the Council to consider. The economic designation for the contingency is absolutely our most restrictive fund. You will see here there have been no withdrawals from this fund since its inception. So if we place these funds in there, in my opinion, they will remain in there, some of them rightly so. However, I think, as in anything, you can have too much of a good thing. And I'm asking the Council just to consider not committing all of these funds at this time. I think that there's room to add plenty to this, millions of dollars to this. I just think we had a streetlight discussion earlier. We talked about things as they relate to potential fees being raised, potential taxes going up, at a time where we would place these funds, specifically the entire additional 2.7 or even an additional 1.7 over the million that was in the first motion, into an account that would achieve almost no growth at a time where we have to buy money through bonding at least 2, if not 3 percent. So on Thursday night, I'm going to bring a motion to table number five and place it into the Budget and Finance Committee, because this money is not going to go anywhere until we decide to do something with it. And I think that the opportunity for us to have a full and fair vetting of what those opportunities are before we place this in the tightest purse string possible, and I think that $4 million in addition is a great thing. Another $1.3 million, based on our vetting of the mayor's budget, is also a great thing. An additional $2.7 million might be too much of a good thing, especially when we're faced with so many other needs and cash outlays that will cost us more than the opportunity of saving this money in a way that we truly cannot use it. If we ever had an economic downturn or by virtue of the definition of the contingency fund, if we made a withdrawal from that fund, we could not make a deposit to that fund during that year. I think one of the main things that bonding agencies and others look at from the outside is our consistency of adding to this fund. And I see that there's no problem with our consistency of continuing to add to this. I think the peak that this might put in it is something that might not derive the best benefit opportunity for all those that we represent. So just a point of conversation for now and for consideration on Thursday night. Mayor, thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Farmer. I'm stuck on one thing that I'm down in the weeds on this, and I can't escape it. I know you find it hard to believe, Mr. Stennett. But the difference between 27.1% and 29%, can you put that back up there real quick? Yeah, that's a mistake. Yeah, that's more than – It should be 37. Hmm? That 29 should be 37. Yeah, the percentage increase from 18.4 million to 19.8 is more than 2%, 7, 8. Yeah, more than 1.4%. Yeah, okay. Okay. Right. So it would be going up from 27 to 37. 37.2. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. All right. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Farmer. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. I have a question to ask of the Mayor, but before we get there, if I can use a few moments of my time to respond to my colleague, Councilman, farmer. Thank you for bringing this data forward. I know we did have a good conversation. The only, and I've had time to think since our discussion, and I think that the intent to make sure that we set aside some funds for economic contingency is still a very valid point. I guess the question now is to what degree are there better uses for the funds. The only question I would have is, in light of your intent to come forward on perhaps Thursday to table the legislation that's on for Thursday, if there's an opportunity to amend that. I don't know how we would do that. But my concern all along has been addressing previous year fund balance as we really dive into the fiscal year 2014 budget. And the link that I serve on will start bright and early tomorrow morning. But you know, three things that I've kind of studied that may be helpful to us is the time to save. and speaking of fund balance, the time to save contingency-wise for a rainy day, but also to use these available funds to create jobs and to make investments. I think we've got to balance those as well. There may not be time to properly amend it, but I would be interested in, if we do table it, what the duration of that table would be. how soon will we really address this? Does that be a question appropriately to Council Member Farmer? I was looking for an instrument that would be as clean and easy for the council to work with on Thursday as possible. I felt like tabling it and placing it in budget and finance was the cleanest and easiest. If we are voting to amend, I think, to use the mayor's term, could get down in the weeds over what could go where. But specifically, these funds are not going to go anywhere until we decide. We don't have to decide immediately to place these funds in our most restrictive savings account immediately. If it were placed, it would be at the discretion of the chair of budget finance, but I would suggest it might be at least a couple of months or more before he could take or the committee could take that up during and after the budget itself. I mean, it's almost like you're picking the color of the room before you've bought the house. And we need to take time to vet through the budget and make sure that saving at this level is the right thing to do against the budget that we're still trying to draw. I just want to preserve opportunity. That's all. I'm not saying in the final analysis I might not vote for what is already out there. But to go ahead and pre-make the decision before we have done our links work, before we've gone back to the mayor and had a final budget, I think it precludes opportunity. And that's something that I find most important for this council to preserve is the ability to act. Right. Thanks again, Councilman Farmer. And I'll give deference to the budget committee chair and to the leadership amongst council as we go forward. But just from my standpoint, again, appreciating the need to save. But I also know that, and not to do so in haste, but I see it very important to when we have the opportunity to create jobs via economic development and to make investments throughout all of our districts, that we take that into consideration as well. So thank you, Mr. Farmer. The last thing, Mayor, that I wanted to ask, and I may not have enough time, is I didn't start the meeting off quite well. I wasn't ready to bring that motion to the docket. But I did hear your comments about Health First. And if I could ask you to chime in on that, I see we have other folks signed up, so I may circle back if appropriate. But I'm very interested in regards to what your conversation was with our auditor, Adam Edelman, and exactly what's going on. I'm a new member representing this council to the Board of Health, and unfortunately missed that meeting Thursday because I was here. But I'm going to wait now, so if you could really circle back and give us that. That would be helpful. I might ask for some help from Commissioner Reed, who is also. Yeah. Council Member, Vice Mayor Gordon. I just had a quick comment. Council Member Stenet mentioned the really good volunteer activity in the Eastland area. And to his point, the Parks Board is already working on a volunteer program for different issues within our parks, which can easily be incorporated with your idea, I think. It's a great one. We have probably thousands of people in our community who would like to have something near them, near where they live maybe even, that they could participate in for volunteering. And Parks is working really hard on a volunteer program. So just to add on to what Councilmember Stenet said. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Reid, Mr. Commissioner Reid, you might want to comment on what you can as it relates to Health Department and Health First. The mayor asked me to get involved with the Board of Health and Health First on attempting to see what we could do to move the process forward, securing the grant that was awarded in 2010 and which has been slow to be implemented. A couple of weeks ago, the Board of Health First discussed with the mayor their concerns over their ability to move forward, and we've been in discussions with both the Board of Health members and Health First members what can be done to get the project moving. Now, during those discussions and, I guess, witnessing the negotiation between the two boards, the issues involving the Southland property, the Southland site, have come up. I think we've all been aware of bits and pieces of this, but the newspaper has reported on issues related to the purchase and the execution of the agreement. And that issue is kind of laying out separately from the other issues of getting the boards to move forward, keeping the grants secure, getting the project moving. What the mayor in his discussions, and not to speak for you, mayor, has requested is the auditor to take a look specifically at the circumstances around 496 Southland. Okay. how much is being paid to the consultant. The consultant is also part owner of the project, and issues involving that whole piece of the puzzle. At the same time, we're trying to move the whole entire project forward. And the two boards met last Thursday. You were here. But they had an excellent meeting, and they took steps to secure the operating grant, satisfy HRSA that they are working together, which has been a major issue, and continue to move forward. I'll make one other mention, then I'll answer or shut up. A year and a half ago, an audit was requested of the state auditor by Rice Leach, and we were working with Rice. We kind of jointly made that request. So there was a completed audit in October of 2011, which laid out a blueprint of moving forward. So, you know, we have that as our benchmark. And now this specific activity related to Southland, we think, deserves a second look. And we need to continue moving forward to get the entire project moving. Both boards are working together, I think, better than they have in the past. I think there's a real commitment to the project. Things have tightened financially because of sequestration and Medicaid cuts, making the financial separation between Health First and the Board of Health more difficult. Okay. Jeff, thank you for that summary. I think that I feel to recall when Auditor Llewellyn, I believe it was, completed that at Dr. Leach's request. And we'll see what happens in regards to Mr. Eadlin in working with the Southland property. At the end of the day, I think it's very important that we do all we can do working with both Health First Board and the Board of Health. We really cannot afford to lose that resource of that $11.7 million grant. We really need that for primary care, and I know that you guys are working to that end. It is a high priority. We are working on it. Both boards are taking the issue seriously. There's better communication there's been in the past. The problem is shrinking federal dollars, and what's happened is a result of sequestration. and we're trying to navigate through this, and I think we will be successful. I think there's just bumps on the way. Jeff, one last thing I would say. I loosely use the term that we can't lose the grant. I think all that, no, but for clarification, it's not Urban County Government's grant. It's the grant to the health department and Health First, but the funds will benefit Fayette County. So to let the federal government down. Health First has complete control of the execution of the grant. The Board of Health has to determine how much money they're going to direct to Health First as part of this separation. Health First Board is a self-perpetuating board that's appointed among themselves, which is a different makeup than the Board of Health, which we have more involvement in. Thank you, Jeff. Vice Mayor wishes to comment on this. I wanted to comment on Council Member Ford's comments, with which I agree. But I think for Council, this is an even bigger issue. It is the Urban County Council that approved the tax that sends lots of money to the Board of Health, the health department, which then shares part of that tax money with the used to be primary care, now it's health first. And so we have a stake in this big time. That's even aside from the grant, the federal grant. And we do not approve any of their budgets. And so I think I really applaud you, Mayor, for asking the auditor about this. And I think as the body that approved the tax, it would be helpful for us every now and then to get some kind of an accounting. And this maybe is what will spur it on. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Reed, all right. Thank you, sir. The only other end comment I make, you know, you're absolutely correct. And if this grant is lost, the South End, Southland location is lost. and that would be a tragedy. But I think what we've all said, though, is that it's real important that we do things the right way just as much as it is important to do things right away. And that's what we, lessons we all learn over time, and that's what we're here to ensure. So thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank Council Member Farmer for bringing up the issue of the economic contingency additional funds. I talked about it during our council retreat. I spoke about it at the council work session again. And because it's referred to as the rainy day fund, I think it gives a lot of people, including the public, that it's just a savings account. Again, to me, and I'm going to repeat this, but it would be like the money is not going to go anywhere. We do not have to pull the trigger on this. We can do it later. that it is the most restrictive fund, and it is not easy to pull it out. This doesn't mean, oh, we're a little low, so we're going to pull some money out of it. And it would be like somebody buying, locking into a 20-year bond that they couldn't draw from before they did their household budget for the year. So I completely support taking a step back, and I think we've gotten additional information since the retreat and since that meeting on budget issues about adding this. but we talk about a rainy day, and we look at what has happened, I know, in many areas. Certainly what I'm familiar with is the 3rd District. For years, the infrastructure has been allowed to go downhill, downhill, downhill in many of the older areas, and now beginning in some of the not-so-older areas, and nothing has been done. And so I have a strong, you know, again, that money is not going to go anywhere until the council decides to spend it. And so to restrict it now in such a harsh way does not make sense to me when there have been so many needs that we've had to neglect during the downturn of the economy and other things that it's costing us, you know, a dollar for every penny we save to let them continue to decline. So I feel very strongly about this, and I hope the council will support tabling it. And, again, we can always add to it. There's nothing. We don't have to pull the trigger on it now. So that being said, thank you, Council Member Farmer, for bringing that up. And, you know, I'm not for willy-nilly, oh, we've got a little extra money, let's go throw it around. But let's be able to access it in a reasonable way. And I think that the mayor put a generous amount in there. And so thank you. And there's lots going on downtown and in many of the areas of the 3rd District in our county these days. So get out and enjoy it. See you all around. All right. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Mayor. I just want briefly to add my voice to this issue and thank Councilmember Farmer for bringing it Forward as an opportunity for this council to have a more deliberate discussion on an issue where there are clearly differences of opinion And I don't want to argue the pros and cons of what we should do But I do want to say that I see no reason not to Table it at this point and put it into budget and finance so that we have an opportunity opportunity to have a much more complete discussion about what our options are. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Kay. Council Member Stennett? Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to follow up on Council Member Farmer's comments. Council Member Farmer, you referenced Ordinance No. 5 for Thursday night. What about Resolution 30? Are you also including that in your motion as well? I think maybe the Law Department can kind of advise us on that because Item 30 under resolutions references a balance or a list, and that list includes the 2.7. You're right, it does. So unless you separate it off that list Thursday night, you're going to table all everything. I don't think we want to table the police radios and things because they've already done budget amendments for that and are ready to go. Commissioner, you're right. I referenced the incorrect one then. I meant to, and pardon me. Well, there's two. There's an ordinance and a resolution. I just want to make sure everyone's clear because I don't want to hold up any projects. You're right, because the other one is number 30. I just wanted the one that just has to do with the – well, that's when I was – Well, they both have to do with it. Well, you're – Commissioner. But ordinance number five, an ordinance amending certain of the budgets of the urban county government for economic contingency appropriations that's approved at the work session April 23rd. I think that's pretty specific. I think what, and we were talking about this, Council Member Farmer asked me about this earlier, the resolution that you all did that had the fund balance with all the different things in it, that was sort of the plan, but each one will be followed by a separate budget amendment, which is the first one that's been docketed, I think, is the rainy day fund one. So I think he's okay just to do whatever he wants to do with that one, and then you could go back and amend the other resolution after that. But we did them as separate ones that you'll be presented with a separate budget amendment for each of those. No, I understand that. But number 30 includes the economic contingency on there. So if number 5 is tabled, then when we come to number 33, we need to amend it. I just want to make sure everybody understands that. You're absolutely correct. That's correct. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Stanton. All right. No one else signed up to speak, which takes us to the mayor's report. Is there a motion on the mayor's report? Motion by Council Member Stinnett, seconded by Council Member Kaye. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Is there any public comment? Anyone signed up, Mr. Mundy, for issues not on the agenda? Well, all right. Nobody signed up, which allows me to take a motion for adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn? Second. Motion by Council Member Myers, seconded by Council Member Ellinger, unless there is an objection. We are adjourned. Now that it's over What now? I feel the whole world Falling all around me