# Council Social Services and Community Development Committee - November 19, 2013 > Auto-transcribed civic record · November 19, 2013 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3172 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3172?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2013-11-19 - **Last revised**: July 15, 2026 - **Length**: 19,773 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Social Services & Community Development Committee met on November 19, 2013, at 11:00 AM, presided over by Ford. The meeting, held in downtown Lexington, included five agenda items addressing various social services matters. The committee took four votes during the session and heard seven public comments from community members. Two agenda items were removed from consideration, one was deferred for future discussion, and one was presented for informational purposes only. The committee approved the introduction of Mr. Malcolm Ratchford, Executive Director of the Community Action Council. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on November 19, 2013: * Ford * Akers * Ellinger * Kay * Lawless * Stinnett * Scutchfield * Myers * Beard * Lane No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took four votes during this meeting, all of which passed by voice vote. **Approval of Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:08:00] The committee approved the summary from the September 24, 2013 meeting. The motion was made by Scutchfield and seconded by Beard. The motion passed by voice vote with no abstentions. **Economic Impact Analysis on Child Care Assistance Reductions** [timestamp: 1:17:15] The committee passed a motion to request that the Department of Social Services begin preparing an economic impact analysis on child care assistance reductions. Ford made the motion and Myers seconded it. The motion passed by voice vote with no abstentions. **Removal of Social Service Needs Assessment from Agenda** [timestamp: 2:02:14] The committee voted to remove the Social Service Needs Assessment from the committee agenda. Ellinger made the motion and Myers seconded it. The motion passed by voice vote with no abstentions. **Removal of Summer Youth Employment Program from Agenda** [timestamp: 2:02:45] The committee voted to remove the Summer Youth Employment Program from the committee agenda. Myers made the motion and Ellinger seconded it. The motion passed by voice vote with no abstentions. ## Public Comment Several community members and stakeholders addressed the board on topics ranging from organizational leadership and program priorities to workforce development and community needs. **Community Action Council Leadership and Programs** Kay congratulated Malcolm Ratchford on his new role and requested details on how the organization plans to transition from crisis-based services to long-term sustainability [timestamp: 0:26:35]. Akers followed with a question about whether the Community Action Council should reduce its 43 programs to focus on core priorities. Ratchford responded that the organization is evaluating which programs to continue based on impact and sustainability [timestamp: 0:31:57]. **Child Care Assistance and Workforce Development** Myers highlighted the long-term economic consequences of cutting child care assistance and emphasized the need for local solutions and data to inform state policy [timestamp: 1:00:27]. Stinnett advocated for a formal resolution to be sent to Frankfort to oppose the cuts, arguing that the policy discourages work and undermines workforce development [timestamp: 1:03:45]. **Affordable Housing** Kay expressed concern that affordable housing, identified as a major community issue, was not included in the three-point bonus system despite its significance [timestamp: 1:21:12]. **Manchester Bidwell Replication Project** Josh Nazem presented the vision for a Manchester Bidwell center in Lexington, emphasizing community-driven development, youth arts programming, and workforce training [timestamp: 1:31:43]. Myers subsequently asked about the feasibility study process and funding sources, noting the project's potential to reduce youth violence and support local employment [timestamp: 1:58:25]. ## Contested Items **Child Care Assistance Cuts** The committee experienced a split vote regarding child care assistance cuts. While members agreed on the necessity of conducting an economic impact study, disagreement emerged over the broader implications of the cuts. The debate centered on whether the proposed reductions were counterproductive to workforce development and long-term economic growth. The committee ultimately proceeded with the economic impact study, though the underlying concern about the cuts' effects on economic development remained contested. **Affordable Housing in Needs Assessment** A heated discussion arose regarding the exclusion of affordable housing from the three-point bonus system. Council Member Kaye expressed concern that affordable housing, identified as a major community priority, had been left out of this evaluation framework despite its significance to the community. This omission became a point of contention, with Council Member Kaye advocating for the inclusion of affordable housing in the assessment criteria used to determine bonus eligibility. ## Introduction of Mr. Malcolm Ratchford, Executive Director, Community Action Council [timestamp: 00:08:35] Malcolm Ratchford was introduced as the new executive director of the Community Action Council. During his presentation, Ratchford outlined a strategic shift in the organization's approach and priorities. **Key Points Presented:** - A transition from crisis response to long-term sustainability as the organization's primary focus - Emphasis on economic security as a core objective - Commitment to community investment initiatives - The importance of exposure and advocacy in the organization's work Ratchford's remarks indicated a reorientation of the Community Action Council's mission toward building lasting solutions rather than addressing immediate crises, with particular attention to strengthening economic conditions and deepening community engagement. **Outcome:** The introduction was approved. ## Childcare Assistance Reductions Joanna Rhodes and Bradley Stevenson presented on the impact of state-level cuts to the Child Care Assistance Program [timestamp: 0:43:28]. The presentation focused on consequences for Fayette County and the broader region. **Key Findings Presented** The presenters highlighted that Fayette County faced a reduction affecting 525 families enrolled in the Child Care Assistance Program due to state-level budget cuts. The presentation emphasized that these reductions would have cascading effects across multiple sectors. **Areas of Concern** The discussion identified three primary areas of impact from the childcare assistance reductions: - Workforce development challenges, as parents—particularly mothers—may be unable to maintain employment without affordable childcare - Education outcomes, given the connection between early childhood care and educational readiness - Child safety concerns related to the loss of regulated childcare options **Committee Action** The committee voted to initiate an economic impact analysis to further understand the full scope of consequences from the childcare assistance reductions. This analysis would provide data to support future advocacy or policy discussions regarding the program cuts. The agenda item was deferred, indicating the committee did not reach a final resolution during this meeting and may revisit the topic at a future session. ## Social Services Needs Assessment Craig Benz presented findings from a UK-led study during this agenda item [timestamp: 1:18:19]. The study identified four priority barriers affecting social services needs: - Child care cost - Mental health access - Job skills - Substance abuse Benz explained that partner agencies addressing these priority barriers would receive a three-point bonus in grant scoring as an incentive to focus efforts on these identified areas of need. Following the presentation, the committee agreed to remove this item from the agenda. ## Manchester Bidwell Replication Project Josh Nazem presented a proposal to replicate the Manchester Bidwell model in Lexington [timestamp: 1:31:43]. The presentation outlined a community-led initiative focused on youth arts programming, workforce training, and community revitalization. The proposal emphasizes bringing the Manchester Bidwell approach—which combines arts education with job training and community development—to Lexington. The project is currently in the fundraising phase, with efforts underway to secure funding for a feasibility study that would assess the viability and specific needs for implementing this model locally. This agenda item was presented for informational purposes. ## Items Referred to Committee During this agenda item, the committee took action on several referred matters. [timestamp: 2:02:14] **Actions Taken** The committee voted to remove two items from the agenda: - Social Service Needs Assessment - Summer Youth Employment Program **Remaining Items** Items that remained under committee consideration include: - Workforce investment - Child care assistance **Key Participants** Ellinger and Myers were the key speakers during this discussion. **Follow-up** A follow-up report on the remaining items is expected to be presented next month. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Approval of the committee summary from September 24, 2013 - **Motion** — passed: Motion to ask the Department of Social Services to begin the process of preparing an economic impact analysis on child care assistance reductions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to remove the Social Service Needs Assessment from the committee agenda - **Motion** — passed: Motion to remove the Summer Youth Employment Program from the committee agenda --- ## Full transcript For more information and anything that you've seen on this program, visit us at downtownlex.com. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. guitar solo I'd like to welcome everybody to the November 19th. meeting of the Social Services and Community Development Committee of the Council. I'll call the meeting to order. We do have a quorum. First item of business on the agenda is the approval of the committee summary from September 24th. Motion by Council Member Scutchfield, second by Council Member Beard. Is there discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries. Next on our agenda, we have a special presentation. And I'm really excited to offer this opportunity on behalf of the committee by welcoming Mr. Malcolm Rashford. Malcolm was recently appointed the executive director of the Community Action Council here in central Kentucky. following the lead of 34 years of Mr. Jack Birch, who has frequented these council chambers often. But I think Malcolm is the only executive director, aside from Jack, who has had the opportunity to visit us here on Main Street. So we're going to allow Malcolm to come forth to introduce himself to us and to share with us a little bit of information about his transition and his vision for the agency. So Malcolm, welcome. Thank you, Council Member, for inviting me and as well to the other Council Members. It is a unique opportunity. My predecessor, Jack Birch, had been there for 34 years, and so it's a great opportunity for us to do an introduction and also talk about the vision and direction of our organization. There was a – I presented a PowerPoint as well. I didn't hear you. They got up on us. Yeah, we have a PowerPoint as well, but while we're working on that, it gives us an opportunity. One of the things that we have done, we've created a great foundation when it relates to combating poverty. And one of the things we realized in our new direction is that we're going to have to build on that and not only combat poverty, but we're going to actually have to get people out of poverty and show that. And I think that's been one of our challenges. Okay, thank you. And that's been one of our challenges is to be able to show that we are actually getting people out of poverty. But it also requires us to look at a couple of things. And I have a philosophy where I definitely understand the safety net programs that community action provides. Those are important. People fall on hard times. There are a lot of situations where people fall into poverty, and we have to address those basic survival needs. But what we can't do is remain in that crisis. And I think that's been one of our challenges is that we stay too long focusing on the crisis aspect of our services. And we need to move to more long-term sustainability. So what I'm going to talk about is when you think of Community Action Council now, we are definitely going to head in a different direction that I want to try to quickly go over. And the first thing is our mission, as we're actually working to rebrand and change our mission from combat to poverty, is that we are focusing on a livable community. And what we mean by that is that you are presenting an opportunity for folks to have access to when they walk out their doors, you have a first-rate education. It doesn't matter what your local tax base is in terms of which communities you live in. Children have the opportunity to receive and the opportunity to have access to a quality education that reduces the achievement gap. When you walk out your doors, you see cultural diversity. There are no issues in terms of affordable, but not just affordable housing, but energy efficient housing that's safe. We have communities in Lexington that families are living in apartments without central air, meaning they have no heat. They're using space heaters. Things of that nature are unacceptable. That's not a livable community. You talk about access to health care, that often many of us share the burdens when folks don't have insurance and they go into the ER. That's not a livable community. Then you talk about transportation and recreation as well. So children deserve, and other folks deserve, to have bike trails and things. When you walk out their house, it doesn't matter where you live, but you have the opportunity to enjoy those things of life. One of the things that I live by, and I heard a guy speak years ago named Brian Stevenson. He's an attorney in Montgomery, Alabama. He said the opposite of poverty is not wealth, it's justice. And oftentimes we think about the cures of poverty or escaping poverty. We think of just pour money into it. But in Community Action Council, that's not my philosophy, that money is the solution to all of the issues we have. What we need are access to opportunity, fairness, and the creation of livable communities. You see this picture here. I show this to people. You see the bourbon, Kentucky bourbon at first, and I tell people I didn't bring any with me, so don't worry about that. But you talk about Kentucky. It's a unique place. And I really, as an avid sports fan, I enjoy the basketball brand. I love the horse farms and enjoy Keeneland, Churchill Downs. We have a unique opportunity. And oftentimes when I hear the mayor talk about the entertainment district and creating a great American city, I'm all about that and support that because those are economic drivers or economic engines for our county and for the state as well and the Commonwealth. But one of the things you see missing is as we go back is do all communities enjoy these same perks and enjoy this brand? The answer I can tell you is no, and we know that. There are certain communities that aren't livable. And so we have to continue to work on the Kentucky brand, but it should also be a great American city that includes all communities. Bloomberg Businessweek voted Kentucky, voted Lexington as one of the top 50 cities in the country. In fact, we were number 25. That is true, however. We want to make sure that all the livable communities are part of that great American city and the top 50 and number 25, so we need to make sure we do that. I'm going to be very brief on this one, but when we were, I was speaking the other night at the NAACP Awards banquet, and we had the chief there, police chief, and I told her I'm not encouraging anybody to escape from jail. I promise you that. So when you see this slide, that's not what I'm saying. But the analogy of getting people to escape from poverty is kind of similar. You're going to have to have somebody on the inside, which are people who support you. You're going to have to have somebody on the outside so that when you get out, you know which path and resources get to. But ultimately, in order to get out, the navigation and execution is up to you. So one of the things you'll see in my philosophy when it comes to escaping poverty is not just blaming other individuals, but I'm not going to put the sole weight on the people we serve, but there is an individual accountability and responsibility that me as the executive director for community action, I believe in and will tap into so that we don't overlook the individual accountability and responsibility part. When you see McDonald's, once again, I don't want anybody to go to McDonald's today. Or if you're hungry, I apologize. But the key wording that you probably can't see because of the light, it says 99 billion served. This is probably an old picture. They've served more than that by now. But that philosophy of so many served, that's where Community Action Council, we've kind of been. You'll hear us say we served 30,000 people a year. Well, that's not good enough, okay? You're going to have to do more than to say we served that many. You're going to have to tell me how many got out of poverty. And so we'll redirect our efforts to make sure we show that. But the key thing is understanding what we mean by poverty. And I used Ruby Payne's definition, who's done tremendous research in the area of poverty, and she says the extent to which an individual does without resources. So it's not just financial, having the ability to buy, purchase goods or services, but at least other things that if you don't have relationship, role models, people you can get good information from, if you don't have the mental capacity or the emotional control to be able to avoid self-destructive behaviors, then what you're facing is a person who lacks resources that can ultimately lead them into poverty or keep them in poverty. So we first have to understand what would mean by poverty and switch our efforts at Community Action Council from just serving folks and addressing the people who don't have money because of their incomes. But look at all these other things that we could be tapping into to support people getting out of poverty. Here you see a lady doing a lot of work. She's cooking, cleaning, feeding the babies. She's doing it all. She's ironing with her toes, I believe, at the bottom. And when I look at this picture, it reminds me that we often say, you know, you hear rich people blame poor people for being in poverty. Poor people blame rich people for having all the money. It just goes around and around and around. And one of the things we have to do is, you know, you say, who is to blame? I use this picture because she has so many chores. She's got a lot of chores. When it comes to escaping poverty or the solution, there are so many chores for everybody, the rich, the poor. It doesn't matter which sector you're in, public officials, private. It doesn't consumer. I have enough blame and chores for everybody so that we can help resolve the situation because poverty ultimately is caused by a variety of situations. Generational poverty, we know people who live in poverty for two or more generations. Situational poverty, I was ill, I got laid off, divorced. None of those things can happen to you. Individual accountability and responsibility is one that is often overlooked. However, I don't want people to focus and say, well, that's the main reason that people are in poverty because it's not. And then there are structural barriers. No matter what you do in terms of having yourself prepared, you still may not be able to proceed in regards to economic security or the access to opportunity. And then there's the environmental. Sometimes just by the sheer nature of where you're born or who you're born to can ultimately impact your ability to escape poverty. So the blame, everybody has it. There's no equal distribution. But I think this is part of understanding what we can do to resolve it. And I like to tell people quickly, you know, I was actually impacted by situational poverty due to divorce when I was a child. I don't know if you guys sent in on our poverty form when Melissa Harris-Perry was there, but she talked about the difference between being black rich and white rich. And I tell this story over again. When I was growing up, we lived on a campus house, and my father was an administrator at the local college, Talladega College. And we were in the process of moving to a new subdivision. We picked out the lot, cleared the trees and things from the lot. And we were about to build a house, and we were about to move into the subdivision that at that time people called a black-rich subdivision. My mom and dad got divorced a year later before construction started, and I ended up in situational poverty for the rest of my, not the rest of my life, but the majority of my life until other things were done and access to opportunity was created. So I understand this, and that's why I'm so passionate about understanding the different types of poverty. Okay? Here we talk about PrEP, preventing, reducing, and eliminating poverty. And this is basically what Community Action Council is going to do. Not just combat poverty, but we are going to prevent it, reduce it, and eliminate poverty. And that is our community plan. We're also going to ameliorate the conditions of poverty, meaning that we have to make things better for people who are living in poverty. The last thing on this particular side is the most important. It doesn't cost you anything at all. It's called exposure. And this is not, it's like FaceTime, except when, you know, you got your FaceTime on your phone and your iPad. This is FaceTime in reality when it comes to escaping poverty. And one of the things I talked about in this picture, you see a picture of LeBron at the Boys and Girls Club, who does tremendous work with children. And I commend LeBron and nothing against him. I think he's one of the greatest athletes in the world. But you think about the exposure he has on our children. And I was in a meeting with Reverend C.J. Akins the other day, Reverend Akins, and I was telling him about the exposure of LeBron James, and he said, wouldn't it be nice if LeBron James and Will James, the president and CEO of Toyota Manufacturing in Georgetown, both walked in the room at the same time to a group of youth. And when they walked out, the youth said, I would like to be like Will James. There's nothing wrong with being like LeBron James, but the likelihood and the opportunities to be a Will James is what our community needs. And I say that because I speak to youth a lot, a lot of children too, and I ask them where they want to be when they grow up. And they always say two things. I either want to be a professional athlete, basketball player, or I want to go into the music industry. The exposure which is needed from every business community and elected officials as well, is that you have to get out into the community and put a face time on your exposure so that that is the hidden jewel that will help our children escape poverty. It doesn't cost much at all. It's not about putting computers in classrooms, but putting your face and exposure out to the community. So we want to make sure we look at that in terms of exposure. And the next slide talks about impacting, how does poverty impact us. A lot of times we think the only people that poverty impacts are the people who are in poverty. That's not true. Actually, there are so many hidden costs, and what I'm trying to do is get people to see that. You know, when people are in poverty, you see the things that we talk about. We've been seeing a crime spree within our community lately, drug addiction. We're seeing that on the rise with heroin. You see, poverty creates more poverty. And then last, when we talk about the hidden costs, a lot of times we think we can shield ourselves and move away from poverty, meaning we move to a different place. We put our children in private school. You can never escape poverty because if you own property, it deteriorates. if things aren't being taken care of in the community. Then there's court cases, there are prisons, health care, when people don't have insurance. You know who pays for that, right? Your car insurance is based on in terms of where you live and your zip codes because people who can't afford insurance are risk. So your insurance rates can go up as well. So there's so many other things other than just property laws and things of that nature. But the hidden costs are tremendous that we all should take a stake in and say, we want to reduce our own costs when it comes to being a taxpayer. The other part is toxic charity versus transformative charity. This is what Community Action Council is going to switch from. And it's not that our intentions have been well, and the thing about toxic charity is it usually talks about where we're not leaving in sustainability at the door when we go. We are just addressing crisis situations over and over and over. And what that does is you don't realize the unintended consequence versus building. You know, you're doing things because your heart says do them. It feels good to give out food baskets. It feels good to do toys for tots. It feels good to go in and just fix things and do community gardens. But when you think about it, when you left, did you leave any sustainability? Did you leave anything that when that person, when you walk in the door, they can say, I now have the skills and the resources to continue this? If not, think about what we were doing. It could be toxic in the sense that you weren't aware of the unintended consequences. You didn't fix anything. So I caution people and caution nonprofits as well as our own nonprofit, Community Action Council, that we will switch from doing those unintended consequence type actions and move to more transformative things that build economic security. And once again, as I said before, there's an internal investment. I believe that people have a stake in terms of making sure they're healthy, their education, job skills. So there has to be internal investments to escape poverty. Community investments, we need to invest in our communities and do that exposure. And then advocacy, as I mentioned before, there are some things where you just have to fight the barriers that are preventing people who are prepared to get that job or who are prepared to buy a home, but yet there are still roadblocks that prevent that from happening. I'm going to go very briefly on these. We know that poverty and crime have an intimate relationship, and I'm not going to speak too much on this story, But Tiana Ricks was a six-year-old girl in California who was gunned down by a 21-year-old while she was with her father at a house where they were celebrating a relative going to college. Just imagine that. She's at a celebration for something good, and she's gunned down due to violence. And so we see these things in our community, but all these things are connected to poverty and crime, and they have a very intimate relationship that we have to continue to talk about and invest in. Immigration. With Community Action Council, we're going to continue to be advocates to focus on the lack of documentation and to go through a path of citizenship with dignity. And oftentimes I do want to say that a lot of times we hear African Americans and Hispanics battling over scarce resources. And the truth be told, I think, is that a lot of times we say as African Americans that it's not comparable to civil rights. Well, it's not comparable to civil rights in regards to the physical horrors and murders at that time, But there is a similarity in terms of the morality that was done at that particular time and what we see now. So we must continue to build that bond and relationship and continue to fight for immigration reform. And that's something you'll see community action on all fronts continue to do due to the connection of poverty. Those who don't have documentation will remain in poverty. And this is basically when you talk about children graduating who were not born in the United States, but they came here maybe when they were a baby. We have some kids right now who are straight-A students in terms of immigration, straight-A students, and will not be able to go to college when they graduate. Those folks could contribute to our tax base and to our economy and be good citizens. So I think that everyone has a right to chase their dreams, and everyone deserves the opportunity to have a dream. You see a buffet, and once again, I've had a lot of food stuff over here, so I apologize if people are starving. But you see the picture of the buffet, and basically what I'm saying is that we have so many choices. when it comes to solutions to escaping poverty and creating a livable community. And they're there. We just need to start picking them and do intentional and purposeful acts to create a livable community. And so once again, our promise as community action is we change people's lives. But the most important piece of here is we see the spirit of hope. And that's where we take hope and connect it and bridge it with help. And that continues to make America a better place to live. And lastly, if you see the last sentence, it talks about helping people help themselves and each other. Community Action Council is not a handout or entitlement organization. It's in our promise that was here from our foundation. We believe in helping people help each other. So I think we have to talk about that more, be more visible when we say we're not just handing out money. We need to talk about why we do that and the reasons for that. And so you'll see that. So we just ask that each person create their own poverty promise. What are you going to do and continually, purposefully invest in our organization and invest in the community as well. So thank you guys for your time. I appreciate it Councilmember Ford and the other council members for inviting me today And stand before you I appreciate it Thank you, Mr. Ashford for for your report. We're going to open the floor up To committee members if they may have questions or comments from Mr. Ashford First up we have Councilmember Kay Thank you chair. Thank you for being here today and Congratulations on your new position. It's a very important one for our community I would like if you would be willing to share with us a little bit more I know we you had to think about 15 minutes as a presentation can you tell us a little more about your your background how you got to where you are yes yes yes well the the one thing that people don't know is that I was actually I've been with community action for 17 years and people don't usually know that they thought I just got the job today but I started out in 1996 as a frontline employee I used to an elementary teacher prior to that. And so I've been with Community Action and the network for 17 years, and basically strategically at that particular time accepted positions that would put me here today. And so my passion is deeply rooted in Community Action, and I just enjoy this opportunity, and I think it's one that is a change agent type opportunity, not for me, but more so to help our community. So I'm very appreciative of that opportunity. And then I had the opportunity as well to come behind Jack Birch, who I respect tremendously as a mentor and feel that he laid a great foundation. And now we're taking not a different direction, but a new direction with a different vision. Well, I appreciate that. And I do have some follow-up questions on that, basically that particular way of thinking about your work. Okay. You've mentioned a few ways in which you think the programs or the allocation of resources need to be changed. Can you, and I don't want to put you on the spot. No, that's okay. Can you talk a little more about kind of what that really might mean in detail? Yeah, for example, we have about 43 programs, and I could probably divide them up and say some are what we call safety net programs, meaning we address an emergency or survival needs. Someone needs, you know, heat during the winter. Someone needs food. someone needs shelter, clothing. We do those type of programs, and those are great. In fact, you're going to have to keep doing those things because we know how people fall on hard times. But the issue is that you can't stay there with that family. I have data that shows that we've served families for 10 or more years for emergency situations. So you must consider what target do you need to do next, meaning how do you get them to economic security and do long-term things, such as programs that build on financial fitness, programs that build on job skills, economic development-type programs. And we have those as well. One of the primers is our youth program, LEAP, where you are investing early, helping people get their GEDs, which is a long-term sustainable activity that leads to something else. It's a tool, but it's not the end, but it's a start. So we have to switch over to more programs that are building long-term sustainability. And we'll continue to do the safety gap, but I would love to see that translate right over to long-term programs. Okay, and if I can, one more question. Again, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but you can talk a little bit about the data that you gather and numbers served as opposed to impact on property. Do you have some notions about how to measure outcomes other than the numbers served? Yeah. The good thing is we actually have the software and database system to track that. It's just we haven't used the information. Everyone we serve, the 30,000 folks I mentioned, it tells you what their income is. It tells you that if they come in today and they come in two months from now, it'll say their income is such. Well, you've got to use that information and say let's redirect our activities and do more family-focused approaches with families. And what we're doing so far right now is more of an intake. and you think of a manufacturing system where we're just getting them in and out, getting them in and out. And I understand that, so we're going to have to reorganize our structure as far as our staffing and say that some folks may do those intake-type things that lead to a crisis being resolved, but your other staff in the bulk should be listed in terms of being able to move families and work one-on-one with families. So it's going to require some shifting in personnel, but also just a new approach to how do we address prevention, reduction and elimination of poverty and you have to assign people to those things it's sort of advanced version of case management if I will okay thank you for explaining further thank you for being here today and I guess just from my perspective a comment the Community Action Council has been an extremely important partner with the city and in and of itself has provides exceptionally important services to our community. So I look forward to kind of working further with you and the agency and continuing to provide good services for the community. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Kaye. Next, we have Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Hi, Malcolm. Welcome today. How's it going? Good. I'm glad to see you and congratulate you on the position. I was a part of the board, and so I'm really excited about your leadership and the future of community action. under your leadership. You mentioned 43 different programs, which is a lot for any one organization to manage. Have you considered reducing that and focusing more on your priorities that you mentioned of poverty? Yes, it's one of the things we look at and we're in the process of figuring out. Sometimes with community action agencies, we do things that are so good to our heart, but they are not productive as far as sustainability or even high profitability as well. And I think we're in the process of finding out what things that we not do that well, and there are other people, nonprofits in this community who are doing exceptionally well. We have to seek those folks out, which we do now in a sense, but we haven't really given away and say we don't have to be the fiscal agent of this particular program. You could be the fiscal agent of the program. Just my philosophy is not one of soaking in all the dollars, I'm going to be honest with you. And people say, well, why do you say that? Because to me, those things will come if you're having good outcomes and specializing in what you need to do. And it may take a reshift in terms of what we're doing as an organization, but that's just what I believe. And we're establishing some current partnerships with folks that I think are fruitful in regards to we may not do that as well. And so we don't have to do everything. And I think in the past, we've kind of taken everything that existed and we did it. And maybe not done it that well, but we kept on to it, held on to it. And we want to just not do that right now, just do what works best for our organization. That's great. I applaud. I mean, it takes a lot of courage, I think, on your part, following someone who led the organization for 30-plus years and making the changes that you're making and some of the statements that you've made. So I just commend you for that and for your vision, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the transformation of Community Action. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next, we have Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Razor, thank you for coming today. Congratulations. Thank you. I'm glad that you got this position. And I want to say Jack did a great job, and you've got big shoes to fill, but I love your vision and everything you had in this PowerPoint presentation. And so much of what you said today speaks to what I've been trying to do since I've been on the council, as far back as chairing the Partner Agency Oversight Committee. and you've talked about outcomes, you've talked about structural and environmental boundaries and how to deal with those things. You've talked about the community plan, the various different things, the toxic charity as opposed to transforming charity. And that to me is huge. When you talk about the database that you have and the information that you have in terms of maybe paying someone's heat for 10 years, a few years ago I was talking to Jack about how do we shift that from paying for the utility bill every year to insulating the house so that we're not paying the utility bill anymore and moving on to the next family that needs help. And we both have some ideas for doing that. It's going to be tough to get it done, I think. But I love your vision. I really do. And I look forward to working with you. There's so much more I could say. I look forward to getting together with you and really working on a lot of things that you're talking about here. I do have one question for you, and this might really be putting you on the spot. When you talk about education and the barriers with education, where do you or your organization however you want to answer line up when it comes to parental choice i can hear the parental choice and as far as like vouchers having a choice to go where you want to go the reason i use the term parental choice is because i think it's a lot bigger than just vouchers vouchers is the simple solution okay take the money and run and go over here but the parental choice leaves a lot more options to do a lot more things be a lot more creative. I think what we're seeing, we see some great examples of schools that have been created, Carghee Woodson Academy, for example, that are showing tremendous results. And you think about if everybody, if every parent had the choice to do that. I think overall, though, we want to focus on just, you know, resources to where it doesn't matter what your local tax base is in those communities. Because we have schools that are, you know, hand in hand near each other, but yet they differ as far as outcomes and resources. And that's because of the communities. one is rich, one is low income, and they may vary on that. To me, that's where, you know, we talk about advocacy for community action. We stand to level that playing field so that that is not the case. So it doesn't matter where I live that the choice for any school I choose should be the same, and so that our low-income schools don't have teachers with less experience, which if you look at the research, not just here, but nationally, high poverty schools, teachers have less experience, less advanced degrees, and to me those are things that we will, there's a structural barrier that community action, Council will continue to fight so that the choice be simple that I just want to live in a livable community that has that not that I have to choose one side of town or the other or be bused to one side of town or the other or that the choices are good and bad we should work on education as a whole and so that the choice is simple and all places are livable right and and that's why I mentioned two of the things you talked about with structural environmental depending on how you look at the situation, whether you view it as structural or environmental. If it's environmental, we can say, well, they live in this neighborhood, and that's why the outcomes are what they are. If you look at structural, you can say that same thing, but look at it from a very different perspective with a very different outcome in mind. And I think the investment in those communities is going to be tremendous. I mean, all we're asking for is people, if you are part of any business, go out and talk to the children and the youth, because when you talk about paying and now versus paying later, show them what you do. I mean, you would stay on them so that when they get to the 12th grade, there may be a possibility for an internship. These are just concrete, simple things that don't cost. We're not asking you to give them a check or anything. Just show up and tell them how you do what you do. If it's an accounting firm, talk to the kids from when they're this age and tell them what they do so that when they graduate, you may be able to hire that person. You don't have to go across the state or across the country to find people. You can build that right here through just FaceTime and real exposure. Sure. And that brings me in closing because my time's almost out. The Summer Youth Employment Program that we've had a vision for changing speaks to what you're talking about there, too. And then there's one other thing you said, but I just look forward to getting together with you and seeing what we can do. I do as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. I just have a few comments before we close up. I want to echo again the committee's appreciation for you being here and good luck in your new role. Let me ask just a few questions. I know that we're fortunate that Fayette County is somewhat the hub base of community action, but you guys serve a greater region. Yes. If you could tell us a little bit about where our residents may recognize some of your service locations. Okay. In lay terms, what services do you guys provide and then also the larger context of your service region? Okay, well, we're in Harrison, Bourbon, and Nicholas in Scott County. Now, for Scott County, we are only there as a Head Start operation. And then, of course, Nicholas in Bourbon and Harrison County as well. But in Fayette County, what we try to do is divide out into what we call catchment areas. And we divided that in terms of north end of town, south end of town, and west end and east end. And we tried to make sure that we moved from being centralized years ago to being decentralized, meaning the access you have to be in the community and that's where you'll find us in many of the areas that are considered low income based on census tract data. You'll see those zip codes. That's where we are. So pretty much any place in Lexington and Fayette County you can find us. We're in the heart of the rural areas when it comes to Harrison, Bourbon and Nicholas Counties. We're right there and the services, it ranges as you mentioned before to energy conservation which is how we look at the utility assistance thing. It's not just paying a utility bill. It frees up cash, but we also do education for that. Then you have the child development. We're one of the largest early childhood providers in the state. And then you just have our case management, which relates to family development. We do youth programming. The gamut just goes on and on in terms of the 43 programs. So we'll continue to do youth and seniors. I forgot about our senior programs we do with the foster grandparent and RICP. These things have tremendous impacts on our community. And so we do a number of services and just financial fitness. It's just the visibility and awareness, I think, is what's needed from our organization. And also to show that you've got people out of poverty is our number one thing. Well, again, I think it's important. I know that the agency has been around quite a while. We want folks to know that they can count on Community Action Council as being a resource close to home in their neighborhoods. I'm going to come back to Council Member Myers. You're fine. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just real quick. One of the things we talked about doing before, you know, there's a repair affair that the Home Builders Association does. And they put money into that pot, and they go out and fix elderly citizens' homes and things like that. Can we get together and work on how we don't have to reinvent the wheel but use their model and maybe even use them as part of the contracting group? Yes. to instead of just doing, because I think the city puts in some money for the heating program as well, utilities do that as well, let's see if we can pull all that money together and look at how we might be able to do some repair fare type things on some of these homes rather than just doing the utility payments. Yes, I would like that, Council Member Maris, because just this past Saturday I was doing winter blitz, and I do that every year, and I was at a home, a trailer, and actually I could put my hand through the window to the outside on several windows. That alone, you know, she said she didn't turn the heat on because of the bill. Of course, it would be extremely high if you don't have any closure and you just have open to the elements and you could literally stick your hand from her inside window in her kitchen to the outside. And she had several windows like that just to repair things of minor weatherization, even if it's major. Those are things that will conserve energy, free up more cash for family, and it's just, to me, the right thing to do when it comes to making sure that community is livable. Just simple things of that nature. So I'd definitely love to expand on it and talk more about that. Okay, and then another thing quickly is you spoke about your database that you have, and I know when UK partnered with us to do the needs assessment, there was conversation about that database and all the data that you have. And is there maybe an opportunity to bring some of that information into what they're doing and continued work as we partner with them moving forward? Yes, definitely. Definitely. We can do that. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Myers. We know that Mr. Rastrup's time is valuable. Again, we want to thank you for coming today. And please convey not only and accept our congratulations to you personally, but also to your board, your team, staff members, and volunteers. And we definitely feel confident that we'll see you here in these chambers again sometime soon. All right. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member, next on our agenda is an item that was just recently referred to our committee but it is not an item that is new to our discussion as a council and it is the Child Care Assistance Program reductions in our community. I'm going to ask Ms. Joanna Rhodes if she will come. Joanna is our Director of Division of Family Services and I know that I want to recognize that Council Member Myers' leadership actually brought this issue to the council earlier this calendar year. And so we'll definitely look for some comments from you, Council Member Myers, in just a few minutes. So, Joanna. Thank you. And Family Services is also known as the Family Care Center. And you all already know that we have many services for families in Lexington, one of which is an early child care program. so this subject is very close to us and very dear to our hearts. I want to thank you for putting this on the agenda. This is a very important subject with some real consequences to our community. As you know, these cuts that were announced about the Child Care Assistance Program and were announced in January by the cabinet, at that point they announced that those cuts would occur in April and then again in July. So we're now well into the effects of those, so to speak. The Family Care Center is one of just many providers in Lexington who are starting to hear family stories about how difficult this has been. As they are losing their contracts with child care assistants, they are being forced to make some very difficult decisions. we believe that those decisions can have detrimental effects on their children. Soon after the cuts were announced in January, Council passed, as you know, the resolution in January that I think did a good job of outlining some of the negative potential consequences of these cuts, including job loss, increased obstacles to higher education attainment, increased burden on various assistance programs, and perhaps most importantly, reduced access to quality early child care and education. These are very real consequences. We're only starting to see these unfold in our city. So as a representative of Family Services, I'm here to say we all need to really understand this and perhaps prepare for the impact of these cuts on Lexington's families. And I am grateful to Bradley Stevenson, who is the executive director of the Child Care Council, for being here today, who will talk a lot more about this. And he's much more of an expert on child care cuts, the history, and the impact than I am. So with your permission, I'd like to turn it over to Bradley Stevenson. That would be fine. Welcome, Bradley. He also has a one-page handout that was not included in the packet. Is that okay to bring up? Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Joanna. Thank you, Councilmember Ford and other committee members. I met with Joanna multiple times, and Councilmember Ford and actually Malcolm, to talk through what the child care assistance cuts actually mean for Fayette County specifically. And we got into much more of a conversation from a statewide perspective. But Joanna asked if I would come and present just some facts today in regards to how families and providers are being affected by the cuts. Just a brief history of our agency and myself. Our agency's actually been in Lexington for 30 years this coming year, and it's amazing how many folks don't know still about our agency unless they have a need related to child care. So we're getting ready to celebrate 30 years. We have managed parts of the Child Care Assistance Program for the state of Kentucky since 1997, and recently, as of July of 2012, actually managed the program for the entire state of Kentucky. So we have staff throughout all 120 counties, and our management is done here locally in Fayette County right over off Newtown Pike. We have approximately 200 staff that work this program throughout Kentucky, and that's everything from eligibility intake to processing claims to processing billing and all the administrative duties that are required for the program. So I'm so thankful to be here to give you some understanding, some clarity on the program and what the cuts actually mean. So let me move here. In an overview for the program, again, it's a statewide program that has various eligibility types for clients to come into the program and receive services. And the top four, protective and prevention, KTAP, Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program, children with special needs requiring specialized care and teen parents, those are what we consider priority groups. At least that's what the cabinet considers to be priority groups. And then the bottom fifth eligibility there is what we call the working parent income eligible, and that's working and or going to school. There are income requirements that are related to that eligibility, and that's the eligibility that's being affected most. And we're going to talk briefly here in a moment about the impact that those are having. Just for clarity's sake, monthly payments are actually made to child care facilities that provide the service after the fact. I think there's been some confusion throughout our state that there's a check or a voucher that goes to a parent, and then the parent actually reimburses for that service. It is not that way. The payment is actually billed at the provider level to our agency, and we actually process the payment, and the cabinet makes payment directly to the child care facility. So here, Joanna briefly mentioned some changes that have taken place to the program, and here are the two major primary changes that began April 1st of this year. And as of April 1st, we were, per the cabinet, not to take any new applications around working families. Those are families that are required to work a minimum of 20 hours a week, and they could also have a school component in there as well. So as of April 1st, we stopped doing all intake and received no new applications except for those priority groups that I mentioned here, which are Protection and Prevention, KTAP, Special Needs, and Teen Parents. We are still taking applications through a referral process. It's an authorization process that puts those clients onto, authorizes their care for the program. That is not the bigger of the two deals. The July the 1st impact is what we are currently dealing with and seeing the impact reality to families. And that is a reduction. The income guidelines have been reduced to 100% of federal poverty. And I should also note that it's reduced to 100% of federal poverty from a 2011 rate. So it's not even a 13 or 12 rate. It's a 2011 rate. Those guidelines, again, are set at the cabinet level. So this is what this means is a client that's currently on the program in Fayette County or anywhere throughout Kentucky. They come into the program at 150% of poverty. We allow 15% variance up for the family to get an increase in their pay, increase their hours, whatever that might be. So when they come back to us 12 months later, that we allow for some room for growth. Because what we're trying to do is get them off of this program into sustainable employment, that they can pay their own child care costs, pay their own rent, et cetera. So we allow 15%. So what has happened is that client that before could come back and redetermine, that's an internal where that we use redetermine their case at 165%, now has to do it at 100% of poverty. So here's what that means for families. Household size, you can see maximum gross of 100% as it compares to 165%. Family of two, it's $800 a month. That's $9,600 approximately a year, and all the way up to a family of seven, the difference being $1,832 per month. So the single mother that before had one child and could make approximately $23,000, $25,000 a year is now limited to making only $14,000, $15,000 a year and being eligible. So what's happening is clients that come back for their annual redetermination, almost all of them, almost all of them are having to make a choice because they're not eligible. They're having to make a choice whether to reduce their hours, which reduces their wages, or just quit work. And that's a bad choice for parents. Neither one of those are good for parents. But that's the reality of where things stand today for families as they come back into our office. Those are awful conversations for us to have with families from a frontline staff perspective. So we are seeing more and more and more reduction. And I've got some real numbers here for you. I compared June because that at the end of June, that gives us a marker for starting the new fiscal year. In Fayette County, there were 2,276 clients on the program. As of October or the end of October, there's 1,751, so 525 families. That's not kids. That's families. It's approximately 800 kids that were receiving the services before and are not receiving it now. We do not collect data on what that parent does when they make a choice to either quit work or pull their child out and send them to unregulated, low-quality type of care. But what we do know is 525 mothers and fathers have had to make some choice, and it's a drastic choice for their family just in Fayette County. Across the state, that number is approximately 4,000 families that have been affected by these cuts. So Malcolm used the jail as a representation of trying to make his point. And I'll use the same thing here. At third grade, we determine the number of jail cells to build in our country based on data that we receive, that we collect at the local school level. And we're building more and more and more jail cells because we know that the education at that point that children are getting, they're not above the level where they need to be. And this, in five years, ten years, the impact from this is going to be great because children are going to be, families are going to be forced to make a choice to quit their job or put their child into a completely non-regulated, low-quality environment. So we, as the administers of this program throughout the state of Kentucky, I will have to say that the cabinet has been very open. We have a great relationship with our cabinet. So this is information purposes only, and it's not anything negative against the cabinet. They're open to trying to work through some solutions. And we're working with them on some other ways that we could save costs, cut costs, and not have this type of impact on families. So I will entertain any questions that you might have as they relate specific to eligibility or staffing or whatever it might be. I'd be glad to answer those. Okay. Your time is fine. Mr. Stevenson, thank you so much for your... I'm certain there will be questions from the committee. First, we'll have Council Member Myers, again, who led this effort on behalf of the council back earlier this calendar year. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for coming today, and thank you for bringing this information. Before we get into what you've already talked about, could you also speak to Kinship Care and the changes that were made in that program? Yeah, well, we don't administer Kinship Care. But as part of the savings at the Cabinet, the $87 million, I think the number, it does involve Kinship Care as well. It's a completely different program. It used to be an eligibility, actually, with child care assistance, and they pulled that to fund it in a different way. So I am not, I would not be able to speak to that. So sorry. Okay. Well, let me say this. And if there's anybody here that can speak to it better with numbers than I can, please do. But the issue with the kinship care is if you take a child, if you take the subsidy away from, usually it's a grandparent who's caring for a grandchild. If you take that money away from them, and they're already on a fixed income, they can't do it. And so the net result is those children will probably end up in the foster care system. Now, the state government may like that because the foster care system is a federally funded program, and so it moves the funding issue from them to somebody else. But the outcomes in putting a child out of a family, which is the cabinet's first goal, is to place the child with family members. To take them out of that family by ending that subsidy and putting them to the foster care system is the absolute worst thing we can do. And anybody can look at the statistics and the outcomes of children who go through foster care as opposed to a child who stays in a family. It's astronomically different. And there's a whole other issue of kids who age out of foster care and those negative impacts. And so I don't want that to be lost on this. But if you could go back to, on this sheet that you handed out, the third fact. You know, if you guys recall, back when the Housing Authority started to relocate residents out of the apartments on Center Parkway, the Pemocle Apartments, one of the big issues that we talked about was, you know, what are we going to do to help them when those apartments are redone? And there's this thing that's in the housing with HUD, and I'm told it's changed a little bit, but it used to be that you had to be on a self-sufficiency plan, which meant you had to be in school for a certain number of hours or you had to be working a certain number of hours. If you look at that model, which was, I think, a great model, because, again, when you go back to what Mr. Ratchford said about sustainability and changing things as we do things, This goes back to the opposite of that. If you take a family of two that could make up to $23,000 a year when you look at the 165% of the poverty level, down to $14,712 a year, you're doing the exact opposite of what everybody else is trying to do to move families to sustainability. And so we've got to tell the governor and the legislature they've got to change their mind on this. If they need to find that savings, they've got to find it someplace else because, in fact, this is not going to be a savings. It's going to cost the taxpayers and our community a lot more in the long run than what this is going to save. And, you know, I think back right when this was going on, the governor was out on location doing a press conference at the grand opening of a corporate headquarters here in town. And I wanted so bad to ask him because they talked about how this is the future moving forward and corporate headquarters coming here. Ten years down the road, because of the decision he made to cut this funding, would that company locate his corporate headquarters here? Because the workforce that we're going to have ten years from now as a result of this action is not going to be what this state wants. And so everybody out there listening has to get involved in this issue because anybody who has a job, anybody who wants a job, anybody who wants to create jobs, it all starts with our youth being educated and being able to perform certain tasks so they can have that job. It all starts with educating our kids here at home so that they go to university, hopefully here at our universities here in Lexington or in Kentucky. But no matter where they go, we want to provide opportunities for them to come back here and raise their families and work and be prosperous. and prosper. So I commend you guys for the work you're doing. Thank you for coming and helping clarify to everybody listening what the crisis is and what the impact is going to be in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Council Member, the floor is still open for questions or discussion. Again, I want to thank Bradley for coming. I just wanted to very quickly make a comment and thank Malcolm, Joanna, and Bradley for allowing me to meet with them recently and for my intent on bringing this forth to committee. Again, this is a state funding issue that we've identified earlier this last calendar year, and we know that the governor's office and the general assembly are preparing for a long session in 2014 to address the budget. And we hope and we have some sense that this is an issue that is on their mind as we speak. However, I think it is imperative and incumbent upon us at the local level to understand the graphs that these cuts have had and are having here in Fayette County. And I also think this gives us an opportunity to come up with local solutions to how we can address these. And I'm not, I don't have any preconceived notions of what those solutions may be, but I think that there are some local things that we can do here to help Fayette counties, and it may also provide some leadership to the state. So I'll have some other comments later. I want to turn the floor back over to questions from the committee. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Chair. I think one of the first things we need to do is to send a resolution to Frankfort that the whole council and the mayor will sign supporting the changes. Because what we're encouraging people to, as you alluded to, is not to work. And this system should be built on getting people back to work and encouraging that and helping those who do, not those who don't. Sure. But those who do, we need to encourage that more. And I don't know if, Councilman Myers, were you going to bring a resolution to the council so we can? Yeah, I think we've done that once, but I think it's an opportunity to do that again, yes. And then our CAO, I know you're here, Sally, but if we can make this part of our legislative agenda in Frankfurt in January as one of our issues, I know we have many we're going to put on that agenda, but this to me is one of the most serious things we've ever faced in our city in terms of our youth and kids. Because that's where the problem, as you alluded to, starts. If we're not providing good child care and assistance and getting children into programs that are instructive and help them better themselves, what we heard earlier will make a difference. We've got to do it with our kids. So if we can bring that in, Councilman Myers, it would be great. Thank you, Councilmember Ford, for bringing this forward. Okay. Thank you, Councilmember Stenning. I'll bring forth my questions now. Some of the issues I see, and Bradley, if you can talk on them, or if Councilmembers want to talk on them, is early childhood development. What impact does this have? What correlation do we have between early childhood development and child care? I believe some folks will not make the correlation between how important early childhood development is while those children are at the child care facility. Workforce development. Again, if parents are having to make the tough choices between foregoing schooling and job training, that is very problematic. The next meeting that we'll have after this meeting is our budget committee meeting, and we're going to want to hear about payroll withholdings, which is the bread and butter revenue-wise of this government. And if parents aren't working, that doesn't benefit the services that we can provide them and their families. And the last but not least, but probably the more important one, is the safety and well-being of children. I cringe to think of it, but we probably know it's a reality that parents who no longer have the assistance of child care assistance subsidy, but who have to work and have to go to school, those children have to go somewhere. And perhaps they're not going to the safest of environments. And so those are some things that we have to consider. And then I will say to the resolution that Council Member Myers brought forth is it was a very proactive move on behalf of this government to send this information down to Frankfurt. I don't think we've had a response formally, but again, with all the media and all the advocacy that's going on, I think that our leadership has been recognized. To play devil's advocate, I would ask, what is it that we can do here locally? I think that we have definitely not the level of resource that state government has from Pipefield to Paducah, But we have some policy and some budgetary options at our disposal. And I think that coupled with another resolution, if one goes down, I don't think we're at a time of sending messages. I think we're at a time of providing some resources and some relief to some families and children that are hurting here in Fayette County. I don't know what that can be right now, but I really think that we need to see what we can do here locally. The first step that I think we would want to do is to get a better understanding of the impact that this is having economically on our community. Brad, what are your thoughts about if that was our interest as a local government, to get an understanding of how these cuts economically, with all the factors that I just aforementioned are having here locally? Yeah, we collect a lot of data on the clients that we serve. The challenge becomes we don't own the data. It's owned by the state and that system. So the challenge would be being able to provide that in some meaningful type of manner so it could be analyzed in a real dollar amount put to the parent that was working last week at 40 hours times X amount of dollars times our formula times X amount of parents and then apply some tax-based percentage to that. We could certainly have that conversation and figure out from our perspective what we can provide to you and what we can't. We could generalize and get some ballpark figure because there's only a range of per hour units that would make you eligible. So we could certainly work with you on getting that data to you legally and meaningful. Thank you for that help, Brad. I'll pose a question to the committee, and I'll ask for some guidance here. Do we see value in, and I didn't even, Brad didn't even talk about how time-consuming that that would be. Right. on your A to CR, a coalition of resources that could help us. But before we go there, I would ask the committee is that do we see any value in getting our hands around an economic analysis of kind of in the interim what these changes have meant and perhaps what they can mean? Let's talk about that first as a starter. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to thank you for your leadership on this. When we jumped out in front of this last time, it was a reaction to what we read in the newspaper, and it was happening. And there wasn't time to do anything except kind of put the word out that this is what they're trying to do and try to get in front of them and persuade them to do something differently. You've brought this back up again, and under your leadership, I think that it is a great opportunity for us to get a handle of the data and see what we can put together to show the real economic impact. And maybe a part of that is we put that into the resolution to not only do what we can do at a local level, but I'm thinking as part of our resolution, maybe we put in there that we request the LRC use the state's total database to analyze that data to try to ascertain what the impact is statewide. Now, I don't know how quickly they'll want to do that based on – because I think we have to ask the legislature to ask them to do that. I'm not sure we can go directly to them and get that done, but I think that's something else we ought to look at. But absolutely, I think that all that we can do to understand the impact on Lexington and Fayette County is a great thing to do, and then we can use that information to inform the state as to how this is impacting the rest of the state. If I might add one thing that we've kind of, I should have mentioned earlier, we've got YMCA folks here that represent a large child care presence in Fayette County, and obviously Family Care Center, there's an impact there as well because there are facilities that are closing. So not only do you have the client that's no longer working, but based on supply and demand issues, and there's no longer the demand, facilities are closing their doors. So you also have this portion of taxpaying citizens that are going away as well as a result of businesses having to close their doors. Fayette County has closed five facilities since the cuts were implemented. Now, I can't say that all five of them were a direct result of child care assistance cuts and reduced reimbursements, but it's not coincidental that five facilities have closed their doors. So it's a whole different layer there of workers that are no longer paying taxes. if i could follow up on that um i've talked to several pastors that have talked about their child care facilities at their churches were going to be closed and are closing and heard some anecdotal data about an employee who works for the child care program who has their child in the program they lose the subsidy now they've got to make a choice like you said can i keep working but then also that particular daycare did close because the tenants went down and so now she's lost the subsidy, but she's also lost her job. Right. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Brad, let me ask this question, an open question. How much work would be involved if we were to pursue an impact study of this sort? And I ask that because I do believe it would be very valuable to us for the data alone. It will strengthen any position that we would be able to take legislatively, anything that we want to do here locally and seeking the assistance of the state. It's just good for us to have that to know. My only concern with that, and I don't say this in haste, is that families are being impacted every day. Right. by this. And unfortunately, it's not something we're going to solve overnight, but urgency is important. Just how do you envision, if we took that route, how vast a challenge and task would that be, duration and perhaps cost-wise, energy-wise? It's a very time-consuming, lengthy process when you start analyzing those type of things. And for us, I'm not exactly sure what the request would be. So it would all depend on what the requests look like and whether we could pull that locally, whether we had to go get permission at another level. So it's tough to answer that, give you a real clear answer. But I do know Louisville did an economic impact study as it related to child care about 10 years ago. Very good study, and it took them a very long time. So, you know, you're talking a year down the road that you really get your study done, and lots of families are going to be off the program, and we've missed an opportunity. So although I love the idea, I think for future prevention, if nothing else, and for some strategic planning locally, it would be a very good tool to have. But I'm not, it would depend on what your request would look like. Right. And I agree. And I'm not, I agree with you. Here's the, for a long-term policy, it would be advantageous because funding governmental across fed, state, local, there's never going to be enough money. And budgets will continue to be tight for the foreseeable future. But if we had such data and an analysis, it may help better inform policymakers, such as ourselves locally and those at the state, in their consideration when they consider other tough cuts to make. I continue that this is one of those cuts that we can't afford to make. What I would like to do, if there are no other council members, to allow us to go to the next agenda item, if I could do so, I would make a motion to ask our Department of Social Services to begin the process of preparing us to pursue an economic impact analysis around this issue of child care reductions. It's been seconded by Council Member Myers. Is there a discussion to the motion? And just to clarify the motion, it just basically gives directives to Beth and her staff to come back to the committee and to advise us of what it would take to go forward on that track. It doesn't authorize it to begin. It just gives us more information. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Motion opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Joanna. Thank you, Brad, for coming. We look forward to keeping this issue in committee. Thank you so much. Committee members, now we have on our agenda item number four, the social service needs assessment. This is an issue that has been in committee quite a while and a lot of work has been done. I'll bring up Craig Benz for the Department of Social Services on behalf of Commissioner Mills. Good afternoon. So a couple of months ago, the U.K. College of Social Work and the Martin School presented their findings to you that preceded this study, and essentially this study encompasses all that information that they presented. It's unchanged from what you heard two months ago. This was a three-semester effort, again led by UK's College of Social Work and the Martin School in identifying our community needs. And really, to make a very long story short, the result was that for the next partner agency funding cycle, we have four areas of emphasis that are going to receive three points onto their final score per the discussion we had in the last committee meeting. and those areas of emphasis are in table one of your report. That's on page 10, and that's entitled agreement that the barrier is a significant reason residents seek services. Those barriers that we're proposing that three points be received for are the high cost of child care services, which really speaks to your last agenda item this afternoon, and I suspect that's why it ended up being so highly ranked. Lack of access to mental health services, lack of marketable job skills, and I would suspect that that would probably be engaged in the youth services part of the applications. And finally, substance abuse on the part of the client or family member. The lack of safe and affordable housing was also an issue on there, but we see that as a parallel track that's being addressed. so that would not be we typically wouldn't receive partner agency applications for social services that would address that item so we weren't proposing the three-point bonus for that because it wouldn't fit into any of those existing categories so those are the four categories that would receive the three-point bonus in the fiscal year 15 application cycle so the big question is next steps what do we do with the report once we have it and we have a couple of options with that we ended up with a pretty comprehensive survey as a result of this report so one of our options is to allow the study to stand on its own and every three or four or five years do another community survey and see how things are changing and adjust our point bonuses if we if we choose to continue on with that methodology we would adjust them based on that that survey we would reevaluate and resurvey. The other option, of course, and frankly both of these could be done, it's not one or the other, we could further study or develop strategies for addressing each of the identified priorities that I just presented, those four need areas, and that could be adjusted as well as we move forward. So with that, I'd like to open it up to any questions. Thank you, Craig. Councilmember Kaye. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Craig, for coming back and presenting this. Can you repeat what you said? I'm not sure I understood the rationale for not including safe, affordable housing as a part of the emphasis or high priority? Well, the safe and affordable housing, right now we have under our six priority areas for social services needs that we address for partner agency funding. affordable housing isn't one of those needs that we address. So we know that that's being addressed on a parallel track, that affordable housing is being looked at right now, but we wouldn't anticipate we would be receiving or funding infrastructure for affordable housing. So that was the rationale for that not being included in the three-point bonus because it wouldn't typically be an application we would receive. So, again, if I can, I want to be sure that I'm clear about this. So if an agency was interested in proposing a program consistent with what they already do that included an affordable housing component, that would not qualify for the additional points? As it's proposed, it would not, because, again, we wouldn't anticipate that affordable housing would be a need that would be addressed through the partner agency approval process, through our grant process. That's not one of our areas of emphasis right now that we receive applications on. This would not, it's important to mention, this does not preclude anyone from applying for any one of those need categories, those priority need categories that we had identified before, the services for seniors and the basic human needs and so on and so forth. This just provides a three-point bonus if they're addressing any of these four needs that were identified. Okay, one final question. Staying on the same issue, was there any discussion about the way, well, let me back up a half a step. So in the work that the Mayor's Commission on Homelessness did, we essentially drew kind of a line between many of the other issues and affordable housing. So, for example, the hardest line being between homelessness and the question of affordable housing and how those impact one another. And I guess I'm concerned that it seems that agencies that are interested in addressing that with new or innovative programs are not going to get the additional bonus that these other programs might get, even though this issue clearly rises to a level of significance in people's thinking about the needs that we have in the community. So is there a way to tell me what might be done about that? And that could be an action of this committee if you choose to, if an agency brings forth an application that has affordable housing as a component of a program that also hits one of our needs categories, it's possible that that could receive the bonus as well. that would be up to the discretion of the committee to add that. And help me understand, we are in the process. So the information about the way in which the application and the evaluation of those, that's already gone out for this year. Is that correct? Actually, we're having our pre-application meeting tomorrow at 4 o'clock at the Ferris Theater in the library, so we'll be presenting this information tomorrow. It hasn't gone out to the community yet. Okay. It seems like there's not an opportunity to really make an adjustment at this point, but I'll just kind of express my concern that this issue, which is of such significance in the community, is not reflected in the process this year, and I think that's something that needs to be addressed. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Kaye. Council members, are there any other questions in regards to the needs assessment? Craig, I just want to thank the department for your leadership. Just a follow-up. In regards to our partnership with the university, both the colleges of social work and the Martin School, have they concluded their work? They have. This concludes their three-semester study. We could choose to engage them for further work or study after we have a chance to digest this a bit more and identify next steps. But the study you have concludes their work that we had contract for. Great. I think that's pretty good. And then I have just one other question, and it pertains to what Council Member Kaye just mentioned. Give us a recap of the partner agency funding. My understanding was that the partner agency application forthcoming, fiscal year 2015, was it to or was it not to include the final product that is the needs assessment? Clarify that again for us. It does. So what we've done is we still have the major six categories, the major six need categories that programs can respond to. But what we're doing is this table one that really identified the barriers. This table one shows the barriers that had the strongest agreement in the community when the survey went out. So hundreds of agencies were surveyed and responded and identified these barriers. And the four that fit within the framework of our existing priorities have been included and will receive a three-point bonus if their programs respond to that. So in other words, if somebody applies for a program that addresses lack of access to mental health services, That already responds to one of our priority needs, mental health services. But because it's identified as well in this study, they would receive a three-point bonus on their final score. So if they ended up with an 85 after the committee review process, that three will be added to that, and they'll have an 88. We didn't want to add so many points to that, and I think there was discussion at the last committee meeting about this. We didn't want to add so many that only those applications that are responding to these four areas receive funding. So we wanted it to be enough points so that it would be a carrot and that it would bring some of those programs up and ensure some funding, but it doesn't preclude anybody from applying for any of those six categories. Okay. Thank you, Craig. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Chair. I want to speak again simply because I don't want to leave the impression that I'm unhappy with the results. I think that the U.K., that partnership, was very valuable. I think the outcome where there is some priority set is very valuable to the process. It's what we asked for, and we've gotten that. I would only add that I think we should continue to look at that set of issues and perhaps refine it even further. It may be that within that set of categories there were differentiations, which we would want to recognize. But I think we've heard pretty clearly that there are some priorities in the minds of the people who are the social service providers in the community. We want to reflect that as much as possible in our process. But I think we've made good steps forward, and I appreciate your work and their work on this. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Kaye. Council members are there any other discussion in regards to the needs assessment? Craig thank you for your efforts and Commissioner Mills as well and definitely to the students and the faculty at UK. We hope they've enjoyed this experience. We may have additional work for them here in the future if they're willing. Thanks so much. Thank you. The last working item on the agenda, Council Members, is the Manchester Bidwell Replication Project. This issue pertains to workforce development, and I just want to, before we get started, I want to ensure that the Council Member, the committee, is okay with this project being a part of our discussion for workforce development. At our last committee meeting, I alluded to and indicated that I was going to bring forth legislation as it pertains to a workforce development area. I've reconsidered. I think that it's best that we be prudent in wait to the findings of what happens out at the Bluegrass ad with this Workforce Investment Board being a component of it. I'm certain that the auditor's report will come back shortly. but I felt that the issue of workforce is so important that we need to continue to chop wood, so to speak, in our committee on this. This issue is not something new to Lexington, but I don't know if we've ever had a public introduction of this project. I think that this was brought up in 2010 before my time on council, and Council Members Scutchfield, Acres, and Clark were here, but it has continued to linger with interest. So without further ado, I would like to introduce Josh, pronounce your last name. Nazem. Josh Nazem, who's actually taken a leadership role on this. Josh, you'll have 15 minutes, if you will, to introduce us to this proposal. Welcome. And I have some information that wasn't included in the packet, if that's okay. He's got some information he wants to pass. Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you, Council Member Chris Ford, and thank you, everybody, for giving me this opportunity to present this to you today. I really appreciate it. It's also pretty cool because I was actually a part, I was one of those UK students that was a part of the needs assessment that was just presented, so it's really nice to get to see how that has turned out. So this is the Manchester Bidwell replication project. So just a brief overview of what I'm going to talk about today. So I'm going to do what is Manchester Bidwell. I'll talk about how it started in Lexington, some updates on the progress, a little bit about my story and why I'm involved in this, some of our next steps, and then a recap, and then time for questions. So if you're not familiar with it, this is what Manchester Bidwell is. Manchester Bidwell is a nonprofit center. It was founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1968. And with this center, there's two main components. There's a youth component, and with this youth component, it's a visual arts program for at-risk youth. So the youth come to the center, they get engaged in different arts programs, And the arts are used as a medium to try to engage the youth and inspire them and propel them towards tertiary education, if that's appropriate. But mainly just engage them and provide a safe place for them to go, whether that's after school or during school. And then the second component is the adult component. And this is the workforce development and job training component of the center. And with this, unemployed, underemployed, and displaced workers come, and they participate in job training programs. And with these programs, for example, in Pittsburgh, one of the main places is Heinz. So the adults come. They complete a rigorous training. It's free for the adults, and it's usually about a nine-month process. And after that, they complete the training, and then they get work directly for the companies as opposed to just getting a degree and casting them out and saying, good luck, go find a job. And the main theme of the center is that it's beautiful. There's art, there's flowers, there's sunlight, music. The whole idea is that when you grow up in poverty, everything around you is just the same message. It's that you're less than everybody else. You get secondhand everything. It's gray, dreary, broken. It's a miserable environment. And like I said, the main theme is that environment shapes people's lives. The idea is to try to put people in a world-class environment rather than giving them the leftovers of everything. And they'll start to aspire for more and they'll start to feel like world-class people. And they'll start to get their dignity back and work and try to overcome their barriers to self-sufficiency. And this is a picture of Manchester Bidwell in Pittsburgh. As you can see, it's truly gorgeous. The Frank Lloyd Wright student designed this, so this isn't usually something that you would expect to see as a poverty program. It looks like something that maybe very wealthy people would attend. So again, it's the idea that poor people deserve this kind of facility as well. And for those of you who don't know, Bill Strickland is the founder. This is a picture of him. And he's won pretty much every award known to man for his accomplishments here, some of them here. I'm not going to read all of them to you because, as you can see, there's a ton. I added a little animation to try to break up the monotony for you. So the Radov Shalom Pursuer Peace Award, Chuck Cooper Foundation, Chuck Cooper Award. There is a ton. A few that I wanted to highlight, one of them is the MacArthur Genius Award. As you may know, this is a very prestigious award, so this is something he won for his work in Pittsburgh with impoverished and indentured communities. In 2010, he was actually appointed to the White House Council for Community Solutions by President Obama. And just to appease any bipartisan concerns, he was also appointed by President Bush to other councils, so he has the whole bipartisan thing working on both parties. And the GOI Peace Award is another award that he won that was pretty significant. So Manchester Bidwell became so successful in Pittsburgh that they started replicating it across the country. And to date, here are the centers in operation. New Haven, Connecticut, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Michigan, San Francisco, and Cincinnati, Ohio. And then these are the cities that are in planning and implementation phase, which means they're getting ready to open their doors pretty soon. So you have Boston, Buffalo, Charlotte, and Brockway. And then here are the cities that are in the feasibility phase. There's a ton of them, but these are just a sample. Atlanta, Chicago, Sharon, St. Thomas, and Vancouver. And I actually prepared this a few months ago. So when I first presented this, there's been a lot of changes. Some cities have already moved to the next phases, so I had to update it recently. So Boston, Buffalo, and Brockway have now advanced, and they have actually opened a facility. So, like I said, Buffalo, Brockway, and Boston. And one of my concerns when I first started this was that in Lexington, we obviously don't have the amount of people that Pittsburgh or San Francisco has with our population. But just to kind of alleviate that concern, Grand Rapids has 188,000 people, which is about half of our size, and I actually drove out to Grand Rapids and met with their executive director and toured their facility and learned about how they made that happen in a smaller community. And then to top it off, Brockway is a little town in Pennsylvania, and their grand total is 2,182 people. So they pulled it off. So I always refer to this as my dream. It's everything I believe in, everything I've been working like crazy for the past year. So this is a little bit how it began. I was doing an internship at the health department under Mark Johnson and a co-worker, Bruce Mundy, actually mentioned Bill's book, How to Make the Impossible Possible. So I read it. I was very inspired. And I went home to see it. I went to check it out in Pittsburgh. And that's when I had the opportunity to actually meet Bill and talk to him about it and actually said that I'd like to do that. And so he gave me some information and told me how. I think he just kind of gave me some information to appease me, and then I told him, no, I'm going to try to do it. I don't think he believed me at first. And then throughout my work as a social work student, I realized that this could be not the total solution to every problem in Lexington, but a partial solution to some of the problems with both youth and adult. So this was some of the process on how it all got started. I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I learned as much as I could. Then I met with a replication liaison to figure out how to do this in Lexington. And I asked a ton of questions. So at first, it was very unorganized. I was just running around without any sort of ideas, no organization. It was very scattered, and I was pretty, I kind of cringe when I think about it, how I first went about this. And I was very nervous, as I am right now. And I had a ton of meetings. I just started meeting with anybody and anybody who would give me the opportunity to listen, just leaders in the community, politicians, anybody who would just give me the time to listen. And at the time, I was also doing my practicum here in the Department of Social Services, and so it was a great platform to just engage with people and learn about how this could provide some relief to some of the problems in Lexington. And like I said, I just had a ton of meetings, leaders of nonprofits, school officials, bank representatives, representatives, council members, Mayor Gray, superintendent, UK faculty, and I was also on the track team at UK, so I was very involved in the UK athletic department and met with a lot of them to discuss this. So eventually I started to realize that this dream could become a reality. It started to take shape. It started to be much less than an abstract thing. It started to take shape. And it made so much progress that Bill actually agreed to come speak. so I started raising money and I got books for everybody and this was the original flyer this actually back in May and uh some people in this this room were actually attended and originally the idea was to have 25 people uh people around the table and keep it small and figure out how we could make this happen but um by the time the event got here I think total at the Lyric Theater there was 212 people who attended so went from a little small thing to huge it was it was a great problem to have. And these are some of our sponsors for the event, Commerce Lexington, St. Joseph Hospital Foundation, LFUCG, the Health Equity Network, and the UK College of Social Work. And again, this was back in May 2013. So from there, I started to get a little more sophisticated. I got some business cards, I had more meetings. And so one of the concerns people talked about was the resources, and people talked about, you know, that's going to be tough to get, especially with, you know, the limited budget. So I wanted to see what I could do on my own, and I started a crowdfunding webpage. And if you're not familiar with crowdfunding, basically it's just you start a webpage and you start asking for money. You say what you're asking for. So I did that. And this is my crowdfunding webpage. And to date it's up to, I actually got a donation this morning, so it's up to $18,257. And this was just off of, like, raw hustle. And I collect aluminum cans, turn that in, you get about 1.9 cents a can. You can turn them in at Baker's. So just a lot of donations, $5, $10. I run some local races and get the proceeds and donate to that. So that's kind of how this got up to $18,000. And this is just another screenshot of the website. You can see people can donate and say whether they want it. They can keep it anonymous if they want. It just has a description of what it is. So this is great for donations if you know me and you trust me, but I wanted to get a little more sophisticated, so now we go through the Bluegrass Community Foundation. So I brought them all that money, put it on their desk, and said, here's the money. So they are our fiscal sponsor. Instead of developing our own 501c3 at this stage, it's a little too early, so they're the fiscal sponsor for this project until we get off the ground. so all donations to them are tax exempt as they are the 501c3. And then from this, we developed a steering committee, and this is a little bit of a structure. As you can see, some of the steering committee members are here today as well in the audience. So we have co-chairs, and we have different chairs, you know, the art, education, every piece that is essential to making this happen. We have a lot of structure, and it's a great group. There's about 20 of us who meet pretty regularly, communicate all the time, and do a lot of work in the trenches to make this happen. And then, yeah, we got a logo, got a little fancier. And then one of the things is I keep a spreadsheet with everybody involved. So to this day, there's over 250 people involved in some way. It's very community-driven, very grassroots, which is very important to me to keep it that way. And one of our first big sponsors was President Capilouto. I met with him to talk about this, and we received a large donation from UK. It was our big first kind of corporate, if you will, sponsor. And then eventually it started to really spread in the media, started getting a lot of press, and then also in the Twitter world, it's really grown. A lot of people were talking about it, which was cool. And then some of the other things we've been doing. The UK School of Journalism and Telecommunications, their students have been working on this in the past semester. They're developing an entire PR campaign to figure out a way to really market this, and it's actually their capstone project, so it's pretty cool. And then recently, Bill came back. This was September 27th. In the morning, we had breakfast at the Episcopal Diocese Church to talk to them about this. And then we also had a luncheon at Portofino's. There's about 20 people at the table and a lot of potential donors who we are now engaged in a lot of serious communication with about donating. And we actually took a trip to Cincinnati with one of these donors, and we're getting pretty close to, I believe, getting a pretty big donation to make this happen. And I also started receiving a lot of private donations. and another thing we're working with is with Lexonomics and their DreamFuel project. And here's a picture from our last group. Councilman Christopher is in the picture. Like I said, University of Kentucky was a big supporter. I've been working with the Bluegrass Higher Education Consortium, attending the meetings and figuring out how we can collaborate and identifying partners and everything like that. Also another thing was the health department here with their community health improvement plan. And then Blake Eames Design is somebody who's, Blake Eames is a local, she owns a studio here, and she stepped forward and said she would provide all the interior design once we got a facility and everything like that. John's Run Walk Shop's been helping out. The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland helped print some packets and some things for us. and then the Kentucky Philanthropy Initiative was a summit that I presented at and they've been helping out really a lot as well and in this part, this is why this is really important to me a lot of people ask why Manchester Bidwell why am I involved with this so I'll just give you a quick overview of my story so I was born and raised in Manaca, Pennsylvania which is near Pittsburgh we got about 6,000 people and three stoplights so just a little town and so for me this whole idea of at-risk youth and people in poverty is very personal to me I grew up in the projects I grew up with a single mom everything that's really condemned in society about food stamps and welfare you know my mom's a welfare mom and to date I've had eight friends who've already died from heroin overdose so for me this is something that is this means everything to me. People talk a lot about the at-risk youth, but that was me. I was one of those kids who I was suspended all the time, getting detention all the time, kicked out of games as a young kid, as a young athlete, always getting in trouble. And then one of my friends, when I was 17, he was actually killed in a car wreck. Basically, it was just an avalanche of things. not a very good father situation, broken home, broken family. This means a lot to me, especially with the drugs and the substance abuse. This is why I'm doing this. But fortunately, I was excelling in sports in school. That was my way out was athletics. But when I was 18, I just sent out a bunch of emails to Division I coaches trying to get a chance, and all of them rejected me except UK. UK said that I might have a shot to walk on, and my head coach, Don Weber, who's actually here in the audience today, gave me a chance when really he didn't have to. He coaches a lot of Olympians, SEC champions, NCAA champions, and I was just some scraggly kid from Pennsylvania who couldn't even keep up with anybody. So he gave me a chance when he really didn't have to, especially because my times, most of the coaches said, your times aren't good enough or we're not really interested. But he gave me a chance. And so I escaped the U.K., and I considered Lexington to be my refuge. I was a walk-on to the track and field team. This was an article in the Herald-Leader in 2011 about it. And I just kept training hard and studying hard and fought hard, and I eventually earned a full scholarship. And I dropped my mile time down from 421 to 402, and I tried to go for the last Olympics, but I missed the trials by two seconds, which was frustrating, but it was always 2016. And so I'm pretty uncomfortable with this slide, but there's a point to this. So this is just a snippet of some of the awards that I won as a student at UK, and I feel very uncomfortable showing it. It feels very narcissistic, but the point to this is that I was one of those at-risk youth kids that everyone had given up on. Teachers really hated me. People in the community didn't like me. I was like a little hoodlum. But somebody gave me a chance. All it took was just one person to believe in me and giving me a chance. And this is something that happened. Some of the awards were national awards. Some of them were local. So I promise this isn't me boasting that there's a whole point to this. And so these are going to be the next steps that we're taking to bring this to fruition in Lexington. So one of the first steps is feasibility. So right now we're raising money to pay for the feasibility study, which will be conducted. What that would do is assess the need for the Manchester Bidwell core programs, the organizational landscape, the funding potential and basically how it's going to be sustained throughout the years, the leadership potential, and the physical space potential, figuring out where it's going to be located, where the best neighborhood to have a center like this is. And then the next phase would be pre-opening and planning. In this phase, we'd select and train an executive director, hire a board of directors, develop a seed fund and capital campaign, secure the 501c3 status, and then develop and train a basic staff. And then the final phase is early implementation. So we develop and expand the programming and curriculum, implement the youth arts, the motivational and adult career training programs, and actually open our doors and start having classes. Confirm the permanent fundraising strategies, obtain the accreditation status, and the track outcomes and statistics. So this is, again, why I believe in this. As a social worker, I got my degrees in social work, both my undergrad degree and master's degree in social work. And one of the core values is the dignity and worth of the person, of every individual. I really believe that everybody has potential. And one of my things is, like me and a lot of kids who grew up in the projects and in poverty, a lot of people grew up in hurricanes. Nobody has the stable family life anymore or places to go to, so it is really very detrimental to the growth and outcomes of kids. And I really believe we can change lives. And this is kind of the way I look at this is this is a disease, or I'm sorry, it's a cure to a particular disease. Again, it's not the total panacea to all the problems, but it can provide a solution and also complement a lot of the great nonprofits already here in Lexington. And one of the ideas is, you know, when you have a dying flower, you replant it in healthy soil. Suddenly the flower blossoms. And again, I was that kid that everyone gave up on, so that's why I believe in this. And I believe this is the last slide. This is why Manchester Bidwell for Lexington. So one of the things I think it could really help was with workforce development. It would help bridge the gap between employers and potential employees. So a business or employer could say exactly what they're looking for in an employee, say the skills that they're looking for, and then we could train them specifically for that. And then they go work. It creates a pipeline to the employers. Obviously reduce the unemployment with livable wage jobs rather than just minimum wage jobs that people still require assistance for. Coincides with the burgeoning art community here in Lexington. And that's been another reason a lot of people have been supportive of this is the arts and the impact it has on your morale and your belief in yourself. Another thing you can do is help re-engage youth, reduce the dropout rate and youth violence. A lot of problems have been happening with youth violence recently. And so this could provide a solution for that. Reduce the reliance on welfare. Again, like I said, businesses would grow. So this is also not just, this isn't just a charity. It's a solution for employers looking for employees that help their business grow as well. And a lot of people who've gravitated toward this talked about the loss of the mayor's training center. So this could possibly be something that could fill that void or at least provide some help to the void created by that loss. And then last but not least, community pride, having a beautiful center in your neighborhood, especially a neighborhood that otherwise is impoverished and has things falling apart. This could be something that people could really take a lot of pride in. And somewhere for kids to go. This is something that is a problem when you're a kid, especially when you grow up in a bad neighborhood. You don't really have a place to go. You're just running around causing trouble, especially if your parents are working. This would just be somewhere, a safe place for kids to go. And so this is the last slide. So the recap, like I said, so what is it? Manchester Bidwell, there's a youth component with a visual arts program for at-risk youth. And then for adults, there's the workforce development and job training. To date, it's in Pittsburgh and eight other cities. The closest one is right up the road in Cincinnati. Some people were concerned about it being a franchise, which is what I was concerned with at first. But I've learned that, no, it's not a franchise. Basically, you take the model and you adapt it to the city's needs. The Manchester Bidwell Replication Project is a community initiative with tons of people and organizations involved. And like I just said, why Lexington helped reduce the youth violence, the dropout, underperforming students, workforce development, and coincide with the art community. And that's my last slide. Josh, thank you so much for that presentation. And, Council Members, thank you for your patience throughout all of our presentations today. They've slightly just run over, but we're being blessed with some very valuable information. Just to recap again, I think that this is an issue, workforce. Josh, your presentation, just from my vantage point, has allowed us some clarity and information in regards to your activities. I know, again, I think this issue, Mr. Strickland, who's kind of world-renowned, at least nationally renowned in his role of rebuilding communities, I think he first came to Lexington in 2009, and forgive me if I'm a year or so off, and it was very well-received. I wasn't able to attend that meeting, but I was able to go with the chamber on their leadership trip to Pittsburgh with the Louisville folks the following year and actually got to go to the campus, and so that was pretty enlightening. But we're going into 2014, and it is somewhat, things take time, but it is somewhat encouraging now that we have you as a young leader championing this on behalf of the community and bringing this forth. One thing that I've learned over time, and if you could speak to it quickly, because I want to see if we've got 10 minutes left and if there are questions from the committee, is that the buy-in of the community. Mr. Strickland, when I had the opportunity to talk to him, he's indicated that this is not the replication if it were to come to Lexington. This is not a governmental fix. This is not something where we're asking. I think the cost right now for the feasibility study is $150,000, and it is not where government is being asked to make that. Talk a little bit about kind of where you are now and how important it is. And I'm not attempting to do fundraising on your behalf, but more so trying to demonstrate the community engagement required to carry such a project forth. Yeah, so when I first started this, it was kind of like my dream, and I didn't know if this was something that Lexington would even support. But once I started doing it and so many people started gravitating towards it, that was when I realized that we could make it happen. And that is something that's very important because it's not like Manchester Bidwell picked out Lexington and is trying to expand. It's more that I reached out to Bill and asked how we could do that in Lexington. So if there's no community support, then it definitely wouldn't happen because it is a community-owned and run center. So without that kind of support, there wouldn't be any chance that could happen. Thank you, Josh. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for bringing this forward and keeping this in front of us so that we can help look at how we can make this thing happen here. Mr. Nasum? Not close enough, maybe? Okay, thank you, Josh. Okay, I'll call you Josh. First, I want to commend you for being a graduate at the University of Kentucky College of Social Work. And I also am a graduate, my wife, my mom, from UK's program. So it's a testament to the strong, strong people that they're putting out of their program. Thank you for bringing this forward again. I was able to attend when Mr. Strickland came. When I did my graduate work in St. Louis back in 1999-2000, we were looking at doing the same thing there in St. Louis. And so I'm very familiar with Mr. Strickland's work. The couple questions I have, though, are when you talk about the feasibility study, who and what determines what the core programming is? The way that it would work is the folks at Manchester Bidwell would come down and help conduct the study with the community. So, alongside it, so basically the community would determine what the program's needs are with their guidance. So, it's almost like they're going to compile the report and they interview all the leaders and everything. So, it's more of an objective viewpoint, but, yeah, with the community. But that goes back to it not being a franchise, and this is really based on what our community needs and not just what the centers are doing across the country. So, I appreciate that. You're welcome. The other question I had was, I guess if you could briefly, and I know you've already kind of talked about this, but what all goes into the feasibility study? Is it just a feasibility study on the needs? Is it also a feasibility study on financing? Yeah, so with the feasibility study, one of the things it would do is it's not necessarily determining if it would work. It's more how it would work. So it's compiling a report and figuring out, instead of just taking a bunch of money and running it and starting some sort of art program in a parking lot, it's more how do we make this a legitimate sustaining center that would be around for several years. So that's mainly what it is. But yeah, we determine the location, the types of funding to sustain it, the donors who are going to be involved, who's going to run it, who's going to be involved. Okay. And the final question is, how are these usually funded across the country? Most of them are funded through private donations, either private donations or the one in Brockway. I believe the governor of Pennsylvania stepped forward and moved some welfare money towards that project. But most of it is private donations and through some city help as well, but mostly private. Okay. Well, thank you very much, and thank you for coming, and we look forward to continuing to work on this. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Any further questions from the committee? Josh, thank you again for your time. Would you, very quickly, as we wrap up the meeting, would you like to introduce or just identify, I'm glad to see Coach here on his behalf in support of Josh, but there are folks that are helping you, Josh, and have come for support. Do you want to quickly identify and introduce those folks? Yeah, absolutely. So Tom Curran, who is the co-chair of this project, is here. Joe Klabes is here. Wendy Keene is here. Larry Johnson is here helping out. I think that's all the steering committee. But then other people who are involved as well have come out to support, so thank you, everybody. Josh, thanks again for your report. We look forward to following the developments as they happen. Thanks again. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council members, that brings us to the last item on our agenda, and that is items in committee. It's on the back of your packet. The first item is the social service needs assessment referred by Vice Mayor Gordon in March of 2012. Are we done with this item? I know. Okay. Is there a motion to remove? Moved by Council Member Ellinger, seconded by Council Member Myers. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. And that motion carries. That item will be removed from committee. Workforce investment, summer youth employment, and child care assistance, I think, are items that still all need to be worked on. We have Council Member Myers. Do you have a thought, sir? Yes, sir. I'd actually like to take the Summer Youth Employment Program out of the committee. Okay. It's been moved. Is there a second? Second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there a discussion? All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. That item will be removed from committee. So that leaves just workforce investment in the child care assistance programs. In regards to child care, we'll work with the department to bring back a report to the committee next month. We have just one committee meeting, which is December 10th, the last day before council breaks, so we'll be sure to keep that committee short, you guys. That'll help us. Council Member Myers, did you have another thought? Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As far as the conversation on the child care assistance program, do I have the committee's blessing to go ahead and begin working on the new resolution and then to bring that forward? I think that'll be fine. Okay, because the goal would be to get that done as quickly as possible so we can get that passed before we get out on break. Okay. Very good. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Any other business before the committee? Is there a motion to adjourn? Second. Motion and second it. We stand adjourned.