# Budget Committee of the Whole Meeting - June 5, 2014 > Auto-transcribed civic record · June 5, 2014 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3371 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3371?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2014-06-05 - **Last revised**: July 15, 2026 - **Length**: 23,694 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 Council met on June 5, 2014, at 3:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers, with the Chair presiding. The council addressed five agenda items during the session, including a revenue update presentation, review of the Mayor's late items, council member recommendations, Link recommendations, and budget committee of the whole meetings. The council took five motions and votes during the meeting and heard ten public comments. Of the items considered, the Mayor's late items and Budget COW meetings were approved, while the council member recommendations and Link recommendations were deferred to a later date. A revenue update was presented for informational purposes. ## Attendance **Present:** - Chair - Commissioner - Commissioner Mills - Council Member Lane - Council Member Stinnett - Council Member Ellinger - Council Member Beard - Council Member Farmer - Council Member Henson - Council Member Clark - Council Member Akers - Council Member Myers - Council Member Scutchfield - Council Member Stenet - Council Member Ford - Council Member Massadi - Council Member Cain - Council Member Lawless - Council Member Missotti - Council Member Marquet - Mr. O'Mara - Craig Benz - Brad Chambers **Absent:** - Vice Mayor Gorton - Council Member Myers ## Votes and Decisions **Motion to Schedule Special Budget Committee Meeting** [timestamp: 01:29:08] Council Member Kaye moved to schedule a special budget committee of the whole meeting on Thursday, June 12, 2014, at 9 a.m., seconded by Council Member Akers. The motion passed by voice vote. Council Members Kaye, Akers, Beard, Clark, Ford, Lawless, Missotti, and Marquet voted in favor. **Motion to Postpone Parks Projects Discussion** [timestamp: 01:51:47] Council Member Akers moved to postpone discussion of all parks projects until the October fund balance review, with exceptions for projects already underway, seconded by Council Member Farmer. The motion failed by voice vote. Council Members Kaye, Lane, and Beard voted in favor. Council Members Clark, Ford, Lawless, Missotti, Marquet, and Stenet voted against. **Amendment to Parks Projects Motion** [timestamp: 01:51:47] Council Member Akers moved an amendment to the parks projects motion allowing exceptions for projects already underway, seconded by Council Member Ford. The amendment failed by voice vote. Council Members Kaye, Lane, and Beard voted in favor. Council Members Clark, Ford, Lawless, Missotti, Marquet, and Stenet voted against. **Motion to Change June 12 Meeting Format** [timestamp: 02:33:35] Council Member Lawless moved to change the June 12 special meeting from a special budget committee of the whole to a special work session, seconded by Council Member Myers. The motion passed by voice vote. Council Members Lawless and Myers voted in favor, with no votes against. **Motion to Adjourn** [timestamp: 02:34:09] The Chair moved to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Council Member Lawless. The motion passed by voice vote. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included appropriations for several community projects and organizations: **YMCA Projects** Funding of $300,000 was appropriated for the YMC North expansion and Hamburg Y project. An additional $300,000 commitment was approved for the Y for capital improvements and deep discounts for county employees. **Community Services** The Children's Advocacy Center received an appropriation of $75,000. **Cultural and Recreation Facilities** The Kentucky Theater was allocated $100,000 for concession stand renovation. The Western Little League received $100,000 for a baseball field at Cardinal Run. Martin Luther King Park was appropriated $300,000 for athletic building demolition and rebuild. **Infrastructure** East Short Street was allocated $185,000 for concrete repair and resurfacing. ## Public Comment Council members addressed several infrastructure and funding priorities during the meeting: **Infrastructure and Paving** Council Member Beard emphasized the need for a bond to fund road paving, citing severe winter conditions and a backlog of infrastructure needs across the city [timestamp: 01:00:32]. Council Member Stenet also advocated for a bond to fund road paving while supporting economic development initiatives [timestamp: 01:04:18]. **Stormwater and Sidewalk Improvements** Council Member Massadi requested funding for a stormwater culvert on Arrowhead Drive and a sidewalk extension on Clay's Mill Road, noting long-standing flooding and access issues in those areas [timestamp: 01:12:33]. **YMCA Project** Council Member Lane expressed support for $300,000 in funding for the YMCA project at Hamburg, citing the long-term relationship and obligation to the organization [timestamp: 01:19:54]. Council Member Stenet also supported the YMCA project, emphasizing its potential for economic development and job creation [timestamp: 01:04:18]. **Parks Funding and Prioritization** Council Member Akers raised concerns about the Parks Department's capacity to handle additional projects, suggesting a pause on new park funding until October [timestamp: 01:31:21]. Council Member Beard opposed postponing all park projects, citing a small bridge repair project already underway that needed immediate funding [timestamp: 01:48:09]. Council Member Lawless supported implementing a more objective, data-driven ranking system for park needs to ensure equitable distribution of funds [timestamp: 01:39:43]. Council Member Lawless further emphasized that professional staff should identify the greatest needs rather than council members, noting the current process lacks objectivity [timestamp: 01:50:00]. Council Member Missotti asked Parks staff to provide a comparative assessment of park needs to help prioritize funding decisions [timestamp: 01:40:56]. **Social Services Funding** Council Member Ford presented a revised link recommendation for social services funding, emphasizing fairness and equity in the allocation process [timestamp: 01:55:42]. ## Contested Items The June 5, 2014 meeting included three significant areas of disagreement among council members. **Social Services Funding Allocation** Council members were divided on a revised recommendation to reallocate funding from high-scoring to lower-scoring agencies. The split vote reflected concerns about fairness and the impact on organizations that had been initially awarded funding. Members expressed worry about the process of changing funding allocations after initial recommendations had already been made, raising questions about consistency and predictability in the funding process. **Parks Project Prioritization** A heated discussion took place regarding whether to postpone all park project requests until October due to capacity constraints. Some council members argued that postponing these projects would hinder progress on urgent initiatives, while others supported the delay to address resource limitations. This disagreement centered on balancing immediate project needs against the council's operational capacity. **Budget Process Transparency** Council members raised procedural concerns about the lack of transparency in the social services funding process. Specifically, they questioned the ability to change funding allocations after initial recommendations had been made public or communicated to applicant organizations. This procedural dispute reflected broader concerns about the clarity and consistency of the budget decision-making process. ## Revenue Update [timestamp: 00:02:34] The Commissioner presented a preliminary revenue update for the fiscal period ending May 31, 2014. The presentation covered year-to-date financial performance and included a recommendation regarding revenue projections for the upcoming fiscal year. **Financial Performance** The update showed mixed results for the year-to-date period: - Withholding revenues demonstrated a positive variance of $803,000 - Net profits tax revenues reflected a shortfall of $957,000 **Recommendation** The Commissioner recommended maintaining the mayor's proposed revenue estimate of $313.2 million for FY15. **Outcome** This agenda item was presented for informational purposes. ## Review Mayor's Late Items [timestamp: 00:22:11] The Council reviewed late items submitted by the mayor regarding the proposed budget. The discussion focused on adjustments to fund balances across various funds. **Key Discussion Points** The MAP fund balance was confirmed at $2,424,530. The Council examined the proposed budgeted amounts for this and other funds as part of the mayor's late submissions. **Participants** The review involved a Commissioner, Council Member Farmer, and Council Member Henson. **Outcome** The Council approved the mayor's late items and agreed to maintain the current budgeted amounts for the funds under review. ## Review Council Member Recommendations [timestamp: 00:36:32] During this agenda item, council members presented individual recommendations covering a range of priorities including parks improvements, infrastructure, and social services. **Key Speakers and Presentations** The following council members participated in the discussion: Council Member Kaye, Council Member Akers, Council Member Clark, Council Member Beard, Council Member Farmer, Council Member Stenet, Council Member Ford, Council Member Massadi, and Council Member Lane. **Focus Areas** The recommendations presented by council members centered primarily on three main areas: - Parks improvements - Infrastructure projects - Social services initiatives **Concerns Raised** A significant concern emerged regarding park capacity, with council members expressing the need to address limitations in existing park facilities. Additionally, the discussion highlighted the absence of a more objective prioritization process for evaluating and ranking the various recommendations being presented. **Outcome** The item was deferred, indicating that further discussion or action on these council member recommendations was postponed to a future meeting. ## Review Link Recommendations The Finance and Social Services Link presented an amended recommendation regarding funding for partner agencies. The proposal increased total funding from $2.58 million to $2.94 million, with funds reallocated based on scoring criteria. **Key Speakers and Participants** Council Members Ford, Lane, Marquet, Clark, Scotchfield, Lawless, and Myers participated in the discussion, along with Commissioner Mills. **Presentation and Debate** The Link presented the amended funding recommendation, which involved a significant increase of $360,000 in total allocations to partner agencies. The reallocation was based on a scoring system that determined how funds would be distributed among the agencies. **Concerns Raised** The discussion revealed concerns about fairness and equity in the funding allocation process. Council members raised questions about how the scoring methodology affected different agencies and whether the reallocation approach adequately addressed equity considerations. **Outcome** The item was deferred, meaning the council did not reach a final decision and postponed further action on the recommendation to a future meeting. [timestamp: 01:53:25] ## Budget COW Meetings [timestamp: 02:33:35] The Council discussed scheduling a special meeting for June 12, 2014, to finalize the budget. Council Members Kaye, Lawless, and Myers participated in this discussion. The meeting format was reclassified from a special budget committee of the whole to a special work session. This change in classification was made to allow the Council to conduct voting on budget matters during the meeting. The outcome of this discussion was approved. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to schedule a special budget committee of the whole meeting on Thursday, June 12, 2014, at 9 a.m. - **Motion** — failed: Motion to postpone discussion of all parks projects until the October fund balance review, with exceptions for projects already underway. - **Motion** — failed: Amendment to the motion to postpone parks projects, allowing exceptions for projects already underway. - **Motion** — passed: Motion to change the June 12 special meeting from a special budget committee of the whole to a special work session. - **Motion** — passed: Motion to adjourn the meeting. --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. It is 3 o'clock and we'll be, we'll go ahead and begin the budget committee, the whole meeting scheduled for today at 3 o'clock. The vice mayor is not available to be here today, so I will be chairing the meeting today. And we'll start by having our commissioner give us our revenue updates. Welcome. Thank you, Chair. As we've been doing the last couple of years, the 1st of June, we try to garner as much information we can. to have an early glimpse at where we are in the revenue picture, and I want to thank the people in revenue and finance and accounting for working very hard so that we could have some numbers to review this morning and prepare for this presentation. I'd like to start with a recap of what we presented to the Budget and Finance Committee on March 18th, and we were preparing the mayor's proposed budget and saw a very high need throughout government, as well as favorable variance in year-to-date. So we came to Council with the idea to reallocate some current-year budget dollars to alleviate the pressures that we were seeing in the FY15 budget, looking for things that were critical needs that we could get a collective agreement and quick implementation. And we want to thank the Council for agreeing to do that because it has helped in preparing the mayor's budget for FY15. So what we did was we increased revenue from the original adopted budget for FY14 by about $5 million, and we reallocated about $5 million of personnel and operating expense in order to fund the list of items there in fire, police, community corrections, establishing the affordable housing and homeless services funds, as well as financing the election. The special election was last fall, which made the county clerk feed dollars in order to finish the primary. So you'll see this number again. That was a total reallocation of $10,155,000. So where are we today through May 31st? Here is a preliminary, so the numbers may change, but we feel that they're in the ballpark. We currently are showing a positive year-to-date variance of $803,000 in the withholding, and that is reflective of where we were hoping that we would start to pick up some speed with withholdings. It's not quite as much as we were hoping, but it does show that positive trend we were forecasting. However, when you get to net profits, we have not seen that uptick that we were expecting in the fourth quarter. We're now two out of the three months into the fourth quarter, and we're actually $957,000 under budget. So that gives us some pause. If you'll remember, the FY15 budget has a 4% increase in the withholding and a projected 5% increase in net profit. we're behind by about $304,000. We do feel that that's probably a timing difference. We think we'll probably make that up. And as expected, we're plussing in the franchise fees as we expected due to the severe winter and the delay in spring. So that is very much affected by weather and is something that we're not projecting to have the severe winter vortex next year. The other positive variances that you see there are real, and they have already been included in the base that we used to build the FY15 budget. For instance, in services, we're plussing $2 million. You've seen that for the last four or five months. That was an increase primarily in bed fees. We have already increased that in the base, in FY15, and it's incorporated in the FY15 budget. But at this point, we're plussing $6 million in revenue. And if you remember, we were talking about allocating $5 million of it to fund that reallocation. On the expense side, we are under budget in personnel by about $1.5 million, under budget in operating by about $6 million. The other categories are rather small in nature. to come up with a total expense favorable variance of about 7.4. And if you remember, we reallocated five of that to help pay for that $10 million. So the current favorable variance, $3.5 million, that's almost exactly what it was in April. And we have committed 10.1 of that. So that would give us an uncommitted variance at this point of 3,346,000. Questions on May to date? I guess what council needs to know is when we're going forward with our individual request and also the link request, are you saying that we have 3.3 million that we have? or if you look at this conservatively, if we want to have a structurally balanced budget, do we have that money available or not, in your opinion? And I want it from your conservative opinion, please. Well, Chair, you know that I am in that conservative mode when I talk about these things, so that's just how I am. And I'll get to your answer, but you've given me an opportunity to be a long-winded answer, so if you would indulge me for a moment. We usually go into year end with a favorable variance. There are things that we do not know will be final for the June 30 until well into the summer. We have actuarial reports. We have purchase order rolls. We have to close out our medical and pharmacy fund. We have to close out our risk fund. We have to come up with grant match. These things happen in August and September in order to report to you all in October. So we're not sure what that total should be going into year end. Four to five million is a comfortable number going into that to be sure that we are covered for the things we don't know we don't know that come up when closing of the books. We usually have some favorable variance that shows up in the last month of the year. So I would be comfortable with using a half a million of that as a beginning balance in your budget going forward into 15 and leaving the rest of it for those unknowns when we're closing the books at June 30. And then when we would then address that in October like we normally do, would that be your recommendation then? And if it came in at 5 or if it came in at 2.5, then we would have an actual. It wouldn't be sand. It would be concrete at that time. Right now, it's kind of shifting sand. In October, we know what it really is. So you're thinking that we have 500,000. And also, I know we discussed that there are some things that we could possibly move around. That would be some low-hanging fruit that also might add into that. Would you address that at this point, or would that be later? Go ahead. Put me on the spot. I was going to tell you I don't feel comfortable raising the revenue. So that's the next slide. So given context. Well, we can go ahead and do that and come back to that if you'd like. So my assignment was to talk about where we are financially at the end of May. And then the unanswered question is, do you feel like we should adjust the revenue forecast in the mayor's proposed budget? Well, the original adopted budget was $297.2 million. We amended that in March to be $301.8. The current mayor's proposed budget is a revenue of $313.2. So if you look at the change in revenue between where we started with the original 2014 adopted budget to where the proposed mayor's budget revenue for general fund is, that's an increase of $16 million. That's a 5.4% increase. Our year-to-date revenue is about 3.5% over last year. So we've got to pick up some steam in order to meet that 313.2 next year. So based on that, I'm recommending that we have no change to the current mayor's proposed revenue, not to increase, not to decrease, but to stick with the 313. And I guess those are my rationale, and I think we've kind of talked about each one of those when we went through. And then you can get back to my low-hanging fruit question. But I think before we do that, we have some council members that have questions. Council Member Lane. Thanks for the report, Commissioner. On the page 5, where it shows operating expenses, and we budgeted at $38.3 million, and we only spent $32.2 million. and that's about 15% or 16% less expenditure than budgeted. Can you tell me what areas that we budgeted for that we didn't spend and where that other savings came from? I can give you a thumbnail sketch of that, Vice Mayor. The $6 million variance is primarily in professional services and utilities. Our professional services has a favorable variance of 2.2, and our utility category, all utilities, has a 2.3 million favorable variance right now. The professional services, were they in all departments of government or in two or three departments? I don't have that granular of information to answer, but it has been traditionally over many departments. It's not just in one place. And these, give me a moment if I could. When we're talking about professional services, we're not necessarily, they go the whole gamut. That includes mowing. That's anything that you could do an outside contract for. It's more than just a consultant that does a study and turns in a report. It's also legal. It's also professional. It's also activity-based where we hire somebody to do something. An example in revenue is we hire someone to bill and collect EMS. Their space is the medical billing. That's not our space. ICD-9 converting to ICD-10 codes in order to get paid by Medicare and Medicaid. And so that service to bill that for us is part of that professional service budget. Okay. Would it be possible to get like a general ledger report where we would show what was budgeted by a different department and professional fees and what we actually spent so we could just see where the savings were? Because I think this would be very interesting information. Be glad to do that. Now, let me point out that this is original budget, and we have swept some of those dollars in order to finance that $10 million. So my variance that I just gave you was the one I could get this morning. We just got this information. It's not the amended budget. So I will give it to you original. Then I'll have to give it to you amended to make sure that these monies that have been swept have been reflected in that second part. That would be great. Thank you very much. Congratulations on your bottom line. Thank you, Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger. Mr. O'Mara. So when will you have the final numbers for May, after the 10th like we normally do? Yes. Okay. On the 3.346 you've shown there at the bottom, we started this year's budget with zero coming from FY14 to build the budget. And in the previous budgets, we had $1.5 million beginning fund balance. Did I just hear you say that you'd be comfortable with $500,000 as a starting fund balance? I did. So that would be another $500,000 to our budget, bottom line? I did. Okay. Just wanted to make sure I heard it correctly. The other issue is on the personnel numbers. I know a lot of the fund balance in the last two budget cycles can be contributed to personnel dollars that we did not spend. Can you give us an – I know we budgeted this year 97% funded for all personnel positions. Can you give me a five-year average from what we budgeted in dollars, not bodies, but in dollars, from what we budget to what we actually spent personnel-wise? We can compute that for you. Yes, sir. I don't know how far back you can go, five years, ten years. I'll have to look at the CAFRs, but it's probably there. I mean, I can probably give you a history. Yeah, if you can give that to us, but maybe before next Tuesday. Excuse me. I hesitate saying how far back because we have budgeted different ways in different years, and I'm afraid there won't be apples to apples without digging into it. That's right. We're doing a much better job today budgeting this, so just do the last five years. Okay. If we can see what that average is, because last year we used 98%. This year it's 97%. I'm just trying to get a better feel, And we see up here one and a half million difference already year to date in personnel versus what we budgeted. So if we could see that before Tuesday, that'd be. We can do that. Which is our next almost last budget meeting. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lane. I was going to say that I think that's a good idea that Kevin had about that information. And I would like to see that too. But I feel maybe all council members would like to see what my requested information and his request. so you can give everybody a copy. We can distribute it. Okay, thank you. Did you want to address the low-hanging fruit items now, or did you want to wait and go over the late items? I'm here now. Okay, because I think we need to know kind of a basis of what money that you feel comfortable with that we actually are going to be able to spend over and above what the mayor's proposed budget. And right now you said $500,000 is what you feel comfortable with. And I think for council, if there's other areas that you think in the budget that we might be able to move some money around that would give us a baseline and where we can start from would be, I think, helpful. Well, the request that I had was where would be some low-hanging fruit where some dollars could be moved around that would have low impact? Now, that all depends on who you are as to whether you agree with low impact. But we had a very, very severe winter. We spent a whole lot of money on salt. And so our philosophy going into this year's budget was to make sure that we didn't get in a space where we didn't have the money to buy salt. So we budgeted $900,000. That's more than the average that we've used over a length of time. That is about what we used or a little less than what we used this past year, a very, very severe winter. So one of the things that I would suggest the council could discuss is what is a comfortable number for salt? Do you want to try to cover the history that we had last year? Do you want to kind of look at what an average is? And it's a roll of the dice as to what the weather turns out to be next year. But if you have $900,000 in salt, would $800,000 be a comfortable number to go into next year, or would $700,000 be a comfortable number to go into next year? We have, I think our salt barn is close to being full. and then so these dollars are then to replenish that. I think our actual spend this year was close to a million dollars. So that's a point that's a large dollar amount that's judgmental as to what philosophy you would like to take on budgeting for salt. The other area that I would probably look at is we have proposed cash funding, $100,000 for the Kentucky Theater. They have asked and said that they need an additional $100,000. So if you're talking about our building and long-term improvements, that could be a candidate for a bond, which then would leave that $100,000 then for cash because, and I ask the chair to allow me to say this, what we have worked very hard about doing is to have a structurally balanced budget. We have revenues that are in excess of expenses. So what we, I, do not want is a final budget where our expenses are greater than our revenue. And so that's the overlying. We weren't there several years ago. We were there before that. We've built back. I would like to advocate that we not backslide, that we keep that overall fiscal policy in place when considering changes to the budget. So that would leave us, if we did those computations, around $800,000 that the council would have to start if we wanted to add anything to it, and then any other recommendations we could look towards October would be where you're... Right. When we know what fund balance is, then you can look at one-time costs, special project costs, and whether there's capacity within government to accomplish those, then you can have that conversation and see what's a priority in the fall. Thank you. That kind of gives us a guideline. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. Bill, you were talking about salt in general. There has been some discussion, is there not, about a second salt barn? There has been a lot of discussion about a second salt barn. Yes, sir. Is that alive and well? I think it's still in the discussion. Is it in the budget? It's still in the discussion stage. There are, I wouldn't be qualified to talk about it, but there's several levels, layers to it of how quickly we would have owned property in order to expand and domino effect to have something open for that. So there's still conversation. And that will be an expense in all probability if we do it. It would be. It's not in this year's proposed budget to build that second thought line. Is that correct? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any further council members have any questions on revenue update? Seeing none, we'll move in. Commissioner, do you have any further comments on that? No, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. The next item is the review of the mayor's late items. and I told her to go ahead and put up the list and I don't think she needs to just because we have a lot on our plate to talk about what the changes are going to be and if you have an individual question on something we can discuss it but she's basically going to tell us what the changes are because usually it's a decimal here or there that they made a mistake and that way we can get through this because we have a lot on the plate today we're probably going to have to have schedule a special meeting because I know that social services has made some changes between the last time we met for the counseling, so we're probably going to have to address those at some point. I'm not sure if we'll be able to get that today or not. Okay. Back to my page. Okay. For the general fund, as the chair said, all of these are errors or omissions or things that you all have voted on since the mayor's proposed budget was proposed. So for general fund, the mayor's proposed budget beginning fund balance was $645.20. There were $101,990 worth of late item changes, and so the balance after the late item changes is $543.30. If there are any questions on any of these items, I'll move to the next fund. Any questions? Seeing none, we'll move to the next fund. Okay. The Urban Services Fund is next. It had a fund balance of $16,582,830. There were $62,510 of changes to the mayor's proposed budget in that fund for an ending balance of $16,520,320. Okay. Municipal Aid Fund. We actually, since this document was sent to you all, I got word from engineering that they did not have time to get the projects under contract before the, we have our end of the year closing periods right now where we have, things are cut off. So we're actually not asking for approval of this item because they did not get the money in Cumberland and FY14. We had originally done a budget amendment late in the year, but they were unable to spend the funds. So we're not asking for approval on these items here. The bond funds. I think there's a question on that. So what is the Council Member Farmer? Thank you. So where does that leave these then? That leaves us back at the 2.424530. So we won't make any changes to the MAP funds. So the money will remain in place to do the projects? Yes, it will remain in place to do the projects. We had originally, we put them in the budget because they were in the budget amendment process and they hadn't got second reading. So if they got second reading, we were then going to ask to have them removed. But if they didn't get second reading, we were going to leave them in there. Does this go back to the subtle point the commissioner was talking about the capacity of government to do some of these jobs? In some instances, they can do no more than what they're doing, I guess, is the point. Well, in this case, the budget amendment didn't get second reading until late in April. So it was a timing issue from the time the budget got approved for these projects to when they could do the projects. I see the engineer here now. Sir? Yes, sir. Could you please repeat the question, Mr. Farmer, of what you're looking for? Well, I mean, I'm looking at two projects in the 5th District. I want to make sure they get done. Yes, sir. That's it. Yes, sir. A lot of times what ends up happening is that when you're dependent on other parties, especially if you're spending federal money, that's state approval, it's Federal Highway Administration, and it's office local programming. So you have to wait for each one of those agreements. You have to wait to be cut loose from that, and so all that does add time. So we try to go ahead and aggressively put together our list as far as what our needs would be for MAP so we can go ahead and do these projects. Right. And then we have to wait for all those agreements to come forward for each component of a project design right away, utility relocation, construction. So anyway, the short and the tall of it is what we have and provided, We have an itemized list of projects that we are going to do. We know we're going to do. As Melissa was saying, she was talking about how we did that budget amendment through there. Some of that stuff will get encumbered. Southland Drive is already advertised. We're getting ready to close that out, and that should come before this council before you go on break. Cooper Drive, the same thing. So it is going in that motion. But what we did is we provided that information. They wanted to know what dollar amount as far as MAP that we anticipate on using for all those projects. And so, yes, it does include what you're talking about there. So they will take place at some point? Yes, sir. I mean, this loosely, this is similar to the Tate's Creek Road sidewalks. Yes, sir. They were approved a long time before they were done because a lot of parts had to come there. Yes, sir. All right. And then I've got to ask, and I don't know if you can zoom in. The third one down about Liberty Road at Winchester Road. Yes, sir. It says remove fudging, and I don't think that's really it. I'm sorry, what? I think there's a typo there. That was a typo. It's not fudging. It should be funding. Is that my typo? No, that's my typo. It's not your fudge either. Engineers can't spell, so. Thank you both. Thank you. Funding. Funding. That was a typo. Thank you. Thank you, sir. I guess just for clarification purposes, what is the fund balance then for the MAP? The fund balance for MAP would be $2,424,530. It would remain what's at the top of the page. Thank you. Budgeted fund balance. Council Member Henson. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify because Brad Frazier and I talked about Harrodsburg and Mason Headley. And it was, Brad, can you come back? Peggy, I wasn't paying a lick of attention. You'll have to repeat it. I'm sorry. I really hadn't asked anything yet. I was trying to get your attention. Yeah, I guess. I was under the impression that Harrisburg and Mason-Headley, that intersection, will be reconfigured. Yes, it's on our list. It's a part of what Council Member Farmer was asking about. I just wanted to clarify because I was under the impression it would be done this year. So is that still? Well, if you remember, that was our intent of what we're wanting to do. But since we were going to take out that intersection to do the work, we were going to need alternate routes to kind of divert traffic. And Water Quality was doing a major sewer project, so we felt like we didn't want the two to happen concurrently because it would just totally just short-circuit that entire area. So we wanted to wait for that one to be complete so we can go ahead and send them down to Shaker, which is across from Bobberlink. Yeah, that's right. So this will be done. Yes, ma'am. It's on the list. I got you on camera saying that, right? Yes, it's on camera with me saying that. Thank you very much. Brad, not so far. Wait a minute. We got one more. So we're saying remove this from FY14, a million dollars, for these projects. We're amending FY14, Melissa, to remove this money? I'm going to have to defer to Melissa. I know the amount that I gave them, but as far as you may be better than that. What we did in FY14 near the end of the fiscal year was we amended the budget to use fund balance of MAP funds to fund these projects. Right. However, nothing has happened with these projects, and so that's why we're asking to not remove them from the late items and keep them in the budget as they are. Okay, because they're already in the FY15 budget document. Yes, they are. Except for Cooper. Cooper's not in there. The description, it's in there. but they're in the budget document, and we were asking to remove them from the document because they were also, we did a budget amendment in 2014 to amend the budget to go ahead and do these projects, but the timing didn't work out, and so that's why we're asking not to remove them now. Okay, so you're saying the carryover fund balance projected from FY14 from MAP is accurate in our budget book? Yes, the budgeted fund balance is accurate in the book. The budget. I said that. Budget. Yeah. I know the budget for 15, you said it's 2.4, but carryover from FY14 that you're projecting at 5 million, we're comfortable 5 million will be there. I got numbers today from accounting, and there's a current balance in the MAP fund right now of $7,783,991. Now, there's a few things to take out of that. In the mayor's proposed budget, we're proposing using $1,560,470 of fund balance because we have more projects in than we have revenues that we're expecting. We have P.O. rolls that I got from accounting that will take place of $1,338,449. and then we have grant match that hasn't been booked that gets booked it's one of the last things that gets booked when we close the books of six hundred eighty six thousand one hundred and eighty five dollars engineering has their expenses of one million three hundred sixty two thousand nine hundred and then we have a contingency amount if we have a sinkhole or anything like that of two hundred and fifty thousand so the balance that we have taking all those things into account off of that 7.8 is left with 2,585,987. And that's as of today, or as of the end of May. And that's from FY14? Yes, that is using the balance from FY14 and then taking into account part of the fund balance that we were proposing to use in 2015. Because it shows starting FY15 with 5 million. It does. It does, and we would be starting close to $5 million, but then you have to take out all of the things I listed. No, it's net. It's at the top. It's in part of revenue. Well, you and I can visit on page 300. That doesn't reflect what you're telling us, so we may need to adjust that in our budget document. That is correct. Like I said, we just got the updated numbers today. Okay, because I know we're not starting with five extra million on top of the revenue we receive from MAP. Right. And my next question is for Brad, and you and I can talk about that offline. All these projects listed using the map money, are they ready to go? So this map is cash. Not these on the screen, but every one that's listed in our budget book, $5.2 million is what we have budgeted. Are they ready to go this year? And, Council Member, Senate, just to make sure which list you're talking about, you're talking about the proposed FY15 budget. CIP. Yes. everything as far as what's listed out in our five-year plan that is what we anticipate as far as our best opportunity to go ahead and get those funds encumbered so that we can go ahead and follow that sequence so in other words when we say we want to do this project in fy 15 why do we have this other one we're saying fy 17 because we feel like as far as as the the capital group when we list those out which ones can we do this year and execute and encumber those funds which will build off that and then go ahead and go with the next one so yes that is our best guess for you sir yes sir very good thank you thank you sir just to clarify then how much how much do we have in the map funds that's unencumbered then for fiscal year 15 right now um we have two million five hundred eighty five thousand nine eighty seven that that is if you take out all of the things that I listed okay any other further questions then go ahead and proceed the other funds please this is our bond fund and it's a it's a wash it's just a department change from one department ID to another so there's no change there the sanitary sewer funds we started with the beginning fund balance of $9,307,710. We actually increased that by $91,830 for a fund balance of $9,399,540. On the Water Quality Management Fund, we had a fund balance of $3,216,910. We decreased that with changes by $75,150 for an ending balance of $3,141,760. On the landfill fund, we had a balance of $1,045,320. We're increasing that balance with changes by $44,770 for a balance of $1,090,090. And finally, on the extended school program or program fund, we had a balance of $11,370. We increased that by $22,370 for an ending balance of $33,740. Those are all the changes. Thank you. Is there any questions on any of the late items? Seeing none, we will now move on to the third item. which is the review the council member recommendations and that is on page 12 and when we'd had our discussions how we were going to about doing this we decided the first ones in we're gonna be the first ones that we are going to discuss and we'll go through these and I guess to for a time if we can and at this point we're just discussing we're not gonna be voting on anything at this point we're just going to be discussing each of the requests and it looks like almost every council member made requests so if we could try to keep it to five minutes or so for each council member to go through their request that way for time wise we can try to get through these and then we're going to hopefully get to the link request and we'll start with councilmember Kaye and And we had a few of them and a very few of them that actually had that people made requests for more than one item. A lot of people made individual requests, but there were some that actually had the same requests. And this, yours being the first one, there was actually six requests for this one. So this had the most requests. And I'll start with Councilmember Kaye. Thank you, Chair. Just briefly, this is an item that I put forward along with a number of other council members, as Council Member Ellinger has suggested. There are some differences in the way in which a number of people have proposed to handle this request. So I just want to be clear. My proposal has been to fund the full $300,000. And the background on that is this is an obligation that the council made a number of years ago to fund on an annual basis a certain amount of money related to fund drive that the Y was then involved in. The economy went south, as we all know. They backed off from their fundraising. But a part of what we had agreed with the Y to do, we were going to provide some funds for the capital improvements. And they, in turn, were going to deeply discount memberships for people who work for the urban county government. Well, we've continued to receive those deep discounts, but they have never received this last $300,000 that the council had pledged to provide. So my proposal is to put it in this year's budget. There are some, I think there's, well, I'll try and characterize the other proposals as well, and that people can speak for themselves. But I believe there's an interest from at least one council member to use bond funds rather than general services funds. And there is a proposal from at least one council member to allocate $100,000 for the next three years to meet that $300,000. So I think that's basically where it sits. I think those are the only variations. So I don't mean to complicate it more than it needs to, but that's the background. And I think on the bond funds, I was told that it couldn't be bonded, but that might not be accurate. Can somebody answer that question? Since you brought it up. Is that right? I'm sorry. I think there was some conversation about that. It never got on. Okay. We scratched that. General services funds. And so I think the only question is, not the only question, but one of the questions is if we were to approve this, is it for $300,000 this year or is it for $100,000 for the next three years? As I understand it, the difference that it would make to the why is if we give them the full amount of money that allows them to proceed more quickly with their overall program, which I would favor. So that's my request. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. And I think I'm going to just keep it to council members because I know we have people in the audience that probably could answer some of those questions about the expediency of doing the thing. But I think at this point we'll just go ahead and let council members go through their requests. Council Member Akers, you have the next four. The first on my list is a walking trail at Highlands Park. The Neighborhood Association there has been requesting this for some time. They have a lot of senior citizens in the neighborhood who aren't comfortable walking either on the sidewalks or on the Legacy Trail. They actually collected signatures on a petition and submitted them to my office of more than 100 residents in the neighborhood. And so I'm requesting funds for that walking trail. And I did receive this estimate from the Parks Department, so it should be fairly accurate. and current. The second one is Tennis Court resurfacing at Metathorpe Park. The neighborhood there has been asking for this for some time as well. It is in disrepair and does need to be resurfaced. We actually featured it in a news story last year whenever we were talking about park improvements and the lack of those in the last several years. Metathorpe Neighborhood Association additionally has been collecting some of their own funds to help offset the cost of this resurfacing so while the number is 30,000 I believe they do have 6,000 give or take to contribute to the project as well so that number could be reduced if approved. Number three on my list is the ceiling replacement at the Charles H. Quillings Community Center at Whitney Young Park in the St. Martin's Village neighborhood. This was on my list last year with the fund balance discussions. And there are two different options. One is to replace with a drywall ceiling, and the second is a drop ceiling. I think that this may be the drywall number, and we actually, in talking with the neighborhood president there, probably can't do drywall because we would have to remove the HVAC units are all in the ceiling. And so if we put up drywall, we would have to relocate HVAC. So I think that number should actually be closer to $11,000 for a drop ceiling instead of a drywalled ceiling. And I apologize for that. And lastly, number five on the list is the Oliver Lewis Way Bridge Public Art Project. As most of you know who were here when the bridge was built in 08, I suppose, It was built for a public art project that was the original design and intent of the bridge. It connects the city. It's our major thoroughfare into the city from Newtown Pike and the interstate. I've been working with LexArts for over a year through the Corridors Commission to get this project off the ground. They have submitted an RFQ or released an RFQ several months ago, received over 128, or not over, but received 128 responses. from artists across the nation. That list has been narrowed down to approximately 12 artists that are on display. Their work is on display at the LexArts gallery and we are hoping to invite finalists, three different finalists, within the year to come and visit the bridge, submit final proposals, and fund the project. The total budget for the project is a hundred and ten thousand, So this is just one portion of the funds that we intend to raise, the remainder of which through private investments and donations. And that's all. Thank you. The next request came from Vice Mayor Gorton, who is not able to attend today. And the first one she had was for the YMC North expansion and the construction of the Y in Hamburg. and her funding was for $100,000 per year for three years. And the second one she had was for restriping and maintenance of bicycle lanes and the need of repair for $10,000. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. First thing I want to say, I think as you look at this entire list, you see a lot of support for parks. So I did a little figuring just for fun, And I came up with a figure of 62% of the money that was recommended for parks, which I think there's a message there, folks. So I think we need to pay attention to that. So anyway, going to my request, basically talking to parks, what are your needs? And I've got the ones that you see listed there, replacing the grill at Southland. There are a lot of needs at Southland, but this is probably the most critical one. But also two playgrounds need refurbishing, and one at Woodland, and I think that's also mentioned in another report, and also the one at Veterans Park. Both of those are estimated at 75,000. And I do have another one later on that I'll talk about when we get there, Terry. Thank you very much. thank you councilmember lawless my requests are also ones that were in last year that didn't get funded and i think that a couple of the things might be included in the links recommendation but the upgrades to the decaying Woodland Park infrastructure. That includes, there's the really big playground that I think the Lynx recommended, and then there's other playground, and they're just really old and worn out and extremely well used. And also a slide for the pool that needs to be replaced, and there's a leak in the lap lane liner, which cost us money because we're leaking water. And then the other is to the basketball court at the Lou Johnson Park over by Prawl Street. It needs to be resurfaced. and that was estimated at $60,000. Thank you. Council Member Myers has stepped out, so I'll go ahead and do his request. He had three of them, and one was for parks for a bathhouse, concession and pro shop at Berry Hill. Park was for $365,000. He also made the request for the YMCA that is the same as what Council Member K had suggested for the 300,000 and his third one was for the Children's Advocacy Center for 75,000 the next one is councilmember farmer well that went fast all right so this is what the top of page 14 then actually would be page 13, number 16 on the list. Yeah, man, so... Oh, yeah, all right, gotcha. Here we go. Well, this first one, number 16, is the foster discussion about how to complete the movement of fire station number 2 from just outside New Circle Road, more on the north side, to an area just inside New Circle, near where the Chase Bank is in Eastland. The mayor's proposed $2.5 million to do it. That doesn't actually fund the entire station. The total here, or the total that I'm asking for, would complete the station, which puts fire station two there, but also provides for some extra storage for some of the apparatus that is currently stored at the fire station one. Some of it not very well stored, but needs a place to be. And as part of a larger discussion that's been going on even today in emails, It repositions one of the fire stations that is in one of the oldest spots to an area that gives it more usefulness in terms of coverage for the rest of the city. Then let's see. I keep losing my place. All right, number 17. You know, Lansdowne Merrick Park was actually the first place that the consultants really wanted to put the Senior Citizen Center at the time because it's near some sort of geographic center for the population of Lexington. In lieu of it going there and ending up in Idlemark Park, there's been a lot of really good developments gone on and use of Landis and Merrick Park. And this is the opportunity to add some restrooms to it because there are trails there and exercise equipment and things that would complete the use of that park, not just for the neighbors that are there, but those who come to use it. as we all would on number 18, there are competing traffic or cut-through problems in each of our districts. But there's a couple in the 5th District that I'm trying to help specifically, trying to make the signal system at Menifee and Henry Clay Boulevard as useful as possible. because when you think of places where the rest of the city gets to cross that railroad track, it's at Walton Avenue, which is a more of an industrial setting, and the underpass on New Circle Road. This is the bridge that was replaced probably about 10 years ago now, and there's a lot of traffic that goes on Henry Clay Boulevard through a truly residential setting. So we're trying to make an opportunity there for folks to still traverse the neighborhood but do so slower and safer in relation to what would be the quality of life for those folks that are there. And then number 19, and this, there's some supporting documentation. I don't think probably that it's in here, but it has to do with a final change to the Kentucky Theater that has to do with redoing the concession stand and taking out an office area that's behind it to increase the size and usefulness of the concession stand. And having been one of the people who was there, along with others, for their reopening, they've done a great job there, but they're still selling out of the same popcorn maker that probably was there 30 years ago. But this would be an opportunity to kind of complete the great work that has been done and give them a little bit more financial opportunity in the future, because I think a better concession stand will give them a better opportunity to serve. I would stand for questions or move on. Thank you. Council Member Scutchfield. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger. I agree with those that brought forward the why. I think it's a commitment that we've made. So that's all I'll say right now for brevity. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Henson and then I think Council Member Myers, if you want to add anything to what I put in yours. I'll go ahead and do Council Member Henson, and then I'll come back. Council Member Myers. Okay. Thank you, Chair. I have two items on here that are both parks related. I agree with the remarks of Council Member Clark because I know I have a number of parks that have needs that aren't quite ready, but there are needs there for in the future. So although they weren't requested this year, there are a number of needs. Number 21 was for a 360-degree plastic spiral slide at Pine Meadows Park. I know that Parks has a plan to upgrade the playgrounds as they are in need. Pine Meadows Park has never had a slide. There's a number of young families that have just recently moved into the area. And although $9,000, I think, is expensive for a slide, But when you look, this one is a freestanding slide and meets all of the code requirements and so forth. But I did tell the parents over there I'd like for the kids to have a slide before they go to college. And then the second request is $50,000 for solar lighting at Cross Keys Park. And this was a fund balance request that I had made that didn't make it through. So I wanted to add it again because this park is located on a street that does not have street lights. It makes the park very, very dark. So installing electric lighting would be really expensive. So parks looked into the possibility of the solar lighting as a pilot project for this park. The ongoing cost would be much cheaper than the electric lights as well. So $50,000 for that. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. And when I'm going through these, Connie, when we look at our numbers here, it looks like I guess that when they came in, that some people I know I did, I put one in and then somebody made it, then I made a later request, so that's why it's in the way it is. I guess that's the reason. Yeah, because if you go down to 27, then it goes back to 17. I'm not sure why that happens. Somebody ran out of fingers and toes. Okay. Well, with that, we'll keep going through. Councilman Myers, we'll go back to yours. Did you have anything you want to add to that? Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I apologize. I was out in the hall talking about some other things for later on in this meeting. So the first thing I want to say is reiterate the YMCA, the $300,000. I'm not sure what all was said on that, and I know there's several people who have put that in there. Several years ago, we made an agreement with the YMCA that if they would extend their discount that they're giving us for all of our employees, to all of our employees, that we would go ahead and meet their request for a half million dollars when they got ready to build the new Y, wherever that was going to be located. And I think we've given them part of that. We were going to do $100,000 a year. Recession hit. Those things came into play. But now they're ready to go. they're ready to pull the trigger on this on two different projects and my hope is that we would support this with the 300,000 immediately rather than doing 100,000 for three years so they can go ahead and and take care of this they also have a match matching opportunity that if we could put that 300,000 dollars in and tie it to both projects then that will certainly help them on their match I think it's a hundred I think it's a million and a half dollar match I think I'm seeing a shaking heads from David out in the audience so that's actually my number one priority because we made a commitment to them and they saved us money in the long term by making our employees or allowing our employees to get more healthy by using their facilities at a discounted rate. Secondly, we have the Child Advocacy Center that we heard about through the partner agency funding process. And on this one, I would simply say that we have children that are in harm's way and the police department certainly needs the services of the Child Advocacy Center in order to give them the information that they need to go through the court system and process to prosecute these offenders. And so certainly I hope that we can find $70,000 to help protect our kids. And lastly, I would like to go back to Berry Hill Park over on Buckhorn. And we have a couple opportunities that we're looking at to redo the bathroom situation there and do that in such a way that we have approximately 500 square feet that we could use for sort of a retail space like a pro shop that would involve both skating and running now that we have the new walking trail in there. And so that number is not locked in solid. We got that number from General Services. They were gracious enough to work with us in a short order to put a number together. But what we're looking at doing there is providing this facility, and there's a couple different ways we can do it. but we will actually have a tenant in there leasing the pro shop. And so there will be money coming back to the government every year based either on their sales or just a rent, a number for rent. And so my hope is that we can bond that project later on and be able to provide something special over that neighborhood, but also generate some revenue and get our new bathrooms created. So thank you again for your time and your consideration. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. Specifically, I'm requesting a $3,000 item. There is a small bridge that crosses West Hickman Creek near Zandale Drive that doesn't get used much for two reasons. One is that people are somewhat afraid of the bridge, and secondly, our parks people can't get equipment back into the park easily to keep it known and do other types of work. So we're doing this in concert with the Lansdowne Neighborhood Association, and hopefully that will be approved. and then the next item, which is probably on everybody's list, either actively or in the back of their head, we have got to do something about the paving situation, as we did last year. We made some gains last year, and then we had the worst winter we've ever had, it seems like. And so I'm suggesting a bond of what size, I don't know at this point, But I would like that to be on everybody's list ultimately. Thank you. Thank you. Then we go back to Council Member Farmer. And this goes to when things came into the queue. You're exactly right. But it follows up perfectly on what Council Member Beard was just saying. And if we were to decide to bond $5 million for paving at 3.5% over a 10-year bond, it would take $601,000 next year to do that. I think we can decide later, certainly, what we want to spend and how we want to pay for it. But I think the discussion of doing more paving is something that we'll find a lot of friendly ears in our group here. So this was just a different version of what others had put up, but I think the same common background is let's find some more money to pay with. Thank you. And then I put in for the why, and I'm amenable to do either the $300,000 for one year, $150,000 for two years, or $100,000 for three. I think the council just needs to decide how we want to do that and how quick that they're going to be able to use the money. I guess that's going to be doing the building on that. But I do support working with the Y because I think we made a commitment to them. The next one is Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. This is out of place from my other request because I was waiting on confirmation from the league to be sure that they could match what we might provide. And so this is for an additional baseball field at Cardinal Run. we would put up 50% of the total cost, and the Western Little League would raise the other 50%. And I conferred with them because I wanted to be sure that they could do that, and they assured me absolutely that they could do that. They've got quite a bit of the money in place, but they just can't do the whole field. And one of the things that I realized there that with that league and others that play at Cardinal Run, it's not just a one team it's several teams in the league from T-ball all the way through the age 12 so there's a lot of activity over there and there's really not even time for a lot of teams even practice in a reasonable amount and so this additional field would be very well used and is desperately needed over there so I'm proposing that we fund half of that amount. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Chair. The first item is once again the neighborhood road resurfacing bond. I think this warrants further discussion. I know I'd like to sit down with Mr. O'Mara and look at our current map fund balance and ways that we could fund this rather than just 100% bonding. I think there's also an opportunity to look at our streets and roads list that Charlie Martin recently gave us. I know in the budget there's $3 million. $1.2 of it goes to man-of-war resurfacing, and that's obviously not set in stone. We can change that, but that leaves $1.8 million, and with this $5, it would be $6.8 million on roads that have went through one of the harshest winters we've ever gone through. So the question is timing. When do we bond it? I know if you bond it in the spring, when the paving season begins again, that would probably hit next year's budget. But if we bond in now, can we get it down before paving season closes this year in November? I think that's a discussion we can have before Tuesday and try to figure out the best course in this particular budget, but I do think it's needed. On the YMCA, again, I fully support that. We started 07, 08, stopped off, should have been done by now. This is economic development and job creation, which you'll hear more about tonight, I'm sure. This creates more jobs than anything we're doing. so there's no question we should do that and we should fund it and get it out off our plate secondly parks pleasant ridge this was a project you all approved back in november with a fund balance we got into the project found out there are some rare cherry trees there that can affect some of the pets that could be in the park so we need to make some adjustments so that's what that money is for is to reorganize or redesign our area that we're utilizing in the park to get away from those cherry trees so that's what that's for the fire two and a half million for station two is in the budget but to do the full layout that we again going back to 2007 we did a lot of good things in 2007 you had the y the fire station relocation that is to me needs to happen once and for all because we don't have a good track record of going back and doing projects and completing them so getting that additional station and apparatuses out of the weather onto that site i know the argument is, well, we could use two and a half men to build a new station. Well, the next two stations on the list also require not just capital for the building, but personnel. And we haven't figured out a plan on how we're going to fund personnel, but I know we can get this building up and utilized immediately. We've been waiting since 2007. We bought the land to utilize the land at fire station number two will eventually go. And then the last thing on the list is the Kentucky Theater, the Mr. O'Mara reference that we could bond it rather than paying cash for it, which would free up some of the money for the Y. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. And then I had three requests on here. And as you can see, they're number 22, 23, 24. The bike lane striping project needs annual bike facilities maintenance and also the annual bike facilities intersection safety improvements. and in the first one, our community currently has a total of 30 miles of on-road bicycle facilities. The proposed bicycle facilities projects would provide an additional 18.5 million on on-road facilities. If you look down through the project, the first part is 58,000 and change, and that can be done for sure in the first year, and they're hoping to be able to do the second part in the first year, but it would require a little extra because you have to have neighborhood meetings. but that would add additional 18.5 millions of on-road facilities. And the key with bike lanes is making sure connectivity. And if you look on the list, there's actually nine of the 12 districts are part of this. So it serves almost everybody in the community. So I think that would be a very big help to get those finally completed because you end up, you go from one street and then you stop and then you have to go to another street. and if we can get the connectivity, I think it would be a benefit to the community. And I put this initially in general services, but then after speaking with different people, I think the best way, and since we do have a balance in that, I would request this be moved into the Municipal Aid Program because it is actually on the streets, and this would be something I think that would be better suited there, and we have a balance of over $2.5 million. And to do everything that I've requested would be 226,000, and 40,000 would be for maintenance of the bicycle lanes. And we would have a program where we would try to do about six miles of bike lane facilities each year to maintain them. And then also one of the big issues is, and that's been addressed, is looking at intersections that have been identified in areas of need of safety improvements. And that would be the other request I've made of the 40,000. And in order to be proactive, because we know there's certain areas that right now, a lot of them around the U.K. area, where we have some potential risk that we need to make sure we address. And I think if we go ahead and take care of the risk now, we won't have to deal with it in the future with potential problems. So those would be my request. The next one would be Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council Members, I have just three requests I bring for your consideration in this budget. The first one is an issue that I brought up during our budget retreat earlier in the winter. It's for the annual member dues reinstatement. for our government in regards to the National League of Cities. I want to thank the budget office for some help in doing some of the research. I've come to found that from 1983 through 2009, we were active, pretty very active members in the National League of Cities. For whatsoever reason, those dues, our payment thereof suspended. I understand that historically the dues of approximately $15,000 have been shared costs between the council office and the mayor's office. And a city of our size, I think it would be helpful and valuable for us to reengage our peers across the nation. So I make that request in general service district funds of $15,000. The second is for the concrete repair and resurfacing of East Short Street between Midland Avenue and almost to Elm Tree Lane. But it actually goes to Curly Avenue. This is a stretch of road that is just one block removed from East Main Street. It is a stretch of road that in prior years I've included on my resurfacing list for the district. But, of course, this is concrete, and I've checked with engineering. I want to thank them for their help in doing the research. It is not on any capital improvement list, but it is in dire need. It is a major cut-through in thoroughfare for folks coming in and out of downtown. That cost is $185,000. I will request to be bonded. And the last project is for an athletic building demolition and rebuild in Martin Luther King Park in the Windburn neighborhood. And also now bordering the Brookfield Chase subdivision that was recently built. The building in question, and I'll provide photos here very soon, council members, for all intents and purposes, is functionally obsolete. It's a cinder block building. Since 1989, our Parks and Recreation has hosted youth football and cheerleaders at this facility, and it just no longer meets the needs and safety requirements of the youth ages 7 through 12. The estimated cost to bring that facility down to rebuild it adequately is $300,000, and I request and recommend it be bonded as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And the last person I have on the list, although Council Member Lane, I have you on here, but I don't have any requests on there. But I want to go to, and I want to welcome back, Council Member Massadi. Welcome back. Glad to see you back here. Hope you're feeling better. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. I'm a little rusty here. Is this the order that we're going to go in next week as far as how we determine what things go in the order? Well, you know, I think we're going to have to. phase. I think we're going to, after we go through all the requests, then I'm going to have to kind of figure out from the council how we want to go about because we have a lot of requests for a little pot of money. I just thought I'd maybe play the sympathy card and maybe. I'm sorry? I just thought maybe I'd play the sympathy card. I understand. Okay. But no, it's great to be back and it's I'm glad to be here. My first request is a stormwater culvert, and it's between my district and Harry's district. It's the culvert on Arrowhead Drive. I don't know if you've seen it, Harry, but every time it rains, it floods, and it's been like that for a long time, and I think if we can get that taken care of, it'll be an improvement for the neighborhood. A lot of neighbors' yards are adjacent to that and flood as well, and luckily the houses are not downstream from them as their basements would be flooded as well, but that's been an issue for several years. It has not been addressed. The Clay's Mill Road sidewalk from Copper Run to Twain Ridge, you know, they're extending the, they're widening, rather, the Clay's Mill from, right now, from Man of War to Twain Ridge Drive. And they stopped there at Twain Ridge, and that's where the sidewalk stops. So a lot of the residents that walk that area have asked me if they could extend that sidewalk to Copperfield, the entrance. I'm not sure this figure that was provided to me for $18,000. that must be i'm assuming just for um the first drawing stage because i would i can't imagine you can do sidewalks for eighteen thousand dollars there we're probably looking at maybe a quarter of a mile stretch there so i'm not sure that figure is quite correct i'm not sure how we can incorporate that into maybe a bond when we do some more either sidewalks around town or into road resurfacing money um maybe connie or someone can help me there council member the 100 it's 150 000 is that right 18 000 is the annual debt service on that okay i appreciate that thank you while while i was at home recuperating i got to watch um the commonwealth attorney ray larson's pretty passionate speech about having a prosecutor position and that really struck me as something that we really need. I mean, the time, just getting the things to the court was shocking, plus just the need. And I think that's something that's severely needed. So my suggestion was to fund that position for $75,000. And Mr. Larson has written me a letter, if any of you would like to see it, talking about the, and you probably had it that day, but just talking about why he felt it was necessary to have that position and fund that. but as I said when I saw his presentation on GTV3 I was pretty moved and I felt real felt it was important that we went ahead and supported him and supported this position and that's for $75,000 and that includes salary and benefits the next are basically all with it within the exception of a few they're all parks projects and as Council Member Clark says that kind of tells us that where our focus is and also tells us that a lot of our constituents use these parks especially shillito park and a lot of these things just over time have been deferred maintenance and now we just need to catch up because we've got the money um i know that you know shillito had renovations in their uh courts four or five years ago um that some of the cracks are um are out of the field of our of the field of play but we need to get them back into shape again and that's I guess around $20,000. Same thing with eventually we're going to have to replace a Shiltoe Park playground. If you ever go there on a weekend that thing is packed. It's a great playground. My kids grew up on there. Several of my grandkids have been there. It's widely used and it's a great playground but it's something that really needs to be funded because it's a destination playground too. A lot of people come from all around the city to play at that playground because it is such a unique playground. At South Point, I'm asking for, let me back up. There's Shiltoe Park Playground, also, again, heavily utilized park, community park. We get people from not only Fayette County, but we get people from Jessamine County that use that. So that's basically just deferred maintenance that needs to be done on the playground. And I think it's $30,000. I messed up here. I apologize, $300,000. The next item is South Park security lighting. We've had some incidences there recently where we've had some juveniles that have been having some activity there at nighttime, causing the homeowners a lot of distress. Drug trafficking has been part of the picture out there, and the neighbors are really concerned about it, especially going into summertime. so they would like some security lighting in the parking lot there so at least we can that can be somewhat of a detriment um to to these kids congregating and as i said as summertime approaches that's when these kids have a lot of time to hang out and i think this would be money wisely spent stonewall park this neighborhood has been real active as far as trails and doing different improvements. There's just, again, maintenance, honeysuckle removal, stormwater improvements. A very active neighborhood. The park not only is used by the residents, it's used by the kids at Stonewall Elementary. So again, that would be something that would be advantageous for the children and the community there as well. Street resurfacing, based on what Council Member Stenet said I would be in agreement to find out what we can do to be able to bond this money and how much we can. We've got a lot of potholes. We've had a tough winter. And hopefully we'll be able to at least hit some of the streets that Charlie has provided us in his latest list. Waverly Park. Harry, I'm not sure that's yours or mine anymore. It's not yours? Okay, I'm sorry. Waverly Park tennis courts again. Deferred maintenance, needs crack repair, color coding, $25,000. Same thing with the basketball courts. They need repairs. It comes to an amount of about $36,000. And the last thing, the Wellington Park, which is a therapeutic park. Central Baptist uses it a lot. It's used for different groups. As I said, a lot of breast cancer survivors walk that park. Different groups in the community. It's a passive park. That land was donated to us when we had the Reynolds Road hearing with NDC, and we've been working on that to upgrade that, mostly volunteer hours for that. And if you all get a chance to go out there, it's beautiful. It's flowers and a lot of different kind of trees and natural species. We're finally going to get the bridge from nowhere put there to where it belongs. And they've requested a shade shelter just because there's a lot of elderly folks that use that too and would like a place to kind of sit and not only relax, but also for the school children that tour that park to be able to have on-site little educational visits. So that is my list. If anyone has any questions, I'd be glad to answer. Thank you, and welcome back. Thank you. And Council Member Lane, we have you down, but I don't have anything beside your name. Yes, sir. I just wanted to say that I support the YMCA project at Hamburg for $300,000. Since so many people have put it in, I didn't just put it back in, too. So I think that's a very worthwhile project, and we have an obligation to the Y to help support them because of our long-term relationship. Thank you. Thank you. My recommendation has no budgetary impact because it's already in there several times. Okay. Okay. Council Member Farmer and then Stenet. Before I go there, I wanted to have the commissioner. We discussed about, and one of the things I think Council Member Clark had brought up is over 60% of our requests are parks requests. And when we had a discussion prior to this just to get prepared for this meeting, one issue that was brought up was about parks since we had known that there were so many requests for it about the park capacity issue. And I guess if you could address that for the council, that would be helpful, I think. I'd be glad to, Chairman. When we were putting together the mayor's proposed budget, one of the key things that we saw throughout government was capacity issues, that they had a desire to produce, but they had limited capabilities to produce. And one of those areas is in parks. We had an extensive additional shopping list in our October that gave them plenty of opportunity to work on projects. They're very busy on those now. We limited what we put into FY15 knowing that they had a backlog of projects and felt like that there was limited amount of dollars that could actually be spent in FY15 project related because of those capacity issues in the parks area. Thank you. And then before I go to questions, one thing that we have, we have our review, our link recommendations that we discussed about last Tuesday. and I know there's been some changes since then from at least I know one link so we'll go through those but when we get done with that we're going to figure out where we want to go from here because we we have our revenue numbers we're going to have to eventually set a revenue number that we're going to agree on and that will kind of be our basis of what we can spend and then I think after that we're going to have to try to figure out a policy on and try to find a consensus on what we're going to, A, be able to forward, and then we'll have to go down the different list on do we have most consensus maybe on one item and we vote on that and work our way down. But I think that's something we're going to have to discuss here amongst ourselves of how we want to actually do. Now we've laid out the different projects. We don't have near the money to pay for all the projects that we have, so we're going to have to figure out a system that we're going to go forward with that. Council Member Farmer, you might have some answers for me. I'm glad to try. I think what the commissioner just said is kind of what we were alluding to earlier. There may not be a reason to add right now to the list of things that parks can't do. I think it's what I hear being said. And that that opportunity might present itself better later in the year, and we might want to have a focus on things for parks and maybe funding or bonding for them more then than now. because if they can't do what is on their to-do list now, adding more to it doesn't get any more done. It just adds more to the backlog. So I think that would be part of our global discussion. That wasn't the reason I had rung in. Subsequent to my turning my list in, I have kind of what I would call a late item, which I would like to potentially add that I would circulate around amongst you. And it is a parks one also, but it has to do with the retrofitting of Eidlauer in terms of where current facilities are and where they're going to have to go for the senior citizen center. And it is a total of $140,805 for repair and paving of the west and east parking lots. And I'll just send this around so everyone can have it and understand it. But it would be, in essence, an additional parks ask that I'm already asking for us to defer to a later time. Right, and if you could get that to us and also to Connie, that would be helpful. Fine, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Chair. I chimed in and talked about the parks. Can we get a list of all the projects that are in the queue from General Services and that will be done this year and the timing of those anticipated projects to be completed? Could the commissioner or CAO come up and – Can we just get that list before Tuesday or a generalization of timing on some of those? Yes, sir. Because Council Member Palmer is right. We may not need the money today. I'll get you the, I'll get you, we are tracking the fund balance projects. And we're doing it every quarter and then we're sending it for people to see. I get worried about this because my job is to worry. We've got $13.5 million when you take what you did, what we did in October, and what we did in March for projects. I'm looking at a spend right now of 6.4. So I've got $7.1 million left that hadn't been spent. Now, remember, we didn't get into that June 30th problem because we put all that money in account so that we could roll. And this is not, I'm not criticizing here. I'm just talking about what the capacity is. Parks is moving as fast as they can. And a lot of these projects are, and this is not only parks. We've got it all over the place. And people move fast, but you know how government is here. So, is anywhere. So, I feel, and I've had this discussion internally numerous times, if we are going to continue, and I understand this need for parks projects, we need to do this differently. Somehow or other, we need to come back to parks and say, here are these projects that are fund balance type projects. We're going to hire a project director, and we're going to contract these out differently in order to keep this volume up, because we've got to approach our construction differently. So we will send you that list. I'm sorry, that's probably more than you wanted to hear. No, but I think you're right on. I think it's a capacity issue. I think parks are doing a good job of moving it forward. but we're overwhelming them if we improve everything on this list. And with these, you're just, we have to be honest with you. This list, you won't see these projects for another year to year and a half. Right. So that's why I'm, so if we can, there may be an opportunity to create another list that we can work from as money becomes available. Okay. And pull off. Thank you. And then the other issue is when we discuss this. I think Tuesday we can get the information back on a solid fund balance number. I think we can get the personnel number that I asked for earlier. We can get the MAP money solidified a little more and need that information before we start going through this list. And then we also think, Chair, we have to approve the revenue number. We do. I think we have to. After we go through this, that will be our next issue as we'll have to set our revenue number. Start 9 a.m. Tuesday, correct? We have right now 9 until 3 o'clock. And we have on there at 3 o'clock the work session to ratify the budget and place on the docket. And I guess if we could ask either Budging or the commissioner what our time frame is, because we have to be done at a certain time to get first and second reading. Thank you for asking. In order to get the document ready to meet, we really need a ratification by next Thursday so that you can make that first and second readings. That also gives us time to actually implement so that the budget is in place and viable on July 1st. So I know the ratification is scheduled for Tuesday. There's a two-day leeway there that will not put a strain on us. After that, we're challenged in order to meet our requirements. And, Council, that's what I want you to look at. Presently, we do not have a meeting scheduled on the 12th, And I don't know if we want to set a special council meeting for that or not. But if we don't finish our work on the 10th, then we're going to need another meeting. And I know we need time to go ahead and give notice. And what's the requirement for the notice? We have to do a 24-hour notice, but it has to be in the newspaper, so we would have to ask the clerk what their deadline is. So is that something we would have to set today, or could we wait until Tuesday to set? I would think you would want to set it sooner or better to get it in the newspaper. So that's something else. Before we adjourn today's meeting, we need to decide, do we want to go ahead and have a special meeting? And if we got everything done on Tuesday, we can always cancel that meeting, but we might want to have that there in case we do not finish. So let's keep that before we adjourn. I think we just go ahead and do it now. I moved this out of special meeting at 9 a.m. Thursday morning so we could have plenty of time before that night to get it done. I have a motion. I second. And a second. My council member Kaye. Any discussion about a 9 a.m. June 12th special council meeting? Is that what it would be called a special council meeting or special council of the whole? Special budget committee of the whole. All those in favor say aye. Oh, I'm sorry, discussion. Councilmember Clark. We're talking about the 12th? Yes, sir. Thursday the 12th at 9 a.m. Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion? Why nine as opposed to some other? Because that's what he made the motion. They give us plenty of time. We don't know how much time. Yeah, we sure would. Yeah. So better be safe than sorry. Do we need that much time? We won't know until after Tuesday. We'll know Tuesday if we need that meeting or not. We'll still have six hours on Tuesday. We could get it all done. Council Member Akers, did you have a question? I have another appointment in the morning. I was just going to see if we could do like one. But I know Council Member Lane is getting ready to weigh in. So I'll just. Council Member Lane. I have a commitment to be out of town on that day, and I really would like to participate in the meeting. I could try to reschedule that, but I just thought I'd share that with you. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? No. That passes. So we'll go ahead and put a special budget council the whole meeting for the 12th of June at 9 a.m. in the chambers here. And now, Council Member Cain. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to follow up on that discussion about parks. It seems to me that given all that's been said, it may make sense to take all of the proposals for parks that are included in the individual recommendations and basically put them on hold. until we get more information until we know more about what funding is available till we know more about capacity it would also simplify some our task of making some decisions about what we want to fund and i i don't have a recommendation for for parks this year i did last year so i don't want to be stepping on anybody's toes but if council basically thinks that that's a good idea that would help simplify our task and simplify our agenda. So I would just put that out. I don't know if that, in terms of a... What date specific would you be putting that on for when they come back in October when we know what our fund balance is then? If it's appropriate to make a motion to that regard, I will do that. And that is to take the parks items that are in the individual requests and postpone consideration of them until we do the fund balance in October. Okay. We have a motion and a second by Council Member Akers. Now discussion. Council Member Stenet. I would say I'm not necessarily in disagreement with that. I think we'll have our list Tuesday that will give us more information to really make a good decision. But on my project in particular, we're already underway, and we have the funding for it. We just need a little bit more. So it may not be one I want to put off until October so we can go ahead and get it done before then. So I would say if there's others that are shovel-ready that are underway that can be done before October, I think we give those consideration. If not, then I would be a disagree. I know C.A.O. Hamilton, you had something I think you wanted to add on that. I was just getting ready to leave the room, too. I've got our fund balance projects ready that we have just gone over and the status of all those. So I'm going to send you out tonight, or the first thing in the morning, the fund balance, all those fund balance projects. And that will show you all the parks. And then I'm going to send you out the list that's got what's been spent and what hasn't so that you can have that right before you to look at now rather than waiting until Tuesday. So you'll have it. Right. I would just ask we make this motion Tuesday because I'll vote against it today just for my reason. So let me – I don't know if we want to get stuck in procedure, but it seems to me it would be perfectly acceptable to propose exceptions based on that kind of information. but that the default position is they're out. So I don't know if I need to amend the motion or to, I'll leave it like it is and let's see what happens. And then just on the motion, Council Member Akers, Ford, and Myers, I think on this particular motion, Council Member Akers and Lawless. I was just going to recommend or offer perhaps an amendment that would allow or that would suggest that we postpone all proposed projects to the October fund balance discussion unless they've already begun, except for projects that are already underway. So your amendment would include an addendum that unless... Any new project. Any project that's already been started? Or to move only projects to the October discussion that have not begun. Okay. In this fiscal year or something like that. I think I understand the amendment. Any second for that? Second. There is a second. Now discussion on the amendment. Okay. Council Member Ford, Myers, and Lawless. Thanks, Mr. Chair. I wanted to discuss the original motion, but kindly I'll just ask for a restatement of the amendment that was just presented. Councilman Rakers Okay, so I think the motion as amended would be that we I guess table all park proposals on this list that have not yet been initiated that will not be on CAO Hamilton's list until we have the fund balance discussion in October in october council member ford thanks mr chair i think i'll be able to speak to both the amendment and the original motion kind of in one suit understanding the capacity issues that parks has had in general services and parks are working very hard i can attest and all of us can however i seem to believe what's represented on our council member recommendations represent needs They represent needs in our parks. And so while the service delivery of addressing those needs, I agree with Sally's perhaps recommendation of exploring a project management approach to it. Our job here budgetarily is to identify needs and provide resources to those needs as available. So if that means providing funding and escrowing those funds to a certain time, I would support that. I just would argue against putting off addressing the financial components of the needs because of the current capacity issues, because I believe those will be improved here very soon. So I don't criticize, but I'm not supportive of either the motion or the amendment. Thank you. Councilman Myers, then Lawless. Thank you, Mr. Missani. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I think, really, I just have to agree with what Councilmember Sten and Councilmember Ford stated. And, you know, oftentimes when we have these discussions, I go back to the fact that the majority of the time when the council has any kind of funds that it can allocate, the majority of it we try to spend in our parks. And so I like Madam CAO's proposal, not necessarily a proposal, but idea of maybe doing a project management, excuse me, and outsourcing that so that we can go ahead and get these needs met. My project kind of falls in between. is sort of a hybrid. The skate park's going to start construction here shortly, and the new building is right there on the footprint with the skate park. And so if we were to put that off, if we choose to do that, and we put that off until October, then you're going to have a skate park that's completed right then, and then go right when we open the skate park into immediate construction right there at the skate park to do the building. And so if we do some type of an amendment where we can exclude certain projects then I hope that would make that list but I'd also say that without getting too far in the weeds this project has a real possibility of cash flowing which would mean that the money coming in from the lease on the building would actually pay the debt service on the building and so I look forward to and hope that we continue this debate long enough to have that ferret it out thank you so then I will not support this motion but as As Council Member Ford said, I'm not critical of it. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. I think that maybe a mix of these two concepts is a good idea. But I also think that we need to talk to the commissioner and the director of parks and those folks out there doing the work and know the conditions of these parks and which ones are somewhat safety issues, which ones can be done, need to be done before, you know, we get too far into the summer. And rather than, well, it was said to me last year after we did the whole ranking and voting thing by one of the council members was it seems like a popularity contest. And I think that I know what the needs are in the parks in my district, but I don't know how they compare to the needs in some other parks. So I think that we need a more objective, clearer review of comparison. For instance, maybe the playground equipment in this park is really, really bad as opposed to the playground equipment in this park that's only really bad. So rather than everybody, you know, we're here to set policy and to allocate funds and ratify the budget, but do I know what the playground equipment in one of Peggy Henson's parks is compared to mine or one in my district or another one? And so I guess that's, you know, because I would gladly withdraw if there was a park in another district that had a greater need, if I'm making any sense. Thank you. Council Member Missotti. Thank you, Chair. I have a question for someone from Parks so I can make a decision on this motion. Is there anyone here that can, maybe Chris, maybe you can come up to the podium for a moment, please. I know when it comes to parks, we get a lot of input from our constituents and from the neighborhoods. And then we also defer to you based upon what you tell us, you know, deferred needs have been over the years. And I'm just wondering, is there a duplication of what you have as opposed to what we have? There are some duplications that we proposed as a divisional budget that is now on your list. So there are some items, and there are some items that are a safety issue item. Commissioner, or Chief, Ms. Hamilton is correct. Sally, thank you very much. She is correct that we are working hard and there is a capacity issue. I feel we can do some more, but if you give us your complete list, I don't feel we can complete your complete list along with what we're doing. But I feel we can do some more. And I understand that, but I'm assuming that you've got a list over years that you've had maybe for the past three, four, or five years for capital improvements or maintenance or something. And then we're giving you our list that we get based upon neighborhood interaction or what we see or what constituents call us about. So my thought is, are those overlapping? Are some of these things that we were asking you to do that have not been attended to the past five years because we didn't have the money? I'm just trying to get the whole picture here. Yes, some of the items are overlapping. Yes, there's probably half a dozen on the list that's proposed today that are overlapping. So would you be able to, based upon that information, as like Council Member Lawless said, give us kind of a rating. You know, is the park over in Cardinal Valley worse than the park over in Stonewall or Stonewall worse than, you know, Waverly or whatever? Can you give us that kind of information? We could make a recommendation for you prior to Tuesday, yes. That'd be great. Thank you. I think that would be very helpful. Is there any other questions on the amendment? Let's see. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to ask, in what order are the projects completed? Is there, like, some, you know, council members are saying that, well, we need them now. But my question, I guess, is if the ones that are already in the pipeline and the $7 million that hasn't been spent of projects we already identified and funded, will those have to be completed first before any on our current list? Is that, I don't know, Jeff, Mr. Reed, someone from parks? Commissioner or CAO. I don't know. I want to make sure that we're clear that you realize that that $7 million that hasn't been spent, that's not all parks. Okay, that's just fun balance. So, yeah, don't let us lead you to the fact that these are all parks projects. Well, thank you. We've got these in numerous places. That's why I thought if you saw this list, it might clarify that for you. Okay, well, I'm asking, though, thank you, but just for parks. So I know that, for instance, I have bathrooms outstanding in Masterson. I know that there's engineering work being done. I know that it's in progress and probably won't be finished or even started until later this fall. So even if we add to the list that we already funded. You're concerned that the projects that are in the mill now could be further delayed. Well, would any be moved forward? Are we going to just go down the list of when they were funded? I think we have to address what we have now, even if we get additional projects and get an attempt to get caught up. So the projects that are in the mill now have to come before projects that are added onto the list. Yours and Masterson, I think we're making some progress. we've got to go on and continue on to what project's completed and not switch to another project, if that's what you're asking. Well, not just that one. Okay, so let's say there's a project that hasn't even begun yet, that we funded a basketball court, I believe, in the Highlands, or resurfacing one. I don't know that that's even begun. So then let's say we do fund tonight one of these on this list that some council members feel is more urgent than my resurfacing. Could any of those change order is my question. They have in the past, obviously. Okay. And, you know, there's a number of reasons that you go from one project to another. Ease group bidding projects together. There's a number of things that move the track along and change the track. So, yes, they can change that way. But again, the problem we've been dealing with from the outset is a glut of projects that we've gotten, not a glut. As we come out of tight economic times, there's a large pent-up need that we are now attempting to address with staff that was reflective in numbers in a time where the budget was much tighter. And we've got a crunch. We are making progress. These projects are starting to move along, but we just keep getting more and more to do. I understand. And I appreciate Council Member Lawless bringing this up, and I would like to see this maybe as a – and maybe they do it, I'm not sure, but a task every year from the Parks Department, similar to what our Roads Department does, is doing an assessment of all of the parks and ranking them in some sort of order of need or disappear. Well, it goes back to the point that the council has been making for some time, and I think what we've been talking about is an overall plan. Well, that would be good to. And what parks get attention and what parks are going to emphasize what services. And we have a master plan, but we don't use our master plan very well. And then we get a lot of projects which don't have anything to do with anybody's master plan. It has to do with you all identifying needs in your area. So we've got to get a plan that we can stick to and have some overall all-encompassing idea of where we need to go at these parks. Yes, I agree with the plan. And that's why Brad Chambers is here today to hear all this, too. Oh, I'm glad he's here. Our new parks director is here. That's great. I agree with the plan, but I think that there's also just basic equipment. There's slides at my parks. There's slides in the 3rd District. There's slides in... And you identify those, and our staff identifies those. And our staff has a good idea of where the needs are, but it comes back to a question of money. I don't think what we're seeing now is a lack of the ability of parks to know where the problems are and where the needs are. We haven't had sufficient funding. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. This knee-jerk reaction, I guess, for lack of a better term, to shut everything down until we know exactly where we are, is valid to an extent. I made one request for $3,000 to work on a bridge in Zandale Park in concert with the Lansdowne Neighborhood Association. They've started. Now, I'm going to pull my $3,000 away from them so they can complete the... The park's been there for 30 years, and people couldn't access it. The bridge would only handle squirrels. It couldn't handle real live people. And so now we've gotten to the idea that maybe we want to go ahead and let some people back in that park. And, I mean, there are other ways to do it. And, you know, one would be NDF, I guess, sometime around the 2nd of July. But just going ahead and throwing that project, the only project I have, actually, away with the bathwater, it just doesn't go with me. And I wanted everybody else to join in. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lawless? Just quickly, I agree with Council Member Beard that sounds pretty squirrely and that we do have professional staff that know where the problems are. And what we've done in the past is, again, rather than allocating money to parks to objectively identify the greatest need, we have voted on what projects in parks should be done. And, you know, I just don't think that's a really good way to do it because it isn't about, you know, that's not, in my mind, that's not our job. It's our job to bring it to their attention that, you know, we're getting complaints about this or that and, you know, ask for their advice and guidance. guidance, but I really think it's our job to allocate money and have their professional staff identify which ones are of greatest need. And I will be more than happy to help build your bridge. Thank you. Seeing no further council members, we will go ahead and vote on Council Member Acres' amendment. it. Councilmember Akers. Can I just withdraw the motion or amendment to the motion? You want to withdraw it? You can withdraw it if you'd like. Yes, I would like to withdraw it. Thank you. The second would agree to withdraw? Who was the second on that? Farmer? Boy, that's parliamentary and he's not here but then we'll just vote on it okay all those in favor of the amendment vote yay all those against it vote nay well there we go that fails uh three to seven now on the original motion by council member k Any discussion on that? Could you repeat it, please? Council Member Kaye, would you repeat the motion, please? The motion as it now stands is to postpone discussion of the parks projects until the October review of the fund balance. with what I added was a provisor or an understanding that, of course, people can propose exceptions to that just as they can propose anything else when we meet on Tuesday. But basically the default position would be the proposals that have been made about funding for parks projects would be postponed until October. Thank you. Council Member Lane, you had a... I was merely going to ask for this motion to be stated. Thank you. Okay. Any further discussion? Could we reset the vote total? All those in favor, say aye and vote yay. And those opposed, nay. And that fails 3-2-8. So we will move on. And the next item on our agenda today was to look at the review of the link recommendations on page 16. And we did go through all this discussion. This is just put in a spreadsheet here to let each person know. But I think at least one has changed their recommendations. I chaired the general government. And as you can see at the bottom, we had a couple of recommendations that we brought up in the meeting. And they were just in different funds. I think I'm going to hold off on this finance and social services because I think that probably would be the longest discussion, and we'll come back to you all. Public safety link. Councilmember Henson, is there anything here that's new that we haven't addressed? Okay. Environmental quality and public works link. Who was the chair? I'm going to turn it. It was Farmer, and I don't think there's any. yeah there's no no change from change there for one two three four we still have eight so we have a quorum and then the general services and planning link is there any new items in that one from that committee that link hearing none we'll now go back to the finance and social services link and I will ask councilmember Ford if you could lead that discussion because I think you councilman beer okay councilman beer and you were chair that but you spoke last time for two I wasn't sure who was gonna be the one again you have your voice back I had oral surgery that day problem I couldn't talk very well with a big wad of gauze in my mouth actually we we met again in fact we met a couple of times and it works and works of numbers and we may have a little better approach to this whole situation with the various and sundry entities and you were right actually because council member Ford is the one that has done the numbers and he is going to present today Thank you, Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. And I guess if you could go through where we were and where we are now, because I think there's been some policy change out besides just some numbers change, too, I think, because the ones who were in the proposed, if I'm correct, in the mayor's proposed budget, I think percentages have been changed, too, if I'm not mistaken. That's correct, Council Member Ellinger. the recommendation that I'll start with the original recommendation of the link. The original recommendation of the link extended roughly $460,000 to be included for social service partner agencies. The mayor's proposed budget called for funding of $2.6 million approximately. And our link met with almost 20 agencies, and we brought forth recommended funding totaling about $460,000 again. However, the funding that we recommended did not go in concert with the rankings and the scoring that the Department of Social Services led through its application process. And then we, Council Member Beard, Council Member Akers, and I, as the link for finance and social services, we reconvened to attempt to reconcile some of the concerns that we heard from council members. So I'll ask if Connie, if you can go to the overhead, please, not the listing of the specific programs, but the summary that represents our amended link recommendation. That one or the list? Let's try this one. As this is all loading, Council Member Elegor, what I will say is that originally in the mayor's proposed budget, there were 31 programs recommended for funding, and those programs rank from 1 through 31. The original council link added 12 programs, again totaling 460, but they did not rank identically from 32 sequentially on down. Our recommendation now, and if you can enlarge that because I want to try to read from the screen. summarizes as such. And council members, if you can bear with me, this will make sense here really soon. And again, we're not focusing on line item projects, but our amended recommendation as a link is to increase the total funding by a net number of 349,552. There's some rounding there, I think, in the report it says 570, but that gets us there. Again, the mayor's proposed budget was $2,587,380. So as amended, our link recommendation is almost $3 million. It's $2,936,932. And this is how we have arrived at this new link recommendation. we are proposing to reallocate the funding percentages and to reappropriate in order of the ranked scores that were brought to us by the Department of Social Services. If you look at the two charts, on the left-hand side, you have the mayor's proposed budget, again at $2.58 million, and you have on the right-hand side our revised length recommendation. Before I go any further, I want to thank Commissioner Mills and Craig Benz of her staff for helping us with this data. Originally, under the funding work group that worked with the Department of Social Services and our committee, on the left-hand side, they categorized the projects by scores. I think there were a total of 73 program applications that were brought forth, and they were ranked by their score. I think the total score was 140 or 145. And you see those there. So as you look across comparison both on the mayor's proposed budget and the link recommendation, we did not reclassify the projects based on where they scored. So there were seven that scored at 135. There were seven that scored between 125 and 135, et cetera. What we did was recognizing that we had $6.3 million in requests, and we're working in a neighborhood of $2.5 to $3 million in available funds. How can we best spread those out? So instead of 95% funding recommendation for the top scoring projects, we reduced it to 80, the next group 70, the next group 60. And then the mayor in his proposed budget added two projects that were already at 50%. And finally, our recommendation brings forth the next 25 projects at an additional 690,444. Again, going back to a net of roughly $350,000, but because the reallocation of the funding percentages shows a decrease from what was originally recommended, and Connie has done a great job in our link packet to show you guys the plus and the minus difference. So, Mr. Chair, that represents the revised link recommendation. It's in concert of almost $3 million. dollars. That's up from 2.3 in the fiscal year 15 budget. We sent the email and every council member has the applicable projects, respective projects as shown, but I on behalf of the link will answer any questions if there are any. Council member Lane. Thanks, Chairman. Is Commissioner Mills here? She is. Commissioner Mills? come on down. When the idea came up to provide additional funding, the primary concern, I agree that we need to do some additional funding, but my concern was to have equity and fairness in the way we redistributed the money with additional funding. Have you gone over this carefully, and are you recommending that these numbers be adopted and it would be fair and equitable to the organizations involved? This is the council recommendation. This is not ours. We stand by our original recommendation, which was then amended by the mayor and then by the council, which is your prerogative. We did the math for Mr. Ford, but this is not our recommendation. Okay. So if I'm interpreting what you're saying, that you don't think this is necessarily fair and equitable based on the way you've evaluated it. Is that what you're saying? I mean, you can Come right out and say that. I'm not going to be offended. No, the only problem that we have is there's an additional $350,000, but $340,000 have been reallocated from the programs that were originally awarded. All right. So I guess my concern is they were originally awarded by a committee following the process, and those agencies that are planning for 95% of their funding in next year's budget are now at 80 and so forth. So of the $350,000 you've added, of the people that have been awarded, they're losing $340,000 of that $350,000. So that was our problem. So if those percentages had been awarded in the beginning and it had been our recommendation, I might feel differently. However, if this council feels this is what they want to do with this money, you certainly have the prerogative to do that. It's just not our department's recommendation. Councilmember Ford, Councilman Lane, do you have anything else? Yeah, I was going to do a follow-up question on that. Would there be any way, well, the first question is, when you made the initial awards, did we actually send a letter to somebody and say, based on our evaluation, you're receiving this much funding? No, they will not get that letter until the budget's final. So we have not finalized anything. They are told that everything is in progress until such time as the budget's finished. What did happen here, though, the partner agencies that have been following this, there are two agencies that were not awarded in the original process. And then when the 12 agencies were picked, they were awarded. And now they're not awarded again. So we have some things like that that happened with the redo. And that's just something you need to be aware of. But we have told agencies everything is tentative until the budget's final. If we were to provide an additional $340,000 to make up the deficiency from the first selection, the awards or calculations, would that help any at all? Or that would be a move question? That would be y'all's recommendation how to do that. And, you know, we gave you our best recommendation. The mayor picked up the next two agencies in scoring, and now it's whatever y'all want to do with it. If you want to add money, it's up to you how to distribute it, frankly. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield to Council Member Ford. Yeah, I think, Council Member Ford, you wanted to follow up on that? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And again, I want to thank Commissioner Mills and Craig for being very professional and objective for helping with the arithmetic. but part of the link discussion that brought us to our recommendation and Council Member Lane raises a great question and I speak from experience as on the side of a sub-recipient and a grantee it's never final until it's final so we have one, not adopted the budget we're still working on the mayor's proposed budget and the link is exercising its role to provide a recommendation to the council And it's not as if we have already sent PSAs, agreements, to these subrecipients, and we are sending amended agreements, decreasing funds. The actual matter of the fact is that no funds have been awarded to date. Secondly, we also recognize that, but we understand how that may be a disappointment. But on balance, we thought that each of the impacted agencies who were originally recommended for more would understand and appreciate the council links and the council's attempt to be as fair as possible with the limited funding that we have. There was also a concern that was raised when we reported out, and we do think that the 10 or 12 agencies that we brought forth with the original link recommendation were solid programs. But we did consider those programs that would have been in the gap, you know, the ones who ranked higher but were not funded. they very well could have had a real issue to demonstrate in regards to us not staying with the rank and score process. So that was part of our discussion. But I will say this, again, thanking Commissioner Mills, but the mayor presented this budget. The department has a process. But it's the council's role how to deal with the budget and limit the resources. So the discussion is ours at this point. It's the mayor's proposed budget, but the council is the one who passes it. You're correct. Councilman Marquet. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner, a couple of questions about the way the process has unfolded. The decision about where to make the first cut, that is, in the scoring mechanism, was that made before the scores were all compiled or was that made after so was the committee looking at all of the the scoring sheet and you and somebody said was it was it determined before you had the list or after that you were going to you were going to a score of 130 would be a place to make a cut in the first category and that well I'll do it really so the 135. So the first seven projects, the highest scoring projects, they're proposed now for originally proposed for 95% funding. How was the decision made about where to make the cut and what the percentage of allocation you would? There was a work group with two council members, two members of the social service advisory board, and two members from the mayor's office. Those six people sat in a room. They were given a baseline amount of money, $2.3 million, which is what we awarded last year, and that's what we were told to start with. And they were given a variety of scenarios. And I know last year the top agencies were funded at 75%. We had many more applications this year. These six people deliberated, and the determination was made that they could make more impact by giving the highest scores more money this year. And so when we got to the end of $2.3 million, we had to find what score that stopped at because we just didn't have enough money to keep going down the list. So that's how the decision was made. So the decision about where to make the first cut between 134 and 135 was made by that committee? Yes, it was. And the decision about what percentage to allocate to that highest category was made by that committee? That's correct. And the rationale for making those decisions, I think you've already alluded to, but can you repeat? Okay, it was the impact that those agencies could make. Last year, we had fewer applicants, for example, and we gave all but two agencies were funded so people were used to getting the money, but a lot of those agencies got 51%. The committee this year felt like the agencies that scored the highest deserve the highest reward and that if they received 95%, they could make a greater impact with the money they had because they should be rewarded for scoring high on the grant proposal. Okay. And so thank you. I appreciate that. I think my concern about the revised proposal is that it so broadens the bottom of the pool that it takes, essentially it's taking money from the people, from the agencies that have scored the highest, and it is allocating it to folks who may be completely deserving but did not score as well in this process. We've broadened the pool substantially. It means there's a lot less funding for the people who scored at the highest levels, And I presume that reflects the importance and the value of the service they're providing. So I don't know. I don't have a proposal about an alternative. But it seems to me as we go through this process, at every step, what's suggested to me is that we need to further refine our understanding at the council level about the policy that we're trying to set. So it may be that council in the next iteration, doesn't fix this one, but in the next iteration, council may need to sit down and think about the percentage of funding and essentially categories and how many people need to be in them and what that means about how we want to spend council money. So that's going forward. And for the moment, I don't have a proposal about how to be as fair as possible to all of the applicants. And anybody who has this list in front of them knows that all of these agencies are doing good work. And there's no one of them that doesn't have a claim to some kind of support from urban county government. But we do have limited resources, and we're going to have to make some hard decisions. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I think Council Member Ford had a comment on this. And then it will be Councilman Clark. Thank you, Councilmember. I just want to, I know this is kind of unorthodox, but I just want to respond to give some insight on behalf of the link to the great questions that the council members are raising. In regards to the score, one change, and I was on the funding group, and I think this was an outstanding recommendation that was brought forth by one of our members. Heretofore in years prior, we would classify based on rank. So we would have whoever ranked 1 through 10 at 95%, whoever ranked that 11 through 20 at 80%. But the recommendation, which was a wise one, was made, well, what does ranking 1 through 10 really mean? You know, what is the, we thought that the score was the better descriptor of the merit and the value of the project competitively. So that was important. One thing that was also brought to us is that every program application pledged and attest that their program equated to no more than 20% of their overall budget. So in sum, we originally, as part of the funding group, as I was a member, we thought that awarding the higher level of percentage funding to the higher scores would allow for greater outcomes. That may be true. But based on the discussions that we've had, attempting to do more with less, for more with less might be an alternative. But that was a clear distinction I wanted to share based on the score versus the ranking. Thank you. Councilmember Clark. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to ask Councilmember Ford a couple of questions, maybe clear up in my own mind. Councilmember Ford, kind of the same question that Councilmember Kay was asking about the process, the original process. In your deliberations, what led you to draw the line at a particular point? point and a second part of the question is how many requests were left out entirely the request based on our amended link recommendation there were 73 total programs and now our recommendation will take the funded programs at some level to 56 what led us to the number that we have which is 2.9 all intents and purposes $3 million. It's a just part and part discussion that we heard when we reported out. I think he wouldn't mind me saying Council Member Stenet mentioned that ideally we ought to spend 1% of our general fund at least at a minimum on social services. That's also reflected Council Member Clark in the fact that our link recommendation now is roughly $110,000 less than it was last week. It's not that our original gain asked was $460 and we wanted to stay to it. We thought it's better to stick to that $3 million that had been expressed to us in our original report out as a baseline, and then we go down from there. Thank you. That's helpful. My other thought was it's just an observation that perhaps in the future, maybe one thing we ought to do is once a process is established, this process ought to come to the council and have it discussed by the council and agreed to. So when we come to this point, we use the process that has been established no matter what. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Scotchfield. Thank you, Chair. Chris, you and I have spoken about this, And, you know, I have a lot of reservations about this. You know, the process was established two years or last year. There were problems, and we changed the process again last year. This year we seem to be changing the process again. I am very concerned about the precedent we are setting with people, us changing our way basically after we've come up with the results. If we really want to give everybody money, and we have so many worthy, everybody on the list is worthy of funding. They're all great organizations. But if we're truly sitting there and trying to give the organizations money, we do have a finite amount. We cannot spend $10 million every year on these agencies. Divide them equally between. If we have 70, divide whatever number by 72. But that's not going to make people happy. We had the ranking system in place. We awarded them a larger chunk because they did rank, according to our process, higher on that list. And further, I have a concern with we have people that came to us after a grant process, and anybody that has worked in a nonprofit organization knows that the grant process is not a guaranteed give. You're not guaranteed that money. They are reviewed by a panel just like this one was. We even put in another one where the people who reviewed it were not the people that granted the money. I have a small child that likes to throw temper tantrums when I don't give him what he wants. If I give him what he wants every single time, guess what he's going to do every single time? And I'm concerned that we are really setting ourselves up for just snowball effect. And finally, looking at the amounts, we did have a discussion that the 50% funding was not enough money for a lot of these organizations to do their programs. And so finally, that's what I ended on, is we left the funding amounts where they were because it seemed to be able to give the most bang for the buck. We ran, I mean, Chris, we ran every scenario we could think of in order to reward the ranking system that we set up. So thank you, Chair. And Chris, thank you. And I know that we want to do what we can do for everybody. I just have major reservations with it. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. First of all, I want to thank everybody involved in going through these grants and doing the ranking and making these decisions. And I guess one of the things that concerns me is that it wasn't the council's decision to give such high amounts to the 95%, et cetera. That was the group of people. And, of course, you can do more with 95% than you can with 50%, but you can't do anything with nothing. So for many of these, and then the other part is that there were several agencies that were funded at 95 or 80 percent that were the same agencies that wrote multiple grants for multiple programs. So they got a huge piece of the pie. And then there were agencies that maybe only did one or two and were completely, I mean, for these, especially the smaller agencies, it chops the legs off of them. and they're really critical agencies to people in our community. And I think we just need to continue to work on the process, and I certainly understand changing it after it's been said, but it hadn't been passed yet. But when you look at how many of these agencies have been funded and who have done extremely good work in this community for a long time on a shoestring are now completely, it completely cuts their legs off. And I have, you know, I think that's really serious that we're leaving huge gaps in services that are extremely needed in our community. So I'm going to support the LINC recommendation on this. And hopefully we can come up with a better way or one of us can win the lottery. but that's what I have to say about it is you know of course I can do more if I make $200,000 a year than if I make a hundred thousand but if I make nothing I can't do anything so thank you thank you uh councilmember Myers has a question comes before is that okay and then I have I want to follow a question after that councilmember well Myers thank you Mr. Chair I don't really a question i just was going to make a comment and i i appreciate what council member ford's attempting to do here um remember a couple of a couple of social services meetings ago i had made a motion that we we passed out a committee and we passed it as a council i believe that the administration is looking at some different options for raising the dollar amount that we put towards our partner agency spend each year and i don't know if it's going to be a percentage of the the general fund or some type of a formula or whatever it is but they're working diligently on that and they're supposed to come back after we come off break with that information so i just want to say i appreciate what councilman ford's trying to do here today but i'm i look forward to what the administration brings forward um and then we can go from there and vet that and maybe tweak that a little bit or or just pass it the way they present it but in future years we're going to have more money i think towards our social services spend and so I appreciate that and I appreciate our process. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Ford, mine's just one that I could look at kind of a matrix. We had the mayor's proposed budget with their recommendations. We had the finance and social services link recommendation number one, and then now we have number two. Is there a way we could get those kind of put into some kind of matrix or something to look at so we I'm sorry I can add them to the list that I gave you today so we can look at it because I don't think we're not gonna be able to make any decision today but when we look at on Tuesday right that way you can see what what's what we had what was changed and be able to look at those accordingly okay I think we we can council member what was emailed out yesterday is the overhead that you have listed which I consider the kind of summary page, and then the spreadsheet that has the score ranks highlighted with different color on the Excel rows has a lot of data. It just requires us to put the original link recommendation back in. It does have the fiscal year 14 funding. It has the request, the work group recommendation, and then also the mayor's proposed budget at the original numbers. So I guess that that can go forth. Here's one thing I would like to ask the committee, though, Council Member Ellinger, is that as a comment and then a question. The first comment is that what we've brought forth today is only the amended recommendation as it pertains to financials. If you guys remember, there were many non-financial recommendations that really talked about improving the process. And so I say that to kind of encourage the council. Council Member Myers really got this started a couple of years ago. This is not a perfect process, but it's miles ahead of where we used to be in regards to that. Council Member Lawless was correct in that the percentage allocations, again, this is a budget process. Those are recommendations that are included in the mayor's budget. But this is really now the time that the council, as a full, has allowed the opportunity to shuffle those as we wish. There was one other thing that's really going to help in the reform of the process going forward, and I know Commissioner Mills and her staff are up to it, is the creation by policy that we created, the Office of Homelessness. That's going to perhaps change how we deal with these issues and this pot of money kind of going forward. In regards to the original link recommendation, though, Mr. Chair, I would say we can provide the information as requested. And I say this as respectfully as we can. What we've brought forth today, I think is much better than we brought forth originally. And I would venture out just personally to say that if we had brought it originally, I think the entire council would perhaps be embracing. But that's not how the process worked. Pencils have erasers for a reason. And what also the link responded to what the council said at the report hour. It said, go in order, stick to the rankings, and it said increase the funding. and that's exactly what we've brought forth back. I'm not trying to push the council, but just trying to, and I will also say. And I agree in a lot of what you've done. I wish we had kind of done this the first time, but it's hard when, and I know agencies when they look at that mayor's proposed budget, until it is passed, that does not tell them what money they're getting. But when you see that number, I know they start thinking that's what they're going to have. And then when you start deducting and adding to others, I'd like to be able to keep the original and add to it like you did in the second. And if we need to add more to it, then I would be willing to do that, too. But I hate for someone to have kind of expectation one and we kind of take Peter to pay Paul. And I wish we'd keep Peter and give more to Paul. But that's just my thoughts. Council Member Akers. Thank you. There's never going to be enough money for social services. And so as a policymaking body and a government, I think that we need to consider and prioritize what we think we should be funding. And that's what I believe the Budget Link first tried to do. We didn't go straight down the list from the rankings because we wanted to prioritize basic human services above other programs. programs. The council didn't really agree with that process, so we went back and tweaked it a little bit and came up with this proposal. But while I endorsed it to bring forward today, personally, I preferred our last proposal. So I think that in all things that require human review and human consideration. There's going to be flaws. I think that our process is flawed on the application as a whole for partner agencies. The reviewers were not consistent and didn't score all apps. So there might be, you know, four that scored this 10 and another four that scored this 10 and another four that scored another 10. And so when you don't have that consistency, you're not going to get consistent scoring. And the reviewers, one bad score could tank someone's application for whatever reason, whether they didn't like the organization or whether they just had a bad day. And I think that that's unfair. And I think that we, if we're looking to be as fair and just and equitable as possible, that really we have to go back and revise the process. This attempt and this presentation today is our attempt to be as fair and equitable as possible across all agencies. But in the future, I think that we need to, again, go back to some of our recommendations. If you have five and throw out the top and bottom score, that's a much more equitable way to score the applications and not allowing the one single score to bring someone's overall score down. And lastly, back to Council Member Lawless's point, she mentioned to me off the mic that two agencies, two of the agencies funded through the original recommendation received 45% of the overall budget of partner agency funding. And so that, again, says to me, and that we saw it from the rankings, that multimillion-dollar nonprofits have the capacity to hire development professionals and grant writers to compete, and that that is an advantage over small, tiny nonprofits with a $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 annual budget. And so I think that we need to consider giving potentially a bonus or some type of extra credit for basic human services that the government, I think, should be in the business of funding over other extraneous, possibly, services. And then also giving some consideration for really small nonprofits that do really good work in neighborhoods and in communities and don't have the capacity for professional grant writers that then they don't score as high, so then they're not funded. And so, but again, you know, I will state that this was our attempt to be as fair and equitable to fund more organizations and to include and to be, again, just as fair as we could be based on the recommendations of council in our last presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I agree with a lot of what Councilmember Akers said, and I just want to go back to a few years ago in social services. We tried to put that partnership together with United Way and with the two different departments at UK, and part of that was going to be grant writing so that it wouldn't just be the agencies out there writing for grants. We would have somebody on LFUCG's behalf writing for grants based on our funding preferences, and, you know, that got shot down. And so hopefully maybe next year or later on this year we can look at going that direction again. But, you know, the bottom line is you were right in saying that there's never going to be enough money. But absent of that, we have to make the pie bigger somehow. And it's not robbing from Peter to pay Paul, like Councilman O'Neill said. It's finding a way to increase the pie and doing that in a way that is responsible. And we're funding agencies that are getting results. so we know what's going on with the money that we're spending. So I hope that when the administration brings back their recommendation for increasing that funding, they're going to have a plan to go along with that. And I look forward to digging into that and seeing what we can come up with to make this all better for everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no further people, council members, on the list, we will move forward, and we're going to have to address all these on Tuesday. Now, I want to move back, and we're going to have to make a motion because after speaking with law, they have decided that we're going to have to actually, for that Thursday meeting, we're going to have to have it as instead of a special budget cow, we need to make it a special work session because if we have to bring anything out of there, make any kind of votes, we need to do it as a work session. So would anybody like to entertain that motion, please? I have a motion and a second. I can motion by Council Member Laws, second by Council Member Myers. Any discussion on that? Seeing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? That passes, and we will put that notice out there. Seeing nothing else to deal with today, we will have to pick up on Tuesday, and I would say we'll have to initially, and we'll get back the information from the administration about the questions that we asked, but the revenue will be the first issue I think we'll need to address, and then we'll have to go through and vote on what we want to add or subtract from the budget. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Motion. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed. We stand adjourned. Thank you.