There never were. Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh I know I know you must follow the sun Wherever it leads But remember If you should fall short of your desires Remember life holds for you One guarantee You'll always have me And if you should miss my loving One of these old days If you should ever miss the arms That used to hold you so close Or the lips that used to touch you So, Tendon, just remember what I told you the day I set you free. Ain't no mountain high enough. Ain't no mountain low enough. Ain't no river wide enough to get me from you. Ain't no mountain high enough. Ain't no mountain low enough. Ain't no river wide enough to get me from you. Ain't no mountains high enough Nothing can keep me, keep me from you Ain't no mountains high enough Ain't no mountains high enough Ain't no mountains high enough Say it again Ain't no mountains high enough I'm gonna be a hell of a happy life And I'm gonna be a hell of a happy life This is a dream And it's all I'm gonna be a hell of a happy life And it's all I'm gonna be a hell of a happy life guitar solo Now here I sit Mr. Lonely He'll hold you tonight But I won't What's he got that I've known The one thing I thought I'd never lose He's got you Thank you. He'll hold you tonight, but I won't. What's he got when I don't? The one thing I thought I'd never lose. He's got you. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo so guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. I believe we have a quorum, and I apologize. We were in a previous meeting with the council members. We're a little bit late getting started, but if council members would take their seats, we'll call a meeting to order. This is the February 11th meeting of the General Government Committee. First item on the agenda is approval of the January 14th summary. Do I have a motion? Second. A motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Next item on the agenda is moving human resources, and this has been before the council before. And unless, Vice Mayor, you want to add anything before we hear from the administration, we'll proceed. Thank you. CAO Hamilton, welcome. Thank you very much. Let me see if I can. I'm going to go through the presentation that we did, and then if it's all right afterwards, I'd sort of like to share with you some thoughts I've had about as we went through this presentation and just share those thoughts a minute. The first thing is to make sure that we're all on the same page as how we are organized right now. In the CAO's office, we have a deputy, which is Glenn Brown, and who reports into us are government communications, GTV3, LexCol, grants and special programs, so that's Irene, computer services, enterprise, and risk management. Now, in the Department of Law, the thing that we need to look at is that human resources is reporting into the Department of Law. In finance, the thing that we're interested in is payroll, and payroll is reporting into finance. In the Division of Human Resources, they have four branches, and you have administration. They've got three employees in there. Total talent acquisition, seven. Benefits administration, employee relations and training. I think not too long ago, the question was asked of John Maxwell to sort of tell what those areas did, and he sent out an email about that. The process improvements. We hear, and I'm trying to walk a fine line with this because I do not want to throw human resources under the bus in this presentation. Every area has room for improvement. And the CAO's office is just like everybody else. We have room for improvement also. But the things that we have heard about where process improvement is needed in HR is on the hiring, is on the grievances, the training, and protection and privacy of personal information. The Department of Law has a great deal of their workload, as we discussed last time. The General Counsel, just in my opinion, needs to be the General Counsel. An autonomous Department of Personnel Services would ensure that employee issues are handled independently. The Department of Personnel Services was created to include, and this is what we would call the department. If there was going to be a new department, we would name it, this is just purely suggestions, the Department of Personnel Services, and it would include human resources and risk management. We did not put in payroll at this time. Payroll is a function that can go into many personnel services departments. And the reason we didn't at this time is that we are trying to sort of map out and organize our payroll better. And I don't want to move that at this particular time until we get all that function lined out. Computer services and enterprise solutions needs to be moved to the chief information officer, and I think that's already decided. That is just a paper move. They are down with me now, but we will come in our budget to move those to information officer. So consequently, if you looked at a department of potential reorganization for a department of personnel services, you'd see that it would be on a line with the Department of Law, the Department of Finance, Personnel Services, CIO. The benefits of doing this. Human resources and risk management is led by a commissioner that can devote a great deal of time to the issues involved there. The commissioner can focus solely on correcting basic system problems. And the commissioner can also do things to enhance training. The CIO, which we're going to do, that's already really been done except for the paper trail, will directly manage all divisions that are responsible for technology. we were asked what would be the cost of this and if you were going to set up a commissioner at a new department and just the cost of the commissioner we ran this as the entry level it would be 143,005 we looked to see how many other cities that were comparable to our size and number of employees had their own personnel department. Loyville does. They've got many more employees, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Boulder, Colorado, and Greenville, South Carolina. Okay. Now, if I can just say a few words. I have thought about this and thought about this. And it depends on which time of the day you ask me about this. But here is my true, true opinion after thinking about this. That is a $143,000 deal. I think that we need to see what this compensation study gives us. I would like to see how many of what exactly it tells us that we have to do salary-wise. I would like to see how we need to change ordinances to come in and deal with a compensation study. And I think truly, I'm going to take a breath when I say this, I think truly that after this budget is over, we've got this budget done, that I, with the help of Janet and my staff, can come back and really look at some of these issues, form committees to help us outside, like asking the Municipal League, asking the state to look at some of our processes of how to improve those. And I think we can accomplish the same thing without adding another department. And I will accept responsibility for that if that is what the council deems to be the best course of action. Okay, I said it. Thank you. There are some council members signed up to either ask questions or make comments. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. Why risk management being placed where it is? The mechanism of what they do is, in some cases, enormous out of the realm of what is up here on the screen. Risk management is one of, I think it's a very good question, Council Member Beard. Risk management is one of those things when we did our research, a lot of times it's in Department of Personnels, a lot of times it's not. It would not have to move, if the Council chose not to, to a Department of Personnel Services. It is in a lot of places because of its involvement with safety of individuals, of the training of the staff, but we all know that it does more also. Well, but that's something that the director of risk management could send people here or send people there, but the risk management has got some pretty heavy dollars attached to it. It does, and right now it's with me down in the CAO office. That's a good place for it. Well, and I think they agree with that. Oh, no. Yeah, I see the head shaking. I'm trying to get people to leave. No, seriously, we appreciate risk management, and we understand that issue. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. I understand where you're going with this. I think for me, one of the issues with human resources being under the Department of Law, and this has nothing to do with personalities or individuals, is that our Department of Law is here to protect our government. And it seems like somewhat of a conflict when there are personnel issues and laws responsible for making sure we don't get in trouble or get sued or whatever. And at the same time, they're the ones that human resources is under that division, and therefore their job is, it seems, it would be hard for them to be unbiased or make decisions regarding personnel issues. Am I saying that right? Yes, and I think that when I spoke with the general counsel, with Janet Graham, I had first talked in the terms of conflict of interest, and I think they have a legal implication themselves. So that's why we use this word independent and to make sure that there would not be any, in a nomenclature, that I would use a conflict. Yes, I think we're on the same track. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Sally, for coming to us today. I know the title is Moving Human Resources, but this is a lot more than just HR. And I appreciate the effort and opportunity to discuss any type of re-organ efficiency. I know we've had a lot of them in the last couple years, and some have been great. Some probably need a little more work. But this will change a lot of things. And the first question, are you asking the council to consider hiring another commissioner? It's not my recommendation. After I looked, when I came back, and Council Member Clark, we talked last month, and last month I said, I think that is a good idea that we do a department. And I said, let us come back this month with that. After that, I mean, you know, sometimes you do your research, you think, you talk to everybody else, and you look at it on paper. and you think, am I just reacting bureaucratically because this is what I've done for 38 years? You know, I mean, sort of soul searching. And I don't think it's ready to be a department right now. Okay, I'm glad. That's my opinion. Well, thank you. And I'm glad you're sharing it with us today and you realize that we may need to still flush some of this out. Yes. What do you feel are the biggest issues with NHR? I know you identify generally, but, you know, I've been on here 10 years, and we've heard a lot of the same things over and over. No matter who is sitting in the director's role or who's working in the department, the same issues seem to occur. I don't know if they'll always be with us no matter what we do, but something has to change to break this cycle, that we continue to hear about the same type of problems with grievances, with the hiring process. How do we get our hands around what the real issue is, and how do we really move forward and really improve it once and for all? I don't want to rearrange the chairs on the deck, so to speak, and say we did it. Well, I think you have truly verbalized what we've been thinking, the questions that we've been asking and the soul-searching we've been doing for the last month on this since it was raised. I am not sure that if we do a department, we're just not rearranging the deck chairs right now. And there are a lot of things that we need to dig into. I think we're too anecdotal when we talk about HR. But because there's a lot of things, what I would like to do is I would like to dig in and look at hiring itself. And to see, I know what the complaints are, but I want to confirm those complaints. And then I want to come back to you and tell you here are the steps that we would need to do to alleviate that problem. They may be ordinance driven. They may be just civil service laws itself. But I need to give you a thorough analysis of that rather than just saying I'm hearing things. I mean, if that. That's fair enough because, you know, we hear the same things. I know, and I do too. Some council members want to dive into HR and have the last several years to try to figure out what the problem is, and some keep a distance and try to let the administration figure it out. But whatever we do, hopefully we can do it transparently, work together, but improve the process not just for the few that may be having problems, but the many who want to make sure the process is fair for their department and can get people hired as quick as possible. That's right. Because we have some vacancies that are critical in our government, and if we can't offer the right salary, if we can't do whatever, or it cripples us in some cases. And I want to get past some of that. I agree with you wholeheartedly. And the transparency of, I think the system itself, the way it's just structured, not the people, makes it very non-transparent. And when people don't understand, they think other things are going on. That's right. And that's why transparency is important. It is. And I hesitate to say this, but I know it's the truth. Every department is not the same. Every department's hiring situation is different, and we need to respect that. And we need to have a certified process to do position re-evaluations. If a department asks that to be done, there needs to be a system in place for that to be able to be done, the PAQs. Because there are some departments that would like it done, some are comfortable, but we need to have a legitimate process in place that gives every department the fair opportunity to have a PAQ process and re-evaluate their positions. I know the big payroll system, my time's almost up. is going to be key to a lot of this, and hopefully that's also on the front burner when we're talking about HR, is getting a new compensation system, one that we've fully funded from day one and continue to fund. So thank you for looking into this, and I look forward to continue having the same dialogues. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Scotchfield. Thank you, Chair. You know, we talk about efficiency, and I'm not sure that adding another layer on top of human resources is efficient. I think there's a lot more we have to look at because I want to do this. I want to do it right when we do it. You know, and making it transparent, taking a look at how, and it's not picking on the staff. It's picking on making sure that we have the process correct. So, you know, when I look at adding right now the way the chart is set out, we add another layer on top. And I don't think that's like a Band-Aid. I think. I think we need to look a little bit deeper into it. And I'm kind of torn, too, on risk management being under human resources. I can see that risk management does something very different than what the law department does, but yet they are somewhat interrelated. I think if we do risk management under HR, it needs to be completely separate from law, and we make sure that we create that boundary between the two. Because it is not exactly the same thing, but it does take a lot of the same expertise. Do you have any thoughts on that? I agree. I think that the risk management, I guess our issue here was when we did risk management over there with the Department of Personnel was probably to make it bigger for a commissioner. I don't think that has to go there whatsoever. And as I said, I really am leaning to what I need to come back to you all with concentrations on HR and some things that I think I need to dig into this. I mean, I'm sorry, but you're right. Thank you. And I think what you've brought up are great starting point discussions, And I think each one of us up on the horseshoe has things that, you know, jump out at them as well. But, you know, we have to start the conversation somewhere, and I appreciate you doing that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Excuse me. Mr. Chair and Vice Mayor Gore, and I'll ask just briefly if the link could give background as to why this issue is in committee. I think it has to do with the fact that HR reporting and being under the Department of Law, is that correct? Was that primarily the basis for the referral? May I speak? And then our chair of our link may also, Council Member Clark may also want to say, yes, that was part of it. And we also talked about the fact that HR supports all of government. It's not like a division of planning or a division of environmental quality or one of those. It supports every employee in government, so it's a little bit different. Council Member Clark may want to weigh in. I don't know. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just let me say that I don't remember this as much of an issue coming from the link as it was the question that I posed in this committee, basically asking the question, why is human resources in law? And I still don't have an answer to that question, But I will say that there's nobody in this room or in this government I respect any more than our CAO. And if her opinion is that we need to leave it where it is and we can at the same time solve the problems that I hear daily, then it's fine with me. I will also say that if we can't solve those problems this way, then we're going to have to find a way to do it. And I hate to see, frankly, I hate to see the CAO being the person that's going to have to solve these problems, because it looks like to me that if we leave it the way it is, that's what's going to happen. And I know Sally is willing to do that. I don't know anybody else would be more willing or more capable of doing that. And so I think this all came about from that simple question, Councilmember Ford. And I think that's where it happened. And I think it's still a good question that needs to be answered. And at some point, I think that question is still going to be out there. And if we don't go anywhere with this, then it's going to become even a more vital question that we need to answer. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Clark, Vice Mayor Gordon. And Mr. Chair, thanks for allowing me to bring this back to the surface for a basis. I'll just ask for deference for just a few minutes to now be able to ask my questions because now I think I have the information that I need. My understanding is that, and I agree, I don't think that HR should be under the law department. I think that it needs to basically perhaps revert back to where it was before the transition reorganization, which I believe was under the CAO's office. and not to put additional burden on CAO Hamilton. But as I look at, and another reason I want to say is that I do appreciate the CAO's office bringing to us, as requested, a proposal, the Department of Personnel Services. They took our request and brought forward. And then Sally honestly said she wouldn't guide us to go that way. We just added a commissioner-level employee, which I think is going to serve benefit to this government, which is the CIO. And that CIO, as I'm looking at the organizational chart, is going to now take responsibility for computer services and enterprise solutions. So that's going to lighten the CIO's reporting burden somewhat. that's what I would recommend for the committee to consider. Because you're right, I think under Sally's and Glenn's guidance, they're perhaps best suited to help us really delve into correcting the issues at HR. And if they're going to do that, it may as well return to their reporting authority on the organizational chart. In closing, can somebody confirm that for me? Is that correct? Prior to Mayor Gray's transition three years ago, did HR report directly to the CAO's office or what was Mr. Kelly's position? If I recall, under the Newberry administration, finance and administration was together, and human resources actually reported to the commissioner of finance. And then under the Gray administration, we wanted to break out that administration piece from the Department of Finance. And so those things that were considered administrative moved to other areas. Was it ever the CEO's office under Gray? Under Gray? I think it moved from finance to us. And thank you, Glenda, because we've had three mayors over the last 12 years. In closing, what I would say, it kind of alludes back to what, thank you, Glenn, so much. What I would, kind of concluding, I will say it alludes to what Vice Mayor Gordon mentioned. HR covers all facets of government, and our CAO, rightfully so, is in charge and guiding all of government. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. CIO Hamilton, please, I hate to bring you up here to be the one to have this conversation with, but I agree, I think that HR needs to go back under, I guess probably under you. I didn't think that it should move from finance to law for a lot of reasons given here today, but I have a different outlook on why I think that needs to happen also. And again, it's nothing with the folks in HR, But as the vice mayor said, HR is essentially a service organization within our bigger organization of the entire government. And it seems like every administration since I've been on the council, we've done something to restructure or move HR around because there were things that needed to be addressed, but they never get addressed in that movement. And I would like to see it come back under your domain. And then there are things that I'd like to see looked at. And that's really an overall review of HR and all of its processes. And I think we've had multiple directors in HR since I've been on the council. And that's never really been done, I don't think. And if you look at some of the things we've come up with, the hiring process still needs to be streamlined. The employee grievance process still has not been – there's no solution to the issues that we have. Exit surveys, that still hasn't been done. I think the way that the council has talked about it being done in the past Excuse me pay equity still an issue There are even things like we found out when we looked at our benefits this year that we didn't even have until now a system to verify That if I say I have for example two kids And they're on my insurance plan that they're actually my kids and they live with me and they're on the plan And so there's just a lot of things It seems like if we move this back under you and we do a structural review of everything that HR does for best practices What systems are in place? What are not and then come up with a plan to address all these things and it may take Years to implement the plan But I think we need to look at all the different opportunities in HR and then put together a plan to start addressing those things If you'd like to comment, but if you don't that's okay, too, but but that would be my hope that we we move in that direction As I said before, I do agree with you. If it is, regardless of whether it moves to the CAO office, the general counsel and Glenda and all of us work hand in hand. So if it doesn't move, we will still do what you're talking about, regardless. I think what we'll do is exactly do a whole structural review, because we can't recommend things to you without knowing the facts. I don't know what hampers that hiring process. You need to know exactly what that is before you can take those steps. So regardless of where it is, we will do those things. Okay, and then that way you would have a recommendation on how to restructure or what employees need to be hired or what skill sets we need to add to the table to be able to get things done that we need to be done. Yes. Thank you very much. And so will you come back with some type of a timeline on how you're going to do that when you're going to start that process. Yeah, I can tell you right now that I cannot, and I mean this with all due respect, until that budget is submitted to you, I really cannot handle this. I understand that. Once we get this budget into you, then after April 8th, then I'm better. I can work on this. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. Thank you, Chair, and I appreciate you recognize me. I don't sit on this committee. However, I do find this one topic of interest, and I think we all discussed it early on. I guess my biggest concern with having HR under law is when we had previously some concerns with grievances and complaints that were filed. I felt like there may be a conflict of interest since the ultimate determination is made by the Department of Law. And I guess that's where I have the most concern, that there needs to be a little bit more separation there when there's some of those issues that we've had in the past. And having HR as a separate entity to me would be a stronger entity and stronger for the employees rather than having it under Department of Law. And I think that also would alleviate maybe some of the Department of Laws, you know, when they would have to issue some kind of a judgment or make a decision on such a grievance or a process that may come up with an employee. Good point. Thank you. Thank you. Council members signed up. Oh, I'm sorry. Council Member Lawless. My memory may not be serving me correctly on this, but if I recall, there was a Division of Risk Management that was under law, and there was a Director of Risk Management. and through a series of events, they split out part of risk management and put it in personnel. That's a good point, Council Member. And that was under the Newberry administration. Yes, and now that claim section is under law of the part that was split out is now under law. But it used to be all under one. I think so, didn't it? Yes. Yes, ma'am. And that seemed to me to be more efficient in a way because they could share information and data. And, you know, that's just not too simple. When we look here, we'll look at everything. I'm not very good at that, the difference in the claims and stuff, but we'll take a look at everything. Okay, thank you. For you. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll defer to you if you had any. Did you have any questions since I've spoken already? I don't have questions, but I'd like to kind of summarize, but I want to make sure everybody's had an opportunity. Do you have further questions? I do, and I'm... Please proceed. Council Committee, I wish to tender a motion for the purpose of bringing us further discussion on this issue. Before I bring that motion, I want to be clear in saying that I have great respect for the work of our law department, and this discussion of reorganization is in no way disparaging of Janet, Glenda, and David, and the great lawyers who, because of the transition, have taken on the responsibility and tried to do the very best with HR. and without need to say I have all the confidence in the world and see a little Hamilton and Glenn and his shop. But it's the responsibility and the authority of the council to reorganize. And I do share some of the concerns that were expressed about HR being under law. I'm not an expert on other municipal organizations, but I would venture to say that we are probably one of the very few local governments that have HR under its law department. So I'd like to, in this committee, of course it would have to go to the full council in further discussion, but I would like to tender a motion for the reorganization of the Division of Human Resources back to the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer after the budget, effective fiscal year 15. I have a motion and a second to move the Department of Human Resources back to the office of the Chief Administrative Officer. Any discussion on the motion? Mr. Chair, I want to be it's very important that it's after the budget it would be effective July 15th July of 14 and the motion to include that this would not happen occur until after the budget is approved in June any discussion vice mayor Gordon so based on your motion councilmember Ford then the budget would if this works its way through the council and passes the budget would need to reflect the change money-wise, the money for HR, and if we move it to CAO, that would all have to be reflected in the budget. Is that what you're thinking? Yes, Madam Vice Mayor. I think from a financial point, that's correct. But my main motive for making that request is because of what CAO Hamilton just demonstrated to us in regards to her current focus. of being on the budget. So I don't want to place a burden on her office right now, but I do feel it's in the best interest of the government that it return to the CAO's office at a convenient time, which none better being July 1. Thank you, Ashley. I guess I would just simply ask, I know we heard from CAO Hamilton about we're in the middle of the budget, and right now she wouldn't be able to do anything with this, but I'd kind of like to, not to put you on the spot, but to put you on the spot, see what your thinking is about this. And I remember in previous years, several mayors ago, we used to have a, and Glenn, you can remind me what it was, Department of General Services, General Administration, Administrative Services. Is that what it was? which is a little bit different animal, and it was not tied to a CAO, I don't believe. Anyway. When we've talked about this in the past, I have fought this tooth and nail. I did not want to do this. I did not want to do human resources, and I think I've expressed that to some of you all. I certainly do not want, at last meeting, I told Councilmember Clark and the rest of the committee that I thought looking at a department had a lot of merit and should be looked at. And from looking at that department, and I'm so glad it was suggested because I think it really crystallized a lot of thinking, I came to the conclusion that I do not at this time feel that that is the right thing to do because we need to determine how to adjust some of these issues that are systematic in HR. They're not personalities. They're systematic. So for that, I am ready to, and I discussed this with Glenn before I came up here this morning, we are ready to assume this responsibility. And I will depend on, because I know I always have the support of law, and this can't be done without law, all this. And I know that Janet supports wholeheartedly and Glenda and all the rest of them, and I know that John Maxwell will be right there to help with anything, and we will grow stronger. So I am glad to accept this. if it's if it's the council's will and as i said i have gone 360 because you know i wasn't there before but um i just feel that we need to really get into this this is the thing that just keeps being talked about all the time and we need some facts rather than stories thank you for that thank you mr chair any other council members wish to speak to this motion Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? No. Mr. Clark voted no. If you just all push your vote, I'm sorry. Yeah, use the granicus. We'll get the vote recorded. Is that everybody on? I think I'm missing one vote. Kevin. Kevin's out. Okay. That vote reflects passage. Seeing nobody else signed up, I do have a comment and maybe a summary statement. Before the motion was tendered, I had kind of made notes that that question that we just resolved was the first question that needed to be resolved before the others were addressed. And if the decision was to move HR, it seems to me there were still a set of questions that remain, and I understand that they may not be able to be addressed before the budget cycle, But it seems to me this still remains the question of ultimate structure, if anything else gets moved. If so, where does it go? I'm thinking of risk management in particular. In addition, in the presentation that was just made, one of the reasons for having a new commissioner would be that that commissioner would be able to spend basically full time addressing the set of issues that have been identified in various ways. It seems to me it would be useful to have back from the CAO some indication of how that will now be addressed and who will be responsible for addressing those issues. And I guess the last question I had has been answered. It's after the budget cycle, but how much after? Are we looking? Would you like to come back to the committee summer, fall? What's your thought? I'll be back. What I will bring back to you, if it suits everybody, is after April, we will start, after April 8th, whenever we submit, we will start to work on a process of how we tackle each one of these issues. I think that what we are first tackling would be that we would want to hear in a very organized form from some employees, that I want to really understand what we've got. We will bring you back an outline of how we will approach these issues right there at early spring, you know, June. And we'll dive into them. I think we can leave that a little bit loose. We'll leave this on the agenda with the understanding that we will negotiate a time for this to come back to the council sometime after the budget cycle, if that's acceptable. That's right. It will not be fall. We'll be back to you way earlier. Thank you. All right. Any further comments on this issue? Let me respond. Explain my vote. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. I just want to explain my vote and say directly to the council and others. and particularly to Sally, that my vote was not to suggest that human resources would not be better off under the CAO. Even though law has done a great job in taking care of this, I think it's probably better off under the CAO. And I just want everybody to understand that. I still think it's a burden on the CAO's office. and would probably be better off in another structure. And that's all I wanted to say, and I just wanted Sally in particular to know that. Thank you. Thank you. No further comment on this. We'll move to the next agenda item, and that is enterprise programming and parks. I believe Brian Rogers is here to address that issue. And does anybody from the link or Vice Mayor Gorton want to say a word or two before he presents? I do not. It was a recommendation from the link, so thank you. Thank you. And you may proceed. Welcome. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Committee. For those of you that don't know, my name is Brian Rogers, and I'm the Deputy Director of Enterprise with the Division of Parks and Recreation. I was asked to come down today and talk a little bit about our section, what we do, who we are. As most of you know, the Division of Parks and Recreation is divided into three sections. Parks, which includes maintenance and planning and design. Recreation, which includes athletics, community centers, natural areas, and enterprise, which includes aquatics, the extended school program, golf, concessions, rentals, external special events, web help, volunteers, and the Tubby's Clubhouse program. We'll start with aquatics. We have four aquatic centers, three neighborhood pools, the Jacobson Park Marina for paddleboat rentals. We do aquatics concessions, and we do the aquatics maintenance, which I bring up because it also includes the downtown fountains. The P&L for the last three fiscal years in aquatics, as you can see, we try to bring in about $700,000 a year. Last year was a bad weather year. We did take it on the chin, but we've also done some things that I feel very proud of. We've opened Shiltoe postseason to try to accommodate the adult lap swimmers. We've extended the hours at Tate's Creek postseason. We opened two new Better Bites concessions. We also instituted a new pay scale for our employees. Aquatic usage by pool, and I know that's a little tough to read. It's somewhat consistent. It's all very weather-driven. In FY07, we had almost 180,000 visits, whereas in FY13, which was an extremely bad weather year, we had 169,000 or 170,000. The aquatic rate comparison, as you can see, our prices are right in line with public aquatics across the state. And then if you look at the number of pools, we're offering a lot more than the majority of the aquatic sections. around the state. Aquatic summary, we're trying to become more community-based. We are proud of our partnership with the tweens coalition to bring to you better bites in our concession stands, senior water aerobics. We're trying to do some free swim lessons over at Douglas Pool, accommodate the adult distance swimmers. Where we plan to approve is in energy efficiency, variable frequency drive motors. That's harder to say than it sounds. We'd like to continue our ADA improvements, update our water features, more shade, the like. You will see a sizable capital request for FY15 that I'm willing to talk about if you'd like to later. We'll move on to golf. The Division of Parks and Recreation is proud to administer five public golf courses. We've been doing so since 1970. We feel like we're putting out a good profit, a good product. not so much profit as leads us to our next slide prior to FY12 we enacted the golf business plan which this committee has heard and approved of as you can see FY12 things were going great we felt really good about it and then in FY13 the monsoons came and we took it on the chin there as well The first half of FY13 was drought followed by consistent rain all through the spring and into the summer. Looking at these numbers, I would say that we need more time to let the golf section incorporate the golf business plan so that we can get a consistent, establish some trends in our data. golf usage rounds per course in FY7 we were at 127,000 rounds FY13 97,000 rounds so golf is down nationwide you guys know that we are starting to see a little bit of a rebound and we hope that that continues in a cost comparison golf pricing is is nestled right there in the middle when compared to other courses in the area we're not trying to undercut anybody we're not trying to overprice ourselves. We feel like we're in a good place there. In summary of golf, we're very excited about something called Golf Track, which is a new supplement to our recreation-specific software that will allow online tee time booking and smartphone access for our customers. We feel like we do a good job with the seniors, ladies programming. We support the local high schools. We try to create loyalty through our loyalty card sales and our range card sales, and we're really excited about that. We'd like to work towards a faster, more fun golf experience and increase brand awareness through Facebook and some other website additions, including Golf Track. The extended school program is a cooperative venture with Fayette County Public Schools to provide high-quality, affordable, licensed child care. We currently have 11 elementary after-school programs, two middle school before and after-school programs, and five summer camps. We are unique in that they're administered by LFUCG, housed in Fayette County Public Schools, yet licensed by the state. So we serve three masters there. It's not always the funnest job. ESP's profit loss. If you would note that for the majority of this time, ESP has gone without a manager, has not been filled for the last four years. That was our choice. It was a financial decision. But despite that, they've managed to get back up into the black. Very proud of that staff over there. I've got a tremendous staff at ESP. They added two new schools in FY12, Wellington and Piccadome. So that's why you'll see the expenses go up there. ESP usage. We usually average around 1,100 students in the school year, and we take about 500 to 550 students in the summer. Cost comparison for the extended school program. You'll notice that we are one of the most inexpensive games in town. We do try to keep those rates affordable, and if you look, I believe that the rest of the city looks at what ESP is doing in order to set their rates as well. Summary for ESP, we provide summer care. It's important to note that we also provide snow day care at four sites. So my staff is getting up at 8 in, well, they get there at 8 in the morning on these days when school's called off. They don't get to enjoy the weather hours that many of the other city employees have. We try to have the most affordable rates in town, as I said. We're looking at options to better communicate with our parents and also to better administer the program, i.e. looking at online enrollment and also working on an automatic debit process so that the parents don't have to give us a check every week, which checks are so outdated. Next, I'd like to turn to rentals and external special events. We do have over 27 rental facilities. We're heavily involved in both internal and external special events because they both need facilities, and we're the ones in charge of the facilities, so we reserve all those. And I spend a lot of my time talking about electricity and parking, trash cans, things like that. It's a lot of fun. We do everything from weddings to dog shows, bike polo, foot races, food truck Fridays. It really encompasses quite a bit. There's only so many nice weekends, So the rentals and external special events usage, you will see, it stays pretty consistent. We bring in about $240,000 a year. Each one of those showmobile rentals is a special event that involves, you know, talking about electricity, bathroom, security, parking. Each one of those Graz Parks rentals is a little wedding. That's something to feel good about. Most of the bell house rentals are weddings. so it's very time-consuming and detail-oriented. We also support the division's technology section. We've graduated almost 1,500 students from Tubby's Clubhouse since 2004. We support the WebTrack, which is our recreation-specific software, and also the LFUCG website for the Division of Parks and Recreation. Online registration for all our programs. We do over 2,500 online program registrations a year and 350 online shelter reservations a year, and that takes a lot to work through. Other areas that are equally important and also equally time-consuming, but I didn't feel I had enough time to go into detail, special event concessions, volunteers, neighborhood associations. So in conclusion, the enterprise section impacts the lives of citizens 350,000 times a year. We employ about 750 people at our peak each summer. We've been without an ESP manager, without an aquatics manager, without an aquatics staff assistant for the last four years. So we've managed to do more with less. And I would submit in conclusion that relative to the park's overall budget for a relatively minor investment, the citizens are granted the privilege of top-notch facilities, five golf courses, seven pools, 13 after-school programs, five summer camps, and 27 rental facilities, in addition to the other programs that I mentioned. I'd like to thank you for your time, and I'm open to questions. Thank you. Council members, questions, comments? Council Member Beard. Thank you, sir. Where do we start? The golf cart debt. Yes, sir. Would you like me to give you a little history? Well, just a little bit about you're getting revenue also off the golf carts. Are you not? Correct. So is this a net number, or is it the revenue under some other category? No, the revenue number includes the golf cart revenue. That golf cart debt is a bonded amount that was purchased. A mass number of golf carts were purchased for Lakeside and Tate's Creek, I believe, four years ago. That debt will go away after next year. but we just did another mass purchase, and so we'll just incur a second golf cart debt. Am I saying that correct? I understand the debt part, but what about the revenue part? The revenue for golf carts? It's rolled into that total revenue number. But not allocated to any specific golf cart, I mean golf course? It is. Yes, sir. Yeah. Each one of those revenue numbers includes the golf court and they're broken down by cores. Am I misunderstanding? No, that's fine. Okay. I guess I'm done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Scotchfield. Thank you, Chair. I want to commend your all ESP program. My son is currently a participant. My daughter was when she was young enough. It's very well run. The instructors, the teachers you have in there are phenomenal. And I'm pleased to see that you all are making money on the program. I know that the school that my children attend, the elementary school, the registration forms, I know that they'd love to have them increase the number that you all can take. that school filled up on the second day of registration. So I know that there is a demand out there. You all are the probably most efficient program cost-wise. Say cheap. Yes. Inexpensive. Affordable. It is. It is. But you get very good service for the cost. Thank you. I do have some concerns. I know that a lot of our aquatics facilities are a little bit outdated. I would like to see once improvements have been made, like water slides, other cities that might have done this, what their increase of usage has been so we can see a cost analysis to determine what the return on investment could be. And then, you know, I have a lot of concerns about the golf course expenses. What is the, do you know what the visitor, I'm trying to think, not repeat visitors, what is the unique visitors that we have to our golf? Do we have that number? I don't believe we do. Okay. I mean, I think that's something if we can find out, I think that will tell us a lot, too. and so those two things with the pool, the aquatic centers, I'd like to see what the return on investment and if we can find out the unique visitors. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Brian. I want to commend you all as well for lots of good things that you do. My son, as you know, participated in ESP also. I think that the rental program and the sports that you all do are excellent and reasonably priced for people that can't afford higher-end facilities for weddings and sports activities. I also think the pools are doing great, and I intend to work with you to increase the numbers at Douglas Pool this year for the free swim lessons. So hopefully we can work on that. I have a couple questions. under enterprise for you all website services tubbies clubhouse and volunteers are included and i'm just curious how those are actually income generating services they're not they're not yeah okay they just fall under the just fall under me yeah lucky me okay yeah i just was curious how those um would make any money okay um can you tell me um a little bit about the first tee program because I had not heard about this at the golf courses. Right. Is it a proposed program, or is it? The first tee program has had a long history with public golf here in Lexington. As you may or may not know, they lost their director, Dave Bunnell, a year ago? About a year ago. So they have been in a state of flux. He was the progenitor of that program. And you may recall, Siobhan, that they were very successful teaming up with the extended school program, and we would bus kids out to the courses, and they would teach the kids golf etiquette and the basics of the game. And we're excited to get that started again. But they just named a new director of the first tee program, I think, maybe five or six months ago. And so they're still getting their feet under them. That's great. I mean, and I think that that's where we can maybe build some of that loyalty that you mentioned earlier with our golf courses by involving younger kids and then maybe some competition as well or leagues. And then lastly, I'm guessing that we don't offer alcohol sales at the golf courses. We do, actually. Yes, ma'am. Okay. We took over our concession efforts four years ago. Okay. And along with that effort, we took over the alcohol sales. And so we do the full concession spectrum. And in the last four years, have you seen an increase? Or, I mean, has it affected, helped the bottom line? It's stayed about steady, yeah. The concession effort has stayed consistent over the last four years. We feel like we could do better. It's a specialized market. You know, there's nothing around Kearney. at Piccadome where my office is you know we're taking to-go orders out to the Lexington Clinic and over to the Campbell House and so but at some of the courses are so isolated that that we if they're not coming in to play golf we're not getting them so it's tough but you have to do it you can't have a golf course without concessions okay I think that's all for now thank you thanks chair thank you council member Myers thank you Mr. Chair thank you for coming in with your presentation today. And one of my children is in the ESP program, and it's awesome as well, and the school sells out immediately, so if we could expand that, that would be great. To touch on what Councilman Beard asked about the golf carts, I think one of the things we always heard was that the golf carts make money. And so I think what he's getting at, what I'd like to get at is, if they make money, where is that money reflected? Does that go back into the general fund? I might need to turn this one over to Mr. Mike Fields, our golf services manager. Oops, sorry. The revenue for golf carts is shown in the revenue line of what was presented. Golf carts will bring in anywhere from $600,000 to $700,000 a year for all golf courses combined. That debt that we're showing is a bond payment, and I believe it's a five-year bond, that bought 130 golf carts. Okay. So they're, you know, five years times $600,000. They're big money makers. But I guess because golf is still in the red, you can't capture that money and use it to pay off the debt service because it still is in the red. Well, it's, yeah, I mean, it's going toward the overall revenue. Okay. My next question is, when you look at parks, it's not about golf. Thank you, sir. One of the sections you have in here is enterprise section. And, you know, when Council Member McCord was on the council, he and I talked about how we can do like Owensboro does with their softball tournaments all summer long. um have you guys and are you guys exploring other opportunities to expand your enterprise section so that we can do things that provide safe fun clean activities for people to be getting exercise but also generate revenue that can offset some of the other costs that parks has uh yes absolutely i mean you may be better suited to speak to the athletics department about softball tournaments and the like, but I know that our eighth in the softball complex, we have a partnership with the NSA Softball Association, and they will come through and say, we're going to have 20, I think they've got 26 tournaments planned this year. And then what they don't use, we fill with our athletics department comes in and runs their own tournaments at that facility. So we're always looking at partnering with new entities to maximize our facilities. Yes, sir. So are those revenues included in here? In the acting director, Evelyn Bologna, acting director of parks. I think the misconception here with this presentation is that when Brian was asked to present for the enterprise section, this does not include any revenues that are received from the recreation section. I got you. So the recreation section, which I'm also the deputy director of recreation interim, so those programs, not all of them, we have a system whereby some of our programs are totally free, some of our programs we try to at least recover some of the expenses, and then some of our programs, like our Kitty Capers program does pay for itself so all of those none of those revenues are reflected in this report okay so that's totally separate under recreation i don't work our organization you know we kind of to say enterprise that's what you think but that doesn't mean that none of our other programs there's a fee involved or we have any revenues there so and you know we can do that give you some more information on those it is nowhere near the amount that brian brings in because because we do have those three areas in a lot of our programs. For instance, for seniors, we don't charge anything for our seniors' programs. But anything through athletics that's external of a rental, that's one of our regular programs, we do generate revenues that's a part of our recreation programs. So I wanted to clear that up. Okay, so there are other opportunities for enterprise. Yes, our camps programs, all those things that we charge. fee for some of the new things that we've done. We're trying to any new program. We've got some new arts programs we're going to try to do. We've got some new adventure programs we're going to try to do. We are making an attempt to get those to where they're at least going to cover a good portion of our cost. Awesome. Okay. Thank you. One final question, and that is, do you have anybody in your shop that is focusing on action sports? Action sports are the fastest going sports across the world, across the country, across everywhere. So I do know that's my. Yeah, I do, George. And you know the answer. You know, yes, recently in the last year, we've brought on Mr. Reed Small, who is an avid skateboarder. And so as the recreation section has loosened up their hold on extreme sports, which I think is what you would agree is the same, Then Enterprise has come in, and we have tried to bolster that effort. We work very closely with the bike polo people over at Kulavan, the street soccer groups around town, and skateboarding. We have dedicated Reed's time as much as he can to bolster extreme sports. Okay. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. And just in general, I'd like to say that this is a very positive report, and I appreciate that. And there are a couple questions I'd like to ask. And first, it looks like in golf, total expenses increased considerably, even though the use of the golf courses were down, and also the administrative costs were up as well. Can you explain that to me? I know there's probably a very logical reason for that. Well, the administrative expenses, as some of you know who have been through the golf discussion before, we had some issues with the PeopleSoft numbers four years ago in trying to isolate the cost of golf. And so what you're seeing are adjusted numbers. You're probably not going to be able to reproduce those going from PeopleSoft. And we've been doing that since FY11. Let me tell you some of the things that we've done, and that is we split out the administrative costs. Golf included enterprise administration. My salary was in there. My administrative staff was in there. And so we just two years ago split out Mike and his staff assistant and called that the administrative expense. Now that we've cleaned up those numbers a little bit, we have identified, you know, He also, at the same time, consolidated his staff clothing expense, and that's in administration. And then trophies for tournaments and outings and such are also in that. So that FY13 number is going to be the more accurate number going forward in terms of administration. We've also laid off two clubhouse attendants. We've moved five PSWs from golf to maintenance. We eliminated two positions through attrition, the assistant superintendent at Kearney Hill and the mechanic at Tates Creek. We've split out all the golf budgets by course. Mr. Caldwell and I spent six months auditing the utilities every meter in golf, and we've tried to better isolate those costs. At one point, golf was paying all the utilities for Shiltoe Park, which included the pool and the whole park. They were paying for Cold Stream Park, which doesn't have a golf course. They were paying the entire expense at Tates Creek, which includes a pool and a rental facility. And so Mr. Caldwell and I worked very hard closely together to break those out, and we feel like that's benefited the golf budget. We split the cost of the Meadowbrook superintendent with maintenance. He now does field maintenance and turf maintenance for them, and so we split his cost. We've also closed Avon Golf Course, just to name a few things. So the numbers for the last three years have been in flux, and that's why I feel like we need more time to establish a trend, to establish a baseline before we can really get down to the nitty-gritty of where golf is. But we're very close. There's only a couple numbers that we still take issue with. So you're still evolving in this whole process. Yes, sir. It seems clear. The other thing I want to say is that you said something about asking for a fairly large figure in this next year's budget, and I understand that because our pools seem to me to be badly out of date. Absolutely. And so I certainly understand that. I think the council understands that too. So we're kind of prepared for that. I say kind of prepared. We'll see. But we do understand. I keep hearing that. But I've got one more question real quick. I want to know what worked towards faster and fun golf experience. Sounds like a good idea. Yeah, it sure does. I'm going to let Mike take that. All right. Speed going. As you all know, nationally, golf has been on a decline for several years. And the basis behind that is that the problem that's happened with golf is it's taken too long to play, it's gotten too expensive, and people aren't finding it fun. and recreation has to be fun. And so the PGA of America, golf professionals at each golf course, we're all looking at ways, how do we make golf fun, how do we make golf faster, and how do we make golf cheaper? And I sat on a committee this fall as a speaker to this very point, and the bottom line is we start by making the golf courses somewhat easier so play becomes faster. and we have to make it easier. The online tee time system using smartphones so people can get on their phone and make a tee time just like that becomes faster. So it's just a matter of making the sport fun, fast, and inexpensive. Thank you. Thank you both very much. And thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. So, Brian, following up on Council Member Myers' question about extreme sports, When might we see an extreme sport like competition, a regional or statewide skateboarding competition? Is that in the works? Is anybody? We do a couple every year already, and we have been. They do a Halloween skate competition, and they also do the National Skateboard Day in June. And we take the Showmobile down to Woodland, and they have a rather regional skate competition every year. but if we can get this new facility online you'll see a lot more of that but aren't those more of like demonstration events more than i mean like qualifying let's say for the x games or something like like along those lines yeah like so that we're i mean i think that we need to really think a little bit outside of where we've been for a long time in parks if we want to see a change in revenues and an uptick and so i think we need to you know broaden that vision and and explore how do we bring people to Lexington? How do we put ourselves on the map for different types of competitions and bring in money? There's lots of competitions in Elizabethtown that get baseball competitions and football tournaments that we've talked about in Nashville, Knoxville or Chattanooga or somewhere that we, I think, could compete for those funds if we could organize them and had someone to administer those competitions and tournaments. So, I mean, I think it brings in a lot of money. It brings in people to stay in the hotels. We can charge big fees. We can make a lot of money in concessions. But it just takes, I know that it takes staff. I know it takes time. And so. And facilities. Facilities, right. You've got to have the facilities. And so, you know, where is that? Is that in the master plan? Are we thinking in that direction? And you don't have to answer all that now. Thank you. I just wanted to, you know, I just want to challenge, I guess, the department and the acting director to think along newer paths of recreation. And to that point, for instance, alternative recreation. Are we offering, like, Tai Chi in the park or yoga at Woodland? Or, you know, I think that these are things that people would participate in, that other cities do, that we could, again, make money. Those would be, you know, definitely revenue increasing or generating to some extent. And then I wonder about, we were talking about reorganizing human resources in other departments. And so when I see that this is what is enterprise, and that is supposedly sections that bring in revenue, but athletics is not on here. And then we have a few different departments that do not make money that are on here. So I wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient to maybe reorganize to some extent. And I'm not saying that you would oversee all the athletics department or whatever. The staff could certainly, you know, still handle that. But should we, you know, maybe consider just how those, I mean, because I would like to know how many participants we have in athletics and whether that number has gone up or down. And I know that could be another presentation. But I think that it's important if we're talking about enterprise and parks and how much money we're bringing in for revenues to include athletics since they are a large revenue generator for the department. So that's just something to think about, too, for current director and maybe future director. Yes, ma'am. Understood. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Council Member Ford and then Council Member Myers. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Brian, for your report. I'll disclose that I am an ESP alumni parent as well, as has been mentioned around the horseshoe today. They do a great job with that program. So, aquatics. If we can go back to the slide on aquatics on profit and loss, just have just a few questions. and Brian you may have mentioned this in your presentation forgive me if I'm the part-time and seasonal labor represents the greatest lion's share of expenses and that is probably from the time school is out describe the makeup of that labor force who are those folks Okay. We've got about 100 to 110 lifeguards. We've got two managers at each pool. Then the pools that do have concession efforts have a concession manager, usually an assistant concession manager, and then a concession staff. And then we also have pool attendants who are responsible for cleaning, taking out the trash, and the like. We also have cashiers at the front, and there's usually three to four of those at each pool to split up the work week. And then we've also got an administrative staff, which is part-time seasonal, since we don't have an aquatics manager or an aquatics staff assistant anymore. And so we've got a part-time staff, which is mainly made up of teachers. And God love them. They've been great. They've really saved my bacon. But we've got three to four administrators or managers, if you will, district directors over the aquatics program. So and thanks for that very thorough description. So basically the senior and seasonal and part time employer, are there young folks? Are there folks, are there students that are out of school? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Teenagers, college kids. Right. Lifeguards are about half and half college and high school students. You do have to be 16 before we'll hire you as a lifeguard and certified by the Red Cross. Pool attendants and concession attendants are usually the 14- and 15-year-olds, although we're trying to get away from 14-year-olds, so don't get excited. And then the managers are generally adults with college degrees. Okay, so I know in social services we've paid a lot of attention recently to the Summer Youth Employment Program, which we've got funded at 225 youth, various occupations across the city. but swimming pools are also a big opportunity for youth throughout our community, and they probably go to that seasonal and part-time labor. On the slide just before, it talks about aquatic maintenance to include downtown fountains. Yes, sir. Explain those. Describe, and forgive me if I'm being redundant if you didn't, describe what are those fountains that we maintain that are included in the expenses for aquatics. I appreciate that question. And Robert Ledford, who is my aquatic maintenance supervisor and has two full-time civil servants with him, they not only maintain all seven aquatic facilities, but they also maintain, I will say, most of the downtown fountains to include Phoenix, Thoroughbred, Gratz, and Cheapside when it's running. Okay. And not Triangle. So that's? Not Triangle, no sir. Okay, so that's labor expense and also maintenance expense for those water sources. The last question I have kind of dovetails on Council Member Aker's comments. Go back to the slide just before that, Brian, that talks about what is enterprise. And I've had the good fortune as a parent and a volunteer to participate in athletics on the recreation side. and their costs involved. It says enterprise, a government-sponsored business activity, including government programs designed to generate revenue. And Evelyn very timely came and gave us the distinction as it pertains to other programs to cover costs, revenues. My question is about aquatics. Does that, and I'm just playing devil's advocate here, does that definition amply apply to aquatics? I understand how golf and ESP could be, well, is considered enterprise. If government didn't offer it, I can go out onto the market and get that same service or that same opportunity somewhere else. But does that truly apply to aquatics? if the government didn't provide swimming opportunities at our aquatic centers in our neighborhoods, could the general public go elsewhere onto the market to find that? So I say that's just kind of, and I don't know, I know that we're accredited. I know that we do a lot of things based on our benchmark park systems across the country. And I didn't know if maybe we consider aquatics enterprise because everybody else does. But it's something to think about. I look at aquatics more on the recreation side. Evelyn's big, I'll be glad to give it to her if that's what she'd like. But I think because aquatics is such a large revenue generator is why it's been included in enterprise. I think so. I would, and Evelyn, I like your opinion as well. I would say that probably is the case because when you look at the numbers, aquatics and golf, I mean, the magnitude of the finances are probably comparable. But by that definition, they're probably quite different. Evelyn, you have any opinion? It kind of goes back to, I think, Siobhan, maybe you talked about it. I've been here 27 years. So over the years, things have changed. aquatics used to be in, more recreation or what was considered special services at that point. So we've gone back and forth on that. And one of the slides, to be honest, doesn't make sense. The comment as far as, well, what's tubbies and volunteers and doing those things are really under enterprise. And the best answer I can give you at that point is at some point in time, it was deemed at that given time that that whether it was personnel resources or whatever happened to be going on in that time extreme sports to go answer your question back to that we used to be when that first started going recreation as Brian pointed out we've kind of gone away from that being a program and more its facility so over the last several years some of these things um we used to have like five different sections and in parks and now we're down into three so it was almost an attempt to um try to to to put round things in a square peg so to speak in the sense of where does this most naturally fit right and i think um you know our master plan several years ago came in and looked at a lot of those things made some recommendations as to what we've been able to do and some other things we haven't been able to do yet. So the short answer, which I'm trying to get to, which I don't do very well, is that over time and situations, we've kind of plugged things into where we felt like we could manage them the best way we could manage them at the time, not necessarily making sense and doing that. That's okay. And thanks for that answer. And Mr. Chair, thanks for your deference. Because in closing, the only thing I want to say is not a criticism of how you guys are operating and where it fits right now operationally, but I've heard this just in this meeting, the need to improve aquatics, the need to upgrade aquatics, and my fear from a policy standpoint, if we continue maybe inaccurately to solely look at aquatics from the enterprise standpoint, it may hamper our ability to champion and advocate for the investments needed. From the recreational standpoint. Because from enterprise, it doesn't cancel out to make sense, but we know recreationally we need to do it. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Come back to Council Member Myers. I would just like to point out that enterprise doesn't mean it is making money. It means there is revenue that comes in. And volunteers, that's revenue. Free labor. Free labor. Love it. And so we focus on these, but there are so many things in our parks that do not generate any money at all, but are costly to keep up, our trails, our tennis courts, our skate parks, the playgrounds. So we focus on these as these are losing money, you know, because we call them enterprise. And I think we need to revisit exactly what the definition is of an enterprise section, and that is there is a fee charged for that particular activity. It doesn't mean it's supposed to be making a lot of money. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was trying to stay out of the conversation, but some of it led to it, and it just sucked me back in. So, and I love parks, and we've got some great, great employees working there, and I don't have any. But here's the thing. We've got a director position open, and I think there's an opportunity to actually fill a position that is dealing with extreme sports, right? Yes, there is an opportunity. So let me, before you go there, so I just kind of want to set the stage. Here's where I am with parks. If you look at the money that the council members allocated this last budget round, I always want to say 90%. I don't know if you take a couple of those fire trucks and things out. The vast majority of the money that we allocated went to parks. I've always said that we need a new park master plan, and we've had a couple of park master plans come through, but to my knowledge, there's never been a process where the council members and the citizens in a long time have been involved in the park master plan. I think our plans are different. One of them a few years ago was a restructuring plan. And in that restructuring plan, they had the $400,000 golf cart shack set up for the golf course in my district. And I thought there's probably nobody in my district that would advocate for a $400,000 building to put golf carts in. Where I'm going with that is I think we need to sit down and talk about, before we hire this new director, what direction we want to go with parks. Because to me it seems like a lot of what we do is manage land as opposed to doing a whole lot of things that some of the other cities do with parks. And so when you talk about, like Councilmember Akers talked about, the extreme sports and the tournaments and things, Louisville last year had, and I think it's called the World Cycling. It's some kind of cycling, and the bikes look like a regular road bike, but they actually go off-road. And they did this in one of their parks, and they had people from across the world come to Louisville for a couple of days for this event. You know, I always talk about Bowling Green has a disc golf tournament. They bring in 750 people from around the world. They have people from as far away as was Wyoming in this country. There are people who came from Japan to play disc golf. Disc golf courses, you know, we were going to put $100,000 into two courses because we needed state-of-the-art. There are people who design disc golf courses just like people design golf courses. I know we're working on the disc golf course in Jackson Park, but it's not what it was going to be if we'd done the grand scale we were doing before. The idea is, I don't know what other events in Lexington besides the Rolex Street Day event, Suite 16, and then when we get into the NCAA regionals and things, that bring people to our city for four or five days to stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, shop in our malls. They bring their families, spouses, others, all those things. That's what they're doing in Bowling Green with the disc golf tournament. I think we have to have a conversation about opportunities. And as Councilman Lawless said, enterprise doesn't mean they make money. And I'm okay with that. There's some that we're trying to get to break even and that kind of thing. But I think there's a whole other side of enterprise that we can go after things that actually do make money. But not only that, they put Lexington on the map and make us a destination point for these kinds of events that happen every year. And when we were working with the city of Louisville, the Parks Department, trying to get insight from them on their skate park, that's one of the things they brought to our attention was that cycling event that they have, that people came all over the world, and they said, this is really inexpensive to build into one of your parks. And then you begin to be known as this destination all summer long for different activities. So I would encourage the administration and all you guys as we look for who's going to be our next Parks Director, that these are some of the questions that we're asking of that person. but that as a matter of policy and direction, this is where we want to take our government. If 90% of the money that we allocated goes into parks, it begs the question, how come parks didn't already have these things in their master plan for things that needed to be done? Does that make sense? It does, and I agree with everything you said. And so I realize that parks is a big deal. is that there's a lot of people and a lot of money and a lot of things that have to happen just to make parks work. And maybe that's where it gets lost is they're busy dealing with the urgency of today and trying to get the grass mowed in seven days instead of 14, those kinds of things. Snow removed. But they don't have the capacity to look at how do we really expand parks and go off into other directions. And so that's my encouragement to the administration is how do we begin to have those conversations now before we get that new director in. And as we look at our budgets and look at our policies, how do we put those mechanisms in place so that we can become a destination city in all kinds of areas? And my good friend, Mr. Reed, is coming up. So now I know I'm doing good now. Good friend. Yes. Commissioner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. It's so good to visit with you all. You raise legitimate points about the need to plan. We – you have to know where we've been. and what these people have confronted budget-wise, what they've been dealing with over the past few years. It's an unfortunate part of government when budget shortfalls occur in this level. Things like parks are the first target. They've been hit very hard. They've done an exceptional job of managing the parks, growing the parks. And I really admire what they've done. We're at an interesting—I'm going to philosophize now. We're at an interesting point in parks. We're in a transition. We just lost a director, a strong-willed director, a forceful person who did an excellent job. What I found in the interim, when, you know, Evelyn took over as acting director, and a lot of people like Brian became more active in interacting with us, the government, with me, we have an exceptional group of people here that do exceptional work, have exceptional ideas. I say that, that we're capable, they're capable of doing what you're asking for in a new direction. I don't think we need to wait on a new director. I think the administration has to be sensitive to what you're asking for in the traits of a new director. But we have some excellent internal candidates. We have some excellent external candidates. The process is down now to where we will interview about 12 people. and do that, and over the next couple of months, I think we can make a decision. You all have asked for people who can get involved in marketing, in fundraising, and take the parks really into the 21st century. I'm sensitive to those things, but this is just a terribly impressive group of people that are doing a good job here, and it kind of flows more to the top. now that we're in this period. Okay. Yes, sir. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Thank you. I have nobody else signed up to speak, so I'll just last comments if you wish, or we can move on. We can move on. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is the coroner's office salary and classifications. Council Member Hanson. Thank you, Chair. I'm not a member of this committee, and I do appreciate you hearing this item. I was approached, actually, by the coroner's office staff with concerns they had. I feel like the coroner's office provides a very, very important service to our city, and we don't hear from them. We'd very rarely hear, you know, I'm sure if things were going bad, we would hear, but things have always went smoothly. So I suggested that and also make the motion then to place this item in committee. And our Fayette County Coroner here again is here to present this item. Thank you. Before we begin, I do have a question about whether the, I'm looking at the clock. So is this an item that is time sensitive and needs to be initiated and or resolved within this current budget cycle? That is what I have recommended to the coroner, that he place this in his budget. But also I think that HR should look at their classifications of all the deputy coroners. They've been working on this since 07. Yes. And so far nothing has changed. But I would think it is time sensitive as far as the budget. And to get it into this budget cycle. Okay, thank you. So typically we allow 15 minutes for presentation. That's pretty much what we have in terms of our meeting time. So I would just urge you to be as timely as possible, and then hopefully we'll have some time for questions and comments. Welcome. Thank you. Well, I will be time sensitive. We do have a presentation, but I'm going to just kind of hit on the high spots of that. First off, I'd like to thank each of you for allowing me to make this presentation about our proposed salaries. Coroners and deputy corners devote a lot of time to their careers at the coroner's office, but some current issues that affect the staff are working loads of the deputy corners are very large, and a lot of them have to have second jobs in order to live. Deputy corners prefer to lose vacation and holiday time rather than taking time off because they don't want to run the risk of losing overtime during their on-call days. Employees retention and qualified candidate recruiting is very hard to do with the salaries levels that are presently so low. There's a large gap that exists in our deputy coroner's turnover because of the 12 years gap that's between the current deputy coroner who's been with us for a while and the most recent that's been hired is about 14 years. Coroners and deputy coroners are not considered hazardous duty, though they are exposed to many on-the-job hazards. Coroners and deputy coroners have many responsibilities to include working on call rotation and being available 24 hours, 7 days a week, responding to death scenes in a prompt and mannered way in order for first responders to return to their work, pronouncing individuals dead, identifying decedents, establishing the cause of death, establishing the manner of death, and responding to hospitals when the manner of death is anything other than a natural cause. We interview and interrogate individuals. We take photographs to document the scene of bodies. We work in hazardous environments. We work carefully with weapons and loaded firearms, working in adverse weather conditions, thoroughly conducting a post-mortem examination of the body, which can be in many conditions, from normal to decomposing to skeletal remains. Decomposing bodies produce noxious odors. Sometimes they're maggot infested. They have blisters containing decomposing fluids that burst when the individual who's examining them touches them and sometimes getting on the individual. We move very heavy bodies, often in excess of 300 pounds. Just last week, I was involved with a removal and even helped get the individual to a funeral home that weighed over 800 pounds. We remove the deceased from the place of death, securing the scene of real estate and personal property until it can be released to the family. We seize illicit drugs, syringes, prescription narcotics, and other drug paraphernalia. locating family members and notify them of their loved one's death. We provide assistance to family to help them through the early stages of the grieving process. We assess the medical examiner in obtaining records and documents to assess them in performing their performance of the autopsy. We obtain body fluids by using hypodermic needles in order for toxicology testing. These fluids include blood, urine, vitreous humor, which is fluid from the eyes. We clean the body of blood, fecal material, vomit, urine, in order for the family to identify them. We obtain tissue samples for DNA. We obtain medical records for identification. We obtain medical records and review them to establish the cause of death. We release information to the media. We investigate all deaths that occur within Fayette County when the body is cremated. We release the body to the funeral home. We refer cases to the public administrator and to the indigent burial program. We maintain Fayette County's indigent burial program, and I'll say that that's something that we've just taken on this year. It was under adult services, and my office now and myself is working on the indigent burial programs, and we have saved the county $21,000 to date. We also maintain accounts receivable and accounts payable. We maintain a daily census of the morgue. We disinfect contaminated surfaces. We review all case reports, medical records, autopsy reports, police reports, firearms, EMS reports established to cause a matter of death. Once the investigation is complete, certify the death by completing the Kentucky Death Certificate and filing with the Office of Vital Statistics. We respond to open records requests. We maintain case files. We meet with child fatality review boards on a quarterly basis or as needed. We evaluate statistics to look for trends. We collaboratively work with the police, fire, EMS personnel, the Commonwealth Attorney's Office, hospitals, nursing homes, hospice of the Bluegrass, and the local funeral homes. We work on joint task force with the Commonwealth Attorney and with the U.S. Attorney's Office and local law enforcement. We work with out-of-state law enforcement agencies and the Commonwealth Attorney's Offices out-of-state in order to prosecute offenders from cases that were transported to hospitals within Fayette County and then die. We testify as needed. Our caseload has grown extraordinarily over the years. Last year, we investigated 3,000 deaths. 650 of those were coroner cases. around 1,400 were cremation investigations, about 1,100 were health care reported deaths, and 120 indigent burials. A study was conducted by the Lexington-Fayette-Urbing County Government Human Resources in 2007, evaluating the pay of the coroner and deputy coroners. The study was complete, but no action was ever taken. We have applied the results of the study. If we apply them currently, most of the deputies would max out in their grade pays. Rather than maxing out most employees, new grade pays need to be established within the scope of the local and regional pay grades. I haven't been keeping up with the slides, have I? So this is really hard to see, and I'll come back to that. But that's that study that was done. And if you look at the bottom line there, you can see that the staff back in 2007 was underpaid as well. We did a comparison. We can come back to that one in questions. But we did a comparison to other sworn and certified individuals that conduct similar in-depth investigations as we do. fire and police investigators at local levels and full-time deputy coroners at a regional level, which was Louisville, Cincinnati, Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Knoxville, Tennessee. Lexington Police Officer becomes eligible to become a detective-slash-investigator after three years. A Lexington Police Officer with three years of experience makes over $45,000. A Lexington Fire Investigator, our fire lieutenants, their starting salary is $63,997 and or a captain starting at $81,633. The base rate for a firefighter is around $40,000. The current rate for my corners that are working currently is $33,820 to $35,000. You can see that we've got a map there. There's where we did our regional study, and that is the most recent pay grades that we've been able to find out from Indianapolis and all the ones that stated before. It should be noted that the Jefferson County Coroner's Office, which we did the study against, as well as the Cincinnati Coroner's Office, do not remove their own bodies. This creates many issues, I believe, in the chain of custody. The bodies are not being transpired by sworn staff, and it creates a liability if the bodies are tampered with. This is also a huge added expense in their operational budget. The Jefferson County Coroner's Office relies on Kentucky State Medical Examiners in Louisville to retrieve toxicology. And as I stated earlier, we do all that ourselves within our office. The background of my staff is four individuals have bachelor degrees. Three individuals have associate's degree, and there's currently no supplemental pay to attract a degree-holding job seeker. We have several employees who have achieved their advanced and master corners training. There's no recognition in rank of those. The advanced corner requires six years of service. The master corner requires 12. The Fayette County Coroner is currently working to become the first American Board of Medical Legal Death Investigators accredited Coroner's Office in the state of Kentucky. Our proposal. Current Deputy Coroner's grade is 112N. We would propose to establish an ordinance abolishing the six existing deputy coroners in the position of 112N pay grade and create six new coroner positions at the pay grade of 118N pay grade. The assistant coroner is at a pay grade of 119E and the chief deputy coroner is at a pay grade of 113N. Our proposal, or my proposal, would be that we establish an ordinance abolishing the assistant coroner's position at the grade 119E and pay grade of chief deputy coroner at the page of 113N grade and to create two chief deputy coroner's positions. This is a little bit different. We've had an assistant coroner for about the past, oh, I'm going to say 16 years. There is no such position in the Commonwealth of Kentucky law, so I would propose to create two chief deputy positions at the pay grade of 121E pay grade. And then it would be helpful if we could establish a pay grade for the coroner who currently does not fall into a pay grade. How much time have I got? In summary, basically what all this is saying is since I've been the coroner in 2003, I talked with Dr. Penn, talked with the staff. I looked at different areas around, and my staff has been underpaid for many years prior to me even being in office. Dr. Penn agreed with me. I met with my staff when I took office, and that was one of their main concerns. I told them that I would start working on that, and I did back in 2003. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to be able to do this. I appreciate the council members who's visited my office. I appreciate Peggy putting this in to the work session. But basically, we do a job that no one else really does. A lot of people doesn't want to do that. We are in your neighborhoods pronouncing people dead. We are in your neighborhoods early in the morning, late at nights, notifying individuals of their family's deaths, husbands, wives, doctors, sisters, brothers, whoever. And it's very tragic when we have to go out. And sometimes we have to go out and tell them that the individual has died and that they're unrecognizable because of fire, because of mutilations, a lot of different things. So we work with a lot of infectious, contagious, diseased individuals, which were not under hazardous duty. But I would hope that each one of you all would look at the presentation as it is. I've cut a lot of it out, but we would certainly appreciate this being taken under advisement, and we have done the work study that the urban county government did ask. Each one of my deputies has filled that out. Questions? Thank you very much for that presentation. Council Member Lawless. I just have a quick comment, and that is I agree with everything you've said. I think it's extremely traumatic work, which you didn't really, you talked about the physical hazards. I was the first mental health responder with Flight 5191, and you were there. Yes, ma'am. And that one event was enough to haunt people for a long time. So I think that in addition to the physical dangers that you all incur, there's a tremendous mental and emotional stress that isn't recognized. So I have nothing but extreme respect for you as our coroner, Mr. Ginn, and for all your employees. And I appreciate the work you do. One quick question is, these places that don't move their own bodies, and I know the toxicology and that kind of stuff that's sent to the state labs, is there a way that we can be paid by the state? or who, you know, they're getting somehow that's being paid for by somebody, is there a way we can be reimbursed for doing those type of activities that other communities are pawning off on other agencies? But I just mostly want to say thank you to you and all your employees and your integrity and the really difficult work you do on every level. Thank you. Well, thanks. I will comment as well. I mean, I see a psychological difference in my employees, especially when we work with children. And as you know, coming from your background, as far as being reimbursed, Really, the Jefferson County Coroner's office is very close in proximity with their offices in the same building. So rather than them take the toxicology report, then they pawn it off onto the state workers. So no one's really being paid to do that for Jefferson County. And it kind of goes the same way in Cincinnati. We prefer to do it ourselves because we know and we're skilled in order to do that. And when we take the sample and when we go to court in litigation, we can say, yes, we did take that sample. Yes, we do have a chain of custody. No one else handled that toxicology report except us. And we know where it went from there, and we now have the toxicology results. So, yeah. Yeah, and I agree with that, but it seems that somebody else is doing that work. Maybe the state or AOC is paying, I don't know. No, they really aren't. Or the Commonwealth Attorney. I just wondered if there was some other sort, and you don't have to answer that right now, but that's just a question. As far as the removals, the coroner's offices and medical examiner's offices are paying mortuary services to actually physically remove the body and the deputy coroners are not handling or the coroners are not handling bodies. We do all that. I mean, as you see it. So could we get reimbursed by the funeral homes or mortuaries or whatever you call them? That would be passing another cost on to our citizens. And I think it's really our obligation. Okay. Okay, and like I said, you don't have to answer these questions now, but they're just kind of rolling around in my mind. Okay, okay. Thank you very much for your comments. Thank you so much for your service, and thank you to all the people that work for you. We've had a few leave. We've had a few deaths since this meeting started. Well, I'm glad I wasn't one of them. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know we're out of time. Gary, thank you for your presentation, and I thank you and your staff who have shown me around your office and explained to me lots about what you do. I have a couple quick questions. I was prepared to make a motion, but I'm not sure I need to based on the compensation study that we have ongoing. Does it, can someone answer for me if it includes the coroner and the coroner's staff and looking at their classifications? And John Maxwell is right behind you. Yes, Vice Mayor. The coroner's office was included and did complete JAQs as part of the compensation study. And all of those under Gary are included. Gary is not included in the study because he's an elected official, and his wages are set by the Department of Local Government out of Frankfurt. So we don't set those wages. So we cannot, are you saying we cannot impact the coroner himself and his wages? Those underneath him, yes. Okay. Okay. And do you know, or Gary, do you know, are there, you may have said this and I might have missed it, are any coroners and their staff classified hazardous? No. And would we have to go to the state in order to get that as a change? Not as far as I know. So it could be just like the urban county government made a resolution to take the detention center and put them under hazardous duty, the garbage under hazardous duty. From what I believe and from what I'm talking with other coroners and other officials, the urban county government could make a resolution to actually put the coroner's office under hazardous duty, from what I understand. Okay, so that would be a local decision. Okay, so if I understand correctly, the staff of the coroner's office is included in this compensation study, and when will it come to us? We actually have the first draft that came back last week, and we're meeting with all the commissioners and directors, and I'll soon be contacting you, Vice Mayor, as well. to kind of go over the basics of the first draft. Our goal is to have it completed no later than, in terms of completed, I mean a budget number to give to CAO Hamilton no later than March 17th. But there needs to be some administrative things worked out as part of that. So we are presently going through that information. Okay, thank you. I'd like to go ahead and make a motion. I was prepared to include the compensation study, but I understand it's already in the works for the coroner's staff. So I move to ask our Human Resources Division to look at the issue of hazardous status for the coroner and the coroner's employees and what other communities around the country are doing with that and to give us a report back by August. Is that doable? I'm looking at the director giving you a few months. Sure, that'll be easily doable. As a matter of fact, we'll have that no later than July 1. Okay, very good. Thank you. Motion and a second to investigate the change to hazardous duty pay. Any discussion of the motion? Vice Mayor? I just had a quick comment. Being a registered nurse, I think what you do has many hazardous components to it, and I believe this is definitely worth looking into. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments, discussion? If not, all those in favor, please. On this, on the motion, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Could you include, Mr. Maxwell, not only what's going on around the country, but also across the state of Kentucky and whatever implications there would be with respect to state law? I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question. When you do the search to see what other cities are doing, when you look at what the cities in Kentucky specifically are doing, and also any implications regarding state law with respect to the hazardous pay? Sure, sure, I'd be glad to look at that. I might also add that when I got this packet for this committee, I did send this entire presentation to our compensation consultants. And even though we have a first draft back from them, I don't have the draft that would incorporate the thoughts that Gary had put together. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Any further comments on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. I have one more quick comment from Councilmember Scotchfield. This should be quick. Vice Mayor Gordon covered at least two of the things that I was going to ask regarding HR and the hazardous distinction around the state. One thing I did want to ask, you're elected, obviously your staff is not. Are both positions considered full-time? Yes, all positions are full-time. I have no part-time positions. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you very much for your presentation. We have one more item on the agenda, and I'm going to try and do this very quickly so that the people hovering over my table will get served shortly. Are there any motions regarding the items that are pending on our agenda? Council Member Ford. Based on our presentation today, Mr. Chair, I'll move that we remove the item related to parks and their enterprise programs as they've provided the presentation as requested. Motion to remove the parks presentation for any further discussion at this point. I need a second. I have a second. Discussion of the motion. all in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries any other motions related to the pending items if not i have one heads up for this committee and that is that i have talked with council member ellinger about budget and finance and possibly scheduling a special meeting to address the issue of housing and homelessness on March 8th. When we're scheduled to meet, we will give you a heads up. We may be postponing the items that are in our March agenda to our April agenda. I'll have more information about that before the next meeting. Any further business before we adjourn? A motion to adjourn? Moved. Second. A motion to second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We adjourned.