! Thank you. Good morning, everybody. To the council members, welcome back from break. To the staff and members of the administration, I'm sorry we're back, but we are. I think this is the first meeting after the break, so we'll go in maybe a little bit slowly. But the first item on our agenda is approval of the summary from the last meeting. Do I hear a motion? Move approval. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. The next item on the agenda is the relationship with the Bluegrass ad. And we had hoped that there would be some representatives from Bluegrass ad able to be with us today, but I don't know if their director is interim at this point or he's been appointed. He's still interim. He is actually in D.C. on professional business, and some of the other invited guests were unable to attend. So I'm going to suggest to the committee that we postpone this item, that we not have a conversation without them here, but that we put it on for next month and between now and then make sure that they will have adequate representation and that we're clear about what we would like to hear from them and what we think they need to hear from us. So is there any objection to postponing this item? Hearing none, we'll do that. The next item on the agenda is human resources out of the Law Department. Commissioner, welcome. Thank you all for letting me present today. I'll be speaking about, in general, the placement of human resources within the Law Department and give you a little bit of history about where human resources have been placed over the years. and we will go through, and if you all, of course, have any questions, feel free. The human resources, the last administration, it was placed in the finance and administration cabinet. I didn't go really far back behind that. My understanding is before that it was in the CAO's office. And when this mayor came in in January of 2011 as part of his larger reorg of government, I was asked if I would be willing to have human resources placed in the law department, and I said, yeah, that would be fine. The rationale for that was there are so many state and federal employment laws nowadays with the ADA, FMLA, wage and hour provisions, and we have both an exempt workforce and a non-exempt workforce, that there's a natural connection because of all the communication that we have to engage in with human resources and law. And there's a belief that I think is true that if you communicate on the front end in some of these employment situations, then it can avoid a lot of bad things at the back end of lawsuits and things like that. So since July of 2011, when law has had human resources placed under it, I want to talk to you all a little bit about some of the things we've done. And, of course, I think the biggest one is we've really had a sea change in our civil service system. With the passage of House Bill 390, we've done that by going to the state legislature, and really it's the first change in our civil service system in 17 years. Having been through the legislative process, I understand why there hadn't been a change in 17 years because it's not a cakewalk to get legislation passed in the state. Had it not been, I think, for Judy Taylor and her knowledge about the legislative system, some of the places that we got hung up, I think we would have had a hard time passing it. So just to give you a sense of that legislation and how we went about passing that, We went through and first we worked with our local players, the Civil Service Employees Association. We talked to the Civil Service Commission. Everybody was on board with doing this. We drafted a bill in the fall of 2012, which we then, then we found a sponsor, Kelly Flood, who was our sponsor in the house. We were able to move it through the house. I had to go up to Frankfurt and testify two times, both in the House and the Senate. And actually, it's interesting, the bill was one of those bills that got hung up as part of the General Assembly legislative process, so it actually got passed the last day of the General Assembly and was signed by the governor. Lexington is interesting because our civil service system really is, in many instances, not really locally controlled. It's a process of state statute when the merger of government went in. Most of our civil service system is controlled by state statute. The original statute was passed in 1974, and it's always been a very, in the past, a very restrictive, what I would call a restrictive civil service system. From 1974 to 1996, LFUCG was a top three system. That's probably one of the more restrictive systems I've ever heard of. In other words, once the civil service system sends a list of folks to the hiring managers to interview, they basically would send them three people, and you were limited to interviewing those and hiring them. In 1996, we changed that to a top five system. And this last year and beginning in July, we are now a qualifying system. And the qualifying system means that the civil service system will get a list of all of the qualified candidates who meet the base qualifications of the job, those candidates will still be rated just on years of experience, but the hiring managers will get a big list of folks that they then have more control about hiring. And the reason we thought this would be a good change, this is the change the state has gone to for most of its hiring. And as you all have heard for years, I'm sure, hiring managers did not like the top five system because they felt like they were the best people to understand who they needed for the job, and they felt like the people that were really in the top five list weren't making it there. Then you had on the other end of the scale, you had candidates who were not making it into the top five who felt like they were being wrongfully passed over and had the qualifications to make the top five list. So with both of these things going on, and there's always going to be subjectivity in the ranking process, and folks would say, well, if the people doing the ranking knew my field better, you wouldn't have these problems. And I think that's the case because nobody's going to understand engineering, law, water quality. It's a difficult thing. So now we have the way that this change, what it will mean for hiring managers, they'll get a bigger list of people, so they're going to have to go through a few more applications, but it gives them a lot more authority, and they'll be able to, If they want to hire number one, they can, or if they feel like number 57 on the list is the one they want, they'll be able to hire that person. So it gives them the judgment to either give someone a career ladder or hire someone who's highly experienced. Okay, we've talked about that. One of the things that we had to do in implementing this system was the way that our state statute is set up, But our Civil Service Commission is sort of the equivalent of the state personnel board. The statute provides that we can implement regulations to implement this statute, but in order to do that, we have to have the approval of a Civil Service Commission. So one of the things we had to figure out in the process was, how are we going to implement our military preference and our seniority preference? And our military preference, one of the things we did with House Bill 390 was update our military preference, which formerly had ended with the Vietnam War, and so we have now included military action since then as part of our military preference. But we looked to what the state does, and in some of their jobs, the state requires you to interview military applicants for jobs. So we were trying to figure out what's the right number of interviews to require of hiring managers. We didn't want to make it too burdensome, but we wanted to be able to lawfully implement those seniority and military preferences. So on your qualified list, if you have three military folks who have military preference points, if you have three of those, we're asking you to interview three. If you have more than three, you have to interview at least three of those. And the same with internal preference points for seniority purposes. we ask that you, if you have three internal preference point candidates, we ask that you interview three of those. So for the most part, in talking to our human resources folks, generally it's rare that we get three military preference points candidates on a list. So for the most part, I don't think this is going to be a burdensome requirement. Then once those required interviews are done, the hiring manager can interview anyone else they want who they believe would be a qualified candidate. and they're not required to hire the military or internal candidate, but they just have to give them an interview. In addition to House Bill 390, and let me say this before I move on, you know, we're really in the initial part of House Bill 390, the implementation of it. We started July 1st and the jobs being under this new category. I think the initial feedback has been really pretty good. We had, I think, folks that waited until the new statute went into effect. I think we had like 20 jobs that folks wanted to post right after that. So I'm looking forward to, I'm hoping this is a beneficial change for the Irving County government. I think the states found it to be a beneficial change with the employee and employer population. One of the, we really didn't stop here in what we've tried to accomplish and with the joinder of human resources and law. One of the things we're working on right now, which we're hoping to launch very soon, is the CHIPS Rewards Program. That's going to provide employee rewards for healthy living. It kind of goes hand-in-hand with our wellness center and our pharmacy, some of the changes we've made there to encourage healthy lifestyles for employees. One of the more important changes, which I really thought was extremely important, was when I came here, I did not have a clear understanding of how human resources was entering into contracts for voluntary benefits and that kind of thing. And so I wanted to make sure that we had a competitive and transparent process for how we entered into these contracts. So we ended up doing an RFP process where we sent out RFPs for voluntary benefits, and we selected a broker, who's Benji Mars from BIM, who you all are aware of, who's worked with us on health insurance matters. They've now gone through the process of sorting through all of these voluntary benefit matters, and I think it's going to provide our employees some sort of value-added benefits that they weren't getting. Like one of the things I know we're going to get out of this is one of the value-added benefits from one of the bidders I know is going to be will preparation and identity theft protection, things like that that we weren't really getting by the old way we were doing our contracts. We've also initiated a compensation study to try and sort of bring LFUCG's compensation system into a more modern way to determine what folks' salaries ought to be. We've gone through, there's been some legal reviews that we've gone through that I don't believe had been done, at least in recent memory, on our cafeteria plan. That's our plan about how we implement pre-tax benefits for employees. There's a lot of IRS regulations that go along with that. We've also reviewed some of our employee benefit options relating to 401K, 457. So those have been important legal reviews to conduct. We've reinstituted the Employee Service Awards Program. This was something that the mayor felt was really important. And we've done it on a divisional level, which I think actually has been very good for morale in the divisions, you know, to have ceremonies for folks who have been here. And we've even had folks come back from retirement to attend some of these. We've now got, with our pharmacy, because some folks have a hard time getting to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions, We've instituted an on-site pharmaceutical delivery from the wellness center, which I think has been helpful for folks who work different hours and can't get out there. One of the things that I really would like to compliment John Maxwell on is he negotiated with the YMCA to keep the same employee rate for calendar year 2013. The Y was going to raise their rates, and he had several meetings with them and basically talked them into keeping those rates flat. We have a lot of folks that use the Y, and that's going to be part of the CHIPS Rewards Program. And so I think that's been a great benefit. HR has reorganized, and we've also coordinated the hiring of several police classes and fire classes and numerous processes at corrections because of the difficulty we have in sort of keeping the corrections hiring at a level that's needed. So with that, I'm happy to take any questions. Council members, questions? Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for your report. A couple things. I wonder, you mentioned initiating the compensation study. Where is that, and how soon will we see the study? We're having to reallocate some staff with NHR to do that. So I would say it's in the initial stages right now. We're going to really ramp up probably in September. But I would think we're on course with that, but it is going to take some time to gather all the data from the divisions on that. And to be honest, I think there's some additional staff that is needed, but we're going to make do with what we have and shift some folks over probably from the training area to help with that. So is your sense that if the council receives that study and wants to make some changes, that it would be possible to do it in the next fiscal year, fiscal year 15? I think so. I think that's the goal. Is that kind of the time frame? Yes. And then I wanted to just put an emphasis and thank you for updating the military preference points. I think that for a long time, I personally think that LFUCG needs to be seen as a military-friendly employer. and we were one of the first employers in town back in, I believe, 2001 to pay the difference in salary when a military member of ours deployed. And we have continued that. And so I think that's a really good thing, and I just want to thank you for seeing that it was time to update that. And then finally, I just wanted to ask you, this is all really good stuff, but I wonder from your perspective if you see any disadvantage to moving HR, which is really the issue that we're addressing today. I think, as you all know, the council has the power to, you all have been here a lot longer than I have and have seen the way government operates in different facets. I think with proper management, HR can be under anyone. There are some things going on right now, and I think not that this couldn't be addressed, but we still have a Department of Justice investigation of our fire department related to minority hiring. So there are some things ongoing that there's involvement with law on. But I think it's within your all's realm to place HR wherever you think is best. And I was asked whether I'd like to have HR when we were doing the reorg a couple of years ago. I did not lobby for it. I will say the people in HR have been great to work with. John Maxwell and Tammy Walters are great people, and I think they're doing a great job. So I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of having them within the department. But, you know, I realize if you all think it's better to put it someplace else, then, you know, that's the way it is. So no disadvantage to moving it. Well, I think, like I said, there's some ongoing things that you need to plan for. you know law is still going to be involved in advising on certain things you know i guess the question is long-term planning wise you know i have some things in my mind that i'd like to to do but that it's not that that couldn't be done under somebody else i think the question is you know everyone that's in government knows hr is a difficult thing and so So I think our CAO has a very full plate. I'm not sure she really is beating the door down to have another division added to her full plate. So I guess in that, I wanted to be sure and say that because she's not here, and I know one of her last comments to me related to, you know, she's trying to hire a CAO and all that. But she has a deputy. So maybe Glenn should talk. Well, good morning. I do feel that it is something that we should say from the CAO's office, and in knowing that you do have that right to move, but we feel that the changes that have been made in our office with just two people, we're dealing with day-to-day operations of government, which a lot of times deals with disciplinary issues. And with dealing with disciplinary issues, I think employees maybe would feel that they wouldn't get the right representation because if we're supervising HR, we basically would take HR's feel for those things. I have been in government before, and I do remember when it was in one of the other places. And as a former director, I felt from my experience that it was not best under the CAO for those reasons that I mentioned, because the CAO deals with day-to-day operations of government, and the employees are 100% a part of that day-to-day operation. C.O. Hamilton and I have discussed, and we don't think it would be in the best interest now because there are so many good things going on in HR that law has been a good supervisor, and we would like to see it continue in the manner that where it is located. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner? And I don't know which closed session this was, but I can remember you standing right over there and saying that you were focused on law and law alone. You said it twice that evening. And I kind of scratched my head about it because the alone part bothered me in the fact that a very critical piece of what we do here flows through human resources. resources. That may have been, the purpose of saying that may have been allied toward what we were talking about more than how you operate on a day-to-day or week-to-week or month-to-month basis. There was something you said just a few minutes ago, though, that of bothered me somewhat, and it implies that human resources won't get support of law in general, law department in general, unless it reports to you. And if that's the case, then the rest of us would need to report to you, too, to get those levels of legal assistance. Tell me, please, no. I think you got it on the tip of your tongue. With respect to comment number one, I don't recall saying that, and I think there was something along the lines, but it was in a different context. But since it was in a closed session, maybe we can talk later about that. That's fine. But on your other point, human resources will get all the support they need from law, whether they're under me or not? I would imagine it would, but what I'm saying is that human resources in the private sector generally reports to the president of the company. It does not report to their, well, they don't have law commissioners, but whoever it might be in their law department that manages that, depending on the size of the corporation. Generally, also, we don't have a CAO in the private sector like we do necessarily in the public sector. But the whole issue is, for instance, on the question of compensation study. We have been crying for a compensation study for at least eight years, and it hasn't happened. And has there been any discussion about going out and getting some help? Because we do that with absolutely everything else we do in government. The first thing we do is push the button to hire somebody to come in at a hefty price. This is something that needs to be done sooner rather than later. And to answer that question, we did an RFP last year and hired a management advisory group, which they are the ones that are going to be helping us with the compensations. You have done that, then? Yes. We've got that. That didn't come through in your earlier comments. Yeah, and I apologize to the extent I didn't stress that. Okay. That's all I needed to say and know. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner, you may not be the one to answer this, but you're probably as good as anyone. Has there been any thought of having HR become its own department with a commissioner? It seems like that, the focus on HR, I mean, it's got to be one of the most important things that we do, obviously. It touches everybody. And I just wonder if there's been any thought to that. That's a very interesting question. As far as I'm aware, there would be nothing in the charter that would prevent that. You could do like planning did and create a commissioner-level position, you know, just like anything else. I think, you know, I think the question would then be on the organizational chart, would you have it over on the side or would you have it, you know, it's the reporting thing. But there would be nothing that would prohibit that. Just curious because it seems like it's an awfully important department. And I'm still a little, not confused, but I don't quite understand why it's in law. There's nothing wrong with that, but it seems a little strange to me. But I'm not sure that, I guess that's the reason I question, where does it really belong? It may be its own entity. Well, that's a very interesting point because really if you look at human resources, it touches every single branch of government really. So I think in the past, and I'm not saying anything before has been a perfect fit or anything. I mean, it's been under finance. I don't know why it was put there. You know, I think the rationale for it being under law, at least there's a rational basis with all the state and federal laws related to human resources. But, you know, with the CAO's office, if you put it under there, the way our grievance process works, you know, it begins with beginning manager, intermediate, and then goes up to the CAO. Right. So I think with putting it under there, you're kind of putting it on the end section of the process. So I don't know that there's a perfect place. I think you bring up a good point. Well, it's just something I think we ought to think about. Thank you very much. Thank you. I see no other council members signed up. I have a question. Actually, it's for the link. As I understand it, this was a recommendation that came forward from the link. Does anybody want to speak to what the thinking was there and why the topic has been placed into the committee? Just because it doesn't, like so far I haven't heard any kind of compelling arguments that we ought to make this move. But anybody from the link want to comment on that? Was that your? No, it was General. It was our link, Councilmember. And I think Councilmember Massadi, who isn't here, may have been interested in it. But, I mean, the thinking was that maybe there's a better place for it, and what's the rationale for it being in law? Okay. Okay. Well, I guess unless somebody has a motion to make, or unless someone feels that this is a topic that merits further consideration, we can consider that we have had the discussion we need to have. Vice Mayor? I'm intrigued by Councilmember Clark's idea. And we were kind of having a little sidebar over here about all the different companies that have their own HR department. And we are probably the second highest employer in Fayette County with about, what, 3,000, Mr. Maxwell, 3,000 employees. and perhaps we should at least do some maybe due diligence and exploration to see what it would mean to have our own HR department. So I would recommend keeping the issue of HR in committee and just maybe help us figure out what it would take to do that and would there be a benefit. Okay, I have a motion. A second. Discussion on the motion? The motion is to keep it in committee and to basically explore the further, the likely, if there is a better place, or what the pros and cons are of moving or not. Discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. So we'll keep it in committee. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm sorry. We've got it. Before you go, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Like I said earlier, the issue we were looking at today was where we move HR. But since you brought up some issues that you guys were looking at, In order to get into the employee benefits program in terms of the wellness program and those things, does the employee and their family have to be enrolled in LFECG's health care plan? That's my understanding. Yes. Yes. Okay. Is there a reason for that? Is it a legal reason? or a... The reason I ask the question is because it seems to me that if we have a situation where a person may be working for a refugee but have a spouse or somebody else working someplace else so they have their insurance in another place, you know, the same claims that the wellness piece will help with reduced medical costs, it also works with reduced time off and increases productivity by employees. So it seemed to me that it would be an advantage to our taxpayers if we had someone involved in that program and they took advantage of that and became more well, and even their family members, because if the kids are less sick and there's less time off work, there's all kinds of advantages, it would seem, that would be appropriate. But if there's some type of a reason why, legally or otherwise, that we couldn't understand. I think it has more to do, but do you want to address that, John? Council Member Myers, to my knowledge, there's no legal reason. I think the way that it was set up and the structure that was formulated was based upon reducing our health care costs and keeping those under control. So those who were on the health care, they wanted to, at the time, bring in the CHIP's rewards. certainly there is some kind of benefit to those who aren't on our health care in terms of perhaps reduced absenteeism and other kind of more intangibles. But I think the thought process was to do the expenditure on the CHIPS rewards for those who are on our health care where we can see some payback, if you want to call it that, in terms of lowering our health care costs. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I believe nobody else has signed up, so again, thank you very much. The next item on our agenda is the procedure for underwriting or sponsoring one of our facilities. I believe Mr. Reed is going to present or at least kick it off. I'm going to introduce the presenter. Two months ago, we came for you with an outline of the plan that we had involving the naming rights. A number of issues were raised and suggestions were made to improve our product. Roger, who made the initial presentation, is going to come back and give you an update on where we are and what we've incorporated into our plan with more suggestions of members of the Council. So I'll let Roger Damon come up and make his presentation, and we'll be happy to answer any questions. Great. Thank you. Welcome, Roger. Thank you. I want to start out just by addressing a few of the changes that we made to the document based on your comments. Then I'll go through the presentation and get into a little more detail. One of the things that was addressed to us was a concern to have a little bit more of a vision and also some more detail of what people could specifically give to. So we increased the language regarding catalogs to address that, and I'll get into that a little bit more here in a minute. We also addressed the concern that the $1,000 limit was too high for a letter, so we brought that down to $500. We addressed some concerns regarding partner organizations to include language that would include in-kind and volunteer donations. We also increased the $200,000 for donated land to $500,000 and increased the percentages to 66% from 51%. We also put in some language regarding allowing council to give 10-year naming rights contracts rather for, let's say, corporate donations to address some of those concerns that were brought up. So to review this one more time, what we have it broken down into is donation guidelines, which are overall guidelines for donations, and then a naming policy for anything that would be over $50,000. The giving level standards, the changes that we made to that were, like I just mentioned, We changed the $1,000 to $500 for the letter of recognition. We also put in a little additional language that would explain to anyone giving that anything below the amount that they're at could also be included for recognition. The catalog language, we added quite a bit to this. we feel like this would really help overall in just an adjustment or a change to a different way of doing things, which we've seen in a lot of cities and has been very successful. The catalog could be put online, and it would just raise awareness for different needs, both small needs and even some larger needs for parks. It could have a price list and then description of the items, and it can be broken down by park or it can be done more general. There's lots of different ways to do it. I'll show you a couple examples here in a minute. It would really showcase what parks needed for funding and maybe even some larger projects, which was another concern that was brought up is we want to be able to show some things, a vision for our parks and what people could give to. So here's an example of a broken down by a park where they're actually showing different items and the price for the item for that particular park. I thought this was interesting because someone in a particular part of your community might really be interested in just giving towards their area and really wanting to help out with their particular park. You could still have general items, community items within a catalog like this, but you can break it down for some of the, especially the smaller items specific to a park. Here's another example. This is from Elkhorn, Wisconsin. They also have smaller items within their catalog, but then they have items like this. They have master plans. They have several of these. This is just one example. And they put in pretty much all of these master plans that they can be phased. So it's not just saying, you know, we need 1.1 million upfront to do this plan. It could be done in portions so people could give towards that plan. And it seemed to be an interesting concept that we could include within catalogs. even if we didn't do it right away we could certainly do it in the future and that's some of the language that we put within the document for partnership organizations and adoption programs we just we address some concerns regarding in-kind donations to make sure that the that the language within our document would would recognize in-kind donations and donations over time so we changed some language there just to address that concern. The amount within the naming rights for donated land, as I mentioned early on, we changed it from $200,000 to $500,000 based upon some comments that we received. It felt like the other amount was too small. and we also changed the percentage from 51% to 66% for both land and for features. Some other things that we changed were, as I mentioned early on, the 10-year naming contract, mostly to address concerns that for some corporate naming, council may wish to have 10-year contracts that could then be updated or could be changed to another 10-year contract rather than everything being for the entire life of the naming park or facility. We also updated some of the language to also include the annual and in-kind donations in general and then also for the nonprofits and partner organizations. And then we reemphasize that renaming a park, facility, or feature would be discouraged. This is just reviewing again. We really didn't do much change to this language with the exception of, and I believe it was handed out to you, one little change that I added today that I think you received an additional page, is that the last line there, the mayor's office will present a recommendation rather than we had language that said May, and that was a concern that was brought up last time, so we changed that language. But this just shows you the procedure within the naming rights. And then if you have any questions, I'd be happy to ask them. Thank you. We do have a few people. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. A couple of questions. I guess on your page three, you talk about a scale for up to 500, 501 to 2500 and such What does off-site recognition mean? Can I put up a sign in my backyard and that would be off-site? Off-site recognition would include things like us putting recognition on our website, any other newsletters, anything that would not be on the actual site of the park or the facility that would be named. Discussion about how long and duration that would last? There is, we don't have anything specific as to duration, but I think at one point in one draft we did have, you know, six months to 12 months, that type of language, and we took that out just to have it based upon whatever the agreement might be. and then a definition i think is needed for the 2501 to 5000 it says temporary sign but that could be like up today and down tomorrow is there a time frame involved in what that might be what i found in most cities is that temporary signs would be during the construction of the project so the temporary sign would be up for that time. Whatever it is. Yeah. And the last question is, not being, or at least knowing anything about Wenatchee, Washington, or wherever Babe Mann Park is, did you contact Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, Indianapolis, Nashville, Knoxville, anything, cities of our size or larger, to get some input as to how they handle this? We did, and we're still receiving some input back from Louisville. We have something out to Louisville and a couple of the other cities as well. We got some information back from them as to what they've done, but we're still looking for a little more information. We can report back to you when we have more of that. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Scotchfield. Thank you, Chair. Bare bones of this is great. I've been involved with fundraising for my children's elementary school where we had recognition walls with little plaques that were put on. I mean, I think the group in the last seven years that I've been involved with the school has raised over $150,000 for improvements on the land. So whether it's putting bricks in one area that recognizes individual donors, I think this is a great way to move forward with it. Do we have someone in the Parks Department or, I guess, NLF-UCG in general that does fund development? Yeah, we do. Rudy is doing that right now for us, as far as I understand, and along with Jerry helps with that at times too. So it's not somebody that's primarily that is their position? Right. Okay. And I'm assuming they also together look at grants? Yes. Within that? As far as I understand. I guess one of the things that I see, I mean, I come from a nonprofit background, and I think there's several other people here that can go along with this, fund development bringing in dollars from donors is a full-time job. I mean, most nonprofits have somebody that primarily does this. Is this something we've looked at, not just for the Parks Department, but we're developing this plan, but if we don't execute this plan correctly, we're not going to be able to bring in the dollars? I agree. And my perspective has been, since I've gotten involved, has been focused on the parks. But you are absolutely correct. And what's lacking here and what we need to do is develop closer ties with the community and with private investors. And I think where cities are most successful, and I've started having our folks look at cities, is when that public-private partnership is robust. I've initially discussed this with some folks who are interested in parks and also private folks with hopefully deep pockets in an attempt to start developing that kind of foundation. Jerry Hancock has pointed this out as a great need and something we need to have to plug in the philanthropic community. And I'm going to attempt to move us toward it. We have a lot of inertia here, and it hadn't occurred. Rudy Cruz does an excellent job within, but what we basically have is an effort just based on history in contact with a few entities, and we're bringing in maybe 200,000, 250,000 a year. It fluctuates, but we've got to think bigger. We have to have something that they can work with, and they have to be involved, the private entities, in the development of a plan that they can buy into and work with. But hopefully, we can start moving in that direction, and that's what I intend to do because I think we can do much better. And I guess I would push you to try to have no budgets, hiring a new person, that type of thing, but I think it would not be a bad thing for us to look at in the future having somebody as a fund development, as their primary job is to go in and bring those dollars in the door. If we're going to have something that's structured like this, I mean, you have 15 people that are doing it. It gets watered down. If you have one person that is intent on bringing in the donations, I think that changes things. That's a good point. We'll look at it. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I want to say thank you to Mr. Damon. You did an excellent job of listening and collaborating and working with us and making some really cool changes to this. A couple questions I have, quick questions, are when you look at the cataloging, will our catalog be park-specific so that, in an example here in Wanatachi or whatever it is, Washington, my question would be if you have, say, a walking trail, in one park it might be more expensive than it's going to be in another park simply because of the length of it. So when we do our catalog, can we do it park-specific so that items in that park have a price associated with them as opposed to just a blanket price? Right. We certainly could do a catalog like this that would be park-specific. But like I said, we could also add in items that may not be as well. So you could have these items that are specific to the parks, but then if you had an overall community project, you could also have that. It would just be identified as such. Sure. If we can go back to the off-site recognition, and this might be more a question for the commission, I'm not sure, but I'd like to see this fleshed out a little bit more because one of the concerns I have is, and I brought this up in a previous meeting, I did a council report a few months ago, and we were transitioning between interviews with three different people. And when they sent us the draft of the council report, it turned out that a company who has done some things with parks was put in there as an advertisement as a transition between my segments and my council report. And I, for the life of me, can't understand how in the world that could happen or why we would do something like that. But at any rate, GTV3 said that they were told to put that in as many times as possible. And so when we start talking about off-site recognition, if this is the kind of stuff that we stick in there, I think we need to really look at that really closely. And I think the council needs to understand what is exactly off-site recognition and how those things are established because the amount of money that that company gave us and to have an ad put in, council reports that run, an item on GTV3 is just amazing to me. And so I really want to get a handle on what it is we're doing so that we know and that we make sure that people are being actively compensated for what they contribute. I think that the catalogs actually could help with that as well because one of the things that we put in the new language in the draft was that we're recommending that you could actually identify packages that would explain exactly what was included in that package. You could identify what something would be worth, a banner, or different types of promotional opportunities. And obviously, council would be involved in that discussion and development of those catalogs that would bring more explanation to how we would do that. So when we get done with this policy, is there an opportunity to codify this in a way that any changes would have to come through and be added to or modified to this? And I want to get to some of the questions that one of the other council members, that Sketchfield talked about also. But I guess I'm trying to figure out how we sort of professionalize how we come up with these packages and who comes up with them and how transparent that whole process is. Obviously, we want a transparent process. I'm not going to argue otherwise. And your point is a legitimate one, that we have to have consistency in what we apply and who we give what benefit to. In fairness, the doors haven't been knocked down for advertising on GTV. One thing we have to do is determine what the worth is of time on GTV. I've talked to some retired folks in the advertising business. I want to bring them in to help work and develop. You have to figure out what you've got and what it's worth, as well as what the policy is in dealing. I do think there's a legitimate point that we have to have some flexibility when certain events come up and things like that for our people to be able to negotiate on time because a lot of things are time sensitive. If something will come up with a certain event, you want to get somebody to give something. But, yes, it needs to come back. And, yes, you should be involved. And, yes, you should have final approval of whatever policy changes or whatever goes on in this plan. I think we've done that to this point, and we intend to keep doing it. Yeah, and I didn't mean to offend you when I talked about the transparency piece. It takes a lot more than that anymore to offend me. And I don't think anybody would have ever known that was going on until we always ask for a draft of our report before it goes out on air. But no one told us that they would be putting an ad for any company in the middle of our GTV3 report. And so because when we talk about what it looks like in terms of who's endorsing what, it looks like I'm endorsing this company in the middle of my report. The report that you're raising, I have already – GTV is a direct report to our office. And we're starting to find that there are a lot of things that we need to look at. And in addition to what they're doing in general services with this project, we want to work along with general services to make this work. So what I'm trying to say is that shouldn't happen again because if they're going to be the owner of the advertising, then we want to run everything through them. So we do know that there are some bugs to be worked out with GTV and the advertising as a whole. Okay. Thank you. And I think my time's up, so I'll skip and come back. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, I had the recent pleasure to serve on a committee for a hospital that was setting the value of naming rights for things like the main entrance, the main reception area, operating rooms, recovery rooms, rehabilitation rooms, et cetera. And they utilized a group of business people. There was about 20 people on the committee, and they provided all the information. These rooms are available, et cetera. I think that a process like that would be very valuable to have an inventory of all of the things that we could sponsor, whether it's a dog run or a pond or a golf course or whatever, and bring it before a committee of just average business people out there and ask them to help set the values for that. The other thought that I had was that then we could have, number one, an inventory of all the products that are available, and then secondly we could come up with some type of a budget, like how much would this be worth if we were able to sell out a certain percentage of it. Another possibility would be to engage an outside marketing service to actually sell this for the government on a commission basis. So then you get somebody that's an expert, knows how to talk the lingo, go out and make the calls, and then they would get a commission or something. I think the council needs to be involved initially in approving whatever the master plan is. And have you actually estimated the value of what all the naming rights and opportunities might be for marketing? Do you have a ballpark number of what all it's worth? You mean as far as naming rights? Yeah, for everything we've got. Have you done an inventory? Have you made any estimates or anything? Because I think that would be very helpful to see what the potential might be for revenue for the Parks Department. That was just a couple of thoughts. I mean, I think this is a great idea. I think there's a lot of potential. And I think maybe the values on this would be greater than you might anticipate because many corporations want to have community involvement and be involved in athletic activities for health and wellness. So there could be a great opportunity. Thank you for your work on that. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. I want to commend you all also. I think this is excellent revisions, and the progress that you all are making is really great. And I love the catalog example that you provided. I think just recently I had a neighborhood association meeting, and they were asking for new benches and new trash cans. And I think it helps not only for donors but for our citizens as well to understand how much all of those things cost and that it's not simply going to Walmart and buying a picnic table, but that those cost lots of money. And I think that that allows also for the partnerships between neighborhoods in the government if they do see that, oh, well, we could afford $300 for a tree, or we could afford, and so we could build in those partnerships in addition to the private partnerships too. And to echo Councilmember Sketchfield and Councilmember Lane, I think that it's very important that we make sure that the person, that we have someone on staff who is knowledgeable in fundraising and development. It's not simply calling up someone that you've had a relationship with or that you know in the community. That's great on one end, but they're credentialed people. It's an expertise. It's a skill set. There's associations and professional fundraisers. And so I think that we need to make sure we should encourage the Parks Department to consider either credentialing someone or hiring someone with this kind of expertise if we really want to maximize the income and revenue potentials. Maybe consulting is an opportunity or a possibility as well. But I love the catalog idea. I like even the information of the history of the park and the master plans. As you mentioned, I serve on the Masters and Station Park Advisory Board, and so I know that that master plan is always up for discussion. And so I think it's all great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Roger, thank you so much. I wanted to ask, and this might be a Commissioner Reid question, I don't know. I think you've done a really good job in reworking this plan. And I'm also interested in knowing about whether you've looked at then the other side of this, which is what is done with the money. And say there's more money than if it's simply a naming right, then what does any extra money do? Does it just go into a big pot? And I'm not asking today for the answer to that. But one of the things that we found at the Arboretum when I served on their advisory board was that with naming situations like this, there usually was not enough money for maintenance. And so if the item that's named needs maintenance, the amount of money needs to cover the maintenance also. Have you looked at those kinds of things yet? I have not, and I think it's a legitimate point. to focus more on how to come up and get money that matters. I think that's definitely something that we can look into and incorporate. I think we should. Maybe next step. To be honest, I hadn't thought of it. It's actually a next step. I mean, I didn't expect it with this information. I think this is really a good plan, but I think we need to definitely think about it because if we have an item that we have naming money for it but then don't have money to maintain it, it's just valuable to think about whether the money is enough to do that so that we're not taking on all the additional cost while we get the money in just to name something. if that makes sense. It does. So that will be one of the next steps, I'm sure. Thank you. Thanks a lot for your work on this. Thank you. Councilman Miss Gushfield. Thank you, Chair. I just have kind of a follow-up question. Do we currently in the Parks Department have a full-time grant writer? Not to my knowledge. We have people that do grants and have done a lot of grants, been recently working with Councilman Myers, spend a lot of time but not exclusively grant writing. Do we keep track of all those grants that are applied for and received in one place? Yes. Okay. Is that something that can be shared with us so we can kind of see what we've been doing? Yes, and they all flow through Irene's shop as well, and that's the central for all local government. Yes. That's all? Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. On the page that says highlighted changes, naming rights, the last bullet says renaming of a park, facility, or feature will be discouraged. Can you talk to us a bit about that? Yes, we just wanted to, that was one of the concerns that was brought up last time, and we just wanted to address that one more time, that we put even another line, additional language, just to ensure that we would discourage renaming, which is common throughout, I've looked at probably 20 or 25 different policies around the country, and that's common to state that you discourage renaming, but in certain circumstances, if it goes through the process and council wishes to do it, it would still allow renaming, but you just don't want to have regular renaming of something that everyone has known as this park for 30, 40 years. Okay. The final question I have is, and this might go more for Commissioner, When you go back and look at the plan, the example that they have from the city of Elkhorn, where they did the master plans and then they had things that were staged or phased, it seems to me that one of the questions that I have about our parks department is, are they charged with sort of managing land or visioning and managing the quality of life aspect that parks can bring to a community? And in that regard, my question would be, when we look at our master plan, and I know we just redid the master plan, I always thought our master plan would include looking at all the individual parks and what we would do with each one of those. And I'm not sure if that's what the city of Elkhorn did here, but this example we have in front of us, they did it at least at that one park. And it seems to me that if we want to look at this policy and we take Council Member Lane's recommendation and looking at maybe someone actually marketing our city and what we can get from that, then we should also go back to our master plan and look at the fund development and bringing in expertise in that area, but also master planning each one of our parks. And as we take on new land from developers in the acquisition program, one of the concerns we always have is we keep taking land in. We don't have anything to do with it. We don't have any money to develop it. But it seems if we looked at every one of our parks and did the process of master planning them, then as we move forward with this plan, we actually have something that we can sell to people and bring the money in to do the things that we'd like to have done. I don't know enough to completely go where you're discussing. In my discussions with people who are interested in fundraising, and if we move which I want to move toward a more serious effort there is a desire to be involved in the master plan and what's contained in the master plan and I repetitively hear we have to know what we're giving to and what's available, what the long term vision is not only for the parks as a whole, but in individual locations. Now, is that pools as a whole, or is it a pool at a specific park? I don't know, but we do have to get more detail into a master plan if our goal is to increase the amount of private donations into the system. And that's certainly not an indictment of the master plan as it exists now, But as we grow and as we move into partnerships with private entities, we need that because they want front-end involvement in developing those things, so they're more inclined to give on the back end. Real quickly, if I can say, the two examples in my district, when I first got on the council, I found out there was actually a Parkmaster plan for Gainesway Park, but Parks had never adopted it. Don Ball through LexLink had paid $2,500 to put the process together. The media came. They did the public meetings. the public said what they wanted in that park and it was all drafted. The construction documents were all put together and everything. But parks never incorporated that into the 10-year master plan. And so when I came on council, I talked to Maddie Morton and she had that and she gave me an electronic version of it. And that's how we got that million-dollar park building over there, is we had that plan and when someone from the state called and said, we want to do some things, we're looking for projects, I had that and was able to email that to them, and we got $750,000 out of that. And so moving over to Buckhorn or to Berry Hill Park and trying to put the skate park there, we're looking at opportunities to bring funding to do the whole park. And so now we've come up with, and parks have done an excellent job of a park master plan for that park now. And so now we have more to sell than just a skate park, the walking trail and gazebos and basketball courts, tennis courts, moving the playground, all kinds of things. So that opportunity is there if we do that front-end work for council members in to take their parks out and sell them. And then also, like Councilman Lane said, have somebody actually out there doing that for the city. So I'd encourage you to do that because I think it puts a stress on parks when, like I went to them and said, can you do one for this specific park because of what we have going on? but it kind of throws a wrench in the fan. And I think that's right, and I think we should. At the same time, we have to also maintain a degree of flexibility considering the financial situation the city's in at a particular time or if a particular concern of a councilman and a project comes up that maybe wasn't contained in an overall master plan and we want to go. We need the master plan as a general guide, a major guide, something that gets people involved. but we don't want to get ourselves strapped into it's not in the master plan. Oh, yeah, yeah. Obviously the plan can change, but if you don't have a plan, nothing's going to happen. You're right. My time is up. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Council Member Clark. Commissioner Reid, let me ask you two questions. In our government, are there other examples where we're raising money? Yes. I know there are. I'm trying to think of specifics. You know, the mayor is involved in a lot of fundraising efforts on a variety of projects. I'm just thinking of a scale something like this. If we're talking about having someone dedicated to do this, if there are other efforts that could be combined with this. I'd have to look at that. I can't think of anything. As far as grants, grants go throughout government. as far as these kind of private philanthropic type of endeavors. Good. The other question is, and Roger might answer this as well, in thinking of donations of some kind, we're talking primarily about things. We're buying things or making things or whatever. Have you thought about the possibility of donations for events? Yes. like activity days, races, arts fairs, concerts, those kinds of things. Yes, and that's one of the things that we wanted to address within the catalog, was to identify different types of opportunities that people would have to donate towards. When I said packages earlier, it could be something like an event or a package of different things that someone could donate for. So that would more likely be addressed in a document that would be put together that would be within those catalogs. Or a series of events. Correct. Okay. I just wanted to be sure we hadn't forgotten that. I think it's something that we could include. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I see no other council members signed up. I do have a comment or two. I guess first, one of my kind of pet notions, and I'm glad somebody else has already mentioned it, and that's the question of maintenance. This has been an issue not only within parks, but parks has had this issue over the years where we take on some kind of responsibility, start something, buy a piece of land, whatever, and then don't have the funds to maintain it. So I think the question of maintenance for any investment, we need to take much more seriously than we have. Secondly, a number of people have spoken to the question of whether it would be useful to have someone in government dedicated to grant writing, development, and so on. I support that notion. I think it's an investment that we should have made before. Many other governmental entities make that investment, and they reap the rewards. We sometimes find ourselves in the position of discovering that there was money available for whatever, and nine other cities have got it, and we're not in the mix. So I think there is some thinking to be done along those lines. I think parks could be the primary benefit, but that more generally it would be useful across government. And then finally, I think my question, and this is really for the council, for the committee, is having had this discussion, and I'm going to have to kind of, I don't remember exactly whether the procedure is that you were looking for approval of the present policy as now redrafted, or does Council need to sign off on this? Help me understand what the next step is. Because what I'm hearing is that what you've redrafted seems to me with general approval from this committee. What's the appropriate next step? We were just looking for any additional comments on this draft to make sure that we had addressed all of the concerns that you had so we can take some of these additional comments and questions and rework this draft to bring it back to you. That was my understanding. Is that correct? Do we need to cancel it? That's a good question as far as if we need council approval. My understanding was that this could become a CAO policy, which in that case we would not need council approval, but that's probably a decision that would need to be made. Okay. So you don't need formal counsel approval, but clearly what I've heard, the question raised and the answers being nonetheless, you would like to make sure that maybe through this committee the counsel is aware of what the final policy looks like, and if there are any proposed major changes, you'd want to come back and have us review that. Is that fair to say? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So we'll leave it on the agenda. We'll get one more crack at it. I think this has been a productive conversation. Thank you for the work you've done. Oh, let's see, one other council member. I'm sorry. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just one bit of advice I may offer, if it's helpful to the committee and to the administration, I'll perhaps ask Jerry's leadership in sharing this with the Parks Advisory Board. I know I serve there, and Vice Mayor Gordon serves on the Parks Advisory Board to allow our citizen members who engage the parks in that role to take a look at it as well and see if they may be able to help this committee and the administration in any tweaks possible. But I think this is a good first step, just a suggestion. I do want to mention we will do that. Jerry has been involved in the process, has reviewed this, and we are definitely keeping him, and in turn he keeps his folks involved. One of his biggest concerns, and I think he shares an awful lot of the views expressed here, is how we need to move forward to tap more private funding, but for their ability to retain flexibility in certain situations while still being accountable and that we are consistent at what we apply. But, yes, we will see that that Citizens Council is plugged into the process. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. If it's not a burden to the committee, I think it may be a good additional step. Thanks, sir. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Just one quick question. Roger, will this come back to us next time as an actual draft form of the policy instead of a PowerPoint? Can we get it? Like, I think that that was one of the original drafts was written that way. because I think that you had details in previous drafts that weren't included today, and some of it, like what Council Member Beard was asking, the longevity of off-site posting and how long for temporary signs and some of those more specific details in an actual policy format. Was the draft, I was under the understanding that the draft was included in the packet or included. It is the last part of the packet. Oh, sorry. So we'll give that back again. And perhaps when it comes back on the agenda, a strikeout or a version that maybe we could work off the draft itself. I don't know how many. Well, does that make sense to the committee so that we want changes? Yeah, instead of getting an overall view PowerPoint, we get a track changes version of the draft and a clean version. We can do that. Okay. One last suggestion or thought that I kind of forgot earlier. I personally would be happy to go out with Jerry or with Rudy or with anyone from parks that is trying to solicit investors or private investment for parks in my district specifically. But I think that other council members would be willing and open for that also. And so I think that's another opportunity and great partnership and resource that we should use in our own neighborhoods and with our resources also. So I hope that I can get some shelters built in Master Sensation, for instance, and I'm glad to and would be happy to help with that. Thank you. Thank you. I believe that is all the questions and comments. So, again, thank you for the presentation. We'll keep you on the agenda. Thank you. Thank you. I believe that brings us to close to the end of the meeting. Items in committee, I believe that the first three will stay on the agenda. The third one, moving human resources, I don't expect to have actively on the agenda for next month, but leave it on our list and bring it back as appropriate, if that makes sense to everybody. The last item, Council Member Akers. I believe this came up during budget discussions or maybe a previous general government committee meeting. And I just wanted more information from the Parks Department about our usage agreements with LISA, for instance, or with various baseball leagues or football leagues and sort of how those came about, how long are those contracts, can we get out of them, and sort of some of those details. So if I maybe have that on the agenda for a report from Parks. I'm sorry, put it on the next month's agenda? If that's not too much trouble, I mean, if they need more time, then I'm happy to delay it. So at the very least, let's say tentatively it'll be on, and we'll check. We'll have staff talk with them and see if that's appropriate. Thank you. Okay, anything else on the items referred? Seeing none, anything else before we adjourn? Not a motion to adjourn? Second. A motion to second. I'll just say aye. Aye. All opposed? We are adjourned.