Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We're right up to time. This is the September 10th meeting of the General Government Committee. I'll call it to order. The first item on the agenda is the approval of the summary. Do I have a motion? I have a motion. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. All opposed? That motion carries. The next item is the relationship with the Bluegrass ad, and David Ducklinger is here to kick off our conversation. Thank you for coming this morning, and welcome. Thanks for having me today. I appreciate it. Before I get started, I'd like to recognize a few people that are with me today. We've got Judge Executive John Wilson from Garrett County. He's our secretary on our board. And we also have Jennifer Compton, who's the Associate Director for Workforce, and our Director of Economic Development and Industrial Recruitment, Craig McAnally. I send regrets from our chair at Winnebaker. She's actually at a function in Lawrenceburg opening up the new visitor center for the Wild Turkey Distillery, which she's there with the governor today. And then both Judge Branham from Clark County, who's our vice chair, he actually had some family medical issues to attend to. And Mayor Russ Meyer from Nicholasville has texted me and said that he's on his way, so hopefully he'll be able to join us in a few minutes. Next slide. So the structure of the Bluegrass ad, let me just briefly talk a little bit about that. We basically have five departments through which we operate. We have the Department for Community and Economic Development, our Aging Department, Workforce, our GIS IT Department, and then an Admin and Finance Department. And that's how we deliver most of our services, which include economic development, human resource, planning, public administration, grant writing, workforce training, marketing, IT, GIS, and GPS support. There are several different definitions for what the Bluegrass Area Development District is. The Kentucky Attorney General has stated his opinion that we're a political subdivision and a unit of local government. Kentucky House Bill 1, which was passed during the last General Assembly, titles us as a special purpose governmental entity. But per the IRS code, we are actually a corporation organized under an act of Congress. And so therefore we date way back to the 1960s. And I would also just point out briefly that we're one of 15 area development districts within the state of Kentucky. We're one of 530 area development districts, although they have various names throughout the country. So every state has entities similar in function and an organization to the Bluegrass Area Development District. So our board structure, we have a very large board which governs what we do. It meets quarterly. The membership of the board is stated in the PowerPoint presentation. and they are really the function of just gathering all these local officials together as an opportunity for collaboration, which I'm going to talk a little bit about in a moment. But what really runs the organization is the executive committee. And the executive committee is a sub-entity elected out of the full board and they meet on a monthly basis. They basically have full power of the board to carry out all policies, direct the activities of the executive director. There's one member per each county. The rules that govern it basically are that there's nine elected members and there's eight citizen members. The chair of the board appoints each one of the members of the executive committee, and each of the officers of the board serve on the executive committee. Briefly, an elevator speech about what the ads do, because I've spent a lot of time thinking about what we are, who we are, and how we can represent ourselves. In general, people like decentralized governments. Decentralized governments are responsive, they provide a sense of local control and autonomy, and they meet the general definition of democracy through direct representation. But how do we connect the various forms of local governments to ensure an equal distribution of public goods and services in a manner that strives to reach the ultimate, or in economics terms, the Pareto efficiency? The answer is by convening a collaboration consisting of both business and political leaders with a common goal of creating a strong regional economy. The Bluegrass Area Development District is the Tertius Youngins, and it's a Latin phrase which means the third who joins. We're the weaver who knits together the political, the business, and the special interest group leaders to create a common plan and a vision for the region. And we do this through planning, projects, and programs that we execute. Some of the partnerships that we currently have can be expressed through the departments that I mentioned earlier. The first is the Area Agency on Aging and Independent Living. I think we have a very strong relationship with LFUCG through this department, and we've done a lot of good things together. We participate in the Title IIIB funding for the senior centers, which provides meals, transportation, and wellness programs at the senior center. We also support the home care program to frail and elderly people in Fayette County, helping them stay out of nursing homes. The services that are provided there include respite, personal care, and homemaking, and we serve about 150 people per year. The Bluegrass Ad also serves on the Mayor's Commission for Aging. Mary Schmidt, one of our senior staff members at the Ad, is also a citizen of Fayette County, and she serves on that as well as on the subcommittee for building the new senior center, and she also serves as a community stakeholder for the accreditation team, which has been looking at the senior programs for Lexington. We run several workshops, which Lexington participates in heavily, everything from the home worker registry through the aging consortium meetings, challenges for the aging conference, the Next Best Years, which is a program designated for elderly people, and the I Know Expo, which is for caregivers who participate in providing these services. The Bluegrass Ad also has a strong relationship with LFUCG and the GIS department. And I think this is one that I want to just mention briefly that was developed through a personal relationship that I had with Charlie Martin prior to coming to the Bluegrass Area Development District. Charlie Martin and I go all the way back to the 1990s when I worked in consulting engineering, and through that relationship and through his participation at the Area Water Management Council at the ADS, he recognized our capability and ability to help and support him in complying with the consent decree program that Lexington is working on. Under that program, Lexington was required to provide accurate maps of all of the stormwater and wastewater facilities within the county. And it's a monumental undertaking that requires somebody to actually physically visit and GPS each known point and also unknown points when you have to go out and uncover things that are hidden by bushes or shrubs or roads to find each manhole, storm outlet, culvert that exists within the city. And we have provided that service since 2009 under a contract with LFUCG. The cost savings is roughly about $1.3 million to the city because we do it at such a reduced price than what it would have cost if we had to bid this out through an engineering firm. And this is a win-win situation. It's not just good economic sense for LFUCG. It's good for us, too, because it provides us an opportunity to deliver a service which is right in the backyard of our location at 699 Perimeter Drive. So this has been a very positive outcome through a relationship between myself and Charlie Martin with LFUCG. The other area we've had successful partnerships include the Workforce Investment Program. We just recently, this past Friday, completed the Workforce Summit for 2013 at the Embassy Suites. And this was a consortium of companies that came, and they were the ones that provided the agenda. Once they provided the agenda, then we staffed it and brought in the resources to talk about the issues that businesses wanted to know about. We've also had several different job fairs that we've hosted and helped in times of need when there's an industry that has said, hey, we've got a layoff that's happening or we have a particular skill set that we need to have trained to be recruited so that we can hire them. Those are listed up there. The other things that we've been involved in are helping others prepare for employment, which was a program through Toyota where they were seeking to change the demographic profile of the workers that they have. So we came in and working through minority churches, we were able to recruit minorities that could go work at Toyota. The second to the last one is the helping individuals return to employment. And this was an internship that was heavy in the medical fields. It became primarily for the University of Kentucky and Eastern State where we would provide for employment opportunities for people to be trained with stimulus funds and then hopefully they continued on to work there after their initial internship at the hospital. The last one is the Medical Career Science Institute Healthcare Consortium. And this is a program where we go into the middle schools and we identify students to go to a week-long non-residential camp through Spencerian College. In the morning portion of this camp, they study academics through traditional classroom functions, studying algebra, blackboard-type classes. In the afternoon, they get hands-on laboratories where I think they even were involved in things like dissecting an eyeball or working in medical things, which provided them hands-on training, and got them stimulated and excited about going into a medical career. A couple more slides on the workforce investment. One of the things that has been pointed out, and I know that Daryl Smith has been before the LFUCG Committee on Human Services and talked a little bit about workforce investment and what their business model is. It is a business model that is market-driven, and that market is developed through analysis that takes place on an annual basis to determine what fields does Lexington, does the region need to focus on. In 2009, the Bluegrass Area Development District performed a cluster study analysis to identify what areas of the market are we strongest in, And they did this by looking at location quotients, which would determine areas that we have comparative advantages over other areas in the country. In areas where the location quotient was greater than one, that meant that we had resources, we had location, we had people, we had training, education, which made us strong in that sector. And therefore, we employed more than our fair share of the nation's employable people in that market segment. The four areas that were identified are advanced manufacturing, information technology, health care, and transportation. But they don't stay focused on these areas necessarily every year. It can change from time to time depending on what the analysis or what the economic models are showing. The workforce investment in 2011 worked with the University of Louisville to take a look at the whole state to identify each of the ten regions to say what is each region of the state going to look at and focus their programs on. In 2012, just recently completed, an economic model was done through a software program called EMSI in a partnership with Dr. Allison Davis at the University of Kentucky to identify the profiles or the areas where we should be training our workforce to be employed in the future. This slide basically is all about supply and demand. It's not just training workers or giving them employment skills, but it's giving them the right set of skills, which is being demanded by the market segment. So the market determines or says, these are the skills. This is based on our location quotient, based on our comparative advantages that we have. These are the areas that we're going to focus on in central Kentucky. Then we train and pull them through a pipeline so that they receive the skills, knowledges, and resources necessary to give the talent to the workforce so that we can have a strong economy. Now let me talk a little bit about how the Area Development District provides or delivers services. I've mentioned the departments that we operate at the ADD through the employees that work there. A big part of what we do is run through committee memberships, committees and councils that report back to our board on issues that are important to the region, issues that will drive social services that are provided and that will drive economic development that we're striving to achieve. I'm not going to belabor each one of these, but the members that are up there are the members that come from LFUCG to participate on those committees. Now, one thing that I would point out through the ones that you're seeing that are up here is that these committees are open to anybody. You don't have to be necessarily appointed and required to attend these meetings. All the meetings are open meetings, and we encourage anybody to come and attend these meetings. So if you have a special interest in a particular area or if there's a program that you're trying to promote within your district, you're certainly welcome to come and attend these meetings. The schedule for the meetings can be found on our website, which is www.bgadd.org, or I've also left you one of our newsletters at each one of the chairs that are up there. It's called the Bluegrass Advantage. And this is a newsletter which goes into more detail on the different projects that we're working on and the different things that are going on. It's a bi-monthly news item that's put out. If you would like to be on the mailing list for it, just send me an email. I'd be glad to sign you up and send you a hard copy of it. It's also available electronically on our website. On the back cover of that newsletter, the inside back cover, is a schedule of all the meetings and events that are coming up at the Area Development District for the next two months. So you can plan ahead, you can look to see what's coming up, and you certainly are welcome to attend any of those. And we definitely encourage participation. And if there's things that we need to occasionally analyze, if there's things that are not meeting the needs of our elected officials, then we need to regroup or recalibrate and adjust to make sure that we're doing what's necessary to provide the goods and services that are being required by your constituents. The last committee that I want to go into a little bit more detail about is the workforce investment. And I want to separate this one out just a little bit because there has to be a clear understanding that the relationship between the Workforce Investment Board and the Bluegrass Area Development District is not the same as all the other committees and councils that fall underneath us. All the other committees and councils that we facilitate are directed by funding sources that we receive or through contracts that we sign to provide that facilitation. And so they all are staffed by members of the Bluegrass Act, and they all report up to the executive director, and then reports are given on a monthly or quarterly basis, either to the executive board or to the full board, on what they achieved or what they accomplished at their last meeting. The Workforce Investment Board is on an org chart off to the side of the executive director. We are both the administrative and fiduciary agent for the Workforce Investment Board, but we don't give them policy or direction or tell them what to do. They actually tell us what to do, so they're organized out to the side of us, and we're contracted by them to be their administrative and financial agent. So the federal law states what their board membership has to consist of, and the way it's organized is that there is one private sector member for each one of the 17 county members. And Daryl Smith is the representative for Fayette County. He's also the chair of the board, which gives him a considerable amount of authority and power to be able to institute policies or procedures for you guys. I know that he's came before to meet with LFUCG. There's also three at-large members, again, representing the private sector. Two of those three actually come from Fayette County, which include Lynette Walker and Barry Lindeman. And then there are mandated public partners that are appointed by the chair. And again, that shows one of the powers that Daryl Smith has. He has the ability to appoint those mandated public partners. And from Lexington, you see that Brad Mills, Chris Douglas, James Coles, and Celeste Collins each has a certain area that they represent. Mandated partners are strategically chosen to represent the region, such as the Area Agency on Aging or BCTC. So opportunities for collaboration that we could look to in the future. Those are things that we've done in the past that I've talked about so far. but there are certainly opportunities for us to work even closer together on other things in the future. Some of those things could include doing a regional land use plan. We've been involved in a lot of comprehensive plans that we've done for different entities, and we've actually provided some of the very first in the southeast part of the United States joint regional land use plans that was done in Jesmond County with a joint planning entity between the city of Nicholasville and Jesmond County. We could also do more of a merged effort on the comprehensive economic development strategy. The Bluegrass Area Development District is contracted by the Economic Development Agency and is required to do an update to the comprehensive economic development strategy every five years. Well, instead of Lexington paying to do their own economic development strategy, this is an effort that we could probably partner on and be able to develop one strategy that would include Lexington being a large part of that area. The Bluegrass Higher Education Consortium is already underway, and we look forward to your participation and support for that. Regional transportation and transit planning, it already happens at the NPO level, but there are certainly more things that we could do in the future with that. And then I'll pause just briefly on the joint application on federal NOFAs, and I want to point out that one of the things that's changed drastically within the area development districts in the past five years is the elimination of line items from the federal budget. That no longer exists, and so there's no longer opportunities to go to D.C. to be able to get line items in a budget for a special project, whether it be an infrastructure project or whether it be building a community center or building a YMCA or whatever it might be. So the way the funds are being funneled now is through the agencies. So the budget goes to the executive branch now. So there's been really a shift in power from the legislative branch to the executive branch, with them controlling the applications that are now required to receive some of the same funding that used to come out. And where most of those funds that we're seeing are being directed now are usually to large urban areas. So Lexington obviously is a pretty big urban area, but it doesn't compare to Chicago or Houston or New York. But when we include the region in a project, then we go from a population of about 290,000 to a population of close to 800,000. And that gives us considerable more weight in the opinion of the reviewers who look at these NOFAs when they're evaluated. Other things include high school outreach, creating a work-ready community. And then another idea that I threw up there was in relation to doing things in the ag initiative that's taking place or the food movement that's taking place throughout the state is that possibly we could do a senior center produce auction where we could bring in produce to the senior centers and then be able to give our seniors access to fresh fruits and vegetables. I'd like to end with the concept that I mentioned earlier of Tertius Youngins, the third who joins. The Bluegrass Ad does not enforce, regulate, or make policy. We execute plans, projects, and programs that are approved by political and citizen members who volunteer to serve as leaders on our board or on the various advisory committees that we facilitate. If done correctly, the strength of our region will shine in the common fabric knitted together from the various threads of our local governments. As an ancillary story at the very end, Dr. Howe at EKU, he's a professor in public administration, he came to speak at our Conference of Mayors back in June, and he did a really good presentation on connectivity, and that's sort of his specialty that he studies, trying to get mayors throughout the country to work together on common issues. and some of the evidence that he provided on the type of collaboration or networking opportunities that can come out of area development districts. He stated that the likelihood of two mayors networking within the state is less than 0.5%. And again, that's because mayors are focused on their jurisdiction. They're focused on their area. Attending six or just half of the area development district board meetings increases that networking opportunity to 3.45%. Being from the same county has a similar type of effect. Participating in a committee or a council at the ad adds another 1% for each committee. So adding it all up, you can quickly get to 7% to 8%, maybe as high as 10%, if the mayors have a lot in common. Now that still seems depressingly low, but when you consider that there are 300 mayors in the state of Kentucky, And if we compound that 10% across the state, we can reach a synergistic effect that will help lead us to being the best governed region in the state and the best state in the union. I thank you for your time this morning and I'll be glad to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. That's a really good start. Open the floor for comments, questions from Councilmembers. Councilmember Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And Ms. Dullinger, thank you for being here today. I think this is a very timely and important agenda item in this committee, which is the relationship with the Bluegrass ad. And I want to stay as close as I can to that topic. But there's been a lot of engagement and issues, conflicts arising between this government and the ad. I appreciate you guys being here. I appreciate your board being here today. In times past, I want to conclude my comments in talking about workforce and how we can better engage working with the ad. But I personally am disappointed in many of the tournament events that have led us to this meeting today. We know that you guys are going and audited by the state auditor's office. and I hope that needed reforms will come from it. You stand in a difficult spot, but I appreciate your willingness to lead that agency through this tough time, so I won't belabor or exacerbate what has happened in the past, but I hope it will allow us to go forward in the future. And I also want to say this, that I want to make it very clear to this committee and to your board is that I see the value of area development districts. I'm a product of an area development district professionally. And from western Kentucky to eastern Kentucky and all points in between, they still serve this state very, very well. And our focus here in Lexington has to be on the Bluegrass ad and not the other ads throughout the state. So with that said, let's talk about workforce and let's talk about the engagement. starting last November, Darrell Smith and Jennifer Compton of your agency has come and talked about workforce in the regional board. But particularly in my district, as the Herald-Leader just profiled our East End neighborhood, and they confirmed what I believed had been true, 20% unemployment, and that is historical and far too long. What role or what advisement does the Workforce Investment Board have to help our community address that need? I advocate personally for the recapture and the designation of a workforce investment area specific to Fayette County. That's not being anti-regional, but that is addressing what's very dear to me and close to home, which is a neighborhood which is trying to revitalize that has 20% unemployment. What is your perspective in regards to how the ad can help this local government in that vein? I think that some of the answers to that question were provided by Darrell when he came in November, and I'll ask Jennifer to elaborate on that. But, you know, again, the area that we perform services in is designated by the governor, and that is designated as the 17th county area for the bluegrass. Across the state, it doesn't match one-to-one for each one of the area development districts. There's ten regions within the state that perform services through the workforce investment law. I think that what we need to do is look for opportunities for your district in particular. We need to be able to do things like the HOPE initiative, where we came in and worked with a manufacturer who wanted to raise their minority numbers and actively went to churches to be able to seek out people that would be needing employment. Those are the type of partnerships that we need to work on. And I think it all just begins with communication more than anything else. It's knowing what your needs are, knowing what the people in your region need, whether it be training or whether it be just a connection or a resume writing, and then getting them into the one-stop so that they can receive the services that they need. Would you agree, and thank you for that response, but would you agree, hopefully not to the detriment of the regional will, but would you agree that in an area such as ours that extra concentration of resources should be focused there? I think that could depend on what the economy is showing from one year to the next. We have a diverse region which doesn't reach that Pareto efficiency that I was talking about earlier where you have an equal distribution of goods and services throughout the 17-county area. Technically, Lexington itself or Fayette County has traditionally had the lowest unemployment in the region, Whereas Estill County or Powell County, they struggle in the 20 to 30 percentile. So they suffer the same plight that your individual district does, that the unemployment levels in those counties are way above the state average, whereas Fayette County has typically been well below the state unemployment levels. But that's not to discredit your question, because I think what I'm hearing you say is that do you need to provide extra resources to where the need is? And even if Fayette County has a relatively small percentage, when you multiply that by the number of people that live here, that indicates that there's more people that need services here, even though the percentage of unemployment might be lower than what the actual region is. So overall, if you were to take a look at the resources, the staff time, the programs that are devoted to people in Fayette County, I would speculate without being able to give you a number that it's much more than one-seventeenth of the resources that come from the state and federal government to the Workforce Investment Board. Thank you, David. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll come back for my other question. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, David, for coming in and giving us an update on the Bluegrass Area Development District. I sort of agree with what Council Member Ford said, that we do have pockets of low employment within Fayette County. And if you consider that Fayette County's got 300,000 people, comparing it to a small county, maybe just one district would be equivalent to a small county somewhere out in the rural area. At the same time, because our community has been so successful as an employment center and all the things we have going that are really good here, We are also one of the fastest-growing counties in the state, and so people are in-migrating into Fayette County looking for jobs and opportunity. And even though we still have very low unemployment, I think we're around 6.3 or somewhere in that range, we at one time were 3.9, which is pretty good, but we still are one of the leaders in the state. I just wanted to throw in my thought there, but I did have a specific question for you. I think it would be helpful to the committee if you could just sort of paint a broad brush on how the Bluegrass Ad is financed and where your funds come from and all that. Give us a general idea of that. Sure. I'd be glad to do that. The Bluegrass Ad has an annual operating budget of about $8 million. We have another approximately $22 million of pass-through funds that come through our agency. About 56% of our revenue comes from state dollars. About 40% comes from federal. And then the remaining portion, which is roughly 4%, comes from local revenue and then a local contribution. And part of that local contribution is .005% is the contribution that our members give to the organization. It's what's in the personal service agreement that you all have discussed here. It's $0.135 per capita, which was established in 1976. It hasn't changed since then. The local revenue, the 4% that's on there, it comes through contracts that we do with local entities, such as they don't have, and really Lexington doesn't participate that often in that local support, although you have done a lot of support through the GIS department with the contract that you've had with our GIS capabilities. capabilities. But that local contribution, the contracts that we sign, usually comes when a county, a rural county, doesn't have an economic developer. They don't have an engineer. They don't have a public administrator. And they need one for a short period of time. And so they will contract for us, and we will go in there and help them until they're able to stand on their own and have the resources necessary themselves to provide those services internally. Okay. And then my just follow-up question to that, your main headquarters are located here in Fayette County. How many people work in that location on an ongoing basis? There's slightly more than 105 employees at the Bluegrass, and there's probably 70 or so that are located at the 699 Perimeter Drive here in Lexington. The others are at the career centers throughout the region. But they will come by occasionally for paperwork and filing things. Who is the representative for the Lexington-Faylor County government on your board at this time? It's Mayor Gray. All right. Thank you very much. That's all my questions. Thank you again for coming. I appreciate it. Thank you. Council Member Akers? Thank you, Chair. Hello. Hi. You identified four different focus areas and high demand areas for employers on one of your slides, advanced manufacturing, health care, transportation, and IT. And so I wondered if you could speak to what specific trainings, classes, or efforts that you all have carried out to train the workforce in these four areas. Jennifer, do you want to help me with that? We have two consortiums that are going in the advanced manufacturing and in the healthcare. The advanced manufacturing consortium is made up of employers in advanced manufacturing throughout the Bluegrass region. And their focus has been on really changing the image of what manufacturing is, reaching out to high school students, and trying to bring back the viability of a career in manufacturing. So we've just recently completed some videos that we've posted online. I know there's national efforts that help in that area, but we really try to focus that down to regional what would be available. They've also done career camps for middle school students. They conducted two of those this summer. The health care consortium has done the same. They have really looked at partnerships throughout the area, focusing on what the new health care is going to be coming to the area, what it's going to bring, and that would be a need for ICD-10 training. And so we've been trying to train the workforce up on ICD-10 and then also get middle school students involved in a pipeline for them as well. The IT, we're partnering with EKU, and we've just kicked off a tech-based 10 forum in September at EKU, bringing together the IT groups. We also work with New Horizon and do a lot of computer training for the information technology fields. And then for transportation, we train a lot of individuals in CDL training. That seems to be a really high demand in our area. Unfortunately, a lot of the jobs that are available also requires the individuals to have at least one year experience. So we're working with companies and trying to overcome that. So do you actually pay for the CDL license or training, for example, or for the IT training or for health care training and advanced manufacturing? Instead of just consortiums or meetings with the employers, when I hear workforce investment, I picture classes and training the actual workforce to be prepared to do the job. So tell me about what you actually do with the workforce and not with the employers. Okay. Well, everything is driven from what the employers tell us they need. So, for example, let's talk advanced manufacturing. They're recognizing the EMSSC, which is the Manufacturing Skills Standard Certification. So we are conducting classes, and the first class begins October the 18th. So we'll bring individuals in. They'll go through a five-week class. This class is stackable credentials that the manufacturers are recognizing. The ICD-10, we're also doing a class size project with that. that's scheduled to begin in November. We also offer what we call Bluegrass Whibb Scholarships that will pay up to two years of training and $15,000 for individuals. Now, we don't just train in anything. We won't train them like, say, for cosmetology. We go back to what employers are telling us that they need, which is why the consortiums is so important, and train the individuals to meet those employers' needs. That's great. And so where are all of the classes? Are there classes in Lexington? Are they... Yes, they're... Every county in the ad? Not every county. The major classes here in Lexington, about 43% of our funding towards training goes to the Bluegrass Community and Technical College. Of course, they've got three campuses here, but also the campus in Danville also gets quite a bit of that funding as well. So do they have to be students of BCTC in order to participate? No, approximately 43% of our training is through the community college. We work with New Horizon, with EKU, Spenserian College, National College, all the major institutes throughout the area. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. I guess I've always kind of scratched my head and wondered how it was decided to carve up the state of Kentucky in the 120 counties. We have 17 counties in the Bluegrass Add. and I'll just say it. It seems like Montgomery County needs to be, it's more oriented toward us than it would be toward Menifee and some of the other counties that it is. Is there any time they reshuffle the deck, I guess? I think it's unlikely to reshuffle the deck, but I would ask Craig McAnally, who's been at the ad for over a quarter of a century, and he understands some of the background of when the ads were formed. Craig, do you mind helping out with the formation back when you came to the ad and how the state was split up? Well, to kind of answer your question, I think we've talked about county consolidation for years, and that hasn't happened. So redistricting the ads, logistically it makes sense. Politically it doesn't. It's the same answer for consolidation of cities and counties, and it's a pretty difficult thing to do. Montgomery County, we have a lot of relationship with them, and because of the transportation network that's in place, I don't see that happening. But we are a pretty large district. We're the largest district in the state, and there are probably some other counties that would like to be in the Bluegrass District as well, headed down to I-75 or even Shelby County over on the other side of Franklin County. So they're intertwined economically. because it was put together when the nature of central Kentucky was a lot different than it is now. And that's one of the reasons why I ask. You know, Lexington at that point, Fayette County was 110,000 people or less. And it's 3x that now. And what's happened in Scott County and what's happened in Jessamine County and some of the growth that they've had. And it just made more sense, I guess, for me all along that Montgomery County ought to be a part of this. But I can understand, obviously, that it would be a slugfest to sit down and try to read. You know, every census, we've got a redistrict here just for our utilization of putting the right number of people in each district and that type of thing. And so I can understand the problems, but somewhere along the line, things are going to change dramatically. And there's going to have to be some reshuffling at some point. It might be 20 years out or whatever, but it just seems like the halves, I guess, are doing well. and some of the smaller counties just aren't, really. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak twice. David, I'm going to attempt to ask three specific questions, and I have five minutes for our exchanges. The first question is in regards to the Attorney General's opinion. It came out a little while ago in regards to the Trent Boulevard property and the attempt of the ad at that time to pursue a workforce, a reentry-type project there at the property. The Attorney General has opined basically that the government specific in that locale should be involved, should initiate that process. What is the status of the Trent Boulevard property right now that you guys own? We have sold the Trent Boulevard property, and Craig McAnally has been a big part of that. It is completely sold to a developer who is working on a senior housing project for that area. And I think at this point right now, they are just waiting for their tax credits. They've applied for tax credits to the state of Kentucky. And if that's approved, I mean, I think their project starts in the spring. Has our fellow colleague, Council Member Myers, and his constituents been advised? He's been closely involved in the entire process. I think Craig has had several meetings with Council Member Myers and also with the Neighborhood Association, the River Park Neighborhood Association. And I think the most recent meeting was about a week ago on a Monday, and the mayor was in attendance. Kevin Atkins was there, Council Member Myers, and Charles Payne from the River Park Neighborhood Association was there, as well as about 30 people, I think, from that neighborhood. And they were all very supportive of the outcome. Pretty good. Sounds like there may be an opportunity for some community relations restoration there between that and the neighborhood. The mayor's participation representing us on the Bluegrass Ad Board, I understand that there has been an attempt to see if the bylaws of the Ad will allow for the mayor to have a proxy who will be able to participate and attend in the event that he cannot. Is there an update to share with that? Sure, yes. We've been working with the legal department for LFUCG, and we are trying to make it as easy as possible to allow people to participate in the ad. And whether that's through a proxy or through his appointing a member to go to the meetings when he can't attend and to be able to vote for them when the mayor can't attend that meeting, we want Lexington to be represented at both the executive committee level and at the full board level. And Kevin Atkins has really done a great job of that. The only issue recently has just been the ability to vote on things because he wasn't actually the designated member. But we're working to change that. We want to do whatever is right. The bylaws right now allow the mayor to send a council member as a proxy. Kevin's obviously not a council member, but he's been there to know what's going on, and we're going to work through ways to figure out what is necessary so that you can have a voting representative at all the meetings that we conduct. I may run out of time. Thank you, David. Let me ask you to restate that the current bylaws now, I didn't know that, the current bylaws now allow for the mayor to designate one of the 15 council members to serve as his proxy. That is correct. To have voting rights. Yes. As it stands right now. Yes. I would encourage that discussion between the administration and this council if the council were interested in hearing that. The last question I have. If you wouldn't mind, Council Member Ford, there has been past history. A council member has represented the Bluegrass Ad Executive Board. During the term of Mayor Miller, on occasion, she'd have Vice Mayor Isaac be her proxy and her voting proxy. So there is past history to that. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Another Ad alumni, I believe, if that's correct, from his time over at your shop. I think that's, just from my vantage point, members of the committee, I think that's worth exploring. Because if it did nothing less, it would allow this council to also be actively engaged with the operations of the ad. And it would not place the administrative burden by changing bylaws on the ad. You guys have so much to deal with right now. So hopefully we can continue to have that conversation. I would endorse that if my opinion mattered. The last question I have is going back to the 20 percent unemployment, and I'm not negatively trying to shine a light on my neighborhood. I can confidently speak for every member of this council that if we could, we would want to improve that. My question would be is would you, even in your interim status now and your leadership of your board, be supportive of our efforts to focus new resources, particularly in an area such as this. There are probably other areas throughout the city that could be, even if it takes us towards pursuing designation of a workforce area, that would allow us to have additional resources. I think everything boils down to communications, and I think we've learned that lesson the hard way through Trent Boulevard. and I would suggest that we sit together after this meeting in a setting where the Wood Board chair can be there, Jennifer can be there, her staff can be there, and we identify areas that we can impact your specific district or any of the districts that are looking to see improvement. And then we set goals and metrics and we see if we can make a difference there. It all boils down to communication and we are definitely standing by to do that. Good luck to you, David. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. I just had a couple of follow-up questions that came on that. The point about council members can serve in the place of the mayor, would that also apply to any officer of the government like some of the commissioners or officers? Do you know exactly what that says? Is it just strictly a council member that can do it? It's elected official. It's either the council member or it's the magistrate, if it's the judge executive. I did look into that. I know we spoke on that, and I looked in our bylaws. It doesn't specifically state that an appointed person, an officer of the government, can come and serve. It has to be an elected official. Okay. And then the other thing I was going to follow up on, the General Assembly recently passed legislation to help promote advanced manufacturing, and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, they implemented a program up in Georgetown to start training, I think with the Bluegrass Community and Technical School, to train automotive workers for Toyota. Are you all working in, is that something you're involved in or is that a separate program altogether? Do you want to answer? Do you have more details? Yes. Yes, that's something that we're involved in. We're working with Bluegrass Community and Technical College to create a manufacturing center in Georgetown. Do you have a ballpark idea of how many people might go into that training program or what it's designed for size or anything? No, not at this point. Right now they're still seeking funding for the building. Okay. All right. And then my last question for you, David, is with regard to Commerce Lexington, which does a lot of the economic development just for Fayette County, but they also work throughout the region, do you all collaborate closely with them? Is that part of your strategy in that you can provide technical engineering support when they're working on a project? Well, I don't know about technical engineering. I don't know if we get down that far, but we definitely work with Bob Quick and his staff. We attend the policy forums, the economic development forums that Commerce Lexington has, the regional policy council. We went to that last week, and we attend any of the workshops that they conduct, and we look for areas that we can collaborate with them. And so we've done that in the past, and I think that we'll continue to do that in the future. Okay, my last question is just a real short one, but sort of forward-looking. What do you consider to be the number one challenge that we have in the Bluegrass Ad for the future? What issues do you see as really looming? There might be two or three of them. Do you think that our community as a whole, the Bluegrass Ad, Lexington Commerce, the urban county government, we could all be focusing on that? What are a couple of those issues that you see? Yeah, I think that's a great question, and I don't think that the issues that we have are probably no different than what you see in the nation at large. We have an aging workforce, and as they retire, they're going to create more needs for the senior citizens. There's going to be more services that are going to need to be provided for them, which we're going to have to do in a cost-effective way. And I think that education needs to continue to be one of our primary goals. I think the more that we can do in terms of education and being able to retain the workforce that we do train, I think that that has to be where our focus is. Okay. Thank you so much. I don't see anybody who wants to, maybe the chairman wants to ask a question now, but thank you all for coming. We appreciate your coming today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Yeah, just to wrap up question, I appreciate the information you've given and the answers, I think, have been quite responsive to the questions that council has had. The only thing I want to add to that is to ask you what, from the ad's perspective, would be most helpful from the urban county government, whether the administration or the council. I think the thing that would be most helpful is to come and serve in a leadership role on one of our committees and advisory councils that we do. Now, that is already happening with Daryl Smith and the Workforce Investment Board, and we're grateful to him and the leadership role that he's served. But there's a lot of other opportunities that are out there. We're looking to collaborate. We're looking to work with people. We want to be that center that we facilitate, people to come together so those networking opportunities take place. And we would welcome members to come and say not only attend and sit and listen, but to actively engage and serve in a leadership capacity to help provide us with the policy direction that we need so that we can implement those programs and projects for you. Okay. Well, thank you very much again for coming. I think this has been very helpful, and hopefully this will be a good step forward in improving the relationships between urban county government and the ADD. So thank you. Thank you all. Okay, the next item on the agenda is the procedure for underwriting or sponsoring one of our facilities, parks. Commissioner, I guess, Roger, are you going to kick it off? Is that all right? That's fine. Okay. Just wanted to bring this back to you, the latest draft made the changes that were recommended. There are basically just three changes that were made on pages 3, pages 5, and 8, and I'll just briefly explain those changes. On page 3, I added the language that states, Advertisements of companies for their services shall be prohibited, and that was something that was requested to add language to ensure that we were not going to include advertisement with off-site recognition. And on page 5, I added language regarding maintenance of signage. So this is just talking about that signage would be maintained by the organization or individual. And this is for anything under $50,000. So it's just regarding the signage for the guidelines. And then on page 8, I had a language that I'll just state this language. which is for maintenance of donated parks, features, and facilities. An endowment for at least 50% of the cost for continued maintenance of the donated park, feature, or facility shall be provided for by the donor for the estimated useful life of the park, feature, or facility. And that was to address the concern of maintenance of donated land or parks or features. Okay. Anything else you want to add? Those seem to me the questions that were raised and that they address those concerns. But did you want to add anything else before I open the floor? No, if you have any questions for me, that would be great. Okay. Any further questions or comments from Council? And, again, the frame for this is just to remind people, my understanding is that this is essentially an administrative procedure that the administration will make a decision about the final form of this. You want as much input as possible. We've been through three rounds of comments, and I think it's a better document. But a few people do have either questions or comments, so I'll recognize them at this time. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Chair. Talk to me on how this coincides with our franchise leagues that lease our fields and their ability to advertise and raise money, because a lot of them have their own advertising outside of LFUCG, but they're using our facilities and they post banners. What if we have one of the people in this program want to advertise on that, saying, how do we work that out? Is it in the franchise agreement that we're allowed to advertise on those fields where they're using them, or are we not allowed to? This was to address a concern that was brought up that with the off-site recognition, such as GTV, that we wouldn't put ads on GTV. We wouldn't have advertisements for that company on GTV. So it's not really addressing banners or any other things like that. It's just addressing that concern that was brought up by a council member. So how do we address those other concerns? Is there another policy somewhere if this one doesn't address it? No, I mean, the banners and other types of recognition would still be allowed, but advertisements on our programming, the off-site advertisements, would be prohibited because that concern was brought up. I don't read this like that. I don't read this just applies to GTV3. Does this not apply to all the parks? That particular language would apply to off-site recognition, which the concern was brought up that an advertisement had been put on GTV3, and that's why that language was changed. Well, I remember that discussion. The other concern was a skate park was also advertised and called a certain company's name. So are we not going to address that, Chair? Is this not trying to address that as well in all the parks? I mean, if we're going to address it just on, I don't see just GTV3 being addressed. I think we're talking about everything. Well, that particular language just addresses the off-site, which is why I added it to there. But, I mean, of course we can change that language if there are concerns. So that does not apply to anything that would be on-site, such as banners and so on. It's just applying to off-site, which would primarily be the website, I presume, and CTV3. But there are other guidelines in here that talk about how we would do that type of recognition So that would address those concerns, such as the language that talks about that recognition could either be a sign or it could be an integrated sign, that type of thing. So there is a level that increases, that addresses some of those concerns that were brought forward previously, and that's why some of these things were addressed in this. So, Council Member Stinnett, do you have a specific example of what your concern is, and he can then respond and see if it's covered? Well, I think we're missing the golden opportunity. I mean, I think if we're going to get serious about funding our parks, advertising has got to be a role and play a key role in that. And I'm trying to figure out how we adopt a policy that we can go out, if we're talking about creating an endowment fund or whatever, and does these guidelines help get us there? And that's what I'm looking for. What are our guidelines for asking for donations to advertise in our parks if we're looking for sponsorships and looking for opportunities to increase park revenue and maintenance costs to be covered through advertising. Is this the policy that will guide us there? Yes, and I believe that there is a lot of language in here that will guide us in that direction and that will address some of the concerns that were brought up previously, that there was not an equal footing, that basically one person could give $10,000 and get a certain amount of recognition and someone else could give $100,000 and get that same amount of recognition. And that was some of the concerns that were brought up that this policy is intended to address. Right, and that's the concerns I have. I'm trying to figure out also how we incorporate that with the folks who lease our property. And they, LISA, the franchise-based bullies, et cetera, sell advertising too. And they advertise in our parks. Does this address that? It doesn't. So we need to, I think it's a real issue. You know, do our franchise agreements, which is actually next on the list, I think, to talk about, does it specifically give the rights of advertising to those franchise leagues who lease our city property? We just need to spell it out. Whether we do or don't, we need to figure that issue out going forward. And from your perspective, is that a part of this document or is it a separate issue? I think it should be part of this, our donation policy, that our donations do not affect the ability or affect the ability, however we want to decide what the people we lease our property to through the franchise baseball leagues, LISA, different things like that. Because they're also getting donations. And when someone hangs a banner on an LFUCG property, we've got to determine is it our sponsor or their sponsor. And if one of our sponsors wants to advertise on the field we lease to them, how are we going to handle that? It's a real issue. I don't know if this policy was intended to address donations to other agencies. This was donations coming in to LFUCG and how we would address those donations. And then the naming policy was to address naming rights of anything over a certain amount of money to address some of those concerns about the inequity that was perceived or that was potentially real. and there was concern regarding that, and I think that was the intention of this document. Okay, but it seems to me that Council Member Stinnett has raised the question about how under certain kinds of circumstances do we or do we not have a policy, do we need a policy that specifically applies to people to whom when we rent, we give them control over the facility under contract, what happens then with advertising, with whatever? And I think you said it backwards. I'm worried about if we have a sponsor, LFCCG gets Pepsi, and we lease a field to someone else and they want to use Coke, do we make them let Pepsi advertise on that facility that we leased out? Not their sponsors, our sponsors. That's a good question. I don't know. And that's a real situation that's come up. That's a real situation that's come up. If Coke sponsors a baseball team, they get their banner. But Pepsi sponsors the park. How do we deal with that? You've got to ask him. And we need a policy besides that. If I can, I believe what you all have on your agenda today speaks to the issue of naming parks or naming amenities or naming pieces of parks, which came up over a skate park issue several months ago. I do not believe that this document is intended to speak to the sponsorship of events or the sponsorship of a league or the sponsorship of a function, which are some of the questions you brought up. I think those are wholly separate. I think this speaks to naming something and the guidelines that we would use to accept that donation or not a franchise league or an event or a facility kind of practice. I think those are separate. Well, it should be. We'll take Constitution Park. If Pepsi wants to be named Constitution, Pepsi Park, whatever it's called, and those girls playing softball there want to get co-responsive to their field, are we going to allow that even though the park's named after Pepsi? I don't know the answer to the question because I'm just now hearing it for the first time. But I think those... It should be part of this. Well, I don't know whether it should be the same policy or whether it should be something separate. I'll leave that to the commissioner's office. But you're right. There are separate questions not addressed here. We just need to be clear about when we accept the donation, what extent that donation goes to. Yes, that's the intention. And let me emphasize for all of you not to... Just to reiterate what Roger may have said. These are guidelines that we should all try and incorporate. There's nothing in my mind that's rigid about $5,000 versus $5,010 or $4,950. It is our intention to grant and accept whatever donors' requests are and hopefully make them fit into a policy that works, not to restrict a donor because of a limitation of funding. And secondly, this specifically speaks, as Roger pointed out on page 8, about maintenance procedures. That is our goal, to have funds along with a donation of land, for instance, for the maintenance of that. But a dozen years ago, when Mr. and Mrs. Heisel left us their 200-odd acres at Heisel Park, they did not leave us cash to maintain that park. we certainly accepted it and it's a grand gift and we would intend to continue to do that these are guidelines that we should all embrace and attempt to put into donations that come forward to us well chair in closing though if a park wants to go build a new field a league or a new building they want to call it whatever building are we going to allow that and this should be spelled out in there if they build their own building because i mean you look at catalog of programs on page four of it you know it says all those things that people go out and fundraise for that we lease fields to, I think we should consider that in light of this guideline. Thank you, Chair. So if I can kind of step in for a moment, it seems to me there are two options, and we want to give the administration time to consider them. One is to include some kind of language within this document. The second is to look at existing regulations and come back to this committee with a suggestion about how a new guideline might be drafted, whether it's part of this document or another document. I think Council Member Stinn has raised a good question. We don't want to necessarily answer it on the fly, but I think we don't want to answer it. Commissioner? I'm very comfortable answering things on the fly. I do it all the time. I think the question is definitely a legitimate one and one we should incorporate. This has kind of grown out of the conversation that we had at our last meeting about what we need to do to generate more revenue through contributions, philanthropic giving. We've begun to work on that effort and are doing some things. The idea of increased grants, doing things. We've begun work on that, and we're looking at coming with some overall schemes for development moving forward with an endowment. And I think definitely that conversation about those items that the Councilman just raised could be part and will be part of that, and I think we would have to have some rules that accompany a greater effort. The problem has been we haven't been generating a sufficient amount of money, And I think the efforts that have been made are good. I think we can do better. And I certainly think that additional guidelines and structure will be necessary as we start to make those efforts. And we'll bring those back to you as part of the overall effort. I'd like to get something in place to begin with and then grow from that. But obviously, if it's the Council's will that we rework this and add those in, we can do that as well. Thank you. Well, we'll leave that for the moment and maybe come back to it at the end. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Okay, so first of all, this proposal that you brought today deals specifically with donations, correct? Donations of goods, of property, and donations to name a field or a park or a swing set. So that is different, my understanding would be that it's different than advertising or sponsorships of specific events or even advertising just for the whole summer. Let's say if someone wants to hang a banner advertising for the summer. Is there a policy existing that deals with sponsorships and advertising? Is there? I assume that there is. I mean, we have all kinds of parks events are sponsored, so I assume that policy is. Parks already has guidelines for that. Okay. So that might answer Council Member Stenet's question, or can we bring that forward? Can we get a copy of that and see if that deals with any of his questions? And I know that the franchise leagues discussion is coming up next, so maybe it rolls into that discussion. I think it's definitely a good one, and we do need to address how we handle franchise leagues and advertising and sponsorships and all of that. But I don't know that it necessarily is applicable in this policy. Maybe, maybe not. As far as number seven, the maintenance and endowment that you propose, it's concerning to me in that it may limit potential donors of donating park land. Oftentimes in new developments that are rampant in my district, developers give portions of the land for neighborhood parks when they're finished with the development. and so if we're going to then ask them to provide 50 percent cost to continue the maintenance of that park i just hope that this policy allows for flexibility in that that's an ideal that we would like to see 50 percent endowment but i mean are we going to require it of everyone are we going to waive it sometimes and i'm not sure that that's really i mean i understand that when we get when we're donated when properties and such is donated that it costs money to maintain and that's that's a concern, but I don't want people to be turned off from donating to us because they have to provide an endowment along with the donation. We can always adjust the language to ensure that that is a goal rather than a definite requirement. Okay. And then on the off-site recognition section under number eight, you have advertisements shall be prohibited, and then examples include, and I don't think those are actually, those are not your prohibited examples. So that needs to be rephrased and reworked there because website donor lists and social media would be included and not excluded. Right. Right. I mean, the intention of that language was that advertisements such as, you know, an ad that is promoting the company's products or services wouldn't be in these types of areas. Because the examples are of the off-site recognition, not of the prohibition. So you're prohibiting the advertisement of their services. So if that cell phone company sponsors a park, they're going to still get their logo on the website and on Facebook and on whatever, social media and all of these outside publications, correct? Correct. So the advertisements that you're prohibiting are? Things such as running an actual ad or a campaign for them doing their business. I mean, they would still get their recognition, but they just wouldn't get the ability to advertise for their services or to promote their company in that way. Okay. I think that should just be clarified a little bit in there that it's advertisements versus logos and what is included and excluded. That's all for now. Thank you, Chair. Again, if I can just briefly comment, your question and your concern is not about the prohibition, but the way in which that reads at the moment. There's a confusion about what is prohibited and what the examples relate to. So the examples look like they relate to the prohibition in the language. I think it's just an editing issue. not a substantive issue. Is that fair? Okay. I want to make it clear that logos are allowed with a specific ad. I mean, I think it's in another thing. Right, yeah. Okay. I think they got it. Thank you. Council Member Malas. One thing that seems a little perhaps off is the level of donation. et cetera, for instance, and I'll use the Fifth Third Pavilion as an example, where that was a $750,000 contribution that paid for the entire pavilion, which would not have happened had it not been for that $750,000 contribution from Fifth Third Bank. So when you talk about different, if you give X amount, you get a letter, or if you $100,000 or 66%, you get naming rights for two years. or I think we really need to look at if we've got somebody that's willing to invest three-quarters of a million dollars for a significant structure, that that naming right should be there. You know, or if somebody only, you know, I think it needs to be somehow valued on a permanent basis in the value of the amenity they're donating. In other words, as an example, people who purchased bricks in front of the children's theater and those stayed there and other things like that. Those are good ways for people to donate smaller amounts that give permanent recognition. And I don't see that in here, and I'm concerned about the limiting of, you know, you give us a million dollars and you can name this structure for two years, or you give us $100,000 and you get the same thing. Are you referring to the language change that we made the last time of the 10-year agreement? Because that gives the option of counsel to do that, but it still could be ongoing. So you wouldn't have to utilize that. So in the example that you gave of the $750,000, that's significantly more than the minimum amount for having it named under the naming policy. And therefore, absolutely, council could consider that to be named and not change that name. I guess I would prefer us to flesh this out more, take up Council Member Stenet's concerns, and instead of guidelines, have policies. because when we have guidelines, somebody from parks or somebody goes out and tries to raise funds, and it's outside the guideline possibly, and so it has to come to council, and then somebody gets in trouble because they didn't. You see what I'm saying? And, I mean, I feel like we need a policy and it needs to be fair and equitable, but also maximize the way in which we can raise money for our parks. Because a significant amount of money is raised, like Friends of the Dog Park has raised an enormous amount of money. You know, Friends of the Arboretum, which isn't necessarily our park, but we partner with UK. So I think having really clear policies keeps people from going out with good intentions to raise the funds and know exactly what they can and cannot offer. That's just my opinion. And I also am out of time, but wondered if this also applies to things like other buildings we may own, like the Senior Citizens Center. Are we going to have a different policy for that if somebody wants to make a donation? So I'll just throw that out as a question. Good question. Thank you. I think there's no answer at the moment. But Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. Roger, I think you were very close to a really good document, and I appreciate the work for you and Jerry and those who have worked on it. A couple of concerns. Let's go to page 8. Actually, Council Member Akers expressed my concern. I want to also express my concern as well. the idea of a donor coming along and giving a donation for a feature or facility, whatever, and then having to guarantee that over the lifetime of that feature, they're going to provide at least 50% of the maintenance. How in the world can we do that? I'm not really sure I understand that. Number one, how is the cost estimated? and what is the useful life of the park or feature or facility. And if a donor gives a certain amount of money, the 50% of maintenance cost could very well equal the donation itself over the life of the facility. And so I'm concerned about that and wondering if that's going to drive some people off. If it is indeed a policy, I mean, it says that right there, that you have to establish an endowment. And that means an endowment that's going to come up with interest that's going to support this. It's not a matter of paying the bill each year. It's a matter of a fairly good-sized amount of money to endow what the cost of the maintenance would be. I don't see how in the world we can do that. And so, Roger, maybe you can explain that to me. That's a very good question. In order to put this language in after it was requested, I looked at a lot of other areas around the country. There are some that actually, believe it or not, ask for 100%, and I did not put that in there because I thought that would be very restrictive. and, like you said, would certainly, for a lot of donors, would cause them to back off and not wish to donate. I went with one to present to you to look at, and, of course, you have good comments regarding it, that I saw quite often, which was the 50%, and to create that endowment so that that, like you said, would handle. And the reason why I put the language useful life is that was also another thing that I saw quite often, and I'm sure that that's probably just determined, agreed upon between the donor and LFUCG as to what we believe would be the useful life of that facility. And, you know, certainly we could change that language to address that concern because I could see that that would be a concern, that there would be donors that would back out because of that amount. But I was just attempting to address what was brought up last time regarding that there should be something in here to handle maintenance so it's not all on parks and recreation to maintain the site. I do understand that. and I also fear that the endowment itself might cost more, might be worth more up front than the donation itself. And it just seems to me, regardless of our previous discussion, it just seems like to me if somebody is going to be generous and give us a donation to support a park or part of the park, that we ought to be willing to maintain it for them. And relative to that, very quickly, the maintenance of signage seems to me to be a similar kind of situation. Are we providing the signage to begin with? On page five, Roger. Yes. Are we providing the signage? Does parks make the sign, put up the sign, and then require the donor to keep it up? The donor would provide the money for the sign, and then they would just say, this once again is something that is very common in a lot of policies around the country, where the donor would then do the upkeep of the sign. And so that's once again why I put that language in there to address what was brought up at last. That's not as serious as the other one, I think, but I still have some concerns about it. But as I say, we've really come a long way on this document, and I appreciate all your hard work. Thank you, Roger and Jerry, and thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Council Member Lane. You know, I reviewed this, and I think that the questions that come up at the meeting today represent a broad range of issues about the format of this and the way it's structured. And I would, just as a suggestion, say that we might go to somebody in sports that sells sponsorships and underwritings and all that. For example, I'll just give you a quick example here. We used to have the Applebee Stadium for the Lexington Legends, and that was on a 10-year contract. They paid so much a year for 10 years. They probably had a right to renew, but they didn't. And then Whitaker Bank, I believe, took over the sponsorship. It's now the Whitaker Stadium. That's the way I believe we should treat if we're sponsoring some of our major facilities, whether they be parks or actual buildings. another suggestion is maybe the format of this needs to be changed and I would suggest that you go out and talk to some of our local advertising agencies here in Lexington that are used to negotiating sponsorship brands for buildings, etc. You look at the Yum Stadium, for example, in Louisville that's another example Now, granted, that's a lot bigger than any park facility we currently have, but they probably spent a million a year for 10 years to get the riding to have their young brand. But it didn't restrict any other advertising over there. So I don't think we need to have too many restrictions. I think we just have the brand name on one of our parks. The other area is that you have sort of arbitrarily said if it's worth $50,000 or less or worth $50,000 or more. And so I'm asking you, who's going to decide whether something's worth $50,000 or more if it's a park? Are we going to go out and get an appraisal? I mean, is this going to be a real hard and fast number? Are we just going to do a see-the-pants number? If we're just going to see the pants, then we might as well just not even have that in there because it would be arbitrary anyway. And the PVA does not come out and put values of our parks. They don't estimate the market value of a park. So there's really not a valuation that's immediately available out there. And then you take something like the Raven Run Nature Sanctuary. I mean, I can see somebody like Alltech being the sponsor. or Altex, Raven Run, Nature Sanctuary, 10-year agreement, and their name would be out there for 10 years, and they could help promote the park that way. And that sort of ties in with their natural products that they offer globally. So I'm just suggesting maybe we need to think about this some more and maybe sort of re-engineer the document and how we're going to approach this. I think Jerry wants to say something, and I'm going to shut up. Excuse me, Roger. Please. In anticipation of this meeting, seeing what was on the agenda, I took this to our Parks Advisory Board on the 28th of August, and our newest member, Mr. Brooks Downing, who many of you know, the head of the Bluegrass Sports Commission, a lot of television station experience, a lot of ad valuation experience, I've asked he and two other members of my Parks Advisory Board to take this document and to meet with me a couple of times and take back to the Parks Advisory Board something that might strengthen it and give it a sense of market value, which we want very much to learn more about. But I think if you could give us six weeks or so to go through that process, we might be able to come back with some real-world sports marketing valuation experience on these levels and language that would be more donor-friendly, if you will. We all believe that there ought to be a process for how you name and value stuff like buildings and parks and event names, but we don't have a lot of experience doing that. So I've reached out, and so I'm asking you perhaps for some time to do that and take into consideration all of the comments that you've made here today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That's all I have. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Back to this maintenance on donated parks, page 8. And let's look at Jacobson. and let's look at Masterson Station, which are parks that are not 100% active. Let's put it that way. And over the span of time, though, we continue to grow at Masterson Station. more soccer fields, whatsoever it might be that we want to do, would we go back to that individual who's been paying X number of dollars for X period of time and say, well, the price just went up because we just expanded. Of course, you didn't have anything to do with it, but you're still going to maintain it. How would you deal with that, I guess? I haven't actually looked into how other communities have dealt with that specific concern. However, I believe that the endowment would be created at the time to handle what was expected for the future. If something changed, I don't believe that you would go back and ask for additional money after they don't i would hope not let's put it that way i would hope not because you may lose the whole process may right melt right in front of your eyes if i think nobody else would come along and do it if they got thought they were going to get stuck i think the intention of that language is to have some money to go towards maintenance um so therefore you know parks wouldn't have to do all the maintenance. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair? Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Just quickly, it seems like maybe we're reinventing the wheel here. If we could look at other communities about our size, in-state and out-of-state, and what their policies are, that might be a good way to come up with a policy. That's what I did to put this together. I looked at several communities around the country. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you said you hadn't looked at it. No, I just mean regarding that specific comment. I'm sorry. I misunderstood. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. No other council members are signed up. I just have a couple of comments, then we'll close this issue. The first is on the section that was added on maintenance. So that was one of the issues that I had a particular concern about. And just to remind the committee, the reason that language was added out of the discussion of last time is because we have been in the position of adding parks, facilities in particular, but others more generally, where we add the burden of responsibility for maintenance and we don't have the budget for it. And so we have incurred a cost. Even though it's a gift to us, nonetheless, we have incurred a cost. And we know there already are park lands that have been donated that are not in use at all because we don't have the budget for development and programming. So I believe there's a tradeoff. We certainly don't want to inhibit gifts. On the other hand, we want to be careful about that. And I believe that the policy or the guidelines are adequate as stated in the revised version with the understanding that any gift, donation, et cetera, has to come to Council for approval, as I understand it. And so we can be flexible with specific items. But I am very interested in having something in there that reflects the concern that we not accept donations that then place the government either in the position of incurring costs or of not properly maintaining the park lands that we have. The second comment, I think that the issue that Council Member Stinnett raised needs to be addressed either in this document or in a different document and something that would come back to this committee. And then thirdly, I believe, given what Mr. Hancock has said, that it would be appropriate to put this item back on the agenda in November, give you a couple months to come back with, again, more refinements. If that's acceptable, we can deal with that when we get to the last item on the agenda. So thank you, Roger, and everybody else for this presentation. I think we're making progress. I keep thinking we're done, but of course, never the case, or hardly ever the case. So thank you very much. Thank you. Next item is the park usage agreement. Mr. Hancock. Thank you, Mr. Kay. I prepared a memorandum, which I think all of you have, which was in response to your questions as relayed to me by Commissioner Reed. I wasn't here when all of your questions were asked, so what I interpreted the questions to be were, how do we provide for youth sports with respect to contracts and agreements? And what my memo says is we effectively have two ways of doing that. A large percentage of our programming for youth and for adults in athletics is provided by parks with parks budgets, managed by parks, civil service, and seasonal people on our parks. And we don't have agreements with ourselves to give us use of Field X or Park Y for those events. Secondly, we outsource the majority, frankly, of our youth sports in the community and much of our adult sports to either franchise ball leagues with whom we have annual facility usage agreements, which you approve twice a year for spring ball and fall ball, if you will. And then secondly, our soccer program, which is managed by one entity, Lexington Youth Soccer Association, LISA, we have a long-term agreement, which you all just renewed at Masterson for the 20-odd fields that they have there. The difference is more historical precedent than anything else. 15 years ago when we had some interaction with the Department of the Interior. We were advised that we needed a concession agreement with LISA to perform sports out there because they are not a government entity. We were advised we had to produce what the U.S. federal government calls a concession agreement, So we wrote a concession agreement 10 years ago, and you recently renewed that. Those restrictions don't apply, and frankly, our experience, our history with baseball goes back longer than with LISA and soccer. So we have evolved annual facility usage agreements which protect both the league and the government with respect to demanding gender equity information and insisting that certain liability protection policies are in place. So we have really two roads we've gone down, one a long-term lease with soccer at Masterson because of that property having been given to us during the Nixon administration through the Department of the Interior, and then secondly, really 25-, 30-year-old annual agreements with franchise ball leagues. So those two programs are outsourced a little differently. the effect is the same. Thousands and thousands of young people and adults are provided in sports at no cost to the urban county government. I hope that begins to answer the question. Thank you. Council members, questions or comments? Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Jerry. So this was my original question, and I brought this to the committee. So I wanted to get a better understanding, number one, of the history. Because I represent Masters and Station Park, I am constantly asked by constituents, I want to host this event there. I want to play this sport there. And how do we use the fields? And when I come back and say, well, LISA has those rights, and people ask me how they have the rights and why they have the rights. And so I wanted some of that historical perspective and information that I could then share with my constituents. And so I guess the question is, I mean, how long is the contract with LISA? It's for 10 years. And it was renewed in 2009? Is that what you said? No, it was renewed this spring. This spring, okay. Yeah, I think I remember that, and we had a question about that. So the concession stands at all of each of these parks and leagues, are those to the benefit of the league? Are those run by Parks and Rec? Who receives the funding from the concession stands? The food concession stands at the Franchise Ball Leagues and at LISA are managed by them, and profits from those sales are retained by the league for reinvestment in the park. And is that required that the profits from the concessions are reinvested into the park? I mean, do we keep track of that? Do we audit that? Do we follow that money and those funding and audit their books and that kind of thing? We don't audit their books, but we do ask for annual financial statements from the leagues. Some of the leagues are profitable, and some of the leagues are terribly not profitable. Some of the league's members have taken on personal loans, guarantees, to support improvements that they've made. The idea is that each league would invest in its own field improvements. We, in effect, and I'm sorry Mr. Stenet's not here, but in effect, we have long-term commitments to the baseball franchise leagues. They just aren't written. Eastern Little League at Ecton has invested a lot of money in that field. The leagues at Veterans and Shilto have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they don't intend to go anywhere, and it's not our intention to ask them to leave. So the distinction, the long-term distinction, is really small, in my opinion. We give them annual agreements, in part, to let us know when those fields will not be used so that other groups, co-ed, co-rec kinds of activities could occur on their fields if people request them. So the responsibility to repair a backstop or to fix the fence in the outfield really falls on these private leagues and not on LFUCG when we have these contract agreements? For the most part. If a league is having a terrible financial time, they're losing, their neighborhood changes, it becomes absent a lot of youth and they don't have any money, we will participate with them. We ask them to come and ask permission regardless of their financial condition. And if they're poor and there's a condition that's unsafe, we'll participate in the renovation of that safety hazard. So is our investment on the city's end different at every park, would you say, at each of these leagues that are listed in the memo? For the most part, the franchise ball leagues take care of all of their own maintenance inside the fence. They cut the grass, they line the fields, they add fill, they fix things. If there are a couple of leagues who are not well off financially, we assist them. For the most part, however, the leagues take care of everything inside the fence. We take care of everything outside the fence. So this includes utilities for water, the restrooms, concession stay, and all of that electricity? No, we pay the utilities. LFUCG pays the utilities for all of the franchise leagues. But for the most part, they make the improvements to the fields and to their facilities. And so if someone or entity wanted to initiate one of these contracts of their own, what is that process and how is that defined in a policy somewhere? Maybe you're asking two questions. What happens if ABC Inc. wants to play a game? They would simply call us and we would find a field and work with them. to make that field available for their use. And we might charge them a small fee to cover our out-of-pocket overtime or whatever. If a new league wants to invent themselves and use facilities on an ongoing, regular basis, again, they need to meet with us, and we would assess the demand, as we have recently with lacrosse, which was not on the radar 10 years ago. And today we allow them to use our fields and work with them to raise money so they can continue to grow that sport. So it's really a question of folks just coming to us and asking the question, and we'll attempt to serve them. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. There are no other Councilmen? Oh, I'm sorry. Last minute. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Jerry, for this report. Thank you, Council Member Akers, for bringing it forward. It's a discussion we ought to have. Jerry, you're aware, and some of the Council members are aware, But I've had the fortune to participate in the programming that we offer in-house in Parks and Recreation, in both t-ball and football with my boys and their friends. So I'm somewhat very familiar with it. I will, and I'm somewhat familiar with Franchise, because as my boys grew older, we ventured on the baseball side of the Franchise. Councilwoman Henson isn't here, but I hope she won't mind me raising this. She's actually raised this concern. It's quite costly to participate in these franchise leagues. And there's been great questions over the years in regards to how we balance that, how we balance the utilization of public parks. and the cost controls and restraints that may prevent folks from, young folks particularly, participating in these leagues. Talk a little bit about Parks' view on, it's good that these franchise leagues exist. It's good that they are doing some things that perhaps government at this point won't have to do because they're offering it. but is it also a concern of parks in regards to the cost prohibition that may exist, particularly for certain families? The franchise leagues offer a product that is significantly more expensive than the parks product, two or more times more expensive. So in exchange for that, franchise leagues offer certain things that the parks don't offer. Is it a concern? It's obvious that there is a difference. It's obvious that there is a difference in the playing surface often. Parks cannot afford or does not have the money and resources today to provide the level of manicured presentation that the franchise leagues often have. The franchise leagues insist on volunteer help, have more funds, as you suggest, to produce a better-looking field that has more amenities. Perhaps there is a discernible level of difference between the two field options. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'll allow you to decide that. Not everyone can apply and pay the fees for franchise leagues. On the other hand, franchise leagues, as does parks, both groups offer subsidies and scholarships for folks who can demonstrate an economic need. There is a very big difference in the product and often in the competitive level of the play. I won't describe it as a concern. It's there. It's real. And I think it's in the eye of the beholder whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. If you talk to the franchise leagues, they'll tell you they've got a much better competitive product that allows for travel and allows participants to progress further in a more competitive environment, perhaps. I wouldn't describe the difference in the costs as a problem, but I think that it's something that you all might want to discuss. Jerry, I appreciate that. I don't speak against Park's longstanding relationship with some of the franchise leagues. I know that some of those franchise leagues have very dedicated families and parents, dads, coachings, and moms helping as a family member. So that's not the issue. and I would continue to encourage as public-private community those type of hybrid relationships. The question that I would pose to the committee is a question that just came to my mind, is how different is this parks usage from the facility usage policy that this council passed in regards to its other real estate. And the council worked a great deal on building that facility usage policy. We've pretty much implemented it. In most cases, it's much difficult to compare market rate rents, square footage, versus green space. I know there's a major difference there. But the premise of that policy, even though it was developed, much of it before I came to council, was to help government recoup costs and lights costs, even if the leaves themselves are manicuring the lawn. So I'll just throw that out for the committee's concern. I just wanted to throw that out. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you. I just wanted to make a short comment on the LISA. From the standpoint that what I know about it, and this goes back from several years ago when we were working on a new soccer field, is their investment in a new field is several hundred thousand dollars, as I recall, and it takes almost two years for the field to become mature enough so that you can actually play soccer on it because once you've graded it and leveled it out and put the grass in, it has to mature and get strong enough before it can have playing. So you have all of that maintenance, and then there's ongoing fertilization maintenance, the striping of the fields. The soccer group provides training and classes, and they have all the officials, and they run the whole program. So there is no administrative expense for the urban county government. But I believe if you really evaluate everything that they do from capital expenditure to ongoing operating expenses, that we are getting a really attractive deal, and I think it is market value or even above market value. But I believe that I maybe would encourage you, Mr. Hancock, to have someone from ISA to come here and maybe give a report to Council so that Council members would get a better perspective of what else encompassed in that program. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know it's getting late, so I quit. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Quick follow-up. At what point would we ever terminate a contract with a franchise league? For instance, there is one on the memo that serves 97 players. So is that, I mean, do we ever look at it and say, I mean, I don't know what our expenses are compared to their investments. And, I mean, is that even enough to hold a league? I mean, my son is a big baseball player, so I'm pretty familiar with the world of baseball. So I'm just curious if that's, you know, reasonable or if we should add maybe more teams. I mean, I don't know how many fields are out there, but should we increase the league or develop it further? Or is there something that we could do to make this more, you know, more involvement in the community? And maybe it's, to Council Member Ford's point, that it's too costly for that league in that area. I don't know. But I just wonder, you know, if it gets down to 50 or 35 kids, are they going to continue to? We'll continue to work with those folks to try and grow their program, merge them with someone else, help them recruit, consider whether they should belong to a different franchise. They all have different recruiting territories that don't overlap very nicely. But, yeah, it's in our best interest to see them be successful. And neighborhoods change over time, and that's not a quick fix. But we would take away fields or reduce field usage for groups that can't keep it busy, and we would also take away privileges for any one of a number of violations of our usage agreements, including fiduciary kinds of problems or problems where they're not producing gender equity or personal protection policy guarantees to us. If people get in trouble, we'll try and help them. Barring that, we would take away or modify their usage. How many fields are at Constitution? I think there's four now. We just built a brand new one, which is being used by girls, and girls are growing, although they have ups and downs too. All the franchise leagues are suffering a little bit. They've all responded to that in the same way that Lysa has, by going younger, by finding younger people. There are more and more things to do for folks today than there were 10 years ago. so the younger crowd is getting siphoned off in things that use their thumbs instead of legs and their arms, perhaps. But we keep an eye on this because it's important to us. When you say girls, do you mean softball? I mean softball, yes, ma'am. Okay. It's not listed on here, so that's good to know that it is being used for something. Best pitch softball is girls. Okay. A constitution? Yes. Okay. And a cardinal run. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Yes, sir. I lied. I didn't quit quite yet. I think there's a footnote here that some of these franchise leagues that have kids that are from lower-income families do have scholarships and help underwrite any fees that they have. So I think there's a sensitivity to that also. But here again, I'm not the expert. I think we ought to get a couple of league people in here. Happy to do that. Thank you. And let me just say one more thing about the franchise leagues. in the last several years, several of our franchise leagues have taken teams of Lexington Youth to the World Series. That says a lot. That's an experience that parks cannot replicate. Okay. Thank you very much. I see nobody else signed up on this issue, and we can consider what we need to do with it when we get to the items that are referred to committee. Here's the next item on the agenda. And if I can, I'd like to point out that there was a referral that's not listed here, and I'd like to speak to that if I can, and that is the issue of domestic partnerships. The vice mayor referred that to this committee. I believe it was an oversight. It was left off this list. And just to let people know what's been happening with that, Since she referred that to this committee, her office and my office have been working with the administration to gather the necessary information that will be useful to this committee in thinking about whether to advance the issue. I want to speak specifically about a few things that are being worked on. One is the eligibility language. So if we were to proceed with some form of domestic partnership, who exactly would be eligible and under what conditions? The law department's working on that. We've been in consultation with our insurers, and Mr. Mars is here today. We don't have much time for questions or comments, but other staff members are also here to answer questions about that. There needs to be an analysis of the budgetary implications, including an anonymous survey of the workforce to see who might be interested in taking advantage of this benefit. All of that information will be coming to this committee, and I'm going to suggest that we make this item the main item on our next agenda. Now, there's an issue of timing. Open enrollment starts October 1. Ideally, we would have resolved this issue one way or another before then. That's clearly not going to be possible. But my understanding is what's likely is that if the council should decide to include domestic partnership benefits, that there can be an additional enrollment period reflecting that there's been a change of circumstance. We don't know that for sure, but we have reason to believe that that's likely. So that we could have that discussion in October, and it might be that one meeting is not enough, but we'll see. And if there is sufficient support, we could move it to council, et cetera, and then there would be an opportunity for people to enroll after the open enrollment period. There are two other aspects that would have to be addressed, and one of them is what the scheduling of that open enrollment might look like and how to integrate, should we go forward, that information into the Enterprise Solutions PeopleSoft system. CAO Hamilton has been very helpful in this regard, and she's laid out most of these issues for us. But I guess at this point what I'm asking for the committee is if it's appropriate to place the domestic partnerships on the agenda for October. Unless there's objection, we will proceed that way. Additional items on the agenda, items that have been referred to committee, going down the list, the relationship with the Bluegrass ad, I believe we can take that off the agenda unless there's interest otherwise. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to ask and encourage that we keep this on the agenda. The issue, particularly as it pertains to the mayor's proxy, as it how it may or may not impact the council, I think is important, and also the issue of our pending membership dues, pending the outcome of the audit. So I would encourage, if we can keep it on the docket, that would be helpful. Okay, I understand. Unless there's objection, we'll do that. The procedure for underwriting, I believe I had suggested again that they come back in November, as they had asked to have a couple months, if there's no objection. The human resources from the Department of Law to the Office of CIO, I believe we had postponed that for a few months. I'm hazy on this one. I think we had postponed it for a few months to give time for more information and presentation. Is that correct? I've got, are we? CAO and or commissioner, you want to speak to where this needs, if this still needs to be on our agenda? and if so, scheduling going forward for some kind of a specific recommendation. I apologize. I was concentrating on domestic benefits there. I was not in attendance at the meeting when you all discussed this before. I think if we could, we're talking about human resources, again.