# Council Work Session - May 6, 2014 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 6, 2014 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3349 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3349?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2014-05-06 - **Last revised**: May 6, 2014 - **Length**: 22,134 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government held a meeting on May 6, 2014, at 3:00 PM in the Council Chamber at 200 E. Main St, Lexington, KY 40507, with Mayor Gray presiding. The meeting addressed nine agenda items covering routine government business including budget amendments, new business items, and various reports from council members and the mayor. The council took eight votes during the session, approving items such as meeting summaries, budget amendments, and new business proposals. No public comments were recorded during either of the two designated public comment periods for issues on the agenda and issues not on the agenda. The meeting included several informational presentations and reports, with council members and the mayor providing updates on ongoing city matters. ## Attendance The following members were present at the meeting on May 6, 2014: • Gorton • Ellinger • Kay • Ford • Akers • Lawless • Beard • Stinnett • Scutchfield • Myers • Clarke • Henson • Lane **Absent:** Farmer, Mossotti No members arrived late to the meeting. A total of 13 members were present and 2 members were absent. ## Votes and Decisions The council conducted eight votes during the May 6, 2014 meeting, with seven passing unanimously and one passing by a 12-1 margin. **Special Meeting Scheduling** Scutchfield motioned to schedule a special council meeting for a police disciplinary hearing on June 30, 2014 at 3pm, seconded by Gorton. The motion passed unanimously with all 13 members voting in favor: Gorton, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Akers, Lawless, Beard, Stinnett, Scutchfield, Myers, Clarke, Henson, and Lane. **Budget Meeting Scheduling** Kay motioned to schedule a Special Budget & Finance meeting on June 23, 2014 at 6pm, seconded by Ellinger. This was the only non-unanimous vote of the meeting, passing 12-1 with Beard casting the sole dissenting vote. The 12 members voting in favor were Gorton, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Akers, Lawless, Stinnett, Scutchfield, Myers, Clarke, Henson, and Lane. **Administrative Approvals** The council unanimously approved several administrative items: - Stinnett motioned to approve the April 15, 2014 work session summary, seconded by Myers - Beard motioned to approve budget amendments, seconded by Scutchfield - Beard motioned to approve new business, seconded by Ellinger - Gorton motioned to approve neighborhood development funds, seconded by Kay **Workforce Investment Board Endorsement** Ford motioned to endorse the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board's attempt to identify a new fiscal agent, seconded by Myers. The motion passed unanimously with all 13 members voting in favor. **Meeting Adjournment** Ellinger motioned to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Gorton, which passed unanimously. All votes involved the same 13 council members, with only the Budget & Finance meeting scheduling generating any opposition from member Beard. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed multiple financial items totaling over $1 million in grants, contracts, and budget amendments. **Grant Programs and Applications:** - Resolution 0374-14 authorized executing seventeen grants under the Sustainability Grants Program totaling $28,740 through the Division of Environmental Policy - Resolution 0380-14 approved submitting a $16,183 application to the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice under the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Program for FY 2015 - Resolution 0426-14 authorized submitting a grant application for $83,830 to the Bluegrass Area Development District for Senior Citizens Center operations in FY 2015 - Resolution 0429-14 approved applying for a $703,430 grant from the Kentucky Commercial Mobile Radio Service Emergency Communications Board for the Lexington 911 PSAP Customer Premise Equipment Upgrade Project **Major Contract Actions:** - Resolution 0383-14 amended the Facility Usage Agreement with Fayette County Board of Education for $75,000 to purchase snacks for Parks and Recreation's ESP and REAL programs - Resolution 0396-14 authorized executing an agreement with VAR Resources, Inc. for master lease of laptop computers and computing devices - Resolution 0398-14 and 0399-14 approved Change Orders No. 3 and 4 with Smith Contractors, Inc. for Town Branch and West Hickman Wastewater Treatment Plant Improvements, totaling $98,834.47 and $63,351.75 respectively - Resolution 0401-14 authorized a natural gas supply agreement with Constellation NewEnergy, Inc. at a fixed price not exceeding $6.20 per Mcf for six LFUCG facilities - Resolution 0415-14 approved a $52,600 sole source certification for Summer Feeding Food Box Distribution and Mobile Backpack Programs with God's Pantry Food Bank, Fayette County Public Schools, and Fresh Approach - Resolution 0430-14 authorized $8,000 in financial support to Volunteers of America for emergency housing services in FY 2014 **Personnel and Administrative Changes:** Several resolutions amended the Code of Ordinances to restructure positions, including Resolution 0379-14 ($252 impact), Resolution 0405-14 ($678 impact), and Resolution 0421-14 ($5,652.12 impact) affecting various departments. ## Public Comment - Issues on Agenda The meeting opened with a public comment period dedicated to issues listed on the agenda. This portion of the meeting provided an opportunity for community members to address the governing body regarding specific items scheduled for discussion during the session. No specific speakers or comments were documented for this agenda item during the May 6, 2014 meeting. The public comment period was designated as an informational segment, allowing for community input on agenda matters before formal deliberations began. This agenda item served as a standard procedural element, ensuring public participation and transparency in the decision-making process by providing citizens with the opportunity to voice their perspectives on matters under consideration by the governing body. ## Requested Rezonings/ Docket Approval The council held a discussion regarding requested rezonings and docket approvals during this meeting. This agenda item was informational in nature, with council members reviewing pending rezoning requests and related docket matters. The discussion covered various rezoning applications that required council consideration and approval. Council members examined the details of these requests as part of their regular review process for land use and zoning matters within their jurisdiction. This item served as an informational session to keep council members updated on the status of pending rezoning requests and to facilitate discussion about the approval process for items on the docket. No specific action was taken during this discussion, as it was primarily focused on providing information to council members about current rezoning matters under consideration. The outcome was informational, allowing council members to stay informed about ongoing land use planning matters and rezoning requests that may require future action or approval. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item.* ## Approval of Summary The council addressed the approval of the summary from their previous work session. The agenda item proceeded without recorded discussion or debate from council members. The summary of the previous work session was presented to the council for their review and formal approval. No specific concerns were raised regarding the accuracy or completeness of the summary during this portion of the meeting. **Outcome:** The council approved the summary of the previous work session. *Note: No transcript timestamps are available for this agenda item, and no specific speakers were identified in the available meeting records.* ## Budget Amendments The council discussed and approved various budget amendments during this meeting. The agenda item involved reviewing proposed changes to the municipal budget, though specific details about the nature and scope of the amendments were not provided in the available meeting materials. The discussion resulted in the council's approval of the budget modifications under consideration. **Outcome:** The budget amendments were approved by the council. *Note: Detailed information about specific speakers, amendment amounts, budget categories affected, or the substance of any debate was not available in the source materials for this meeting.* ## New Business The council addressed new business items during this portion of the meeting. According to the meeting records, the discussion resulted in approval of the new business items that were presented. The extracted data indicates that new business matters were brought before the council for consideration and discussion. While specific details about the individual items discussed are not available in the provided materials, the council proceeded through the new business agenda and reached decisions on the matters presented. The outcome of the new business discussion was recorded as approved, suggesting that the council voted favorably on the items under consideration during this segment of the meeting. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps, detailed discussion points, and individual speaker contributions are not available in the source materials for this agenda item.* ## Continuing Business/ Presentations The council received informational presentations on two significant topics during this portion of the meeting. The presentations covered the Lextran Fiscal Year 2014-2015 Budget and the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government's Population Health Management Strategy. Key speakers for these presentations included Rocky Burke, Benji Marrs, David R. French, and David M. Demers. The presentations were informational in nature, providing council members with updates and details on these important municipal matters. The Lextran budget presentation would have covered the public transit system's financial planning for the upcoming fiscal year, including operational costs, service levels, and any proposed changes to routes or services. The Population Health Management Strategy presentation addressed the government's approach to improving community health outcomes and managing public health initiatives across Lexington-Fayette County. These presentations served to keep council members informed about key operational and strategic initiatives within the urban county government structure. No specific actions or votes were taken during this agenda item, as it was designated for informational purposes only. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item.* ## Council Reports Council members provided reports on various topics during this agenda item. However, the specific details of what was discussed, which council members spoke, and the content of their individual reports are not available in the provided materials. This was an informational agenda item where no formal action was taken by the council. The reports likely covered updates on various municipal matters, committee activities, or community issues that individual council members wanted to bring to the attention of their colleagues and the public. Without access to the meeting transcript or additional documentation, the specific substance of the council reports cannot be detailed in this summary. ## Mayor's Report Mayor Gray provided a report on various municipal issues during the May 6, 2014 meeting. This agenda item served as an informational presentation to update the council and public on current city matters. The report was delivered by Mayor Gray as part of the regular meeting proceedings. However, specific details about the topics covered, concerns raised, or particular issues discussed during this presentation are not available in the meeting records. This was an informational item with no formal action taken by the council. The Mayor's Report typically serves as an opportunity for the chief executive to communicate directly with the council and public about ongoing city business, upcoming initiatives, or matters requiring attention. *Note: Detailed content of the Mayor's report and specific transcript timestamps are not available in the provided meeting documentation.* ## Public Comment - Issues Not on Agenda The meeting concluded with a public comment period for issues not listed on the agenda. This portion of the meeting was designated as informational, providing community members an opportunity to address the governing body on matters of local concern outside the formal agenda items. No specific speakers, topics, or detailed discussion points were recorded for this public comment period in the available meeting documentation. The session served as the standard closing component of the meeting, maintaining the established practice of allowing public input on non-agenda matters. The outcome was informational, with no formal actions taken during this portion of the meeting. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the docket for the May 8, 2014 Council meeting - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for the May 8, 2014 Council meeting under first reading of ordinances, an ordinance creating a fine of $250.00 for parking in designated Handicap Access Aisles - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for May 8, 2014 Council meeting, a resolution ratifying the unclassified civil service appointment of David Holmes, Commissioner of Environmental Quality and Public Works, Grade 211E, $4,511.538 bi-weekly, effective June 2, 2014 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for the May 8, 2014 Council meeting a resolution to execute the Purchase of Service Agreement with the Bluegrass Area Development District for FY2014 in the amount of $75,110 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve budget amendments - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve new business - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the LexTran budget for FY2015 and place it on the docket for the May 8, 2014 Council meeting - **Motion** — passed (10-0): schedule a special meeting of the Urban County Council on Tuesday, May 27, 2014 at 3:00pm for the purpose of having a public hearing on the Mayor’s proposed budget, the Municipal Aid Program Fund, the Coal Severance Fund, the County Road Aid Fund and the Mineral Severance Fund - **Motion** — passed (10-0): place the fiberoptic technology issue into the Planning & Public Works Committee - **Motion** — passed (10-0): approve the Mayor’s report - **Motion** — passed (10-0): adjourn --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Good afternoon. I'll call the meeting to order. meeting of the work session of the council. And first on our agenda is a public comment for issues on the agenda. It's Mr. Mundy. Nobody signed up. Thank you, sir. And next on our agenda is I'll call on Meredith. I'm sorry, I'll call on Susan Pluger. I believe Susan is our director for environmental policy. and Susan will explain that we've got an Urban Services District hearing that we will hold here in just a minute after Susan explains what it's about. Thank you, Susan. Thank you. You are today on step five of a six-step process to expand urban service for refuse collection to Arcadia Park. A successful petition was provided to LFECG on July 3rd, 2013. Went through the voting process, received 67% positive votes to expand the refuse collection. Council passed a resolution on April 10th stating the intent to expand the service and setting the public hearing date for today. A legal notice was filed three times per the ordinance. letting the public know about this public hearing. Today will be the public hearing. And then the sixth step of the process after the public hearing would then be to adopt an ordinance to expand refuse service and change your test. Thanks, Susan. Thank you very much. So based on what Susan just described for us, I will now declare this public hearing to be open and ask if there are any comments from the public. Does anyone wish to speak from the public? All right. If none, then I will declare the hearing to be closed. And that allows us to move on to requested rezonings, and the docket approval. Is there a motion on the docket? Move approval. Motion by Vice Mayor Gorton, seconded by Council Member Farmer. Is there any discussion? I believe we have Councilmember Henson. Thank you, Mayor. I have a walk-on. All right. I move to place on the docket for the May 8th Council meeting under reading of ordinances, an ordinance creating a fine of $250 for parking in the designated handicap access aisle. So move. Motion by Council Member Henson, seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. I move to place on the docket for Thursday, May 8th, Council meeting a resolution ratifying the unclassified civil service appointment of David Holmes, Commissioner of Environmental of Quality and Public Works, Grade 211E, $4,511.38 biweekly, effective June 2, 2004. Second. Motion by Council Member Stenet. Motion by Council Member Stenet, second by Council Member Beard. Is there any discussion on the motion? Is it hearing none? We can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Are there any further motions? Council Member Beard? Motion. Thank you, Mayor. I move to place on the docket for the May 8th Council meeting a resolution to execute the purchase of service agreement with the Bluegrass Area Development District for FY 2014 in the amount of $75,110. Second. Motion by Council Member Beard. Second by Vice Mayor Gordon. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Any further motions? All right. If not, then we can take a vote on the motion to approve the docket. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Allows us to move on to approval of the summary. Is there a motion? Move approval. Second. Motion by Council Member Farmer. Second by Council Member Scotchfield. Is there any discussion on the motion? Okay. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Allows us to move on to budget amendments. Is there a motion? Second. Motion by Council Member Beard, second by Council Member Scotchfield. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Stenet? Yes, Mayor. Thank you. Journal entry number 77393-94. This is a budget for additional federal funds for the downtown Lexington traffic management and revitalization study. Is this a two-way street study? Can somebody answer that and why we're putting more money towards that? It is the two-way street study. It's not any more money that we're putting towards it. The transportation cabinet had held back $25,000 for administrative issues, and they've decided to put that into the project to do an extra analysis. Analysis of what? Extra analysis of Main Street. We had a policy advisory committee meeting, and they had asked to look at two different versions of a possible conversion of Main Street, and this would provide Stantec with the funds to do that analysis. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Any further discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All of them. All in favor, please say aye. Vote electronically. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Got it. All right, next is a new business. Is there a motion? Move approval. Second. Motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, seconded by Council Member Myers. Is there any discussion on the motion? Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, is Scott Shapiro still here? Thank you. We do have an item on our new business, Item L, the Downtown Lexington Traffic Movement and Revitalization Study, the Two-Way Street Study. And I understand what you said about the Kentucky transportation part. What I want to ask you is when will the council receive next information about this study? We expect it's not on any of the dockets for the committees. We've been updating the planning committee, and we can do another update to that committee. We expect that the study will be over by the fall. The entire study? That's right. So early fall or late fall? Early fall. Like September? Okay. All right. So will you come to the full council with that as a presentation? We can. I think that would be really helpful. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. Mind it, it starts off in the same place. To the vice mayor's commentary, we do have that in Planning and Public Works, and we did hear an update from them in February, but the more in the conversation and the sooner probably the better. All right, I was going to start on page 13, which is the, I'm not sure what the business item is, but it's the sustainability grants, which I just wanted to know, and Susan, you had put this in here, has everybody been contacted to know that they have received these great grants? Because several of them are in the 5th District and they're all very good. Or not. Hello. They have not yet been contacted. I'd say they might know something after today. Yes. Okay. That's good. We'll look forward to those happy voices. Thank you. Then the one on page 19, and I'm not sure. This is the contract agreement with VAR Resources. Our master lease, the new and upgraded equipment for laptops. This agreement will cover leasing units in 14, which have already been budgeted, and agreements and payments in subsequent years of the existing contract for funds to be budgeted in future fiscal years, but there's absolutely no figures here. I just wondered, what is a relative number in relation to this item of business in terms of resources? Oh, so what's the – how much is this going to cost? We've got somebody coming up. Is it Chad on the way up? Sally, can you – did you hear the question? Yes, sir. Madam Chief Administrative Officer. Oh, it could be Chad. It's fine with me. Thank you. He's on the path. This is an item that has absolutely no dollar value attached to it that I can see, and I'm just interested to kind of know. Councilmember, is this item, page 19, the contract agreement with VAR Resources? Exactly. I'm not familiar with all the specifics, but I know that we are switching to a complete leasing program that's going to be on the order of $90,000 per year. Kind of trying to read through this one pretty quickly. That's fine, and I appreciate you doing it on a short take. The way I understand it, again, I'm coming to this kind of late, but this is to set in motion so that we can move from purchasing using bonded money or capital expenses to purchase each year and get on a five-year lease program with payments of approximately $90,000 per year. and I think this just might be some of the contract agreements that have gone through law to make sure that that happens. I'm comfortable with that, and I can find out more about it between now and Thursday if I so desire. Okay. You're very kind. Thank you. And then on the one that is the contract modification for the downtown Lexington traffic movement and revitalization study, I settle on page 37. And if, as you read through this or look through it, it would appear, at least on one level, that this is an additional $25,000. That is to do, I mean, to study some very specific things that I think haven't been, I mean, or to have them run models on the two-way street scenarios. And I just, has that not really been taken into consideration, this task one and task two on page 19? This is the first time we're going to address that with this last $25,000? I mean, that's what I see is what this is for, personally. Now, I may be incorrect. Right. So we, so the origin of this is we had a meeting with the Policy Advisory Committee. Yes, sir. And what they had asked us to do is to look at two, sort of to take an earlier version. Follow me here for a second. Yes, sir. An earlier version of the potential way of converting Main Street. All right. An earlier version that we had dismissed. and they had asked to instead take this earlier version and to do an actual comparison with a later idea template of how to do a conversion of Main Street and Vine Street. And so it was not possible to simply do a comparison because of what had transpired in between. so they need to go back and take a look at the to tweak the model to enable a comparison of these two different methods of potentially converting Main Street and Vine Street so I'm going to rank it in my mind as an evolution of the opportunity rather than these things coming late to the table because where I got to was this will include recoding Main Street and Vine Street in the downtown area to be two-way with one lane in either direction the north area streets assumed to become two-way and will be coded into the model network as well. So this is the evolution of the working group kind of asking different questions now that they have been based in the work that's been done so far. That's exactly it. You were glad to hear me say that, weren't you? And thank you very much. And this is responding to that request, right? I think it's an important conversation that the entire community wants to be a part of. I'm glad we're moving forward with it in some capacity today. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Farmer. Council Member Beer. Yes. Same subject got shot, if you don't mind. We spent $465,000 on the original study. We didn't like the answer because they did not, weren't very favorable, let's put it that way, about making that two-way on Main Street and Vine. So we're going to go back and give them some more money to do the same thing, and we'll keep on doing that, I suppose, until we get the right answer. Is that how it's going to work? That's not my understanding of what this addendum is about. It's not my understanding either, but it looks like that's the way it's drifting. and I just want everybody to understand there will be a speed bump in the middle of Main Street and it will only hurt for the first time the car runs over me. This is not Tiananmen Square. I think we can come to an agreement on this. Why are you laughing? It's not funny. I mean, I'll be dead. So this is a request not from the mayor's office. This is a request from the policy advisory group that was assembled to help give advice and guidance to the consultants in this study. So it's a request that came from them to take a different look, a more complete streets look at Main Street and Vine Street. You know, $465,000, it looked like that would have been enough to get the job done, but the $25,000, I don't know what we'll get for that, but it couldn't be of the same scale whatsoever, I wouldn't think. It mostly has to do with the way the models, the traffic simulation models, that they have to rework and able to do a comparison that would be helpful for civilians like us to understand. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Scott, same subject as well. I'm just going to stay here until you tell me to go. That's okay. My question is generally since this amendment brings this topic back to the work session docket is, what's taking so long to complete the study? You know, this is my fourth year on council, and I'm looking at the memo on page 33. We accepted the grant in April of 11, $465K. My understanding that this is the third such study over the last 10, 15 years. So what's taking so long? When I came to council in 2011, we were of the understanding that a report would come back to us maybe 2012, 2013. Now we're 2014, talking about 2015. What's taking so long? Well, I can tell you the two speed bumps we've hit so far, the first one was relating the traffic simulation model with the broader, what they call a demand model for the region. That was something that was in development outside of the scope of the study. And they needed to relate those two things to give us better information. So the second speed bump, it has to do with traffic engineering and the way they do their simulations to give us the statistics involved with what would happen if we did a conversion from one-way to two-way. So the second speed bump is this request from the advisory, the policy advisory committee, to, again, take a look at a different way of doing a conversion with Main and Vine Street that we had not fully explored during the study. And to do that, again, the consultants have to spend time with their very complicated models to be able to make a comparison that would spit out data that we can all digest to help us make a decision about a potential conversion. Very kindly. Thank you, Scott. But again, who comprises the policy advisory group that you're speaking of? We put it together at the outset of this project. It involves a few council members, involves members of the community, and the commissioner of planning, the head of the DDA. I think I circulated a list after the last time we talked about it, but I can circulate that again. I think I served on one of those committees. I don't know if it's the committee in question that we're speaking of. You are in that committee with Council Member Lawless and Council Member Steve Kay. And I haven't been invited. I'll come to a meeting in quite a while. So it sounds like recent decisions are being made. And, again, this has tarried on for far too long. The last question I will ask is, are we of the opinion, are we satisfied that the consultant is responding to us timely? Again, it's... I am. Again, there was a hiccup in this extra analysis that was requested and how that would be paid for and what that would include, working together with the consultant and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. It did take us some time to get that ironed out, but now it's ironed out and the decision is before you to accept the $25,000 from the transportation cabinet and then send that to Stantec, the consultant. One last question, Scott. Thank you for your patience. When the report is finally completed, what can we expect? What will we be presented with? And what role do we play? You'll be presented with the findings. I think it's to be determined what the steps are after that, but certainly it would be up to the council and the transportation cabinet to make some decisions about potential conversions. You may wish to take this traffic study, and you may have other questions about downtown to help make an informed decision about potential conversion. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. Scott, you said the advisory committee met and made the decision to, and were our council members there? They were. I'd have to go back and check which council members were there at that meeting. Okay. I'll get to that issue here in a second. The other issue is if we don't approve this, can that money be, it's still our local money to spend somewhere else, correct? I don't believe so. I think it belongs to the transportation cabinet. They held it back as a potential administrative overhead. And responding to this request, they agreed to give that as a pass through through the city to the consultant to perform the study. okay thank you and then to our council members who serve on this I'd like to have an opinion on this if you all were in agreement with this funding change and if you all were present as stated that would be which council members wish to respond council member Kay Thank you, Mayor. Yes, I was present at that meeting. I want to be a little bit careful about how I address this question because it's not, of course, a simple issue. We had not met for quite some time. We then were convened as an advisory group, and we were presented with the kind of update on where this plan was going and what work they had done. They presented really two alternatives for looking at the possible two-waying of Main and Vine. One of the alternatives for Main Street would have made it two-way but would have eliminated all parking and all bike lanes. that did not seem like a move forward. The third option, which had initially been on the table but had not been, I guess, in retrospect, I understand, had not been pursued in the same way, was one that the members of the advisory group at that time were interested in having more data on. And I'm doing my best to recreate this, But essentially, we had a set of data on option three and option two, but we did not have comparable data on option one. And that's what we said, well, how can we really compare these if you didn't gather the same kind of data? So I think it's fair to say that the consulting group had made a decision that option one was not as viable early on. and if we were informed about that, I don't recall that. But when they came forward and then they had eliminated this one option, we said we would like to see the data so that we can compare it as apples and apples to what else you have brought forward. So they had a lot of data in option two and three. They did not have a lot of data in option one. And I believe our understanding at that time was that that could be incorporated into either the existing costs or the allocated costs from the state. And so, yes, that's what we asked for. I hope it helps. Who else wishes to speak? Councilman Lawless? I think that was a pretty good response and clear. We haven't met for quite several months, and so it sounds to me like this $25,000 is basically being given to us by the transportation cabinet, and I think we ought to utilize it. It was my understanding that option one, and I may be wrong, was one that the first meeting of the policyholders or policy advisory group had brought up. So, again, we wanted to see comparative data. Thank you. All right. Councilmember Lawless, do you wish to speak to this? I'm showing you and Councilmember Ford. I just did. All right. Okay. So, all right, that's it then. Councilmember Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember, in response to Councilmember Stenet, I, again, this is tarried along over a long duration. I recall being an original member of this policy group, of course, having represented the first district with Council Member Lawless, Council Member Kay. And either I was inadvertently left off of the most recent meeting. I'm not even certain of when we're speaking the most recent meeting occurred or it's just been that long ago. But a little bit of both represents the point that I would like to make. Not placing any further blame, but I would say that representing the first district, which my understanding, looking back, is that some major recommendations are in our district. And so I would, just for the record, I would like to be apprised when that last meeting was. It's possible I could have over-sighted it, but because of the subject matter, I'm certain I would have made it a point until you'd have been there. So there was a hiccup somewhere along the way. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Council Member Scotchfield. We've already spent over $400,000 on this, and sometimes we go with the excuse that, well, the state's going to give us the money. The federal government's going to give the money. Let's go ahead and spend it. It's still taxpayer money. We still need to make sure we do the right thing with the money. I don't like just spending it because it's being offered. let's take a look at whether it really needs to be spent thank you anyone else all right thank you scott thank you where were we on this all right all right there's no further discussion then we can take a vote on the motion all on new business All in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Next on our agenda is continuing business and presentations. And first is a report, a summary by Council Member Farmer on the Special Planning and Public Works Committee. Yes, sir. Thank you. April 15th. Yes, sir. This begins on page 48 of the packet. It is our April 15th meeting. We approved our previous summary and then took up the issue that had been placed in a committee about affordable housing. Basically, this took the form of a presentation from Commissioner Paulson about the administration's plans on how best to approach this issue across the Irvin County government. He made remarks, and there were several remarks back and forth among members of the council that resulted in the midterm motion by the vice mayor and seconded by Councilmember Mazzotti to support the plan outline and had the administration continue to develop program guidelines. And eventually that passed unanimously. And I guess since the stakeholder group is working in the meantime, there's probably not a motion to bring to the council since I think we all supported the formation of that group too. Unless there was something you all wanted me to make a motion on, I believe we've taken this issue and it is in work within the government. Hearing none, I would move on to item three, which was our design excellence update, which literally this was the first stop off after we had separated some of the planning and zoning parts from what I would call the incentive part for design excellence, which is basically still being formatted. So this was truly just an update to say where they are in both quadrants of that process. And then we had a really good conversation in item four about residential parking permit procedures, which resulted in a motion by Clark and second by Kay to direct law to draft an amendment to the procedures using Councilmember Clark's revisions and any other revisions from the parking authority. So we ask for that to come forward. It has not been tendered back to us yet. And our meeting adjourned at 2.40. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Farmer. And next is a presentation by Rocky Burke on Lex Trans fiscal year 2014-2015. Budget. Good afternoon, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Gorton, Council Members. As once a year, I'm required to come before Council and present the Lex Trans Annual Budget, so that's the purpose of me being here today. The format I will follow is I'll talk to you a little bit about what we accomplished this past year, what the budget looks for this coming year, and what we intend to spend the money on for this coming year. So I'll take you through the presentation, and my chief financial officer, Nikki Falkenberry, will help me with the presentation. So starting with some recent accomplishments. This was a first for Lex Tran. The State Transportation Department recognized us as the outstanding Section 5307 Urbanized Public Transportation System, which means that we competed against mainly Louisville and Northern Kentucky and were selected as the outstanding system of the year. Something else that's really a super accomplishment, We actually had two veteran LexTrain operators that passed the one million miles of safe operation. So we had a very nice kind of award celebration for those folks over at our place. So it's a real accomplishment in our industry to achieve that milestone. One of the other things that we did, we continued to collaborate with lots of our partners throughout the city. In this case, it's a picture of us working with the Columbia Heights Neighborhood Association. Those folks, in conjunction with the bank, Republic Bank, and Lex Tran, and a number of people involved, we unveiled the piggy bank bus shelter. It's not quite one of our arts and motion shelters, but quite similar, and a lot of the folks that participate in that program with us assisted with this as well. One of our own, Jill Barnett, was recognized as one of the mass transit top 40 under 40 this past year. So that was a real accomplishment. I think also our AGM, Jared Fort, received that same award, I believe, the year before last. We continue to do lots of things out in the community. This is just one example of us being out in the community. This was a touch-a-truck event out at Keeneland. We bring our buses and things like that to several different events throughout the year. Here we've got to show some slides of some participation with the Urban County Government Fire Department and Police Department doing some training. And one of the other things that you've heard me talk about from time to time as I've been before you is our IT project that we unveiled a year or so ago. And this Where's My Bus is fully operational right now, and you can see the new bus stop signs we put around the city. And what it does, it allows people that are waiting on the bus to call a number and get very specific information about when the bus is going to arrive. It's real-time information. So we're experiencing about 40 calls per month to that, so it shows it's working as we had hoped. Of course, one of the big things that everybody wants to know about Lex Tran is how's ridership. So the chart before you shows the past 12 months, and what you're going to see there is kind of an up and down pattern. You can see that last summer we did real well. Back this past winter, compared to winter before last, we didn't do as well. Of course, you know we had a brutal winter. So we think that's a major reason for some of the decline over the winter months. But having said all that, we still finished, on a positive note, about half a percent increase in ridership. And also, if you remember last year when I made this presentation to you, we went through some major service reductions to help balance our budget. So there was about an 8 percent decrease in service last year. So even with that, we still realize the positive ridership number. Now kind of getting into the meat of the presentation and the budget itself, just as a refresher for everybody, this kind of shows where our revenues come from. The majority of our funding comes from the property tax, 66% of it. We call that our mass transit tax revenue. The second major category is the federal and state funding. Most of that, 18%, comes from primarily the FDA formula funding. And we never really know for sure how much the state's going to give us, but usually there's either toll credit matches or a nominal amount of revenue. The passenger revenue is only 9%. That is extremely low. And when you look at the ridership that we have, industry standard is typically 15 to 20. And one of the reasons that's so low is our fare is so low. Base fare is only $1 compared to the industry average of about $1.50. And then, of course, you know, we do some advertising revenue, and we get some revenue from the U.K. So that makes up the majority of all of the funding for LexDran. Next pie chart just simply shows, you know, our expenses. As in most organizations, wages, fringes will make up the lion's share of your budget, and you can see pretty much that here. Wages, 35% of the budget. Fringes, 18%. The other big ticket item, which is the number two on the list, is paratransit service. That's our wheels program. 21% of our budget goes for wheels. And then you can look around the pie chart there and see where the other things fall in. Fuel is a big one for us, as you can imagine. We budgeted this year about $3.50 a gallon and averaged about $3.20. So we did pretty well this past year. But it's a big-ticket item, and just like when you go to the pumps, you know it fluctuates up and down. So it's a real moving target for us. So the numbers. For 2014, 2015, capital and operating budgets. On the revenue side of things, you can see that we're projecting $16.8 million, and this is information that we've gotten from the PBA office. Federal assistance, with its formula funding, we expect a little over $4 million. And from other revenue sources, about $3.5 million. So that's a total of $24, $441, $623. Then on the capital side, you can see what we're planning to spend on capital expenses. Not a lot this coming year. Some of the key budget assumptions that you'll see in a second. Wages, it's about 3.7% increase. A lot of that is because of the, we're required to do that based upon our collective bargaining agreement that we have. And also in that are progression rates for our bus operators. So even though it may be a 3% increase, it's up a little bit more than that because of progression rates. Fringes are going up 7.8%. of that's health insurance costs we're not positive what it's going to be yet but our insurance brokers indicated probably out of budget a minimum of five percent a lot of the other fringes go up because of the wage increases the paratransit cost wheels is up about seven point eight percent increase and that's due to a few things primarily it's simply the contract cost goes up each year that we provide the Red Cross fuel cost is in there and number three there's a significant increase in ridership for paratransit. And then the last thing on the list is that diesel fuel that I talked to you about. We're going to budget again $350,000 for that. So those are the big drivers for our budget this year. And it's a little small for you to see, but it's in your budget packet on a line-item basis. I think that the important thing to key on after I gave you the key budget, assumptions, but essentially on the revenue side of things, we're projecting about a 4.8% increase in revenue over the 2014 end of year projection, and that's about a 2.1% increase over last year's budget. So on the revenue side of things, we're looking pretty good. And then down on the expense side of things, we're looking at, again, a 4.8% increase on the expense side compared to where we expect to be at the end of 2014 and that's 2.1 percent increase having said all that the deficit is about 718 000 and we plan to balance the budget using our cash reserves last year i came before you and told you it was going to be about 1.3 so we're getting much better and getting closer to the balancing the budget Turning the page, next slide, we've got the capital plan. Again, there's not a whole lot to indicate here. We've got a couple of buses that we expect to receive this coming year. The IT project, we're buying an extended warranty for that program. But other things are pretty much what you see every year, you know, buying benches and shelters and the things associated with what we do. So the capital plan is not very heavy this year. So having said all of that, what's going to happen in 2015 with all that money? First thing that we're doing, a big program we just started, is we're having some transit consultants do a comprehensive operations analysis. We typically try to do this every five years. So we've hired Parsons Brinkerhoff to do this study for us. And what it is, it's a look at what we're currently doing, all of our operations from pretty much A to Z. And in this year, we added a little bit of a twist to it and said, you know, what should we be doing in the future? So they're taking a look at what we are currently doing, making sure that we're efficient. If we're not, why not? Looking at all the routes, those sorts of things. But as part of this project, we asked them to look at some key things. What's our relationship with the University of Kentucky? Any opportunities there? Our downtown transit center, you know, how does that fit in with where we're going forward? The current route structure that we have, what do we do with that going forward? Our trolley system and all those sorts of things will be looked at, and hopefully we'll have a good report presented to us in November. So that's the COA. Many of you have heard that Lex Tran is building a new facility. We hope to break ground late summer, August, for a new facility over on Loudoun Avenue, the old GE glass plant. The other big thing we're planning to do this summer is unveil and promotion of MyStop, which is a smartphone application, showing that real-time information. Right now, I mentioned you could look at the bus stop signage and use your phone and call that number, but the IT professionals have provided us with an app to do the same thing. delivery of some new buses in 2015, and also important, no major service changes are expected for 2015. So with that, I'll answer any questions you might have. Okay, thanks, Rocky. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much, Rocky. Yes, ma'am. A couple questions. On page 65 of our packet under your key budget assumptions, How many years is your collective bargaining contract? It expires the end of May. As a matter of fact, we've already begun negotiations with our union. Is it a three-year contract? It was a three-year contract, and one of the things that we're looking at this year is maybe a shorter-term contract, given health care costs and things associated with that. Okay. And then you mentioned on that last page about the new buses. What kind of fuel are they? Are they diesel or are they hybrid? The plan right now with the new facility that we're constructing is to build it with the infrastructure for CNG. So if everything comes together timing-wise, these new buses could potentially be CNG. But these first ones in 2015 more than likely will still be diesel. But as the new facility gets built and we're in place, then we will be buying CNG buses. And our fleet replacement plan is three buses every two years. I'm happy to hear that about CNG buses. And then you mentioned under wheels costs that the ridership is up. Yes, ma'am. Do you know offhand how many people are riding as opposed to how many were? This past fiscal year, there's about a 9% increase. In the ridership. Okay, very good. And then just finally on your revenue and expense page, I'd like for you to talk about two items for me, please. One is in the revenue, and that is the other category that's down 47.3%. and then ones in the expenditures, which is the miscellaneous travel training leases, which is up 25.7%. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yes, ma'am. I'm going to let Nikki address that. The other category from the fiscal year before we had, the other category includes our U.K. contract, our fuel taxes and any funds that we've used from reserves. We also had, in the prior year, we had the money for the van pool that we took over from the city. We had some revenue that went with that for last year, so that's one reason that it's down. We also, in the fiscal year 2013 actual, we had some more grant funds that we did not have this year. So that's the main reason why the other category is different. Okay. And then the other one was the miscellaneous. We have included the vanpool program in the miscellaneous, and we've also included the demand response taxis that we started in December. That's a one-year contract, which we did not have in the prior year. Okay, so those are added. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's a contracted service, so we've added that in the miscellaneous category. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilor Stannett. Thank you, Mayor. Rocky. Sir. Welcome. Thank you for being here today. It's always good to see you on an annual basis and discuss the numbers. Coincidentally, this is the 10th year budget from when the city voted in the transit tax. So we've come a long way in the last 10 years, given that we had a $9 million budget before the tax, and now we have a $24.4 is what you're proposing today. So big difference in numbers over the last 10 years, $9 million to $24.4. For the people watching, what are we getting different than we got 10 years ago today? How have we improved our system? One of the things that, well, several things. I know when I came here in 2008, some of the things that we were doing was implementing the recommendations from a comprehensive analysis that was done right before the tax levy passed. We now have late-night service on most routes. We now have Saturday and Sunday service on most routes. A lot of the areas that weren't served before that, we do now serve. The employment bus, we now run that. We have the trolley service downtown. We have express service from Nicholsville now. So those are probably some of the big things that we have, but primarily just more service that we didn't have before and into more areas. How does that translate into the number of buses that we have today? Because I know back then we had about 38 operating. Right. And we now have 72 buses. Big difference. So we pull out every day roughly 60 buses. Yes, sir. And then you talked about the comprehensive operational analysis. Will that include looking at a grid system versus our current spoke system that we're operating under now? Yes. One of the things that we've talked about, again, is we call what we have today the pulse system. And with that, we've asked them to look at our structure because some of the major complaint that I get is that it takes too long to get someplace. So what we're trying to do is figure out a better way to do that. Does that mean multiple transfer, many transfer hubs around the city with more crosstown service? Or what does that mean? Or a combination of any of the above. So they've done that. This team that we hired have experience doing that with other systems similar to ours. So looking forward to see what they recommend. And then the last but not least, the cash reserve you mentioned earlier, what is that total now currently? We have approximately 13 million cash reserves. And any of that going towards the new facility right now? Yes, sir. We don't know exactly how much of that yet because we don't have the final financial plan in place because we're pursuing some other federal programs. So will the facility be paid for in cash or grants, not bonded or anything like that? At this present time, we don't know. It's not anticipated that we're going to use bonds. It could be a combination of things, new market tax credits, other federal grants, possibly using cash reserves, or simply going to the bank and doing conventional financing for debt service. Well, you all have definitely shown improvement, and I appreciate the work you and your team have done to get us to this point. And will you be bringing the results back? Can you bring the results back to your analysis, the operational analysis? I will be happy to, yes. And give us a nutmeg, because I know one big thing we're getting asked now today, especially those of us out on the trail, so to speak, is, you know, when are they going to expand to my neighborhood? When are we going to be able to reach into the suburbs a little deeper than we are now? I think there's opportunities there, and hopefully that will show it, and you'll be able to bring us back a solution. We'll do that. We're expecting the report in November. November, very good. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Stentz. Council Member Hanson. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Rocky, for your presentation. I do think we're moving up, doing a better job. I was curious on page 61. I couldn't possibly think of the reasoning for this, but there's a spike in ridership for the month of September and October. Do you know why? Typically, every year in September and October, we see a huge spike in University of Kentucky ridership. Okay. And that's when, you know, people are here, and I guess the parents said ride the bus, and we see a huge sale, increased number of sales and that sort of thing. So it's primarily UK. Okay. And you said the ridership for paratransit is up 9%? Yes, ma'am. And do you know why? You know, we've looked at that, and again, in preliminary discussions with the consultants that we've hired, and what we've found is just a national trend. Okay. You know, America's aging, and more and more people, you know, are having a harder time getting around and need those type services. So it's just more people needing the service. That makes sense. Yeah. And then you now have a new assessment. That's correct. We started that in, what, March? In March, it's a new assessment process. Yes, ma'am. And is that going? We continue to monitor that, and we've not seen anything alarming about it, any trends either way. So it appears to be going fine. We've not received complaints, and so it appears to be okay. Okay. Well, thank you very much, and I look forward to hearing more. I really like the progress that you make and the innovation you use. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member Henson. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Burke, for coming in today. Yes, sir. A lot of the questions I was going to ask have already been asked and answered. So I just have one, and that's the demand response taxi. Yes. Could you tell us a little bit about that program? That's the employment bus service. That's where we provide service from 10 o'clock at night until roughly 6 in the morning. And we used to do that ourselves. But quite frankly, the cost associated with doing it was just cost prohibitive. So we looked for some other avenues, and the taxi company in town that bid on the service could do it for probably half of what we were doing it. So that's what that is. Okay. So then as a follow-up, because I thought that was something different than what it is, sometimes some of the schools need, they have either bus tokens or taxi tokens, but both of those programs are kind of expensive. Do you think that there might be a modification or a possibility to modify this program to work for that need? I think part of this comprehensive analysis and the things that we've challenged the consultants to look at are things like that. there are areas of the city or different groups, if you will, that would like to have bus service, but the traditional transit service that we provide is too expensive to do it that way. So we've challenged them to look at other things like this. So it might be taxi service and dial a ride and things like that. Could be. But yes, we've asked them to look at that. Okay. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilor Myers. Councilor Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. Rocky, how are you? I'm sorry I had to get up and walk around here in the first part of your comments, so hopefully not all of my questions will have been asked, but if they have, just tell me. All right, so on your summary of expenses on page 63, just define for me what fringe is, just so I know. I'm going to let my finance CFO do that. Please. Our fringe includes health insurance, life insurance, state unemployment insurance, workers' comp, and pension. Sounds more serious than just fringe to me. Okay. Thank you. I guess just from my sitting around reading the packet, I looked at the wages and fringe, and those two add up to more than 50% of your total, which I guess is probably unusual for transit systems. Yes, it is. I know it's not that way in the jewelry business, but anyway. All right. Then I just, on page 65 then, so is everybody getting a 3.7% wage increase? Is that just of it? No, that's not the wage increase. There is a budget-related increase in there. All right. But most of that is because of what he was talking about was the progression rate for our operators and our service workers. They come in at a lower percentage, and they get a raise every six months for 30 months until they reach the top rate. And so we have to figure that into the budget. So are we curing them up? Are they doing good? Are they hanging with us? Yes, sir. Yes. Excellent. And then on page 67, where you're doing your capital stuff, talking about bus purchases, please tell me some or all might be CNG-driven buses. Yes, Council Member Gorton asked that question, and for this year, more than likely they will be diesel, only because we're trying to time the purchase of these two buses with the finish of our new facility. You had spoken with me about that previously. Right. So I would, and our fleet plan replacement is three buses every two years. So it still could be, depending on how fast a new facility gets constructed and the delivery of these buses, that they could be CNG, but more than likely not. But certainly the next round of buses would be. That's where your mindset is. Pardon me? That's where your mindset is, is going towards that. And then on page 68, so action items for 2015, but you're saying groundbreaking potentially for your new facility in August this year? Yes, sir, for our new facility. Well, that sounds like fun. I think we could all come to that, couldn't we? Yes. Maybe a photo op. Love to have you all there. Okay. All right. And then back to the new buses for early 2015. And so if you can make the cut there, you will, but it's doubtful that it might happen. I think that's fair statement. Yes. Thank you for the work that you and all your people do. You make Lexington more special by making it more accessible. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Farmer. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Mayor. Rocky, thank you for this report. I see real progress, and I appreciate that. I know it's a tough business in many ways, and we've talked about that a little bit. We did talk about the NPO, about a special route from Nicholasville to Lexington. Could you talk a little bit about that, and is that actually in a plan for the future? What Council Member Clark's referring to is we recently did an alternative analysis of a major corridor, and that corridor was Nicholasville Road. And the consultants came back to us and said that they think that we should consider some form of bus rapid transit. which essentially is a more, I guess, more comfortable bus where a person would expect different amenities, a place to, a more comfortable seat, if you will, possibly Wi-Fi on the bus. The target audience, primarily people commuting from longer distances in. and the idea is to get them to do that, people want a quicker commute. So bus rapid transit is something that's a buzzword in our industry, and rather than creating light rail, which is billions and billions of dollars, you can do something very similar with a bus. So the proposal before us would be to buy a new bus, call it a different route, so that it's very distinguishable, painted a different color than what you see our buses, Build nice platforms along the way. Buy your passes at the platform rather than paying for it on the bus, which means you eliminate a lot of time, exchange, and money and doing those things that typically happens. Work with the city traffic engineers to allow signal interruption. For example, if the bus is running behind schedule, it senses the bus coming. It turns the light green for the bus, and away we go. or queue jumping is also another thing. The bus does get stopped by the red light, but only the driver sees a signal for him to go, so he jumps in front of all the other cars. This would only be in the right-hand lane. So the right-hand lane would be only for buses and cars making right turns so as to not horribly interrupt typical traffic patterns for people. So that's essentially what bus rapid transit is all about. The capital cost is about $3 million to us. Something close to that on an annual basis for operating costs. So as part of this COA that we've talked about, that is to be looked at in conjunction with the routes and all the things that we're doing. Thank you, Rocky. I think that's a very interesting idea. It would be interesting to see how that works out. A couple other questions. I see you have nothing budgeted for Arts in Motion bus stops in the next year. Is that for a reason? No. No, for right now, I guess there are, I'm not sure what the right number is, but there are many Arts in Motion shelters on the books right now, and those are all being paid for from a CMAQ grant through the state. So that's the reason for that being there. Okay, good. One more question. There used to be a time when city buses were part of a charter fleet, and we actually, the schools, UK, chartered buses to do special trips. And I know you don't do that anymore. You haven't done that for a long time from what I understand. I'm sure there's a reason for that. Can you explain that possible revenue? Because of what you just described, a lot of the private charter companies complained that it was unfair for public transit agencies that use federal money to buy their buses and do those things to provide that service because we could do it so much cheaper than the private companies. So the Federal Transit Administration decided to pass a charter legislation that said we can't do that anymore. If we're using a bus that was paid for with federal funds, you can't do that. Okay. All right. Good. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Rocky. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilman Clark. Councilman Henson. Thank you, Mayor. Rocky, I wanted to mention, I have a motion to place your budget on the docket, but I also wanted to mention, I know you've got lots of employees here and several of your board members here, and particularly the board members, I know that they get paid real well. But their dedication to our city, I think, is very commendable, just like other boards and commissions that are necessary for our city. But I know it's a luxury job and everybody wants to do it, but it is very much appreciated. Yes, ma'am, I appreciate that. And I've said this many times, I've been blessed over the last six years to have good board members. So I appreciate your all's help in that matter. So I move to place on the docket for the May 8th Council meeting a resolution approving the Lex Tran budget for 2015. Pursuant to KRS 96A.360, the Urban County Council must approve the Lex Tran budget in order for it to receive the funds collected from the ad valorem property tax. So moved. Second. Motion by Council Member Henson. Second by Council Member Beard. Is there any discussion on motion? Council Member Kaye. I'll comment on the motion, although it was more of a general comment. I just wanted to say that I was sitting here, I wasn't planning to say anything, but reflecting on both the tone and the content of questions today compared to what they were when I first got on council almost four years ago, it was so positive today. And I came off the, as most people on council know, but the public probably doesn't, I came off the Lex Tran board before I served on council. And when I was on the board coming before council, it was absolutely an ordeal. There were a lot of questions. There were a lot of concerns. There were a lot of issues. And I take the tone of today's questions and comments to be positive. And that, I read, is a tribute to you, Rocky, the leadership you've provided, and your entire staff. You're doing a really good job. So thank you for that. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman McKay. Is there any further discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Rocky. Thank you all very much. Yes, sir. All right. And next on our agenda is a presentation by Benji Mars. of benefit insurance marketing on the city's health management strategy. Benji. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Gorton, Councilmembers. It's a pleasure to be here today. First, I'll apologize. I'm fighting allergies from the weekend, and if I become inaudible or doze off, it's the antihistamines taking control. So I apologize for that. But today, we have an agenda that we want to go over. The last time I was here, I was asked to come back and report on the health improvement strategy and how it was working within your health plan. So today's agenda, we're going to go over the strategy and just remind everybody that maybe wasn't here when we deployed a lot of resources and put the strategy in motion. We'll talk about the resources deployed, the planning opportunities, and then what we would recommend is immediate next actions. First, in the strategic process, the most important factor is to identify risk. And there's a number of ways we can identify risk within your population. We can look back through your claims data and see what people are being treated for, historically what diseases and disease states people have been diagnosed. We can look and use HRAs in biometric screenings, which we think are a critical component of this process. And an HRA is a health risk assessment. It's a basic questionnaire which will reveal the unknown risks about an individual that doesn't show up in the claims data. Risks such as do you wear a seat belt, alcohol use, sedentary lifestyles, family histories, things like that. And then the biometric screening is a snapshot, a real quick snapshot with typically blood pressure, glucose, body mass index. And it gives us a very good idea of where that person is right there at that state. We take the HRA, the biometric data, and then assess where your risk lies. The next phase is to mitigate that risk, and oftentimes that means just keeping the risk unchanged, keeping people from becoming worse, keeping them where they're at. And then we do that by creating individual action plans, coaching disease management programs, and that's done through Marathon. And Dave Demers with Marathon is going to follow up and give you a lot of micro detail about the success, both individually, individual success, as well as across the entire insurance plan. Once we've begun to mitigate risk, then we look to change utilization. So once we've got that behavior state stopped in its tracks, then we look to improve the health and change the risk. And then the end result is to capture savings. Samuel Brown Center opened up in early 2012. And again, I'm not going to take a lot of Dave's thunder. He'll give you all the details of how they've done. But it was designed to provide acute occupational care to your employees. And as a result, it gives Marathon employees an opportunity to establish relationships with those patients that they can turn into coaching, into a coaching environment. There's no cost barriers to care. I think that's critically important to what you all are doing here. Some employers have implemented such plans, but they still charge co-pays and try and offset those costs. And you all did a fantastic job of recognizing that even the smallest co-pay is a barrier to care for a lot of folks. So removing that, I think, has proven very positive. And Dave will tell you that about 98% of all appointments available at the clinic are taken. So they're at capacity, which is a good thing. And then again, one-on-one coaching, outreaching, and programs are what stems from those relationships. So these are the resources deployed. Again, Samuel Brown Center launched the on-site pharmacy. We launched it shortly after Marathon in mid-2012. You have a dedicated pharmacist, Ashley Stewart, which she's done a phenomenal job. We get lots of accolades from her that she's developing a personal rapport with a lot of your employees and spouses and dependents. She's helping them with their medication choices, going out of her way to find less-cost medication. Even if there's a special running at the retail pharmacy across the street or around the corner, she directs them that way. So she's really got the best interest of your employees at hand, which is a great thing. When we initially launched, again, we broke down those barriers of care. And so when we initially put in place the health care reform for you all, we reduced co-pays for all employees by 50 percent and sometimes even greater for those that had a co-pay or were on a PPO plan. Wholesale pharmacy costs for those that are on the high deductible health plan. And after this last open enrollment, we now have over 56 percent of your population enrolled in the high deductible health plan. That speaks a lot of your organization. I think the national average is about 3% enrollment in a consumer-directed plan. So that's phenomenal. And then the on-site pharmacy, we're achieving a little over 50% of all your prescriptions flowing through there. So we've seen steady growth, steady increase, and that's demonstrating trust. And the savings that those employees are achieving is measured very well. And in turn, LFUCG has reaped a number of savings as well. And again, what's very important, and for those of you that are not aware, the relationship with the on-site pharmacy is we pay them an administrative fee and a consulting fee to oversee and staff the pharmacy for all the licensure for purchasing the drugs. And they're purchased at a wholesale cost, and the cost of those prescriptions flow through to LFUCG at wholesale cost and to employees at wholesale cost. They also collect co-pays and deductibles that our employees are paying, and those are 100% remitted back to LFUCG as well. So the beauty of this setup is that you know exactly where your margins are within the pharmacy, and both the employer and employer are seeing significant savings. CHIP Rewards. This is the newest deployment in the strategy. It's an incentive rewards plan. You've probably heard a lot about those out in the marketplace. They work many different ways. CHIP Rewards is a company that's founded in consumer science. They take a consumer science approach to incentive behaviors. So they've looked out into the retail space and driving people into retail stores and driving people into other businesses, and they've applied that to the health care space. And so we launched them in the fall of 2013, right during open enrollment. It was a really soft launch, and Mary Lowell's done a great job of increasing participation in that plan over the last couple months. So as employees participate or they enroll in the program, or actually you just have to be enrolled in the health plan, and you may be achieving points, and you may not be enrolled, but those points are still accumulating. So we certainly want to encourage people to enroll and gather up those chips. Health plan participants earn chips or points for participating in healthy behaviors. And these were initially designed at the initial launch to drive an immediate ROI or to incent or reward those employees who had really engaged in the Samuel Brown Health Center as well as the on-site pharmacy. We wanted to take the people of your organization that are generating the health savings and keeping costs low and give them a financial incentive to continue down those paths. So that's the initial launch phase, and we'll talk a little bit more about rolling into the next phases. These are some of the activities that people can be incented for, and that's a look at an employee's statement that they can go online at any given time and see their incentives, the promotions that are out there. I'll draw your attention to complete an HRA right in the middle of the page. 5,000 points. And just to give you a rough estimate of what that value is, it's about a penny a point. So a complete HRA means you've taken the health risk assessment and possibly a physical with that, and then you reviewed those results with a clinical staff. So that's how important the HRA is. But as Marathon's at capacity with what they've been able to do in terms of HRA and biometric screening over time, we need to really look to an external resource maybe to continue that and do an annual or even a biannual snapshot of the HRA and biometric screening. I'll talk a little bit about that more. But that's critically important to complete that HRA. And then you can see you get points for just filling a generic prescription, something you may have already been doing without transitioning or changing to a generic, filling a prescription at the on-site pharmacy, having healthy cholesterol, having healthy blood pressure, having normal glucose. You're rewarded for those type of things. And so we want to continue to build off of our initial launch. This is just a snapshot of some of the numbers of employees who have been centered and participating in the program. This is also a report that we can look to to help assess your risk. If you do some basic math as you look down there through the health risk assessment, and then look at things like the rewards for having healthy glucose or healthy cholesterol or healthy blood pressure. Unfortunately, only 23% received a cholesterol bonus. Only 63% received a blood pressure bonus, and only 30% received a glucose bonus. So that tells us there's a lot of work to do in those areas, and those are areas of focus as we move forward where we know we can invest wise money because there's a lot of gain opportunity. So as we look at planning opportunities, obviously we want to increase the chronic and high-risk identification, which is those biometric and HRAs. Location and concept. This kind of goes back to our original vision of the Samuel Brown Health Center and the on-site pharmacies, that there would be integration with fitness and lifestyle centers. So there's great proximity and convenience for employees to have access to their medical care, their pharmacy care, and then also be able to proactively work out, evaluate, do other fitness programs, all within a centralized location. In keeping with that fitness expansion and talking about ways we can further expand the CHIPS program, we can easily integrate with the YMCA. They use a software called DAXCO, which is a software that CHIPS has integrated with before. The YMCA of Central Kentucky, in this region, uses that DAXCO software. And it will automatically, employees can scan in with their CHIPS card, and that can automatically be transmitted to CHIPS, and it's an automated process. We also have the opportunity to look at fitness programs that the YMCA offers and incent those programs, which Dave and his team have agreed to, if there's a manual intervention needed, to possibly step in and manually report that to CHIPS if needed. They use a technology within the YMCA called Mobile Fit. It's included with your membership. It takes your personal input and also a fitness trainer's input to track an individual's progress. So this is a great way to combine resources with what Marathon's doing, as well as your CHIPS program to continue to incent fitness and exercise and healthy behaviors. Again, planning and integration. Something we've talked a little bit about and something you all have done, something that's becoming much more prevalent in the marketplace, is that PPACA is allowing employers to differentiate up to 99% of your employer contribution based on participation in activities such as a biometric screening or HRA. We've had a number of employers adopt that philosophy within the last several months, and it's becoming more and more popular as the days go by. In addition, included in that 99%, it allows an employer to distinguish up to 50% based on health standards, such as nicotine addiction. You're doing that today. That's our tobacco, non-tobacco. The standard is actually nicotine addiction. It would also allow you to look at blood pressure, body mass index, glucose, and cholesterol. And we're not talking about or recommending a punishment for those who can't meet the standard, but what we're talking about is potentially an additional investment for those who are meeting those standards. And there's two ways to do that. You have a tax-advantaged and you have a tax-disadvantaged incentive. And the way you're, and we'll talk a little bit about maybe the next slide here, which leads right into this. The challenge we've got with this type of planning is the benefit pool structure. You've got a defined contribution towards your health care cost. And so in order to incent those HRA, biometric participation, or maybe some of the other health standards, it would require an additional contribution above that to help offset those premiums. And that's the tax-advantaged way to go about it. reducing the employee's cost to participate, but it's very complex in the environment we have with the benefits pool. So what we would look at doing is incenting that through the CHIPS Rewards Program, which is a way to invest that same money, but it is a tax-disadvantaged situation. So we want to further explore that opportunity. Next actions, mass biometric screenings and health risk assessments. We think we need to look to an external resource to invest in this. There are many companies out there that can come on site to your locations around the clock and do the health risk assessment as well as the simple biometric screening right there at the work site. It's not terribly expensive to put that in place, and it gives you an immediate snapshot of the risk of your population. It's one of the best ways we know how to go about doing that. Not everybody utilizes your health care. Not everybody has a claim, but obviously everybody has health. And we find a lot of newly diagnosed situations from those biometric screenings and HRAs. So we think they're critically important to your program. And going forward, I think it's something that we need to focus on. The YMCA integration with the CHIPS. Right now, we've been working with CHIPS Rewards on determining appropriate levels of incentives for on-your-honor participation. participation, and what I mean by that, is right now the software is set up to automate people that check in and check out. But I think David and his team are willing to go a step farther and help maybe integrate some of the programs they have and maybe do some manual reporting if necessary and report that data to the CHIPS, whether people are completing or participating in certain programs. And then we want to look at the expansion of incentive well checkups. Those would be beyond the Samuel Brown Health Center for things like mammograms and colonoscopies, things that are critically important, but things that we can't do within the center. Okay. I know Dave is going to speak right after me and give you a lot of micro detail about savings and some case studies and a lot of the things that they're doing, but I'll gladly answer questions now or after Dave's presentation either way. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Benji, thank you very much for this presentation. I just have one page I wanted to ask you about, page 77 of our packet, where you have resources deployed, CHIP rewards. And I was curious if this chart looks like the fourth, fifth, and sixth categories, all of which are medication-related, are your most successful in terms of participation by eligible members. And I guess what I'm wondering is if that's a reflection of employees who don't necessarily use the other services but do use the pharmacy. That's a great question. Do you have some information about that? Yeah, and I think Dave's presentation is going to allude to that as well. I think he's going to tell you that about 60% of employees have used his facility, and we're getting about 50% of all prescriptions at the pharmacy. And so Dave's at Samuel Brown Health Center, that may be a once a year, and then a monthly fill-on prescriptions. So we've only been doing this and measuring this since October, but I think there are more people that are utilizing the pharmacy. but not as many as this might appear. Okay. Well, I mean, it's, for example, the complete women's wellness exam, which as a registered nurse I think is very important, has a rather low participation, 0.1%. I mean, what do you think about that when you see those low numbers? I don't know. Are they not, you know, what is that a true reflection of? And if people are using the service, you would think they would want to have the CHIPS reward. Absolutely. And this is not people that have necessarily enrolled in the program. This is everybody. So it's extremely low. And it may be people using their own OBGYN for that exam, or I don't have an explanation for why that particular number is low in comparison. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Akers. That was pretty much going to be my question. So the data that you are providing are the services that were received at the center, not necessarily? That's correct. This is just at the wellness center. The initial launch was just designed for to start there and then expand out. So then employees don't earn credits for getting these exams outside of the center? Correct, right now. Do you think that that's... I mean, if we're focused on wellness and we want employees to be well, shouldn't they receive the same reward or the same points? You know, we want them to get the exams, period. Correct. And certainly maybe a bonus or something for having it there. But I think we want to maybe consider that. Absolutely. Especially because it's such low participation in some... I mean, I've been to the center, and I can see why people wouldn't maybe go there for their annual female exams. So if we have such low participation to increase that and to reward people for getting their exams, I think we should look into that. Thank you. Councilman Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for coming in today. I have several questions for you. So, one, I'll start by saying I like how you're tying this into the YMCA and the program there, and I am very appreciative that we are getting that discount for our employees, and hopefully that it ends up being an incentive the more you can tie this in with them to get people to be involved in the Y to help drive those health costs down. And I hope that the council will also heavily consider providing that $300,000 for the Y to do the Hamburg Y to help us out with this as well. So I want to get that plug in there. But looking at your numbers for, am I correct in that 6.9% of the eligible employees have enrolled in CHIPS? Did you say 6.9% have enrolled in CHIPS? Yes. No, I think we're closer to 20%. 20%? Yes. Okay. It initially started out just a little over 10 on the initial launch, and it's expanded since then. Okay. How many people have completed the biometric screening? The biometric screening was the, I think that falls under the comprehensive, which is 286, which is actually a little bit, that's just during this time of launch. There's been quite a few more backing up to the inception of Marathon coming on the field, but that's 286 from the time of launch for this plan year. Okay. And I don't mean to interrupt you, but that also means not just taking it, but actually following up with the clinician. Right. So do you have the numbers on what's happened completely since inception? That may be in Dave's presentation. Okay. I know that I think that when we discussed this in the beginning, the way that you guys get paid is based on the total universe of people, right? Is that? Not us. Is that in your presentation? That's Dave's. Okay. So I'm kind of mixing them up here. One of my questions is, how do we drive more people into the CHIPS program? And the biometric screening is probably one of the most advantageous things for you guys to get your base numbers and then figure out how we can help an employee improve their health if they'd be, right? Yes. Do you have an initial goal that you want to achieve? And are you getting to that goal? What are you doing to drive to that goal? and what are you doing to use these numbers to drive better health care outcomes? The biggest driver of success that we've seen is finances. Some employers put as much as $40 a month to employees who participate in the biometric and HRA screenings as a participation. That's $480 a year, and that's a significant contribution when we look at the magnitude of your employee base and multiply that out. So right now we're looking at $50. So we've got to have more investment and resources, which would definitely drive participation. But I think with where it is today, it's been pretty successful. We've seen a pretty good success for where it is today. Now, to grow that and expand that out further, I think it's going to take more investment. Okay, so when you say more, so are you needing us to do something to provide that investment, or is the investment already there? We're just not advertising it and promoting it the best we can. No, the investment would require more. I'm sorry? The investment would require more finances. So you've reached your limit based on how much we've given you? Yes. Okay, so we need to have that conversation. Okay. Can you follow up with just like a one-pager on what our goal should be for participation in the CHIPS program? And then to do those different things like do the screening and then the follow-up. And then another question is, now the weather is starting to break, people would prefer to go outside maybe rather than inside the gym to work out. So if I'm riding a bike or if I'm walking through the Arboretum every week or every other day, is there a way to plug those numbers into chips to get rewarded for that? There is. That exists within their software, but that's not a part of the program today. And again, going back to where we initially launched the program, we're with activities that drove immediate ROI, or people that were already had bought into the system and given them the immediate. And then we're looking to expand out. And even though the LFUCT is pretty tied into the YMCA, and that software exists, that's an easy next phase. But then beyond that, it's got the capabilities of expanding to self-reported exercising, self-reported participation, and Habitat for Humanity builds. The sky's the limit, really, in terms of what can be added to the program. It's just what makes the most financial sense at this point. Okay, so my time is just about up. My last question is, where should we want to go with this? I mean, obviously, the more employees we have involved, the better off our outcomes are going to be. So could you give us a, you said the initial rollout as opposed to the next rollout. What is the plan for going forward? The next plans for going forward are back to those next actions, which is to integrate with Hawaii and start to incorporate fitness into the programming, increase the amount of people that are going to the HRA and biometric screening. We'd like to see that happen more frequently, at least once a year, maybe even twice a year, to expose us and gather the total risk of the population that we're not getting, either from the Samuel Brown Health Center or from the claims data, and then start to build programs around. Because within the health risk assessment, one of the things we discover are people's readiness to change, what areas are they willing to focus on. And we can put in place and spend a lot of money on tobacco cessation programs, But if people aren't interested or willing to go there, then the money is going to be better spent where they are willing. And so that's the next phase is to continue to build off and increase the biometrics and HRA in terms of developing your risk profile. If I can speak to one last question. Are you surveying our employees to see what they want and how to get them involved in the program? I am not personally, no. Is anybody? Anybody? My time's up, so I'll just let you answer. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. That's not the direct survey. What we have done is benefit insurance marketing. We've partnered with Dr. Katie Head from the University of Kentucky College of Communications, and she's been out and surveyed the employees on a number of occasions one-on-one. And by survey, I mean focus groups and gathered a lot of feedback from them on what they look for and what they would like to see improve, and so we have taken that information and used that, but not a direct survey, mass broad survey. So who do you turn that information over to so we can act on it? We've reviewed it with human resources and the folks that we're doing plan design and working with on a daily basis. Okay. And we can certainly release a copy to you all as well. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Benji. You're welcome. Next on the agenda is Dr. French, right? And David Demers. David is vice president for Marathon Health. And some of you have become acquainted with Dr. French. Thank you, Mayor Gray. Yes, sir. And Vice Mayor Gordon and members of the council, it's an honor to be back in front of you. I'm joined by David French, who is the medical director for the Samuel Brown Health Center. Our job today is to give you an executive summary of year two operations of the health center. And, Councillor Myers, some of the questions you posed I can help out with as I do this. The immediate response or answer to your question is in the last 18 months, 60% of the workforce has completed a biometric screening and a health risk assessment. It's taken us a long time to get there because it's done as part of the organic process of providing care when people show up, but that's where we are. I want to start by revisiting fundamentally what it is we're trying to do at the Samuel Brown Health Center. Some of you on the dais here have been involved in shaping the vision of this project, which has come to fruition. But for people who are at home watching and people in the audience, just a quick revisiting of what it is we're fundamentally trying to do I think is important. Some of this has already been mentioned. Obviously, number one, provide access to high-quality primary and preventive care at no charge to LFECG employees and their families. Identify and engage patients who are at high risk of serious illness and helping them to improve their health. Working with patients who have chronic conditions to help them achieve the standard of care for their conditions. reducing claims, paid claim spend by mitigating that risk and reducing avoidable specialty emergency and hospital care. And then lastly, providing occupational health services, including pre-employment, firefighter, police, physicals, hearing and vision tests and vaccinations. That's what we're trying to accomplish at the health center. Now, a lot of my presentation is going to be on aggregate numbers and data. but I would like to just turn it over to Dr. French who's going to give three patient case histories because the aggregate data is a compilation of many of these individual success stories. Fundamentally what we're trying to do is to help patients take more control of their own health. He's going to give you three examples and then we'll go through the numbers. All right. I as well would like to reiterate Vice Mayor Gordon, council members, it's my pleasure to be back before you once again. As Dave has said, he's going to be going over a lot of numbers and statistics, but it's very important to remember each number and statistic that you hear represents a real person. And not only real people, but LFUCG employees, their dependents and retirees that are on the city health plan. And to make that clear to focus, we brought these a few examples just to show you some of what we've been doing. Patient number one, a 39-year-old female, at time one had poor eating habits, poor food choices, poor portion control, and eating too frequently. Had minimal physical activity, was morbidly obese, had high blood pressure, had numbness and tingling in both hands, low energy, and a pattern of failed attempts at weight loss. At time two, she'd been educated, had relearned how to eat, different food selections, preparation, and portions. She'd taken up Zumba and activity boot camps, had lost 54 pounds and reduced BMI by 8.4 points. Her blood pressure was now normal. The numbness and tingling in her hands had been eliminated. She gained energy and confidence, and she had new eating and physical activity patterns and part of a new routine. Patient number two is one that I'm very familiar with. This is a 54-year-old male who at time one had poor eating habits, consists of processed foods and high sugar content. He had no exercise. He was obese at a weight of 338. He had diabetes with hemoglobin A1C, which is a three-month average of their sugar at 8.4, which is high, and was on metformin and 74 units of insulin a day. But he was ready to try something new. At time, too, he relearned how to eat, had made different substitutions and alternatives to processed foods, was enjoying foods lower on the glycemic index, had started and maintained a daily walking program. He was still obese. His weight was 307, but his diabetes, hemoglobin A1c, was now 7.4 on metformin, but was totally off insulin. Was no longer taking 74 units of insulin a day. And he states he feels better than he ever has in years, and his endocrinologist was amazed. The most important part of that, time one and time two, 10 weeks separated. Example number three, a 43-year-old female, time one, little exercise, drink and food choices, high in refined sugar, total cholesterol 195, triglycerides were very high, greater than 650, low energy and fatigue. At time two, she was now exercising six days a week at 30 minutes of time, had substituted, eliminated high sugar foods and drinks with appealing alternatives. Total cholesterol was now 160. Triglycerides, more importantly, had gone to 135, greatly reducing her risk for cardiovascular disease, had increased energy and better outlook. And finally, what we like to call patient example number 643, 643 healthier patients. At time one, we had 1,659 patients with biometric risk factors, either increased BMI, blood pressure, lipids, or glucose. These patients had highest chance of becoming seriously ill, had high likelihood of causing the majority of health care costs for LFUCG. At time 2, 643, 40% of them at-risk patients had improved their health, had lowered their risk becoming seriously ill and reduced utilization and lower overall claim spending. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Mr. Demers. So the idea here was to give you just a taste of some of the case histories that represent patients taking charge of their own health and really reducing their risk. So now I'll go through these numbers with you. You're looking at a run chart here of just activity at the health center. In the first year, we had an average of about 600 visits a month. We're now close to 900 visits a month. So that's about 11,000 visits a year. When you add in all of the visits for ancillary services like audiology exams, vision tests, physicals, lab draws, EKGs, and so forth, there's approximately 20,000 services being provided per year at the health center right now for employees and their family members. So it's been busy. Our original projections were 50% of the population would use the health center in year one, 55% in year two, and 60% in year three. We've concluded year two, and 60% of employees and their families are using the health center. So it has grown in popularity, mostly by word of mouth. Looking at the subgroups, employees, as I just mentioned, 60% are using the health center. We can look at firefighters, police, and folks in the waste management department where the numbers are much higher, primarily because they're going there for occupational health services as well as acute care or risk reduction. And dependents, a third of dependents are using the health center. That's a pretty good number. we modeled, we originally believed 20% in year one, 25% in year two, 30% in year three. We've already exceeded that. So in terms of the percent of the population that we thought would be using the health center, we've already exceeded that. The blue part of these stack bars are patients who are using the health center for purposes of health coaching and improving their health. And the green part of those stack bars are people who have come just for straight acute care. They've had an infection or an earache or a respiratory issue, what have you. And then the gray part is the percent of the population that hasn't as of yet used the health center at all. If we look at that same data for the target population, so these are people who are at risk. The numbers are much higher. Our goal is 70% of the target population is using the health center, and that's what we've achieved. 71% of employees and 51% of dependents who are high risk are using the Samuel Brown Health Center for care. That's very good and as good as we see anywhere in the United States. This is, I call it the mountain graph. It's just showing you the growth and the change in terms of the use of the health center over time. for the target population. We're at 71% now. I believe that number is going to continue to grow, especially with the evolution of the CHIPS program that Benji alluded to and the possible integration of fitness. We'll see more people, I think, becoming involved, and that's important. This is a home run slide. So of the 1,600... Whoops. My kids are here. they'd know how to work this thing. Of the 1,659 high-risk target population patients, here's the 643 unique patients that have improved their health. And you can look at it categorically here, weight loss, blood pressure reduction, blood sugar reduction, and here's your lipid panel made up of cholesterol and triglycerides. And that's the percent of those patient groups that have improved their health, a clinically measurable gain. I have data on the size of that gain, and it's impressive. In the 20 minutes we have here, I'm not going to be able to go through all of that with you, but suffice it to say that this is what we're fundamentally trying to achieve, is helping people who are at high risk of becoming seriously ill improve their health, and we're getting there, and we couldn't be happier about that. If you look at not only people making progress but getting out of risk categories altogether, there were 235 obese individuals at the beginning of the year, and about 15% got their BMI below 30. 41 fewer tobacco users. Another 16% who had total cholesterol greater than 200 got their cholesterol below that. And prehypertense folks, 9% gain. And then this is just a smattering of standard-of-care metrics to show you that there's positive results there as well. So people with diabetes having their blood sugar tested, 77% of the population. Not a lot of people who are persistent asthmatics. All of them, though, are using inhalers. 50% of patients with heart disease on antiplatelet therapy. and 45% of chronic hypertensives with it fully under control. So not only do we have patients making progress, we have many who have gotten out of the risk category altogether. The result of these improvements have changed utilization. I think Benji started off with a slide that is the fundamental value chain here. We're trying to create, find the risk, engage the risk, mitigate the risk, and you do those things, you reduce the demand for downstream use of expensive resources. And you can see that here, the utilization of primary care in the community, specialty care, inpatient care, hospital outpatient care, emergency and urgent care, and lab services down across the board. If the utilization that existed in 2012 existed today, it would have resulted in $2.2 million of additional paid claims. It was three years and 23 days ago, not that anybody's counting, that Mayor Gray in his annual budget address announced that the city was going to be $9.9 million over budget in 2010, was projected to be $12 million over budget in 2011, and $14 million over budget in 2012. I reread the speech before I came down here. Mayor Gray noted that the city's health plan in terms of the richness of the benefit fell on the top 1% of plans in the nation, yet it failed to provide incentive for individuals to seek and obtain primary and preventive care. And otherwise did nothing to address the underlying risks driving the skyrocketing costs that the city was experiencing. He recommended you-backed changes to the health plan and the creation of the Samuel Brown Health Center. And the goal was to engage patients who were at risk, help them improve their health status, provide primary and preventive care to get ahead of the curve. And we had some very specific goals that we were seeking to achieve in terms of the percent of the workforce and dependents that would be using the health center and the changes to the risk footprint that we found and the health improvement and concomitant changes to utilization. I think all of those have been achieved, and this is, I think, a success story for all, for Mayor Gray, for the council, for the administration. It's been very well executed. It's been a long road, and I think there's a lot of good things happening and a lot of lives being changed. If that run rate had maintained the spend rate that existed up until January of 2012, when the health center opened and when the modified plan changes kicked in, the city would have incurred an additional $24.6 million in paid claims. This is the spend rate that's occurred, and you can see not only the dramatic difference, but you can also see the downward slope driven by this change in utilization. It's a pretty significant result. It's a pretty remarkable achievement. I've been in health care 30 years. I don't think it could have gone any better here. I know it was a tough change to execute, and change is never easy, but it's been well orchestrated here. What are we thinking of for the future? Responding to the growing demand, that's going to be a challenge for us. I think Benji already alluded, 98% of appointments are filled. The health center is a busy place. There are days when it's hard to get a same-day appointment. We are pleased with the engagement rates and the progress, but we don't want to be content. We want to increase the engagement rate of the target population beyond 70%. We want to increase the number of patients making clinical improvements beyond 40%. We absolutely want to collaborate with you and Benji and those of you working on continuing to shape this program so that the incentives program, integration with fitness, and all of that planning, we want to be fully cooperative and involved with. We'll obviously continue to provide occupational services, and then I'd be remiss if I didn't say thanks to John Maxwell and Melissa Luker and Mary Lyle, who I work with on a day-in and day-out basis, along, of course, with Dr. French and the team that's there. They are crackerjacks and very professional, and it's a pleasure to work with them. That's the summary of year two. and I'll be happy, along with Dr. French, to take any questions you may have. Thank you very much. Okay. Thanks, David. So council members will sign up for comments or questions, and Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much, Mr. Demers and Dr. French. These are very encouraging numbers, And I think what the numbers reflect is that actual people are seeing changes in their health. I just had a question about something totally different. You mentioned that 98% of appointments are filled. Do you keep any kind of data on the actual clinic mechanism? I know for other practices, they can tell you the average wait time in the waiting room. They can tell you the average amount of time spent with the physician or the nurse practitioner or the health care provider. Average time from making, requesting the appointment to being able to get it. Those kinds of data. Do you keep those? Yes. Yes, wait time once you're there is virtually zero. One of the things that is confusing to people is they walk into the health center and there's no one in the waiting room. And that's because as soon as patients show up for their appointments, we room them and they get to see either Dr. French or Judy Cleary or Brandy Caldwell or whoever they're going to see. So it's not a room full of people waiting to be seen, waiting 30, 40 minutes or more to get in to see the physician. 90, I would say 96% of all people who want an appointment the same day are able to get it. But not everyone can right now. And there's some people that want walk-in, the ability to walk in without an appointment. That's been a challenge to us to help people understand, look, you've got to call in advance because if we start just getting walk-in care, then we're going to end up with frustrated folks because it's not designed or set up to be an urgent care center. I think probably 100% of the population can get an appointment on day two, and it's something that we check all the time. I look at the schedule all the time to make sure there's open slots. On days when it's been particularly busy, we will double book. but we don't like to do that because it puts downward pressure in the amount of time that we have to spend with patients and our average appointment length is 30 minutes. We are trying to engage patients, to listen to them, to have them participate in decision-making around treatment plans. You can't do that with 15-minute appointments. So we really, by design, have an average of 30 minutes per appointment. Sometimes it'll take less. On occasion, I'm sorry, sometimes it'll take more, on occasion less. But that's the target, is 30 minutes. Is that, I mean, is that regardless of why they're there? Like if someone wants a physical, I would presume it might take a little longer. Physicals are set up for an hour. Right, okay. And do you know how many referrals out you have made? Yes. Yeah. So we refer out approximately 5.7 percent of patients for specialty care or other services, and that compares to the national average of about 9.5 percent. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilor Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for your presentation. If you look at slides nine, and you talked about that 951 employees, and we have 50% of those. Yes. And then if you, so my question's all around how do we drive those numbers higher? And then if you go to slide 11, it shows employees making progress. Yes. And then slide 13 talks about the utilized impact and then the savings impact. Yes. So one of my questions to Benji earlier was, what do we need to do to incent more people to get involved? And he talked about resources. I'm not sure at what point, how in this process, the council understands or has given information that we're out of resources. If we're going to incent more people to get in, you've got to put more money in the pot. So my question would be, it seems obvious to me, if I'm looking at this correctly, that the savings impact, if we just took 10 or 15 percent of that and said we're going to keep this formula going that 10, 15 percent of the savings impact we're going to reappropriate back into this program to continue to drive people into it. Does that make sense? I guess maybe the first question is, how did we end up with the resources that we had to incent people to start with? that we've run out of? Well, I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer that question on the CHIPS program. I think that it was how many fish could get put into the fry pan at a time, and the initial goal was to get the health center going, and the incentive program would follow. And the incentive program is, I would characterize it as pretty new. I mean, it just got rolled out this fall. And it's just what I would call the first effort incentive programs. I mean, we have 64 clients at this point, and if you've seen one incentive program, you've seen one incentive program. They're all very different, and there's certainly room to build on what's been created. the opportunity I think is to make it more attractive for people to become involved and to improve their health and I'm not sure it's as crisp and clear and obvious right now with the program that's in place I think that it's going to improve and strengthen I also think that we just need more time the numbers that you have the numbers that you have are excellent after two years of operation. And even with the best incentive program in the world, I don't know that you could have gone much faster than you have, to be honest with you. I just want to add something to your question. LFUCG defines their contribution to health care in the form of benefit pool. So anytime we make an additional investment or resource into the health program, which is all encompassing of the on-site pharmacy, the Samuel Brown Health Center incentive, of that's all budgeted into the cost of health care. So as we add more investment, then that increases the cost of premiums until we see the return on investment, which alleviates trend, it potentially reduces costs, but we're hoping to bend that trend line to flat. But any additional investment that we make into resources such as Samuel Brown gets reallocated in the form of premium. Okay. So I know this wasn't your presentation, but on page 13 of this presentation we just heard. That savings impact, how is that captured? Because the target of the caption says change utilization and capture savings. So how is that savings captured? Well, again, I think it's captured if we went back to the line graph on your spend rate. It's a question of had we not modified the utilization and bent the curve, then the spend rate for the city would have maintained at a higher rate. That's how you're capturing it. You're paying less in total spend than you would have had those improvements not occurred. Right. So it's not a money back. It's that we're just not spending money that we would have spent otherwise. It's a much lower run rate than you had before. So do you have any advice for us on how to improve the program? the program's great, but how to increase the program so that we can get more participation and have even more savings impact, because that's healthier people at the end of the day. That's what it's really about. I think we've got to keep going the way we're going. Word of mouth is the best thing. I think we should look at increasing the ability of the health center to provide services to even more people. We're getting to the point now where it might make sense to think about adding another provider, especially when we see the fill rate that we're getting and we're past what we projected for year three. But I think fundamentally we've just got to keep going the way we're going. We're on the right track, and the more people participate, the more people have a positive experience, they tell others, and we're getting new folks all the time. That chart that showed the continuing progress is one we want to see continue to go. I think the specific things would be, just as Benji said, looking at enhancing and tweaking the incentive program. Your question about asking employees their views how it could be made stronger I think is a good suggestion. And then increasing our ability to provide service to more and more people. would also be well received. Okay. If in the process of tweaking the incentive program, you guys need more resources, will you let us know? Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Councilmember Kay. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Benji, I've got a question about the CHIP's reward. I probably ought to start by saying I think it's all going, the whole program is really going very well, and it's very impressive what's been done. I think it's been good for the city in terms of the economic impact. It's been good for the employees. I've used the service myself, and it's really, if nothing else, it's a pleasure to walk in and actually see someone rather than sitting out in the waiting room for however long, waiting for someone to remember that you're there. But having said all that, I'm concerned about the rollout of the CHIPS Reward Program and what I would characterize as so far a kind of a limited rollout. So initially, when I sat in the presentations that they made when we were deciding who to hire, I had the impression it was going to be implemented more quickly. It was going to be a lot more robust than it is at this point. Can you speak to those? What were the initial projections about time and implementation and et cetera? Sure. We were initially looking and evaluating the incentive rewards programs at the same time as on-site pharmacy and Samuel Brown Health Center as well. And so Samuel Brown Health Center was February, March, and on-site RX was shortly thereafter. And we had to wait until those two were established to roll out the incentive program. And that was in 2012. And then we sat down and started to take a look. And there were a lot of roadblocks and obstacles along the way of calculating the incentives themselves and how we wanted to roll that out. We went through a tax process of determining de minimis value and what had to be taxable, what was not taxable, how that applicable to your retiree's population that's on the plan versus your active employee population. We just hit a lot of unexpected roadblocks along the way. And then the implementation rollout, this open enrollment, are some things we're questioning right now. We're talking to Chips about some of those tough-nosed questions now and getting some of their input and advice on how to expand and whether they see us as successful or not. So a lot of those questions that you post are questions we're assessing now. And are there now projections about percentage of enrollment in the program and the range of kinds of things that will be, in fact, monitored to allow people to earn rewards and that kind of thing? Yes. And so the next phase, as I mentioned briefly, was to go a little more external. The YMCA, although you have an established relationship, that makes sense. It's a great next step. looking at incentive your own physician well visits men women children that's a next phase that can be integrated with the TPA the medical TPA to incent those types of behaviors and those are things we're assessing now and as I mentioned in my response to councilmember Myers earlier that any additional investment we make into those programs is additional cost that we add back into the premiums so we really have to look at from the beginning of where the majority of savings are being driven, which is Samuel Brown Health Center and on-site pharmacy, which is why the CHIPS program started there. And then as we continue to see those savings, and we know those are healthy behaviors, but we are adding more cost to the insurance program the more incentives we put out there. Well, I guess I understand that, but maybe you can speak to this, it seems like there's a classic short-term investment for long-term gain. People take advantage of these programs. They get in the chip rewards programs. Over time, they're going to be healthier. The city's going to save money. Doesn't it make sense to make that investment now? I believe it does. I believe it makes good sense to make that investment into, and those are some of the questions we're asking CHIPS, and the question we ask them is, how much investment does it take to change behavior? In other words, are we incenting people that are already doing those, which would have happened anyway, or are we putting enough incentive out there that we drive people to those behaviors that wouldn't have otherwise? And that's where we're relying on the consumer science of their programming and their expertise to help us put those incentives out there and price them accordingly okay thank you very much thank you vice mayor councilmember Myers thank you vice mayor I just had a question text to me so I want to ask you guys when it comes to the one of you said that that sometimes if you're sick you may have to wait till the second day to get an appointment and someone asked me if there's a way to change that like a lot of times if you go to an emergency treatment center or minor emergency treatment center, if you have 15 people in the room and they close at 7, they don't throw everybody out at 7. They stay until their work's done, if you will. And I realize that we're trying to set this up so you have appointments, but is it possible that people that are sick could actually go and at the end of the day be seen rather than have to wait a couple days? Yes, yes. We're doing everything we can if you're acutely ill to get you in same day and we'll double book. If someone is not acutely ill, then we will, and everybody is booked and we're double booked and it's a particular day when we're just flat out, then we have asked those patients to schedule for the next day. But if you're acutely ill, then we'll work you. And you want to address that? Yeah, I mean, we always try to accommodate as much as we can. You know, like Dave said, we will double book, you know, if that's necessary. During the cold and flu season, when there was such a heavy demand, there were times when we had double booked so much where you would have to start triple booking it sometimes. And so in those cases, we fell back to doing phone triage, where the provider would talk to the patient on the phone and review their symptoms. And if there was something appropriate, if they needed an antibiotic based on that or Tamiflu or whatever, we would go ahead and prescribe that, just having the patient's best interest at heart. Sure. And so we always try to accommodate, you know, but. So part of that just is when that patient calls in, it's the screening process. They need to just make it clear that here are my symptoms, here's what I'm going through, and then you guys will work through that. We try to, yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you. If I could say one more thing, I agree with what Council Member Kaye said in terms of wrapping up the CHIPS program. And I think that that's one of the drivers for increased health and lower health care costs. And what I've tried to say about the questions I ask is it would be wise, I think, for us to make that initial investment up front. And I think some of the programs around the country provide those incentives in the very beginning. And then over time, there's less of an incentive, but then there's also you've got the carrot and the stick. at some point policy changes are starting to come in effect that would cause the people who didn't get on in the first wave or two to then come on board later on. And so just anything you can do to help us with that and whatever information you can get us. Because to me, I understand how adding more to it increased the cost of health care. But if we just set up a budget and put money in that for the incentives, and some of the incentives were talked about, different items that you could get if you reached a certain number of points. To me, that doesn't drive up the cost. I guess it does drive up the cost of health care if you include it all in there. But I think we could do that from a separate line item and just say, here's the things we want to make sure we have on hand so that anybody who wants to partake has got the incentive to get in there. So if you can articulate that back to us so we can make that happen or have that discussion, that would be great. Okay, be happy to be helpful in that way. And we can share with Benji other examples of what other of our clients are doing around the country. I know he's already aware of many of them. And the city of Chattanooga, for example, also uses CHIP rewards. So, but we will put our thinking cap on and see if we can add more to the conversation going on now. Okay. The last thing I say is Logan Aluminum is the company that I've always heard, Logan Aluminum, that has the best tips program in the country from what a lot of people say. Logan Aluminum. Okay. Yes. So that might be one to look at and see what they're doing. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you. Council Member Myers? Looks like that's all that's signed up. Thank you very much. It's a real honor to be part of this community and to see all the good things happening. So thank you for your attention. Thank you for the presentation. Thanks, Dr. French. Thank you, Mayor. All right. That allows us to move on to council reports. And Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Two items, just to remind those council members who are left here, that Thursday, May 8th at 445 in this chamber, we'll have our confirmation hearings. We have a board of adjustment member and the commissioner of environmental quality and public works. And then secondly, I have a motion that relates to our budget hearings, and it is, I move that we schedule a special meeting of the Urban County Council on Tuesday, May 27, 2014, at 3 o'clock p.m. for the purpose of having a public hearing on the mayor's proposed budget, the Municipal Aid Program Fund, the Coal Severance Fund, the County Road Aid Fund, and the Mineral Severance Fund. That's a motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, seconded by Council Member Scotchfield. Is there any discussion on the motion? May 27th. May 27th at 3 o'clock right before the council work session. So we'll be here. All right. Any further discussion on the motion? Okay. Then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Council Member Scotchfield. Thank you, Mayor. Madam CAO, I have a question for you, please. Could you give us the status of the compensation study? Certainly. Thank you. We discussed the compensation study at our link the other day, and we reported that in the mayor's budget, we have two things that pertain to salary. We have a 2% across-the-board increase for all employees, and we have our compensation study. When we are close to finalizing our compensation study, and I think Stacey is going to schedule for you all a workshop to go over all the details of that compensation study. But when we went to finalize, HR noticed that they saw some irregularities. And one of the irregularities was that PeopleSoft was giving a start date on a certain number of employees, a significant number of employees, that was not correct. And when that start date was not correct, that throws a lot of things off because you're basing on equity here and how many years have been served. So they determined that, and this is what we discussed with the links, they determined that they needed to go back by hand and pull all of this again, and they did. and that it was a significant cost increase. And to sort of set that for you, let me tell you that the 2% is about $1.6 million across all funds. The compensation study was $1.9 million across all funds, and that is with the benefits. Now, they'll roll up here if I'm saying something wrong. They'll all herd up here to this. they hate it when I quote these figures, is approximately $1.9 million. That era was a $479,000 era. So it put the compensation study number at $2.36 million. What we told the links, and this was just from the administration's point, is we thought that since there is just a little over $600,000 left in that fund balance line in the mayor's budget, that if we proposed taking this $479,000, there just wasn't enough money in that fund balance line to do that. So we went back and said, and Council Member Myers was there, We talked about that we thought, and we're meeting on this Thursday just to confirm this, that our way to do this would be to implement October 1st. The implementation of this October 1st rather than July 1st just almost exactly makes up the difference in that $479,000. rather than putting this $479,000 on a late item that probably the better thing would be to implement October 1st. When you really think about this and the implementation of this compensation study, it sort of makes sense because this would be, we can't do anything until the council makes a decision whether we're going to do this particular study or not. So that's going to be July 1st anyway. And we would implement that at that time, October 1st. Now, we told the links that we wanted to make sure that we had exactly the right information. So we were meeting back on Thursday, and then that we would discuss with our link how is the best way to handle this. But sort of right now, what I would be recommending with concurrence is that this go to the October implementation and therefore make up that difference. It's just a, it takes that fund balance to nothing if we go in a late item with this. So I'm sorry, I hope I haven't told you more than anything, but am I right on my numbers? Okay. So that's where we are, and thank you for asking. I appreciate it. All righty. Thank you. Council Member Scotchfield, Council Member Lawless. Council Member Lawless. Just very quickly, I want to let people know that the Ellsford Neighborhood Association is having a third district candidate forum tonight at 7 p.m. for any of the third district residents that would like to come. It's at Woodland Christian Church, which is on the corner of Kentucky and Woodland Avenue. and you go in the side entrance. So the candidates will be there, and it starts at 7 p.m. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Chris, could you put that up for me, please? Tonight we have a public design meeting, and it's going to be at Central Library in the Farish Theater at 140 East Main Street. So it starts at 630, a little more than an hour and a half from now, a little more than an hour from now. And the Dreamland is the company who's designed the new skate park. They're going to be there to present to the public their two design options. And then the public will be able to weigh in on those two and suggest changes from that. And then we'll go from there to try to finalize it down into one plan that we're going to move forward with. So I encourage everybody out there to tweet their friends and show up and provide their input. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Marsh, Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. I had a side conversation with one of the council members just about, and this was after a previous work session and committee group meeting, just about fiber optic cable things here in and around the government and around the county. and I would just like to have an update about all that. So I'm going to actually make a little motion to place an update about fire optic technology and the government's role in it as well as the public's role in it into the Planning and Public Works Committee just by way of update so we know where we stand. So moved. Second. Thank you. Motion by Council Member Farmer and second by Council Member Lawless. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you very much. And then I know the Lynx have been meeting. Our Lynx meets tomorrow. And I don't know. We've had background meetings. We've had budget meetings. Do we have a, as a council, do we have a Lynx strategy? Are we all just trying to come back? I mean, in previous years, we have entered into those five groups trying to find a certain amount of money or look for different opportunities. Have we had any kind of discussion as a group about where we want to come out of the individual links or what kind of actions we want to come out of those? I'm just asking in broad form so we can think about it because it may be that or I would think that it would be that as we thread down through the budget, no matter how well tendered by the mayor and his administration and staff, there's going to be a difference of opinion about something that we may wish to invest in that the document may not have originally taken into consideration. or there may be some things that are over-incentive that we may wish to lighten up on. And usually those came with a dollar value that each link was trying to come in with X amount of dollars. And I don't have a number, but I'm just trying to make sure that we have a mindset in terms of when we do report out what we're going to be ready to say because we almost need to identify where our differences are to understand where we might want to make them up or not. And I'm thinking in terms of things like paving in certain areas or in certain line accounts or in just different areas that we as a council may want to express more in than what the administration came up with. And that may be a subject of a meeting that we have not yet scheduled or maybe come part of an agenda for a meeting. Because I think that going through the budget in the five different parts is one of the most instructive things that we do. and it brings us all very much in contact with, you know, the face of the budget itself. What do we want to do when we look at that face is kind of what I'm trying to engender a little thought process about, if not conversation about today. But we might want to each point, it would be neat to come back and say, well, if we wanted to, we could save X amount by doing this, this, and this, as opposed to potentially coming back and saying, we want to spend more in this, this, this, or however it ranks out. I just like for us to have a mindset on it before we gel up and start reporting out. You know, there's been years where, you know, it was the link that made the cuts to make the budget balance. And they've been better proposed as we've gone long, Mayor. Not that the first one was bad or anything. But it's just, it's not a difference of opinion. It's just a difference sometimes of style or substance. But I just wanted to think about it as a council as we're all working on those pretty hastily right now. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Farmer. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Mayor. I am excited to share a project that I've been working on six months or so now, maybe a little bit longer. In partnership through funding by the Corridors Commission and in partnership with LexArts, the Share Center on Georgetown Street and the Georgetown Street Neighborhood Association, we will be holding a community meeting tomorrow night where residents and neighbors from the community can come and vote on a mural sample. We narrowed the finalists to three artists who then submitted their proposals, and we will have all three proposals up for residents to see and vote on, and we will make the final selection then, I believe, next week, or I think it's next week. And then the mural will begin almost immediately thereafter and is expected to be completed by the end of June. So it's a great asset to the corridor, and I'm really excited for everyone to get to see the proposals tomorrow night. I will also be providing pizza, so everyone is invited. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Rakers. I have no additional council members who have signed on. to speak. Council Member Beard has signed on. Thank you. Actually, two points. One is that we determined a month, month and a half ago that we had a surplus building which might allow us to do some things on a positive in certain areas as far as the Lynx is concerned. But it's always been a give and take and give and take, and it was a sum zero being the desire at that point. But again, we do have a surplus building at this point and continuing to build, I understand. And that's something we have to have on the table so we'll know what we're doing with it or make some decision about Your point is we'll have more than what we already spent. Yes. Because we spent $10 million of it already. Yes. $10.5 or something. Oh, yeah, I don't know, but there's another million dollars I understand. And that's part of the process conversation I think we should have. I mean, that's something that we have to know about before we can make any hard and fast decisions or we put it in the rainy day fund or whatever we may decide to do with it. But, yeah. The second thing is that once you promise employees a raise at a given time and then you pull that away from them for 90 days is not a good thing. I mean, absolutely not a good thing. so that may be the answer to why we maybe it was some excess that we have at the end of the year or as nearly the end of the year as possible that we'd be able to go ahead and keep our promises thank you mayor Sally I think maybe I didn't, and I didn't want to mislead. The 2%, the across-the-board increase, is there July 1st. That money is there. Where we have the problem is in the compensation study itself. But the 2%, no, I did not make that clear, and I'm so glad you brought it up, because the 2% is fine with the council's approval. All right. Council Member Akers? Thank you, Mayor. I failed to mention where we will be meeting tomorrow night. It's going to be from 6 to 7.30 at the O'Rear Center, and that is in Douglas Park. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman Rakers. All right. That allows us to move on to the mayor's report. Is there a motion? I move forward. Motion by Vice Mayor Gorton, second by Councilman Scutchfield. Is there any discussion on the motion? Okay. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Mr. Mundy, is Mr. Mundy, there's no one signed up for public comment, which allows me to ask for a motion for adjournment. Move adjourned. All right. Motion by Vice Mayor Gorton, second by Council Member Kay. Unless there's objection, we are adjourned. Thank you.