# Council Work Session - November 19, 2013 > Auto-transcribed civic record · November 19, 2013 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3174 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3174?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2013-11-19 - **Last revised**: November 19, 2013 - **Length**: 13,548 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 Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government held a meeting on November 19, 2013, at 3:00 PM in the Council Chamber located at 200 E. Main St, Lexington, KY 40507. Vice Mayor Gorton presided over the session, which included six agenda items and resulted in six motions and votes. No public comments were received during the meeting. The council addressed several substantive matters, including approval of requested rezonings and docket items, adoption of a summary, consideration of budget amendments, and new business items. Additionally, the body received an informational presentation on the Lexington Jobs Fund. A public comment period was scheduled for issues on the agenda, though no members of the public provided remarks. ## Attendance **Present:** Gorton, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Akers, Lawless, Beard, Farmer, Stinnett, Scutchfield, Mossotti, Clarke, and Lane **Absent:** Myers and Henson **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included six votes, all of which passed. **Approval of the Docket** [timestamp: 0:03:06] Motion by Myers, seconded by Ellinger. Passed by voice vote. **Approval of the Summary** [timestamp: 0:04:11] Motion by Beard, seconded by Farmer. Passed by voice vote. **Budget Amendments** [timestamp: 0:04:41] Motion by Farmer, seconded by Clark. Passed by voice vote. **New Business Approval** [timestamp: 0:05:11] Motion by Farmer, seconded by Ellinger. Passed by voice vote. **Approval of the Qualified Adult Benefits** [timestamp: 0:20:15] Motion by Gorton, seconded by Akers. Passed by roll call vote with 8 ayes and 1 nay. **Authorization for Employee Dependence Audit** [timestamp: 0:23:57] Motion by Gorton, seconded by Kay. Passed by voice vote. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting on November 19, 2013 included authorization for four financial actions totaling $793,600.50: **Grant Application** - **Resolution L1201-13**: Authorization to submit a $27,500 grant application to the National Police Athletic/Activities Leagues, Inc. **Business Services Contract** - **Resolution L1209-13**: Authorization to execute an agreement with IBM Business Continuity and Recovery Services for $84,360. **Arts Funding** - **Resolution L1221-13**: Authorization to provide $100,000 in funding for EcoART projects through LexArts. **Pension Supplement** - **Resolution L1225-13**: Authorization to approve a tiered supplement to retirees and beneficiaries of the City Employees' Pension Fund in the amount of $581,740.50. ## Contested Items **Qualified Adult Benefits** The council discussed and voted on amendments to the qualified adult benefits during this meeting. The vote resulted in a split decision, indicating that council members were divided on the proposed changes to this benefit program. However, specific details about the nature of the disagreement, which council members supported or opposed the amendments, the exact vote count, or the rationale behind differing positions are not available in the meeting record. ## Public Comment - Issues on Agenda [timestamp: 00:02:30] No public comments were made on issues on the agenda during this portion of the meeting. ## Requested Rezonings/ Docket Approval [timestamp: 00:03:06] The council approved the docket for the meeting. Key speakers on this item included Myers and Ellinger. The council voted to approve the docket as presented. ## Approval of Summary The council approved the summary of the previous meeting. [timestamp: 00:04:11] Key speakers on this item included Beard and Farmer. The summary was approved without noted objections or concerns. ## Budget Amendments The council approved various budget amendments during this agenda item. [timestamp: 00:04:41] **Key Speakers** Farmer and Clark were the primary speakers on this matter. **Outcome** The budget amendments were approved by the council. ## New Business [timestamp: 00:05:11] The council addressed new business items during this portion of the meeting. Key speakers on this agenda item included Farmer and Ellinger. The council approved the new business items that were presented. No additional details regarding specific proposals, concerns raised, or the nature of the business items are available in the meeting record. ## Lexington Jobs Fund Presentation Jamie Emmons presented the Lexington Jobs Fund to the meeting [timestamp: 0:27:12]. The presentation was informational in nature and covered the fund's purpose, structure, and expected outcomes. The session provided an overview of the Lexington Jobs Fund initiative, with Emmons detailing how the fund is organized and what it aims to accomplish. The presentation focused on explaining the fund's framework and the anticipated results of its implementation. This agenda item concluded as an informational presentation without a formal vote or decision required at this time. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the docket for the November 21, 2013 council meeting - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for the November 21, 2013 council meeting an ordinance adopting a schedule of meetings for the Council for the calendar year 2014 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the November 12, 2013 work session summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve budget amendments - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve new business - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve neighborhood development funds - **Motion** — passed (0-0): ask planning to bring the proposed text amendment to not allow private streets in residential subdivisions back to the Planning and Public Works Committee for approval and conversation - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the revised B1 Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment which amends articles 1, 8 and 12 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place the approval of qualified adult benefits on the November 21, 2013 council meeting docket - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place the authorization of the audit on employee dependents on the November 21, 2013 council meeting docket - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Motion by Gorton that the make-up of the proposed Economic Development Investment Board structure be changed include the Council Member who chairs the Budget & Finance committee and the Council Member who chairs the Economic Development committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place development entities (UPTECH, St. Louis and IMEP, etc.) and the work they are doing into the Economic Development Committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place into the Public Safety committee to the staffing level at community corrections and the inmate to correction officer ratio - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place in the Public Safety committee for January 2014 the Division of Police staffing plan - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Mayor’s report - **Motion** — passed (0-0): adjourn --- ## Full transcript . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. I'll call, this is a meeting of the work session of the council. I'll call the meeting to order. And first on our agenda today is a public comment for issues on the agenda. Mr. Mundy, nobody signed up for comment for issues on the agenda, which allows us to move on to docket approval. Is there a motion to approve the docket? I move. Second. Motion by Council Member Myers, second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion on the motion? I have a walk-on to the docket. Is this a good one? Yeah, that would be good. All right. Vice Mayor? Thank you, Mayor. I have a walk-on to the docket, and Council Members, you've received various drafts of the 2014 Council calendar, and I think that you received the latest one with Council Member Stenet's final suggestion. And so I move to place on the docket an ordinance adopting a schedule of meetings for the council for the calendar year 2014. Second. Motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, second by Council Member Akers. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Vice Mayor. All right. It allows us to go back to the original motion. Is there any further discussion on the motion to approve the docket? Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. That allows us to move on to approving the summary. It's a motion by Council Member Beard, second by Council Member Farmer. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. The motion carries. That allows us to move on to budget amendments. Motion by Council Member Farmer, second by Council Member Clark. Any discussion? All right. Hearing none, then we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right, next is new business. Is there a motion to approve? Second. Motion by Council Member Farmer, second by Council Member Ellinger. Any discussion on the motion? Councilman Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. Mine was just, by way of explanation, it's, I don't know the item number, it's page 13. It's the recommendation to the City Council from the City Employees Pension Fund to kind of change some of their supplements. I know this is a closed fund. I just wanted to air out or make sure that these changes will keep it funded correctly for as long as these recipients, which it says that has 29 retirees and 59 beneficiaries left in it. I think Meredith Nelson, our council clerk, has approached the podium to address it, and Jonathan Hollinger has as well. If you don't mind, I'm going to ask Jonathan Hollinger to explain that for you. Very good. Thank you. Councilmember Clark's legislative aide. This is a recommendation that was passed by the Pension Board for a supplement to the pensions and the City Employees Pension Fund. There are currently 88 pensioners and beneficiaries in that fund. 59 of them are beneficiaries. There's only just a small amount of actual retirees. The fund has an excess at the last valuation of $15 million. All right. The present value of this over the remaining life of the fund is about $580,000. So it would. That's the cumulative nature of these changes. Yes. Very good. That's what I wanted to hear. Thank you. And then, Mayor, just one other one, I think. This is the item that's on page 20, which lately we've had a couple of items in whom their title seems much worse than probably they are. the Memorandum of Agreement with the United States Special Operations Command Program, Executive Office, Special Operations Forces, support activity on Briar Hill Road. And we had one before that was, you know, authorizing, I've forgotten, like Strike Team Alpha to do something, and we had comments or questions back to the council office on that one. I'm just wanting to know. Which item is this, Mr. President Farmer? It's page, I don't know, it's page 20. J? J. All right. Okay, thank you. So who are we asking to do what, just to make sure the public understands? Commissioner Mason, can you help us with this? Thank you. These are routine agreements with organizations in the area. This is with the Department of Defense for the facility out on Briar Hill Road that delineates the responsibilities if there is an event of criminal or terrorism activity on their facility as to the response by the police department and who is responsible for what types of activities. It's routine. So it establishes critical paths based on the type of problems? Yes. That we're incurring? Yes. It's the same thing that we have with Transylvania and the other item. Okay. It determines as to what type of crime or what type of circumstance comes up, who is responsible for handling the response, and then the subsequent investigation. These are routine agreements. Do we have to renew them yearly then? It just seems there's been a little spate of them. I think if they are yearly, it just happens that they're coming up due at this point in time. I'm trying to see when this one was last signed, and I don't have it here with me. Well, you've given the explanation I was after. It just seems like we've had a few of them, and sometimes they're a little bit ominous in their styling. I think that's all they are is ominous in the language. They are very routine as far as even the one where Transylvania lays out the types of crimes that their security people handle, such as thefts from dorm rooms and things like that, as opposed to crimes of violence on somebody on campus, that would fall under the jurisdiction of the Lexington Police Department. I appreciate your thoroughness in these matters. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilman Farmer. All right. If there's no further discussion, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is presentations. Continuing business, is there a motion regarding the NDFs? Second. Motion by Council Member Stennett. Second by Council Member Massadi. Is there any discussion on the motion? Okay. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. And next, Council Member Farmer, if you'll please give us a Planning and Public Works Committee summary. Thank you, Mayor. This is our summary and motions from our October 8th meeting. We approved our summary, then we talked about an ongoing item in committee about erecting large utility poles in the right-of-way. There was a discussion at this time that did not result in any motions, and it remains in committee. The third item was the Capitol Road projects for major corridors and the ability for the LFUCG to maintain those roads. This item also remains in committee and is one that we have done. We made a definition for what those thoroughfares are and began to kind of focus in on what amount of money that would be and how we would try to fund it on an ongoing basis. However, at this time during this meeting, it resulted in no motions. Our fourth item was the potential merger of the Division of Streets and Roads and Traffic Engineering into a new Division of Transportation. We have that one just on hold based on some background information or awaiting other information or direction from the administration. Item five is the private streets enforcement maintenance and specification. This is an item that was placed in committee by Councilmember Pizzotti. I'm so sorry. I know. I just, it won't go away. The good council member, I have a hard time, said she wanted to separate residential from commercial because of the huge difference between the two in terms of private streets. And she did not see any reason to issue private streets going forward. She cited safety concerns. I made commentary that we want to consider changes to the enforcement and maintenance instead of taking the idea of private streets out of our toolbox. Council Member Stenet made some comments. Council Member Henson, Clark, Director King. we had a little bit of a discussion about how private streets are, how they come in, and what form they take. Ultimately, this resulted in a motion. Spaghetti. Masati. Masati. Thank you. A motion by Council Member Masati to initiate a text amendment to not allow private streets and residential subdivisions was seconded by Gordon. Director King said that before they could initiate a text amendment, they would have to have specific language to present, and they wanted to suggest that planning staff would be willing to draft language for, in essence, the committee to review. Vice Mayor Gordon wanted input from all entities, including the development community. She asked if they wanted to form a working group to assist with drafting the text amendment. Director King said they could have the conversation in committee before the process is really initiated. Council Member Kaye asked the director about the upsides and downsides to not allow private streets. King said that he leans towards public streets, but that is a subjective personal opinion. However, there are cases where the access easement is excessive and contrary to providing affordable housing. Subsequent to this discussion, they did meet and are working on bringing specific language forward. So the motion I would bring now is to ask them to, as is stated here, it says to initiate the Texas Amendment, but really it's to bring the proposed Texas Amendment back to the committee for its approval and conversation. And I would so move on behalf of the committee at this time. Second. Motion by Council Member Farmer, second by Council Member Kaye. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we'll take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Next up in the packet is a rather long discussion about the so-called B1 ZODA. And this is something that planning staff initiated to change some of the principal and permitted uses in the B1 zone across all parts of the zoning ordinance. It has been in front of the planning committee three times. Different parts of it have gone to the planning commission and come back about three times, too. What you have before you is the omnibus bill, if you will, that includes all those changes. And, you know, in certain instances, we're striking things out. In certain instances, we're adding things back, as you can tell as you move through. For instance, on page 41, you see a whole different group of principal uses are redefined there in those underlying categories of 1 through 16. Then, like on page 43, several things are taken out based on what staff believes and our committee and the Planning Commission also believe are good changes for different parts of the B-1 zoning ordinance and its applications. Those go on for many pages, and we've vetted through them individually, one by one, during our committee work, and once or twice that resulted in some things going back to the Planning Commission, which they ultimately approved all of and sent back to us. I think one of the most interesting, which I want to take a moment just to preview, is on page 76, which is the creation. It's number three under special provisions. A farm-based neighborhood business project may be approved by the Planning Commission on any site over one acre in size. For any such project, a final development plan shall be approved by the Planning Commission prior to the issuance of any building permit. The lot, yard, height, setback requirements will be those established by the Commission on the approved development plan rather than those stated above, or as outlined in the previous styling of the B-1 verbiage, rather than those stated above. So in addition to the development plan, an applicant seeking approval of a form-based neighborhood business project shall be required to submit an area character and context study prepared by an architect of urban design professional. The study will document the architectural and urban design character of the area. It shall demonstrate through the use of renderings, elevation, and similar graphic materials how the proposed project will enhance and complement the area's character. It will also show the integration with the surrounding neighborhood by using positive design features such as supplemental landscaping, provision of public space and open space buffers, and improved pedestrian accommodations. These drawings shall be made part of the Commission's approval, and building permits shall comply with the approved drawings. A form-based neighborhood business project shall not be subject to square foot limitations of 8-1601 above. So that in and of itself provides an opportunity for greater latitude in what can be approved in the B1 zone specifically, and I think that's a great addition and change there. The rest of it is just, as you can see, where it went back and forth between ourselves and the Planning Commission. In June of 2012, coming on up through January of this year, we have approved it. in committee, and Planning Commission has approved it on their own, and I would so move to approve the B-1 ZODA on behalf of the committee at this time. Excuse me. Motion by Council Member Farmer. Was that a second by Council Member Clark? Yes. Close. Second by Council Member Sketchfield. All right. Next one. Okay. Motion by Council Member Farmer, second by Council Member Clark. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. That provides a certain amount of closure as well as the end of the report. Thank you. Yes, sir. So, Mr. King, go yes as well. Thank you, Council Member Farmer. Next on our agenda is a summary of the General Government Committee meeting of November the 5th by Council Member Kay. Thank you, Mayor. This is the summary for November 5th, meeting of the General Government Committee. First item was approval of a summary, and that was passed without dissent. Second item was discussion of qualified adult benefits, which was fairly extensive. It started with Vice Mayor Gorton reviewing the material that was included in the packet and the draft ordinance produced by the CAO, et cetera. There were then a fair number of questions and comments, and I'm just going to kind of abbreviate what they were. There was a question about how joint liability was defined. There was a question about the premiums and the impact to LFUCG. A question about the criteria for the qualified adult not having any group health insurance. And a question about whether that was also required for married couples at this point. A question about the stipulation that qualified adult must reside with the employee for at least 12 months prior to enrollment. Question about how we compare with what we're proposing with what the University of Kentucky now requires. A concern that some of the criteria proposed were not strong enough. I return to the question of whether the qualified adult should or should not have group health insurance And there was a motion by vice mayor gorton to remove the language quote Does not have any group health insurance unquote required to remove that requirement Seconded by acres that motion passed without dissent There was then a question about the requirement that qualified adults cannot currently be married and Commissioner Graham stated This was removed based on the opinion of the Attorney General. Nonetheless, there was a motion by Council Member Myers to insert language requiring that qualified adult to be unmarried. That motion passed on a vote of 8 to 1. There was then further discussion of the definition of a qualifying event, further discussion of the 12-month requirement, and then a motion by Vice Mayor Gorton to recommend approval of the qualified adult benefits as amended, and that passed unanimously, and so I now will move to place on the docket the approval of the qualified adult benefits. Second. Motion by Council Member Kaye and second by Vice Mayor Gordon. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please. Yes, thank you. But Council Member Kay, we made some adjustments after our committee meeting. Are those considered in our discussion? Particularly, well, I'll mention qualified adults or rather a qualifying event. I'm sorry. We made some recommendations that that was to be changed. Jennifer I think the answer is at this point the only changes that were made were those that were moved as amendments in the committee meeting. If there are further proposed amendments and I believe you've got the language you'd like it would be appropriate to Well, so here's the question. Is it appropriate to take amendments or to move it on to the docket and take amendments when it gets on the docket? Probably better, a little more convenient, efficient to take it now, I would say. Right. Any objection to that? Okay. Is that going to work? All right. That's fine. Council Member. I'm not sure. I'm prepared to make those amendments now. I would have to go back and think about what we had discussed. So I would, well, they could be made later. Yeah, Harry. Yes. I think that would be appropriate. I wasn't anticipating. I thought we had already made those changes. If we have not, then I can be prepared to make them myself, but at this point I'm not quite ready to do that. All right. That's fine. Is that good? So then we will proceed with the original motion. Yes. Okay. Is there any further discussion on the motion? Then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. The next item on our agenda was the dependent audit, and Vice Mayor Gorton proposed a health care plan audit for dependents. There was some discussion of that motion, and Director Maxwell had some information that he had received from our consultant from benefits insurance marketing regarding that issue. He recommended that all plans be included in the audit, and indicated a cost somewhere between $19,000 and $30,000, and the probability that if we move forward on this, the audit would take place in the summer or fall of 2014. There was then a motion by Vice Mayor Gorton to authorize the audit on employee dependence, and that passed unanimously. And so I now move to place that item also on the docket. Second. So moved. Motion back, Council Member Kaye, and second by Vice Mayor Gorton. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. The fourth item on our agenda was a procedure for underwriting or sponsoring parks. This is a conversation that we've had in committee for a number of months. Roger Damon highlighted the changes to the policy that have been made since the last meeting of the committee. There were questions that then ensued about donor signage, sponsoring rates, the flexibility of the policy, maintenance issues, the difference between gifts and contracts, and then some specific language about who actually retains the right to accept or deny any donations. and then I think there was agreement. This is, just to clarify, this is a CAO policy, and so it's being reviewed by council, but it does not require council approval. But I believe that the CAO agreed that that language change, which was suggested, would be appropriate so that it would read the Lexington Fayette-Irban County government retains the right to accept or deny any donations rather than the Division of Parks and Recreation. There was discussion of a couple of other items, and then agreement that there will be further information about the usage agreements, but there was no action taken at that time. That was the end of that issue. The next item on the agenda was building security, and Jamshid Baradaran discussed potential building security options for the government center campus. He discussed in particular eliminating entry points to use of metal detectors and use of access cards to limit access. There was then some discussion about whether weapons are or are not allowed in the building and what the state law says about that, and then a recommendation that LFUCG move to a single point of entry and every visitor should be subject to metal detectors. Again, this would be, I believe, an administrative action. It would not require council approval. So there will be further consideration of the issues raised by the administration, but there was no action taken at that time. The last item was items in committee, and qualified adult benefits was removed from that list, and that concluded our meeting. And that concludes my report. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Kaye. All right, next on our agenda is a presentation on the Lexington Jobs Fund by Jamie Emmons. Ready? I'd like to thank the council briefly for allowing us to talk about this subject one more time. Just to summarize where we're at in the process, we've had a workshop in the past, and this is a follow-up presentation. But what you have on your docket today, items L and M, include the ordinance to create the jobs fund, as well as the board revision, which creates the Economic Development Investment Board. in the coming weeks we will have two more pieces that will require approval. That will be the policies and guidelines document that really include the meat of the jobs fund and which businesses can apply in the guidelines. And then finally, the funding component, which will be a budget amendment to move the $1 million from the fund balance over into the Economic Development Jobs Fund account. And just briefly, I would mention that today we have Jim Parsons back with us from TAF, who's consulting on the legal front for our economic development proposal. We've discussed justification quite a bit, so I won't go through everything that we've done in the past, But just to summarize, the purpose of the Jobs Fund is to increase Lexington's economic development competitiveness in a time where state and federal resources are dwindling. The program is focused on growing jobs, resulting in economic activity, tax revenue, and recovering the city's investments. It's a bit unique in that we're going to have cash dollars available for businesses, not just tax abatement. And, you know, we can combine that with our many local other resources to develop, hopefully help develop a more robust economy in the university city. Some key highlights on the program. The intent here is to really, on the first bullet point, is to cluster around our current economic strengths. You know, as a university city, we are a little bit unique in that we have a talent pool and a skill pool that companies can try to grab a hold of to create employment. Secondly, the three-tiered approval process is sort of a rigorous approval process by the city's professional staff, the Economic Development Investment Board, and, of course, the ultimate authority then rests with the city council. So the tiered approach provides several levels of scrutiny that ensure that each application is worthy of investment. And finally, in the event that a company is not able to deliver on the job creation that they promised, there will be protections for the city through the legal framework that we're talking about developing. Just to continue on the structure, the ultimate goal, of course, is job creation. But what we're talking about specifically are two basic programs, one grant program and the other being a loan program. The structure includes grants up to $100,000 or loans up to $250,000. Of those two, we hope to put a priority on the loan program because it can turn over. We'll have cash coming in the door as the loans are repaid so we can replenish the jobs fund without depending completely on general fund allocations through each budget cycle. We know from research that a cash incentive program is rare in Kentucky. Most existing programs are based on tax abatement, but in many cases, businesses now need cash to buy equipment to expand their space or otherwise grow in operation. So ultimately, the fund is designed to be flexible for packages larger than those outlined in the Economic Development Investment Board or the council feel that they are necessary or appropriate. So the two main tools that we're hoping to use here, I say business expansion there first, because today in Lexington, 85% of our business, our job growth, it comes from business expansion. So that's a real priority. Attraction is, of course, another component. But again, the focus should be on expansion primarily. So to define gap incentives briefly, that would include incentives for companies that do not meet the minimum job requirements for state or federal incentives, but that do show strong evidence of success or potential for success. We intend for that gap financing to be flexible. I think it's important to note that some of the state incentives require at least a minimum of 10 new jobs to be eligible for KBI. And there are lots of companies at the local level that would like to expand that may not be eligible for that minimum. And then secondly, on deal closing, the definition of deal closing is basically it's the last dollar in. so that you can close the gap between public incentives and private investment that are required to make the business expansion or attraction. We took a health care provider out. A little bit about priority sectors. I won't read the full list. It's on screen. But we have a clustering opportunity based on the current economic strengths that exist here today. You know, the strategy is very deliberate in that these are the types of companies that create a foundation on which other jobs can grow. So there's some research actually from Berkeley that has shown that for every high-tech job created, which is a career job, a high-paying job, that five more jobs are created, and two of those being service-level jobs, professional-level jobs in the medical profession, legal profession, and accounting professions. So other economic spinoff from that, of course, would generate spending in entertainment, retail, and restaurants. That's what I'm getting to. And then just quickly at the end here, it's the SBIR component of the fund. So what we're looking at is to invest in innovative focused companies. Most of those have been vetted by federal agencies and have a high likelihood of success. And Scott Shapiro is here today to talk a little bit more about that if we have questions. So with this flow diagram, basically what I wanted to summarize was how the program works. All the details are in the ordinance, specifically on how the process works, but I wanted to illustrate this to show you, number one, the three-tiered approval process, but also, from beginning to end, the marketing process and the compliance process as well. So it starts on the left with the Chief Development Officer, who will be in charge of coordinating marketing activities through our Economic Development Partner Agencies, Commerce Lexington, the Downtown Development Authority, World Trade Center, et cetera. But that's where the process begins, of course. And the applications for the jobs fund would initiate there through the chief development officer. Then, of course, it would go to the Economic Development Investment Board after it's been vetted and can continue to be vetted through that investment board. And the investment board can either approve or make a recommendation to approve or deny to the council. But again, ultimate authority comes to this body on whether or not you want to make these investments. And you'll have detailed information on every dollar that we intend to invest before making those investments. And then finally, the compliance component rests with the chief development officer as well. Of course, he'll have support of both finance and legal departments in the city. And we can share more information about that if you need it. A little bit about the board structure. Today we have what's called the Industrial Revenue Bond Review Committee. You see those come through your blue sheet process occasionally. What we propose to do is to basically leave that committee intact, but add two positions and adjust. Actually, it's add one position and adjust one of the designations. So we're bringing some experience to the table from the investment community and the private equity or venture capital community. And this is the final slide. I thought it was important to note that protecting public investment is really a key component of the jobs fund. While the details will be in the policies and guidelines document for your future consideration, consideration. I just thought I would hit on it at a high level today. So one of the key factors of the program is to remember that there's always going to be risk, but we need to take the steps necessary to reduce that risk. You see that risk reduction coming through when you have caps on funds like a $100,000 grant program or a $250,000 loan program. You also see that coming through by targeting the dollars through the priorities that I listed on the slide just a moment ago. And then the three-tiered approval process is totally transparent, and everyone knows exactly what's in each agreement. And, of course, the clawback provision is a big component of each agreement. And so the definition of clawback is if the company is not able to create the number of jobs or the types of jobs dictated in the agreement, then they owe the city a repayment of the incentive dollars. There are examples out there, and I think Wes may have a couple that we can share, but one of the most recent ones that you've seen is the Tiffany & Company that located in Lexington three years ago. There's actually a callback provision there where, and I'll just read it verbatim, if the company fails to comply with the jobs requirement, the company shall be required to repay, this is just an example, $600 annually to the LFUCG for each full-time job not created or maintained in accordance with this agreement. That's just one small example. There are others that have been in the KBI documentation as well. So that is the summary, and I'm happy to take any questions. Council members, stand in. Thank you, Mayor. Jamie, thank you for coming today and following up with us as we requested to give us a more detailed presentation and the workshop as well. I understand that was very beneficial. A couple questions on the board makeup. Give me your thoughts behind how we selected those different people for the board. Because one thing I was thinking of out loud here, and I'll do it with everyone today, is two council members should be on that board. and they should, in my opinion, be the chair of the Economic Development Committee on Council and the vice chair of that committee so that the council dictates who represents them on the committee versus this method. I don't know if you all thought about that. That would be a good natural fit. Well, that one council member there could be the chair of the Economic Development Committee. But, again, it does come before the full body, but I'm not opposed to that change at all. That way it would be automatic whoever the council voted in as chair of Economic Development would be on there. Just a thought. I didn't know if you all thought about that. I think, Dave, do you see any problems there? Okay. Now, as you all were looking at this and designing it, what other cities did you look at that have this? Many, many, many. I think most of what you've seen has been modeled after the Cuyahoga County example, Cleveland, Ohio. But we looked at several across the country. For example, Boulder, Colorado, Denver, a couple in Florida. Wes, do you have a complete list? Probably. But regardless, I think we have some good benchmark data that we've based this on, and it seems the protections that are included in the good programs we've included in this one. On the sectors that you listed up here, if we could put that slide back up, Brad. Yeah. On those side, are those the ones that we would adopt and change each year as the focus, or are those just ongoing day one and will always be there? Because I'm sure that's going to change, obviously. How do we agree on what sectors to focus on or approve those type of applications? Well, it's actually listed in Section 5 of the ordinance. It could be amended in the future, but the key word there is priority and not restrictions. So it's priority for those industries or those sectors. But, again, you could actually apply for a grant if you did not have a business in one of those sectors. I just want to make sure everyone understood that. I'm glad you pointed out the keyword priority. And these are obviously some of the top sectors for our community. Thank you. I appreciate you bringing this forward. Mayor, thank you for working on this and initiating it through the budget process. I'm funding. I know it was sometimes a long road, but I think this is a good thing for Lexington because, as I said before, if we're not creating jobs, we're losing revenue, and this is the key to all of our budgets. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Stenet. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Jamie, thank you very much. You're welcome. A couple questions. Have we seen the ordinance? Yes. Well, it's been blue-sheeted. I'm not sure that you've seen it. Can you email the actual ordinance? Actually, we did email it around. We did email it around. It was two weeks ago, but I'd be happy to do that again. Can you email it again since we're voting to put it on the docket? Sure. And then back on the page 102, back on the board makeup, I would suggest, and I don't know whether you change this or how it gets changed. I'm presuming, as you said, this is in the ordinance, the designated spots. Following up on Councilmember Stenet's comments, it seems to me that the chair of the Economic Development Committee and the chair of Budget and Finance would be two very appropriate council members to serve. and would that need to be changed in the ordinance? We would need to amend it. So it will get first reading on Thursday, correct? Correct. So if we want to change those positions, we need to do that Thursday night. I normally take the position with the clerk's office. If it's today, you don't need to do anything as long as we know about it before we get first reading. and you don't need to formally do anything. We'll go ahead and make the changes. You will have those changes in front of you before Thursday night at first reading. Well, I'm not sure there's... Now, if you would like to make a motion today to go ahead and initiate those changes, we can do it that way as well. Okay, because that would help us know if there's support to change that. And so I wanted to just, to Council Member Stenet's point about the priority sectors, and I believe you said that's in the ordinance, correct? It is written in the ordinance. So priority sectors may change in terms of what's going on in the economy. So I'm guessing if we want those to be different, we would have to change the ordinance at the time. We would, but they won't change very quickly. Right. So it might be something to revisit in five years. Right. Okay. All right. Well, with that, Mayor, I'd like to go ahead and move that the makeup of the proposed board structure be changed to say that the LFUCG will include the council member who chairs the Economic Development Committee and the council member who chairs the Budget and Finance Committee. So moved. All right. It's a motion by Vice Mayor Gorton, second by Council Member Masada. We just wanted to clarify that it would still be 10 members. I would assume you would want to replace one of the at-large members with a council member. Is that what you're planning on doing? Yes, sir. Okay. All right. So we have the motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, second by Council Member Massadi. And the floor is available now for discussion. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. I support Vice Mayor's motion. And speaking to the motion, I had a question in regards to the composition of the board. And my question is, how many named incumbents exist from the current industrial revenue that's listed up there now? and how many vacancies would this new jobs fund board actually create. But I won't hold that now. I'll bring that. I will draw that question and hopefully be able to bring that back up after this motion carries. I'll support the motion, Vice Mayor. Any further discussion on the motion? All right. Then we can vote. All in favor of motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. And back to the discussion on the... Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Jamie. I guess I would have a question as to how do you determine... And maybe it's in the ordinance, and I should read it more thoroughly, but how would a company qualify? Do they have to apply, and then the board decides? So if you're going to bring in 100 jobs at a living wage of $12, you would qualify? Well, the process would be that they would make initial application through the development office. And at that point, based on the next series of documents you're going to get, which is the policies and guidelines document, which is really where all the requirements lie and rest, they may or may not qualify. And so I don't have those. It's totally in front of me at the moment, but I think that we should dig into that just a little bit more. I'm actually getting feedback from not only the council, but also the current IRB board is taking a look at this and giving me some thoughts as well. So I think it would be probably more beneficial if we could have the conversation in a week or so. Okay. And I would also know that you would come back and give us updates on the progress of how it's going. I guess, you know, how can you decide if a company would just come here anyway without the incentives? Right. So, but at the same token, one of my big concerns is that I know that we're looking for probably keeping our U.K. students here and getting some high-wage jobs, but there are many, many other people that live in this community, and it needs to be inclusive of all. I agree. Let me go back to the slide real quick. Both these tools, you just mentioned whether or not our money was needed. That is one of the requirements that we've stipulated. It's last money in that they can't get financing otherwise to make that expansion happen. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Council Member Scotchfield. Thank you, Mayor. I'm very hesitant with this. That doesn't mean that I don't like it. But any time that you have a large amount of money going to something that's untested, it should make me nervous. I like a lot of the proposals on how we would administer this. I guess one of the things that we talked about, that Council Member Stenet talked about, the priority sectors. I really think we should take a look at this and probably vote on this every year or have input every year, only because, you know, Council Member Masotti just said next to me that, you know, 10 years ago it would have been manufacturing. So I think Lexington is ever-evolving, and so that's one of the concerns that I have. I think that one of the things that didn't get mentioned is the board would play a very active role in this, And I think the expectation would be if they identify or if you all identify that you need to do any of these things every year, that that would be a recommendation from the board as part of the process in administering this program, that you all need to look at changing these priorities to accommodate other different priorities going forward for the next couple years or however long it needs to be. And the other thing that I wanted to mention, And obviously, one of the things I'd love to see us do with this is leverage our greatest asset that we have in the city, and that's our relationship with UK and setting up something along the lines of a venture capital fund for Kentucky graduates to keep them around. I think that would be a great way to keep top talent here instead of losing them to other areas. But thank you, and I look forward to learning more and more about this. Absolutely. Just one quick comment. This is totally new to Lexington. It's not been tested here, but most of what we have talked about today has been tested in other places. And somewhat, you know, so it has been proven to work in other areas. So I understand the hesitancy completely. You're welcome. Yes, good points, Council Member Scotchfield. Council Member Ford. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Jamie, thank you for the presentation. Again, I just want to follow up with the question about board composition. I also have a question in regards to practical application. And I'll raise these questions with the understanding that, as Jamie, as you just mentioned, that this is new to Lexington, and which is even more the reason we are afforded to ask these questions. So my understanding as I look at this diagram, we're basically talking about, in regards to board composition, converting what is now the Industrial Revenue Bond Committee and converting it basically to the new makeup of the Economic Development Investment Board slash the Jobs Fund Board. Is that correct? That is correct, and they would keep the authority of the Industrial Revenue Bond Rebuy Committee. Okay, so will the Industrial Revenue Committee still exist, or will it be disbanded and just be the jobs fund board? It would be incorporated into the jobs board. Okay, I'm clear on that note. Now, how many incumbents are there? If that is the case, it appears then that most of the job funds board is already constituted. How many can you, as soon as you can, provide the names of the incumbents that now serve on the Industrial Revenue Bond Board who will then be converted and transferred over to the new jobs fund board and if you can do that, that's greatly appreciated. Secondly then, how many new folks will serve on this jobs fund board as a result of this new ordinance? How many new folks will we bring to the table? And in what slots will they serve? The chief development officer, I guess, is one. the investment community and the private equity would be the other two? Those are the three changes. That's right. We're in a situation right now where we don't have vacancies, I believe, or if we do, it's just one vacancy. Right. So we're going to have to look at the current membership and their qualifications to see the expansion of duties on the board service, who makes sense to leave on the board and ask to serve on the new board. Clearly, if we don't have someone from the investment community or private equity community, then we'll have to seek someone out. Will there be any, Jamie, it appears as I look at this, if it is only one vacancy or in the case that all the slots are filled on the industrial revenue, it appears that we could possibly be terminating the service of folks who are appointed right now to the Industrial Revenue Bond Board. For example, we're going to go from two housing reps to one. We're going to go from four at-large members to three. So I won't harp and belabor on that, but. That's a relevant point. You know, part of the IRB committee is they have important work. it doesn't require. Kevin might be able to help me on this a little bit more, but I think the point is they could use the extra focus for the economic development incentives. I think they're all excited about it, so I'd prefer that we don't actually ask someone to step aside, but we need to take a look at it. You're correct. That's a relevant question. That would be helpful. Again, this board would be one of the important boards, as are many of the perhaps hundreds of boards and commissions that help us carry out our work, and they also are the vehicles for transparency for this government, so that's helpful. The last question I do have is in regards to practical application. Will this be a discretionary fund, or will it be a uniform fund? And so what I mean by that is the day that this ordinance becomes law, if it passes in the form or closely resembles what's being presented, how will interested businesses petition for use of these funds? Will it be an application process or will it be solely by the professional advisement and guidance of the development officer and this board? I think that's a very important question. Can you advise on that as it stands right now? Sure. two things probably that are relevant. Number one, marketing. The chief development officer will be in charge of the marketing program with our economic development partner agencies. Actually, Jenna Greathouse sent me an email last week saying that she was in Chicago and she had already been pitching the local jobs fund as an idea to her consulting group, and there were 20 consultants in the room. So that's a good start. But regardless, yes, the marketing is an important component, and the application process is probably the most important. They make that application through the chief development officer, and he goes through the criteria and decides whether or not they've met the minimum requirements for the application or not. And from that point forward, if they have, the application then goes to the Economic Development Investment Board for thorough vetting. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Mayor. You're welcome. Thank you, Council Member Ford. Council Member Sadi. Thank you, Mayor. Jamie, a couple of questions on the financing, I guess, on page four on the one-goal job creation. I understand, number one, the grant's up to $100,000, but the two, the loan's up to $250,000. Is that going to be the final amount of money, or is that possibly an amount that could be leveraged? Say if I'm a company and I'm coming to Lexington and I need more than $250,000, would the government be the guarantor for the $250,000 in order to leverage more money and to get a loan and more money? How would that be utilized? That scenario is not legally sustainable. That's why I'm asking the question. I want to know if that was a possibility or not. There's a constitutional prohibition on doing that, so we would not be in a position to be able to do something like that. That's good. That's what I wanted to ask the question about. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Sutton. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Irmonds, for coming in and doing the presentation. A couple quick questions, or one question and a comment, I guess. With respect to the bylaws, which bylaws are you going to use for this committee? Are you going to use the existing bylaws for the IRB, or do you have a set of bylaws that you've created for the new committee? I think we can answer that in two ways. I'll let Dave go first. Thank you. They would likely adopt new bylaws because technically the group is going to be made up of different people. So they just adopt new bylaws going forward. Okay. So would it be easier to maybe address Council Member Ford's questions to just reconstitute that board under the new bylaws and then at that point determine which current members meet the optimal criteria for being on the new one and bringing the most to the table, if you will, to the new committee, and that would be how you end up at the end of the day merging the two? We talked about a couple different approaches. We think the one that we proposed is the simplest way to get there because it will be basically they will use the policies and guidelines document that you send them to create the bylaws. We could go that route, but I think we're just going to go back to look the slide. I think we know what types of folks we're looking for pretty clearly there. Okay, so let me ask you this then. So you're basically going to, when you get the new board, let them create their own bylaws instead of already having bylaws created, which is okay. I think they do adopt their own bylaws. Okay. Okay. Then that's essentially sort of the same thing. Okay. Then the second thing is I had a conversation with the mayor before when he first proposed this about ideas on how to spend the fund or how to utilize the fund. And that's sort of before you guys came up with this concrete idea. and actually Council Member Scotchfield brought up some of the same points. And I haven't been able to put the research together to give it to the mayor yet. But in St. Louis, I graduated from Wash U, and they have a program that's a venture capitalist program that they put together. And actually what they did was put the money together and then sort of challenged graduates and current students at Wash U to put together a business plan that then they would apply for funding. And so they were trying to, it's kind of like an incubator for their homegrown folks that are at Wash U to try to keep them there creating or establishing a business and creating jobs. And so I don't know if that is something that can be done as a part of this, but if not, that's still an idea that we may all want to consider down the road. Okay. Jim Parsons can come up and share a little bit of experience he's had in northern Kentucky with a couple different privately funded groups on that front. Okay, thank you. And then I'll just let you speak, and I'm done, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. One of the – actually, just prior to this meeting, I was talking to staff relative to the Uptek program in northern Kentucky. Cincinnati is a brandery program, and it's actually – it doesn't necessarily fit within this specific type of program, but it's something that I think that the urban county government may want to look at, where it's a program to specifically go after startup businesses and things. The program in northern Kentucky, a lot of private capital was raised, and they created an entity called UpTech. And in that particular one, they basically focused on startup companies, brand-new entities. Probably wouldn't meet some of the criteria for the loan eligibility and things like that here, but they create a certain amount of funding up front for these companies. They also have a number of law firms and CPA firms and banks and everything that are on it. And each entity that's selected for funding through that program is then assigned a group, a team, that will help. The legal will help them form their limited liability company. They'll put their operating agreements together. They may have some, because a lot of these people have ideas, concepts, but they don't have to know how to market their idea. They don't know how to set up, handle the legal side or the accounting side and things like that. So that's something that, even apart from this program, might be a good opportunity. In fact, I'd e-mail prior to this meeting information about the UPDAT program and the contacts to staff, because I think it would be a really good thing, especially with a research campus like UK, to tie into something like that. This could possibly be a tool at some point for that. It's probably going to be after the business is actually established and starts moving forward, probably a little bit second stage after the entity has proven to be successful or not. Sure. Could you do us a favor? Is it okay if you email that email that you sent to the council? Yeah. In fact, what I'll do, if you want, I will get more information about Uptech, how it works, and also possibly even the Brandery Corp program in Cincinnati, which is a similar type program, and get information down. Because I think that would be a really good entity to work, even in addition to what you're talking about with this loan program. Okay, and then I'll see if we can pull together the information from St. Louis. And then, Vice Mayor, can we put this into committee and maybe work on this as a part of next year's idea for economic development? Which part of it? The information that he's going to send in the Uptech program, the other program that he talked about, and then St. Louis. And, Jamie, do you want to say something? Yeah, there's one more to add. local example. It's called INET, and it's on campus, UK. It's just recently started, I believe. It's a venture capital project, so it might be worth throwing into the mix if you're going to put it into committee. Sure. Did you want to make a motion? Yeah, so I move to put these entities and the work that they're doing, along with St. Louis and what it's doing, into Econite Development Committee. Okay. All right. Do I hear a second? Councilmember Ellinger seconded. Is there any discussion about the motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you. Councilmember Clark, I thought I saw your name on there. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just feel like I need to comment on this whole proposal. I think it is a very good proposal in its conception, and I suspect that it's also going to be successful in its realization. And I just want to comment on that. And I also want to comment on the priority sectors and there's some question about whether it will change or not. Of course it will change. There's no question about it. As a matter of fact, there may be things in this whole ordinance that might change. That's a reality of government. and particularly when we're talking about moving development objectives. So I think the fact that the priority sectors are in there at all is a very good idea, and I think a very good first step. I also wanted to ask, still not clear about the board. Jamie, if you could just comment on this. So we're actually going to try to keep the same board, the same people as much as we can, and perhaps even say to some that there's no room for them. Or are we starting from scratch? That's my question. Is this a completely new board that might indeed include some of the same people, or are we saying we're simply dissolving the original board and we're starting from scratch? I think you could probably do either, but I think when this was contemplated, the idea was they were going to try to retain as many of the existing members of the IRB as possible. So there's nothing in the ordinance that really clarifies that? No, it doesn't clearly. But I think from a process standpoint, that was the idea, was that they were going to try to retain the existing members. I understand that. But obviously there are some people who are on the board now that there will not be room for them. Is that a probability, Jamie, you think? It's very likely since we're adding a second council member. Yeah, right. Okay. That was my question, and I think it's something. Although, I mean, again, I want to take a deeper look at it and see what we can do to maintain that. Okay. I appreciate it. That's my comment. Thank you. Council Member Stenet. I'll yield to Mr. Farmer. I'll think he's spoken yet on the subject. I'll be glad to. Mr. Farmer. Thank you both. Specifically, would the entity of 21C be eligible to apply for some of these funds? Interesting question. No. Well, I wouldn't think so. Not the retail component, not the restaurant component, excuse me. The two exclusions we have in the document are retail and restaurant-oriented businesses. Anything outside of that, there could be a case made. If they needed the money, if it was the last money in, they could make an application and make the case that they would be eligible. And would the same hold true for Center Point, potentially? A development project? I'm not sure about that. Dave, do you have an opinion? What do you think, Jim? I think maybe the businesses that might locate in CenterPoint could be eligible under the concept and things. The development project itself would know would not be eligible under this concept. It really wasn't intended. This is really intended to be for the actual businesses who are actually using the facility and things, and there are some exclusions for things like restaurants and some of the service industries that are traditionally not provided incentives in some of these type of areas and things. So that's why you have the targeted type businesses and things like that that you want to focus on, the idea that if you get those businesses in and those are open operating, some of these service and other types of businesses like restaurants and things will benefit from them, but they wouldn't necessarily be eligible for the program. But, yeah, technically, if you look at the literal awarding, those businesses would be legally eligible, but probably some of the size and scope of some of those businesses would probably be eligible under the larger KBI program, and so they may not need a program like this in that circumstance. I don't know if that answered your question, but... You've done fine. I just, I was interested. I will tread lightly and move on. Thank you. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. I did, based on Council Member Farmer's question, wanted to ask a follow-up. Did we look at any type of limit as to money that one entity could receive from LFUCG? If we give money somewhere else, can we also apply for this fund, or are we going to set a cap? Because, hey, for people to double dip within government and take all our resources when we're trying to actually spread them out, did we put a cap that if they receive assistance through, like, the other budgetary process or other processes, should they be eligible for this fund? Right. I wish I had handed this out to you as well, but that is a factor in the policies and guidelines. You have to have not received an incentive from the government other than the one you're applying for. Very good. So it comes up front in the beginning of the application process. Right. And also the last thing is funding for this program. Did you discuss, I know it's not in the ordinance yet, but an annual fund allocation through the budget, such as we do in the Economic Contingency Fund and other funds that we can ensure this fund is built up to accessible levels, wherever that level may be, we decide. Do we talk about a dedicated funding source each year? What the ordinance has that you're voting on Thursday would be it would actually establish the fund itself, but it doesn't require through the ordinance any annual contribution. Not yet. You know, we thought we would test it and see how it's doing first and then perhaps amend the ordinance later if we thought that it was valuable enough for the city to continue the investment. Testing's good. I'll live with that for now. But, you know, in order for this to really work, we've got to continue to do it. It can't just be a one-time done deal. But having a track record is good to prove that. Absolutely. I mean, I think if we can show some success, it gives everybody a little bit more ease to perhaps put a general fund appropriation in in the next budget and then consider how it's doing in the following year to make an amendment to the ordinance. Very good. Thank you. Well, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Jamie, when you send the amended ordinance, can you also send the draft guidelines and policies? I will resend those as well, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor, for the opportunity to speak twice. I have just one or two questions, and I may have missed it. I don't know if it's been provided to us. What is the standard? How many jobs will this initial $1 million of investment create within the confines of the proposed jobs fund ordinance? Do we have an idea of that? I would say that's a very hard estimate to give you. Can your consultant help us? Mr. Parsons. Do you have any thoughts on that? I don't really have an answer on exactly how many it will create. A lot of it might be jobs that maybe create new investment or new assessment and things like that. So I think just the million-dollar number, it would be kind of hard to say this will create this many jobs. I think the program overall, though, when it's tied to other things, is an important tool to tie in to create new investment in Lexington. I wish I could give you more information on that, but I really don't want to provide an estimate that is not based on anything. Thank you for that honesty. The answer disappoints, to be quite honest. Let me ask this question. Let me rephrase the question. Is there a limit to the dollar amount for which, and my background is in grants and housing, it's definitely not in finance and economic development, But in my prior roles, I know that there's a threshold that is often attached to public investment, which this will continue to be, taxpayer dollars, that kind of gives us some reassurance that we're maximizing, we're being efficient with this process. Is there going to be, for example, so when said company petitions or applies to the government, within the policy and guidelines of the jobs fund, will there be a standard? Will there be a chart, for lack of a better term, that kind of identifies the desired impact that we want to benefit? For example, to spend $100,000 to create one job. I think some programs, yeah. I haven't seen it in the specific program guidelines and things relative to that. You may, as they begin to implement the program, they may decide to at least put some determination about so much, no more than so much per job or whatever, as you move forward with this particular situation. So, again, one, you're not just creating one job. I would assume as they move forward with this process and make recommendation to counsel, One of the important recommendations, especially for those that would get the larger allocations of funding, would be based upon the number of jobs that particular project was creating, since that's the intent of it. And at some point, as you move forward with this particular program and idea and concept, you may begin to establish some of those type of standards and to create some type of maximum limit per job or something like that. I think at the front end it might be a mistake at least to attun my limitations on that. They've already got some pretty significant limitations on the security, on the callbacks and provisions and things like that. I would keep it as flexible as you can at the front end as you begin to implement this with the idea that you can start adding some requirements later there. I mean, at the state level, for instance, they often have an artificial number that they put together, like so many $20,000 per job or something like that, so that they are kind of creating some type of artificial standard, that at least they have something to guide the way they're doing business. Well, I appreciate that, because you answered the other question I was going to ask was, at the state level or other public incentive programs, job creation-wise, are there standards? They may not be hard, fast numbers, but they kind of give a gauge in regards to what kind of impact that we want to have. Thanks, Mr. Parsons. Thanks, Jamie. What I will say is for 21C and that project is going to be coming forth in the vein of job creation, we have taken the steps to apply for a $6 million loan for 150 service-level jobs. My math says that's $40,000 per job. And again, my expertise doesn't qualify me to say whether or not that is a wise investment. But jobs are jobs, and every job we can bring to the community is important. But I think we need to be able to demonstrate that we can quantify that we're creating jobs. and we're doing so in a reasonable fashion. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you both. Thank you, Councilman Ford. Councilman Beard. Councilman Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. I just wanted to clarify one little piece of this, and that is when you talk about jobs, there are a whole gamut of types of jobs and how much they're paid and how critical they are to the success of the company. It isn't just we got a job, 20 grand a year, so we should feel good about that. It's got to be something a little bit more in-depth, as I see it than just so many jobs. I wasn't aware of the 21C situation, but that for them is $40,000 a year is our bet. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilman Beard. If I could just comment on that quickly. That exact reason is why we apply priorities to the ordinance, because if you focus on higher-earning jobs, you're going to create the spinoff economic activity from those in both employment and spending through retail entertainment and the restaurant industry. So, again, putting priority into the ordinance is key because that's where we should focus our money on those good career jobs. All right. All right. Thank you, Jamie. That's all that have signed up for comments or questions. Thank you for the presentation. That allows us to move on to council reports. If you have a council report as a council member, please sign on. Council Member Massadi. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say a big congratulations to the 27 recruits who graduated on Saturday and became probationary firefighters. With the addition of the 27 recruits, we now have a total of 540 trained firefighters in Lexington. And the next class, I believe, is scheduled in spring of 2014. Congratulations to those new recruits and our best of luck. And be safe. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Sadi. Vice Mayor Gordon. Two things. I also wanted to say congratulations to our fire recruits. Mayor, I think that may be the first time we've done that on a Saturday, and it was a huge turnout. The fire training center was packed. And so the mayor and I had talked about whether on a Saturday it gives families an opportunity to have more family members in because they can get here. But it was just a great event, and I appreciate the commitment of our new fire recruits. And then I believe this is our last work session before December, and I know we have Thursday night meeting, but I wanted to just take a moment to thank Jerry Hancock, our Division of Parks and Recreation Director. He's retiring at the end of this month. and I have done a lot of work over the years with all of the Division of Parks directors back into the late 90s and I just wanted to thank him for his commitment and in particular his work with Friends of the Dog Park who originally, the Friends of the Dog Park, was not a group that was widely expected to be successful. And Jerry has embraced that group and worked with the group and seen what a public-private partnership can do for our park. So I appreciate his work. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. And I would just echo what the Vice Mayor has said, and I appreciate the years of service of Jerry Hancock. and also I wanted to mention the vice mayor in her announcement last week that she chose not to run but I think we're very blessed to have you on this council Lexington's blessed I should say but I do have a motion to place an item in committee, public safety committee. I move to place into the public safety committee to examine the staffing at community corrections and the inmate corrections officers ratio. So moved. Second. Motion by Council Member Henson, second by Council Member Massadi. I confess I didn't catch the motion, Council Member Henson, so you want to repeat it. To place in the Public Safety Committee the staffing levels at Community Corrections, and in addition to that, the ratio of inmate, officer. All right. Okay. So, motion by Council Member Henson, seconded by Council Member Sadi. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, ma'am. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to mention that I had an interesting experience this morning watching the removal of a beautiful spruce tree from one of my constituents' yard. And talking to Mr. Walsh, I found that the people who did the work, he was just extraordinarily pleased at what they were doing, particularly the gentleman who was in charge from parks. And I just wanted to mention that publicly, that they did a terrific job, and the process was quite amazing. And my constituent was very pleased to be able to contribute to the cause of the holidays. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Clark. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. I have an announcement and a comment. This Saturday, November 23rd, the Robert H. Williams Cultural Center at 644 Georgetown Street is going to celebrate its centennial celebration. In 1913, the colored orphan industrial home was rebuilt after a fire, and it started from African-American women over a century ago who stepped out to help orphans and disadvantaged youth of our community. So I look forward to going there. Dr. Loretta Flynn Byers, a native of Lexington, a former administrator of the UK and now an administrator at a college in Texas. She's going to be the keynote, and she has also authored a book about the history of that facility, so a great display of Lexington history. I will also want to move my comments to the job fund and our priorities, and I want to issue a challenge to this government. Mayor Gray, I support the jobs fund. I support going forward. I know that it was an honor for me to be named, invited to serve on the Robert H. Williams board before my time at council. Coach Roach invited me, and he thought that was an honor, and it was. And, Mayor, you and I have talked about this before, and I'll share it if you don't mind, his comments to you of what's important. for our community, African-American community, J-O-B-S, Jobs. And I think your jobs fund is titled as such. However, I do think we're moving quite fast on this jobs fund. We moved quite fast on 21C and $6 million. We moved quite fast with the million dollars in UDAG. We're moving quite fast in a lot of areas. But I have confidence that we can go in the right direction. What I ask is for goodwill, reciprocity, and economic justice to a certain degree. The same veracity and intensity that we pursue these high-scale, upper-tech jobs. That's the easy work. The hard work is how do we address the East End of Lexington, which has chronic 20% unemployment. How do we address that? We should address that. And whether it is through our own workforce area, whether it's through job training, whatever it takes, if we can move just as fast and almost prematurely to an extent, we can do the same thing for the folks that need this work most. We're taking great heat over homelessness. Well, how do folks end up homeless and disadvantaged? lack of economic opportunities, amongst other shortcomings. So, Mayor, you'll continue to have my support now last for yours and the Council as we address issues important to our district. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilman Forward. Councilman Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. I, too, will celebrate the character and personality and accomplishment of both the Vice Mayor and Jerry Hancock. We will miss one before we miss the other. To those who enjoy watching our proceedings here, beginning before our recess in August, we began doing a few things in the chamber. To at first just remove some indirect lighting that used to kind of lean out on each side here. And it took a while while we were gone to get those lighting fixtures removed and then this sound deadening material put back up. and it took a little while longer to get the indirect lighting replaced up there. And then a couple weeks ago, after our meeting, I was able to spend some time with the mayor. We went to the archives, the city archives, and looked at all the portraiture of previous mayors, and that has resulted in four new portraits being hung in here between our meeting last time and this time, joining the ones of Foster Pettit and Mayor Amato and Mayor Miller. If you'll follow me. This is just for a minute. I've only got five minutes, right? He's about ready to go up in the scissors lift now to Henry Clay. May I reintroduce you to Mayor Henry T. Duncan, as pictured here, a rather well-dressed gentleman. He was our mayor from 1894 through 1895. He was born in Paris, Kentucky on August 30th, 1836. After graduating from Harvard University in 1859, he returned to Lexington to serve as a member of the State Guards during the Civil War. He was married to Lily Brand of Lexington in 1860, and the couple would raise ten children together. With Hart Gibson and J.J. Miller, he established the Lexington Press in October of 1870. He sold the newspaper in 1896 to DeShay Breckenridge, who combined it with the transcript to form the Lexington Herald. Duncan served for many years as a city councilman, and following the city government reorganization, who knew, he served as a city alderman. He was elected mayor in 1894 and served two terms. In 1900, he was elected again and remained in office until 1903. He died at the age of 75 on June 4, 1912, at the home of his son-in-law, Colonel John R. Allen, at 417 Fayette Park. Duncan was an uncle of future Mayor H. Foster Pettit. That concludes my report. Wow. Well, I'll save some for next time. Oh, okay. That's coming. Good. Wow. So what was that connection to Foster again, to Mayor Pettit? His future uncle. Duncan was an uncle of future Mayor H. Foster Pettit. So he was a relative predecessor, if you will. So it does run in the family, Mayor. Thank you for that. Thank you for that history lesson. All right. Council Member Stannett. Just think, Mayor, one day we can do that for you when you're on the wall. Oh, Lordy. I hope I'm lucky enough to be here to do it. Council Member Henson put an issue of staffing into the Public Safety Committee. I also had an opportunity to talk to Commissioner Mason and Chief Bastin about a staffing plan for Division of Police. I know we've worked on the Division of Fire extensively through the council work, but I'd like to have an opportunity in January for Council Member Henson to place into committee the staffing of Division of Police. and the biggest issues are there's a couple divisions that we no longer have due to the cutbacks we've had during the recession, one being the clear units that some of us had in our district neighborhoods, the other being the second shift traffic units that assisted greatly on neighborhood traffic issues from 4 to 8 p.m. in the evenings. Some of those issues, along with some other departments that have been scaled back, I think it's an opportunity for the council and administration to come up with a plan on what our true staffing needs are, where do we eventually want to be, and how do we get there. And I think they'll have an opportunity to present a plan in January. So that's a motion to place into public safety for January the Division of Police Staffing Plan. So moved. Second. There's a motion by Council Member Stenet, seconded by Council Member Beard. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you, Council Member Stenet. That looks at all the council members who signed up for a council report, which allows us to move on to the mayor's report. Is there a motion to approve? Move approval. Motion by Vice Mayor Gorton, second by Council Member Kay. Is there any discussion on the motion? Oh, who was that? Council Member Clark? You all are sounding very much alike. Forgive me. He's projecting. Correction. Did that happen twice? I think it did. Got on the same coats. Yeah. Same. Yeah. All right. Is there any discussion on motion? All right. If none, then here we go. We take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. That allows us to move on to public comment for issues not on the agenda. Is the floor available for public comment? Mr. Mundy, nobody's shined up. All right. Then that allows us to move to a motion to adjourn by Council Member Ellinger and second by Vice Mayor Gordon. Unless there's objection, we are adjourned.