Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. If you could take your seats, council members, we'll get started. We're a little over time. Welcome, everybody. This is the November 5th meeting, General Government Committee. The first item on the agenda is approval of the summary. Do I hear a motion? I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. Thank you. The next item on the agenda, qualified adult benefits, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Council members, you have in your packet, starting on page 8, the ordinance and information about the qualified adult benefits. And the first thing I would like to do is simply thank some folks. This issue has, I think, been worked as long and as hard as any that I've ever seen. other than maybe the smoking ordinance in the early 2000s and some of the rural land management. This has been vetted by lots of people. And so I'd like to thank CAO Hamilton, who's been in this from the beginning, Director Maxwell from HR, Councilmember Steve Kay, Chad Cottle and Candy from Enterprise Solutions, Benji from our benefits manager, and Janet Graham, Commissioner Graham from Law, as well as Glenda George, and our aides, Tyler Scott, Leah Boggs, and our former core staff member, Jennifer Benningfield. All of these folks have had multiple meetings to thoroughly vet what we have before us and to look at some of the questions you all brought up. So thanks to all those folks. Now, I'm not going to go through this word by word because we've pretty much done that at our last meeting. and we do have their Jennifer and Tyler have this on the they're getting it on the computer and so if there are any changes we can make them today and they've also recognized a couple of typos that they're going to fix so on page eight you have the draft ordinance which is It's simply an ordinance that directs the mayor to extend health coverage to qualified adults and their dependents. And then this would be coupled with a CAO policy. And so it's kind of a multi-part action here that would allow it to be something that the CAO policy drives in terms of the details, but the ordinance drives from the or is initiated by the council for approval. And then you have on page 9 and 10 the draft CAO policy. And I appreciate all the work that went into this. It comes to us with one very important change that I think came as a result of some of the council members' questions and comments last month. If you look at the bottom under definitions, these are the same definitions that you all saw, with the exception that the table at the bottom has been divided into two parts. The part on the left is those qualifiers like joint ownership of real estate property, joint bank account, those sorts of things that are a little easier to attain. And if you look at the list on the right of the box of qualifiers, those are a little more difficult to attain, such as having a will designating the eligible qualified adult as a beneficiary, having an insurance policy, power of attorney, and those sorts of things. And so the policy would say that a person applying for the benefits would have to meet one from each column. We had them all together last month, and now it's been much more finely tuned to require one from each column. And then if you turn to page 11 and 12, this is the continuing CAO policy and outlines the procedures, most of which we talked about last month. These have been finely tuned, and I'm sure as you read this, if you have questions, we'll talk about those. And then on pages 13 and 14 and 15, we have the affidavit which incorporates the CAO policy requirements and the employee and the qualified adult signing this form to serve as an affidavit. it's more or less a control that people have looked at the requirements and have signed off on them and are following the rules. So with that, Mr. Chair, I didn't think it was important for me to go through all the detail again, but thank you for the opportunity to highlight what we have in front of us. Thank you, and thanks from me also to all the people who work so hard on this. I'll open the floor. Questions, comments from Councilmembers? Councilmember Clark. Thank you, Chair. Just a couple of questions. Let me go back to page 9. The first question is, is there such a thing as a joint utility bill? As far as we know, do the utilities allow that? Do we know that for sure? I'm sorry, what is your question again? The question is, do the utility companies actually print a bill that has both people's names on it? I'm not in the utility business, but I think... That was a question that we brought up last time, and I don't think anybody has discovered that yet. Does anyone know? I think you can have, like, for example, Charles or Linda. But I don't know for sure, Leah. It's my understanding that while the bill may not be printed in both names, you can have another person listed on the account. For instance, my husband. The bill is actually in my name, but my husband is listed on the account, so you could get that printout from the utility company. Okay, so is that all utilities or one in particular? No, that I don't know. But I believe it's all utilities. That's how it works in my household. All right, thank you. I think that probably needs to have some clarity there. I'd also like to ask what joint liabilities means and what the limitations are for that. I can speak a little bit to that. Please. Because I had that same question. Okay. And part of this, I will say, Council Member Clark, was specifically done in response to your questions to make some of these a little bit higher bar. Yes, yes. Joint liabilities, and some of our staff can join in on this too, would be joint mortgage, would be a joint liability. A joint lease, yes, thank you. Of course, that's listed at the top. But Tyler or Jennifer, do you remember what the others were on the list of joint liabilities? We had identified based on best practices from other cities. Can you hear me? Can you use a mic? We had identified several others based on best practices from around the country. A lot of them to use were credit cards or loans. It was something I think eventually someone in HR would most likely have to clearly define. I guess that's my problem. it seems kind of open-ended and not specific enough to give us a standard. If I may jump in. Please. Given that it's basically a permissive column, not a required column, I think the intention is to make it as broad as possible so that if there's any way in which you can show joint liability other than the ones listed, you have that opportunity. But you don't have to do that. I understand that. It's not required. So it just means anything else that people could bring together that show that they have a joint responsibility for some financial obligation. Okay. Well, my thought is that it becomes less of a standard if somebody comes up with something that doesn't really define a true liability. Somebody's going to have to interpret that. And that concerns me somewhat. And then on the affidavit, how do the people actually indicate which of these two standards they're going to submit? Yes, does H.I.C. John, can you help us understand how that would be actually implemented? They would simply verify that they meet this criteria. We wouldn't designate that. How do they indicate on the form, John? I guess that's what I'm asking. Yeah. Which ones, these are the two that I'm going to submit. How do they indicate that? It's a formal thing. It's just a, but it needs to be indicated somehow. I don't think there's a, I don't think we had a place on there for it. Are they going to circle or are they going to check it? It's a simple little thing. Yeah, I think when they execute it, we'll have to ask them to, you know, indicate which ones. Right, you'll have to, there'll have to be some way to indicate that. Correct. And then up at the top where it says Address of Employee and Qualified Adult. Never mind, I got that. I've entered that myself. And then in the termination agreement, it lists Lexington, Kentucky as an address on page 16. that's council member clark that's just a fillable form that's how it printed but you'd be able to fill in whatever address that will not be on the form okay good yeah and then finally uh it it talks about the summary plan description uh what what is the summary summary plan description. What is that? Where is that reference? On page 14, well, it mentions the SPD several times. Yes, Council Member Clark, that's the legal description of the plan document. So in the summary plan description, there is a definition of what we'll have to put a definition of the qualified adult benefit, as well as children or other dependents. That's all in the summary plan description. Okay, so it's not in here? No. It's not here? So we haven't seen that? Is that correct? Correct. Okay. All right, I'm through. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Okay. And before I recognize the next person in line, the vice mayor wanted to add a little bit more information. I meant to point out to you in the packets 17 and 18, Council Member Lane had asked at the last meeting for some numbers, and so our benefit insurance marketing folks have brought some of those, and I wanted to say that Benji was not able to be here today, but Ellen Burnside and Matthew Clifford are here, and if you have any questions about those two pages. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you. The question I have is who pays the premiums? Who can address the question on that? Your budget is set up with premium equivalents that we build for a single employee spouse, employee child, and family. So those are the premiums that we're talking about that funds your liability for the plan for what we build on a calendar year. So that's what we're talking about when we estimated the gross premiums. So then we broke that down into averages per employee. That's what Benji did on his analysis there. How much does a regular employee receive monthly as an allowance for benefits? That's the benefit pool that is set up. It's based on your divisions, and then it's based on tier. So, again, single employee, spouse, family. I don't have those numbers in front of me, but it is $3.55, I believe, for a single full-time employee. And then it's adjusted based on your divisions, fire, police, and corrections, et cetera. Well, the question that I was interested in is not what it's going to cost the employee to add somebody on to the coverage, what it's going to cost the urban county government. Okay. So do you have a number there on this report? Well, actually what Matt and I did was we took Benji's numbers and tried to consolidate it down even to the smallest, lowest common denominator, which is your per member, employee, child dependent, we call them belly buttons, and your cost on average is $4,700 per year per member. So that's what your current expenditure is right now today. So you can anticipate that if you add dependents, it's going to be an additional $4,700 per person per year. Okay, well, here's still my, I'm not clear on your answer yet. But if we receive, say, $350 a month allowance to an employee for benefits, then that's about $4,200 per year. So let's say my cost was $4,200. And I added another person onto my coverage. I would pay all the additional costs. It would be a deduction from my paycheck. Correct. And the Irving County government makes no contribution towards that at all. They're going to get their benefit pool, and then whatever difference, the employee is going to pay that difference. So if they're paying a single premium now and they get the $355,000, they're going to pay a larger premium to add a spouse or dependent. So then they subtract that $355,000 and they pay the difference. So the employee is going to put more money out of pocket to add those dependents to the plan. Well, that's what I wanted to just reconfirm is that if we put this qualified adults benefits in, the employee would be paying basically the premium on that. so it's really not going to be a direct cost to the urban county government. Maybe there will be some administrative expense, but other than that, so as long as we have it where we appropriately qualify the adults to get the benefits, then there won't be any other cost to us. As I said at the last meeting, I do support this idea, but I just wanted to make sure that if we agree to do that, we're not picking up additional health care costs at the cost of the taxpayer. It would be the cost directly to the employee for the additional benefits for the qualified person. Well, the employees are going to pay more, but again, your claims are all aggregated together as a whole, so you could have one dependent that's added that could have significant cost if they had claims. So it's really hard to determine if one person is going to cost you more. You have to aggregate it together. I understand that. Tearing is set up to require the employee to pay more to add those dependents. What you're saying is that one of the qualified adults had a catastrophic illness, had a huge bill, then that person would obviously have the benefit of the insurance coverage. But that's understandable. I don't think that's an issue. And you have reinsurance to cover that also. All right. That was my primary question, just to see what the additional cost to the urban county government would be. And I presume that it won't be significant unless there's catastrophic loss somewhere. But that would be averaged into the whole pool of employees and dependents. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. I had a question about on page, I guess, 13. Wait. Nope. Page 9. Sorry. One of the qualifications or definitions of a qualified adult says that they do not have any group health insurance. Do we currently have that requirement of spouses, of employees, now? Mr. Maxwell. I believe that we do not. That's my question. No, we do not have that requirement now. So why is that included here? Is this just a draft from some, do we just use this from another city or does anyone know? We drafted that. Yeah, it was based on other cities. Okay. I think in the interest of equity and consistency across all employees that we should consider removing that. Right. If we don't require it from married couples, then we shouldn't require it of unmarried partnered couples. John, do you know of any reason why we should keep that? No. I mean, from a practical perspective, it's normally, if you have other coverage, it's either one or the other. Right. Usually you pick whichever one's better and most beneficial for the couple. Right. I don't see any practical reason why it has to be in there. I mean, it's. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Chair. John, before you sit down, I don't want to. On the 12-month issue where they must reside with the person for 12 months. Yes. Is that basically the honor system, how we're going to enforce that, just by the affidavit? Because what happens if they move out? We're never going to know. So is there a reporting requirement? How are we going to know that? There is a reporting requirement. is a declaration of termination of benefits that they will be required to initiate just as there's a requirement for a married person to let us know that there's a divorce situation. So it would be in that kind of same situation. That's what I was going to ask next. On a divorce situation today currently, how do we know if they've been divorced? Couldn't they just stay on there forever unless they notify us? They could. I mean, they have an affirmative obligation to let us know when that qualifying event occurs, and they would have a financial and legal obligation as a result. Right, but in a divorce, you have a legal document to prove that you've been divorced. What would you submit if someone moved out? Yeah, it would be another certification, certifying that they're no longer a qualified adult. Okay. And then 12 months, what's the magic about 12 months must reside there? Because I see when you get married, you can get the coverage instantly. Yeah. So when there's some type of relationship, why wouldn't we just allow them to go ahead and do it instantly versus 12 months or 24 months? I think the team that came up with that came up with it as a result of what was common or best practices among organizations that had qualified adult benefits. I think if you buy a house together and you move in together, you already have a document showing you're financially together there. Why would we make them wait 12 months? Yeah. Yeah, that's a very good question. but I think there has to be some there has to be some parameters on it I'm just trying to understand 12 months and then if that relationship ends is there a certain time frame that they must report it are we going to put that in there within 30 days or within in that whatever document you said we're going to sign I'm sorry I didn't understand the question when do they report the end of a relationship or when there's no longer a oh they should report it within 30 days like any other qualifying Okay, within 30 days. That's why I was trying to get there. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Mr. Maxwell, while you're there, if I can follow up. I think that the question of the waiting period and some other issues have to do with the way in which, in the state, we have legal requirements that if you are married, you don't have to meet, and if you are not, We still have this, we're calling it qualified adult benefits rather than anything else. And I believe it's fair to say that what the draft tries to reflect is that difference and that there are some stipulations within the draft at this time that are not entirely consistent with full equity, but that the intention is to modify some of the regulations regarding people who are presently married so that there will be audits and et cetera. But at this point, we're kind of stuck in a difficult situation. So I think the question of why 12 months as opposed to some other waiting period is a good question. I had the same question. But it seems to me the interest here, well, I'll just state my interest. The interest here is in moving this forward and then moving increasingly towards full equity as much as we can, given the way in which we're subject to the laws of the state regarding marriage and other arrangements. So is that, I mean, again, you and other folks may want to comment on that, But does that roughly reflect some of the thinking? Yes, I think that's very accurate. Okay, thank you. Council Member Wallace. I was going to ask some of those same questions. Do we have the policy that the University of Kentucky has regarding this? I think Tyler has it. Yeah, Tyler has that policy. Is there a question on that? Well, I wanted to know how it compared to these qualifiers. It's quite similar. They break it down with three different proofs of the relationship. I think they use a different terminology, though. Is there anything specifically you want me to compare to? Like how far, how long do they have to be together? and do they include both same-sex and opposite-sex? The answer is yes to same and opposite-sex. I'm looking for the amount of time. And as of their affidavit from their work-life committee report 2007, they were recommending six months. Six months. Council Member Lawless, the 12 months is a best practice across the United States, but there are variances from that. There were many communities that did six, many that did nine, but overall a best practice seemed to be 12 months, but that's up for committee interpretation. That can easily be changed if that's the desire of the committee. Any further questions? Thank you. Yes, thank you. I'm sorry. Council Member Lane. I guess this is more of a legal question, but it seems to me that some of the items on here are a little weak, like a joint utility bill. I mean, anybody could walk down and sign up for joint utilities. That's maybe even joint ownership of an automobile. This is sort of a weak item, too. somebody's guaranteed payment on it. My concern here is, as I do support this qualified adult coverage, but I don't think we want to make it so easy to get it that if people are sort of squirting on the margins of what we have intended because we have such a loose standard, what is an interrelated relationship, that we might have a lot of people signing up that normally wouldn't qualify because we have sort of a loose definition of some of these items in here. And in the long haul, that is bad for the people in the plan and bad for the people that have regular insurance with us and bad for the taxpayer too. So I think if we could maybe tighten that up just a little bit, I would be even more enthusiastic about the support on this. Council Member Lane, if I may ask a question back. Do you have some specific recommendations, and are they related to the ordinance or to the draft CAO policy? Well, yes, sir, I do. I think, for example, I think the joint utility bill doesn't really mean much as far as I'm concerned, because just about anybody. I mean, people often have tenants in common and ownership of property, and they have a joint bill. so it doesn't mean they have an interdependent financial relationship. And people often guarantee somebody else's credit card, and that doesn't necessarily guarantee anything else. To me, the things like the joint checking account or bank account and the joint ownership of real estate, that's pretty interdependent, and that's what I would call an interdependent relationship. Okay, thank you. Thank you. side, you'll see the total number of employees of each of those, either cities or universities, and then how many actually signed up for the benefits is in yellow, the actual enrollment. So I just wanted to, I personally wanted to know, and then I think that this demonstrates that the number of employees that we have potential to be covered and then the number that would actually enroll in these benefits is probably 1%, give or take a little bit. So in Louisville, for instance, they had 7,000 total employees and 48, I think it is, yes, 48 enrolled. Cincinnati is 5,328 people. UK, 14,000 employees and 129. So if we're looking at 3,000, we're probably maybe around 20 or fewer people. So I just wanted to put that up there for a visual and information. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gorton. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of things. I think on page 8, excuse me, on page 9, the suggestion to remove the fourth bullet does not have any group insurance. Health insurance would be consistent with what we do with all of our employees, and that would be a good thing. In response to Council Member Lane's concern, this is why we changed it. The last month when this was presented, all of these were in one list, and you did not have to select one of the easier ones and one of the very difficult ones. And the work team that I thanked in the beginning, they've all been meeting over this and over the concerns, and this is why they went ahead and divided these requirements at the bottom of page 9 to make it so that if you have a joint utility bill, which could be an easy thing to acquire, You also would have to choose one in that right-hand column, which is not easy to acquire. And so that is why that change was made, was to recognize that perhaps we wanted a little bit more difficulty in choosing two. And then I also wanted to point out, as we're discussing this, that the next part of our discussion can be page 19 after we've dealt with the qualified adult benefits. We wanted to talk a little bit about something that Council Member Myers and others brought up last time, and that was the audit of all of our health care. and so that will come as a separate discussion. But I want to go ahead and move that we approve the ordinance and the draft CAO policy with striking out the fourth bullet on page 9, does not have any group health insurance. That would be included in my motion, and you will remember from reading the packet that any changes in the future have to come before the council. So even with the CAO policy, they would bring any changes. So I make that motion. Second. I have a motion by Vice Mayor Gorton, seconded by Council Member Akers. Open the floor for discussion. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I didn't have a chance to get in before the motion was made. I had a question, and it could just be a simple amendment to this motion. On page 9, under those bullets, I was trying to find last month's packet, and one of those entities that we had in the packet before had as one of the stipulations that you can currently be married. Can you? Yes, that was removed, I believe. If Mr. Graham's, we removed that because of the legalities that we ran into with the state constitution. You can't reference it. She can't explain it. Because wasn't it the Attorney General's name? It's my recollection also because the Attorney General has an opinion that says if you're going to do a qualified adult benefit program, that you should avoid likening things to marriage or including marriage-type provisions in them. And I believe that's why we removed that. Okay. Weren't the other examples in Kentucky? You mean the other examples of places that have qualified adult benefits? Yes. I believe we looked at UK, UofL, Berea. Tyler's got the list. I think it was Berea, I think. And I don't know if it was the College of the City, because I think both were listed in there. But it would seem to me that if a person was maybe legally separated or estranged from their spouse, and then they wanted to join into benefits here, that was the purpose for that, I think, in those other two examples is they don't want to be paying for insurance for someone who's legally married to somebody else. And I'm trying to think of how that would work because if you get insurance when you're married, you would still retain that until your qualifying event, which would be a divorce. So under the IRS guidelines, I don't think your insurance coverage would change until that final divorce decree generally is the way the IRS uses. That is the qualifying event language. Right. But if the scenario is that the person didn't have insurance coverage and they're estranged from their spouse and then they move in with an employee of LFUCG and want to come on to our insurance, then under these guidelines we would call that a qualifying event. I guess if they'd, whatever we do at the 12-month period, if it's 12 months or 6 months or whatever, but then we would be able to provide insurance to somebody who's married to somebody else. There's a country music song. I think I'm a little lost. I guess you would still have to meet. You would have to, I guess, be your divorce would have to take longer than 12 months to finalize, I guess. Am I getting close to what we're getting at? Because normally you would have to meet what we're saying is the 12-month period of time. And I'm sorry if I'm a little confused about the question, I guess. If anybody else... Yeah. I mean, we were trying to put the 12 months in, which is what most folks use that do the qualified adult benefits, just as a parameter. Based on, as an example, that could actually happen. that you can be separated from somebody else and then move in with another person for 12 months and she'll prove of it. So he's right. That could happen, but hopefully people wouldn't do that if you didn't have insurance coverage, which is what I think he's saying. Does that make sense? You are, go ahead. If I understand what you're saying, a person is separated from their spouse and then they have a significant other that they live with, and if they meet the criteria under our policy, would they be able to get insurance? I hate to say this, but I think arguably the answer to that could be yes. Right. And what I was saying is that a couple of examples that we have up there, they put a stipulation in there that you couldn't currently be married to stop that from happening. And so I'm asking if that's not something that we want to look at doing. Leaving it in? Yes. And these examples, I believe, are all in the state of Kentucky, so I'm not sure why that would be conflicting with the Attorney General. We're having a huddle. I think there's a country music song in here somewhere. I think they're working on the lyrics right now. Okay, Commissioner. Commissioner Louisville says unmarried. Can we use that language instead of not currently married? I think that's okay. I'm going to say that. I believe that's okay. Okay, so I move to amend the Vice Mayor's motion to include, I guess would we put it back on page 9 under one of those bullet points? Is that the appropriate place to do it? So you're saying that you want to amend the policy to add in the definition section unmarried? Yes. Okay. So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the amendment? Seeing none. You know, can I just add one quick thing? I'm sorry. I still have a little bit of discomfort as far as the Attorney General's opinion with the marriage language. Because, and again, that opinion, part of the problem we have here is our state is one way and our federal government is another on this issue. and I'm a little worried about including that language because if you read the Attorney General's opinion, anything that sort of equates this type of benefit with a marriage relationship, whether it's language in it or that kind of thing, that's why we've tried to be real careful about that and that's why it was taken out of initially. So I don't want to give a legal opinion that I'm real comfortable with that being included. Sorry. I guess... About that, that's right. Yeah. I guess my question would be then for Louisville, the city of Louisville, and the rest of these groups that have that in their policy, if that hasn't created any kind of problem, then why would it create a problem in ours? Well, every attorney's got a different view of things, and you all can certainly do whatever you think is best. I just didn't want to be saying that I have a complete comfort level. coming from the AG's office, and that was written during the time that I was at the AG's office, too. But anyway. Well, if I may follow-up question, if we add that language as the amendment proposes, and if there is a challenge, we could remove that language. Is that correct? Certainly, I think. Thank you. Any further discussion? Mr. Chairman. Could you restate the motion, please? The motion is to amend the draft CAO policy to add a bullet that says must be unmarried. Further question or set up? Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? No. That motion carries. Now we're back to discussion of the original motion. Any further discussion? Council Member Akers. Thank you. In the last committee and in this chart, there was also mention that they cannot be, it's under UK, that they cannot be employed by the employee. I know that it's nitpicking. I get it. And I know that we're looking at every potential manipulation of the system. But someone, I guess maybe actually, hold on. Let me think this. I'm thinking out loud. I guess if someone worked for you as a domestic assistance person in your home, that you probably wouldn't have them as a beneficiary of your retirement or life insurance or adoption papers. so I think that that is okay so I've actually thought this through and it's all good thanks thank you any further discussion? Council Member Ford thank you Chair I want to thank the committee I want to thank Vice Mayor for bringing this forward and I also echo the applause that she's provided for those who have helped her I'm in support of the motion as amended. I also just simply want to say that I think this is a step in the right direction for our government. What's more impressive is, as we look at the ordinance, it's a one-page ordinance, but it doesn't indicate how much work has gone into the preparation. And so I applaud again, Vice Mayor and the committee, for putting a lot of work into this, where we stand to demonstrate our legislative intent. But more importantly, I also applaud the council for having the courage to work with the chief administrative officer to carry this process forward by building the policy that's needed to support it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. On page 11, I meant to mention these before I skipped them on number six. Very picky. That sentence needs a subject. Page 11, Roman numeral 6. Number 6. Just some rewording there would help. And then I wanted to know what the qualifying event is. Mr. Maxwell, question about a qualifying event? Sure. A qualifying event is, I don't have the legal definition, but it can be a birth of a child. It can be a marriage, a divorce. It could be anything that a major event. So this is something that is defined by law, and it applies across the board, a qualifying event. Yes, it's defined. It's defined. There's some criteria for that. Thank you. I don't really have any problem with it, but I think that is confusing. Maybe there's a better way of saying that as we take it to the Council. Also in number seven, and I apologize for not picking this up before I meant to say this, but the approval is either by the LFUCG or the health care provider. So in this case, we as a government don't have to approve this, but the health care provider can approve it without any approval by the government entity itself. That's correct. Is that correct? Yeah, normally. How does that work, John? Council Member Clark, on our health care insurance, it's what's called a self-funded plan. It's a plan that's governed under ERISA. And as such, we do have some control. There's other plans that we're also talking about, the dental plan and the vision plan, for instance, that are fully insured plans of which are completely under the control of the insurance companies. So they would have the complete control of that. So is this appropriate then for this particular issue? Yes. You think so? And I guess is the council comfortable with that? That's all I had. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. I, too, want to thank Vice Mayor Gorton and the administration, Sally Hamilton, and everybody that has worked on this. I hope that we can come back and change the 12-month living together for 12 months. So I guess when you hit that 12-month mark, that could be a qualifying event. but that does seem that's not equity. But I think we are moving in the right direction. And I think also we need to remember that what is covered for employees is the least coverage option and in our health insurance benefits, and it's not great coverage anymore. And so keeping that in mind also is that it's not like they're getting great coverage for this. But more than being just and fair to our employees, I think it also sets a tone that we as a city are progressive, diverse, and welcoming to all people. So I think it's more than just a benefit to the employees. So thank you all very much for all your work, and I'm excited to have this move forward. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lane. I had a follow-up question on the cost again. Is there someone here from Benefit Insurance? I've had a chance to review page 18 in a little more detail, and could I ask a couple of questions on that? As I understand what you've done here, You've divided the gross premiums and the gross combined cost by categories. So I just did a quick analysis here, but it appears that our cost for our medical coverage runs about $1,000 a person per year above the premiums that are paid in either by them or the government. Is that an accurate estimate of the way I'm figuring this? You're comparing the premiums and the cost sections, and your question is that your costs are $1,000 more per employee? For every person on the list. This is per employee, the calculation Benji did here, not per member. Right. This is just a snapshot and average that he did at the time that he did this analysis. That's more of a budget question I would assume. Right. Well, then my point I think that I wanted to make is I realize this is an estimate because it would depend on what your actual costs are for coverage versus your estimate. Right. But we're estimating it at about $1,000 per person who receives the benefit over the premium that they are paying. So if we add 100 new people, that would be 100,000. 250 would be 250,000, I guess. Right. So that's sort of what our new costs will be for providing additional coverage. Is that close to the number on that? Yes. In fact, we were looking at the 1% number, which kind of jives with the comparison up there, and it would be about $255,000 for approximately 55 people that you might add to the plan. But again, the employees are going to share in that cost also by that increased payroll deduction that they're going to make when they add that dependent. I guess my thought is the next time we do a study like this, I think it would be very helpful to break it out like you did, then put the totals in, come up with the difference between the actual cost and the premiums that are being paid, divide that by the number of insureds to see what the cost per additional insured would be. So we just have an idea. Because when we vote for this, we're committing the taxpayers' dollars, pick up $1,000 a year for each new person that's covered under the policy. And, you know, I take that seriously. And also, you know, where our finances are not that great, and they're kind of coming already. So any time we take on a new expense, we need to look at it carefully. I still am supporting this, but I'm just saying that we need a little bit better analysis, I think, so we can see exactly how much it's going to cost when we vote for something. And each year when we look at the budget, we do look at your enrollment shift to see has it gone up, has it gone down, which, again, will reflect your budget prediction for the next year. So that is calculated each year during that process. Well, at the last meeting, I specifically asked for this information, and, of course, I just recently got the packet on this. I didn't get it in advance. So, you know, I just wanted to mention that. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no one else signed up, the motion on the floor is to approve the ordinance. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you very much. Council members, the second piece which is not necessarily related to the qualified adult benefits is on page 19. And I want to thank my colleagues because last month several of you brought up the audit idea and I believe Director Maxwell is prepared to do this and this would be for all of our employees. And I'd like to go ahead for purposes of discussion and then we'll hear and also hearing from Director Maxwell, I'd like to go ahead and move that we authorize the dependent audit on all of our employees. A motion and a second to authorize this audit. Mr. Maxwell, comments on where we are with this? Independent of the qualified adult benefits issue that we're talking about here today, we had determined it is a best practice to go ahead and do a dependent audit of everybody on the health care, and we had planned tentatively to do that in 2014. And we had also already gathered quite a bit of information about how to do that. It is something that as more organizations are doing this, they're able to find somewhere on average between the 3% and 4% of dependents that are on health care plans is not being eligible. And we really have an affirmative obligation to do this for a couple of reasons. One is this is, as I mentioned earlier, an ERISA plan. As an ERISA plan, we have an obligation to see that, as employees do share in the cost of the premiums, to see that the people who are actually on the plan are eligible for the plan as per the terms of our summary plan description. So that's what these audits do. They make sure that we have the right, that the people are appropriately on the plan, and occasionally there are some removals as a result of that. So it's a best practice. And then, of course, assuming that the qualified adult benefits also get passed by council, then that would also be rolled into this audit as well in 2014. Great. Thank you. Council member comments, questions? Council member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. In this document, it talks about the fact that before you do the audit, you have to have the penalties and things like that clearly outlined to employees. Can you talk about what those are? Or do you have that figured out yet? We haven't figured that out yet, but it's going to be a discussion with CAO Hamilton and the administration as to what parameters we're going to put on that. There is some flexibility on how we do that. and when we get to that point we have to make a decision because all that has to be spelled out before you begin the audit. What's your timeline for doing the audit? We plan on doing it in July-August time frame. Okay, so are you going to bring something back to this committee with the guidelines in it and the whole audit document? I certainly can, yeah. Okay, and the penalties and all those things. Yes, we're going to have to. The preliminary cost that I indicate on the bottom of this is between, I said $19,000 and $30,000. With the addition of the qualified adult benefits, it's probably going to be slightly higher, not much, but slightly higher. So we will have to do RFP on that process. Do you have best practices? Have you started to look into what other cities or other governments do if people are found to have provided fraudulent information? We do have some information from three different companies that do this, and they have given us verbally how they handle it and given us some ideas. Some relax. Some provide an amnesty period. Some actually go after benefits that may have been paid to, let's call it unqualified dependents. And now that's a policy decision that we're going to have to determine and go forward. Okay. And then I have one more question. As a part of that, are you going to put into practice guidelines? There's guidelines in this ordinance that we just moved forward that say if you want benefits, you have to qualify based on having certain documentation. Are you going to request that or require that of all other employees? Yeah, the marriage certificate. So marriage certificate. No, we don't have plans to do that, Council Member Myers. We do have plans to periodically do these audits, and that's what Benefit Insurance Marketing has recommended to us in terms of most of their book of business, their clientele, do audits every two to three years. Why would we not have a policy in place, which is what most businesses do, instead of relying on an audit? The audit just catches people that aren't honest. But if we're going to require people who are going to come into our health care benefits through this ordinance that we just moved forward to document certain things, then why wouldn't we require all other employees to document those same things? And that's what most companies do. I can show you my other company. If I wanted to put my wife on my plan, I have to have a marriage certificate. If I want to add my kids to the plan, I have to have a birth certificate. And those are normal practices across this country, so why wouldn't we do that? as a government? Well, for qualifying events, it certainly is a normal practice. In other words, if you would get married outside of open enrollment period, yes, we would require you currently to have a marriage certificate or if you had the birth of a child. we would already know that because the mother would have, obviously, health care claims relating to that. But at open enrollment, we do not, and I don't think that most companies, most organizations do require marriage certificates and birth certificates of eligible children. Council Member Myers, if I may make a suggestion, and that is this seems to me a related issue, but it's not directly relevant. If you think it's the right thing to do, we'll put this issue into our committee and ask them to consider this set of questions about requiring additional information from everybody. Is that? I would like to do that, yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Any further? You still on for? I'm sorry. Vice Mayor Gordon. That's all right. Thank you. I just had, Mr. Maxwell, if on the issue of audits, can you say again, I may have missed it if you said it already, if an audit doesn't require such documentation as a marriage license, et cetera, how does it work? Is it just on the word of the employee? No, the audit does require that. Well, the audit does require that. Yes, I'm sorry. Was that the question you had, Council Member Myers? Yes. Yes, so you are going to require those things. I'm sorry. I thought you meant that when the initial enrollment, but during the audit, yes, absolutely. Okay, so when you do this first audit, all the employees are going to have to provide that information. That's correct. I'm sorry, I didn't understand. Okay. Thank you. If the sense is, Mr. Chair, that council members would rather take this and put it into this committee, I'm happy to withdraw my motion to support an audit. It was not setting priorities for the audit. It was simply to support. Okay. My sense is there may be support for the audit itself. Okay. And there are other questions which we may want to address subsequently. Excellent. I may be wrong. We'll see. We'll see with the vote. Any further questions, comments on the motion that's on the floor? So just to repeat, it's to authorize the audit that's laid out on page 19 of the packet. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? That motion counts. Thank you. Thank you. I believe that brings us to the next item on the agenda, which would be the procedure for underwriting or sponsoring one of our parks. Vice Mayor Gorton, it's your issue. Do you want to say anything before we ask staff? I just simply will say I appreciate that the staff has thought about this more and looked at it more and is bringing back changes. Thank you. Roger. Yes. Welcome. Thank you. We made some of the changes that were recommended by the committee from the last go-around. If you want me to go through a couple of those changes, I can, or if you just have questions, I can do either way. Do council members have a preference here? Do you want to hear each of the changes, or do you just want to ask, you'd like to hear what's been amended? I think if you would quickly go through what the changes are, then we can proceed. Thank you. All right. We just actually met quite a bit with council staff to help put these changes together, so I really appreciate the help that I received from Leah Boggs and Jennifer Benningfield. And we kind of went through the different areas. we changed a little bit of the language regarding what it's actually called. So it's donation recognition guidelines now. It's formatted a little bit differently, and we're going to continue to format it into an actual CAO policy format. That will be the next step of formatting changes. We changed, let's see, on page two, we changed some language. to also include evaluation instead of just general donation criteria and change a little bit of language in C and D on that page, that the donations will be evaluated by LFUCG Division of Parks and Recreation staff. Change a little bit of language regarding referencing policies, which that may change again depending on the CAO policies that are put into place and the numbers. Then on page three, a couple of minor changes once again to address policy numbers, and then also we did address the concern that there was confusion under number seven, beginning level standards. So I changed the LFUCG monetary in-kind giving levels are as follows, and I separated it from the rest of the paragraph so there was no confusion there. Let's see. And then once again, just some minor policy number changes. I did remove the maintenance language from the donation guidelines, which was talking about maintaining signage. And I actually removed that because I think there were some concerns regarding how you would go about addressing the maintenance of signage. So we just took that out of the policy. And then the other main maintenance concern was in the naming policy, which is on page 8. And I changed the language to, if it's okay if I just read this new language change, an endowment for at least 10% of the estimated value of the donated park feature or facility may be provided for by donor for continued maintenance of the park feature or facility. Exceptions may be made by council approval to set aside maintenance funds for any given donated park feature or facility. So we tried to make that, you know, I know there were several concerns regarding how much would be required to maintain the facility. and so we tried to bring that down to a more manageable level and then also include the ability for council to set money aside for maintenance if council so desired. I would say that those are really the main changes. And then the other main change that we are in the process of making is, since there was a lot of concern regarding sponsorship and advertising, that we would have a separate CAO policy that would address that. And the three of us are working on drafting that, but we don't have a draft at this point that's completed enough to bring towards you at this point, but we would bring that back in January. Okay. Thank you very much. Is that more? One other thing is that we did receive some good feedback from the Parks Advisory Board, and we are going to include a lot of that language into that sponsorship and advertising guidelines and then take a draft back to them to have them comment on it. So I wanted to mention that as well. Okay. Questions, comments, Councilmembers? Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much, Roger, and all the folks who worked on this. A couple things. On page 22 at the top, that's page 3 of your presentation. Item D, corporate taglines or marketing messages shall only be in accordance with the CAO corporate sponsorship and advertising policy. And then throughout here it talks about different signage and things. And one of my concerns has always been that we don't junk up our parks with signage. And so I wondered what you're thinking in terms of the CAO policy and how we could prevent that. And I'll use an example, and I understand this example, and I'm not opposed to this example, but on, for example, baseball fields where they usually are rimmed with advertising and companies' names, I'm sure you don't envision that for our parks, correct? And how will we prevent that? I think within the advertising and sponsorship guidelines, we can have language in there. And, Jennifer, I don't know if you've addressed that at this point, but we can have language that could address that concern. I think it's important because one of the reasons people go to parks and green spaces is to have some more peaceful experiences and not have a place that has a lot of signage. So I appreciate that you're going to be looking at that. And then on page. Just on that note, we're currently drafting that policy, but some of the cities I've looked at, many of them actually, the signage issue goes through advisory boards in some way, shape, or form that's dealing with this specifically. I don't know if it would be Parks Advisory Board or a subcommittee of the council, you know, whatever that could be. But that is a concern all over the country, and they do have people specifically sort of designated to make sure that that does not happen. So we'll try to include that in some form for you all to debate in January. Well, for a long time, I appreciate that because, I mean, for a long time, our cities had very stringent signage rules for everybody else. You know, you can't just put 100 signs out. And I would think we would want our parks to be similar. And then on page 7 of your presentation and 26 of our packet, I just wanted to be sure that with the gifts and actually it may not be on this page but the gift discussion that was in here I trust that when we talk about a gift we're talking about a gift that comes to us with no strings attached is that correct? in other words it's not an agreement you give us this and we'll do, other than the recognitions, we'll do X for you. Is that a true gift? You're talking about true gifts. Right. That doesn't mean that we wouldn't still recognize that gift. Right. But there is not a partnership or some kind of written agreement. Okay. A straight-out gift. All right. I appreciate that very much. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Council Member Lane. I just had a suggestion with regard to the fees or the value of the gifts that are given or whatever. However, it seems like if we have too much of the detail into the guidelines, this is going to be changing from year to year as we have inflation or values of the naming right as it goes up or whatever. So I was just going to suggest that perhaps it would be a good idea to have some type of an addendum to this, which would have like a rate card on there that would say what the current rates are, and then you could bring that back to the council whenever you felt it was appropriate and ask them to revise or modify the rate. In some cases, the rate might come down because of the economy. In some cases, it may go up. This would keep this document becoming real obsolete over a period of years. The other point I noticed is it did use the term permanent marker, and I don't know what permanent marker means. I mean, is that for eternity or is that for 10 years? I think maybe there should be some kind of limitation on how long permanent is so that at a future date, we might want to take that sign down and put something else up in its place. Just another thought on that. But I think this is a very good start on this. It's something I think we've needed for some time, and I think there should be a number of people who would be very interested in helping support our parks and still get branding and marketing exposure to the people that visit them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. I, too, think that there needs to be a little more flexibility and opportunities. For instance, if someone wanted to buy a bench for the street or whatever, and there could be a plaque on that bench that said donated in memory of or whatever. I remember selling the bricks outside the children's theater. That was a good way to raise money. And that allows for some recognition without cluttering our parks with gaudy signs, but they can be attractive. And, you know, when the Kentucky Theater years ago sold the seats, you know, you could buy a seat when they were renovating. And I assume those plaques stay on there until those seats, which are now about to fall through, are there. But I think that there are opportunities. And we have a lot of generous people in our community. And it is really hard to raise money for our parks. And so I think we need some leeway for thinking outside the box and coming up with a fundraising kind of initiative and not having such, you know, to me there's a difference between, you know, you donate $500 in cash to a park for a bench and you get a letter. that's different than maybe $500 worth of volunteer labor or whatever. I think that the catalog programs would address those concerns. Once we have that catalog put together, that's on page four. And there would obviously be four memorial benches and things like that. there are going to be exemptions from some of those specific giving levels. And that will be addressed within that catalog, which a lot of communities are doing, and it's a really neat way to let the community know that here are different trees, here are different benches, here are different things that you can give, and then, of course, you can name those as well. and it'll be out there for the public to see here are the different types of things that we do in our community. So it's kind of like a gift catalog. Yeah. And people can do it with their own name or as a gift for somebody or in memory of someone. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Council Member Scotchfield. Thank you, Chair. One of the things I guess that jumps out at me that I'm concerned about is number 7 on page 27, your page 8. How would this affect? We have a lot of properties currently that are being maintained by the city that have not actually been deeded to the city, but the intention is to deed these properties to the city by some of the developers. Is this going to be a retroactive? How are we going to handle this going forward, or have we thought about that? I don't believe we would make this retroactive. I believe we would move forward with this from when the CO policy was put in place and then move forward from that. And the intent of this language is just to try to identify that maintenance is a concern or the cost of maintenance is a concern. And if we can address that by receiving a little additional funding from the donor in order to help maintain it, that's one way. And then the other way that I put in here was if council wants to put money aside to maintain it, then it at least addresses those concerns, but it tried to be a little bit less, you know, try to bring those numbers down a little bit just so that it wouldn't deter someone from donating. Absolutely. And you may not know this number right off the top, but looking at the pieces of land that have been donated to us, we may not have taken the deed yet, but we're maintaining. About how many properties does that entail? Maybe a year? Do you have any idea? I wouldn't have a number on that. I'm sorry. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilman Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. On page 21, okay, I'm sorry, page 25. The second paragraph. I guess what I want to ask is what role does the council play in initiating name changes? In the initiation portion? Yes. Of course, Council could always initiate any of these suggestions just the same as anyone else would. It would go through parks. But then as far as the approval, it would come back to Council for approval. So, number 8 on page 27 where it says, The process for all naming requests and proposals shall be initiated by the Division of Parks and Recreation. Request shall be reviewed by the Division of Parks and Recreation staff with recommendation to the director. The director of Parks and Recreation shall forward a recommendation to the commissioner of general services. Upon review, the commissioner of general services will provide a recommendation to the mayor's office. the mayor's office will present a recommendation to council for consideration and approval. So even though it says that the process for all naming requests and proposals shall be initiated by the Division of Parks, you're saying that a council member can still make a recommendation? Certainly. They can still initiate the process? Or someone, you know. Neighborhood association, that kind of thing? Yes. Could come to parks, and then it just means that the process would, you know, have to start in parks and then go through the rest of what you had just read off, that it would have to go through all those steps. And it would still come back to council. So can we change that to say the process for naming requests and proposals shall begin in the Division of Parks and Recreation? Sure. Okay. And then I thought I read somewhere in here, and I'm looking at electronic copying so I don't have it marked, but there was a place that said the Director of Parks can essentially deny a gift. Did I read that correctly? Okay. I don't believe I don't believe that it is stated that way but I'm just trying to I can't find it again. Don't believe I have that language in here. If you do find it, please. Are you looking for us to approve this today? Actually, what we're wanting to do is get any other additional suggestions, changes from you. We'd like for this portion to be kind of tabled until we bring back the sponsorship and advertising policy, and then we can bring it back, both of them, to you in January. Okay. I can get with you offline then. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Any further comments, questions on this item? Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is page 21. The first paragraph, it's like this third sentence or so. It says, Division of Parks and Recreation retains the right to accept or deny any donations. Do we have a process for making sure that the council and the administration are aware of that opportunity to receive a donation before that's denied? or does this say that essentially if someone contacted Parks and Rec from the outside and said they wanted to donate something, they could nix it right there and no one else would ever weigh in on that? The reason for putting that language in there was, you know, If what was being donated goes against what parts is trying to do with that particular park. So can we change that language and say the urban county government? That's fine. Retains the right to accept or deny. And then the other question I have, the vice mayor asked the question about a gift with no strings attached. My famous example that I keep going back to had a whole lot of things attached to that. So when this policy and the other accompanying policy are finalized, are we to understand and will there be language in there that these are gifts and there's no strings attached so that if a company wants to provide a dollar amount to do something, but then in return they want X, Y, and Z, that's a whole different thing than what these two policies are going to address. That's the whole purpose of putting this in place is that if it's a certain dollar amount, then this is typically what we would recognize them with. And, yeah, that's kind of the whole purpose of doing this is just to ensure that we're not just having, you know, different types of recognition for, you know, very different numbers. Sure. I think Commissioner's going to. Commissioner, welcome. Thank you. I wanted to speak just a second to that point because the issue you raise is why we've gone through this process, developed these guidelines. And what we basically have here is consistency versus flexibility. and i think there are folks i know there's folks in parks and on the parks advisory board feel we have to have a certain level of flexibility sure dealing with donations and gifts when we're getting large gifts and you know for some dollar amount or even small ones and there's something else involved or something that you know they have to have the ability to uh i guess negotiate for a better word, or at least listen. I think we've tried to walk that tight rope and have increased consistency, but retain some level of flexibility. And I think we'll probably have some more discussions about that in the next month or two. But I just want to make that point that we're not going to a rigid, strict system when we're trying to get money and generate revenue, because the The point I continually want to make is we've got to get more money into the parks. Absolutely. We've got to get the endowment working. And, you know, once this policy is solidified, and we'll probably be back for adjustments as we learn more about how to raise money, what hurdles we hit. But your point's legitimate, but I wanted to make that point as well. Yes. There's a need for flexibility. There's a need for me to be involved in some of the process when we have those issues within parks and opportunities that I can be inserted into the process, and that's in this policy as well. Absolutely. Whoever the commissioner is. And this is a great, this step and the other step are both great documents. And I think the easy way to do that is those other things that we're talking about, that other example, rather than that being a gift, that's more of a contract and a deal that's negotiated. And so if everybody understands that, then we have a process for negotiating and working out contracts as opposed to gifts with no strings attached. I think that will really work well. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Roger, one thing that we haven't discussed but is included in this package of procedures is the facility usage agreement. and would this be the right time to ask a question about that? I think that's somewhat separate from what we're discussing right now. Okay, well, it's included all in one big number three, so when we're ready for that, Mr. Chair, I'd like to ask a question. Okay, thank you. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. First, I'd like to say I think this is a really fine job, Roger. I think it shows a lot of concern, and I think the way you've taken our suggestions and modified the document shows a lot of thought and careful consideration. I would like to commend you for that. I'd also like to disagree with Councilman Myers about the fact that the Division of Parks and Recreations retains the right to accept or deny any donations. There you are. I was looking for you. It seems like to me that it might be a bit more complicated if we put the LFUCG as the entity that makes that decision. And so that's probably a point of just conversation discussion, George, because it would be a lot simpler. And I would trust them if something was inappropriate to make that decision. Thank you, Roger. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Okay, well, I have another idea. I'm sorry I'm having a bad day. My thought was when we implement this program, we're going to have every park, every park bench, every part of our own county government will really be available for signing. And maybe it would be a possibility that for the first time around we could have an auction and actually list every sign or marker or whatever that's available, every underwriting, and put it up for bid to the highest bidders. And then that would do two things that would allow us to put all of them, you know, do every park all simultaneously and to also have something we could promote to businesses as a way to support our parks and at the same time have a branding opportunity for their company. And then after we do that, then we could go in for future years and negotiating renewals or new deals on those. Just an idea for you to think about. But I'm very enthusiastic about your program, and good luck. Thank you. Thank you. I see no one else signed up. Is this appropriate? Vice Mayor Gordon's issue, the question was about the facility usage agreement, which is in the packet. I believe it was added to respond to a set of either questions or a request from Councilmember Akers. Is it appropriate to have a discussion of that at this point? Is that why it was included in the packet? I just don't know if I could address the concern, I guess, or the question. I can ask it and they can figure it out. Vice Mayor Gordon. I could ask my question and you can figure out whether you have the answer. But it is in our packet and it is included in this number three. So I just have a very simple question. All of this or much of this information seems to apply to baseball and softball leagues. Where does an entity like LISA fit in? Soccer, other sports. Is this a question that can be answered today or should we hold it for our next meeting? Commissioner? I know, but they use our phone. I don't know the complete answer. I've reviewed and seen the other contracts for LISA and other entities. I think we'd be best to get our director of parks here to discuss that issue. If you give me specifically the information you want, I will get you the information you need. I just was thinking that we have more than baseball and softball. and so there are lots of teams. I think the specific response was to a specific question, and I think we can gather those additional contracts and get them to you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else at this point on this topic? Seeing none, thank you for your additional work, And I presume when you get that second segment finished, we'll schedule you to come back and present the whole thing. Is that correct? Absolutely. Great. Thank you very much. Next item on the agenda is building security. Jamshid. Thank you for your time. Primarily the reason for today's presentation is to provide you an update in regard to some of the items that were discussed during the last month's presentation. We were requested to get some final numbers in regard to the financial impact and some of the items that were discussed. For example, we were looking at floor by floor on some of the security measures that could be done for the building itself, as well as the utilization of the metal detectors that C.M. Clark had discussed. At this point, putting metal detectors and guards at every point of entry into government center would be unfeasible because of what it's going to require in terms of resources and funding. Looking into different scenarios, it was decided that probably the best option at this point that would minimize the financial impact would be to make the primary point of entry into the building at the main doors facing the main street and keep the rest of the points of entry as emergency exit. That means that all the employees, staff, will be in access to the building coming in through the main street. It might cause some inconvenience for some, but to be honest with you, that at this point seems to be something that we could implement fairly quickly. and be able to kind of work out the bugs as we move forward and get a better idea on what might be some of the points and issues that we might be facing. In terms of putting the metal detector fully realized there, you've got two potential groups that need to be looked at. One is obviously your employees. Those are the ones that have got the ID cards and all the documentation needed. At this point, we feel like if you're going to try to force everyone through a metal detector, that is going to be extremely cumbersome, not to mention that it's going to be increasing the length of time from the time anybody gets into the building, especially in the mornings and in the afternoons and midday. So at this point, the proposal is to have employees who've got proper ID and documentation to just go ahead and proceed to report to the workstations and only concentrate on what we call non-LFUCG visitors coming for a variety of different reasons and be able to have them go through the metal detectors and so forth. At that point, we took a close look at what would it take to actually have the metal detector fully operational and following through the proper procedures for each visitor that's coming through. You've got a few options. You can have probably the cheapest option would be just to hire additional guards that is needed. That would be one guard at the metal detector section. And that could be an unarmed or armed. Unarmed probably gives you a few options at that point. You can add a couple of, we estimate about 60 hours a week additional for somebody to be stationed full time at those locations. So as you can see, by just utilizing one person, you're not going to be able to cover everything, especially when it comes to breaks and holidays and so forth. But the bottom line is an average of 60 hours a week, you're probably looking at about a one and a half full time. What the cost is to us, if you have to hire another security, full-time security staff, fully burdened rate for our operation is about $27 an hour. You can also, another option is to actually contract that one portion of it by just utilizing and outsourcing outside contractors to provide qualified security force. There might be some savings with that option. The numbers that were presented to us based on the contracts that UK utilizes and a few other outfits around here was about $18 to $20 an hour. Then if you're looking at maybe beefing this up with an armed staff at the point rather than having unarmed, Obviously, your options would be you can have a contract with the sheriff's department or police, or there are outfits out here in terms of outsourced services that can provide you armed guards. So the cost of those varies. Obviously, as I mentioned, the cheapest to the highest. The least expensive option probably would be looking at about $56,000 a year and can go as high as $160,000. depending on which one of those options would be considered and provided. So that's on that one. In case of if you are going to be concentrating based on the level of risk at each floor, what we wanted to do was just come up with a unit price. What does it cost to secure each level as needed? And what made it a little bit easier was because mostly, with very few exceptions, all the levels have the same layout and the same points of access. You got three points of access from the emergency stairs that needs to have some sort of electronic access monitoring control installed. Then you've got three elevators that needs to be looked at, and then depending on the level, there might be some additional needs for doors with access card readers internally. The average cost based on what we've got from our contractors have been about $40,000 per floor. So that's the number that we've got that we can work with as we move forward with implementing some of these additional security means. There was a question last time that was brought up, but I don't feel qualified to answer that. It was regarding about conceal and carry. Commissioner Graham and her staff have been looking into that, and I believe they might want to give you all a quick update on it. My understanding from Jomsheed was that you all had some legal questions about the ability to either carry openly or carry concealed in this building. And so if that's sort of where you want to go, I can give you some general parameters on that. Kentucky is an open carry state. In other words, our Constitution lets us regulate concealed carry firearms but not really open carry firearms. So if someone wants to come in the building openly carrying a firearm, we cannot do anything about that pursuant to state statute. KRS 65.870 is a statute that was revised recently, which tightens up even more the state's ability to regulate firearms and lessens the city's ability to occupy any part of the field of firearms regulation. and it provides for penalties for any urban county government who gets into that field and tries to occupy the field on firearms. We can regulate concealed carry of firearms, and we do that pursuant to resolution. So we have to post signs on that so when you come in our building, you'll notice that it says this building, you can't concealed carry within this building, and that would include the chambers here. So that's sort of an overview of that area. If anybody has any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Questions about concealed and open carry? Yes. I've got two people in there, both on this. Okay. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. I do have a question. So based on John Sheed's information, and we're talking about a metal detector, So how does, okay, we can't regulate open carry, but if someone's openly carrying, you can see that. So would that just, would the metal detector simply allow us to find the concealed carry people? I mean, I'm not sure how this works together. I can only tell you my experience when I was at the state to the extent it's helpful. Well, as I recall, when I was at the state, they had metal detectors when you came in the Capitol. And if you were carrying concealed, my recollection is they would maybe put a little dot on your lapel or something like that. But it was just basically we, you know, when you went through the metal detector, you know. And they could also, I guess, at some point, if they wanted to see the permit, I don't know if they made people pull their permits out. So employees were identified by the badge somehow, but when they went through the metal detector, they weren't required to show the weapon? Is that your...? You know, I don't know that I was ever there. I heard this third hand. I don't know that I was ever there when somebody who had a concealed permit went through. Okay. So you mentioned that we can regulate concealed carry via resolution. Do we have a resolution on the books? We currently have a resolution on the books, which is why we are allowed to post the signs about concealed carry in the building. So in other words, every government building that we own lease, occupy control kind of thing, we have signs posted like the fire stations and that kind of thing for concealed carry regulation. What do they say? I don't remember. I don't know that I can give you the verbiage offhand, but it's basically concealed carry weapons are prohibited in this facility or something along those lines. We wordsmith the language a little bit, but you can, as you enter or come into this building, the sign, I think, is on the right as you come into the building. Okay, and that resolution that regulates concealed carry in our buildings, how old is that? That's been on the books a while. I don't have that right in front of me, but I know that's, I want to say, several years. before KRS-65870 got tightened up again. It was on there well before that. Okay. Okay, thank you. And then, Jumsheet, I had one more question for you, please. Out of all the possibilities that you mentioned for security, what would the administration recommend? Do you have any recommendation right now? At this point, I believe reducing the number of points of entries will help us a whole lot, at least seeing who's coming and who's going. We also, in the first phase of replacing all of our electronic access systems to a newer one, that's going to give us a little bit more control. We're also looking at some applications in terms of additional cameras. But it seems to me the single point of entry and eventually being able to have the resources to be able to put the metal detector, make it fully operational, probably would be the lowest hanging fruit at this point that's going to have some financial impact but not as much. Okay. And would you just state one more time the cost of just simply converting to the single entry point? The single entry point itself, converting it probably will take Dave Pugh less than half an hour to do because we can go through the computer system and modify the program. So that way you won't be able to get inside the building. We further push that with putting in some sort of an alarm system. That way it only would be used, for example, the door that faces the little alley. you will have an alarm in there. So if there is a fire, God forbid, that's what it's used for. And otherwise, people are going to be coming and going primarily through the main entrance to the building. And if this committee wanted to pursue the single entry as a first step to improving our security, would that come through a motion to ask you to bring that forward? Or do you need? It's primarily an operational adjustment. So, I mean, if it's the, if yours wish, we'd be more than glad to implement it. As I said, it will be some inconvenience to some of the staff and so forth. But really, at this point, this is probably what I'll call a low-cost, no-cost kind of approach, trying to see how it's going to work out. Okay, very good. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Councilmember Lawless. Just very quickly, I think one of the things that we should add to our list to lobby for is that people can't walk in government buildings with a firearm, given almost once a week now there's a massive shooting somewhere. So that's my two cents worth. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you were going to do a single point entry, which one would it be, the front door, I guess? Yes, that's correct. Okay. Also, could you look at something else as you're looking at different options? I've mentioned this a couple times before. When I worked for the state, I was at the Cabinet for Elton Family Services, And there was a single point of entry there. Everybody had to, if you were an employee, you could go in one side and show your ID and keep going. If you were not, you had to come in this other door, and then you were behind security. And then they required that you, if you were coming to see me, they'd have to call my office, and then someone would have to come down and then physically walk you up to my office and then back out. The other key to it, though, to make the whole system work, because there are a couple other doors that people can go out, Actually, they do have two point entries. I'm sorry. They have one at the bottom. And they've got a camera on all the doors. If an employee comes in a door, you have to come in single entry. Like I come in, the door closes, and you come in, the door closes, et cetera, et cetera. If I hold the door for you, I'm terminated. They absolutely want everybody who comes to that door to swipe their card to get in the door or come up through security. So as you look at best practices, that's something that at least that one cabinet for the state did. and it seemed to work pretty well. I think that we heard earlier this week, was it yesterday or maybe one day last week, that there was somebody that was in the building that was rummaging through offices that security saw on camera and had to go get out of the building. So I think we're heading in the right direction, and I just ask that you look at that as an option too. We'll definitely look into that. What you noted is a practice that a lot of people in the industry would do. And that's definitely would be something we're looking into right now, and having someone from a group will be downstairs to meet with individuals who need to have access. Sometimes some of those, the needs would be discussed and taken care of by just an employee meeting in the lobby. But then they can accompany the visitors up to their level. It would be a great help. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I have a question or two myself. With the single point of entry, what do you do about the loading dock that's in the back of the building? Well, right now that loading dock, you've got limited access to those who got either the remote control coming from the back side or providing their access card coming from the main street side. And then once you're in the garage, you're actually going to still need to use your car to be able to gain through the back door's exit. So that's still going to be considered. And we're going to probably be putting an additional camera on the back side. At least we'd be able to also review that. But the access from the door all the way in the back facing the water street, that's also going to be limited to far exit only, and it will have an alarm on it. So nobody would be able to have access from that side either. I guess I'm still not clear. So a delivery? The delivery is right now. We've got an approved list. They can't have just unlimited access to that garage. What they do, they pull up to the door. They have to push the button, talk with who was at dispatch, identify themselves and what they're doing over there. And then when they're coming in, traditional, we have one of our staff actually meet them at a loading dock to make sure that everything's, you know, they deliver things and then they're going to be leaving. So the only people who will be using that back entrance would be delivery people, and those of us who park there now would be happy? Anybody who got access that is authorized to let you into the garage in the government center still would have that access in there. But the only way you can gain access in by utilizing your car coming in from the main street or coming in from the viaduct side with that overhead door. So for those of us who have these cards, it's not a single point of access. You all can come in from that point or you can come in through the main street. I mean, once you're within the building, your point of access into the building would be from the doors in the back facing the garage. Okay. So just a comment. and I believe I'm probably well in the minority on this. I'm concerned that we spend a lot of time and energy and money on efforts at security, which provide, I want to be careful how I say this, at times they provide the illusion of security but not security itself. They create inconvenience. They create cost. And they don't really prevent the worst kind of possible things that can happen. And people get around these things. So I'm uninclined myself to be supportive of additional measures which inconvenience people but don't really provide what we really all want, which is perfect security, which we can't have. Well, that doesn't exist, to be honest with you. Based on our discussion with a few others, there is no such a thing as 100%. Right. And if somebody wants to bridge security at whatever level, they're going to gain access, and that's unfortunate. Okay. Council Member Clark? Thank you, Chair. I may also be in the minority. I tend to agree with Council Member Kay. And I want to also make it clear that my suggestion when we were talking before was not to insist that we have metal detectors on all the – I was simply saying to be absolutely sure nobody is coming in with a firearm that was not approved or whatever. That's the only way you could do it. I wasn't suggesting that at all. But I think our bottom line here is to ensure the safety of the people in our building. And I'm not sure that anything that we're talking about here is really going to do that. So I think we need to be real careful that we take away the convenience for our employees and for little value. So I think we need to continue to think about this and see what is really needed to do the best job we can do. And rather than just trying to do wholesale and make it more difficult, I think we need to be careful about that. So I'll leave that. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. We're up to time, but I have one more person who would like to speak. We can take that and then go ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would just say that on that single point of entry, one of the other things you can do is the back door. If you disable everybody's card except for the people who have parking access, then that will eliminate people coming in the garage door when it's open because they still can't get in. But in closing, I would say that there is no such thing as perfect security, like you said, but I think that most people would agree that we have a responsibility to protect the employees in this building as government employees. And we see all over the country that people do things to government employees that ought not be done for whatever reasons. And so to say that we don't have perfect security, so we don't do anything at all, makes no sense. We need to do what we can do and what makes sense financially as we continue to build a model that gets us to the best place that we can get to. But when somebody loses a family member, we don't want it to be said that because we couldn't get to perfect security, we just didn't do anything. So thank you very much for the work that you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, John Sheed. I'm assuming that we could leave this on our agenda. We've not had time for full discussion. The last item is the items referred to committee. Quickly, does anybody have a motion to either remove or change the status of anything on this list? Vice Mayor Gordon. Yes, Mr. Chair. Given the motion that's coming out of this committee, I would move to remove qualified adult benefits. I have a motion. Is there a second? I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. Any other motions at this point? I have a motion to adjourn. Second, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? We stand adjourned. Thank you.