# Council Social Services and Community Development Committee - May 28, 2013 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 28, 2013 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3005 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3005?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2013-05-28 - **Last revised**: July 16, 2026 - **Length**: 16,009 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Social Services & Community Development Committee met on May 28, 2013, at 11:00 AM under the presiding officer Ford. The committee addressed five agenda items during the meeting, including approval of the committee summary, informational presentations on the Domestic Violence Prevention Board and Small Area Plan background, a discussion of the Housing Authority tenant relocation process, and a review of committee referral items. The committee took three votes and heard five public comments during the session. One item—the Housing Authority Tenant Relocation Process—was deferred for further consideration at a future meeting. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on May 28, 2013: * Ford * Akers * Ellinger * Kay * Lawless * Stinnett * Scutchfield * Myers * Beard * Lane No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took three votes during this meeting, all of which passed by voice vote. **Approval of Committee Summary** The committee approved the summary from the April 30, 2013 meeting. Beard moved for approval and Scutchfield seconded the motion. The motion passed by voice vote with no abstentions [timestamp: 00:00:00]. **Housing Authority Tenant Relocation Process** Ford moved to remove the Housing Authority tenant relocation process from committee consideration, with Scutchfield seconding the motion. This motion passed by voice vote with no abstentions [timestamp: 01:48:13]. **Adjournment** The committee voted to adjourn the meeting by voice vote with no abstentions [timestamp: 01:49:51]. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed three grant funding items: **Rental Assistance Demonstration Program** The Lexington Housing Authority received a $20 million grant to fund the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program at Pimlico Apartments. **Violence Against Women Act Enforcement Grant** The Domestic Violence Prevention Board received $200,000 per year in grant funding for an arrest and enforcement grant under the Violence Against Women Act. **Safe Havens Grant** The Domestic Violence Prevention Board received a Safe Havens grant to establish a supervised visitation center. The specific funding amount was not specified in the meeting materials. ## Public Comment Council members posed questions on two primary topics during the meeting. **Domestic Violence Prevention Board** Council Member Stinnett [timestamp: 00:26:04] asked about the impact of increased arrests related to domestic violence prevention efforts. Specifically, she inquired whether the number of calls for service has decreased and questioned what prevention efforts are being pursued beyond enforcement measures. **Housing Authority Tenant Relocation** Multiple council members raised concerns about the Housing Authority's tenant relocation plan, focusing on different aspects of the proposal. Council Member Beard [timestamp: 00:49:43] asked how children are being handled during the relocation process, with particular attention to school transitions and whether there are safeguards against potential system manipulation. Council Member Kay [timestamp: 00:54:34] inquired about the fiscal impact of using tax credits, specifically whether their use would affect the availability of funds for other affordable housing projects in Lexington. Council Member Akers [timestamp: 01:00:15] raised similar concerns about tax credit allocation and its potential to reduce resources available for other affordable housing efforts. Additionally, Akers asked which entity will manage the property following the relocation. Council Member Myers [timestamp: 01:03:14] focused on service continuity, asking about the self-sufficiency plan and case management services, and whether these services will continue to be provided under the new model. ## Contested Items **Housing Authority Tenant Relocation Process** Community residents raised concerns about the Housing Authority's tenant relocation process. Specific issues included difficulties with school transitions for children and the broader impact on families undergoing relocation. In response, the Housing Authority offered flexibility in the relocation program, including providing residents with the option of a Housing Choice Voucher and assistance with moving costs. **Self-Sufficiency Plan and Case Management** A split vote occurred regarding the new self-sufficiency plan and case management model. The point of contention centered on whether the proposed model would maintain adequate case management and self-sufficiency support services. Concerns were raised about the implications of the Housing Authority's loss of a dedicated social services department and how this would affect the level of support available to residents under the new structure. ## Approval of the Committee Summary The committee considered approval of the summary from the April 30, 2013 meeting. [timestamp: 00:00:00] Council Member Beard moved to approve the summary, with Council Member Scutchfield providing the second to the motion. The motion passed unanimously by voice vote. **Outcome:** The April 30, 2013 committee summary was approved. ## Domestic Violence Prevention Board Overview Terry Farragher, Director of the Domestic Violence Prevention Board, presented an overview of the board's mission, activities, and impact [timestamp: 00:01:07]. **Key Accomplishments** Farragher highlighted a 70% increase in domestic violence arrests, which she attributed to training funded by a federal grant. This increase reflects enhanced law enforcement response to domestic violence incidents. **Prevention Programs** The board operates several prevention initiatives: - **Green Dot**: A prevention program aimed at reducing domestic violence - **Safe Havens supervised visitation center**: A facility providing supervised visitation services for families affected by domestic violence **Board Functions** Beyond direct programming, the board serves broader coordination and information functions: - Acts as a clearinghouse for domestic violence information - Coordinates services across multiple agencies to ensure comprehensive response to domestic violence issues **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action or debate recorded. Mills also participated as a key speaker during the presentation. ## Housing Authority Tenant Relocation Process [timestamp: 00:31:51] Austin Sims, Executive Director of the Lexington Housing Authority, presented on the relocation of tenants from Pimlico Apartments under the RAD (Rental Assistance Demonstration) program. **Presentation Overview** Sims outlined a relocation plan that would offer tenants at Pimlico Apartments a choice between two options: - Relocation to another public housing site - Receipt of a Housing Choice Voucher **Committee Discussion** The committee raised several concerns during the discussion: - The use of tax credits in the relocation process - The scarcity of available vouchers and implications for meeting tenant needs - Long-term effects of the relocation on the community Mills participated in the discussion alongside Sims regarding these issues. **Outcome** The item was deferred and subsequently removed from committee consideration. ## Small Area Plan Background Chris King of the Division of Planning presented an overview of recent small area planning efforts during this agenda item. The presentation focused on two key initiatives: the Central Sector plan and the East End plan. King emphasized a significant shift in planning priorities from greenfield development toward infill and redevelopment strategies. This represents an important change in how the jurisdiction approaches growth and land use. A central theme of the discussion was the need for implementation funding to support these small area plans. King highlighted that planning efforts require adequate financial resources to move from the planning phase into actual implementation of the identified strategies and projects. The committee discussion, which included Duncan among other participants, underscored the importance of ongoing support and coordination among multiple stakeholders. Specifically, the discussion emphasized the need for continued collaboration between the City Council, the Planning Commission, and community stakeholders to ensure successful execution of the small area plans. The outcome of this agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken. The presentation served to update the committee on the status and direction of small area planning efforts and to establish the foundation for continued dialogue about implementation needs and coordination mechanisms. [timestamp: 01:28:15] ## Committee Referral Items [timestamp: 01:47:41] The committee discussed a shift in funding strategy from supporting agencies to funding programs based on need. This discussion centered on restructuring how resources are allocated within the organization. **Key Participants** Council Members Kay and Myers led the discussion on this agenda item. **Main Points** Council Members Kay and Myers emphasized the importance of transitioning toward a system that prioritizes program effectiveness and innovation over institutional funding. This approach would focus resources on programs that demonstrate measurable results and meet identified community needs rather than distributing funds based on organizational structure or historical precedent. **Outcome** The discussion was informational in nature, with no formal action taken during this agenda item. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Approval of the committee summary from April 30, 2013 - **Motion** — passed: Motion to remove the Housing Authority tenant relocation process from committee - **Motion** — passed: Motion to adjourn the meeting --- ## Full transcript Council members, committee members, before we get started, you should have three items of information. The original agenda packet, you also should have an addendum that was delivered over the weekend, and we also have a revised copy of the meeting summary of our meeting on April 30th. And if you need copies, just feel free to let us know. The first item on our agenda is the approval of the committee summary. If you've had a time to review, there was just one addition that was made towards the end of the packet, referenced to Council Member Myers' comments in regards to partner agency funding. Is there a motion to approve? Motion. Motion by Council Member Beard, second by Council Member Scotchfield. Any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. The motion carries. Next on our agenda, I would like to ask Commissioner Beth Mills of the Department of Social Services to come and introduce the topic of Domestic Violence Prevention Board. Commissioner Mills, welcome. Thank you, Council Member Ford. Good morning. It's my pleasure to introduce Terry Farragher to you all. She is the Director of the Fayette County Domestic Violence Prevention Board. Terry is probably the longest serving personal service contract employee in this government. She started in this venue 26 years ago, and she has done this fabulous job of coordinating services for all family violence. She does child abuse, partner abuse, elder abuse. She works with across disciplines, which she'll tell you a little bit about. She has a board which includes a lot of strong personalities, and she does a great job of getting people to collaborate around these issues. Terry also is a member of the Social Work Hall of Fame with me. We have been social workers together since we were in our 20s, and she has brought millions of dollars in grants to this government, not just to social services but to the police department and community agencies that work. So I want you all to know a little bit about what she does and what value she brings to our government. Welcome, Ms. Farragher. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me here today. First of all, I just want to thank you all for what you do. Of course, I think this is the most important committee in all of government, so thank you for your service on this committee. I'm going to – you have a copy of my PowerPoint. If I'm too loud, let me know. But you have a copy of my PowerPoint, and I'm going to go through this fairly quickly. I just wanted to give you an overview of why we're here to begin with and what we do and why it's important to this community, really. And I'm certainly open to any questions you may have if you want some information that I haven't included. We do a really broad range of things, and so it's kind of hard to fit it all into a very brief presentation, but that's what I'm trying to do. What do I have to aim this at to make it? Oh, that's the thing. I didn't turn it on. An important part of the instructions. So just quickly, I'm just going to show you three very quick slides about the problem to give you a brief overview. And these next two slides are basically the largest, most comprehensive state-by-state study on intimate partner violence, sexual assault, sexual violence, and stalking ever done in the United States. The study was funded by the CDC and gives us good state-by-state comparisons on levels of violence. This was just released in December of 2011, and so these are pretty current statistics. So I just wanted to show you a comparison with the U.S. being the, I guess, more aqua blue and the Kentucky numbers in the more Kentucky blue, of the comparison between the cumulative U.S. results and Kentucky results on incidents of rape, stalking, and intimate partner violence. That's what IPV stands for, with impact. And with impact simply means that it wasn't that just a one-time somebody shoves somebody in a relationship, but it was that there were either some kind of ongoing issues in terms of health. They had to get medical intervention, or the police were called, or it somehow affected their lives. There was some impact. And as you can see, Kentucky is on the high end of incidents in all of those arenas. The one in the center, though, stalking, we have the highest level of stalking in the nation. When this study came out, that wasn't pointed out or highlighted in the study, but I looked down the statistics state by state, and what I saw was Kentucky had the highest level of stalking in the United States. That's very significant because it is a high-risk factor in terms of lethality and serious injury in cases of domestic violence. And just by the way, this is from the age of 13 through lifetime victimization, so it does start with children. It includes some children. And then it also is the first study where we looked at a male-female comparison, and so I wanted to show you that also because you hear a lot of discussion about that. And again, this is the intimate partner violence with impact, but there are a number of males who are victimized also. It is generally certainly considered to affect women at much higher levels, though, so I just wanted to quickly show you that. And then lastly, because I really consider partner violence and really all of these family and interpersonal violence issues to be a matter of public safety. I think for many centuries we viewed them as private family matters, and we're beginning to understand that they affect the larger community tremendously in many, many ways, but even directly in terms of injuries and deaths, of course, in terms of children's performance in school, you know, so many factors that it affects. But I just wanted to show you really quickly, there recently was a four-year analysis of mass shootings, and mass shootings is defined by at least four people were murdered with a weapon, with a gun. So there were 56 incidents across the United States, And when they looked at all of the possible factors, causal factors, and what was behind these mass murders, they found that 45% were related to intimate partner violence. So that was the largest category. And I'm just showing you this to bring home that it is a public safety issue, that it does go way beyond the family. 20% random unknown, 13% other family-related issues, maybe cousins, whatever, fighting, 9% drug-related, 5% school shootings, 5% work-related, and then 4% retaliation-related. So obviously it is an issue that's of great concern to all of us. I want to go through this quickly, so I'm just pulling these all up. But to give you a little bit of background on the Domestic Violence Prevention Board, it was created in 1985 after United Way did a study. I was at that time, along with Beth, well, she might have already left the Cabinet, but I was a young social worker with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. I think at that point I was supervisor of the adult protection team, and there was a press conference in these chambers in 1985 that I went to when they released the results of the findings of this study group, a United Way study group. And the primary recommendation of the United Way study group was that we form a coordinating council to deal with these issues. We already, Urban County Government, already had created a child abuse and exploitation board, and basically they changed that board into, kind of metamorphized, into the Domestic Violence Prevention Board and was established in ordinance. The ordinance passed in 1986. I was actually hired in 1986, and they told me they'd organize a meeting and introduce me, and we'd get going. In March of 1987, I said, I think maybe I'd better organize that meeting. And so we held our first meeting in March of 1987, and that was the beginning of the board. We have seven appointed members and 24 ex officio. I think there can be several meetings to ex officio. So for our purposes, that basically means that you hold your position on the board by virtue of your job, of your employment. Like the county attorney is on it, the commonwealth attorney, the sheriff, the chief of police, the director of the Blue Grace Domestic Violence Program, on and on. Obviously, if that person leaves that job, we need the current person in that position on the board. So all of those positions were made ex officio. They are voting positions, though, so that's a little bit different in the definition. So we only have seven positions that are appointed by the mayor and approved by council. We are Kentucky's longest-standing local coordinating council on domestic violence. A number of other communities have similar efforts, but they haven't been standing as long as we have, and I would argue that we probably have better participation than pretty much any community. So this is our mission, and it's a fairly lofty one, to promote safe and healthy individuals and families through the prevention of interpersonal and family violence. And by prevention, we do mean primary and secondary. Unfortunately, we have to spend a lot of our time and effort after the violence has happened and trying to address it to keep it from happening again. We do participate in primary prevention to keep it from happening to begin with, too, but unfortunately we do have to spend a lot of time on the latter. The ordinance, I forgot to mention this, has only been revised in terms of membership as agencies have changed. So that has really been the only major change to the ordinance has been around membership. So our goals, we have five primary goals, and I'm going to go through these quickly because I'd rather get to what we actually do, and hopefully you'll see these goals at work in terms of what we do. So it's to develop an effective system of prevention and intervention, to coordinate the roles and services of local agencies, and I would say this is probably the most important thing we do, is try to keep everybody on the same page so that we don't have a lot of territorialism on these issues and we're not working at counter purposes. I want to back that up by just saying when I worked for the cabinet, I felt I could spend many, many hours trying to help a victim of domestic violence achieve safety for herself and her children, but if when the police were called or if when she went to court the right things didn't happen, and all of my effort was wasted, really, because she was right back to square one. So that's the idea, is that when somebody comes into our system, we have this network of services and protections, and wherever they enter that system, that whole network is available to them and put in place, and everybody's working together toward the same goals. So when I got this job, I mean, that's what I felt about it, was we can change this. it doesn't have to mean that everybody's out there working in an isolated fashion, and so we're not really complementing each other's efforts. That became really our primary goal. We also monitor and promote the quality and effectiveness of services. When we see something that isn't working, we try to address it. And that is where most of my interaction with current victims comes from, people who call because they've had a problem in our system. And I'll just tell you, because I think my next slide is about our arrest grant, we did have a big problem with our police department. And I go around and do talks with some of our officers, and they will say the same thing. Back in 2005, we had a lot of people calling us and saying, the police were called to my house, but they didn't help at all. They used my child to translate or to interpret after a domestic violence incident, which is totally inappropriate. Or they didn't make an arrest. They just told him to go cool down for a while. You know, whatever. It wasn't the response that we wanted. And so we did something about it. But that's the point of that. It's not that we have authority over any other agency, but we do try to make sure that our system works. And if it doesn't, it is our job to try to do something about it. We've intervened with a lot of agencies. We want to promote a clear understanding of what we have in the community for people and how our laws can be utilized. We, some of you may be familiar with our candidates forum. It's why we sponsor a candidates forum whenever there are contested judicial races. This past year we included the candidates for U.S. Congress and all of our state legislative offices. We don't, there's nothing partisan about our forum, but we just ask some tough questions about what they know and what they're going to do about these very issues. We also do a legislative email update so people know. And again, we don't promote any particular legislation, but we let them know the legislation that's out there so they can be informed if they want to get involved in the process, they know who to call. And lastly, to serve as a clearinghouse for information not only for the general public but for the agencies also. When we get information about grants, trainings, anything that might be of use to the agencies in this community, we forwarded on to them. You have a copy. I think it's after the PowerPoint in your packet. You have a copy of our annual report. And I'm not going to go through this whole thing, but I just wanted to point out a couple things in there. Every year we do an annual report, and it kind of sums up our efforts and the work of our various committees. So you can see behind the cover is our roster of official board members. So these are the voting members of the board. There's a letter for me. I write a letter every year. And then we get into the committees and who's on the committee and what each committee does. And I think one of the main things in looking at this is just to look at who participates on these various committees. Because there's a lot of organizational effort in the community around child abuse, we have a multidisciplinary child sexual abuse team, We have a children's advocacy center. And we just actually restarted, and this was done through the board, our child fatality review team that is actually required by state law, but we haven't had a functional one for a while. And so we've worked with a coroner's office and just gotten that restarted. But that committee primarily works on interdisciplinary training. So we bring together the Crimes Against Children's Unit, the counselors and social workers throughout the school system, and Child Protective Services through the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. We do that at least every other year and host a big training to basically grease the wheels of cooperation between those agencies. We do a lot of small group work so people can talk about how we can work better together, work more effectively on behalf of families. If you look at the next page, the Partner Abuse Committee, it gives you an idea if you just look at the list of people who participated. And all of our committees, by the way, are open to the general public. Anyone can participate on any of our committees. We have quite a few survivors of violence and even some perpetrators of violence who have come and want to participate in our efforts, and they're welcome to come to any of our committee meetings. So you can see that we have pretty broad participation there. I would say this is one of the most active, dedicated, and passionate groups of people in this community are the people who participate in these very efforts. Again, I'm not going to read through everything on there, but if you read through all the things that we do, you'll see that it involves a lot of agencies in this community, like we have a red flag team, we have a fatality review team. Any domestic violence fatality that occurs in this community, after it is adjudicated, we sit down in a group and tear it apart and say, how could we prevent a similar death from happening in the future? Our red flag team is a high-risk response team. It's in its infancy. We're still working on it, but basically we want to, through that team, prevent any deaths to begin with. And then the next page is our Safe Havens Consulting Committee. I'm going to talk about that in a minute, so I won't go into detail about that now. And then lastly are some activities of my activities, Executive Director. I would remind you I'm part-time also. So I am, you know, and on my list are some of the things we get involved with that puts us in that state arena, and even like with Human Trafficking Task Force so that, you know, brings those efforts together. So I'm going to go on with some of the other things we're doing, and I'll point out a few other projects of the board. But I think that that most is kind of just a reflection of year to year the kind of projects that we get involved with to achieve those five primary goals. So we also, I'm going to back up to where I talked about the police department, that we had some problems in terms of our response to domestic violence. And so I had talked to Irene Gooding and said, you know, if we see any possible grant funding that could help us enhance our efforts on this, please let us know. Well, the Violence Against Women Act, which is a federal act, offered some grants called arrest and enforcement. They were to increase arrest and enforcement in communities around the country. and we applied for a grant in 2000, it was at the beginning of 2006. It actually was awarded at the end of 2006, but it was 2007 before we started implementation. Since that time, we have gotten two more continuation grants, and we've received $200,000 a year, the bulk of which has gone to our police department to enhance their efforts. Luckily, those have brought some great results, which I'm going to tell you about. So we've had, as I said, we've been funded at $200,000 a year since the end of 2006. We've just applied for a continuation grant. At this point, we can only apply for $100,000 a year. So it will be cut in half what we can get. But we've applied for that, and we have $300,000 pending that hopefully will get awarded, but you don't know. That would be in October, September, October. We'll find out, and then that would carry us through another three years. In terms of results of that grant, in the first year, it was toward the end of the first year, but since we have had a 70% increase in domestic violence arrests. So the first thing we did was intensive training with the police department. And I have to hand it to our police department. I mean, honestly, they said, the chief said, we aren't doing a good job and we've got to do better. And a plan was laid out on how to do better. And so really intensive training was done initially with 30 officers, and we were calling them our domestic violence officers. And then the rest of the department said, why are they getting this training and we're not? Because we're patrol and we're the ones going to these houses all the time. And so then we did training with all police. Every single patrol officer in urban county government has received the enhanced domestic violence training. There's been lots of ongoing training through this grant. We also send a lot of people to training, national trainings. We just sent a whole group of officers to Baltimore for training. We've sent prosecutors, advocates from the domestic violence program, the rape crisis center, Legal Aid of the Bluegrass. We've sent lots of people in this community to training through this grant. We also established frontline advocacy services in our police department the first time we had advocates in the police department. And this really was the brainchild of Lieutenant John Ginsheimer, who worked with me on the grant at the time. And he said, I feel like my detectives have to be social workers. If we could get advocates in our department, they could be doing this behind-the-scenes work, the supporting the victim work, the keeping the victim on board in domestic violence cases that the detectives were having to do and free the detectives up to do detective work. And that's exactly what happened. Okay, I'll go through this quickly. So we just ultimately had great results from our arrest grant. Before we even applied for the arrest grant, we actually got a Safe Havens grant. This grant, again, same office, Violence Against Women Act, and this was prompted by six deaths in one summer, not in Fayette County, but throughout Kentucky, around the exchange of children. You all might remember the death recently at Hazard Community College. Three people died on the campus, and it was during the exchange of child. The perpetrator, the child witnessed the whole thing and killed not only his ex-partner, but two family members, one a 12-year-old child, a cousin of the person he was intending to kill. He killed the uncle and cousin, too. So again, it is a matter of public safety. So we established a supervised visitation center through the Safe Havens grant. It's called Sunflower Kids. I'm sure some of you have heard of it. They serve, you know, it's all on your slide, so I won't go through, you know, the number of people they serve. But basically it has made Fayette County a model for the state in terms of supervised visitation services. I get calls from lots of other parts of the state, both about our arrest grant and our Safe Havens grant. but we have not had any injuries or deaths around visitation or exchange of children since then. There's a lot of other notable efforts I wish I had time to go into, but I'll just tell you the first one and the rest you can kind of read. We were getting complaints that our Child Protective Service hotline didn't work. People couldn't call in referrals for child abuse. We as a board sent a letter to the head of that unit of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services in Frankfurt. I hand-delivered the letter, and lo and behold, they added positions, they changed their phone system, and we got results. So it's really having a group of people that try to make things work and are willing to intervene when they don't. I want to ask if you have questions, but before I do that, just quickly, you did get a few handouts. These are things we have produced to help the residents of Fayette County know what is available in Fayette County and how they access those services. I also would like to point out that when the state did a protocol for coordinating councils statewide because they would like to encourage the formation of bodies such as the Domestic Violence Prevention Board throughout the state. It was based on the Domestic Violence Prevention Board, and I have this booklet if anybody's interested, but that is even our ordinance is in here, although it's made more anonymous. Again, I'll see if there's any questions, but I do want to thank you for what you do. It is extremely important. I think the decisions you make have a tremendous ripple effect in this community. I believe that it is government's job to make communities safe for people to live in, and intimate partner violence, child abuse, elder abuse, abuse of vulnerable adults, these are all a part of that and a part of social services. And so I'm glad to get to tell you about what we do. Any questions? Ms. Farragher, thank you so much for this presentation, and thank you, committee members, for allowing the time to get through this very, very important topic. Are there any questions or comments from Ms. Farragher today? Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Chair. Ms. Farragher, thank you so much for bringing this to our committee. It's been a while since I've seen the overview. Being on Council on a number of years, it's always good to have a refresh about exactly what you're doing and the impact you're making in our community, so thank you. A couple questions. On the grant project, you had mentioned arrests were up 70% because of the efforts of training our officers. But go beyond that. After we've done the arrests, where are we seeing positive results? I mean, you would think that one of our goals would be less number of calls for service on a domestic violence situation, that they would go down. Are you tracking that? Actually, we are. Our number of protective orders has gone down somewhat significantly. Now, the problem is always knowing whether or not it's because we're being successful or, you know, you're never really sure. I will say that we do have a partnership with a researcher, Dr. T.K. Logan at UK, which is highly unusual. So we do try to evaluate the things that we do. We have followed up and looked at conviction rates, and actually the conviction rates in domestic violence stayed the same. our percentage, and I want to say that's in the 70% too, but don't quote me because I can't remember for sure, but from charges moving on to prosecution, and we have really applauded our prosecutors because they've gotten some training and stuff through this, but they did not get any actual dollars in their pocket, and yet they really had to go to that too when we increased the arrest. So we were able, we have gone through the files and looked at them, and we were able to keep the conviction rate at the same level, which I consider a success. Absolutely. So we can't really track the calls for service? And have they dropped off? In terms of our police department, they fluctuate a little bit, but I can't say we've seen a dramatic decrease in calls. So where do we impact that at? Is it through counseling? Where in the public do we impact the domestic violence and prevent it before it starts? I mean, I understand we're focused on once it starts, they call in, we're doing a much better job, it sounds like, of getting to the scene, evaluating, making the arrest, etc. But how do we prevent it? Well, let me say first that when the research has shown that the single most effective intervention in partner violence is an arrest, that that speaks louder than anything, and it speaks beyond the person arrested. People know if it's a community that takes this seriously, and you can go to jail for this, it's just that they're less likely to do it again if that's what happens, or hopefully to do it in the first place. We do have a lot of prevention efforts. You've probably heard of Green Dot, that is an effort in our schools on prevention. And, I mean, I do a lot of public speaking. I just spoke to a homeschooled group at a Christian church about domestic violence. So we try to get to people young if we can. We talk about healthy and unhealthy relationships is really how we approach it, rather than talking about violence per se. But I think it takes a long time to really see a cultural change, which is what we're talking about. I will say that the Office on Violence Against Women, they do claim a dramatic decrease in domestic violence in general. They're saying people are reporting less. That's a little hard. I'm not willing to make any great claims around it. I will say that I've always looked, this is anecdotal, I've looked at deaths in our community. I used to always say we had four to six deaths a year, and now we average less than two a year. That's two too many, so we're trying to get it to nothing. But we do try to track a lot of data. In fact, if you Google my name, what you will see is an NIJ video of me and the National Institute of Justice, video of me and the researcher at UK talking about that practice-research partnership and how we have to evaluate our programs and how important it is for practitioners to work with researchers in doing that. Well, very good. I would hate to think what our community would do without your board and the efforts that you've done over the last several years. So thank you for that. I had one final question. On the page that you showed mass shootings, the 56 that were done on the chart, for instance, since the shooting at the elementary school and then at the movie theater where would they fall under which category i'm just trying to figure out how they categorize i think that one would be categorized as school related i honestly i was shocked when i saw this chart and it was it was put together by national researchers not me but i mean i didn't know who behind all the scenes how you you know quantified each one but there are a lot of deaths of four five people um that don't get as much press. And so I think when you add all those up, that's where that number gets so high in the domestic violence arena. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Senate. Ms. Farrig, thank you so much for your time, and we look forward to being of assistance. Thank you for what you do. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Mills, for this presentation as well. Next on our agenda is the Housing Authority tenant relocation process. Committee members, you should have the addendum, which is comprised of 21 pages. At this time, I would like to invite Mr. Austin Sims, the Executive Director of the Lexington Housing Authority, to come and talk a little bit about their relocation process. Thank you, Councilman Ford, for the invitation and the opportunity to talk with you all about what's going on at Pimlico. So I believe we've given, and all of you have, a copy of sort of a summary of what's going on. Let me, if you will, indulge you for just a moment and tell you why we are where we are. Pimlico Apartments is a public housing complex. and HUD decided some time ago that because of the $30 billion of deferred maintenance across this country that it would come up with a different way of encouraging housing authorities to maintain their property. And the latest program is called RAD, which is Rental Assistance Demonstration Program. Congress approved for 60,000 units of public housing to be transitioned into RAD. Last count, I understand there were some 12,000 units in the process. We submitted an application to HUD and said we would like to take our 206-unit complex and participate in RED. We did that because it was a complex that was falling in disrepair. We had not the funds from HUD to maintain it. We could not demolish it according to the HUD rules and regulations. And so the only opportunity, we couldn't really wait for 9% tax credits because that was the year 2015. And we thought it prudent and wise to attempt to do something right away, and so we applied for the red. We were accepted, I believe, December the 14th or somewhere thereabout. We received a letter that said you are funded. Now prior to the funding, we met with tenants at the Pendleton Co. in October to say this is a possibility. Give us input. Share with us your concerns about the complex. and received basically support from those who were in attendance for us to apply for RAD. When we took the application to the board and got approval, we then sent back to the tenants and informed them that we indeed were applying for RAD. And in the first meeting when we met with them, we talked with them in terms of if we were to relocate. And many of the comments were, well, why don't you tear this place down? We explained why we could not turn it down, why we could not tear it down. And that if, in fact, we were successful in red, we would have to relocate the tenants. Under the RED program, it's very clear you must relocate every tenant to another public housing site, and the cost is ours. We must bear the cost, and they have a right to return to that site. When we met with them after we had gotten the award and began to do more serious planning, we went again through the RAD process, but we offered a different, a second option. And that was if you do not want to participate in the RAD program, which is we move you, We pay for it. We pay for the dislocation of your utilities, your cable. We pay for the mover, and then we move you back 15 months later. If you choose not to do that, then we will create a Housing Choice Voucher for you. Housing Choice Vouchers are the most popular affordable housing program in the country right now. When we made that announcement, many of the tenants there immediately raised their hands and said, we'll take that. What that allowed them to do, or still allows them to do, is they're able to choose their own apartment, their own location, with no direct influence from the housing authority. It also offers an advantage that public housing does not, and that's what we call portability. You may take a voucher and you may go anywhere else in the United States of America, and they must accept that voucher. We had over 100-plus people who indicated they wanted the voucher. So for those who accepted the voucher, they don't play by the red rules. The red rules are for the ten people who said we want to stay, that we will move them at our convenience. We'll attempt to accommodate them, but it will be at all of our cost. And the others, we gave vouchers. and under vouchers you have 60 days in which to find an apartment. We have to be very careful because while sometimes we say they talk out of both sides of their mouth, they basically say to us, be very careful you cannot steer people to a particular neighborhood or to a particular landlord or give them assistance where you can. And so we basically said to the lieutenant, you have 60 days in which to find an apartment. Typically, most of our voucher holders find those apartments or houses within 60 days. There is a clause that if they don't find them in the 60 days, we can give extensions. we don't make that announcement up front because we don't want people to wait until the 60th day and then say, I need an extension. Because it's very important that we get that complex emptied as soon as possible. Today, 39 persons have been relocated under the voucher program. Of those 39, eight of them have ported out to other cities. and the others are all but four have picked up their vouchers and are in the process of looking. The four that have not are people who have indicated to us that they were waiting for school to be out and so school was out and we would think that this week staff will be communicating with them. So in a nutshell, that is it. Now, I'm sure you react to some of the public comments, and I'd just like to answer a few of those before you have to ask. And one is, what we've said to people is, if you don't like the voucher, if you don't want it, you may turn it back in, and we will pay for your move. We've said that, and to date, no one has turned their voucher back in. We went to a public meeting that was scheduled a couple of weeks ago by Jenny Ramsey, who's supporting and assisting some of those who need to be helped. That was, again, emphasized that if you have a problem, if you can't find a place, you may turn that voucher back in. What they understand is if they turn the voucher back in, they have to move to a location that we have an availability. They have to move within our timeline. We will work with them. We indicated that in every meeting we've ever had. We will work with them, particularly those who have school-age children and wanted to wait. So we think that the program is moving along fairly rapid. and at this point we don't have a lot of concerns about the process of maybe the miscommunication that has existed. With that, I'll entertain any questions or any comments that you might have. I would like to say to you that we have present with us the chairman of our board, Kina Ko, and Director of Operations, Barry Holmes, our voucher assistant manager, Tanya Christopher, who's handling all of the voucher programs, and Greg LaRue, who is the manager of the Pimlico Apartments, and we've charged with getting it vacated and getting it renovated. And, of course, I have a second board member, the Chief Administrative Officer, Ms. Hamilton. I represents Mayor Gray on the board. Right. Yes, sir. Mr. Sims, thanks for that report to start off the discussion. We'll start with Council Member Stenick. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Sims, good to see you again, sir. Go back over your numbers for me. How many had to be relocated and how many are we down to? Walk me back through those. We have 39 whose vouchers have been affected. The voucher is a technical piece of paper that they go out that says, you have the right to work as a private landlord. 39 of those have moved in their new homes. Eight of those have ported out of cities. Mr. LaRue informs me this morning that he has 89 vacancies at this point at Pimlico. And so we feel comfortable with that number as we move in terms of trying to get them all out by late summer or early fall. So how many are left? Well, let's do the math. It's 117. Okay. And what's your deadline for relocating them? It really, we would like it early fall. we'll work with tenants to be sure that we get them. Well, I mean, have you given them a deadline? Because a lot of times, you know, none of us act until we're given a time frame. Have we communicated that to when they have to be out officially? Yes. We've communicated with those who accept the vouchers have 60 days. Okay. And what's defined in the apartment, that voucher expires. Now, again, we will work with them if they have been out working for the voucher and they've not found it. We're going to work with them and extend that. If we won't whisper that, probably another 60 days. On those who have chosen to stay at Paminico, we're working with all the managers of all of our complexes, and we have to wait until an apartment becomes available. Or if you need a two-bedroom, we have to wait for the two-bedroom to become available. But we have a turnover that should satisfy that. Or if you need an accessible unit, we have to spin our wheels a little bit more to do that. So we feel at this point comfortable that we'll get them all out. Okay. So I assume they've moved to the top of the waiting list at other facilities? They have priority because of relocation. Okay. Very good. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Stenick. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Sims, for coming in today. Can I ask about the people that are going to come back? There's 10 that are coming back, or at least they're moving to another housing unit in public housing, but they can come back. That is correct. They have that right. It used to be that you had the self-sufficiency plan for residents. When this complex is completed, will residents here have to be involved in that? I know we talked before, you said there's another name for that program. HUD's kind of changed it from the self-sufficiency to... It will not be public housing when it reopens. It will be a tax credit deal. And so we just add, in terms of the masters that we serve, we're serving HUD because what they're providing for us is a 40-year, and it's what makes the program exciting for us, in spite of their cuts and sequestration and all that, they basically commit that we will pay you for 40 years X amount of rent with some inflation factor in that. But it's going to be owned by a new LLC that the House Authority is creating, and we'll play by the rules of HUD, who funds it, the tax credit. investors who are investing in Kentucky Housing, who's providing the tax credits for it. So will you guys still be managing it, but it's going to be an LLC that you set up? We will be managing it, and we'll be a part of the LLC. We'll have a percent ownership in the LLC, and then in 15 years, it'll revert back to the Housing Authority. Okay. I want to take this time to say that we had some folks come into our last meeting, They had some concerns that they raised about the move and the relocation process and how things were working. And Commissioner Mills set up a meeting with Austin and his team, and it was a great meeting, I thought. We learned a lot about, you know, there's always two sides to the story. And to me, I feel like you guys are doing a very good job with this relocation. You've brought in Commissioner Mills and some other folks with some different aspects of the move when you needed help and things like that. So I appreciate what you guys are doing. Are you going to do, do you have plans to apply for another one of these grants when this one's completed? What we want to do is to see how successful it is. But if HUD continues to cease funding, we're going to have no choice but to do it. Macon, Georgia, for example, applied for all of their public housing to become RAD demonstration programs. We chose not to do that. We just thought it was not wise to jump into something that's brand new, so we're working on it and evaluating the whole process. Okay. Well, is it fair to say that the RAD program and the way that this is financed and it's going to be managed moving forward is similar to what UK is doing with its housing on campus? Is it? I'm not sure if I'm as familiar of what I've read in the paper as to UK, but it is very similar to what we are doing in all of our other equestrian view site where the subdivision, not the subdivision itself, that's private home ownership, but all those apartments there. Right. They are tax credit units, so we've got a partnership with Kentucky Housing and Investor. But the difference is they are public housing funds versus this is a Section 8. It's really a project-based Section 8 voucher system is what it is. So it's a little bit different. It's the new animal on the block. Okay. Well, thank you for what you're doing, and we'll just stay in touch. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Next is Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. Austin, how are the children that are involved being handled when they get moved? They're having to make a transition from one school to another, and then when they come back, how does all that get sorted out? And are there problems where people are playing games with transporting the children to the school that they want and not necessarily following the rules that the Fayette County public schools have laid out for them? At this point, I've not detected any abuse of that system. We talked with Dr. Shelton and several of the school board members about the whole process. And then one of the principals spent a complete day with us in meetings with tenants. And she was the principal of the elementary school at Tate's Creek. And what she said to them was, if you transfer, if you move, and you can get your child back in this school, school, in other words if you're out of district, we'll allow that to happen. We can't send a bus around the city to find them. And I've gotten no input from the school system that there's any manipulation of the system. Now the ones who took the vouchers, and that was one of the issues that we had in terms of, because the first thing they said to us was, well, how will this affect Tate's Creek? We don't know, because if they take a voucher and they find another house in the Tate's Creek area, then they don't lose those students. So, but I've heard nothing from the principal or from Dr. Shelton. You know, when kids get to be in their junior or senior year, it's very critical for them to be with their friends at some point, even to the point where they would have to maybe transport, parents transport the children themselves as opposed to school buses and get them back into the school where they're used to being, especially with a situation like Tate's Creek where it's all the way from kindergarten all the way up to 12 right on the same campus. It's a little different than you have with anywhere else in Fayette County. Right. Except I believe our grade school kids, do they go to Tate Creek or Mill Creek? Okay, they do go to Tate Creek. I thought she made, that principal made it very clear that we really want to work with you. I mean, she was in every meeting that we had and spoke at each of those meetings and met with people after that, but I have not followed up with her in terms of that. I'm just curious about it because I do know that in many cases there are movements like that that take place just generally. A divorce or whatever splits a family up and one parent might have one child and another parent might have another child. and their geography reallocates those kids to schools that they don't necessarily want to be in. Right. And we've had that expression by some who say, you know, my children have been in this school all along and we don't want to move. And our response has been very forthright with them. There isn't a choice here. These units have to be rehab. We can't, you know, this agency, the Housing Authority, with its urban county government support through the years, basically said we aren't going to provide anything less than above adequate for people in Sweden. We've demolished a lot and built back. And so, you know, our response has been, well, it's not what the children who say I want to stay at that school want to hear. if in fact we've got buildings that are moving or buildings that are deteriorating or not modernized, we've got to move you out. And under the tax credit deal, we have to do the 206 as a project versus a few units here and there. And I'm not suggesting that any of that should change at all. It's just an ancillary type of a thing that kind of rubs people the wrong way sometimes. I agree. And you don't need any more of those, I'm sure. I agree on bank accounts. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Council Member. Next is Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Austin, for the presentation and for what I gather is a response to concerns that were raised and kind of adding some flexibility so that the needs could be met. I think that's a good move. I did have one question about the financing. This is going to be a tax, and I did not understand this until this morning, this is going to be a building that's financed by tax credits. That's correct. Backed by the Kentucky Housing Authority. And the reason that caught my attention is that that's been a conversation. As part of the work we've done on affordable housing and the Mayor's Commission on Homelessness, The question of is that a finite pool, that is, there's a certain amount of money that the state has to allocate as tax credits, and this project will take some percentage of that, which would mean it'd be, and I'm not questioning the value of the project, but that would mean that there would be less in that pool available for other affordable housing efforts. Kentucky Housing, they would have dances. some of those questions for you in terms of their total allocation. But they have 9% tax credits and 4% tax credits. The 9% of the more desirable is double the amount of dollars that you get. That's what we like is 9%. It gives us more money for the city. But it is a competitive race, okay? And we have been competitive in one. But they have already, and what they did when we had the HOPE 6, they set aside for us one of the few state agencies that did that. They set aside units, an allocation for public housing authorities. So for us, they did that, and they are now doing it for Louisville as they finish up their last one. They did it for Newport, and they did it for Covington. But now that we don't have the HOPE 6, we've tried to get them to do a set aside, and they couldn't. The 4% are not competitive and involve a lot more creative financing. So the fact that you don't compete for them, you really just make an application, and they say, you know, come and get them. Come and get them means you've still got to do a lot of legwork. So we will be doing a 4% tax credit. We will be doing an FHA loan. We are putting some dollars that the LHA subsidiaries have into that pool to mash together, if you will, for that $20 million. We also plan with Kentucky Housing for some of their home dollars. And I'll keep my fingers crossed that we'll get that. We've indicated to Irene here that at some point, you all's dollars are committed this year. If you've got home dollars that can help with the gap financing, we would certainly be interested in that. that. And so what happens, we realize that HUD has done a complete shift from when they previously just gave you funding and basically would say, we'll provide you with X millions of dollars to build public housing. They're getting out of that business. And so we must create teams, financial teams, to be as creative as we can. And that's kind of what we've done with Pimnicombe. Okay, and just one follow-up question. As I understand it, there was a time when the tax credits, the discount rate, that is the difference between what investors get and what they are willing to pay on those has varied as the desirability of tax credits has waxed and waned. Do you know roughly what the discount will be on those tax credits? We're expecting, I think, about 86. Is it 90? Okay, 93. Okay, so they've become desirable again, I guess. Yes, and they had dropped down to, at one time, like 70s? Or lower, is my understanding. There was a time when they were very hard to sell. Right. And the investor for us is Ohio Capital, who's out of Columbus, but they do Kentucky. And we've had some success with them in the past, again, over in the east end of town. And so we're kind of excited about that partnership. Kentucky Housing looks at the team that you create, well, you know, the financial advisor, the bond council, all of that that's meshed together. They look at it to be sure that you can carry it through. And so that's kind of where we are. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Council Member. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Hi, Austin. Thank you for coming today and responding to the recent public comment that we had a few weeks ago. I didn't really get the answer to Council Member Kay's question. So your all's use of the tax credits, will it decrease the available tax credits for other programs in Lexington or developers? Well, I guess in the sense that when we apply, they're going to give us an allocation. That allocation is gone. It's spent when they give it to us. But my understanding, again, I don't want to speak for Rick. And one of the Kentucky House board members is here in the audience. I'm going to put him on the spot. PG Peoples, but they've kind of encouraged us that not a lot of people have been taking advantage of the 4%. Because, again, the 9%, if I can wait, to be honest with you, had our property not been in a deteriorating state and had it not been read on the horizon, we probably would have waited to get the 9%. It's double the dollars. So, yeah, it's going to be decreased by somewhat, but I don't think it hurts what they do for other affordable housing. And what makes ours so inviting is, again, that when you talk about affordable housing, if you don't have that 40-year guarantee for vouchers that are going to, that we can use when we're talking about hard debt on the property, It's just difficult to build. On the first page of your relocation plan, there's this statement that says that the housing authority will convey the property to an entity who can use the tax credits. And who was that entity? It's still you all, but it's a different... It will be an LLC that will be made up of the equity investor and the housing authority. And so it's Hood's property. In fact, they have a Declaration of Trust on it, and they are saying to us, you may, not only you may, we encourage you to do that, to create that. Lastly, can you talk about your self-sufficiency plan and case management that you currently provide for individuals living in your public housing, and how will that change under this new model of housing? Will you still offer those same services? We had more than one person that came to the mic a few weeks ago mention that they didn't know how to do a budget, they didn't know they had to pay deposits, they didn't seem to understand a lot of the processes involved, in relocating. So I just am curious if you could speak to those services. Okay. Our self-sufficiency programs sort of run the gamut. It depends on which one. In an example, we have two self-sufficiency programs that have a special coordinator, one for the Section 8 Housing Trust Voucher Program, one for public housing. that very clearly defines you shall have no more than 50 people in that unit. And that's a rent adjustment program that basically says you come in and you sign a five-year contract that says here are the things I want to do. I want to finish school. I want to go to technical school. I want to save money for a house. I want to, you know, whatever. and you work with that particular coordinator in doing that. If, in fact, they get an increase in their rent due to employment, then the differential we put into a savings account for them, and then at the end of the five years when they have graduated from whatever it was that they wanted, they have those dollars to do with as they want. That's one of the other programs. One of the other ones that we have self-sufficiency, we just basically say you have to work 37 and a half hours in some job in order to live here. That was the first one we did and then we realized that everybody couldn't have the 37 an hour. So we said, okay, we have a second that you must work 20 hours in which to qualify. A third is that we determine limits. Probably one of the more controversial issues that we have, and we're still wrestling with it, and that is that you move into a complex and you have five years in which to become self-sustaining. You know, the theory that public housing should not be a lifetime gift and all. And again, across the country, we try to stay in tune with what others are doing. What we realize is we move, if we move, well, let's just use Pimlico as an example. If we move 206 people into Pimlico 15 months hence and give them a five-year period that they must give it up, at the end of the five years, from a social perspective, people may say that was really good because you've said to them they cannot remain dependent. The bottom line is we've uprooted them permanently. From our standpoint, we've created a 206-unit complex that has no one in it. And we've got a tax credit investor looking and saying, you know, we've taken tax credits. We need the dollars. And so, you know, you hear from it takes people more than five years to finish college. to after five years they ought to have to leave. And we're still kind of wrestling with that whole theory. But those are, in essence, our self-sufficiency programs. One more. How often do residents meet with a case manager? Do they receive financial literacy training? Do they receive help with resumes? Do they receive job training assistance, referrals for jobs? all of those steps to self-sufficiency without just saying, you've got five years, or I want to go to college, but they don't have a GED. There's baby steps along the way to some of those. And that's one of the discussions that we have in terms of how effective should ours be. We don't have social workers per se on our staff. We are, by nature and by charter, a housing agency that builds and manages affordable housing. Now, we understand that we must do it with some level of sensitivity and some level of social awareness. But, you know, back 30, 20, 30 years ago, we had a complete social services department with an MSW and three social workers, job counselors, and all. When funds were cut, that was the first thing to go. So we do not have a social services program per se. We rely on Beth and her staff when we have a social issue that is broad enough because we said they are citizens of Lexington. But, again, their status is limited as well. But we do not have a social services department. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Austin, what you were just explaining, that's the beauty of the HOPE 6, right? Because the HOPE 6 allowed you to increase your income and stay in place. rather than relocating like you just talked about. So you had a third tax credit, a third market rate, and a third public housing, so that if you did graduate from school going through your self-sufficiency plan, or you did get a better job and you made more money, then you could stay in that unit, and your unit would transition from public housing to a tax credit to a market rate, so that you had your social network in place, your kids got to stay at the same school, and those kinds of things. They couldn't stay in the same complex because they're unrelated. The public housing that switches to the Section 8 is not to allow that person to transition per se. That's almost an afterthought, George. The way they did the Hope 6 in St. Louis was you got to stay in place, and then say if you're in public housing and all of a sudden you've got a better job, and so you're able to pay, say, the tax credit rate, so you've got up to a third of your income, then the next person that moved out of a tax credit unit, it switched to public housing, and that's how they kept their quotient the same. I think what they did was, and I'm not familiar with St. Louis and exactly what they did, but it sounds like what they did was a private complex with floating public housing units there. So they were floating in the sense that they were not disguised as apartment A was public housing, apartment B. And so you were able to transition that. But we do not have that. Right, right. Because we don't have that private complex. So your whole sixes weren't done private. You guys did them. Okay, that's the difference. They were done private there. So let me ask you one final question, and that is, is or are Appian Way and Pimico, are they self-sufficiency-based complexes? Because you've talked about your different types of self-sufficiency, but all of your apartments aren't that way. Is that correct? That's correct. All of them are not self-sufficiency. And again, the issue becomes, should you make them all self-sufficiency, which says then that we disregard those who fall between the cracks. In your district, the first complex, I think one of the first that Lexington did some years back was Trent Boulevard. They're across from the old Septicon. Right. Yeah. Those are self-sufficient. Falcon Crest, up at the contiguous with Tate's Creek Center, is a self-sufficiency. So sometimes we deal with self-sufficiency, and then because we had an MTW site, we were able at Pimlico to increase the rents to $150. We had people that we were paying to live there. And the bottom line was, I mean, because it's under the HUD rules, you know, the bottom line was we couldn't pay the bills. Right. So let me ask you, when this unit's completed, will it have any self-sufficiency component to it? I believe it has. I don't think we have ironed out completely what will happen, but we think that it will have self-sufficiency. It can conflict with the tax credit equity thing. But under our MTW program, which allows us to do creative things that typically you can't do if HUD approves it, that we will look at it. because it's difficult to balance between being sensitive to the hardships that the families have and how do we get them sufficient. Sure. Because ultimately, right now, we would be faced with some of our units of saying, you've not finished five years, we want to take your public housing complex and move you out. So go somewhere else and live. Well, again, what's the public perception of that? But more than the public perception, what's the reality of do we take the kids away from that home because mom or dad didn't get self-sufficient in those five years? The jury is really still out on that one. Since only ten of the families decided to stay in public housing, and we can assume or not assume whether or not they want to come back to this one when it's completed. Where do you anticipate populating these 260 units from once they're complete since the vast majority of them took the Section 8 voucher and left? Well, one, those who took the voucher do not have a right to come back. Correct. But they may apply and come back. But it's not likely they'll give up the voucher and come back, right? I don't think they will, which gives them kind of a double control that if they're really out there and they don't like it, they can reapply. Because my time's up. So where do you think you're going to populate this unit from once it's done? Because you only have 10 families coming back. You've got 260 units. At this point, we're sort of a revolving door. From the waiting list. From the waiting list? Okay. Can I ask where, if you're on the waiting list, you would live now? You're asking what now? If you're on that waiting list that they're going to populate it from, where would they live now? Well, the waiting list today designates, you get to choose particular sites. But I mean, if you're on that waiting list that she talked about, where are they living now on that waiting list? Oh, where are they? I don't know. Okay. You have a lot of extended families. So can you work with our Commissioner of Social Services when it comes time to repopulate this? Because it looks like we're going to have a whole lot of different issues when people come back there that we don't necessarily have now that we need to get an understanding of. We love working with Beth. She might run from us, but no. My time's up. Thank you. What we'll basically do is, you know, as we approach the 15-month period, we'll let Beth and tenant services, who we've always worked very closely with, to say we're going to be taking applications, we'll be doing newspaper advertisements, all types of things opening up. because once we know comfortably when that unit, and we'll be looking at Barry, who will kind of know when that complex is going to be available, that the moment it's available, we're going to be moving people in. So the more offers and acknowledgment that the community has that those are available, the better it all for us. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cherokee. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Mr. Sims, we're almost done. I appreciate your time there at the podium. Hope it hasn't been too long, but I think this has been helpful for the committee. I just have a few comments that I would like to make. I think the good thing is that, as has become a custom, is that the authority under your leadership and your staff has proven resourceful again and again here at Pemta Club to be able to bring some federal dollars back for the improvements out there. The relocation and the renovation, of course, are two major things we'll have to tackle before that improved facility. But the December 14th letter signed by her as Assistant Secretary, Henriquez, I think helps us there. I think she visited with us here in this community not long ago as a representative of President Obama's administration. I've worked with you and your staff over at the Housing Authority, so I'm perhaps somewhat more familiar with this issue. So if the Council will just indulge me for just a second, I think we can provide some clarity for this. is that the issue over at Pimlico is that you guys are providing information on your relocation plan. Is that option A is that you guys are going to be required to move folks away from public housing to other public housing sites, but you also offered a second option, an attractive option, which was the voucher, the housing choice voucher. And so anybody that wants to, and it's more than temporary relocation because the extent of the renovation is projected to be 15 months. So those folks that want to leave and come back, technically the duration is permanent relocation, but under RAD, you've committed, they're assured that you would bring them back and also help with moving expenses. Let me ask this question. And of course, the Uniform Relocation Act, all of those federal guidelines apply, designed to help those that are impacted by displacement to absorb the additional costs of housing and relocation. So you're meeting the URA definition by agreeing to move folks off and move them back if they so choose. But the option, and we know that there's a wait list. We know that public housing perhaps has a wait list just as a Section 8 voucher has a wait list. So in the Council Member Myers question, I agree. I think that you guys probably won't have much difficulty at all because there's an affordable housing shortage. That's the only soapbox comment I'll make. There's an affordable housing shortage throughout our community. So renovated Pimlico will, the waiting list and other interests will generate there. The scarcity of the housing choice voucher. If you would just briefly talk about it, you've committed as part of your specific relocation plan for Pimlico and most of the folks have taken advantage or indicated their desire to take advantage of that. Talk to us very briefly about the scarcity, if not for the relocation, the required relocation here. One, our Section 8 program is $17 million a year, a program we spend $1 million, $6 million, $7 million every month on landlords. And the only increase in vouchers at this point are what are called VASH vouchers, which are for veterans. Designated, we have a partnership with the Veterans Administration Hospital, and they must do counseling and all. And we've got, I think, on the drawing board an additional 25 of those. About 200 of our 2,600 are VASH programs. Other than that, HUD has not increased the Housing Choice Voucher program for years. Housing Choice Voucher at one time was a numbers program. Basically you had 300 units and then you had an additional 500, 700, up to 2600. It's now become a money-based program. And so what has happened, because we are one of the select housing authorities in terms of what we call MTW status, we're able, because we need to make that complex happen, take some dollars that otherwise typically would not have been available to create the vouchers for the people who need to move out of. who have chosen to move out of Pemnico. As it stands right now, Pemnico aside, how long or how extensive is your Section 8 housing choice voucher wait list? We've been closed for how long, Tanya, now? 2010. Since 2010. In 2010, we opened it just for a very short period of time. Okay. And so because we open and close it, it's about 300 to 400 on that list. But you've probably seen it in the news where housing authorities all across the country have had literal stampedes and physical harm due to opening their wait lists. So that answers my question. Thanks, Mr. Sims, in regards to scarcity, the need, and the demand of this very attractive program. And so the residents, as a part of your specific relocation plan at Pimlico, offered this as an option. I think that's important. Let me ask you, in application about the Housing Choice Voucher, my understanding is that it's a subsidy, is that I would guess that the household housing cost is going to be limited to 30% of what they earn. And so that's on the resident side. And then there's a cost of housing. And so if that is a real income and then there's a cost of housing and that the voucher covers the difference. In lay terms, is that correct? In lay terms, that is correct. If the rent is $600, but their 30% affordability is $200, the voucher, the housing choice voucher, covers the $400 difference, or the difference in housing costs. That's correct. I did some quick math. Is that the Uniform Relocation Act, again, is supposed to be temporary assistance to get folks moved and to cover the increased cost of housing. There's a number in the act, I think $5,250. The Uniform Act, that's supposed to be the payout to get folks moved. In just rough numbers, at 165 households, if everybody applied to the Uniform Act, URA, 800, 825,000. Here's the reality is that Section 104D also kicks in and triggers an extension of URA because most of these residents will perhaps be considered low income. That would be the cost if you just had to move everybody out, provide them comparable services, et cetera, et cetera. But the cost comparison of the value of the housing choice voucher perhaps can be much, much more than that. Because URA, again, the assistance via URA runs out at some point in time. the residents at Pimlico, once they obtain the housing choice voucher and are able to locate and cite that housing choice voucher, I don't want to use the word perpetuity. How far does that assistance extend? Well, it extends as long as HUD funds or Congress funds the program. And also as long as they have a need? As long as they have a need and as long as they're not some new rule or something that changes. Every session we always wait for Congress and between them and HUD to decide what's the new rule. But today, yeah, you're absolutely correct. And it's portable as well. It is portable, which makes it really desirable. Mr. Simpson, the last question I would have, again, going back to Pimlico, is that the Housing Authority has prepared and is prepared to accommodate the Uniform Relocation Act needs of its residents at Pimlico. And for those that chose the housing choice voucher, that that assistance, the acceptance of that assistance, Relieves is not the word. Satisfies is not the word. You guys have met either with relocation, moving away and moving back, or the extension and offer of a housing choice voucher. You guys are providing the assistance needed to relocate. The housing choice voucher is something that the housing authority offered. We offered with no force and very clear that they had a choice to take that. And if they took that choice, there would be no financial support to them on it. And if they got out there and decided that they did not feel comfortable with it, they could bring it back and move under the RED program. And that remains today. Committee members, are there any other questions? Mr. Sims, you've been at the Housing Authority quite a while. We appreciate your expertise. We appreciate you and your staff coming down to answer some of these questions of the council. I hope we haven't been a burden, but I think that this information has provided some insight that has been needed down here on the second floor. I might just extend one last invitation to you as council people if, in fact, you get a constituent who is talking with you. And it's one of those unbelievable situations which sometimes we hear. feel free to pick up the phone and call me. We will look into it, and without reaching any confidentiality of that person, we have to respect that. We'll be glad to respond to you on a one-on-one basis. Thanks again, Austin. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Committee members, the last item on our agenda is a small area of your plan background. I'd like to welcome members of our Division of Planning. If Chris King would like to come to the podium first, and if he would need to hand off, that would be fine. This issue, at my request, was referred to the committee to give us an overview today, just an overview of the activities here in the last few years from the Division of Planning and our Planning Commission and neighborhoods throughout the city as it pertains to small area plans, and particularly how do we move forward as a government in helping getting some of these strategies implemented. So, Chris, thanks for being here. You can take it away. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Councilmembers. Appreciate the opportunity to talk to you a little bit about small area planning. And it really extends to planning in general and the whole notion that the best plans have no meaning unless it is followed up with focused implementation. And that's been true in the planning profession going back for as long as there has been such a thing. I would just like to maybe, before I talk about the specific plans that have been undertaken recently and where we see small area planning going, I would like to maybe just comment on the larger picture of small area plans and planning in this community. For decades, our focus really was on the explosive growth that we were having in the community and the large, vast areas of the urban service area that became our suburban Lexington because that's where the action was, that's where the focus was, and that's for a long time the kind of planning that really was done. And that kind of planning was fairly, I won't say easy to implement, but a lot of the success of those came through follow-up rezonings that were managed by the Planning Commission, coordinating of public facilities, which is the hard part, but Council generally does recognize that when you grow into a new area, you had to provide new facilities to go along with that, and a lot of times there were growing pains trying to coordinate those expenses of the infrastructure with that. But again, by and large, a lot of the implementation of those plans would be through efforts that did not cost a lot of money. Well, that's changed. The last significant greenfield type of small area planning that has been done was the 1996 urban service area expansion. One of our more recent small area plans caught a little bit of that out in the South Nicholasville Road corridor because we do have some larger vacant parcels there. But by and large, we don't have unplanned large vacant parcels left within the urban service area currently. So our planning and the implementation that's associated with it is an entirely different challenge that we've been dealing with in the last 10 years, primarily focused on infill and redevelopment, and looking at older neighborhoods that have a character, that have their land uses fairly well established, but need tweaking or have special needs. And that's a different kind of planning, and it also challenges us for a different kind of implementation. Typically, the low-hanging fruit of some of those kinds of plans are maybe a little bit of rezoning, maybe a new text amendment, those things that don't cost money other than council's time and staff time. But if you look at the more recent small area plans, the kinds of things that we need to do to make those areas develop to their full potential quite often will involve significant upgrades of existing infrastructure, things like corridor plans, road diets. agencies, things that you've talked about such as the land bank and programs like that, which have been created, which have a lot of value, but need a lot of capital to be meaningful and to really start up. So with that background, I would just like to highlight for you, And I think I was here recently and talked to you about how we try to do small area planning in the cracks between our major comprehensive plan updates, which occur on five-year cycles and basically take two and a half or three years, a very focused effort of our staff. In those couple of years that we have in between, we work with the Planning Commission to develop recommendations for small area plans, approach council for funds to implement those kinds of plans, and or to the extent that we have the capability on staff, do some of those ourselves. Well, there were basically four major small area planning processes that took place as a result of the 2007 comprehensive plan. The two leading ones were the central sector and east end small area plans, which basically between the two of them ended up getting most of the area inside New Circle Road, north of Main Street, between the Georgetown Road Corridor and the Winchester Road Corridor. An area of many diverse neighborhoods, great potential, and great challenges as well. And there were major recommendations that came out of those two small area plans. and there has been implementation. There has been a group that has been meeting since those plans were adopted to try to advance a lot of the recommendations that were made through those planning processes. And, you know, we have pretty much taken care of most of the low-hanging fruit, to be honest with you. So now those kinds of things that were recommended by those plans for the neighbors who were involved in that, in order to keep those things progressing and to keep the neighborhoods plugged in and the credibility of those planning processes. Again, those challenges, we hope, are addressed. Other ones that we did actually in-house included the South Nicholasville Road Small Area Plan, which was successfully concluded out in the area near Manowar Boulevard, Nicholasville Road, but we did have vacant land and some developed land out there as well. And another one that did not conclude successfully was the North Nicholasville Road Small Area Plan, which again involved tremendous effort by staff, but the major stakeholders in that were so polarized. It's one of the few processes where there was so much polarization, there was no common ground after many, many, many months of effort. the staff at Planning Commission and others, we basically shelved that process. So I think what I would just like to say again is to reiterate the big picture, is that if we're going to do planning processes and we're going to have small area plans and we are going to engage in consultants and we're going to ask the community to engage in those processes, because those are the successful ones where you start at the bottom with the community and the needs and the issues, and you build the plan up from that point. It's very important that there be an understanding that it doesn't end with the plan. It really starts with the plan. And, again, we appreciate this opportunity to talk to the council and remind the council that you will have a major role in those kinds of plans. and the types of plans that we foresee doing in the immediate future, which are much more big city type of plans. So with that, I will be glad to answer questions. I also have Jim Duncan here, who is the head of our long-range planning section that is responsible for the comprehensive plan and the small area planning on a much more day-to-day basis than I as director. and either I or Jim would be glad to answer any questions, give you any information that you have about this. Thank you, Chris. First up, we have Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Chris. This was very informative. On your chart, you show that the Central Sector Small Area Plan was funded at $100,000 and the East End at $120,000. So those were funded? Yes, those were funded by Council funds from the General Fund. And do you know what has come of those funds, what they were used for? For consultants. Okay, just to study and develop and create the plan. The East End plan, we had consultant teams on both of those. The consulting team for the East End was led by EHI at Holmes, local firm, his firm. And the central sector, we actually got a very favorable rate from consultants. Arashio out of Indianapolis was our lead consultant who were interested in expanding at that time into other markets. And, again, I think for the amount of work they did in the land that was involved, we did get a very favorable rate from them. But those funds were expended. So within the plans, because I've not read one, so I apologize. I just sent an email to request it. But within the plans, are there specific outcomes measurable that we could fund? I mean, I assume that there are. And I guess is it up to Council then to fund those next steps? Or, I mean, how do we facilitate the continuation of the plans and see that they, like you said, that they're worth the paper that they are written on? Very good question. I think what we have done, and I will say in the last ten years we have tried very hard, is to make sure every plan has an implementation type of element that is done and that then gives guidance to where to go. Some are much more detail and project-driven than others, and some of them do involve new big ideas like the creation of a CDC, a community development agency, that will work in that area and would need seed money and try to link between government entities and private sector developments and things like that to make things happen in those neighborhoods. Again, much more like you've seen in larger cities dealing with neighborhoods that have special needs. So I would recommend that, again, that there be, for every small area plan, some kind of, I don't know if a council link is exactly the word, but some kind of acknowledgment that there is and will need to be, in certain small area plans, funding. I think it would be unwise, though, to always limit the planning process by what folks might seem doable budget-wise, because then what you're going to do is, oh, that's too expensive, that'll never happen. You kind of thwart the creative process. In my experience, a lot of times it is those big leaps that happen that take us in a new direction that a lot of people said would never happen. So it's a delicate balancing act, making sure that expectations of the community are managed, expectations of the council, planning commission, all those stakeholders. But what I would recommend is there be some kind of continuing and ongoing process and a continuing ongoing realization like so many things. This is a function of government that should be looked at as worthy of competing for funds. Do you feel like a position within the planning department would be helpful to facilitate some of these plans if, I'm assuming, you know. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it seems like there needs to be a central, yeah, I mean, it seems. There needs to be a central, yeah, I mean, it seems. There needs to be a central, yeah, I mean, it seems. Strategic planning that worked in that area that we no longer have due to loss of positions over the last five to ten years. I just hate to see the $220,000 that we've already invested and have this great working document and plans just collecting dust. Certainly. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilman Breakers. Chris, it may help the committee again to echo some of the things that you stated. We understand that these small area plan activities are adopted as part of the comprehensive plan. Correct. So they are very, very valuable in that instance. speak briefly in regards to the role that planning staff and planning commission plays in regards to the regulation of these small area plans and, Chris, if you will, into the decision of areas. You provided us a list of areas that the planning commission is considering to carry out additional small area planning. If you could speak to the Planning Commission. Absolutely. It's very important, I think, that there be good communication between the Council and the Planning Commission on these things. As you all know, the Planning Commission, other than the goals and objectives, adopts the comprehensive plan. The Council does not. So the decisions as to what the comprehensive plan will say in terms of what the priority areas and recommended areas for small area plan studies will be, will be pretty much a Planning Commission decision. And if the Planning Commission can flat say, well, we don't want to study that area, we're not going to adopt a plan, it would be silly for us to put resources into doing that. Likewise, for the Planning Commission to say, we want to study these areas, if there is no interest in the council in those areas, provide the support for consultants if necessary, or to follow up projects that would come from that plan, that would be kind of like banging your head on the wall. So I think it's very good that there be communication. We often hear from council members and others for areas that they feel should be studied. And, of course, council can always fund studies and things like that as well by its collective will. So I hope that's what you were getting at with your question, Council Member Ford. But to me, it's good that there be communication between the three parties about those things. Right. So it does help, Chris. I think what I want for clarity is the discussion, hopefully, that we can examine in future times in this committee is not how do we fund the pursuit and the development of additional small area plans, but after the Planning Commission has adopted areas that we've studied, such as East End, Central Sector, and out south of Nicholasville, I believe, after the Planning Commission has studied and adopted small area plans, how can we facilitate the needed investment to bring those plans to life And realizing, just in my opinion, is that it is not necessarily the local government's role to fully fund the implementation of the small area plans. It needs to be, however I believe that we have a role we can play, and I'm hoping that this committee can help us understand what role in limited budget times we can play. We're going to need the support of the private sector, and surely we're going to need the support of many of the vested neighbors and community groups within these areas of study. But the question is, what role can the council in this government play? Well, again, I think it would be good, a couple of things, If that kind of checking up on plans after they are done becomes a part of the routine business of the council in one of your various standing committees, I think that would be a very good thing. I think it also, knowing that the Council is interested in that, is a good challenge back to us as planners as we develop the plans and develop the implementation recommendations to develop cost estimates, develop specific strategies, identify various sources for funding, whether it's transportation funding, whether it's sewer infrastructure, whether it's road work, or whether it's a new agency or a thing like that, to identify those so that you have some specific ideas then to react to. Chris, I think that's all the questions we have for today. Hearing none other, we will definitely keep you and your staff apprised of how we may study this issue a little further on in future meetings. Thank you very much. We appreciate the Council's interest in these issues. Committee members, it appears we're going to have just a few minutes between our next meeting. The last item on the agenda is the review of items in committee. The four items that we have are the Senior Citizen Center. We may ask for an update at one of our future meetings there. The Workforce and Training, we understand that the CAO's office is working with the folks at the Bluegrass Whib. They may have some updates signed and sent in here soon. I would urge us to keep this small area plan implementation in committee. The question I would have is the issue in regards to the public housing authority relocation process if Council Member Henson or Council Member Myers or the committee has a desire for this item to remain or to be removed from committee. I would move that we removed from the committee. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second by Council Member Scutchfield. Is there a discussion? Council Member Akers, discussion to the motion. Hearing that there's still 117 people remaining in the apartment complex yet to move, yet to be relocated, I don't know that we want to bring them back at the end and say has everyone moved and settled, but I kind of feel like That is what I would like to hear in a few months. I would say that, you know, when I put it in the committee, my question and my concerns were our constituents that came and said that they were having difficulty. After having met with them, and I think the commissioner will support me in this, they're doing their job and they're doing it well, and they're engaging the commissioner and other folks when they need help to get it done. So I'm confident that we were looking at the process and whether or not people are being properly served, and they are. And so I think unless we hear otherwise, it's good to take it out. Okay. Is there any additional discussion on the motion? Motion to remove. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? And that motion carries. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Hearing no other further business, is there a motion to adjourn? It's been moved and is seconded. Our next meeting will be June 18th. We stand adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.