# Social Services & Community Development Committee - August 26, 2014 > Auto-transcribed civic record · August 26, 2014 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3439 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3439?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2014-08-26 - **Last revised**: July 15, 2026 - **Length**: 15,028 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Social Services & Community Development Committee met on August 26, 2014, at 11:00 a.m., with Ford presiding. The committee addressed five agenda items, including approval of the Committee Summary, three informational presentations, and one deferred item. The committee took four votes during the meeting and heard six public comments. The approved Committee Summary was the only item to receive a formal vote and approval. Three presentations were delivered on the Lexington Area Workforce Analysis, the Partner Agency Outcomes Process Year-End Report, and an update from the Office of Homelessness Prevention & Intervention. Items referred to the committee were deferred for future consideration. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on August 26, 2014: * Ford * Akers * Ellinger * Kay * Lawless * Stinnett * Scutchfield * Myers * Beard * Lane No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included four motions, all of which passed. **April 22, 2014 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:02:34] A motion to approve the April 22, 2014 committee summary was made by Beard and seconded by Akers. The motion passed by voice vote. **Amendment to Section 5-1-07 of the Code of Ordinances** [timestamp: 0:02:34] A motion to amend section 5-1-07 of the Code of Ordinances to allow excess funds in the Tenant Relocation Fund to be allocated to other relocation assistance programs was made by Myers and seconded by Scutchfield. The motion passed unanimously. **Emergency Temporary Relocation Fund** [timestamp: 0:02:34] A motion to create an Emergency Temporary Relocation Fund was made by Myers and seconded by Scutchfield. The motion passed unanimously. **Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board Fiscal Agent** [timestamp: 0:02:34] A motion to endorse the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board's attempt to identify a new fiscal agent independent of the Bluegrass Area Development District was made by Ford and seconded by Myers. The motion passed unanimously. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting approved two significant financial commitments: **Workforce Study Funding** The body approved $50,000 in funding for an in-depth workforce study of the Central Kentucky area with a focus on Fayette County. This purchase was authorized under Resolution 0073-26 and directed to Commerce Lexington as the recipient. **Housing First Pilot Project** The body approved $200,000 in grant funding for a Housing First pilot project to be awarded through a Request for Proposal (RFP) process. The grant will be distributed to proposed providers selected through the competitive bidding process. ## Public Comment Six speakers addressed the meeting with questions and concerns regarding workforce development and housing initiatives. **Workforce Study Data Collection** Stinnett [0:23:27] asked whether the workforce study would collect income data and emphasized the importance of linking workforce development with quality of life improvements, identifying internet access as a key barrier to employment. **Stakeholder Inclusion in Workforce Study** Akers [0:31:45] inquired about the inclusion of transportation providers such as Lex Tran and human services representatives in the study. Akers also suggested involving university students to support data analysis efforts. Henson [0:36:17] highlighted the importance of including agencies like the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation in workforce development planning. Henson emphasized that employment barriers extend beyond job skills and include mental health issues, substance abuse, and childcare needs. **Housing First Model Implementation** Myers [0:18:59] asked about the feasibility of implementing the Housing First model and requested information about lessons learned from similar programs in Chattanooga and Nashville. Myers also questioned how housing would be sourced under this model. Clark [1:22:19] asked how housing would be provided under the Housing First approach and stressed the need for coordination between affordable housing initiatives and homelessness services. Ellinger [1:25:36] requested a timeline for the Housing First pilot project, including when the program would begin and the process for selecting participants. ## Appointments The following appointment was made during this meeting: * **Charlie Lantern** was appointed to the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention. ## Contested Items **Housing First Model Implementation** The meeting included a split vote on the Housing First model implementation. While there was broad support for the model overall, several concerns emerged during discussion. Participants raised questions about funding mechanisms, the availability of adequate housing stock, and the need for stronger provider accountability measures. A particular point of focus was whether providers should be required to participate in the HMIS (Homeless Management Information System), with this requirement viewed as essential to ensuring accountability across the system. **HMIS System Participation** A heated discussion developed regarding mandatory participation in the HMIS system. The central disagreement centered on whether non-participating agencies should be required to use the system. Participants expressed concerns about unfunded mandates—the potential burden of requiring participation without corresponding financial support—and about privacy controls within the system. Despite the intensity of the debate, consensus ultimately emerged that compliance with HMIS participation was necessary, though the specific mechanisms for implementation and support remained points of contention. ## Committee Summary Approval The committee approved the summary from the April 22, 2014 meeting [timestamp: 00:02:34]. Council Member Beard made the motion to approve the summary, which was seconded by Council Member Akers. The motion passed with approval. ## Lexington Area Workforce Analysis Billie Peebler of the Business and Education Network presented a proposal for a comprehensive workforce study of Central Kentucky [timestamp: 00:03:08]. The presentation outlined plans for an in-depth analysis examining multiple dimensions of the regional labor market. The proposed study will focus on three primary areas: * Supply and demand dynamics in the Central Kentucky workforce * Career pathways and workforce development opportunities * Application of the collective impact model to workforce challenges The research will involve systematic data collection and analysis to develop actionable recommendations for the region. This informational presentation introduced the scope and methodology of the workforce analysis initiative without debate or discussion of concerns. The outcome of this agenda item was informational, with the presentation serving to inform attendees about the planned workforce study and its objectives. ## Partner Agency Outcomes Process – Year-End Report [timestamp: 0:41:39] Commissioner Beth Mills presented the FY2014 partner agency outcomes report to the board. The presentation highlighted overall program performance across the partner agency network. **Key Findings** According to the report, 66% of programs achieved or exceeded their established goals for the fiscal year. This metric demonstrates the majority of partner agencies successfully met their performance targets. **Fund Reallocation** Two programs did not meet their goals and consequently returned their allocated funds. Rather than allowing these resources to remain unused, the board directed the returned funds toward expanding summer meal access for children. This reallocation prioritized a critical service area and ensured efficient use of available resources. **Outcome** The presentation was informational in nature, providing the board with year-end accountability data on partner agency performance and documenting the decision to redirect unspent funds to increase summer meal programming for children. ## Office of Homelessness Prevention & Intervention – Update Charlie Lantern, Director of the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention, presented a 90-day progress update on the office's initiatives [timestamp: 0:57:26]. **Key Initiatives Presented** The presentation covered three main areas of progress: - Launch of an RFP (Request for Proposals) for a Housing First pilot project - Efforts to transition federal continuum of care funding - Plans for establishing a new governance board **Outcome** This was an informational presentation with no formal action items or debate recorded. ## Items Referred to Committee [timestamp: 1:28:20] The committee discussed several items that had been referred for further consideration. The discussion focused on three main areas: workforce training issues, partner agency funding commitments, and a proposed reorganization of the homeless office. **Key Speakers** Myers and Ford led the discussion on these referred items. **Topics Discussed** The committee addressed workforce training issues and examined the level of commitment to partner agency funding. Additionally, the committee considered a proposed reorganization that would place the homeless office under the Department of Social Services. **Outcome** The committee agreed to defer action and keep the workforce and funding items for further review. This decision allowed for continued examination of these matters before final action would be taken. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to approve the April 22, 2014 committee summary - **Motion** — passed: Motion to amend section 5-1-07 of the Code of Ordinances to allow excess funds in the Tenant Relocation Fund to be allocated to other relocation assistance programs - **Motion** — passed: Motion to create an Emergency Temporary Relocation Fund - **Motion** — passed: Motion to endorse the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board’s attempt to identify a new fiscal agent independent of the Bluegrass Area Development District --- ## Full transcript It's hard describing a heartache, all cause it's a one of a kind thing. A serious injury And a whole lot of endless pain If it was a storm guitar solo . . . . . Good morning. I'd like to welcome everybody to our committee meeting of the Social Services and Community Development Committee. Today is August 26th. I'll call the meeting to order. We have a quorum. The first item of business is the committee summary approval from our meeting on April 22nd. Pages 1 through 3 of your summary, is there a motion to approve? Second. There's a motion by Council Member Beard, second by Council Member Akers. Any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. That motion carries. Committee members, we have three agenda items today. The first one is in regards to a longstanding issue in our committee. There's been a lot of work to date, and we have some more good information in regards to the Lexington area workforce analysis. We would like to welcome to committee Ms. Billie Peebler, who serves as the executive director of the Business and Education Network as part of Commerce Lexington. We were introduced to her work last Tuesday at work session, and we're fortunate to have Billie here today. So again, Billie, welcome. Thank you. Okay, so as Council knows last week we did present that we are going to do an in-depth workforce study of the Central Kentucky area with a focus on Fayette County especially. So as Councilman Ford said, my name is Billy Peevler. I do work for the Business and Education Network. I'm the Executive Director. We are in partnership with Commerce Lexington. We are kind of that workforce arm that supports the economic development team there. I've been in this position for a year, so it's been a wonderful learning experience for me to truly understand community workforce development, economic development within our community and how things work, and look at other communities and what they're doing as well. Previously, I spent 24 years at Toyota, did a lot of different things there, so I won't go into that, but I did a lot of human development and skill development, and I think as everyone here knows, Toyota has been a strong voice in our community for workforce development and skill development, and always saying they're struggling to find that skilled labor that they need, thus working in partnership with BCTC and creating that AMT program that they have there now. And now they're sharing that and transforming that, growing that region-wide with various employers and bringing them on in an organization called Kentucky Fame. So you'll begin to hear more about that organization. They are a national model. and they're doing some really good things in workforce development pertaining to one particular industry need, and that's the integrated maintenance technician. So I'm not going to talk about that today. I just kind of wanted to throw that out to you and let you know that there is some good work going on there. So if you're not aware of what they're doing, definitely give me a call. I'll be glad to connect you and share more with you. Okay, forward. There we go. So what we as the Business and Education Network, in partnership with LFUCG, we are going to do an in-depth workforce study in Central Kentucky. We're going to provide an initial data analysis, and we're going to talk about recommendations for action. So one thing I've heard all along is we've been doing workforce development for 20 years, and we're not making a difference. We're not getting anywhere with this. We're not closing the gaps. So we want to take that data, we want to look at it, and then we want to do something with it. Okay, along with that, we'll provide a full report and an executive summary. I'm going to suggest some models for addressing those gaps. And again, that goes back to what we've been doing has not been working or isn't working to the fullest needs of what our customers are saying those customers are our employers. They're saying we can't find the skilled workforce that we need. There are gaps, and we've got to address those. Then we'll share that information with stakeholders and community partners and gain support for a community-wide problem-solving initiative. This is our ultimate goal, is to solve the problems, identify the barriers, and help our employers as well as those job seekers here in Kentucky. So a high-level overview of what the outline of what the report will look like. It's basic economics. We're going to look at supply and demand. So what is the labor market demanding? What are our regional job growth indicators or job demand indicators? What industries are growing? What industries have vacancies? What are the average wages? And we want to look at those industries that do pay a living wage and what their gaps are. This is not about putting people into low-paying jobs where they cannot support themselves and support their families. We want to look at historical and future job trends by each sector. And those sectors in our community, I'll share those with you in just a minute, We want to identify what the high demand jobs within those sectors are. Maybe the top five positions within each of those sectors. And then do that deeper dive. What are the jobs? What skills do those jobs require? What education is necessary? And look at the professional skills needed as well. The industry sectors we're going to look at. Advanced manufacturing, of course. We already have the BEAM initiative. So we're not going to recreate. We are going to utilize systems that are already out there that are being successful. So keep that in mind as I go through this. Business and professional services, bioscience, aerospace, construction and building trades, equine and agriculture, health care, information technology, renewable energy, transportation and distribution, and visitor industries. These are all either focus industries currently identified by our economic development team here in Lexington or industries identified as where we need to diversify as well as up and coming industries. If you notice aerospace is on there. I've learned a great deal about the aerospace industry in Kentucky. How many of you are aware that Kentucky leads the unmanned drone research? That we have a NASA scientist group at the University of Kentucky working on unmanned drones. They are very advanced and leading the way as far as the research and development of these drones. This is new technology. This is up and coming. There will be jobs. Someone will have to make these drones in the future. Right now, there's a lot of political concern and a lot of issues out there in legislation about what they can and cannot do. But one way that they can be used in Kentucky is for agriculture purposes, identifying terrain, potential for crops, where livestock is, so on and so forth. So there's a huge market for the aerospace industry here, especially in the unmanned drone industry. So we want to look at what's up and coming. There are going to be jobs out there in industries that are emerging that, because of the advances in technology and how quickly those are changing, we don't even know what those jobs are going to be. But getting as close as we possibly can to the technological needs of employers is definitely something that we want to look at. It's very important to the future success of Central Kentucky. So on the supply side, we want to look at what our current workforce pipeline is, what is the educational attainment, not just in our bachelor's degrees and above, but also our associate's degrees and those nationally recognized certifications. For every bachelor's degree, there are two jobs that require a bachelor's degree and seven jobs that require an associate's degree or a nationally recognized certificate. That is a ratio that Harvard recently came out with, and they can show you the historical timeline behind that, as well as they are predicting that to be the ratio for future jobs as well. We want to look at what our current career pathways are. I spoke to someone the other day, and I'm not sure if I mentioned it here, but manufacturing is very big in our community. But we do not, in Fayette County, have an advanced manufacturing career pathway that begins in our middle and high schools and leads us all the way to employment and gives us opportunity for work immediately after high school or pursuing a certificate and or a two-year degree, as well as providing an option for a four-year degree plus. We want to look at the demographics. What age groups are struggling with employment, race, gender? Our veterans, I know we have a lot of veterans initiatives out there, and we have a lot of veterans who are very qualified to go into many of our industries. But we may need to look at how do we need to change our employment recruiting? What do our employers need to change as well? And we want to look at those that are hard to hire. As I mentioned earlier, we want to identify what those current initiatives are. If we have an initiative, a group that's very successful in what they're doing, we definitely don't want to create something new just to support this. We want to bring those groups on board as partners. It's very important that we begin to come out of our silos and we act in community. Um, those cities and metro areas that are acting in community right now are those who are being successful in their workforce development and economic development. And I think in the next three to five years, they will make huge strides and really set themselves ahead of those communities who do not engage in those community-wide efforts. So currently, we do have the BEAM initiative, Kentucky Fame. The Home Builders Association just started a building trade school. There is a very active health care consortium in central Kentucky. There are various earn and learn programs and modern apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship programs. There are various internships and co-ops available. Job shadowing is available. The WIV does have some training initiatives, and I'm sure that there are many others that I have not included on here. So this will all be part of that study, pulling in what's already out there and are they effective. Can they help us meet the needs of our local workforce and our employers? Why are we doing this? Well, I don't think we've done a very comprehensive study of what our workforce supply and demand is. So we want to do that. And again, you'll hear me say many times that community-wide problem-solving initiative. The conditions for change are present. There is a level of dissatisfaction out there. I know council has had many conversations about what are we going to do about workforce? Are we satisfied with what's currently being offered? And there's definitely a sense of urgency. As I mentioned earlier, those communities that get workforce development are the communities that are being successful and will grow immensely over the next three to five years. We have a prime opportunity to create impactful, tangible results that can positively affect our entire community. And we've got to maintain and continuously improve our economic competitiveness on a global scale. The bottom line is we need to attract, retain, and develop the most talented, skilled, educated workforce available. Site Selection Magazine will tell you that the number one factor that businesses look at when they are considering where to locate is, is there an available workforce? You know, economic development takes into a lot of different pieces of the pie. And in order to attract, develop, and retain that workforce that we're looking for, that talent that we're looking for, we have to be able to be strong in each of these areas. So businesses definitely are looking at incentives. I hate to keep bringing up Toyota's name, but as you know, in northern Kentucky, the Erlanger office is moving to Plano, Texas. There were lots of incentives offered to them for doing that. Education is very important. Although we have a population, our population in Fayette County is about 39% of our population holds a bachelor's degree. We're still lacking in that two-year degree and those certifications. Many of the jobs, especially in our health care industry, do not require a four-year degree and have jobs that pay anywhere from $15 to $20 as a starting wage. Those are excellent wages. And a person can have a wonderful life and their family can have a good life on those wages as well. Business attraction and expansion, we must have a vision for economic development. Understand who are we trying to attract? What is good for our community? And what workforce is available to support that? Good infrastructure, I'm not going to spend much time on that, but the two that I do want to spend time on are workforce development and quality of life. You know, when I came to this position, what I heard was we need a skilled workforce. We need a skilled workforce. Yes, we do. But we also need an available workforce. And that leads into quality of life. We do have barriers to employment here in central Kentucky. Some of those do center around health and human services. Some barriers are transportation and even housing. So it's very important that we don't separate workforce development from quality of life, which includes many other factors. But within that quality of life, it does include that transportation, that housing. So it's very important that we tie those together as well as include all of the other pieces of the pie. So I think it's very appropriate today that I'm presenting to the Community Development and Social Services Committee. This is our draft timeline. August to October, we'll collect the data, start to share what we're doing with community partners. October to November, we want to analyze that data, grow our partnerships, and begin to identify that problem-solving model. In November, we'll present to you a draft report, and in December, we'll finalize that report. And in January, the Business and Education Network has their annual meeting. So I think this would be a great opportunity to share with our community what we've been doing and what the results are and what our next steps are. And, of course, we'll keep you updated throughout the process. um so council has approved fifty thousand dollars for this um and you know i can't say right now because we're kind of moving through this exactly how the money will be spent but we may have to contract out some of the work some of the costs will be administrative as far as printing the report whatever we need to do with the report we also want to have the report verified by an industry expert. It's very important that our data is irrefutable. Much of this data that we are going to collect is publicly available for no cost. But we want to make sure that no one can challenge our data, that it is what it says it is. And we also may look at some consulting when we begin to look at the model that we'd like to use for the problem solving. And just so you're aware, what I'm currently looking at is called collective impact. Many communities are using this. It's a very highly structured organization. Basically, you would have a backbone, what they call a backbone entity who would kind of be the overseer and the foundation, the holder, kind of the financial agent. And then you would bring in your community partners. Let's say we decided that we identified a barrier to employment as transportation. So you would bring in groups that are experts in transportation, allow them to look at the data, analyze the data from their perspective, and that group would work on the transportation initiative. if there was a housing initiative, if we needed a community education initiative. Whatever the data tells us, we establish what those buckets are and bring in the community experts in that particular area. And from there, then we basically build our teams to work from and solve the problem and implement what the countermeasures are. But understanding that full structure, I'm not an expert and I don't know of anyone in this community who is an expert. So making sure that we are successful in what we decide to do. If we need to do some consulting around that, then we would like to be able to do that. What does success look like? So I thought this was very important. We can tell you what we're going to do, but how are we going to know if we're successful? Well, we want to move from talking to doing. It's real data decision making. We want effective outcomes. We don't want to establish something just to establish something. And if we establish something that we think the data is leading us to as a positive countermeasure, we want to be able to track that and understand whether it is giving us the results that we want and need or not. And if it's not, then we want to be able to back up and do something different. So we should have effective outcomes, which would include lower skilled workforce, potentially moving into a more skilled position, reduction in unemployment, hiring processes for employers should become more efficient, personal economic prosperity should increase, barriers to employment should be reduced. This should be mutual gain for everyone involved, public, private, and individual. And of course, one great result of that is the tax base for our city will increase, which then we can have a greater quality of life as well, right? So this just can create a very positive cycle for our community. And I mean, there are so many potential results as far as success of this program that, you know, I didn't keep going. I just filled up one page. So, questions? Thank you, Billy, for your presentation, and thank you, committee, for the deference in allowing just a few extra moments from the chair. Billy did reference, we have one council member signed up. Billy did reference that council actually has not approved just yet. We will have a first reading this coming Thursday. We approved it to the council docket last Tuesday, but it will be presented there this coming Thursday. the $50,000 increase to the purchase of service agreement with Commerce Lexington. First up for questions is Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Chair. And, Billy, thank you for coming today and giving us a more detailed overview from what we learned about last week at our work session. A couple questions on the project itself. I know a lot of us have been asking for this for several years, as you know, and I'm a big fan of you can't manage what you can't measure, And this will actually give us a tool to use in a lot of areas, especially as a council member and our community partners. But as you collect that, are you going to collect incomes in terms of how much those jobs pay as well? Yes. Okay, so we're going to be able to identify what the average salary in Fayette County would be? Yes. Okay, because I think that's useful in a lot of other discussions such as the minimum wage discussion we're having as a community, et cetera. And I'm glad to hear you mention the quality of life because a lot of people think there's a disconnect between workforce development and quality of life. But, you know, one of the biggest barriers, and we even experience it here in the government, is access to the Internet because most jobs now are done online. And that's a big issue for this community is getting access to everyone on the Internet. I know a couple of community partners that you mentioned that we may want to add, Bluegrass Career Services. I know they're here, Employment Solutions. Those are people also working to help the workforce development and probably many others. I guess my question is, at the end of all this, how are we going to get everyone together to analyze? Are you going to do it in pods, groups? How are you going to organize that? Are we just going to stick the data out there and say everyone who wants to look at it, look at it? That's going to be a big challenge. It is going to be a big challenge. And one of the goals of Collective Impact is also to get everyone to agree to the data that's been presented. This will not be an easy undertaking. How we will do this, as far as I'm sure you're aware, once you get so many people in the room, problem solving and everyone coming to an agreement becomes very challenging. But who are those community partners that we need to have at the table? who are the people who are active, who have had successes, and who have not had successes, but have given good effort to that. How do we analyze that? You know, I'm going to be honest. I don't have the answer for that right now. I do think that we have to look at those who are part of workforce development, those who are in career services, those who are in our education system, those who support minority populations. We have to look at a very diverse panel for who's going to be present in these meetings and work on this. And some of that also, we have to have some folks who are very passionate about this. And that may be their only experience with this is that they are passionate about it. They want to see change in workforce development and in our community. So we'll have to sit down and look at that. And we'll be taking, you know, expert advice on that, you know. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned education, too, because I think that's one of the biggest pieces that we're missing as a community, and there's a disconnect. But getting back to those educational programs in high school and middle school that are career tech paths so that people, like the homebillers, don't have to go out there and create their own school to get HVAC workers. That's right. It opened up last week. But the middle and high schools are introducing that earlier because I know when I went to school, if you didn't go to college and get a degree, that was the tagline when I graduated from high school. But now some kids don't need to do that, don't want to do that, and want to go the career tech path. So that's going to be an integral part. I'm glad the school system is starting to see that again and getting back to those type of educational opportunities. That's right. And creating a lifelong learning culture in our community, I think, is very important. I had the opportunity to benchmark Singapore in their career and tech ed system, and they will tell you that technology changes every seven years at a minimum or at a maximum. And every six to seven years, they look at retraining their entire workforce and revising their career and tech ed plans and what that curriculum is. So it's an ongoing, very effective system. In 2012, Apple's 100% of their profits for the previous five years were – let me back up. In 2012, 100% of their profits were based off of technology that had been created in the previous five years. So we can go to school now, but those who have other jobs and understand that they are constantly learning will also understand that learning never stops. So getting that basic education, that basic requirement to get you started in the workforce, but then carrying that lifelong learning culture with you and making sure that you're constantly learning something new, that you're up on what the new technology is, that you're able to be successful in that workforce developmentally is very important to a person's career success today. I couldn't have spent 24 years at Toyota if I had not learned technology along the way. When I started there 25 years ago, remember computers were very basic. We were just starting to move to Windows, right? So being able to understand PeopleSoft and many other pieces of computer software, machines, equipment, how computer integration into those pieces of equipment and how to operate that equipment was very important to my success. And my time's up, but one last question I was going to ask. Oh, you're fine. No, I'm enjoying the information. One of our barriers to employment in our community are employers' hesitations to hire people with background or have been incarcerated or records or drug substance abuse issues. Will you be able to compile a list of employers through this that actually do welcome individuals with those backgrounds and are able to work with them and train them? Because, you know, if we don't help those individuals become reaccommodated to society and get a job, it creates a vicious cycle for them. That is correct. Will you be able to identify those employers and compile this? Because I think a lot of our agencies can utilize that information to help people find employment. Is there a way to do that? Well, I would see that as kind of the second phase of data. Once we identify exactly what those barriers are and we start to work on that problem-solving and countermeasure activity, I can kind of see that as being, well, that team, that task force pulling and saying, okay, well, here are the employers that will hire, and here are the job categories that are available. So maybe our countermeasures, we need to do some training around these categories and feed those trained people to those employers. So I don't see that as an initial piece of the data collection, but I do see that as something that for that team to move forward and identify, you know, countermeasures that we would have to pull that data. I do think we can get that. It may take some legwork, but I think we can find that information. Yeah, I understand that's going to be a challenge, but I appreciate you saying as a next step, we will try to identify that because I think it's a big barrier here in our community. It's growing every day, but I think as a society, we got to figure out what our standard is to allow people to reenter and what's that measurement because every employer looks at it differently. Yes, they do. So it's going to be hard, but the challenge is there and we can tackle it. So thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Senate. Next up is Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Billy. I really appreciate this information, and I think that it's definitely a needed study that we need to look into in the community. And my first question is, I mean, who are your stakeholders as of now? I mean, is it only businesses? Is that who you're primarily focused on or who else in the community, I guess, is at the table? I believe that we do need education as a big partner, not just your four-year universities, but we also need our public schools and our parochial schools on board. BCTC is on board with us. I believe the Urban League is a very important part of this. The Workforce Investment Board, you know, I left my list of people that I've talked to about this at the office. So I'm kind of going off the top of my head. And you can, if you'd email that to us, maybe in advance of the council meeting, because I would be interested for sure to know and to make sure that, I guess it was a leading question. But I want to know if Lex Tran, for instance, is part of it. Because you mentioned transportation being a barrier. And I mean, I know that that is a primary barrier in part of my district. And so while we can recreate all of the job training programs we want, if people can't get to them and if people can't get to the jobs in Toyota, you know, in Georgetown, then they're kind of, you know. Right. We can't even get them to the industrial park on Georgetown Street by 6 a.m. when production lines start, much less. to a community outside of Fayette County. And then do you have other representatives from human services, social services, when you mentioned quality of life and some of those barriers, daycare or, you know, child care issues, housing issues? Do you have representatives from all of those different? Currently, not yet. We have identified that we do need those partners on board, but not who they are yet. But you will be? Yes, we will be including them. Absolutely. And when you mentioned analyzing the data that you do collect over the next several months, it reminded me of the needs assessment that the Department of Social Services conducted a year and a half ago or so. I came on, I think, after it had already been initiated. So I want to encourage you to maybe get the best. Okay. Hello. So to get with Beth and maybe go, you know, look at that and some of the findings that they found and then consider utilizing either the Department of Social Work or another department at the university, maybe, you know, with you all's connections to the College of Business perhaps and use, you know, students, you know, and make this a project for them to alleviate some of the costs and workload for you guys, as well as, I think, to have maybe more a broader perspective and analysis or recommendations that they might suggest, I think would be really good. It's definitely part of this initiative that I'm looking at. We're, you know, when we're looking at the youngest, the best, and the brightest, because they are our teacher. not only will they give us a new, fresh insight, but will also connect to our community in a way that hopefully they will stay here. If they're not from here, they will stay here. If they are from here, they will continue to stay here and be involved in our community and kind of attached here. Your mic, I think, was the problem over there, so we're going to give you a new one. Thank you. And lastly, you reminded me, education. So the Center for, I think it's Technical Education, CTE, I believe, Are they involved or will be engaged in addition to BCTC? They will be, yes. Okay, great. That's all I have for now. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Akers. Next is Councilmember Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Billy. I have to say, even though I've seen you only in this chamber, I think you're my new best friend. Thank you. I think this is an exciting start. I think we have a ways to go, and you talked about that other piece. But I do think that the barriers are extremely important. If we want, and I'm a firm believer in being inclusive, that everyone can work, that no matter what your barrier might be. And I just wanted to mention the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. Don't forget them. There are many folks out there with disabilities that I've worked with for over the years that are working every day. Employment Solutions had tremendous success along with some other agencies. So, you know, you look at mental health. You look at physical and mental health and substance abuse. There are so many barriers out there in addition to some of those already mentioned, transportation, child care, anything that we would need. So I see bringing this all together and then that will be another piece. But I really like the way you think. I appreciate your works very, very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Henson. Next is Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Peebler, for coming in today. And I just have a couple of questions. So when this process is all done and the data is all collected, what do you see are the deliverables, if you will, out of this, besides just the data? So for this particular agreement, it's to deliver the data, a report, and a suggestion of a model. Okay? Okay, so second step, I think what you're getting at is what are the deliverables? I think we'll need to, once we identify what the model for problem solving is that we're going to use, you know, deliverables will be building that team and, you know, what those outcomes are, what their findings are, and then what their outcomes are, and then what the countermeasures are in implementing those countermeasures. Of course, when we start to get to that stage, you know, somewhere in there we're going to have to talk about money. But not just with council. But, you know, when you start talking about countermeasures and implementing new or different things and relieving those barriers to employment, you know, we're going to have to come together as a community. And that may be pooling money, creating partnerships for grant opportunities. opportunities, you know, the opportunities are endless when you act in partnership, especially today. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I had a couple other questions. You sort of answered everything at once because the next one is going to sort of be who owns this after it's done. I know you talked Tuesday about who owns the data and we're both going to own it. We're going to co-own the data, but really it's who owns this issue. Once we get that data, how do we move forward with a solution that's going to be comprehensive and impact all of Lexington Fayette County and even Central Kentucky from that matter. So I guess you've sort of answered that question that as you get to that data, then we look at the model that you're going to recommend and then what has to happen for that model to come together. And if you think about North Carolina, they did the Apprenticeship 2000 was one of their big initiatives, and there's a lot of financing that went behind that and a lot of different people from the public and private sector that's taking part in that. So I look forward to this project, and I'm glad that we're helping to fund it. And another one of the things we're looking for is sort of a structure coming out of workforce development and what do we do and how that all works, and it sounds like that's going to be a part of what your recommendation, not necessarily completely what we do with WIB. I'm not saying that, but what type of model do we want to have for going forward in terms of solving workforce development issues and providing opportunities? So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Seeing no further questions, Billy, we want to thank you for your availability to come and speak with the committee. Again, this agreement is on the docket for council on Thursday night. In his absence, I want to thank Kevin Atkins for bringing us this opportunity. and committee members later on at the end of the meeting, we'll talk a little bit more about workforce in totality. But again, Billy, thank you, and good luck in your efforts. Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to present to you today, and thank you for supporting this initiative. Having city council, local government on board, and supporting this initiative is a huge, huge plus for this initiative. So thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks again, Billy. Committee members, the third item on our agenda is the partner agency outcome process. We've spent a lot of time in the spring of each year with partner agencies, but we know our Department of Social Services works throughout the year. To give us a summary of the fiscal year ending 2014 will be our Commissioner Beth Mills. Welcome, Beth. Okay. I guess it's on. Before I get started, I have to make a comment. It's unusual to be here. I'm used to having Craig Benz at my right hand, and now Craig Benz is at the right hand of Council Member Ford. And I'm sure by now y'all are appreciating Craig's talents and contributions to the council. Y'all are lucky to have him. So anyway, we want to talk a little bit about what happened with your money. This mayor and this council set a record in being generous with partner agencies this year, not only in funding, but in the number and diversity of programs that we served. It's got to be, it will feed into the things that Billy talked about. Just like Council Member Akers mentioned, I was sitting thinking the same thing. Our study was around self-sufficiency. The needs assessment that they did was around self-sufficiency, and the bonus points go to the agencies that get people to self-sufficiency. No better way to be self-sufficient than to be work-ready. So what I'm going to do briefly, and there's a lot of information here, but I promise you I'll be brief. This was the first year that we really measured what you're getting for your money. And it's not perfect, but it's a great start. And so I just want to kind of give you a summary of what we did. So this is the number of agencies that we served. There were 35 agencies, but some of them had multiple programs. So 11 of them had more than one. Some had as many as four or five. Some had two. You have this list in your packet. These are all the agencies that we served. And those that are in bold had more than one program last year. Not this year. This was FY14. Thank you, Council Member Stenet. So this was last year's group. If they're in bold, they had more than one program. So there were a lot of programs for us to evade. And I know this group has had some conversation about whether we should fund programs or agencies. We have to do PSAs with agencies. So even though there's programs within agencies, we can't sign a contract with the program, we have to sign a contract with an agency. So I don't know how we'll ever really get past that. So everybody who received this money was visited twice this year personally with a one-on-one interview. And we have some of our partner agencies here today, and they can tell you that Amy Baker did a really good job and got to know them. Craig had always been real accessible to them through email and telephone, but it was nice to have a person come see them. The first visit, she went out and looked at their programs. How are you using your money? This is what we expect you to do. Show us what you do. And then on the second visit, she tried to schedule them when the program was actually in action, like when they had kids in the house or when they were doing a treatment program that she could go in that wouldn't breach confidentiality. So she actually wanted to see them operate. After all of this, I think next year what we need to look at more is not just how the program's operating, but what kind of outcomes. We've got a lot of numbers, but we might want to see how it affects employment or how it affects school. You know, did people do better in school because of the programs? Also, we need to look more closer at cost per unit. What did they actually spend the money on? Was it sufficient? Where could the money be used more efficiently? So everybody had outcomes and they were in their funding, what they were applying for our funds for. Every quarter we get a report from them. And if in that report they gave really good details about, this is what we did, this is how many people we served, then they got a bonus when they applied this year. So anybody who's in the room or is listening, it's to your advantage when you turn those reports in, not just to put no change, but to put in there, you know, this was a success we had this quarter, this is what happened. It's best to send those throughout the year so that we know what we're getting for our money and it helps you with your scoring if you reapply. So at the end of the fourth quarter, it says here the vast majority of funded programs achieved or exceeded their goals. Well, I don't know if it was vast, but it's page number 40 in your packet. And actually, I miscounted on the first one. There was one that went on into the next page. There were 36 programs that achieved all of their goals, and that's 66% of the total. So actually two-thirds of the programs achieved or exceeded everything they said they were going to do. I think we should shoot for a higher rate of that, and maybe we can do that by working with programs about what are your goals? Are they realistic? And, you know, there's nothing wrong with changing what you spend your money on. Again, it goes back to being efficient. About 30% partially achieved their goals, and only two programs, which is about 3% of the total, did not, and they did return their money to us, so they were very honest about this. Here's some of the successes I just wanted to, that Amy has pulled out to present to you all. She couldn't be here today. Kentucky Refugee Ministries, look at the numbers. They were supposed to serve 10 families. They served 78. And that represented 300 families as opposed to 50 with the money we gave them. So they far exceeded numbers than what we thought. This was funding post-resettlement. The State Department helps for refugees for three to six months. After that, there's a service gap. Imagine moving to a country where you can't speak the language, you don't have a job, and at three to six months they say, we're not going to do anything for you anymore now. You're an American. So our money helped fund post-resettlement, and look how many people took advantage of that service. That shows a big need. The medical and dental clinics at Mission Lexington. And it'll be important to see how this changes with ACA and KY NEC. I mean, will more people start going to Medicaid? Maybe their mission will change. But that was not in effect last year. And we allowed them to serve more than 200 hours, which meant many more patients, about 60 more patients in the dental chairs, and about 150 more patients than they expected in medical services. So your money went a long way there. The other one was the NEST Child Care Program. Now, they only provided nine more children than we thought, but it was 1,000 more meals. Given the fact that the state cut child care funding last year, I think that's a big deal because they're the one place where if there's a parent who needs emergency child care, they can go drop them off with no cost. And this is very helpful to parents who may be feeling like they're into the rope, they could smack their kid. You know, it helps prevent child abuse. So your money went a long way there too. Two programs were not able to realize their goals, and they chose to end their programs. And so we had this refunded money. The reason we brought this up is this is another outcome we were going to look at. We talked about what to do with that money. Most departments just let things roll into the general fund. There was some discussion, and we went to our advisory board and said, what could we do with this money? And, of course, we had like a month to spend it, so we had to be really quick on the trigger. And if you might remember, there was a press conference about this. We decided to try to increase the number of kids that use the summer meal program. Data showed that only 16% of the kids in Fayette County who are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch bothered to go get free meals in the summer. So we thought, these are all our partners. We went really broad and got everybody at the table in a quick hurry. We had volunteers. I know the council aides volunteered. My department volunteered. The kids from our day treatment center volunteered, and it was a feel-good thing. We packed 800 boxes to send to the public schools and parks this summer for families that needed emergency food. We also packed that number of backpacks before the end of school so that all the kids in selected schools could take a backpack home. And in that backpack was information about where the food sites were in the I Do program that Partners for Youth runs so that the parents of these kids would know where they could get food and what the kids could do during the summer. So we decided to do a quick impact study and said, okay, we've got all that effort, what did it mean? 60 extra children received meals this summer. So it was a very modest gain for a lot of effort when you look at it. There were five fewer days in the feeding program because school was out later this year. It's 60 kids, so why didn't we get more? I don't know. We got a late start to this. Perhaps there's a different way to engage kids. I don't know. What I do know is every one of those food boxes and every one of those backpacks fed someone this summer. And so we can say that, but did it really increase the number of kids who came to eat meals in the summertime? No, really didn't. So maybe there's another way we need to do that. Partner agency visits for the program will begin this fall. We're going to keep this process up. We think it's very valuable. And I didn't do every program in here, but I know each one of you probably have a program that is near and dear to your heart or several. So if you'll look on pages 28 through 39, you can go to each program and each agency and see how they did and what they did with your money. And I think this will make you feel like you really did a really good investment this year. And we can always do better and do a more efficient investment, but I think the outcome approach is well worth the effort. It does say in there that one of the programs did not get their fourth quarter report in. And it's been our policy that they get the four increments of funding even without the reports, and that would be something that this council could undertake. But I did call the agency that didn't have one in this week, and I said, you're the only one that didn't have a fourth quarter report in. You really don't want me to report that. And we got it this week. So we have all the reports in. So I guess that's it. This is not really the process. You know, it's an ongoing process. And I've talked with Council Member Ford. Hopefully next month we will bring to you the latest greatest on how we may do funding in the coming year. But this was just our outcomes, and I'll entertain any questions you may have. Thank you, Commissioner Mills, for that report on fiscal year 2014. Committee members, are there any questions or comments for Commissioner Mills? Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner, I just want to tell you I'm proud of you and your department and all the work that you've done. And you've worked with this committee and the council and the administration to change this process. And it's been tough. I know it's been hard. It's been tough sledding. every year more tweaks and more tweaks but you're doing a fantastic job and i appreciate you and your team and um thank you for for listening to the input that you've been given and uh this is fantastic so um my only hope is that we get you more money to continue doing what you're doing and and we're in the process of doing that too so um thank you very much thank you mr chair thank you, Council Member Myers. Next is Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. I want to echo Council Member Myers. I think it's highly commendable and above and beyond what I think anyone ever dreamed possible of what we've done and what your office has done and the diligence. And I know that Craig was a big part of that. And so I'm sorry that we stole him. But and I want to I want to just go back a little bit, you know, to the God's Painter Food Bank. You and I did discuss this. So it's kind of funny that I'm getting ready to say this, but I think, you know, it is a lot of money for 60 kids, but at the end of the day, it is still 60 kids. And 60 kids who, you know, may have been hungry or gone hungry or, you know, didn't have somewhere else to eat. And so, you know, I think that that number is still a good number. And so I wouldn't beat yourself up too much over spending that amount of money. And when we do bring the process, Council Member Akers, it's when we have money left over at the end of the year. You know, every other department in this government lets it go to fund balance. And this council did decide to use the majority of fund balance for social services this year. So that's a discussion I think we should have in here. Do we really need to do something at the end of the year or does social services need to be a bigger voice in fund balance discussions along with every other department in this government? So that's something we'll talk about in September. And I think that was, you know, obviously that was the will of the council, but, you know, that you didn't just say, oh, well, it was returned to us and we'll put it back in, you know, to the general fund and have it, you know, possibly go to parks, which is another favorite. But that you, you know, that I think we agreed as well that money is designated for partner agencies and social agencies should go for those causes. So thank you. You all have been very supportive. Thank you, Councilman Breakers. Committee members, are there any other questions or comments for Commissioner Mills? Seeing none, I would just wrap up, Commissioner. Again, thank you for your leadership and your efforts, as Council Member Myers mentioned. I will say that our council administrator and hopefully many of the council members can attest that Craig is off to a great start in the council office, and we appreciate his role. But there's been a lot of hard work and still more to come. I know Council Member Myers was at the forefront in bringing forth some reforms to this partner agency process. and we're still seeking improvement. But as we stand right now, the first year that you came back to government and I was on council, we had $1.75 million for partner agencies. And this current fiscal year, the budget we just approved, we stand at $3.25 million. So we're heading in the right direction, but we definitely look forward to working with you in the next few committee meetings to improve. I don't want our community partners to not get mentioned in all the things. Fayette County probably has the most robust private nonprofit program in the state of Kentucky. I remember years ago when I was acting commissioner, the secretary of the cabinet came in and said, by far, there are more nonprofits in Fayette County, even in Jefferson County and northern Kentucky. So this is a community with people that are creative, not just that they solve problems, But we have very interesting kinds of agencies if you look through this. So that does give me hope moving forward, and I appreciate that the council recognizes them because we couldn't do what we do with our small department without their help. Very good. Thanks again, Beth. We really appreciate it. Committee, the last item of presentation is the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention. And as Charlie comes, I just want to, by way, introduce this item in committee. We know that there's been a lot of work over the last few years in regards to this issue, and Council Member Kaye is not with us today, but he definitely led that effort. We referred this item into committee last Tuesday at work session. But today's presentation is really to allow Council to observe what Charlie has done in the 90 days he's been in the building, and that may lead to recommendations down the line. But again, we want to welcome Charlie Lantern, our director, and turn the microphone over to him for a few minutes. Welcome. Thank you, Councilman Ford. Thank you all for having me up here. It's a pleasure to get to share what we've been working on. Like Councilman Ford mentioned, I've been on the job about 90 days. I do want to echo what Beth was saying about the robust nonprofit sector, having worked at Community Action for many years. Is that better? having worked at Community Action for many years before coming here and knowing how things worked in Louisville in similar circumstances. The systems are better here. They're more coordinated and the resources are easier to find. That said, we all know we have progress to make, particularly in the area of homelessness, which is why I'm here. So just to introduce a little bit about how we see the office, the mission statement which I've written is that we exist to help implement the recommendations from the 2013 report from the Mayor's Commission on Homelessness, as well as providing planning, coordination, advocacy, awareness, and other issues about the changing needs and service gaps with regards to homelessness. One key element that I've been trying to stress with folks is that we don't provide direct support services. I'm not a social worker. That's not my background. I have tried as calls come into the office, and we get them. I also have folks come see me, folks who are experiencing homelessness. I do my best, based on my knowledge, to get them referred to organizations that are better qualified to assist them. This is a high-level office. This is administrative function. So taking a look at where we stand, in order to know how we're going to prevent and reduce homelessness in Lexington, we need to know where we're at as a community on homelessness. So the data you've got in front of you is taken from the annual homeless count that's required by HUD. It's been conducted for some time. We didn't do an unsheltered count, which means sort of a street count, in 11, 12, or 14. So that's why those numbers aren't available. And it's important to note that the number we get is very strongly impacted by the weather on the night the count is conducted, which is each year in January. So you can imagine how a warm or a cold January could impact that count. Best example of that, if you look at 2014 emergency shelter data at 566, it's a big jump from 2013. January 2014, you all might recall, is when we had that extraordinary cold snap that drove a lot of folks into the emergency shelters. What you're really wanting to look at there is the total homeless figure. And you can see it's up and down a little, somewhat affected by weather, somewhat affected by economy. But it's statistically fairly steady. There's not any alarming trends there. So that's good to know as far as it's not on a massive upswing, but at the same time, we also want to get that number down. That number is at or higher, depending on the year, than the count in Louisville. So that's an important thing to note. However, they count differently, so there's a lot of extraneous factors that affect that that doesn't just mean that we have more homeless in Lexington. So to give you an idea of what I've been doing for the last three months, We wrote and issued an RFP to spend some of the $500,000 that the council allocated on a Housing First project. That RFP is out now. The proposals are due to my office September 2nd. I'll get into a little bit later on what Housing First is and why we're doing that. I have also been working with a group in Lexington to support the creation of a mental health court. That was one of the recommendations from the Mayor's Commission report. You all are familiar, I'm sure, with the drug court. This is a very similar concept, working with folks experiencing mental illness, because that is a major factor for many of our homeless. One thing that I have spent a lot of my time on is transition of the federal continuum of care funding from the Central Kentucky Housing and Homeless Initiative to the City of Lexington. You all actually have, I think for a second reading this week, a MOU that sort of formalizes that transition. What we are doing, the federal government through Housing and Urban Development allocates about $1.5 million annually that goes to various organizations in our community. Hope Center, Chrysalis, Volunteers of America, Community Action Council, and the Housing Authority. I hope I didn't leave anyone out. They operate transitional housing programs and permanent housing programs with that money. As of right now, each year, the Chicky Group applies for those funds, develops the application, and then HUD funds and contracts with each individual agency. That was working for a while, but HUD has increasingly demanded extraordinary new measures from the entity doing the applying, monitoring of those projects, ensuring the outcomes. They're ensuring they're insisting on greater compliance with the homeless management information system HMIS They are just putting more and more work on that group and the chicky group was really unable to keep up with that And so we're working on a transition over the next year Have a really good collaboration going on to make that happen The other thing is we're working on a plan to transition The emergency shelter piece of the partner agency funding you were just talking about to the Office of Homelessness, that is very preliminary at this point. You all will get a more formal presentation probably through Commissioner Mills on how that will work later on. So don't worry too much about the details of that because it's still in progress. I have taken time to visit some other communities to see what they're doing in this area. Dayton, Ohio is particularly interesting. It's a very comparable community as far as where they're at in dealing with their population. they were exactly where we are 15 or 20 years ago, and they are now essentially a model community as far as HUD and some other funding sources are concerned. So some of what you'll see me do, I'm modeling after Dayton, a little bit after Louisville, but there's not as much comparable there. A lot of apples and oranges with Louisville. But they are doing well. And then a few weeks ago, I was at the National Conference on Ending Homelessness where I got to meet with a lot of other communities, people doing what I do, and speak with folks who work at HUD, which was very helpful. One good thing, they were all praising the City of Lexington. It had actually gotten to D.C. that the City of Lexington has hired a homeless coordinator and put money from its general fund into this work, and people were talking about that on the national level. So that was very impressive. Next steps, I'm developing a governance and operations structure. Those of you who are following the affordable housing process, you know, we're kind of doing these on completely different timelines. We just hired Rick, but we already have the ordinance coming to you on setting up the board. In my case, you hired me three months ago. The board's not in place. So I'm trying to develop a board and a governance structure for a couple of reasons. One is I think you would all agree I don't need to be making all these decisions myself, funding decisions, priorities, key indicators. The other is I need someone to hold the office accountable to track our work and keep up with that. And then finally, if we're going to take over that federal continuum of care funding, there are some required structural elements that HUD requires in order to do that. So that's part of why we're proposing the board structure that we are. We got up on the web, got on social media. If you're not following us on Facebook and Twitter, please do. I'm trying to share good news, keep the public posted on what we're doing. Also, I have been working with others in urban county government to review the day shelter ordinance. we should be bringing you some recommendations soon on possible revisions that you can consider. We have some ongoing meetings with our homeless providers and the mental health community. One thing we're finding is there's a gap that's been identified for folks who are essentially to put it as simply as possible not sick enough for Eastern State Hospital mentally ill but not in a condition that our shelters are easily able to accommodate them. So we've got a group of folks that is meeting regularly to talk about that, ways we can deal with it both in the short term and in the long term. And then also the mayor has signed on to a federal nationwide initiative to end veterans homelessness. And so we're trying to make that a priority of this office. It's a good place to start if you're going to end homelessness is with veterans. And so there are some national resources that we think are going to be available in support of that in the coming time So we're going to create a homeless prevention and intervention board ordinance to do that is before council on Thursday along with the affordable housing trust fund Council separate board This 13 member board will have funders on it council members Represent from the business community and faith in the faith community the membership structure is is is largely driven by HUD requirements for the continuum of care board. It seemed redundant for Lexington to have multiple boards looking at multiple funding streams or multiple approaches to ending homelessness. So hopefully we'll be able to streamline a little bit, have this one board that a lot of this stuff can run through. Committee structure is ultimately going to be up to the board, but just to get the group started, I wanted to put some thoughts out there on how that would work. One thing to note that was advice I got from Dayton and from other communities at the National Conference. As far as performance and evaluation, how we determine if our projects that work on homelessness are effective, how we measure that, what targets we set, those committees and those decisions should not be made by providers. We need an evaluation team of other entities doing that work. the phrase they used a lot that I've adopted is our work should be provider informed but not necessarily provider driven and that's going to be a big change for our community with regards to how we've approached homelessness. We do need to be provider informed in every way possible we don't necessarily need to have provider decision making at a lot of levels HMIS common assessment this is a area where our community is sorely lacking and behind. Our bed coverage on the homeless management information system is behind as a community, and it is hurting our federal application for homelessness assistance funds. It is making us less competitive when new funding is available. Something to look at, just for comparison's sake, Louisville gets about $9 million in continuum of care funding. We get $1.5 million. Now, Louisville's bigger than us. They're not $7 million, $8 million bigger than us. A lot of that has to do with their progress on HMIS and on common assessment on some other factors, how that application is scored. I'm not saying that we should just roll it out willy-nilly, but we do need to have a committee that is looking regularly at how we can make that happen here. And we have a long way to go on some of those issues. So what this board will do, consider and recommend solutions to specific issues. This is a group that would have advised me on the day shelter ordinance as we reviewed that, had they been here. and then other individual things as they come up. They will advise on fair housing and access issues. A number of the Mayor's Commission report items were advocacy issues. That's a great role for this board. To give you an idea of some other things, this board will work with us on implementing the recommendations. They're going to help me set and measure and monitor key indicators. Something we need to start doing as a community with regards to homelessness is thinking of it in terms of a system of service delivery. We do a great job at looking at our individual projects, what each agency is doing. We're not looking at our community-wide data. And that's one of the reasons the HMIS system is so important, because you can look at, as a community, as a whole, are you reducing homelessness instead of individual projects and what outcomes they've been able to achieve. So that's something that this group will need to look at is the data associated with that. how are we as a community reducing homelessness, how are we reducing shelter stays and recurrences of homelessness, and how are we improving employment and income outcomes with regards to the folks experiencing homelessness. Those are just some of the indicators that we'll need to look at. And then obviously they will establish the guidelines for the future funding and help review not just the LFUCG process, but also that continuum of care federal process. this is just to give you an idea of the structure again final decisions on that ought to be made by the board but they weren't here so i wanted to get started yes sir excuse me charlie let me let me stop you right right there committee members uh the can we go back housing no uh housing first okay i wanted to ask for the committee's approval to allow charlie five more minutes to complete this presentation because this Housing First model, I think it's going to be of great interest to the committee. So is there a motion for five minutes? There's a motion. There's a motion. And second, all in favor say aye. Aye. Charlie, thank you. Thank you. I have just a few more slides, but it is important. I mentioned that we have the RFP out for Housing First. So let me explain what Housing First is and why we're doing that. Housing First is a different approach to addressing homelessness that takes people and provides them with housing quickly and then wraps the services around them while they're in the permanent housing situation. The key word there is permanent. It's not emergency shelter and it's not transitional housing. They're in a permanent housing situation with a lease like you or me, and then they have the supportive services wrapped around them, whether it's mental health, substance abuse, or multiple co-occurring issues. So it shares the common elements of getting into housing quickly, and it's not time limited. The services are wrapped around them, but the services are time limited. Ideally, you're going to phase them out. You want to move the folks towards stability. And then finally, the housing is not contingent upon compliance with the services. So in many of our housing programs, you've got to participate in a recovery program or you've got to participate in this treatment or this service to remain in the program, to remain in the housing. This is not contingent upon this. One theoretically could be in the unit and continuing to drink or struggle with their issue. The idea is just to keep the roof over their head because, and I'll get to the benefits. There was an extra slide there. I'll get to the benefits of that in the next slide. This just helps to illustrate what we're talking about. Typically, our homeless continuum follows these steps. Someone moves into an emergency shelter, they go to transitional housing, which is time-limited, typically no more than two years, and then they go into permanent housing. Housing First essentially skips that, bypasses from the street straight into the permanent housing, and then provides the services in their own individual unit. The reasons for doing this, research shows that 80% or more make it. They stay in the unit. That research has been done largely around the country. There was a huge project in Canada that was done with this as well. Pathways to Housing out of New York City kind of pioneered this. Some of what they're doing isn't exactly comparable to what Lexington needs to do. That's one reason we need to get a pilot project up and running and see what's different here. The research finds there's no negative impact on substance use or mental health. You'll note that this is no negative impact. It isn't necessarily always a positive impact. The goal, Housing Affairs approaches this, that the goal is housing. It is not necessarily recovery from the issues that led to the homelessness. The theory being, if you wrap the services around them, you can get them stable enough to stay in the unit. Many participants prefer the Housing First model. If we have one way out of homelessness as a community, we're never going to completely solve the issue because it doesn't work for everyone. Housing First is good sometimes for people for whom the traditional model has not been effective. It's not for everyone, but neither is the traditional model. And then another good reason that we need to be looking at Housing First, HUD is in love with this model. HUD and the Interagency Council on Homelessness have said this is a best practice, and they want to see some of their funding utilized on this model. We currently have no what I would call high-fidelity housing-first projects in Lexington. They're really sort of pure to the model. So next steps for this office, we need to get the board up and running and appointed so that we can start having our meetings, establish those key indicators, and start setting goals for the office so we can move forward. we need to work on the common assessment and HMIS progress as well as completing the continuum of care transition and getting the funding that the council has allocated out into those new models like housing first other things that I think are going to come up in the near future getting this mental health court up and running we as a community desperately need a medical respite program and or mental health respite, a place where someone can go when they need to leave the hospital, but they are not ready to care for themselves. And so they can't necessarily go into a shelter. That is a huge need for our community that we're still working to address. And then also specific housing solutions for homeless elderly individuals. I've been getting a lot of calls in that area, as well as for families so that they can stay together. any questions thank you charlie for your presentation committee members are there any questions we'll begin with council member acres thank you chair thank you charlie um you mentioned social media and i tried to wave at you and i know i've probably distracted you so could you just um let the viewers know where you are what your facebook page is and the twitter handle and all of that such. On Facebook, we are Lexington Homelessness Prevention and Intervention. And on Facebook, it is at LexKY Homeless. Okay. And in your slide and presentation, you talked a lot about data collection and how that drives funding from the federal government on down to local jurisdictions. So I know that we have at least one agency that doesn't like to use or want to use or whatever, the HMIS system. And then I wanted to ask just the Catholic Action Center, do they utilize HMIS with their populations that they serve? The Catholic Action Center does not utilize HMIS. They don't receive any public funding that I'm aware of. So there's very little incentive or motivation for them to participate. I am, however, working with them. I laugh about this with Jenny whenever I talk to her, But I foresee a day when I can convince her that we'll get them into the system. Well, I just, I mean, I ask, I understand why she doesn't as well, because if you're not required to, why would you take on that burden? But when you talk about the discrepancy between Lexington and Louisville, and if two of our major shelter providers are not having their populations counted, that affects the amount of funding that we get and thus the number of services that we can provide. So do we collect data in other ways that we can somehow use at all from the two agencies? We do our best. You know, there's a monthly shelter count that I've been collecting via email. I just actually finished up today. I'm in the process of taking that over from the Chiki group, and I'm going to evolve that a little bit. You know, I'm trying not to get too far down that road because the goal really is to get folks from HMIS. It's a win-win. And if you're going to take the time to compile data and send it to me on a spreadsheet, why not just enter it into the web-based system so that I can pull a report from my office? Well, thank you. And I want to compliment you to have this presentation, to have the amount of structure and the amount of work that you've completed in 90 days is phenomenal. and within sort of two different offices and managing both of those for now and trying to create two different boards as well as working with all the different agencies in town. So I think you're doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilman Breakers. Next up is Councilman Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Lander, for coming in today. And a couple of comments. One, the provider informed, stick your holdout on your guns on that. But when I first got here, I actually went on staff with the council. Social services, our funding used to be provided by, there were two committees that were set up. And one was programming, one was services. And it was mainly made up of providers who were making the decisions on how the money was spent. And so it was a small time. Yeah, I used to have presentations to that committee. And it was painful getting rid of that, but we don't want to go back to that. So stick to your guns on that. On Housing First, did you by chance, have you talked to anybody in, it's either Nashville or Chattanooga, I think, is supposed to have a pretty robust program. I actually did look at Chattanooga. I'm not as familiar with Nashville, although I did meet with a guy from Nashville when I was in D.C., and we're supposed to be sharing some information. But I'm familiar with the Chattanooga program. Knoxville is actually pretty ambitious on HMIS as well. Okay. And then how are you coming with your board? Is it coming together? We know the structure. We know essentially the slots that need to be filled. The next step is just identifying individuals for that and approaching them. Okay. And then last on the HMIS system, I think some of the issues have been identified, I think, right? And is part of it Frankfurt or is it on the user end here? It's complicated. I mean, every individual organization that's not participating or is not fully participating has their own challenges. As someone who's been on the other side of that coin not all that long ago, the biggest thing is it's more work for less money, right? I mean, it's sort of an unfunded mandate. I get that. And for a long time, Lexington was lagging in its participation because folks, for very good reason, did not want to participate in a system that's essentially not the most user-friendly in the world. and also you're not getting staffing money for data entry. So as we have made progress in that area, other issues have come up. There is some sort of differences of opinion on privacy controls. We as an office, I personally am comfortable with those issues. I think there's some just misunderstanding that's taking place of a meeting on Friday to continue that conversation. I will continue meeting until the day it's resolved. Sure. We've got to get everybody in. Is there a way that we can incentivize people to participate in that, if it helps us get more money at the end of the day? Well, I think the city of Lexington should not be funding organizations that don't participate. Most communities aren't. Okay. When I met with other communities, Dayton, Ohio, if you want to receive city funding, you participate. You just do. I like that. That's what the federal government is now saying, and they're essentially, by mandate, expecting local governments to come along. Okay. Well, anything we can do to help with that, let us know. And thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, thank you for this presentation. I'm not a member of this committee, but interested in all the topics that we've talked about today, and particularly this one. In the first place, I'd just like to say that I think the data collection for the HMIS is extraordinarily important. And I appreciate your attitude about it and holding the line on that. I think it's important that we do that. My principal question is, first let me say that I'm an advocate, a serious advocate of the whole concept of Housing First. When I first heard about that, I thought, boy, that makes sense. And my question is, we adopt the idea, but then how do we provide the housing itself? We can say it's a good idea that we do that, but where does the housing come from? Well, there's different approaches. And we have this RFP out now, and the hope is that organizations who would submit a proposal are kind of hopefully putting that option together right now. Now, you know, we've put $200,000 out there instead of the goal of serving 20 people. That's ambitious. I mean, the best practice is about $20,000 annually on a housing first case, which would really serve 10 with $200,000. So I expect to get proposals that request additional funds above what we've said was our target and or serve fewer individuals just because of the cost. That said, there are efficient ways to do it. You know, we can work with the housing authority to have vouchers that are available for folks going into Housing First. There are permanent housing units already in the community that could be converted to a Housing First model. You know, part of our, one of the reasons for our pilot project is to see if it works, see how it works in our community, and then incentivize eventually, hopefully, some of our existing providers through their federal dollars to shift their target priority population to a housing-first model. Does that make sense? So, you know, I don't want the city to get into this business of throwing a bunch of money at housing-first. This is sort of to catalyze a shift in our service delivery if we as a community decide that it is an effective model for us. Thank you. From the very beginning, we first started talking about homelessness and affordable housing, and the two ideas began to coalesce, it seemed like to me that it was awfully important that these two programs be inextricably combined in a healthy way, of course. And I'm glad to see that we have gone in that direction, and it seems like to me that the cooperation between the two is really important in terms of each success. So I just encourage you and us for that matter to continue to understand that the two have to cooperate and know what each are doing. And thank you for your work. It's been a very profitable three months, and we thank you. Thank you. And just I would add to your point that Rick McQuady, the affordable housing manager, is anticipated he will be on the board, the HPI board, and that I would be on his so that there's reciprocation there. That's excellent. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Clark. Next is Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Charlie, for being here. I want to kind of follow up what Council Member Clark was talking about, the Housing First pilot project. Could you give me kind of a timeline on what's going on and what's going to happen here? You talked about the 10 people as your goal and 200,000. Is that? Yeah, we're using the 500,000 that the council allocated out of the fund balance. to, we've set aside $200,000 as a target for that RFP. And then the target was to serve $20,000. We got a lot of pushback from potential proposers, and for good reason. It wasn't enough money or it was too much of a target because of the cost of serving people through Housing First. So I'm hoping that that doesn't keep some folks from applying. But September 2nd, so next Tuesday, proposals are due to us. We will review them and hopefully have an announcement made by the end of September. I will then immediately start working with someone 1st of October to get that program up and running. We have basically said to them, right now we have one year of funding. It's sort of contingent upon the decisions the council makes with regards to the ongoing funding mechanism, which is on your agenda for Thursday with the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Should the additional funds be available, this would be a multi-year project. Did I answer your question? It did. No, that's exactly what I was looking for. I just wanted to try to see where our timeline was. And then the population itself, the 10 or 20 people, how do we go about getting? That's going to be largely up to whoever's designing the program and applying as to which specific population they want to target. You could target specifically people with mental illness. You could target specifically people with substance abuse. You could target people who have co-occurring both. you could target folks straight off the street you could target folks who have been in a shelter and have not have been in and out of shelter and it's not working for them so some of that's going to depend on the model that the agency proposes and when would somebody actually be in your best case scenario that somebody would be in the the program then the project well i'm i'm new to the council process i'm getting contracts approved so not knowing what that timeline looks like once we get a contract awarded. I would hope, because it's quickly. You're housing someone almost immediately. As soon as November would be a good guess. That's what I want to hear, sooner than later. Thank you. Absolutely. The sooner the better as far as I'm concerned. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger. Charlie, thank you for your presentation. It sounds like you're off to a fast start. Thank you for coming again to the committee to share this information with us. We're going to talk on the last item in regards to the proposed reorganization. But again, your purpose this afternoon was just to familiarize us with your work. So again, thank you. Thank you very much. Council members, the last item on the agenda are items referred to committee. And we'll go through these rather quickly. The first issue is in regards to workforce training. I want to ask us to keep that item in committee. there's quite a lot going on behind the scenes regarding workforce with the interlocal agreement between Bluegrass and then also the status of the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board. I anticipate that there will be some great discussion and maybe even some action items for the committee next month. The next item is increasing commitment to partner programming. I know Council Member Myers referred this in. I'll turn it over to him. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We're going to have an update coming before the committee here shortly. But one of the things I'd like to do, though, is if we could amend this. This is the first time I've actually looked at what this said. It says increasing commitment to partner programming, but that was actually partner agency funding. It's all about funding. It's not about programming. And so that's what we're going to be bringing to the committee here shortly. So if we could keep that in just for another meeting or two. Okay. And we'll make that inclusion of those two terms, partner agency funding programming and look forward hopefully maybe at the September meeting. We have several... Thank you, sir. No problem. Thank you, Council Member Myers. We have several linked referrals in and we'll try to address those quickly. The last item is in regards to the proposed reorganization of homeless office. I'm going to ask Sally, if she would come, please. She's not expecting this, but she's quite comfortable at the podium. Today was just for information in regards to the specialty of the homelessness office. On the organizational chart, it's listed under the office of the CAO. Logistically, it is housed in the mayor's office. and my referral and interest is for it to be reorganized under the Department of Social Services. There is a lot of, as Council Member Clark mentioned, and wherever it ends up, there's surely to be a lot of coordination between planning, affordable housing, and the things that Commissioner Paulson has. My question would be, for this item in committee, if you would be willing to work with the Department of Social Services, and even if needed with Commissioner Paulson, to bring us back a proposal, a plan of how that reorganization would work if council so chose to endorse it and approve it. I certainly will. I certainly will. I will work with both of them. Okay. Very good. And we'll look forward to that information at the next meeting. hearing no further business before the committee is there a motion to adjourn second it's been motioned and adjourned the committee stands adjourned our next meeting is on tuesday september 23rd we have 30 minutes until the next committee meeting Thank you.