# Urban County Council Work Session - May 7, 2013 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 7, 2013 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3002 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3002?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2013-05-07 - **Last revised**: July 16, 2026 - **Length**: 24,624 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Urban County Council met on May 7, 2013, at 3:00 p.m. in the Council Chamber on the 2nd Floor of the Government Center, with Mayor Jim Gray presiding. The council addressed ten agenda items during the session, including public comment periods, zoning matters, budget amendments, and various reports. The body took 19 votes and heard 8 public comments from residents on both agenda and non-agenda items. Several items were approved, including requested rezonings, a summary approval, new business, council reports, and the mayor's report, while other items were handled on an informational basis. ## Attendance **Present:** Linda Gorton, Chuck Ellinger, Steve Kay, Chris Ford, Diane Lawless, Julian Beard, Bill Farmer, Kevin Stinnett, Jennifer Scutchfield, Harry Clarke, Peggy Henson, and Ed Lane **Absent:** Jennifer Mossotti **Late:** George Myers ## Votes and Decisions All motions during this meeting were decided by voice vote. The following actions were taken: **Docket and Rezoning Matters** - Motion to approve the docket for requested rezonings and docket approval, moved by Stinnett and seconded by Gorton, passed [timestamp: 00:09:31] - Motion 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, moved by Ford and seconded by Beard, passed [timestamp: 00:09:31] **Administrative Approvals** - Motion to approve the summary of the work session on April 30th, 2013, moved by Beard and seconded by Myers, passed [timestamp: 00:10:01] - Motion to approve new business items, moved by Farmer and seconded by Scutchfield, passed [timestamp: 00:10:34] - Motion to approve the Mayor's Report, moved by Stinnett and seconded by Kay, passed [timestamp: 00:13:19] **Budget and Finance** - Motion to approve the neighborhood development funds, moved by Gorton and seconded by Ellinger, passed [timestamp: 00:13:19] - Motion to ratify the Lextran budget as presented, moved by Gorton and seconded by Kay, passed [timestamp: 00:13:19] - Motion to refer to the Budget and Finance Committee the issue of reserve accounts, their usefulness, and how they are funded, moved by Gorton and seconded by Lane, passed [timestamp: 00:13:19] **Zoning and Environmental** - Motion to place on the docket for the May 2, 2013 Council meeting an ordinance amending Article 5-1(a) of the Zoning Ordinance to provide for right-of-entry and administrative warrants related to zoning enforcement, moved by Farmer and seconded by Gorton, passed [timestamp: 00:13:19] - Motion to refer to the Environmental Quality Committee the Internal Audit Report on the Division of Waste Management's expenditures, moved by Stinnett and seconded by Ellinger, passed [timestamp: 00:13:19] **Code Enforcement and Community Development** - Motion to place on the docket for May 23, 2013, a resolution directing the mayor to immediately fill the vacant positions within the Division of Code Enforcement, moved by Henson and seconded by Farmer, passed [timestamp: 01:24:06] - Motion to refer the subject of small area plan implementation and funding aspects to the Social Services and Community Development Committee, moved by Ford and seconded by Akers, passed [timestamp: 01:27:52] - Motion to place the issue of creating a community-wide community development corporation into the Economic Development Committee, moved by Myers and seconded by Ellinger, passed [timestamp: 01:43:32] **Housing and Budget Scheduling** - Motion to place the issue of the relocation process of the Housing Authority into Social Services Committee, moved by Myers and seconded by Ford, passed [timestamp: 02:39:22] - Motion to schedule a special meeting for the public hearing on the mayor's budget on May 28th at 3 p.m., moved by Ellinger and seconded by Case, passed [timestamp: 01:36:46] - Motion to adjourn, moved by Myers and seconded by Ellinger, passed [timestamp: 00:13:19] ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included authorization for five financial actions: **Verizon Wireless Contract Renewal (L0295-13)** Authorization was granted to renew the Verizon Wireless Contract Routing Project for the next four calendar years at a cost of $180,000.00. **Information Technology Services Contracts (L0386-13)** Authorization was approved to select vendors to provide Information Technology Services and Consulting as needed per RFP #2-2013. The approved vendors are AIC, Leverage Partners, Metaformers, Pomeroy, Signature Technology Group, SIS, and Zannett. This action has no budgetary impact. **Law Enforcement Protection Program Grant (L0422-13)** Authorization was granted to submit an application to the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security for funding under the Law Enforcement Protection Program. The grant would provide $13,633 for the purchase of a micro-robot. **Dishwashing Chemicals Purchase (L0428-13)** Authorization was granted to execute an agreement with Smart Systems for dishwashing chemicals for use in the child care food program at the Family Care Center for FY 2013. The cost is $2,400. **Senior Citizens Center Funding Amendment (L0438-13)** Authorization was granted to execute Amendment #2 to the agreement with Bluegrass Area Development District. This amendment provides for additional federal funds totaling $10,040 for operation of the Senior Citizens Center in FY 2013. ## Public Comment Eight residents spoke during the public comment period, all addressing relocation challenges facing Pimlico residents. **Housing Access and Section 8 Vouchers** Jessica Spivey [timestamp: 02:05:28] described difficulty finding landlords who accept Section 8 vouchers and stated she lacks resources to cover moving expenses and deposits, reporting repeated rejections from landlords. Antonio Edwards [timestamp: 02:07:34] reported being unable to find housing within a 60-day window and said he has been turned down by landlords despite holding a Section 8 voucher. **Housing Options and Downsizing** Mary Chidester [timestamp: 02:08:37] stated she was denied the option to return to public housing and faced downsizing to a smaller unit, which she said makes it impossible to accommodate her young child. David Christensen [timestamp: 02:15:39] highlighted the need for the option to return to public housing and criticized the lack of time and support for families to relocate, warning of potential homelessness. **Support and Resources** Tanya Fogle [timestamp: 02:11:04] emphasized the social justice aspect of the issue, noting the lack of resources and the emotional toll on families, especially single parents and those with special needs children. LaShonda Lewis [timestamp: 02:23:03] criticized the lack of support and information from the Housing Authority, stating that residents were not given adequate time or resources to find new housing. **Emotional and Financial Burden** Ikaya Travers [timestamp: 02:20:53] described the emotional and logistical burden of being forced to move again, expressing frustration with the lack of assistance and the downsizing of housing options. Diane King [timestamp: 02:26:20] detailed financial and emotional hardships faced by residents, including being charged maintenance fees and evicted for non-payment, and criticized the lack of transparency and fairness. ## Contested Items **Pimlico Apartment Relocation Process** Residents raised significant concerns about the relocation process for Pimlico apartments. The primary disagreement centered on the adequacy of support and timeline provided to residents during the relocation. Residents cited several specific issues: - Lack of support throughout the relocation process - Insufficient time to complete the move - Difficulty locating alternative housing that accepts Section 8 vouchers The community opposition was substantial enough to generate a public outcry. In response to resident concerns, multiple motions were introduced to investigate the relocation process, indicating that the disagreement escalated beyond individual complaints to formal requests for oversight and review of how the relocation was being managed. ## Public Comment – Issues on Agenda [timestamp: 00:09:31] No public comment was received on issues on the agenda. ## Requested Rezonings / Docket Approval [timestamp: 00:09:31] The council approved the docket for requested rezonings during this agenda item. Key speakers on this matter included Stinnett and Ford. The council also placed a resolution authorizing a Memorandum of Agreement with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet on the docket for the May 2, 2013 meeting. **Outcome:** The docket for requested rezonings was approved. ## Approval of Summary The council considered approval of the summary from the April 30, 2013 work session. [timestamp: 00:10:01] Key participants in this discussion included Beard and Myers. The council voted to approve the summary, with the item passing without recorded objections or concerns. ## Budget Amendments No budget amendments were presented or discussed during this agenda item [timestamp: 00:10:34]. The meeting proceeded without any proposed changes to the budget. ## New Business [timestamp: 00:10:34] The council addressed several new business items during this portion of the meeting. **Items Approved:** - Renewal of the Verizon Wireless contract - Approval of IT vendors - Authorization to apply for a micro-robot grant **Key Speakers:** Farmer and Scutchfield led the discussion on these new business matters. **Outcome:** All new business items presented were approved by the council. ## Continuing Business / Presentations [timestamp: 00:13:19] During this agenda item, the meeting included six separate presentations providing updates and information to the body. **Presentations Delivered** The following topics were presented by the listed speakers: - Neighborhood development funds (Stinnett) - Environmental Quality Committee summary (Beard) - Economic Development Committee of the Whole summary (Gorton) - Budget Committee of the Whole summary (Means) - Lexington Parking Authority update (Hancock) - Division of Parks and Recreation agency accreditation **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken. The presentations provided updates across multiple city departments and committees, covering environmental quality, economic development, budget matters, parking operations, and parks and recreation services. ## Council Reports During the Council Reports agenda item, the council addressed two matters requiring committee review. The council referred the issue of reserve accounts to the Budget and Finance Committee for further examination and recommendation. Additionally, the Internal Audit Report on the Division of Waste Management was referred to the Environmental Quality Committee for consideration. Key speakers on this item included Gorton and Stinnett. The council approved the referrals of both matters to their respective committees. [timestamp: 00:13:19] ## Mayor's Report [timestamp: 00:13:19] The council addressed the Mayor's Report as agenda item VIII. Key speakers on this matter included Stinnett and Kay. The council approved the Mayor's Report. ## Public Comment – Issues Not on Agenda [timestamp: 02:05:28] During this portion of the meeting, public comment was received regarding the Pimlico apartment relocation issue. Multiple residents and community members spoke to express their concerns about the situation. **Key Speakers** The following individuals provided comment: Spivey, Edwards, Chidester, Fogle, Christensen, Travers, Lewis, and King. **Issues Raised** Residents expressed concerns centered on three primary areas: - Lack of support for those affected by the relocation - Limited availability of alternative housing options - Financial burdens being placed on residents **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken. The public comment was received and noted by the body. ## Adjournment The meeting was adjourned following a motion by Council Member Myers [timestamp: 00:13:19]. Council Member Ellinger was also present during the adjournment. The motion to adjourn was approved. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the new business - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Neighborhood Development Funds - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for the May 23, 2013 Council meeting, a resolution directing the Mayor to immediately fill the vacant positions within the Division of Code Enforcement - **Motion** — passed (0-0): refer the subject of Small Area Plan implementation and funding into the Social Services and Community Development Committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): schedule a Special Council meeting for a public hearing of the Mayor’s Proposed Budget on May 28th, 2013 at 3:00pm - **Motion** — passed (0-0): refer the issue of creating a community wide community development corporation into the Planning and Public Works Committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): refer the relocation of Pimlico Apartments in the Social Services and Community Development Committee and to place the item on the next agenda - **Motion** — passed (0-0): adjourn --- ## Full transcript Music I'm going to go to the next video. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go to the next video. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'll call the meeting to order and thank everybody for joining us today. And first, I'll ask for public comment for issues on the agenda. Mr. Mundy, has anyone signed up to speak for issues on the agenda? For issues on the agenda? No. All right. Okay. Then that allows us to move on to Roman numeral two, item two on the agenda, which is a rezoning and docket approval. There's no council meeting this week, so there's no docket to approve this week. which allows us to move on to the approval of a summary. Is there a motion to approve? Second. Motion by Council Member Beard, second by Council Member Myers, to approve the summary of the work session on April 30th. 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. Allows us to move on to budget amendments. There are no budget amendments today, so we don't need a motion there. Allows us to move on to new business. Is there a motion to approve new business? Motion to approve by Council Member Farmer, second by Council Member Scotchfield. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Farmer. Yes, Mayor. Just a question about item B that is for selected vendors to provide information technology services. I was just wondering about its actual, what that actually does. All right. Looks like we've got. From Chad Cottle. Chad Cottle or Chief Administrative Officer Sally Hamilton might be able to address this. Is that possible? Excuse me. Yes, ma'am. Those, every year, the Enterprise Solutions puts a certain number of vendors on price contracts. Okay. And that's what these are, and that's to help them with various services if they need that help, but only if they need that help. So they're at their disposal. Yes, they're at their disposal. That's what it is. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for your question. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Farmer. All right. Anyone else wish to speak to the motion? Council Member Henson. Or to new business. Thank you. I had a question on item A. And this may be a more, I was thinking government-wide. when we do do we do wireless contracts this is a little bit different this is the what we proved a couple months ago about four hundred eighty thousand dollars for the route where we have to improve every four years and this is a component of it that we have to put in okay I thought maybe that was the case thank you sir okay thank you Commissioner thank you Councilmember. Anyone else wish to speak to the motion? All right. All right, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. That takes us to presentations, continuing business. Is there a motion for the NDS? Motion by Councilmember Stennett, second by Councilmember Akers is there any discussion on the motion all right hearing none we can take a vote all in favor please say aye opposed no motion carries next on our agenda is a summary of the Environmental Equality Committee meeting on April 23rd Councilmember Stinnett thank you mayor we met on April the 23rd at a special time at 12 p.m. the first item on our agenda was a zero waste initiative initiative which was presented to the committee by the leadership lexington organization jennifer cave and cheryl norton were the two class members that presented it to the committee this has to do with marketing education and facilities to accommodate and processing disposal of our recycling materials including the rate structures and what incentives we can offer to citizens to encourage them to recycle more the recommendation from the group addresses all those things we will keep this in committee with a recommendation back from the administration at our next meeting about ways we are already implementing some of the suggestions as well as what we're working on moving forward to increase our recycling operation the second item on our agenda or the next item was the distillery district update this was our first preview of the feasibility study for development of the distillery district the basic summary from that presentation was three potential alternatives for developing a trail and streetscape improvements that range from 16 actually 14.9 million up to 23.9 million the best estimate being at 16.2 million of the three alternatives that were presented to the committee this was done by Strand and Associates, and Mike Woolham, who is the consultant working on the feasibility study. Again, this was just a summary of the study. The committee expects the final summary to present it back to the committee in the next month or so, and then whatever direction the council can decide along with the administration about moving forward and funding the distillery project. They also identified some additional engineering work that can be done in the meantime in that area and finalizing the FEMA floodplain update, as well as the utility service plan, sanitary service plan, and stream revitalization. Those costs were about $825,000. We did have one public comment speaker on the issue. The next item on our agenda was the consolidated greenways responsibilities. This had been recommended three actions to the committee from Susan Bush and our Environmental Quality Department. The first action was to adopt the 2006 draft of the greenway plan. Second was to create a greenway coordinator position. And third was to consolidate greenway maintenance responsibilities within the Division of Parks. In the Mayor's FYI 14 budget, there is an additional $117,000 in parks already for greenway maintenance. Next on our agenda was the monthly financials. There was no discussion on those. Those were for information only. And we concluded with public comment from Ms. Katie Seitz in regards to our drainage issue, drainage maintenance policy, and the drainage maintenance issue on Waller Avenue. The meeting is adjourned at 155. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Stenet. All right. Next on our agenda is the Economic Development Committee of the Whole Summary, April 23rd meeting. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Well, I'm not finding it. There it is, page 15, for anybody who wants to follow along. The Special Economic Development Committee of the whole met on April 23rd. I called the meeting to order at 2.07 p.m. All members present except Farmer and Lane. Committee summary of March 7, 2013. On a motion by Ellinger, seconded by Myers, the summary of the March 7, 2013 meeting was approved. Item number two, Siobhan Akers council person Siobhan Akers has been working diligently on this food truck work group and feels like she can with two more meetings can finish the work I'm just only reading what's on here But progress is being made, and they are operating in certain selected locations right now. um council member k had uh been working on a median salary discussion and feels like um we get the final report on it that we will have something that we can work with as far as the question of salary uh discussion and fairness. Commerce Lexington, Jenna Greathouse, senior vice president of Commerce Lexington, stated that Lexington worked with several potential clients and consultants regarding new startups, report on the status of Bluegrass Industrial Park, which Commerce Lexington owns, and there are a few little smaller power parcels left and they have so their planes for alternative and industrial sites in the future and due to the staff emphasis on marketing and new expanding businesses existing business visits have slowed down but they should increase visits this spring and summer and she discussed the economic development model produced by the University of Louisville she stated that UofL is in the process of updating the model, but that won't happen for a while because they're still celebrating up there. And she updated the council on several new startups. Council Member Henson asked about the Toyota expansion announcement in response to the Great House stated this will have a positive impact on the local economy. I asked Jenna about the Omaha trip, which I believe leaves tomorrow morning. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Hmm? Yes. And it comes back Friday. There are 185 people are going, and they're going to, again, Omaha, Nebraska. All right. Meeting was adjourned at 2.35 p.m. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Beard. Next is a Budget Committee of the Whole summary by Vice Mayor Gorton. Thank you, Mayor. This starts on page 17 of the packet, and I would just ask that I be switched. I'm not the Vice Chair of the Committee of the Whole in the minutes, if you'll change the minutes, where it says Vice Chair Linda Gorton. We had quite an interesting committee of the whole on revenue, debt, and capital on April 25th, and this was to hear about the mayor's proposed budget and what is in it in regards to revenue, debt, and capital. And this report includes lots of numbers for anyone interested. I'm not going to say all of them, but our acting budget director, Melissa Luker, was joined by Dr. Chris Bollinger from the Center for Business and Economic Research, and they talked about revenue. And Dr. Bollinger did tell us we're seeing rapid employment growth in Lexington and that the occupational license fee numbers are trending upward. and that the net profit taxes have been flat. Those are the net profit of businesses. Finance Commissioner O'Meara reported on revenue in that employee withholdings are at $168,405,000 and are 3% over the fiscal year 13 projections and 4% over the fiscal 13 budget, and business net profits are at $29,725,000 in the budget, the proposed budget. Some other numbers that I wanted to report out, we talked about current debt. The new debt service number is $34.9 million, And then there was a discussion about our CIP Capital Improvement Plan, not only the criteria for projects, but some of the highlighted projects in the budget, specifically $1.25 million for Arena Arts and Entertainment District, $1 million for PDR, $350,000 for the Corridors Program, $5 million for the Senior Citizens Center. $3 million for new police and fire vehicles and $15.6 million in total bonded projects. And then finally, Acting Director Luker said that the mayor has budgeted $4.6 million in Urban Services Fund for operating capital. Sanitary Sewer R&O Fund is $6.3 million in projects, and the construction is $40.2 million in projects. Water Quality Management Fund, $2.9 million. Landfill Fund, $1.4 million. And Enhanced E911, $2.2 million. And that's kind of just an overview of what was in that meeting. Mayor, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. All right, and that takes us to the next item on our presentation, or on our agenda, rather, is the presentation by Gary Means, Executive Director of Lexington Parking Authority. Mr. Gary Means. Thank you all. Good afternoon. Appreciate you giving me an opportunity to give you some updates on what we've been up to since you transferred the parking garages over to the parking authority. just as a reminder on July 1st of 2012 the parking authority took over ownership of three of the four garages the fourth one being the courthouse garage that we are managing and branding the same as the other three and I know a lot of your questions and interest will be on the annex so we'll get right into that but some of the things that we saw going into or that were needed in the garages were this list here, you know, mainly it's safety first, but then other things like lighting, making it brighter and more efficient, painting if we can afford it, and improving the revenue control and access control system. We put together by using consultants and engineering firms a list of items that we needed to do, and this is kind of a rough breakdown. the main ingredient was the 3.1 million dollar annex restoration figure transit center and i'll show you a picture here in just a little bit of one item that we need to do at the transit center but that'll be about an 800 000 project we hope to move to that one next the courthouse restoration is a little bit less and putting new equipment in all of the garages for the gates and the revenue all tied into one system is a 1.1 million dollar project and then the lighting somewhere around $220,000 for all four garages and then signage in all the garages we've got a budget of $135,000 just under six million dollars that we've entered into in terms of restoration and improvements in the city garages some of the questions back when we were talking about the transfers how's this all going to be paid for so I want to give you just a quick recap on street revenue and garage revenues total a little over three million on an annual basis and our Our expenses are about 2.2, so it leaves us a little over $800,000 for debt service, and that's how we're going to be able to pay off this initial $6 million, with the ultimate goal being putting the parking authority in the position to be able to bond for the next parking garage that's needed in downtown and assist with economic development, which we see as one of our main agendas and ways that we can help the city. This is just a reminder of some of the conditions. The upper three and far right picture are all annexed. The one in the bottom in the middle is a beam in the transit center garage that needs some attention. So I just wanted to bring that to light to show there's some things over there that we're going to start on right away. The ultimate goal on all of this is safety and longevity of these assets. The work that we've done at the Annex Garage will prolong its life for 20 years. This is just a product. I didn't have time to get pictures of the Annex, but this is the same exact product that we're putting on. It's a protective coating. It's a four-layer system that will protect that concrete for an additional 20 years. The upper right picture shows the sand that's embedded in it to give it good traction, and it protects the waterproofing element that's in it. With the new equipment that we've put in for gates and revenue, we've moved away from a paper ticket that most people are used to. You push a button when you enter a garage, a paper ticket comes out. now you are issued a token that has an electronic chip embedded in it. That knows what time you came in, and you use that chip upon the exit or at a pay-on-foot station. This is what the entrance and exits look like. If someone chooses just to use a debit card or credit card, they can drive straight to the exit, insert that token. It will tell them how much they owe, and they can use their debit or credit card right there. And we've seen already in the last two days many, many people using that feature, and they like that. It's a quick in and out. if you want to pay with cash you need to stop at a pay on foot station and that there is one at the bottom of the elevator and stairwell and then there's another one outside the county clerk's office looks just like this and easy to follow instructions to walk you through payment if you want to use cash coin or credit card at this point there's all kinds of features i won't go into all those details but it was in your packet and if you want to ask me questions i'll be glad to answer one feature that we haven't had a lot of time to talk about yet because we needed to get this up and running is this barcode feature but we'll actually be able to do things like event parking when we get to get to the victorian square garage we put this in some people could purchase parking to go to uk games and even download it put it on their cell phone and there's a barcode reader in all of our entrances that will read any kind of a barcode and it's something that we want to work with the kentucky theater and possibly have them start to purchase tickets when you go to the movie that that ticket would have a barcode on it and then you could come back and use it as a validation at the garage so we have a lot of a lot of opportunities with the barcodes and so we're the we're just starting to explore there's going to be a whole lot of things that we can do we went on and made the vestment and put this in all of all of the garages and it'll be something we can use in a lot of ways this is the validator we're using the one up there in the top left you'll lay that that chip coin or token on the validator folks that come visit any of the entities in the phoenix building or the gut this government center i'm holding up one of the chip coins if you haven't seen one up close it's about the size of a quarter but you just lay that on the unit and if you're a visitor to this building it'll give you half off when you go back to the garage if you're if your stay would have been four dollars it's only two dollars now so it's really simple this this whole thing besides being sustainable not using up a lot of paper it's it's almost foolproof it's gravity driven when you push the button this thing falls out it has the the time on it you lay it on there there's no ink stamps no anything that it's really really simple and robust and this is a system in-house this will be located at the Lex Park office and they're able to generate coupons so if you're a if you're a restaurant or an entity that doesn't have that validator and by the way the validator that was talking about cost about $400 we purchased about 10 of them with this purchase and gave them to the city to use and some of the other entities that we're working with but some restaurants or other folks may want to have coupons. So very similar to the way you used to be able to buy stamps to stick on the old-fashioned ticket that we had, you'll be able to buy pre-purchased coupons, and we'll generate them in these machines and sell them to people. You'll be able to get one-hour or all-day coupons. I'm jumping to this because I know there had been a little bit of a question about the name of the garage. Something that we are very, very excited about is something that we're looking at, is to create that iconic image out of the helix. A lot of people don't even know what a helix means. so we know that people know what it looks like though and for years everybody's been saying you know is that garage going to fall down all these posts are holding it up the good news is all the posts are gone it's extremely safe all new concrete all new steel and like i said in a couple of conversations we've we put over 48 tons of steel into the garage and over 80 truckloads of concrete most of it went into the helix but look at some of the cool things that we can do and think about holidays and things that we can do, special events downtown. So this is something that we're exploring, and we really feel like highlighting that image and kind of creating an iconic image in downtown is a really great thing. So we're still exploring it, but there are LED capabilities to do any thousands of different combinations of color, floor-by-floor colors. Those are just some images. I'm sure people are already thinking about things that could work. Other things that we're looking at on the exterior is signage, And I'm just going to show you some signs. This is probably one of the best, and it's not, I'm not going to say it's the greatest sign in the world, but probably one of the best ones in this city, and it's on the University of Kentucky's parking garage. But for downtown, you know, we've not seen perpendicular signage for years because of a signage ordinance that went into place. Now we can do this again. So we're starting to look at signs. We're going to be going to Omaha, and we'll check out what's going on in Omaha for ideas as well. but this was when we were down in Greenville, South Carolina, something that we see in their imaging. And I think this is a great idea that we should look into as well as putting an image on the roadway. We'll have to work with the state to do something like that because some of our roads that come through downtown are state roads. But we want to investigate more ways to help people get to the garages that we are branding. I went online and found all kinds of different signs. So, again, this is just an exploration. We're looking at what other communities do, but the exterior signage is prevalent now. This gave me an idea, if you notice up in the upper left, I hadn't thought about charging dogs to park. So we're going to look into that, too, but I see a dog parking sign there. That'll help us pay that $6 million debt off. So that's a quick run-through. I know I flew, but I wanted to give you guys some of the ideas of things that we've been doing in places that we're heading. So any questions? Okay. It looks like some council members signed on. First, Council Member Akers. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Gary. This is very exciting. I'm pleased to see the addition of parking spaces as well as the signage. I think that that will be a great help to visitors as well as just people who live here and don't come downtown often and are intimidated by the parking system. I did have one question about the foot stations, and you said they were located on the bottom floor or two spots. Do you have to go to those, get a ticket, and go back to your car to put something in, or do you just enter your space number or something? No, you will go to that with your token, and we've positioned them strategically. Most people have to go by the other road, the elevator down, or took the stairs down to the lower level of the one, and a lot of visitors go into the county clerk or the state police offices. There's another one there. So on your way back to the garage from wherever you went, you pay for your parking. It will give you your token fully validated back. And then you drive to the exit. And I really appreciate you asking this question because another thing that we did was get rid of the log jam that occurred at the bottom of the helix with the booth there. Now you have three ways out. So once you've taken care of your payment, you're driving straight to the gate and you're on your way out. And that's just been flowing. There's been no lines at the gates. Everybody's just flowing out the last day and a half that we've been doing that. Excellent. Thank you so much for this. Thanks a lot. Council Member Lawless. I don't know anybody in the world you make happier than me. I really, and I think the Helix Garage is fabulous. I've been very excited, as you know, about it. And other than it not being named the Lawless Garage, it's very exciting. And I really appreciate the fact that you listened to feedback from the community about, you know, different entities and, you know, people that depended on that parking have an option for coupons and that kind of thing. And it'll be good to have that parking back. It's not like we've got an abundance of new parking downtown. It's been gone for a while, and you all dealt with that very, very well. But I'm so excited about this. I can hardly stand it. Congratulations, and thank you very much for all you do. Thank you all. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. Gary, thank you for coming to you on such short notice. I know this was headlined last week in the newspaper and has since raised several questions that I think you can help us answer here publicly and so the public can get a better idea of where we came from and where we're going. On the name of the Helix, did you all adventure to discuss any other type of names, maybe after a fallen officer or LFUCG council member in the past or, you know, just any other names out there besides Helix? I do think people will have trouble at first knowing where that garage is, but if you say, oh, you know, it's the one with the concrete. The Helix. The Helix. The Helix. But we call it concrete thing, so. Sure. Well, obviously, we try to make good business decisions is the way that Parking Authority has tried to operate in its existence and up until this. Certainly, there could be some names that would get thrown around. And even in non sort of memorial attempts, we looked at other names that might make sense. And garages are named in different ways all over the place. Universities sometimes like UK, I think nothing against them, but they just have like parking structure one, parking structure two. so you know some just use addresses but I feel like it's it is the community's garage naming it after any individual probably less than what it what it could be and everyone I think recognizes that they may not have known it was called a helix but we feel like that iconic image really creates a brand our whole idea is to make people be more comfortable coming downtown parking and doing business with other folks downtown so we looked at a few other names but that's the one we kind of um you know vetted it out with a few folks and everyone thought that was a pretty cool name well what about sponsorships name you know there's a way to fund parking you know that we can get a little more creative since we have a lack of parking we can you know catapult i don't think that's really out of the question and we actually are investigating ways to potentially advertise within the garage just to help generate additional revenue so i don't think naming's necessarily out of the question but at this point and is the helix completed i mean are the lights on at night no that that is uh basically kind of look at this whole project as phase one phase two phase one get the garage reopen make it safe get all the interior um and then we're going to move towards exterior so what kind of enhancements we can afford to do with some of the budget savings that we had um this this idea of lighting it i think we're going to do we're just kind of working the bugs out on that and what's your time frame for phase two um we'd love to have uh some really cool lights up before july 4th we can do red white and blue you could do some cool and then that's kind of a goal. Then we talked about parking. Obviously for this room here and for a lot of activities going on the government center, that's going to be the main garage that our systems will use. Now understand though, you're going to be charging 24 hours a day in there, so it's no longer free at night. Right. So, you know, I guess I'm trying to understand how do we get more citizens here and encourage them to come at night when we're going to make them pay to park? Well, one thing you should keep in mind is that we've had the garage closed for eight months and you've had numerous council meetings and people have found a way here that they wanted to be here and obviously we want to encourage more so the city has also provided the phoenix lot free there's about 98 parking spaces there which i think accommodate your typical crowd here and at the same time three dollar charge for a safe and well-lit garage that is covered and less than a block away we we don't feel is out of the market at all and i don't think that'll be a problem i understand it's a big culture shift and we certainly don't want to get ahead of the market or overcharge we feel it's very fair so so what what are the rates um if you enter after five you can stay as long as you want for three dollars and that's every night of the week and then all weekend so you can stay as long as you want on a saturday or sunday for three dollars and if you come to the government center do you get half off or do is there a way to there's a validation program here at the government center i'm not sure how late in the evening the security desk will be staffed but they have a half off for visitors to this building so in the daytime right now if someone wanted to come here that's the main garage or transit right yes and do you all have a brochure that advertises all your garages or how do you package them so that a visitor to downtown new knows where everything is looking at a map or we have a brochure we also have a website that we've recently updated as well it's got even more information about the garages and all the prices of the garages are the same or yes and we did not change the daytime prices it's eight dollar all day max and a dollar a half an hour we kept that the same it's been those rates have been in place for three or four years i believe in the parking spaces that we had previously will still have in that garage for our police department etc yes and everybody that was parking there before is back and boy are they happy oh i'm sure and what are our costs to park there um the well according to the transfer agreement it's free for anybody that was already an employee we are that's grandfathered in any new employee comes in is uh half the rate and then in five years according to the transfer agreement all lfucg employees will have to pay at the garages that they park in or the city can pay for them and the rate right now is is 55 in that garage so half of that would be the rate okay very good thank you mayor thank you councilmember stent council member myers thank you mayor uh thank you mr means for coming in great presentation excited about the things that you're doing i like the technology and innovation thinking way outside the box bringing new stuff to Lexington. It's just one question. You know, you had the token and you put it across a little thing. What happens if I come downtown? When you said there's two or three different ways to pay to get out of the Helix. Yes. Is it possible for me to, how much time do I have, I guess, between the time that I pay and I have to exit? Great question. Let me separate that into two answers. So for your question, from the time that you paid, so if you went to one of them pay-on-foot stations, you have 15 minutes to walk to your vehicle and go on and exit. We feel like that's adequate for a 380-space garage to take the elevator stairs to wherever you parked and then go on out the exit. And again, what we've done in changing these three exits instead of one is if there are lines, they will happen on foot and not at the exit. And a lot of times people will be upset. I've been in the parking business a long time, and I've heard so many times, I was in this long line, and I was only going to be in there an hour, and now I've been in an hour and a half. because your line was so long. So that won't happen. You get 15 minutes to get to your car and they're flowing out. So that's that. The other part of it is the validation. If you went to visit, if you came to this building, you got a validation. There's no time limit on that. It's half off whenever you get back over there and exit. Got you. Okay. I would just encourage you to look at the option of naming rights because that would bring in more revenue, help you pay off the debt. Other than that, fantastic work. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much, Gary. And I see Jim Frazier's here, your chair of the Parking Authority Board. And the first thing I wanted to say is that there are several of us who were on the council that created the Parking Authority several years ago. and for me it's really it's very satisfying to see this coming to fruition just exactly like we envisioned and it's coming piece by piece and so the first thing I wanted to say is to thank you and the board because I think you've done a really good job of thoughtfully moving from step to step to make it a reality reality and and I don't know about the other council members who were on the council at that time but I think this is what we envisioned it's exactly what we envisioned so it's working well I like the lighting potential you know other cities have have lights in different ways and I think if they were on the helix it would be very special it would be unique and at first I I didn't really know what I thought about the name Helix it just seemed kind of odd but the more I've thought about it it tells exactly where it is for people who know the you know the Helix and you could incorporate that if you do go to naming rights into the name anyway you You know, it could be the Gary Means Helix garage or whatever. But I know that our CAO is looking at a comprehensive naming rights plan for urban county government. And so I would encourage you to look at that also, see what it brings forward. And so I just wanted to thank you very much for your hard work. I think it will be heavily used, even though citizens have to pay to go in there. They were used to paying before. I'm glad that the government and other entities have the discount, because we do encourage the public to come to our meetings, and they do come. So anyway, thank you for all your hard work, and I appreciate it very much. It looks great. Thank you very much. I see it right from my office window. Great. So you probably heard the jackhammering from your office window, too. I saw them painting. I've seen lots of different faces. So anyway, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Gordon. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Gary. Just a couple questions. One, I'd heard that there would be or might be external design elements, decoration, artwork, whatever. Is that still in the plan? Yes, we're working on that, and we've got some renderings that we're not prepared to share yet that we're still trying to get pricing on, the actual fabrication of some ideas that we have for the exterior. We hope to do something pretty grand on the Main Street facade, but we're still looking into it. Great. I think that would make a big difference in the way people think about that garage and maybe parking garages in general. And then, I guess, a suggestion about the lighting. I like the idea of lighting it. I think it also has the potential to be a dynamic lighting situation. I don't know if you've seen computer-driven light situations on other buildings, but it could be a signature for downtown. So I would encourage you to look a little bit into that and see what the possibilities are. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Kay. You may be actually referring to all the press that that San Francisco bridge got recently. Is that the one? Anyway, yeah. And the company that we've been speaking with about LED lighting actually did the Empire State Building. And if anybody goes on YouTube and looks at that, you can see a pretty impressive light show. So it's the same exact type of ideas that we're exploring. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. Gary thank you for coming and presenting and thank you for the work that you've done I just think I always get really excited I think it's very innovative and I think I would never think to do the things that you do and but the most important thing is I think you're a blessing to this city when we look at what we had and what we have now so I just echo what the vice mayor said I think that you know that garage was really really scary to drive in it and to think that you know the we made a very very good decision to create the the parking authority and a very good decision to let you take over these garages because it's obvious we were not doing a good job and i just thank you so much and the lights i'm thinking if we could get some you know blinking going on and things at christmas and there's a i could come up with some ideas for that we'll have to talk okay thank you okay thank you councilmember henson councilmember farmer thank you mayor thank Thank you, Mr. Means. My verse of this kumbaya may be darker than others. Because I appreciate the council's kind words, but I think if every ticket-paying member of the public were here, they might have something different to say. I just see a lot of tickets being given, and I see a change in culture, And I think that's part of what your entity does, is it changes things as it goes. And I understand that. That doesn't mean that I may be overjoyed by some of those changes. I know you were there for part of the food truck working group meeting the other day, but you may have left before one of the gentlemen who is one of the partners in Alfalfa spoke, who was taken by surprise by some of the after-hour and weekend fees. And I just wonder, and I know that probably was presented to us, and I was aware of it at that moment. Did you do or what kind of outreach did you do to merchants in the area around where the parking changed so dramatically in terms of after hour and weekend parking for fee? Well, what we are doing and have been doing to reach out to, and we've been speaking with Alfalfas as well, about the validation opportunity. So when we talked about the transfer, we were talking about charging at night, and I got several questions. what are the rates going to be? Are you all charging at night? We explained it back then. What we didn't know at that time was how easily we can roll out a validation program. So we feel like we have options for these merchants to take that and take that what could be considered a negative impact. But I think the bigger story is now there's 380 safe spaces that are going to be well lit, and it's a very reasonable price. And we are not overcharging. I understand it's a big culture shift, and we will continue to work with them. Well, I mean, part of his closing comments were that his lease is up in a year, and he was looking to move based on what was that day's headline, if you will. So if you'd step up there a little bit, I think that might be helpful, because he did move from Lime downtown to help downtown and the Downtown Arts Center be vibrant. We, I, appreciate that. Sure. Two more things. which garage will you do work on next then since this one will be complete or is complete i guess um the next restoration project will be at the transit center garage and um the new equipment will follow one month at a time so we hope by june one we have the new equipment up and running at the transit center the next garage after that will be the victorian square garage by july one and then by august one the courthouse which has the newest equipment in so we'll get to that last to complete the system on the equipment. The lighting will probably be done in six to eight weeks in all of the garages. And then just in general, I notice just from seeing notices come through, you all have had a couple of special meetings lately. Is that just to meet certain deadlines for things, or what has been generally the... We've had to do some approval of the financing that we've been putting into place to make sure that we can cover this debt load. sir i have to respect what you do i may not like it but i have to respect it thank you thank you councilmember farmer councilmember lane thank you mayor i just had a couple of comments uh first off i think gary you've done a great job and you know managing the day-to-day operations of the parking authority and uh being that my offices are located downtown for maybe 15 years, I can see a big improvement in the availability of parking for people that want to do business downtown, come to offices downtown, or even restaurants downtown, where in the past, before we managed it appropriately, the employees were just camping out and coming down and putting coins in the meter all day long and tying up all the spaces for the business usage. So I think that's been a plus. And then, of course, you've done a great job in refurbishing some of the older garage areas. I also wanted to suggest that maybe using the street addresses on the garages would be appropriate and maybe have a marketing program saying you want to find our garage put it in your GPS and then it would take you right to the garage entrance and everything is going GPS now and so I think that would be very good for marketing. And then the last thought I have I'd like to I noticed that James Frazier the chairman of the board is here and I know he I believe if I'm not mistaken he was an original board member and about maybe two or three years ago became the chairman and I just wanted to recognize him because I know him very well and I think that his professional business acumen has been very valuable and operating the from the board's perspective in supporting you in the day-to-day operations and so i'd just like to say thank you mr frazier for a job well done on your end also thank you thank you council member lane council member clark thank you mayor gary also say i really like what you're doing here and this is this is really very good very modernized and i think it's going to work let me i'll be very quick as much as you possibly can make as much give as much information to the citizens of lexington as you possibly can this just something different scares people uh particular people of my age but i think you i think the more information you can give to people to to satisfy them this is not that difficult and i don't know exactly how to tell you to do that Website's good, but I don't think that's totally adequate. So really, as you begin to discuss this with folks, as much as you possibly can, give as much information to the whole city as you can, how easy the process is, explain the process in simple terms, and keep in mind that people are coming, their understanding is coming from scratch. You're involved, you've been involved, and this is really easy. it's not easy to a lot of people and so I would request that as people get used to it they're going to love it I'm sure of that but the more you can give them information the better off and I appreciate what you're doing thank you thank you mayor thank you sir a couple of comments on that it was a quick little story today I was helping a gentleman in his late 70s understand how to use the pay on foot and he was just so impressed with it he said well that's a heck of a deal but he didn't use the word heck but he was pretty pretty excited about how easy it was to do it and um but you're right um we're going to do as much as we can and one other thing i wanted to add that also talks to the gps conversation is there is already a an app that we were able to work with this company for free it's called park me and all of the downtown lexington parking is on it and it will direct you we have them by address on there so the city garages or the parking authority garages are listed as well as other parking so if anybody's going anywhere in downtown they can log into that and get directions straight to the facility that they're gonna and we've already got that up and running called park me councilmember beard thank you mayor as it went Gary I had to jump in the pool with everybody else and congratulate you on what you all have done not just on what's the name of that um helix anyway uh most of the people in my neighborhood actually approached me about about that and asking me what a helix is and of course i was one of the ones that i couldn't tell them either so there's three blocks there of people that could not guess what what it is but they can learn, I'm sure. I saw recently that you were going to alter rates in certain areas of town to try to boost utilization of that and boost the areas that have those. Tell us a little bit about that and how you're going to stop and get out of it once he's done it. Well, we announced early on when we started talking about on-street parking and best practices in terms of managing the curb space, especially metered spaces, an optimum occupancy is about 85%. We were talking about this back in 2008. And what that really typically means in a meter block is of eight or ten spaces, one of them should be open at any given time. So if you're going to visit somebody on that block, you'll find a parking space. That's our ultimate goal. So we monitored that, and then we were able to budget it and implemented a position called a parking analyst. This parking analyst now walks around and does studies. We're looking at all kinds of different data. But we've identified these areas that are a little bit off the beaten path and way under parked. So we would find them only 26% or 30% occupied. So in these four areas that we mentioned in the press release, we want to make adjustments to see if that would improve that area. It may make people more comfortable going to those facilities or maybe walking a couple blocks. Instead of parking and paying $1 an hour, they could pay $0.50 an hour and walk back over to wherever they were going to go. So it may or may not work. I mean, a lot of things are demand-based, as we all know. So if there's not something on that block that you want to go to, the $0.50 may not entice you to come. But that's what goes behind that. We'll do the same thing in the garages. We're charging $3 after five on weekends. We're not going to stick that just because we said that's what it is. If we see that that causes folks not to park there and they're parking somewhere else, which I don't know where they would go because most of the rates are at that level or higher, we'll make adjustments. I mean, we can analyze and study and make adjustments if we need to. The market rules. Exactly. I don't know what happened to my voice all of a sudden. if they were staying away because of cost and you do this to pull them in and then raise it they're going to be not only worried about the cost they're going to be mad as a hornet right uh so i hope you're ready to handle that some some way i don't know i'm staying out of all the council staying out of it we're all going to hide somewhere when that happens I understand. Anyway, thank you so much for what you've done, and we've had a lot of fun with today. I appreciate it. Thank you, Council Member Beard. Council Member Lawless. Could you tell me just real quickly for the viewing public, et cetera, about the discount passes that downtown businesses can use and that program like the Kentucky Theater or Alfalfas. So at the Victorian Square Garage, where a lot of retail is already established, our board approved a validation program that would allow up to half off for them. and there had previously been a program that was in place since the early 80s and we were phasing that out and phasing this in so over time we will get there. So once we establish that goal there, we quickly start realizing you've got the Kentucky Theater, folks like Alfalfas that have the need here, and we want to extend that same program, which is a half-off validation to assist with their business. And this can be done in two different ways. And that's at no cost to the business? It can go either way. If the business wants to pay for it up front and get their customer out free, they can do that. Or if they want to allow the half off to come to the customer, they can do it that way. So it's no cost to the business. Okay. And you sort of answered one of my questions about Victorian Square, but what year was this Helix garage built? I'm going to say 1966, but it was in that range somewhere. Right. I remember when it was new, unfortunately, or rather new. And my second question is, when were the rates raised last or changed? Well, we haven't been operating the garages. We just took them over. As far as I know, there was a monthly rate increase about four or five years ago. And we did one when we took over about $5 a month in the different garages. is the daily rates have been in place, I think, at least five to six years, maybe more, what they are, the dollar, half hour, $8 all day. Those have been in place for five or six years, I'm sure. And basically, you get what you pay for. You can see the condition of the garages before you took over. So that money went somewhere in the wind. And I think that I'm very glad that, you know, our businesses downtown close to there will benefit, have some way that it's not going to deter customers. But I also know that many people, myself included, were very fearful of parking there at night because of the lack of lighting and safety issues. So, again, thank you for listening to the community and responding likewise. And, you know, what were the prices in 1980 for any other thing that we can compare to today? So, again, thank you, and thank you to your hardworking board. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. we'll go next to the council members who have not spoken to this motion or this issue or commented yet. It would be Council Member Akers, Massadi, then back to Council Member Lane. Oh, you've already spoken on this one. Okay, Council Member Massadi. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Gary, for the presentation. I think very informative for the public, and I do like the Helix name. It's all about the DNA, I guess. So let me ask you a question, and this alludes to the parking meters. Who makes the decision on who bags the meters and for how long and how that's done? That's a very good question. We have a really great working relationship with the city, with the police department. So the dividing line typically is for one-time events like a parade or something like that. The police will typically bag them with the red bags that they use. If somebody needs a meter for, you know, they've got the remodeling or they're going to set an air conditioning unit, they'll usually go through the Lex Park office and we bag a meter for construction purposes, things like that. And those are blue bags, and that means someone's paid for that. So that's kind of the difference between who does what. We work together. Sometimes we do things for the police. Sometimes they do it for us. Yeah, I've seen, like, sometimes KU has bagged those for customers, too. Now, do they reimburse you for those meters, or how does that work? Yes, if you see a blue bag on a meter, then there's a $9 all-day charge going on in that case. So it's based on the hourly rate of $1 an hour and 8 to 5. So you come up with the $9. And does that routinely happen? I mean, is that something like once a month they'll bag the meters? I'm just curious because I've seen them at different times, but I just wondered how that was worked out. It's just random. Based on the need at that particular space or parking space, if somebody's doing a remodel in a facility and they need to set a dumpster, that kind of thing occurs. You know, the big events where the police do it, we've got six or seven, eight or ten of those, I guess, a year that, you know, we bag all of Main Street kind of thing. You know, as Council Member Clark alluded to, you know, people from the suburbs coming downtown, parking is, you know, strange for them. You know, they're not used to getting into the garages or parking on the street and then having to pay and so forth. And I was just wondering what the process was. But I appreciate it. And I understand, you know, you have to, $3 after 5 is a bargain. compared to more other cities. And hopefully we can educate the public and have them understand why this is necessary, but I appreciate your hard work on this. I did want to comment real quick on helping educate. We'll work with GTV3 to produce some segments on how to utilize this equipment and get that out there as soon as we can. All right. Thank you, Council Member Mossade. Council Member Lane. Just one follow-up question. You indicated you've started charging parking at nighttime. How much revenue will that create for the parking authority on an annualized basis? I realize this is an estimate. I really can't separate that in my mind right now. I wouldn't prepare to answer that question, but it's something that I can get back with you all on. We have some projections, and it's really a serious guesstimate at this point because we're not really sure what that level of parking will be where there are options that are free in other places, but most of the paid parking is $3 or $4 at night. So we hope that by staying right in the market, we'll get some business. But we've got a projection, and I can't peel it out right now. So you'd be encouraging some large events downtown then? Okay. Exactly. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Mayor. Just one last question, Gary. Will you be charging increased rates for special events, as another one of your competitors has done? We increased the rate at the Victorian Square Garage before last basketball season. It was $10 when the city was running it, and we increased it to $15, which could look like a pretty hefty increase. But we filled it up every U.K. game, and people are happy to park that close. Any sold-out concert at Rupp Arena, it'll typically fill up. We started charging last year at the Transit Center garage at a rate of $5, and we didn't know what that would do. Previously, when the city was running it, the gates were up, and you could just park there for free, and so they weren't grabbing any of that potential revenue. We saw about 80 or 90 cars every U.K. game at $5. So it was a new stream of revenue that was totally unbudgeted. But this coming season, we have no anticipation of increasing those rates. Do you have signage outside of the garage at the entrance to the garage that the fees are $15 so people aren't driving in and then finding out at the booth that they have to pay the $15? So then they're sort of hostage to pay it? Yes, we pre-warn them ahead of time. And then in particular at the Victorian Square, we still honor validation. So if somebody was going to just eat dinner and not go to the game and come back out, we will reimburse them from the event rate and just have them pay what would have been the normal rate. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks, Council Member Akers. Okay. No other Council Members signed up, so, Gary, thank you very much. I'll just add to the chorus of praise, punctuated that it does illustrate the effort toward gaining efficiencies in many respects. It's looking back less than a year since this transition occurred, and to see that just in the way of one project being designed, being financed, being procured, being built, and then the project itself being engaged. It's a pretty big deal, so congratulations on that. And it also, you know, in many respects, it adds to the component that we all know is relevant, which is lifting and elevating the city's brand and working toward achieving economic growth and creating jobs, which is in today's economy still a very big deal. So thank you all very much. And Mr. Frazier, several have already recognized you. Thank you, Jim, as well. Thank you, sir. Okay, that allows us to move on to the next presentation, which is by Mr. Jerry Hancock, Division of Parks and Recreation. This is related to the agency accreditation process. I'm going to ask if that, I have a 415 phone call I've got to make, and I'm going to ask Vice Mayor if she'll take over the chair. It'll occur during this, so thank you. My colleagues are saying don't do it. Danger, Will Robinson, danger, danger, right. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Jerry. Council members, what we have today will be very brief for you. It's an update on what Parks and Recreation does on a regular basis to ensure that we're doing the best job we possibly can. As you know, we have a wide variety of responsibilities, and every five years we participate with the National Parks and Recreation Association in evaluating how we do things and whether or not there are better ways to do them and can we incorporate new and improved best practices from around the country. I simply want to summarize for you our re-accreditation efforts. We were accredited originally in 2007, and we are this week sitting through a re-accreditation process where there are three nationally known members of the parks and rec world here looking at our records and business practices to see if there are things that we can do better and to see if there are things that they can take to other cities and introduce based on our lead. CAPRA, as it's called, is the Commission on Accreditation of Parks and Recreation Agency. CAPRA, as we call it, was formalized in 1993 to set standards and best practices in the parks and rec world and to recognize those agencies for excellence in service delivery and in operation. What it does for you and what it does for the citizens of Lexington is it provides an assurance that the agency meets national best practices. There's a broad range of standards in place, essentially statements of desirable practice. There are 144 standards, 36 of which are fundamental that we must meet in order to be accredited. And there are 108 non-mandatory standards, of which 85% must be met. And quite honestly, we stand here proud of the fact, and we hope you are as well, that your Parks and Recreation Division is accredited nationally. There are 108 agencies as of this time that are accredited. Bob might know the exact number, but for some odd reason, I happen to know that there are 3,008 counties in the country, many, if not most of which, have a Parks and Rec agency. So there are 3,000-odd agencies out there. We're one of 100 that are accredited nationally, and that, I think, is a very positive thing. As I said before, we were accredited first in October of 2007. We're now seeking reaccreditation in 10 broad areas of standards from our role and responsibility, how we deal with the police, our human resource efforts, physical management, all of the recreation programs that we do. We look to see whether we set goals and objectives for ourselves before those activities are put in place and evaluate ourselves after to see if they can't be improved next year. A whole wide range of issues are covered as though we were a standalone government, which in many agencies, in smaller governments, a parks agency really does accomplish most of its own work. So as I say, this effort is in effect a self-assessment. We put together a 100-page document that had about 1,000 electronic files, sent it to our national association that distributed it to a couple of people around the country to look at in a blind taste test, if you will, based on what those individuals found. The national agency has instructed these three on-site people to come and visit with us to take a look a little bit deeper to see whether or not we in fact have met the standards that we profess to have met ourselves. The on-site team is here this week, Monday through Thursday, led by Robert Hall, who is the former director of St. Louis County and the St. Louis City Parks Systems, as well as having spent six months as the executive director of the National Parks and Recreation Association, John Boggs from Dayton, Ohio, and Kathleen Frazier from Kingsport, Tennessee, are here as well. They'll be digging into all of the things that we have to show them over the next couple of days, and will report back to us sometime in the next couple of months as to their findings. Based on those findings and our response to whatever questions they may have, the national organization will review our application in October at the national convention in Houston and give us their verdict as to whether or not they consider us accredited for another five years or so. Based on that, I'd like to introduce Bob Hall, who's here as the head visit team member, and he's got a couple things that he'd like to say as well. Thank you, Jerry. Members of the Council, acting mayor? Not acting? You're in his chair. I see you in his chair. He likes to sit in the mayor's chair. You know, I do that a lot. I like to do that at home a lot. My wife lets me sit in her chair once in a while, but not very often. It's my birthday today. Anyway, I asked Jerry if I could actually say a few words. And first off, I want to thank the council. I want to thank you for allowing one of your premier agencies to go through this process. It is not a simple process. It's very difficult. When Jerry points out that there's only 108 agencies that are accredited, the reason for that is it's very difficult. It's a hard job, but it's a very worthwhile job. The agency will gain more from going through this than the little plaque they're going to get on the wall. This will make them a better agency. They'll know more about what they're supposed to do, how they're supposed to do it, and quite frankly, they'll know what they've been doing. So many times agencies get wrapped up in the minutia of everyday life that you don't see what you're doing and what you're accomplishing. This will give them the opportunity to do that, and it will give an opportunity for you to show the people what you have been supporting all of these years. So I think it's extremely important, and I think you're to be congratulated along with the agency itself. As a visitor, we're the eyes and the ears of the commission. I've been doing this since the beginning. I was in the very first team that went out a number of years ago, and I've done about 40 of these now over the last 20 plus years. And I can tell you that I do it for a very particular reason. It's enjoyable. I have a lot of fun. I get to see some really neat places. We actually have five military bases now that are also accredited across the country. We have a program for them, and I had the very good fortune. I did Fort Knox about five years ago. They just went through reaccreditation for their first time. I did Fort Leavenworth and I had a hard task. I had to go and do Army Garrison in Hawaii. But somebody has to do those kind of things. You know, you've got to sacrifice once in a while. But again, it was very fortunate. When I look at your agency, I look at everything that they've done. We start looking at all of these things today. We've got today and tomorrow and Thursday. We make a recommendation. We don't accredit anybody. The commission does that. We would never want to usurp their authority. But I can tell you that based on what we've seen, we're very impressed with the way things are going here. A lot of good paperwork. God, we love paperwork. Jeez. And I spent almost 50 years in government service, so I guess I'm a paperwork wonk or something. But anyway, we really do like what we see. We like the support we see in the community. Everybody we've talked to, it's very supportive. We visited some of your facilities yesterday, some of the park facilities, and great staffs, very enthusiastic. That nature center that we saw. McConnell Springs. Yeah. McConnell Springs. McConnell Springs. Fantastic. What a real jewel. And I can tell you those things. And when you walk into a place and it's being utilized and you see people that are enjoying what they're doing and everything else, that's what this business is all about. and that's why you put your money and everything up there for it because people want to see these things. So again, I want to congratulate you. I want to tell Jerry and his people, we think that they're doing a great job. Hopefully when we finish our task tomorrow, we'll still think that. I'm sure we will. But again, it's been a lot of fun for us. I've never been to Lexington before. I've passed you on the highway many times. My sons went to school in Washington, D.C., and so every time we'd go to Washington, we would go that way because we have friends over in south of D.C. there. And so I'd come by Lexington, never had stopped, so I got to stop this time, and I appreciate that opportunity. So thank you very much, and thank you again for this opportunity for your agency to go through this process. Thank you. Thank you so much, Bob. We're happy you could visit Lexington, and you'll have to come back sometime when you're not working. Yeah, yeah, that would be a good idea. that would be fun yes council members did you have any questions for jerry or bob at all get her done thank you very much thank you council member k actually we're actually going back to work right now okay very good can council member k jerry i just yes sir i just wanted to get a little bit of an idea of the kind of time it takes within your agency you're part of the agency to do this and is there an expense involved? I mean, is there an external cost? Is there a budget? There are effectively no external costs. A few thousand dollars and some travel for the team to come. The time it takes is as much time as there is, quite honestly. In 2008, I attempted to have a position created that would have managed accreditation full-time. I think there is an FTE worth. I think the police department and has more than one but less than two FTE working on it. It could be a full-time job. For us today, it's probably 5 to 10% of five people's time. It takes a lot of time to make sure that there is evidence that the budget flowed up from the bottom and that there's a piece of paper that demonstrates that. remembering to feed the file so that five years later it can be observed is the difficult thing to remember. It's approximately a full-time position, but there is not a single person doing that as their sole responsibility. Okay, and obviously from your perspective, it's worth that investment because of what you get back from that process. Is that fair to say? Yes, it forces us to follow a menu that works nationally. It is worth the time. I don't think we can point to a single grant dollar or gift that we got because of it, but it has given us tools that we've learned how to use. At this point in time, I can say that it is worth every minute. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Council Member Lawless? Yes. Did I dream this, or did we become a kaboom fun city? Yes, we are. Which, you know, I've been yelling about for six years, and the work done for that, for those of you that don't know what a kaboom fun city is, there were only two of them. Playful city. Playful city. And if I may say this off of television so that nobody at home could hear this, we're not allowed to say that until tomorrow, which is the 8th of May. It's been embargoed until tomorrow. Never mind. But, yes, we will be very soon announced. I contribute to things through that place we can't say. Anyway, congratulations. And this process dovetailed that process. And that opens a lot of doors for us for grant funding, et cetera. Thanks a million. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks. Now, Council Members, if you have a Council report, will you log in, please? Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I wanted to announce that this coming weekend is Mother's Day. And I expect my guests know. But there is a Mother's Day event at Valley Park from 1 to 5 on Sunday, and there will be all kinds of activities for kids and mothers, games, prizes, giveaways, and it should be very enjoyable. And I have a motion that I would like to bring that came out of the Public Safety Committee meeting today, and the committee members felt that rather than wait until report out, that we would go ahead and make this motion. So I move to place on the docket for May 23, 2013, council meeting a resolution directing the mayor to immediately fill the vacant positions within the Division of Code Enforcement. So moved. There's a motion by Council Member Henson, second by Council Member Farmer, to immediately fill the vacant positions in code enforcement. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Akers, are you on for a discussion on the motion? No. All right. Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? That motion, I believe, passed unanimously. Anything else? Thank you. You're welcome. Councilmember Akers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. First of all, I wanted to update my colleagues and all interested parties of the public that the food truck work group did reach an agreement last Thursday, so it only took one meeting, not two, and we submitted or approved a pilot project that I will actually present that pilot as well as the draft, the map at the next work session on May 14th. Also, this Saturday, Sandersville Elementary is hosting a 5K run called Sharks on the Run. It will begin at 8 a.m. on Saturday at Sandersville. There will be door prizes, and you can sign up online at sharksontherun.com. And Metathorpe Neighborhood will be meeting next Tuesday at 6.30 at the Metathorpe Community Center. and lastly Mayfest that goes along with Mother's Day every weekend will be held this weekend, Saturday and Sunday at Gratz Park. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have an announcement I'd like to share and I also have a motion I'd like to bring for the council's attention. this coming Saturday, May 11th the Lexington VA Medical Center will be hosting a Vets First Health Care and Benefits Bazaar. Again, that's this coming Saturday from 1 p.m. through 6 p.m. at the Charles Young Community Center 540 East 3rd Street. Should be a lot of resources available for both vets and members of the community to come out and support that good event. Secondly, in regards to a motion at last week's committee meeting of social services and community development. We've talked a little bit about potential items for discussion in that committee. One of those items are small area plans. I had a discussion with our division of planning and they provided me a little background. Small area plans are a function of our planning staff and our planning commission. With the 2007 update of the comprehensive plan. Four small area plans came out of that, of which three was adopted. The East End small area plan, Central Sector small area plan, and the South Nicholsville Road small area plan. So planning staff in those neighborhoods are continuing to work on those. In addition, the 2013 comprehensive plan may come up with recommendations to study additional areas. There are perhaps eight additional areas that will focus on challenging economic demographic neighborhoods, underperforming commercial areas, and underperforming job areas. But again, those are the purview of planning staff and the planning commission. What I would ask Council's willingness to do is to in committee study how we examine and go forth with creating strategies to fund and implement many of the items, the good things that come out of small area plans, particularly those that have community development aspects. So as such, I move to refer the subject of small area plan implementation and funding aspects to the Social Services and Community Development Committee. I have a motion from Council Member Ford, seconded by Council Member Akers, to refer the small area plan, and will you repeat, funding and implementation and funding aspects, yes ma'am. To Social Services Committee. Any discussion? Okay, Council Member Stenwick. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Customer forward, usually these are handled in the planning committee. What's the rationale going into social services since it's a planning issue? Right. Great question. And per my discussion with planning staff, I think there's a difference. Again, my commentary this afternoon recognizes the fact that the planning aspect of small area plans from the initiation through the adoption and through some of the regulatory implementations are handled by planning staff and the planning commission. Some of those items would be the applicable zone changes, text amendments, et cetera. But particularly what we have, particularly in speaking in brief to those area plans adopted in my neighborhoods, it's more so about how do we examine the funding. And I think that this is important, not that the funding has to be wholly based at local government, but how do we recognize and examine that funding will be needed to bring some of these community development-related items to fruition? And I think it's important for us to examine that now because we all appreciate the great work and detail that goes into the planning exercise, But the reality is that if we don't have the adequate funding or strategy to bring funding to bear, you know, we really wouldn't be well advised to continue on with future small area plans. And I truly believe that we ought to have small area plans. The plans adopted by Council Member Stenet to date and the areas that have been identified by planning heretofore, potentially in the 2013 update, represent areas in eight of the 12 council districts. So I think it behooves us as a county in whole to think post-adoption of how we get the resources needed to get these things done. So it's a difference between the regulatory aspect of planning and what we do on a community development standpoint. Well, again, though, if we're going to focus on implementation, it's not just community development dollars. It's actually funding is a budget and finance issue. I think it probably would go better there for just focusing solely on implementation and the funding for it. But I understood the motion differently. So, you know, if the motion is obviously to fund the plan, that's different than once we have a plan and how do you implement it and involve both the community and LFUCG to find funding. So, I mean, I just see it differently from not being a social service issue at all. You're exactly right. It's not a social service issue. It's a community development issue. I'd contend in. Planning and community development. The planning. No, the committee is community and community development. But I still see it as a funding issue. And that belongs in budget and finance. Well, the only thing not to be argumentative is that I would contend is that the funding post-adoption of the plans should not be all to bear on this local government. So it wouldn't be our budget and finance committee who would have the ownership of implementing many of the good things that come out of these comprehensive plans. So we're talking a community development. How do we bring all the partners to bear to examine the needed funding? So thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Now, for those of you signed up, are you to speak to the motion? Yes. Council Member Henson, are you to speak to the motion? No. Council Member Lawless, to the motion? I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm confused as to why the small area plans would be put in social services and community development. And I heard your, but it still doesn't, I'm still not there because in many ways we're talking about, I'm just not making the connection, I guess. Thank you. Council Member Myers, did you want to speak to the motion? Okay. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak to the motion? I guess I would ask, Council Member Ford, we at this point don't have any small area plans coming forward, and they will in the future. So this is a generic, is this a generic motion for all future small area plans? That's correct, Vice Mayor. Again, what planning staff has advised me is that we have three adopted plans, of which result from three of the four that were initiated by the 2007 comprehensive plan update. Potentially, planning staff is examining up to eight additional areas to bring forth recommendations of small area plans. It's probably unlikely that all eight areas will come forward from the Planning Commission, But again, this is a holistic approach to not a specific small area plan, but how about we look at it as an overall policy post-adoption of available plans. Okay, thank you. Other questions? Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess since the mayor put some dollars in his current proposed budget for small area plans, and the council voted to put money in the budget last year for a small area plan, I think we need to wait and determine what we're going to be doing before we start down the road of how we're going to fund if we're looking at other small area plans being initiated, I guess I'd say. The other thing is I think that there are some people in the community have talked about putting together a citywide community development corporation and I think that that probably ought to be part of the discussion too when we start looking at how we try to find funding for these plans once they've been completed. So I just kind of think it's premature to put this into committee without a plan to move forward and with all these other plans that are going to be being started. Thank you. Vice Mayor, if I could. Yes. Council members, I'm asking just to put an issue in committee to study. That's all I'm asking. I think we, again, I don't think that local government is in a position to afford to fund all the recommendations that come from these plans, but we should bear some responsibility and leadership in trying to see some of the recommendations to be funded if there's some of our dollars or not. Again, I think this is a worthy item for discussion in committee and that's all I ask of the council. Is there any other comment on the motion? Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? I hear no opposition, so that motion passes. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Welcome. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Real quickly, I just, I failed to mention that we have a very old council member that's having a good birthday today. So I just wanted to make sure that we recognize Council Member Myers for his 50th birthday. Is that okay? Oh, did he want you to say that on camera? I wanted to have a black-blue there, but I failed to bring it. Since 50 is the new 20, I'm cool with that. Or the new 30? Okay, that'll work, too. Happy birthday, Council Member Myers. Thank you very much. Okay. Council Members, I have one issue under Council comment, and I was actually going to make the motion until the Mayor left, and now I'm chairing. So I'd like to ask one of you to make the motion. We have a public hearing scheduled on May 28th at 3 p.m. This is a public hearing on the mayor's budget. It's just part of our process, but we need a motion to schedule a special meeting for the public hearing on the mayor's budget on May 28th at 3 o'clock. So moved. Okay. Council Member Ellinger moved, and Council Member Case seconded. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Thank you for that. Now, Council Member Myers, did you have council report? Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I would ask that you put into Planning Committee the issue of this community studying a community-wide community development corporation. Can you say what the issue is again? To study the issue of putting together a community-wide community development corporation. And which committee would you like it in? Are you making a motion or are you asking me to just put it in? Either way. We have the council here if you want to make a motion. Okay. I will make the motion and it would go into planning commission, I presume. So the motion is to put the issue of a community-wide community development corporation. The issue of creating one. Into planning committee. Did I hear a second? Yes. Council Member Ellinger seconded. Now, is there a discussion? Council Member Ford. Council Member Myers, could you expound upon the request? It seems that what you're asking could be discussed in the very action that we just moved to put into Social Services and Community Development Committee. The creation of community development corporations are recommendations of two of the three adopted small area plans, And I would imagine that that would be discussed in the committee. But could you explain your rationale for wanting to take such a similar subject and put it in the planning committee? Sure. And I think the difference is we're talking about a citywide community development corporation, and it would incorporate the entire city. I don't think that that has anything to do with the funding issue that you just talked about. We're talking about putting together a community development corporation. Did you have further comment, Councilmember Ford? Yes, Vice Mayor. I'm not clear on such a community-wide community development corporation. I've never heard of such. Can you give an example where there may be others? Council Member Myers? No, I just want to put it in committee. And I know that there are people in this community that have talked to other members of the council, as well as a peaceful administration, about this issue. Thanks, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Council Member Akers, this is to the motion. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So, Council Member Myers, can you maybe help me understand why Community Development Corporation for the entire city should go in planning and not in the Community Development Committee? I think it would be easier once we put in a committee to do that. If you look at the people who have talked about this issue, it has much more to do with the entire community. It's Ecoliard Community Development Corporation, but it really encompasses a lot of things besides that. Okay. Is there other comment on the motion? Council Member Clark. Were you on to comment on the current motion? Okay. Council Member Clark. Yes. Council Member Myers. I'm sorry. I just need more information about, and I'm not opposed to it necessarily, I just need more information about what the purpose of that corporation would be. And not where it goes, but just give me some information about what the purpose of that organization would be in terms of the city. Yes, sir. Some of the things that people that have asked for this and are seeking this are talking about is different industries in Lexington and Central Kentucky and how we grow those industries. And so it's a much bigger thing than just community development. And so you're looking at areas of industry where we have competitive advantage over other communities and how we bring all those things together to create something that changes our job outlook and things like that. So it's not a community or neighborhood. It's economic development more. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else who wants to comment on the motion? Council Member Beard. Just one comment, Vice Mayor, for George, and that is isn't that what we have been doing around this horseshoe for the last, for me, eight years? Why have the corporation when we've got an entity like this to function in that way? Well, if we put it in committee, we'll be able to bring some people forward to talk about what their ideas for this community development corporation would be and why the things that it wants to do aren't being done. Okay. Is there any other discussion on the motion? Council member Ellinger. Listen to Mr. Myers explain. I think it might be more appropriate to be in economic development than in. And I agree with that. So I would move to amend that and put that in economic development. Do I hear a second? Second. So the motion is to amend the motion and place the issue of creating a community-wide community development corporation into the Economic Development Committee. Is there discussion on the amendment? I see no discussion. All those, Council Member Akers? I just wanted to say that I appreciate that amendment. I serve on social services, so I wanted to be a part of the community development corporation discussion, and so now that it's an economic development, we can all participate, and I think that's excellent. Thank you. Other discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the amendment to place the issue of creating a community development corporation into the Economic Development Committee, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, the amendment passes. Now, is there any discussion on the main motion to place the issue of creating a community-wide community development corporation into the Economic Development Committee? Council Member Ford. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I approve and thank Council Member Elegant for bringing the amendment. I think economic, per what Council Member Myers has just said, is probably the correct way to go, because economic development is a committee of the whole. I just want to clarify, and it's not playing on the semantics of words, but I think there's a major difference between an economic development corporation and a community development corporation, because a community development corporation is more geographically centered around neighborhood-type boundaries that have similar socioeconomic characteristics. Hence, the recommendation of the small area plans to create succinct community development corporations. And I think I understand what you're saying, kind of. But I guess my question is an economic development corporation, is that more in line with, I'm concerned about the confusion which may arise between a CDC and an EDC, both of which have very valid terms and functions in other communities. Thank you for your comments and your question, and I appreciate them. You're right, there may be a difference. I think that overall, this may even end up being a way that if you look at our community holistically, rather than just looking at it from individual CDCs, and that may happen, there may be individual CDCs, but I think really when you talk about how we get these small area plans funded, the citywide opportunity may be the best one so that we connect everything together, so that we do things sort of seamlessly instead of compartmentalized by small area plan, but at the same time achieve some of those things that are in the small area plans. But really, when we get this in the committee and you hear from the people who want to do this, it's much bigger than the small area plan piece of it. Council Member Myers and Vice Mayor, I'll wait and take your leadership now that we got it, I think, in a more appropriate committee, and we'll see where it goes from there. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Okay. Now, I think we still have a motion on the floor. And has everyone had their chance to speak? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, that motion passes. Is there other... Did you get your birthday present, Council Member Meyers? I think it's in the caucus room waiting for me. Thank you. We voted for him to put that in committee. All right. Yes, that was your present to put that in committee. Okay. Is there any other council report? Okay, I see none. And we have no mayor's report. Now, public comment is next. And we have several persons here to speak on the Pimlico apartment situation, but first I wanted to ask CAO Hamilton. It's been a long day. to CAO Hamilton to address this, and there may be an update from a meeting, I understand, and then we'll have public comment from those who have signed up. We thought maybe it might be good if we started with Commissioner Mills, and I met this morning and also with Council Member Myers, to go over an update of the Pimlico situation. and I am on the Housing Authority Board myself as the mayor's representative. But Commissioner Mills had called Austin Sims and sort of gone over with him after she had heard from the community meeting. She wanted to pursue this issue and sort of find out the details. And so I think before we start, if we could for just a minute, if she could reef you on her conversation with Austin Sims, who is the director of the Housing Authority. Thank you, Sally. As Commissioner of Social Services, I was concerned. We had all read in the paper about the folks from the Pimlico neighborhood. And we have always had a fund available for relocation for code enforcement properties in Fayette County. And I wanted to make sure that the housing authority was okay and that we didn't need to step in because I wanted to do this in a fair way. So I talked with Mr. Sims, and as it turns out, everything has followed the federal guidelines, and the federal government is responsible for relocation. So there's a Uniform Relocation Act in any property that's going to be in repair for 15 months or more, which is the case with Pimlico Parkway. He sent me the timeline, and the residents were first made known that there was going to be some relocation in October of last year. And they didn't know they had the funds to do the repairs until December, so in March they had a meeting at Pimlico Parkway, and 96 of the 106 residents came. And they were given a form to sign. They had two options, one of which they could move to a housing authority property that was either owned or controlled by LHA, And if they moved to one of those temporarily, the housing authority would pay all their moving expenses while they moved to the other place that was suitable for them. They would pay their moving expenses back to Pimlico, where they would have first preference after it was built, and they would give them $100. They had the option to sign up for that. If they chose not to go to a housing authority, a controlled property, they could get what's called a rent voucher, a Section 8 rent voucher. That list has been closed for years. There's thousands of people on the waiting list, so it's a very special thing that you get. Once you get that voucher, you can take it to another state. You can move to any landlord that will accept the Section 8 voucher to pay all but a third of your rent cost based on your income. However, the letter also said that if you accept the voucher, that you waive the rights for moving expenses, that the housing authority is not responsible for your moving expenses if you accept the housing voucher. Those are very hard to get, and as long as you meet the income guidelines, you have them for the rest of your life. So all but 10 of the residents elected to have the Section 8 vouchers, but they signed a thing saying that they would give up the moving expenses. So in all, you know, the way that it works out, Mr. Sims said if people would prefer to go back and accept the housing authority properties rather than the vouchers, they could do so. But it's not fair to the folks that took the moving expenses and to stay in a housing authority controlled property for someone to subsidize the moving expenses for people that waived them to take the Section 8 voucher. So after hearing all of that and hearing that residents were informed, there's been several meetings. I appreciate some of the community's interest in helping these folks move. If volunteers want to help find trucks and help the people move, Mr. Sims said that he would send the list of properties that will accept Section 8 vouchers in the area, but it was my recommendation that city funds not be spent for moving expenses for people who took a Section 8 voucher. Thank you. Council Member Henson, is your question for Commissioner Mills? Okay. Thank you, Beth. I wanted to ask if they changed their mind, like, you know, no, I don't want the voucher. I'll just move into another housing authority property. Would they allow them to do that? Mr. Sims said they would take that up on a case-by-case basis. If people had changed their minds and felt like they couldn't afford to move, that they should call him. And that he would see about putting them in a housing authority-controlled property. And do you know why the Housing Authority chose to renovate the entire complex at one time? It's my understanding there's a lot of structural damage to it. And when they got the grant, they can do the whole property with the funds that they've got. I know other properties that have gone into renovation, and they would do one building, move those folks, move them back. And, you know, Council Member Henson, that's probably a better question for the housing authority because I really don't know the details. But that's not a question that came up. No. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. There are a couple more questions. Council Member Myers. You just dropped off. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just a question. And again, you may not be able to answer this, but it seems to me it's important. When Mr. Sims with the Housing Authority says he'll make judgments on a case-by-case basis, did he give you any idea what criteria he would use to make judgments about whether to grant exceptions? Well, this is an example he gave us. There was a woman who moved to a property, a Housing Authority-controlled property. And after she moved, it was not suitable. She did not like that property. So they paid for her to move to yet another temporary property. So because she was unhappy, he has case managers that work with folks in these properties. They moved her to another housing-controlled property until they get Pimlico redone. The folks that chose to stay in housing authority-controlled property will get first rights on Pimlico when it becomes available. I thought you were talking about the voucher. He said that he would talk to them on a case-by-case basis. But you don't know what, I mean. No, and that would be his decision, but, you know, if people have signed this, I asked them if they had a right to rescission. If they signed this thing and said, yes, I'm going to give up the moving expenses and take the Section 8 voucher, if they changed their mind, could they come back and choose the other option? And he said, yes, indeed, they could. But that's a housing authority decision. It's a federal decision under the Uniform Relocation Act. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Commissioner, for, one, looking into this for me when I asked last week that the government look at what role we could play. I do have a little bit of concern because originally you said that if they wanted to change their mind and go back, they could. but then there's sort of a caveat there about Mr. Sims' discretion maybe. Can you elaborate on that? No, because it's a federal property. It's not a city property, so I can't speak for Mr. Sims, you know. I can't elaborate on that because that's his decision, not mine. Okay, so can you clarify this point? Is it that all of them who would like to go back to the other option of going to Lexington Housing Authority property, will they all get that option, or is it simply going to be a case-by-case basis? They would have to ask Mr. Sims that. Okay. But they could elect for option A or option B. If they go to a housing authority-owned property, they get moving expenses. If they accept a Section 8 voucher, they do not get moving expenses. That's a federal rule. The way he explained that to me was that when people take the Section 8 voucher in the federal policy mandates, that means that people are moving more towards self-sufficiency. So the assumption is being that if you take the voucher, you're moving more off of public housing and you should take care of those expenses yourself. And if you can't afford the moving expenses, maybe that means that you're not ready yet to assume that level of self-sufficiency. Okay. Well, thank you for looking into that. Thank you for our meeting this morning. and we'll continue to work with the Housing Authority to make things right. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Commissioner Mills, for being responsive to Council Member Meyer's request. And this issue is one of concern. I won't belabor, but what I will say is that from somebody with a housing background professionally and who was also, as a staffer in this government, had the tough role of helping coordinate relocation. It's a very tough and very sensitive item. It can bring a lot of anxiety on families. And I think that the Housing Authority, and I know CAO Hamilton is still here, and she has some experience with the granting process as well. I think that they have the expertise in regards to understanding the federal regs and those things. But I'll say this without being critical. I'll say this from a leadership standpoint and an advisement to them is communications has to be better, either from a public information standpoint or a community relations standpoint. You see a lot of organizations that have those valuable people, that that's their primary role is public info or community relations. And that may be something. If we could, as a government, could advise of the housing authority that they may help in future incidences, because they're going to continue to have projects that help, hopefully intended to help folks. Communications has to be better. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Council Member Lane? I know very little about this subject because I just more or less got caught up on it today, but it does concern me that a number of people put in an awkward situation, and although I don't think we have any kind of financial obligation as the urban county government, I think it would be very helpful if we could provide support to the people that have issue and gives us some advice and counseling maybe have one of our attorneys you know help and discussing it with the housing authority and see if you know some kind of an arrangement could have worked out to solve the problem because with that many people you know being real okay that is a that's a major a major problem and I just spoke to the finances case managers social workers from the adult tenant services meeting will be at the community meeting on March May the 14th. I'm in the wrong month. But our social workers will be a part of the meeting that's been called to try to give assistance that is available to residents. Well, I'm sure that. Other than financial. I know you're on top of your game and you already seem to be very knowledgeable about the issue. So I'm sure you're going to help people who need help on this. But I feel their pain because moving is an anxiety. Council Member Myers. Okay. Let's go to Council Member Akers since Council Member Myers has already spoken on the issue. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner Mills, I don't know who provided this. if it's your office or council member. Do you have a copy? Yes, I do. Okay. So it says under the keeping in mind the first section of bullet points that the cost to move is $800 to $1,000, including deposits. So are there deposits charged if they're given a Section 8 voucher? Yes, they are. And so when they were originally, I guess in March, had the meeting with the Housing Authority Administration and were offered these two choices, were they made aware that there were deposits and they would have to pay moving costs in this $800 to $1,000? I don't know that. I wasn't at the meeting. Did anyone ask or invite Mr. Sims to tonight's meeting from our end? Does anyone know? Today's meeting? Right now? Yes. Did Mr. Sims know about it? I don't know who knew about it. He did know about it, but he wasn't aware there was going to be a group here today. Oh, I see. Okay. That's all. That's what I, when I spoke with him today, that's what he said to me. Thank you. Councilmember Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner, I think, and CAO Sally, I think this is, as I said before, a great opportunity, maybe for us to be able to partner with the Housing Authority. I realize that this is their project. It's federal dollars. He's not under the government in any way. But it seems to me that if we could, and I think you guys are working on that meeting. I know, Sally, you're on the board. If we could pull Fayette County Public Schools and maybe United Way and LFCCG together with the Housing Authority to look at this from a broader perspective and how this reinvestment into this community can be an excellent opportunity for everybody involved. I think that would be a good thing. I realize, again, we're sort of outside of our bailiwick. We don't have any authority. But I think that Austin and his board are amenable to at least having those conversations. I would say to the residents that are here, if you have taken the option A and you can work out moving arrangements, it seems to me that that Section 8 voucher is almost gold. Is that not right, Commissioner? That's correct. The program's been closed for probably a decade. And if you get one of those, they're not easy to come by. And the only reason you're able to get one is because they're doing this redevelopment on that site. So in my background, I'm a social work background. When I was in St. Louis, I got to work with the Hope Six Project in St. Louis. And my job was to work on the relocation aspect and bringing those citizens back to that development when it was done. And I'll just tell you that the opportunity you have with that Section 8 voucher is golden. And if you can make it work, I'd make that work. And Housing Authority is great. But the independence that you'll get from that and the ability that once you have that, you can take it for life. If you relocate to another city because of an opportunity that's afforded you, you can take that with you. So don't be so quick to give up that voucher just because you have to come up with your own moving expenses is all I'm saying. That's just my perspective on it. So take a hard look at that because you've got options available to you that a whole lot of people out there would like to have. So don't give that up too quickly. Thank you. Do other council members have any comment before we hear from the public? All right. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Mills. Okay. We have several people signed up to speak. And the way that we do this is you'll come to the podium and state your name and address, and you'll each have three minutes to speak. And so first we have Jessica Spivey. And after Jessica will be Tammy Robinson. Just so you can get ready. If you'll say your name and address, please. My name is Jessica Spivey. I live at 1317 Center Parkway, apartment 57. And although we have been given the option with Section 8 to, you know, we know full out that we have to pay our own expenses. We have not been given any help as far as builders or renters or landlords that accept Section 8. It was, here's the voucher, you're on your own. That's where we need help. We need assistance in finding people. I've been turned down, I don't know how many times, I've called 60 people in the last two weeks. Everybody says, nope, you're on your own. It's not so much the funding. we knew we had to take all the responsibility of the financial burden when we chose Section 8. But how many doors are going to be closed to us because we are taking Section 8? And what properties do we have left in Housing Authority if we decide to go back and take Option 8? From what I know, there's like two properties that might have an opening. There's 230 families out there in Pimlico. They don't have room for all of us. What do we do? We're stuck. That's where I need help. Give me a landlord. I'll do whatever they need me to do. I can't find one. Thank you very much. Tammy Robinson. She's no longer here. Okay, thank you. Antonio Edwards. Antonio Edwards. Antonio will be followed by Mary, I'm so sorry if I massacre a name, Chidester. Chidester, so welcome Antonio. My name is Antonio Edwards. I live at 1317 Center Parkway, Apartment 50. I also took the Section 8 voucher. And like I said, they didn't give us no resources or a listing of the LIMP landlord to just take Section 8. And I have, like I said, like she said, I've been looking also and I get turned down and in 60 days, it's really not enough to find people when they get 60 days. And 60 days, maybe not, then you lose to Section 8. I'm able to help myself. And it's kind of hard when you call the same people in a week and they keep turning you down and the time they give us, it's really not enough. Thank you. You're welcome. Mary Chidester, and she'll be followed by Tanya Fogle. Is Tanya still here? There you are. Hi. First of all, I was listening. If you could say your name and address, please. My name is Mary Chidister. I live in apartment 41 at Palmville Cove. First of all, I heard that they gave us option A and option B, and I heard something about they offered us $100. That didn't happen. Second of all, when they told us or they said that we can change our mind and go back to option A, no, we cannot. I decided I could not afford to move on my own. I have a one-year-old child. I can't pay those moving expenses. Now, when I asked if I can go back to option A, they said, we have no place for you. So I don't know what we're supposed to do about that. Also, I was told that my voucher would be good for a two-bedroom because I have a son. Now, when I had received my voucher and I had signed my voucher, it actually turned out that I was downsized. Now I'm told that for the next year, I have to have my almost two-year-old son sleep in the same room as me when he has had his own room. So I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that. Now, I tested that. I went to a friend's house to see if we could be in the same room together. he had me up from 3 a.m. on. There is no possible way for me to move him back into the same room as me. There is no way that I could downsize like that. Now, I am also a single mother. I am originally from New York. I have no friends or family out here that is willing to help me move. And they're telling me I can't go back to option A. And that's what they said that we can do. So, and at the same time, we don't get our security deposit back right now. How are we supposed to pay for the deposit on a new apartment? Nobody will take the apartment off the market until we come up with the money. I don't have the money. I am a single mother. Thank you very much. Thank you. Tanya. Hi, Tana Fogle, 2324 Shandon Street. I'm here as a voice to the voiceless. Yesterday I struck out due to the rain of Saturday and Sunday. I would have been there Saturday and Sunday. So I went to the Pimlico Apartments because I'm an advocate at heart. I heard about this situation and I said we've got to do something. So I'm affiliated with a lot of churches and organizations organizations to see where we could come in and fill the gap to help these individuals move and relocate. What we found out is that one gentleman told us that due to sequester and that might not be pronunciated right but it's hard for people to accept the vouchers because they don't know if they're going to get paid or not. And so we found so many issues from single parents and a mother five and and when her children is autistics we found so many issues going forward you know right here in Lexington and in our community there's a big mistrust you know dealing with the Charlotte Court issue and then the Asmodele issue a lot of people was promised a lot of things and people moved out and wasn't able to move back in as toad and so now we've got the Pimlico Parkway issue I'm just here as an advocate and to tell you that there are people like me who's willing to try to help them. We're going to try to find resources. Resources is depleted. We're at the end of the physical year. So it's going to be really, really hard to try to relocate 150 plus people. The other thing that I, you know, and I'm sorry that some people had to go home. We came down here at 2.30, but we had mothers that had to get the kids off the bus. all kind of issues came up and we had a great presentation a long presentation but great presentation some of them stuck it out and they have to leave right now so I hope they can get to the podium I just wanted to tell the city council that I don't know I keep hearing that you guys don't have funds or whatever the obligations are but somewhere we've got to stand up for all the people of Lexington. And this is a social justice issue also. And then you have people who don't have the means. If I'm living in Pimlico and my income is zero, and I've got to move and I'm still paying rent in Pimlico, and then some of the parents told me that they have to pay to patch up the holes, where is this money going to come from? Or if I'm living on limited income of child support, How am I going to do this? When you lose hope and we're trying to keep people out of jails and prisons, they're going to go to whatever they need to go to to satisfy their children. It's not just moving. It's uprooting their children. Think about your own kids. If you've got to uproot them and put them in another school district, you've got to learn more teachers and all of those things. It's more than just moving. It's not just moving. It's not just a voucher. It's everything that goes with that voucher. Deposit. Some people don't even know how to pay bills. Now they're coming from Pimlico with utilities included to how do I pay gas, electric, water, sewage, and all of those things. So an education piece should have been. And I think I'm out of time. You know, I'm trying to be right with the government. I might need y'all one day. Tanya, thank you. to sit down so thank you vice mayor much all right lonnie cowan and then bonnie robinson is lonnie here um bonnie robinson david christensen you're here i'm gonna hobble up here with my bed i'm david christensen i live at 48 44 brennan drive and muscle the executive director of the Okay, excuse me. Someone says they're giving you. Are you signed up on the list? I am. I'm so sorry. Is it Jenny? I couldn't see you all the way back there. So I won't talk so fast that you can't understand what I'm saying. Okay. Jenny's not on the list. Uh-oh, so she can't give up her time. Oh, is there another list back there? Oh, can somebody maybe, Monday, can you or someone bring the other list? I'm so sorry. I only have one. Yeah, we'll start your time over. I think you're on the overflow list, Jenny. Thank you. Thank you so much. And we'll start. Okay. Okay, thank you. And so we'll give Jenny's three minutes to David and start over at six. Thank you. As I said, I'm David Christensen. I live at 4844 Brennan Drive here in Lexington. I agree with almost everything that's been said both up here and out here, particularly with what Beth said. A Section 8 certificate is a wonderful thing that's designed to encourage independence and really something highly sought after, which plays into this equation. because when everybody was offered this stuff in the beginning, people did not anticipate. In other words, if I'm at the initial meeting and I say to you, would you like a Section 8 certificate or you want to stay in public housing, then 170 people say, yes, I'll take the Section 8 certificate. And then I say, okay, give me $1,000 and we'll make it happen. My guess would be that there would have been a lot of different choices made. This whole issue of being able to go back to Plan A, I think, is really, really crucial. And we were told at a Central Kentucky Housing and Homeless Initiative meeting last Thursday that that was a guarantee. Now, maybe it wasn't from Austin Sims. It was from one of his staff people. But I think as a community, we really need to make sure that the option to go back is available to folks. because some people may have jumped at this chance and not recognized what had to be done to accomplish it. If we go to the point where they are unable to do it over the next 60 days when they're allowed to try to do it, to say, sorry, Charlie, you're out of luck, you're going to end up on the street, I think we need to avoid that as a community. Let me backtrack just a second. this all started as a result of several meetings that many of us attended to and part of one of the meetings the fair housing council meeting is designed to kind of ferret out issues in the community that the fair housing council could be working on a lot of folks at that meeting brought up and said i'm getting inundated i'm getting inundated by people looking for assistance and and I'm running out of money, most of the folks who are opting for the Section 8 option have very little resources to squeeze anything out of to ever be able to save the kind of money that it's going to take. So naturally, they went to whatever resources they could find, whether it's relatives, whether it's faith communities, whether it's the government or whatever. They've really tapped into some of the FEMA money for relocation purposes and stuff. But the volume here is completely overloaded the system. As Councilman Lane said, you've got 180 families or close to 170 are suddenly out there looking for resources that are not meant to deal with that kind of a rush. We have a shrinking supply of affordable housing options and a shrinking supply of people who are willing to accept Section 8 certificates. We've also set up a situation where people can be easily victimized. One individual was asked to pay a $100 non-refundable deposit in order to apply an application. That's way more than is needed to get a proper background check. If I'm a landlord and I have no moral base, I can charge 10 people $100, and I have no intention of ever renting to any of them. I make a lot of money off of a lot of desperate people trying to get into a unit that I say is available to all of them. That's something that I think we need to deal with in a separate venue, and other states have done it. But basically, we've got a potential crisis situation here that we have come together to try to deal with as a group of faith communities and service providers. And one of the options was how can we get more resources into the pool that can help some of these folks take advantage of a Section 8 voucher and move towards independence. And that was why there was a request that we looked to the city to see if some money could come up to add to the existing network of funds that are available to help people with deposits and last month's rent. There is not enough time and not enough resources in the families that exist now. they just i mean you know when your income is 225 a month saving up a thousand dollars after you have to do everything else with that money it's it's got to come from some other place so that's basically where the initial request came from to see if the city as councilman meyer said if we could all come together as a community and find a way of helping everyone help themselves which is basically what's going on here. I think I will give my 53 seconds back to somebody else. Thank you very much, David. Alicia Wilson? No? Ikaya Travers? Did I? I'm so sorry if I mispronounced that. Okay, come on. Give us your name and address, please. You'll have three minutes. Okay. Hello, my name is Ikaya Travers. My address is Sorry. 1301 Center Parkway, apartment number 56. Let me start by saying that I was a person who said you could not pay me to live in Pemico. But due to circumstances, you know, with housing authority, they've dropped a bottle on me before, and that was their way of basically patching up the issue. I had a voucher before. They took it from me because they ran out of funds. I was homeless at seven months. They had me sign up for Pemico. It took a year and a half for me to get in there. when I finally got in there just this September, we found out that next month that we'll be moving. So here I go, I have to move again, you know? Like I said, you couldn't pay me to live in Pemico. I encourage you all to go visit those apartments as well as, you know, any other apartments that HUD has to offer. You know, they told us if we decided to stay, if we decided to stay, that we would have to be transferred to somewhere that we qualify for. Majority of us that live in Pemico, we would qualify for something like Appian Way. That's no better. You know, it's like a lose-lose situation. And then you get the vouchers. Some people have three, two and three bedrooms. Myself, I have a two-bedroom voucher with my one and a half year old son. Well, not a voucher, I'm sorry. A two-bedroom in Pimlico. I was told that I would be downsized to a one-bedroom. And if I want something decent, I'm going to have to share a room with my son. And I don't know any of you guys, but I don't want to share a room with a toddler. But, you know, I just feel like it's a lose-lose situation. I feel like they're really insensitive. Yes, a lot of people who live there, their income, it doesn't exist. So as far as moving expenses, it's hard. Deposits are over $1,000. People have four or five kids, so they need the space. I just feel like there's really no help. They're just like, you can leave or you can stay, and if you stay, we transfer you, but there's no guarantee that you can get back in Pemico when we're finished. I just think that they really didn't take into consideration. They're just more so worried about what they can afford, but what about what we can afford? And that's all I have to say. Thank you very much. LaShonda Lewis. And after LaShonda, we'll be Diane King. My name is LaShonda Lewis. I live at 1317 Center Parkway, apartment 43. And my biggest concern was a lot of the issues that they hit us with, They hit us after the fact that we signed up for Section 8. The people that I represent today, I know for a fact, wasn't at the meetings where they told us what was what because I was there and I didn't see them personally. I was there for all of them. We didn't find out about not, we knew we wasn't going to be helped with moving expenses. As far as we go over here and we're finding these different realtors, There's these different properties and they're telling us, okay, up front, this deposit, we're not going to take care of it. We're not going to help you with it. Where you get it from, we don't know. We don't care. That's the basic attitude that is given towards us. That's if you can find a realtor that will accept Section 8 or whoever is homeowners that are renting out their houses and things. It is very, very hard to find. They also told us when we signed up for the option that they would give us places or listings with people that are providing Section 8 or accepting Section 8. They have not once done that. The only listing they ever gave us was the listing of other property that housing owns. If you accepted Section 8, for one, you don't want to take it to another broke-down, busted-up apartment that they're already not taking care of. and jury-rigging everything on the inside, and you want me to pay rent all at the same time. This is overwhelming. It's too much. Then you turn around and threw in, oh, by the way, you only have 60 days to try to find you a place. What about those of us that don't have transportation? They didn't care about that. They don't now. The other problem that has been coming up is if you ask for an extension, You're not even knowing if you're guaranteed this extension or not. It's a 50-50 in everything that you do. Everything. This has been tough on us. Like I said, there's no type of assistance. The Section 8 was the probable thing to do because it does help you step up. You can find a place that will benefit you and help you out as you know your money stretches. but at the same time, they're not giving you enough time to do that. And a lot of time is 60 days. And I'm here to tell you my 60 days is almost up. And I don't know. As far as right now, I don't know what's going to happen. As far as taking option A and moving to another place, where am I going? Because you said Appian, the first place that they told us they would be putting people is Appian Way. Guess what? There's no openings over there. The next place is Roger Rose and McCullough. Guess what? there's no openings there where are you going to send us that don't know where we're going that's all thank you very much Diane King good afternoon my name is Diane King I live at 1301 Center Parkway apartment 53 I have been with Pemico apartments for eight years I have been the advocate for the meetings at Pemico apartments with mr. Austin Sims when When they first started, it was a maintenance supervisor inspection that they did on us in January of 2012. And then from there, you're talking about low-income females, single parents that half don't have education. Some of them could not read and write. Some of them had no self-sufficiency skills. Okay, so then starting May 1st of 2012, that's when they sent in and they sent rent at $150 minimum. They took the utility allowance checks and put them in with the rent. We made the rent. It was $150 for your monthly rent. Your utility allowance was $105. Your rent went down to $45. Then after they did the maintenance inspection, they found all types of maintenance problems. When they were asking for this HUD money, HUD came in. They sent everyone bills. Some people had bills. I had a bill of $488. Some people had bills of $1,200. Some had $800. They emptied our pockets back in May of 2012 before they even started the self-sufficiency. Then they implemented the self-sufficiency program, and the self-sufficiency program only was for like 25 people. So only 25 people qualified. So you had girls that did not know how to spend food stamps. They don't know how to pay bills. They didn't know how to shop at the grocery stores. Self-sufficiency only came in six months before they gave us Section 8. The whole time we're asking, do we have Section 8? No, we're not going to give you any Section 8 certificates. Okay, when I went at the meeting with Mr. Sims, Mr. Sims, Greg LaRue refused to meet with me. I had to call Reggie Thomas, who is running for state representative, who is a very good friend of mine as an attorney and state representative in that area, to have that meeting. Mr. Sims has refused to meet with us on several occasions. And since I was not going away, he did entrust, and he came and he met with us. But they gave us the option A and option B. Option A was that we could not come back. We had to qualify to come back to our home. So that means you had to be on the job six months or more, and you had to have income. Option B meant we're throwing you out in the streets. So in return, they emptied our pockets with these maintenance fees. People who couldn't pay the maintenance fees, which I have the paper right here, were evicted. And I had to encourage them to make payment arrangements with these tenants in order that they didn't get thrown out in the street. So, no, they have not been fair with us. They have not been honest with us. They have not been legit with us. And I will continue to fight this fight, whether it be in the newspaper or here. But thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Shanae, is Shanae here? No? Okay. All right. I don't have anyone else signed up. Yes, you're all welcome for our time. Did everybody get a chance to speak who wanted to speak? Okay. I think, Commissioner Mills, there may be another question for you. We have a couple of council members signed up. And the council member over this area is Council Member George Myers. And I just have a quick comment, if I may. And Council Member Myers and Council Member Akers may be going to say something similar. I don't know. but it seems to me there needs to be someone to talk with Mr. Sims and try to sort through this. We're having another meeting with Mr. Sims, with Mr. Myers, and Commissioner Hamilton and I, when I called him today, I said we will need to set up a meeting with you. Okay, good. So from urban county government, we have already decided to have a meeting with Mr. Sims. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess a couple things. One, in the expedient, Commissioner, you said that Austin has given you a list or is going to give you a list of all the providers? He said that he would have a list of people that are offering Section 8 rentals and that he would send it to this community meeting that's being held on May the 14th. I didn't get it today, but he said he would make it available for the meeting. Okay. I have a lot more questions now than I had before. And, you know, I'd heard from people that they were being charged to make repairs to their units. That doesn't seem to make sense because if they're tearing it down, why would they have to make repairs? Also, if you want me to move but you won't give me my deposit so that I can apply the deposit where I'm moving, it doesn't make sense. So what I want to do is make a motion to put this issue into Social Services Committee and expedite that on the agenda for the very next meeting this month. But also, something has to happen now before then. I understand that we don't, Austin Sin doesn't work for us. I understand that. But there are questions that are being raised, and people say they have documentation. and for the life of me I can't understand why someone will be charged to fix something when they're tearing it down in the first place so I guess I would say this if we can't get Mr. Sims to come in and talk with us about this then we may have to ask some other people that do have authority at the federal level and if folks do have documentation with facts and dates and amounts if they would go ahead and send that, then when we meet with Mr. Sims, we can take it to him. But I think I want to be careful here with one thing. I know that we talked this morning about meeting together with him, but I want to be careful that we don't end up owning this, that this is still the housing authority's responsibility, and that we don't misconceive people that because we're meeting with him, now we have some type of control over what happens. We don't have any control over him, but there are questions that need to be answered. Sure. And if we can't get, please, ma'am. Ma'am, is that documentation in your hands that you talked about? We need that if you are willing to give it to us. Also, anybody who has that type of documentation, we need to have their name. We need, hopefully, them to be willing to sign an affidavit saying that. And can you get a copy so that the residents can keep their original? Yes. So that you still have your documentation? Sure. So I'm not sure how the best way to proceed is, but I do want to put this in committee. I've made that motion. But also, I don't want to just wait until that committee meeting before we do anything. So what exactly is your motion? Really just to put this whole transition into our committee, because I'd like to have Austin come in. Part of the reason for that is for him to come and explain in a public forum so that people can understand. And if this is simply miscommunication or bad communication, then we can help clear that up. But clearly there seems to be timing issues that if they don't give me my deposit back, but I have to apply a deposit someplace else, that's problematic. If you allowed me to take the Section 8 voucher, but now to come back I have to qualify when I didn't have to qualify before. Now, I'm not saying that all that's true. I understand that. You don't know if it is or not. Right. And so I want to be careful there, too, that I'm going on what I heard today. I don't have any proof or substantiation of those things. But these are questions that we have to ask. But I guess I'll close by saying this. If I'm the director of the Housing Authority, then what I do is provide housing for people that I care about and I care about this community and all these things. And I'm not suggesting that Mr. Simms does not care about these folks in this community. But it just seems to me that there's a better way of doing this. And I would think that the gentleman that talked about putting this many people into the system at once to try to find a place to go, their grant, didn't they have to certify that they have spaces? What if nobody had taken option B for the Section 8 voucher? Wouldn't they then have to have a place for all these folks to relocate them to? Mr. Sims assured that they did. So we haven't really looked at whether they do or do not. Okay. And again, I want to. And I can't say that. I mean, they say not. He said he did. It's kind of a he said, we said. So I think that's something that needs to be looked into. I don't know the reality of that. And that's why we need him to give us the answer so that we can just clear up. That's correct. If it's confusion or misunderstanding or lack of knowledge or information or whatever it is. And maybe the property is available where someone does not prefer to live. But if that's all he has available. What the people have been told by the Fair Housing Council that I learned at the Fair Housing Authority forum was, don't move unless, like if you need an accessible unit, they should not move until they have an accessible unit. And by the Uniform Relocation Act, they cannot make them move until it's an accessible unit, for example, or something that meets the standards. This downsizing thing, I don't understand that. I don't know if that's true or false. There's just a lot of questions to be answered. Right. And my time is up, I know, but if I could ask one more question. Yes, and we have a motion on the floor. Okay. If I could ask one more question before we go to the motion. You talked about downsizing. I guess my other question I'd like to know is, if they have to leave, what is the timeline at which they have to get out? And if they took a Section 8 voucher, how much time do they realistically have to find the case? I was quoted 90 days by Mr. Sims. But, again, he told me 90 in a phone conversation because I have it written down. But I don't know that. It's like, again, we have to meet with him and verify these things. Right. And then and then put the proper information out there so that if there's misconfusion or whatever, we get it taken care of. And I appreciate you and and CAO Hamilton for getting involved. I appreciate the residents that have come and the community leaders out there also. So the motion is to place the issue of the relocation for the Pimlico apartment into Social Services Committee. Is there a second? I second the motion. Council Member Ford seconds the motion. And is there a discussion? Vice Mayor, if I could clarify that the other caveat on that was that we expedite it to the very next meeting. Yes. Is that? We can accommodate that. You chair it. So I don't think we need that in the motion if he's willing to put it in the next meeting. So discussion on the motion, please. Council Member Henson. Thank you. I guess I see this issue as being very urgent, and I don't know that hearing it in committee is going to help move things along. But I think just the overall issue, not necessarily Pimlico, but any transitional type housing. Right, but I'm talking about your motion to put it in committee specifically said Pimlico, but why don't we look at the process overall? And I'm, that's okay with me. I do want to reiterate though that we are meeting with Austin, so we're not just going to wait until that meeting is in the moment. So are you going to change your motion to take out the Pimlico apartments? Because I don't think it's just about Pimlico. I think it's about a process. Are you moving to amend the motion in that case? I will move to amend the motion to look at the transitional process for the housing authority. because there may be other properties that become renovated, and we would have a similar issue. So the motion is to amend the motion to look at the relocation process. Council Member Henson. Pardon? The amendment, I just want to be sure we have this correct for the minutes, is to look at the relocation process of the housing authority. Right. I said transitional housing, but housing transition, but relocation is a good term. Okay. And I heard a second. Council Member Clark seconded. Is there any discussion of the amendment? Council Member Ford? Yes, Vice Mayor. I support the amendment. I still support the original motion. But I think the urgent issue here, as Council Member Myers is correct, that this is a federally funded project that's under the purview of the housing authority. What we have to own, and I give a lot of credit to Commissioner Mills and CAO Hamilton, is that we want to own confidence in the process that Fayette County residents are going to be taken care of as best we can under these relocation. That's our, from a policy standpoint and from a good governance standpoint, that's what we want. And I think by bringing this into committee, three weeks from today allows two things. It allows the housing authority in haste to go ahead and work on the issues specific to Pimlico, but it also gives them the due process and the time to prepare to give us a comprehensive look on how they handle the sensitive issue of relocation. Because Peggy's right, there will be, we hope, additional improvements at additional properties. So relocation will always be a needed thing. So I support the amendment. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Is there any other comment on the amendment motion? All those in favor of amending the motion to place the issue of relocation process of the Housing Authority into Social Services Committee, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay. So now the main motion, since the amendment passed, is to put the issue into Social Services Committee, the relocation process of the Housing Authority. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you very much, Commissioner and CAO. it seems to me a lot of facts need to be uncovered. So appreciate your work on this. Thank you. Council members, is there any other council report or business or any more public comment? Alright. We have a motion to adjourn. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Thank you for sticking around to keep the quorum. You