# Social Services & Community Development Committee - September 23, 2014 > Auto-transcribed civic record · September 23, 2014 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3461 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3461?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2014-09-23 - **Last revised**: September 23, 2014 - **Length**: 18,078 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 convened on September 23, 2014, at 11:00 AM with Ford presiding as the meeting officer. The committee addressed four agenda items during the session, focusing primarily on informational presentations and updates related to workforce development and community funding processes. The committee took two votes during the meeting and heard no public comments. One item was formally approved - the Committee Summary - while the remaining three agenda items were presented for informational purposes. Key topics included a Workforce Investment & Training Interlocal Agreement, the Partner Agency Funding Process for Fiscal Year 2016, and a review of items that had been referred to the committee for consideration. The meeting appears to have been primarily focused on receiving updates and information rather than taking significant policy actions, with only the committee summary requiring formal approval. The session provided committee members with important briefings on workforce development partnerships and the upcoming funding cycle for partner agencies. ## Attendance The following members were present at the September 23, 2014 meeting: • Ford • Akers • Ellinger • Lawless • Stinnett • Scutchfield • Myers • Beard • Lane **Absent:** • Kay No members arrived late to the meeting. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included two unanimous votes by the nine-member body. **Meeting Minutes Approval** The first motion concerned approval of the summary of the April 22, 2014 meeting. Beard made the motion, which was seconded by Akers. The motion passed unanimously with all nine members voting in favor: Ford, Akers, Ellinger, Lawless, Stinnett, Scutchfield, Myers, Beard, and Lane. There were no opposing votes or abstentions. **Presentation Time Extension** The second motion addressed allowing five additional minutes for Mr. Lanter's presentation. Lawless made this motion, with Myers providing the second. This motion also passed unanimously with the same nine members voting in favor: Ford, Akers, Ellinger, Lawless, Stinnett, Scutchfield, Myers, Beard, and Lane. No members voted against the extension or abstained from voting. Both votes demonstrated complete consensus among the attending members, with final tallies of 9 ayes and 0 nays for each motion. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed one financial appropriation totaling $50,000. **Workforce Study Appropriation** The council considered an appropriation of $50,000 for the Workforce Study of Central Kentucky. The funds are designated for the Business and Education Network to conduct this workforce analysis study. The appropriation represents the meeting's sole financial action item, focusing on workforce development research in the Central Kentucky region through partnership with the Business and Education Network organization. ## Committee Summary The committee reviewed and approved the summary of their April 22, 2014 meeting during this agenda item. The discussion involved three key speakers: Ford, Beard, and Akers, who participated in the review process of the previous meeting's summary. The committee successfully completed their review of the April 22, 2014 meeting summary and voted to approve it. No specific concerns or objections were noted during the discussion, and the approval process proceeded without complications. The outcome was the formal approval of the April 22, 2014 meeting summary, allowing it to become part of the official record. ## Workforce Investment & Training – Interlocal Agreement Billie Peavler presented agenda item 2, which focused on the Workforce Investment & Training Interlocal Agreement and the associated Workforce Study of Central Kentucky project. Peavler outlined the project scope for the workforce study, which involves comprehensive data analysis and the development of recommendations for the Central Kentucky region. The presentation covered the analytical framework and methodology that will be used to assess workforce needs and training opportunities across the participating jurisdictions. The interlocal agreement appears to facilitate collaboration between multiple government entities in Central Kentucky to conduct this workforce analysis. The study aims to provide data-driven insights into regional employment patterns, skills gaps, and training requirements to better align workforce development efforts with economic needs. Peavler's presentation included details on the data collection and analysis components of the project, as well as the expected deliverables and recommendations that will result from the study. The comprehensive nature of the workforce analysis suggests it will examine multiple sectors and employment categories across the region. This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken by the body. The presentation served to update attendees on the progress and scope of the workforce study project being conducted under the interlocal agreement framework. The workforce study represents a collaborative regional approach to understanding and addressing employment and training needs across Central Kentucky's participating jurisdictions. ## Partner Agency Funding Process (FY16) The meeting included a discussion on the funding process for partner agencies for fiscal year 2016. Commissioner Mills led the presentation of this agenda item, which focused on establishing criteria and application requirements for organizations seeking partnership funding. The discussion covered the procedural framework that partner agencies would need to follow when applying for FY16 funding. This included outlining the specific criteria that would be used to evaluate potential partners and the documentation requirements that applicants must submit as part of their funding requests. The agenda item was designated as informational in nature, indicating that the discussion served to provide background information and context rather than requiring immediate action or decision-making from the meeting participants. The presentation aimed to ensure that all stakeholders understood the upcoming funding process and timeline for partner agency applications. No specific concerns or objections were noted during this discussion, and the item concluded without requiring a formal vote or resolution. The informational nature of the presentation suggests it was intended to prepare attendees for the upcoming FY16 funding cycle and ensure clarity around the application process for interested partner agencies. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item.* ## Items Referred to Committee The committee discussed various items that had been referred for their consideration during this agenda item. The discussion was led by key speakers Myers and Ford, who presented information on matters requiring committee review. One of the primary topics addressed was increasing the commitment to partner agency funding. This item was brought forward for the committee's consideration as part of their ongoing review of funding allocations and partnerships with external agencies. The discussion served an informational purpose, with speakers providing details on the referred items to ensure committee members were aware of the matters requiring their attention. The conversation allowed for committee members to understand the scope and implications of the items that had been forwarded to them for review. No specific action was taken during this discussion, as the agenda item was designated as informational in nature. The committee received the information about the referred items, including the partner agency funding commitment increase, for their consideration in future deliberations. The discussion provided a framework for the committee to understand what items would require their ongoing attention and potential future action, though no immediate decisions or votes were recorded for this particular agenda item. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (9-0): Approval of the summary of the April 22, 2014 meeting - **Motion** — passed (9-0): Allow five additional minutes for Mr. Lanter’s presentation --- ## Full transcript Music guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo Good morning. I welcome everybody to this morning's committee meeting of the Social Services and Community Development Committee. We'll call the meeting to order. We do have a quorum. I want to thank committee members and council members for joining us this morning. First item of business on pages one through three are committee summary. Is there a motion to approve? It's a motion by council member Beard, second by council member Ellinger. Any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Motion carries. Committee members, we have just two items of business on our agenda this morning. We'll begin with a longstanding item related to workforce investment and training that pertains to the interlocal agreement. In your packet, you will find, just to start us off, you will find Resolution 268 from 2013 that authorized Mayor Gray to sign this interlocal agreement. You actually have that interlocal agreement in your packet. then you will also find a resolution that we passed just this spring in regards to the fiscal independence of the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board and a subsequent respond letter by Mayor Burtner from Winchester, and we thank him for being here this morning, as well as Judge Executive John Wilson from Garrett County. What we have pending before us is a proposed amended interlocal agreement that our administration is reviewing at this time. So this discussion is intended for informational purposes. And without further ado, I would invite Mr. Kevin Atkins, our development officer and liaison to the Bluegrass Area Development District, to start us off. Welcome, Kevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yesterday at our Commerce Lexington board meeting, I heard Bill Samuels of Makers Mark give a quote that I thought was most appropriate for our conversation this morning. And if you get the talent part right, everything else will take care of itself. And I think that's what we're here to talk about this morning, and that's the talent piece. Workforce development is about getting the right talent, the right training, so that those workers can be the best that they can be and achieve the most that they can achieve in the workplace. As I communicated with you all yesterday and the whole council for that point, We have with us this morning Judge Executive John Wilson from Garrett County, as well as Mayor Ed Burtner from Winchester. They've been traveling the Bluegrass Area Development District counties to discuss the interlocal agreement that you have in your packets today. Mayor Burtner actually serves as the chief local elected official. You often hear the name CLEO, that's what that stands for, for the Workforce Board. So as Chairman Ford said earlier, you have the interlocal before you. They're here to talk to you about that and answer your questions this morning. I would just add to reinforce what Council Member Ford said, we have been in the process, along with Keith Horn from the Law Department, reviewing the agreement. We're looking at it as it applies to the current workforce law as well as it applies to the new we owe a law, which will take effect next year. So, Mr. Chairman, at this time, if it's all right with you, I would turn this podium over to Judge Wilson and Mayor Burtner. Thank you, Kevin. Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, as it has been stated, my name is Ed Burtner. I'm the mayor of Winchester, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning before the committee. I'll start off, and for the difficult questions, I'll defer to Judge Wilson. The amended interlocal agreement that you have before you is a major improvement over the interlocal agreement that has previously been adopted and is in place for the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Area. And I'll say very simply, as Kevin indicated, that my role as vice chair of the Bluegrass Area Development District automatically makes me the chief local elected official and invest that position with an enormous amount of authority and power. And very simply, what this revised and amended interlocal agreement does, it fires me from having about two-thirds to three-fourths of those duties and responsibilities. It basically sets up an arrangement that's contemplated under the federal law. The federal law existing is the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. Now, Kevin has already indicated that a new bill with regard to workforce matters at the federal level was adopted this past summer, which is a pretty interesting thing that with a group of lawmakers that can't hardly agree on anything, they were able to agree on a major revision to the federal workforce investment law that was adopted this past summer, which is the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act. That particular bill will go into effect July 1st of 2015, and it has a very different arrangement with regard to how we govern workforce investment matters in the regional or local level. Let me go back to the point that I started, though. Under the present arrangement, the chief local elected official has the following duties and responsibilities. He or she may designate the local or may designate the fiscal agent or the grant subrecipient. Now, that language is taken from the federal bill. It says may designate the fiscal agent or grant subrecipient. And I think the word designate is a critical word in terms of crafting or language crafting at the federal level. They probably had several words they could have used there, but the word they chose to use was may designate, or the words they chose to use was may designate. In addition to that, the chief local elected official has the authority to approve the budget of the Workforce Investment Board, has the authority to approve appointments to the Workforce Investment Board, has the authority to approve the work plan and action plan that would be developed by the Workforce Investment Board. Under this different arrangement, essentially those duties and responsibilities are transferred to the chief elected officials, which are defined as the 16 county judges of the Bluegrass Area Development District and the mayor of Lexington. And it is their duty and responsibility to be intimately involved in the operation of workforce investment activities at the regional level. Now, this is a very complicated law. It is for me. There are others in the room that probably can quote you chapter and verse, but for me, it has been very difficult to get up to speed on these matters. And let me say that I became the vice chair of the Bluegrass Area Development District on January 22nd of this year. I've been in that role just since January. I came to that role as a result of the nominating committee of the Bluegrass Ad asking me to serve on the executive committee and serve as an officer. So my tenure in dealing with these issues has been relatively brief. It certainly has been after the period that the Auditor of Public Accounts chose to do their examination with regard to the Blue Grass Area Development District. I was not an officer. I was not on the executive committee. But I agreed to do this knowing that there were several things that had to be done. For my part, I will say that I don't feel like I broke this. But I do feel like I have an obligation to help fix it. And I think this interlocal agreement that we have before us is a major improvement. It has been signed off on by Commissioner Brindley, the Commissioner of Workforce Investment for the state of Kentucky. It has been approved by the 16 fiscal courts. Judge Wilson and I personally attended every fiscal court meeting at which this came up. and answered questions that were raised. It is an interlocal agreement that spells out specifically who is responsible for doing what. Now, the Commissioner of Workforce Investment for the state placed us initially under a deadline of July the 15th to have this document concluded, completed, and signed off on, In addition to what is referred to as a memorandum of understanding, which will be an agreement between the Workforce Investment Board and the local elected officials, that deadline could not be met, could not have been met, and was not met, and we now have an extension to October the 15th. Uh, we are and have been focusing on this document, the interlocal agreement, um, and Commissioner Brindley has committed to personally be involved in negotiating the MOU, which would involve, um, an arrangement of four members of the Workforce Investment Board for LEOs. One of the slots has been reserved for Mayor Gray. The other three slots would be county judges who would serve on that. And the product of that would result in an MOU between those two bodies. But it is my understanding that our instruction was, Judge Wilson and I, to focus on this, get this document resolved and approved, and then to turn two on the MOU that, again, Commissioner Brindley has asked us to prepare. I don't know how much more time. Is that clock counting down or clock counting up? Down. That indicates time remaining, but, Mayor, if you need more time, I think the committee will be gracious to extend it. Let me address one of the documents that you referenced, Mr. Chair, and that was resolution number 212, which was adopted April the 24th of 2014. I became aware of the resolution when I received it in the mail. I was unaware that this was going to be addressed and taken up by the urban county government, the county council. Had I been aware of that, I would have been present. But having said that, your question might be, Bertner, what have you done with regard to the request that was made and stipulated in this agreement? And for the benefit of those present who may not be aware, Section 1 of that document reads that the Lexington-Fayette-Urton County Council hereby requests that Winchester Mayor Ed Bertner, as the chief elected official of the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board, actually it's a bluegrass workforce investment area, and there is a distinction between those two, take the necessary steps to identify and retain a new administrative and fiscal agent, which must be independent of the bluegrass ad, to provide services to the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board beginning July 1 of 2014. This resolution was adopted a week before I was called upon by the Commissioner of Workforce Investment to make a decision as to who the fiscal agent would be and grant subrecipient, consistent with the federal law, which I've already quoted, one week before. and again that is something that is a requirement that falls to the chief local elected official under the federal law. And I was called upon to make that decision for a two-year period, the two-year period which would begin July 1st of 2014. And I spent a great deal of time. I invested in personal contacts with the Auditor of Public Accounts, the Governor's Office, Commissioner Brindley, Daryl Smith, who is president here today and chairman of the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board. And I thought long and hard about the most appropriate thing to do. And so I did the following. So I designated for a six-month period, not two years. I was confident to make the decision for a two-year period, and I decided to do it for a six-month period, and I'll explain why. And I designated the Bluegrass Area Development District as the fiscal agent. In addition to that, and you have my letter before you, I called for several things to occur, one of which was for there to be a legal opinion sought and secured with regard to all of these matters. Now let me say, and I'll say it with a bark off right here. That's a Clark County expression. I'll say it with a bark off. That there's a lot of people that will offer an opinion and say they understand the law and say they know exactly how the system is supposed to work. But in my opinion, when you get deep into the issue, there's an awful lot of gray areas. I will say I called for a legal opinion. I will say that I didn't get any grip or traction on the part of those people that I had hoped would partner in that process. I also found myself in a position where everybody associated with this issue was represented by legal counsel except Burtner. So I found myself in a position of having to make a very complex and difficult decision without counsel and in an area that I was just now beginning to understand. This was roughly two to three months after I had been elected as vice chair. I chose a six-month period because, frankly, I felt like there needed to be something of a probationary period here. There needed to be a period of time at which everybody stayed under the gun, so to speak, in terms of fixing this issue. Now, the Auditor of Public Accounts with regard to the – may I have a little bit more time? And I promise I'll finish up. Yes, sir. May I? Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. I make a motion that we give the mayor an extra 10 minutes. That's great. It's a motion to second by Council Member Myers. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Passes. Please proceed, Mayor. Yes, sir. I felt like that everybody needed to stay under the gun with regard to this matter. The Auditor of Public Accounts in his report had a series of eight findings with regard to matters related to the Bluegrass Area Development District, and part of that related to workforce matters, but not all of it. And we have been, we being the leadership of the Bluegrass SAD, have been as rapidly as we can trying to work through those findings and try to resolve those issues because all of us are mayors and county judges and we have local governments that we need to be primarily concerned with. because that's what, when we took our oath of office, it was to be mayor of Winchester and county judge and Garrett County. But basically, I felt like there needed to be a probationary period. Everybody needed to stay under the gun. We all needed to work as hard as we could. And in addition to that, and I'm not saying anything that is not commonly known, uh, Commissioner Brindley has retained another individual to, uh, identify disallowed cost. Any funds that were disallowed and spent, uh, his job, uh, is going to be to determine, uh, what those funds were, uh, why they were misspent, and somebody is going to have to, uh, either repay those funds or make good on those funds. So I did not feel that during this time when you had another auditor, when we were trying to resolve these issues, when we were trying to fix all of these matters, I did not feel that it was appropriate to go through what I was being called upon to do in the resolution. Respectfully, I understand what the Urban County Council was asking me to do. Again, I would like to have had the opportunity to address the council that day, and I would have made myself available, but that's over and done with. And I realize I've taken up far too much of your time. I would just say that with regard to the interlocal agreement that you have before you, this is a vast improvement over what we have in place. What we have in place now is a document that without a vote, without a democratic process, simply says that the chief elected official as an officer of the Bluegrass Area Development District shall be the CLEO. Under this revised arrangement, there is a democratic process that requires the chief elected officials, the 16 county judges and the mayor of Lexington, requires them to become engaged, and they are engaged. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Again, for the hard questions, I'll defer to Judge Wilson. Thank you, Mayor Berner. Committee members will open the floor up for questions. are there any questions for mayor burton at this time well mayor uh if you will uh hang tight we do have folks who have signed up to speak on this issue and a committee if it's okay i'll allow and call for public comment at this time we now have first we have mr charles pain if you would come forward and provide your name and your address and we'll kindly offer you three minutes to address the committee. My name is Charles Payne. I live 1528 Bell Harbor Court in Lexington, Kentucky. So So even though we agree that a governing board needs to exist, as the interlocal agreement calls this board of local elected officials, we have serious concerns with the powers and authorities and the structure that the interlocal agreement would establish. First, the fact that the local elected officials board in its entirety would only meet, I think, twice a year. And then there's an executive committee that would meet, I guess, in the interim time periods and make decisions on the actions that the governing board or the CLEO would take. structure similar to what we saw in the area development district. It got them in trouble in the first place with the conflicts of interest that Auditor Eadlin found in that it would establish, again, the executive committee, once you constitute a quorum there, then it only takes, I think, four votes to carry the day on anything. So that would eliminate the voices of 13 counties with respect to workforce investment issues that may come before that board. Another one of the issues that we have are the powers and authorities that would be taken from the CLEO and the Workforce Investment Board and bestowed upon a fiscal agent. It appears that, as per the agreement, it appears to be a consolidation of those powers so that it would eliminate a lot of the negotiation and agreement process between the parties, the workforce being the Workforce Investment Board, the chief elected official, board of local elected officials, so on and so forth. One excellent example is the workforce director under this agreement, which is responsible for administrating the oversight that is supposed to reside with a local workforce investment board, would be bestowed upon the fiscal agent. In the sense that the workforce director would be the grant subrecipient or the fiscal agent's employee. so they would in effect be their supervisor. And that's just one example. There's a lot of things in here. I'm sure you guys have read this and read the comments that I've made over the last few weeks. There's a lot of things that establish conflicts of interest here that we're convinced are going to bring us back in just a few years to have this thing reexamined in a formal capacity and at the state level. So that said, I have seven areas of concern that we feel should be addressed. I'm out of time. Did you guys sign up? Mr. Payne, if you could give us just one second. I'll turn to Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we give Mr. Payne, being the neighborhood president, 10 more minutes. Second. It's a motion and a second by Council Member Kay. Any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Payne. Seven areas that we have of concern. if the agency out there and the local area elected officials are sincere about reform, would be as follows. All the services that are mandated to be procured by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act must be procured. That includes one stop in youth services. I believe youth services is already being procured. The workforce director and staff must not be under the supervision of the fiscal agent, the service provider, or the grant subrecipient. The fiscal agent must not be allowed to also be the service provider and vice versa. Responsibilities granted to the local workforce board or to the chief elected official must not be granted to the fiscal agent, service provider, or designated grant sub-recipient. Budgetary control must not be bestowed upon the fiscal agent, service provider, or the grant sub-recipient. Fiscal agent must be procured and agreed upon by both the chief elected official, the governing board, and the workforce investment board. Federal law does not mandate that the agency is to be designated. It doesn't say it must be. As Mayor Burtner pointed out, it just says he may designate. All decisions made by the governing board must be by unanimous decision and never delegated to a smaller executive committee where regional policy can be determined with a simple majority vote by as few as four persons. these come from other states and other recommendations there's some states that want that specifically prohibited by a state law for example that the fiscal agent cannot be the service provider so these these seven things here were convinced would go a long way to eliminate conflict of interest and would would be a demonstration of the parties involved that have drafted this interlocal agreement. It would demonstrate their sincerity at true reform at the Area Development District and with this workforce investment situation. So I believe that's about all I have. Mr. Payne, thank you for your comments. We have one other person signed up for public comment, and then we'll circle back around to allow the committee to ask general questions from all those who've spoken. I'll call now Mr. Darrell Smith. Sir, if you'll, again, share your name and your address, and we'll begin you to start off with three minutes. Okay, Darrell Smith, 853 Ridgebrook Road, Lexington, Kentucky. I'm a private citizen, and I'm a private sector member and chair of the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board. First of all, I want to thank Council and Mayor Gray for taking the bold step to put forth a resolution for the independence of the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board. Secondly, I want to go on record as saying that the WIB, in addition, has asked there to be a procurement process, competitive bid for the fiscal agent. Third, I wish to state that we have asked the CLEO to recuse himself since the APA report said he has a conflict of interest in any matter as it is related to the WIB and the ad. I'm a believer in the talent pipeline that Kevin Atkins talked about, and I think it's a simple question. Going forward, if we are to reach the citizens and business needs of this region, do we want to go on the same path, or is it time to go on a different path? There's a quote I want to give you. Edward DeBono said, you can't dig a new hole by digging the same hole deeper. The bluegrass web struck out several years ago in 2011 with a bold new strategic plan that's economically focused, trying to meet business needs and meet the needs of individuals. In 2012, I got snookered. I signed a web CEO agreement, which gave away power that I later found out belonged to the web to the ad. I won't be fooled next time. We want our full rights under federal law, nothing more. Number two, we want to be as effective as possible in this region. And that means we've got to start over and start with regional conversations about the real issues with workforce, not looking through the glass lens of being pro-add or anti-area development district, but in my opinion, through the lens of the economy, the businesses, the individuals, and what their needs are. And I believe that strategy ought to drive the structure. You ought not come with structure to drive strategy. Strategy ought to drive structure. And that's simply all we believe in, and we believe in free and open competition. And I believe if you look at federal grants, there's a requirement for the one-stops to be bid out. And I think if you look at federal law, the WIP can hire its own staff, and it is not bound to be under the umbrella of the Area Development District. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Thanks for all those who have spoken today before the committee. We'll begin with questions with Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Smith, could you come back up for just a second? And Mr. Payne, I have a question for you after that. So you heard, I know you probably didn't have them written down in front of you, but the seven points that Mr. Payne made that would speak to independence, Do you agree with all those? Without hearing, let me start. I've read an audit from the state of Pennsylvania where there was not a proper firewall between the fiscal agent who was also a program provider. And in that case, if you look up, I think it's RCWE is the one-stop provider who ended up buying a building, and there was a lot of issues up there. The audit in particular pointed out there must be a distinct firewall to protect the integrity of programs. I agree that a fiscal agent, in my opinion, should not be a program provider if the fiscal agents, and let's be honest, the Leos, the local elected officials, are the board of directors of the ad. How in the world can they be unbiased in the selection of anything if they are also the deciders to say whether I get on the board or not? They simply can replace me on the board if I don't vote to make them the program provider. So I don't see a way to mitigate that conflict of interest. So I am in agreement there. And so several other states have done this. I think it's Indiana who requires that a fiscal agent must be bid out. I think it is Texas, and I may be wrong on the state, that requires that you can't be both. Matter of fact, I think Indiana says the same thing. There are requirements where you can't be both. And I think for the integrity of the system, those kinds of measures may need to be considered by the state legislator. Okay. Thank you very much. And then I suppose that you would also agree that employees shouldn't be underneath that fiscal agent either. Again, let's be honest. You make indirect costs off these grants. There is a financial interest to being the one-stop provider and the staff to the web. I have to be honest. That's transparency. Whoever is that provider makes money and can divert money, they can share the light bill, the rent bill. That's a cash cow to that organization. I think those matters have to be looked at solely as you look at who should be these providers. And simply, you didn't ask me this question, but our board voted to do an employer of record contract. We first offered the contract to the Area Development District. At their July meeting, it's my understanding that they turned down that contract. So legally, I do not think that they are still the employer of record for the WIB. Now, that's subject to negotiation, and we have learned counsel here, Ms. Tagay, who is the counsel for the Area Development District, he probably has a difference of opinion about that. We sought forth and actively have a RFP out where we are looking for an employer of record for up to six staff for the Workforce Board. Secondly, we are earnestly trying to seek the opinion of the CLEO because as I read federal law, it says either the WIP is enabled to provide direct services or the one-stop is bidded out. If the ad is no longer the provider of record, then immediately we must procure the one stop. Okay. Thank you, sir. Mr. Payne, the only concern that I had with the points that you made was that, one, you said that the votes should be unanimous. I like the second part of that because, as you said, part of what happened before was you have a board with 70-something people on there, but then you break that down where decisions are being made by a real small committee, and then all you need is a quorum of that committee to make big decisions. Right. When you said unanimous, how many people were on that committee? I believe that would be you would have one representative from each of the counties, local elected officials, which would be all the judge executives plus the mayor of Lexington. So you're talking about 17-member board. Why would you stipulate that it needed to be unanimous? That seems difficult to. Well, in a democratic process, one vote, one voice. And if you're going to be determining, in my opinion, policy that's going to affect workforce in the entire region, that everybody should have a say in that. Who knows better, for example, the needs of the industry and the employees of any given county than their elected officials? Okay. So that's why I thought that that would be a good suggestion. is that way everybody has a say in it instead of just three or four people. Okay, I get that part. In matters that would affect, say, for example, you're talking about four people that may not necessarily be from Fayette County that's addressing the workforce investment needs for Fayette County. These are people I haven't had the opportunity to vote for. Sure, I understand that part. But when you said the bigger committee with the 17 people on there, you want their votes to be unanimous? Or did I misunderstand you? Okay, I see what you're saying. All 17 people to vote one way, I think would be very, serving on a council of 15 people, we hardly have. So you're talking about a simple majority versus a unanimous decision? Right. I like the fact that you're talking about the 17 member instead of the four-member quorum on a committee. Right. But unanimous vote seems hard to. Well, maybe a better way to look at it would be, instead of having four significant issues relating to workforce investment, to have a meeting of the full board and more than just a quorum, but everybody be present, and then a simple majority of the 17 carry the day. Maybe that's an option. So we really haven't explored in depth how that would be structured. But we feel like that there's, you know, it's inherently dangerous to place these authorities in the hands of four people. Sure. What you might consider is a super majority of the 17. Simple majority of 17. Super. Super majority. Super majority of the 17. Which would be, for example. Just two-thirds. Okay, two-thirds vote. Of the 17, not a small. That sounds more reasonable. Getting all 17 to agree like these gentlemen, I'm sure, have found is a formidable task. Okay. I know my time's up, so I'll pass and come back for a second time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Committee, if it's okay, I'll ask just a few questions. I don't have a motion to bring, so I'll ask Mayor Burtner or Judge Wilson. And then I may have a question for Kevin or Keith of our law department. Where we stand right now, if committee members would turn their attention to Paige, 6, 7, and 8. This represents the existing interlocal agreement that we have in operation right now. And if you guys recall, we have been discussing this issue since the fall of 2012. Very complex, as Mayor Burtner mentioned, and we all have come to realize. On the top of page 8, the second line from the top is a signature for Lexington Fayette Urban County Government and Mayor Gray. He signed that on June 26, 2013. The first signature on this agreement was late December 2010. And I say that just for recollection purposes, is that our government had great hesitation to sign the current interlocal agreement, even prior to the uncoverings of the state auditor's report. So there was great discernment there initially. I guess my question would be now, with that said, and I think the mayor mentioned that 16 of the fiscal courts have already signed and agreed to the agreement. That again leaves Lexington to be the final signature required. All right. What is the exploration of this agreement that's proposed, the proposed amended agreement? Well, let me thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is John Wilson. I'm the judge executive in Garrett County. My address, 15 Public Square in Lancaster, if you want to send me a Christmas card. This agreement, you can withdraw out of this agreement, if you notice at the end of the current agreement. It says termination. It's on page 6 of 9. This agreement shall remain in effect until terminated pursuant to this section. In the event one of the local government parties withdraws from this agreement, this agreement shall be null and void with respect to that government. So you have the right to pull out at any time. I guess we have six minutes left on Mayor Burtner's time of the original. Can I address some of the comments that were made earlier? Yes, sir. Judge, that'll be fine. This current issue has very little to do with the Bluegrass Area Development District. And we all know that there were problems with the Bluegrass ad, and we know that there were problems with the workforce program. This agreement begins to fix those problems. And the elected officials, the chief elected officials from the 17 counties, it's the mayor of Lexington and the other 16 county judges, have spent time working on this agreement to prevent these mistakes from happening again. You've heard a lot about the conflict of interest. This is an apparent conflict of interest. And what that was is the way the current agreement reads, the one that we're all operating under now and we will continue operating under until Lexington adopts this agreement, the chief, the highest elected officer at the Bluegrass Ad is automatically the chief local elected official. And that just looks bad because just like Mr. Payne said, he is on the Bluegrass Ad board and makes a decision on who selects the fiscal agent. This agreement that we've come up with for the first time since the 90s when this started puts this into a democratic process where all 17 counties get to make those decisions. The reason that we don't require all 17 to get together is we haven't been able to have a meeting where all 17 chief local elected officials have been able to coordinate their schedules. You're talking about the county judge executive from all 16 counties plus the mayor of Lexington and just the Herculean task of making all 17 of those people's calendars work. It's almost impossible. So, you know, to your point, Councilman Myers, it would be impossible to have a unanimous agreement. Right now we have 16 counties who have passed this. We have, but what we did was when we all met together, Kevin Atkins from your staff was there, we set up a working committee of the judge executives and mayor. And there were five of us, myself from Garrett County, Judge McKinney from Boyle County, Judge Kent Clark from Madison County, Judge Pryor from Nicholas County, and Judge Adams from Lincoln County. And basically what we did was we hammered this agreement out. We've had meetings with Commissioner Brindley and Randy Justice, who's general counsel for the Workforce Cabinet, and the Department of Local Government. They've reviewed this and signed off. Commissioner Brindley herself has signed off on this after Randy Justice has reviewed this. So we take care of the conflict of interest issue. The other issue is this lack of oversight. And there is a lack of oversight because what happens is the current agreement leaves all the power vested in one person, Mayor of Winchester, this year. This process under the new agreement, all the elected officials will be focusing on that. And that puts the oversight, gives us an opportunity to meet for the first time. Also, it creates a dispute resolution process and also presents a process for going after disallowed costs. Right now, if there's disallowed costs, who should bear the cost of that? Should it be the Lexington City government when those funds were spent in Lexington, for instance, if they were? So we set up a great process here that you can read that we take care of those issues. We also had John Chamberlain, who's an attorney from Portland, Oregon, who's the preeminent workforce investment expert from the country. In fact, Mr. Smith and I attended a conference last week on workforce issues. John Chamberlain taught most of the classes there, and he helped us draft this. So the old agreement invests all the powers in one person. This new agreement puts all the powers where it belongs in the chief local elected officials because, after all, we're the ones with the ultimate accountability. The Workforce Investment Board has no assets, and it's made up of private citizens the way it's supposed to be. But there's really very little accountability to the voters that way. This agreement puts it all in the local elected officials. There is a negotiation process under this new agreement. In the old agreement, no negotiation process. In the new agreement, there is a negotiation process, and it currently fixes that. There's also been something said about the executive director and the employees working for the fiscal agent. We set that up for accountability purposes. we expect the fiscal agent to produce for us, and that would be the executive director as well. And then there's also a question under federal law whether the employees of the WIB can provide direct services. That can only be done with permission of the governor and the chief local elected official. And the reason that process is set up in such a difficult and burdensome way is because it's rare and should only be used in specific instances, not the situation that we have here. Now, with respect to Mr. Payne's seven areas of concern, we share some of those areas of concern. Those will be addressed in the memorandum of understanding that we will negotiate with the WIB, assuming this gets passed. And that's why this is so important to pass this agreement. This is basically the Constitution. For instance, when the local judge executives and the mayor of Lexington got together to meet, one of the judges said, by what authority are we meeting? And that's a good question. We don't have, there is no document that creates that board of local elected officials to meet. This does that. So we get together and we're supposed to negotiate this memorandum of understanding. By what authority do we have to enter into that agreement without this interlocal agreement? This interlocal agreement establishes that body of chief elected officials from the region to negotiate that. So we don't even get into these seven issues for the memorandum of understanding until we pass this agreement. Mr. Smith talked about the procurement process. Any processes that are mandated to be procured, obviously if it's mandated, we'll certainly procure those. Right now, the way it is set up, the chief elected official, the mayor of Winchester, gets to unilaterally make these decisions by himself. That's the agreement that we're all operating under. The new agreement strips that away and creates a democratic process where the chief elected officials from each county will vote and select that. I agree this isn't a pro-ad or anti-ad. This thing has nothing to do with the ad. In fact, the agreement that we're operating under now mentions the ad specifically. This new agreement, the word bluegrass ad, is not mentioned in there at all. We're moving on from this. And again, I would just say if this thing is so slanted and illegal, why would Commissioner Brindley have signed this herself? Why would 16 fiscal courts and 16 county attorneys have signed off on this already? John Chamberlain, workforce expert, signed off. Department of local government signed off. I'm glad to answer any questions. I think there's been a whole lot to do about all these other issues, but they're really not germane to the real issue here. Thank you, Judge. And I have just two follow-up questions just quickly in regards to the position of Mayor Burtner currently as the chief local elected official. and I think that most of us up here can understand, Mayor, in regards to the steep learning curve just assuming that role in January. Is that federal law? And I'm no expert at the Workforce Investment Act, but is that in the current agreement, is that federal law? Does the federal law dictate that the chief local elected official, not only in Bluegrass, but across the other 15, I believe it is, workforce investment areas. Speak to that aspect, if you will. If I might, could I ask John to respond to that? I'd be happy to, but I'm not a lawyer. John is. That's fine. Yes, sir. Welcome, attorney. Thank you, Chair. The federal law simply states that the chief local elected officials, by agreement, can set forth how the duties and responsibilities are carried out, which would include the designation of a fiscal agent or subrecipient, and the current interlocal agreement in place designates that the highest-ranking elected official of the Bluegrass Ad shall serve as the CLEO. That is the, quote, apparent conflict of interest that was raised by Adam Eland in his audit report. The only thing the Bluegrass Ad at the time could do to correct that apparent conflict of interest is to make sure that the chair of the Bluegrass ad was not an elected official, and she is a private citizen, which then puts the chief elected official of the Bluegrass Area Investment District, the WIA, as the vice chair, which is Mayor Burtner, which separates the duties from the chair and the vice chair. The only way to fully correct the problem is to have a new interlocal agreement because that interlocal agreement is all 17 counties agreeing to a process to elect the CLEO, and the Bluegrass ad nor anyone else can correct that until there's a new ICA, interlocal cooperative agreement, that corrects that problem. Again, attorney, but the CLEO as defined in the current agreement, is that current federal law? Yes, it's compliant with federal law under the current system because that's the current interlocal agreement. The federal law defaults to the interlocal agreement. It says basically in the 650 WIAs around the country, it says that you all as a region can determine how you're going to select your CLEO. And this region has decided that, and that's compliant with federal law. May I respond? Yes, Mayor. Just a little bit there. I think maybe more directly your question is, does the federal law provide for chief elected officials? The answer is yes. under the federal law, the chief elected officials are defined as the heads of the general purpose units of government. And the way that has been interpreted in Kentucky is that that's the county judges for jurisdictions, and obviously in Fayette County it would be the mayor. The way it has been interpreted in Kentucky, the federal law talks about CEOs in Kentucky. It's been interpreted to be the county judges, not the mayors of the county seat towns, not all the other mayors with the exception of Fayette County. And so the federal law also provides that the CEOs, the chief elected officials, may come together and may do an agreement which occurred three years ago and which is proposed to be revised. and the Bluegrass Area Development District under the old or present agreement basically made the decision by policy that the highest ranking elected official who is a who is an officer of the Bluegrass Area Development District would be the CLEO and so you have federal law that says you've got CEOs, you may have a CLEO, or Chief Local Elected Official. I'm not sure if that's the exact word that's used in federal statute. In the Bluegrass ad, that's the practice. We are attempting to cure that practice by making that a person not automatic, but by making that person selected by a democratic process. And let me say that when this agreement is fully approved, and I hope it will be, if, there's a big if there, that when the CEOs meet to select the CLEO, it may not be me. It may be an elected official from another jurisdiction. It may be another mayor. It may be a county judge. It may be somebody else. Frankly, after these six or seven months' experience, I'd rather it be somebody else, But that's just an aside notion. The interesting thing about this whole arrangement that we have in Kentucky, there are 15 area development districts. There are 10 WIAs, 10 workforce investment areas. And when I inquired about who the other chief local elected officials were in the other 10 WIAs, there's a couple of WIAs that don't even have elected officials as the chief local elected official. So, you know, this notion that we're trying to get it right and do right and trying to come around and, you know, there's a lot here and there's a lot when you start peeling away the layers, there's a lot to understand. But the federal law is the one that drives this arrangement and this arrangement that we have in place was what the ad worked out. What we're trying to work out here is getting the CEOs engaged so that they make the fundamental decisions. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council, maybe this question would be for you. Um, you, someone said that until the new agreement is signed, then the current agreement is, is in place. And therefore, um, you can't change who, how the CLEO set up. But isn't it true that the current agreement could just be modified by a vote of the current CEOs, if you will, the judge execs and the mayor of Lexington? Without a new agreement, couldn't they just amend the current agreement to change that? Well, that is precisely, this is couched as an amendment of the prior agreement, and there is a process, and it would take all 17 agreeing. That would have to be a unanimous vote? Well, that's a second question, but that will pose a very interesting situation that if Lexington does not sign. Well, I meant the unanimous piece, because if it has to be an unanimous vote on that, then we're getting back to how difficult it is to get a unanimous vote. Yeah, well, I think the prevailing, well, under the current agreement, to fully amend it, I think the prevailing view is, and talking to Commissioner Brindley's counsel, is it would take all to amend. There is a, with 16 agreeing to how to conduct themselves, we're going to be in some gray area of how we go forward. Okay, let me clarify, though, because my question is not if Fed County doesn't sign the new agreement. My question is the current agreement. The real issue is how the CLIO is set up. That's part of the reason why you're coming up with a new agreement. But really, you don't need a new agreement to fix that. You could just amend the current agreement and change how the CLIO is set up, period, and not do any other changes. Is that? That is true. Okay. Okay. Thank you, sir. And if I could address one of your prior questions, which I think shows the real benefit of this agreement and why so many people have approved it. The whole voting process that you were zeroing in on, on supermajority and so forth, under paragraph two of the agreement, page two of the agreement, that there are certain items that the full board, all 17 county judge execs, and the mayor of Lexington address. What page are you on, sir? Page 2, subpart A, that the duties that the full board retains is the designation and selection of the fiscal agent and subrecipient, the selection of the CLEO, and the election of the executive committee. And I think there comes a point of where you want to let people govern and respect and honor their ability to govern. But what this agreement also says is that the executive committee can perform all items except the designation subrecipient, the CLEO election, and other actions expressly reserved by the governing board. So all of these supermajority things, there's going to be, as Judge Wilson said, this is the Constitution to start things. And it has been there's been a lot of hours that have been put into this to try to make it a good Constitution. Ninety nine point nine percent of everything has been discussed is an MOA issue for an agreement. is is uh daryl smith mentioned that that he felt like he was fooled once on it it isn't going to happen again it's not going to happen with the leos it's not going to happen with the web because commissioner brindley is going to be involved and we're going to be having a very sincere discussion about what goes into that secondly the leos i think when given the opportunity and i've had the privilege of working with a bunch of them and they're very thoughtful and read and studied this more than anybody has in the last 15 years, they will also be addressing some of these governance issues. So I think we just need to get over the initial hurdle and get this thing moving forward. Okay. I appreciate your additional comments. I only have 47 seconds left. I don't know who to ask this question to, but there seems like there's two documents here. There's our resolution that we're talking about, but we're also talking about this new interlocal agreement. So my question to whomever and everybody can weigh in if they like, if we agree to this new local interlocal agreement, does that then lock us into how the decisions are made about the workforce investment moving forward? No. If you were to say to me that that new interlocal is only about how the CLIO is selected, I might be okay with that. But my question is, if we agree to that, then all the questions that Mr. Payne had about conflict of interest and all those things, how do those get decided, and are they decided in the decision-making process for this other interlocal? I think, to answer your question briefly, is it is not the end of those discussions. It is the beginning of those discussions. So if I'm, because my time is short, I don't mean to cut you off, So if I'm the neighborhood president and I'm trying to understand that in a way that I can believe that and get my teeth around that, how is that? What do you say to me that I go back to my neighborhood and say, if the government agrees to sign this interlocal agreement, then it's time to sit down at the table, be a part of how the rest of these decisions are being made? Is there a document you're going to give us that shows all these MOAs? This is what has to be decided in an MOA? I'm really interested in how decisions being made forward aren't made by subcommittees that have 10 people on them, and the quorum's six, and four people show up, and they make decisions, that kind of thing. So how do we say to the neighborhood, those things can't happen in the future? And how do we say to Mr. Smith's concerns that those things aren't going to happen moving forward? In a 17-county region, you say this to Mr. Payne, along with any other, if we were in any other county in this region, is you elect your councilman, you elect your mayor, and when you elect them, you trust them to go out and represent you. This is your answer, Councilman Meyer. And the answer to it is that this empowers Mayor Gray to be at the table for this. Just like Scott County, all these questions have been asked, and people were involved and engaged at the elected official level, And the question from Scott County was, how is Scott County making sure they're getting their share of these funds? So how is Mr. Payne comfortable that he and the employees here are getting their fair share? It's by putting your mayor at the table under a democratic agreement is how I'd answer that. Okay, and if the committee would be so kind of letting me respond quickly. I would say to you that that's the wrong answer, and here's why. because if I'm the neighborhood president, I go back to the fact that we had a mayor, how engaged or not engaged, and we had several mayors over the years. It's not the issue. The issue is when you read Adam Elin's audit, he clearly says that the way this thing was set up, I kind of take exception to his leniency. I think that board members are responsible for what happens on their watch. He says that it was set up in such a way that many of these things happened without the understanding of the board that these things were happening or could happen. And so when you say that we say the neighborhood, we elected a mayor and the mayor has a seat in a democratic process, that's what was supposed to have happened before. But we understand that the way that ADD was operating, they circumvented much of that according to the auditor. That's not my statement. If you read the audit, that's over and over throughout the audit. So, again, how do we alleviate the concerns of the neighborhood and of Mr. Smith that this new process is a new process that works, not just a process that allows somebody to sit at a table because everybody's at a table before? Okay, I'll try it this way. The old process was bottom-up management. It was an executive director that called the shots and ran the show. And that was the problem. The selection of the Leo was by accident. That when they're having an election for officers of the Bluegrass Ad, nobody really understood that they were empowering the highest elected official that was an officer of the Ad with the powers of the Cleo, which are pretty significant powers. Comes also significant responsibility. This is a complete flip of that entire process. This is management from the top down. It is all 17 that are coming together on a two-year basis to consciously think and debate and decide who's going to be the Clio. And it is not driven by an election of the Bluegrass Ad. So that is where, if you want top-down management, then you're going to be stuck with whoever the top is that you elect. whether it's the president of the United States, whether it's the mayor, councilman, whatever, it still trickles down to the constituency. And then it's the responsibility, now that those Leos have been empowered, to exercise that power responsibly. Okay, so it sounds like what you're saying, then, if we had a Cleo that was elected because the ad had the power to do that, and that person was corrupt and that's why all the other things happened. That sounds like that's what you're saying. Right. I mean, the CLEOs or the LEOs were not involved in the process before. That was one of the tenets of the APA report is get involved. That's why the governor has mentioned to other county judge execs, get involved in this process. And now they've done all that. And that's what's bringing around the change that's occurring right now. So if I understand you correctly, it's like the LEO is the king or the CLEO is the king can make all these decisions. but there were votes that were being taken by people on the board. And so it wasn't just that the Cleo had all the power and it was top down. There were votes being taken. They bought a property with six votes, I think it was, out of a 75-member total board. I can tell you firsthand, I'm not saying the fallacy in your argument, of the fallacy in the comment that the CLEO and board members were allowing things to occur, just like Mr. Smith was saying that he didn't feel like he was in the process. I'm trying to understand your statement. The process currently is that the CLEO has all the power. You're the one that made that statement. Right. But I think your point was is that in the past the CLEO had this power already. The problem is, my point is, is bottom-down management is the Cleo did not even understand he or she had the power. Mayor Baker from Lawrenceburg, the prior Cleo, had no idea the enormous responsibility and power she had because she was never told that. Now, people can fault her and say you should have known that. Fair comment. But I think she's a diligent mayor. It wasn't explained. the world today is different. There's not a Leo in our region that does not understand the power and responsibility that comes with them. There's not a councilman or fiscal court member that doesn't understand that. The attention is on the workforce area and the responsibility of leadership down. Okay, so... Okay. I still don't understand how the concerns that Mr. Smith raised and the concerns that Mr. Payne made are going to be satisfied by this interlocal agreement. I'm not saying they're not. I'm saying I don't understand how they are. I'll go another method. Mr. Payne wants one vote per county on everything. He wanted unanimous, but now it's supermajority. But he also talked about who the fiscal agent is as opposed to who the employees are, et cetera, and Mr. Smith said the same thing. So where do those things come in? All 17 counties will decide that. That means Mr. Payne's objective. So you're saying, okay, so what this interlocal does is set up a process so that all those decisions can be made. Yes. And then how is that in writing, that there's going to be MOAs for ABCDEFG. Yeah. Well, there's... You don't have to touch today. Right, right. There's regs on that. This agreement contemplates the MOA between the WIB and the elected officials. The agreement clearly spells out one county, one vote on all major issues. It is, you know, we can certainly, you know, if the question is making a super majority on that, I don't think there's going to be a pushback to have a supermajority on those type of decisions. And when you say one county, one vote, that means that it can't go, decisions can't be made by a subcommittee with fewer members, right? Not without all 17 counties by majority or supermajority saying that can occur. Can we create a situation where that cannot occur, that they can't delegate that power to a smaller committee? The, currently, the answer is yes. Currently, we thought we took all the major issues off the table. It says it can't occur except for all 17, which was the very thing we're talking about, the CLEO, which is the other elephant in the room, which is the subrecipient and fiscal agent. Those two, if this agreement is adopted, cannot be delegated to the subcommittee. Okay. One final question. I thank you, committee, for allowing me to ask questions. I can't exceed my time. So the last big issue is, does this interlocal agreement, if adopted the new one, allow for a fiscal agent to be separate from the ad? Yes. Mr. Smith is shaking his head no. He's shaking his head no? Mr. Smith is shaking his head no. Well, it says it to be designated. It doesn't mention the Bluegrass ad. I don't see what language. Mr. Smith, please, if the chair will permit. Mr. Bertner is already on record at the Scott County Fiscal Court saying he's already named the Bluegrass Area Development District. In his words, as subrecipient and fiscal agent. I have an email from Mr. Bertner where he has petitioned Commissioner Brindley to extend the six months to one year. I also understand that Judge Wilson is interested in getting that extended for a full two years to 2016. I will further ask the question, it has been stated as though Commissioner Brindley endorses everything in this in a local agreement. I would ask counsel to personally call the commissioner to see if she endorses everything in the agreement or whether she says everything in the agreement, they've got the check boxes done. It accounts for how they would handle this, that and the other or whether she agrees with the fact that the ad should be named subrecipient and be in a superior role to the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board. Further, this amended agreement gives marching orders to the governing board and the fiscal agent that they will have to follow. Some of those orders are contrary to the Workforce Investment Act. I refer you to page 18, the governing board may render policies and procedures adopted by the WIB void and ineffective. Page 20, the fiscal agent can be the employer of the workforce director who should be chosen by the WIB directly to support the efforts of the WIB. So with due respect to the colleagues here in the room, I still have issues with this in the local agreement and would further state to you, you are ceding Mayor Gray's ability to name a private sector board member to the WIB as he currently has. And in the future, if you read that agreement, he may turn my name or somebody else from the private sector's name in, but it is a smaller group who will name that board, which means it is possible that no one from Fayette County may be on a future workforce investment board. The question was, does the document prohibit or require the designation? I'd actually rather have you respond to his comments. Okay. Well, Mr. Smith did not reference the document at all, saying that the document mandates that the Bluegrass ad be selected. And the reason he didn't reference the selection of the Bluegrass ad as a fiscal agent subrecipient is it is not in the agreement. Well, is it true that the judge has requested that that be extended because he told us six months? Right, and that is a different question, which that the fleo... That I'd like to have answered, because if he stood here and told us six months and he didn't tell us that he'd already sent a letter asking it to be extended for a year, that's sort of disingenuous. Well, I... If he's going to tell us he only wanted it for six months, he's giving us the impression that that's all he wants. If he's already submitted a letter asking for it to be extended for a year and the other judge is trying to get it extended for the full two years, then what Mr. Smith said, fool me once, don't fool me a second time, is exactly what's getting ready to happen here. Well, I was taking notes during Mayor Burtner's comments, and he said that he had originally— He's here. He can speak for himself, sir. Just committee members, I'm going to ask, I'll welcome Mayor Burton if he wanted to respond, because I do want to allow council members to ask questions that aren't in Dias. Mayor? Well, certainly I don't know if it's disingenuous or not. But I will say that this agreement was part of a negotiating session. The answer to your question is yes. I have made that request to Commissioner Brindley. How come? Well, I'm getting ready to say that. Thank you, sir. The, basically, Judge Wilson and I sat in a negotiating session with Commissioner Brindley and with her counsel, Randy Justice, on August the 7th. And one of the questions that came up was the RFP that the Workforce Investment Board, that process that Mr. Smith referenced. And I also asked her the question that had been posed to me by the Workforce Investment Board as to whether or not I would allow basic services and core services to be performed by the Workforce Investment Board. And I asked her that question, and she said that was something that I did not need to respond to, that she would have a conversation with Mr. Smith, which she subsequently said she would. But she told me that the reason the Workforce Investment Board was going through that process was because I had only designated a six-month period. And that discussion, the Leos, and John Wilson is the chairman of that, had requested a full two-year period. That was not something that I was comfortable with because, frankly, I think all of the things that I have already stated about there being a probationary period and everybody being under the gun and all these things need to be worked out. The interlocal agreement has to be revised. The MOU has to be done. all of that still has to occur and we're sitting here september almost october so i made the decision and it was in writing to request that commissioner rendley extend the four-party agreement which we've had no discussion about whatsoever but there's a four-party agreement that preceded all of this and i asked her to extend it to the end of june of 2015 for all the reasons that I said, in addition to the fact that the Workforce Investment and Opportunities Act that was adopted by the Congress that I've already spoken about goes into effect July 1st of 2015. So I felt like that that would give us some additional time to go through the process that we would have to go through in terms of reconstituting the board. The interlocal agreement is very clear about that, that if we go through the process that's called for under the WIOA, there are specific slots that have to be filled. So looking at everything that has to be done, the interlocal agreement, the MOU, the conclusion of the work, the additional auditor's work, the fact that I would be faced with a decision of making another decision with regard to the four-party agreement, basically a month from now, November 1st. because bear in mind I had to decide May 1st for the period ending June 30th. So I would be called upon to make a decision November 1st for the period ending December 31st of 2014. And in that meeting that we had with Commissioner Brindley, she said, she said, I can't support and won't support two years, which frankly I agree with, but I will support an additional six-month extension. And that's how all that came about. So, again, I don't know if it's disingenuous. I don't know if certainly there was no intent to mislead any member of this committee or anybody in the room, but that's exactly what happened. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Next is Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Chair. I apologize first for being late, so I did not hear what Kevin Atkins had to say to the committee and to the public. And if I'm going over old ground, I apologize. But it would help me to know first what decisions, if any, need to be made by this council in regard to this interlocal agreement. Can I just, what's the short story? The short story, Council Member K., is that this is informational. The interlocal has been presented to the administration, and the mayor's office and Kevin, CAO's office in our law department, are scrutinizing it and reviewing it now. And ultimately, I would imagine, bring us a recommendation as to whether or not to execute it or whether or not to execute it. So this is informational for the interim for the committee. And they'll be looking for a recommendation, or is that a vote by counsel to approve or disapprove? that is does the administration have the authority to implement this or does council have the final word it takes council authorization to uh allow the mayor to execute if he and the administration so choose to do so just as the uh when we executed back in 2013 it required council approval ultimately through the blue sheet process, I believe. Okay. So that's very helpful to me. And I've been trying to follow the ins and outs of this conversation, and it's getting increasingly convoluted and complex. So I really, well, for the question, time frame, is there a drop dead date? Is this something that we need to do sooner, later? I've got two. Commissioner Brindley originally had us under a July 15th date, and that was part of the corrective action plan that she set forth that both the Workforce Investment Board and the Bluegrass Area Development District and the CLIO and everybody were to operate under. That date obviously couldn't have been met, so there was a request to extend that deadline to October the 15th. And that October the 15th deadline was for the purpose, is for the purpose, of having this interlocal agreement fully revised and adopted by the 17 jurisdictions and to have the MOU that has been referred to. So basically, there are, when you come right down to it, and I can understand it being complex, it is for me. You have a four-party agreement at the state, which we really have not talked about. You have the interlocal agreement between the jurisdictions. You have the MOU between the Workforce Investment Board and the LEOs. and all of those documents have to be revised, approved, and reviewed within a very short span of time. But at this point, what we're really looking at today is just the interlocal agreement. It's just the interlocal agreement because the MOU is not something that would come back before the urban county. That would be something that Commissioner Brindley would see to the negotiation between the Workforce Investment Board and the LEOs. That would be something, and it's my understanding, that would not come before this board. Let me say, Mr. Chairman, if you would indulge me, it is not my pattern and practice to mislead anybody. And if there's a feeling on the part of the committee that I have done so, I sincerely apologize for that. I, you know, what I have done with regard to the request that I made and the actions, for the most part, they're all in writing. They're all a matter of public record. My request of Commissioner Brindley was a written request. I, you know, I had no reason to believe that it was not commonly known that that would occur, but it was also consistent with my reasoning in the past. But I will say one more time, there's not a person in this room that would say that Burtner is a dishonorable person. And if I have misled anybody, I want you to know that I apologize to you and to every person in the room for that. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Kevin. I just wanted to follow up on the timing question, Council Member Kay. And just so you know why we have not brought a recommendation before this body. We, Keith Horn, Commissioner Graham, and I have met with Commissioner Brindley. We still had some questions about the interlocal agreement and how it would work. So what we have done to bring us comfort in helping make that decision is we have written and asked for the U.S. Department of Labor to review the document. We have sent the ad bylaws along with that document. So we're asking them to weigh in on this and answer the questions for us before we bring it to you all. So it's possible that you may not be bringing anything forward. Is that fair to say? I think our commitment to you would be we sent that letter in late August. We're still waiting on response. We're working with the firm that you all approved in D.C. to help get that response in hand. When we get that response, I can make the commitment that we will share it with you, with the council. Okay, so my time is also up, if you'd indulge me. And I know Council Member Meyers is waiting in the wings. What I'm trying to figure out is what the best use of council's time is on this issue, and it seems to me that a variety of issues have been raised. As I said already, it's pretty complex. I would suggest to the committee that we not continue this conversation at this point, but that we ask our staff to work with the administration so that when or if they bring something back to council, that there be a briefing paper. And I've talked about this in relation to other issues, but from my perspective, it would be useful for this council to have these issues sorted out by our staff. What's at issue? Where are the areas of disagreement? What are the pros and cons? so that we have a document that we can work from rather than trying to put together the pieces as we've been trying to do this morning, not wanting to do this afternoon, because I don't think we're going to reach a resolution today. So that's a suggestion. I'm not going to make a motion, but that's what I would like to see happen is if and when that comes back to council, that we have our staff prepare us a briefing paper on this issue. Thank you. Council Member K, thank you for those comments. And I know Council Member Myers is, we're going to offer him the last question because at 1230 we do want to turn to the next item on our agenda. But Council Member K, that's a great idea and suggestion. What we have, the latest action of the council collectively on this issue of workforce in totality has been the communication of our endorsement of independence, fiscal agent that is, of the Workforce Investment Board from the Bluegrass Area Development District, of which we are a member. We are the central government in the 17 counties. that is what is at play. And as been expressed this afternoon, this morning, this afternoon, is that the interlocal agreement ultimately helps our region decide who the CLEO is. Irregardless of who the CLEO is, and with all respect to Mayor Burtner, he serves that role currently, irrespective of who the CLEO is now or going forward, I don't think the policy directive that the council has brought forward has changed. It's that ultimately we still encourage strongly that the fiscal agent is independent of the Bluegrass Area Development District for all myriad of reasons. And if I can respond, it seems to me that then the main question for the administration and this council is, does the interlocal agreement make it more likely or less likely that the issues that we have about the investment board will be handled appropriately? That's correct. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Council Member Kay. Last word on this issue to Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I agree with your follow-up comments on that, and that's why I was asking the question about that interlocal and what that does. Kevin, could you come up just for a second? You said that you have submitted a letter to the Department of Labor. Is it possible that you could include Mr. Smith's concerns if they're not already in there and Mr. Payne's concerns and do a follow-up letter and see if they will also look at it from the perspective of those concerns as well? We can. They're not in there because we basically just asked them to take a look at the agreement, take a look at the bylaws, and make sure they were in accordance. but yes, we can surely do that. Okay. I'd appreciate it if you guys would do that. And then, Mayor Burton, I appreciate your apology, but I want to follow up and say that the reason I said that was because this body can only make decisions based on the information it has before it. It can't read minds. It can't, and what's said in this meeting is what we look at, not what may be said in a subsequent phone call or anything like that. So the reason I made that comment is because when you said that you weren't comfortable doing anything past six months because you wanted everybody to stay under the gun and at the table trying to hammer this thing out, what struck me about that is that if you then have an agreement already with the commissioner that it's going to be extended six months, and then you've got, and you're the Cleo, and then you've got the judge exec who is the chair of the ad right now, correct? Not yet? No, the chair is Linda McGee. I'm sorry. Okay. But you've got another ad member who is asking for it to be extended out the full two years. Sure. Then it seems to me to detract from the ability to keep people all at the table and focused on a solution because they've got a way out. They know, some of them maybe, maybe not everybody, I don't know, but some people know that it's already going to be extended for six months and that we're trying to get it extended for a full year past that. So it detracts from your original statement of we only wanted to do six months to keep everybody under the gun and focused on this. And so the fact that you would make that part of the statement but not give us the rest of the information that you asked for a six-month extension, to me, seemed interesting. I appreciate that, and I appreciate your candor. uh... the comments that i made with regard to the decision i made the first of my all of that holds true and based upon the timeline that was laid out by commissioner brandley and that we were you're trying to resolve all these issues there was every reason to expect that issues such as this would be resolved by july fifteen that was the date that commissioner really identified it could not happen it did not happen uh... And as you get into this issue, it is incredibly complex, and it requires a lot of people to come together and a lot of moving parts. So we didn't get those two things done by July 15th. We asked for an extension. The gentleman that's doing the auditing, initially I was told that he would be on the Area Development District premises at the end of June. It would be a couple of weeks. We would know exactly. Well, it's September, almost October, and documents are still being requested. So all of the things that I said with regard to probationary period, under the gun, and all that are still true. It's just that it's taken so much time. It's taken so much longer. And if I were being, you know, John and I just simply disagree with regard to the ending point as far as that period of time. And I think Commissioner Brindley understands that as well. So I did not intend to mislead. I did not intend to do that. It's just taken so much time to get all this done. John Wilson and I attended every one of those fiscal court meetings in the 16 counties. uh, in the month of August. And, um, so I'm repeating myself. Thank you. So one last question for anybody who wants to answer it. Would you guys be amenable to including in the, to amending this, um, agreement? Well, I guess everybody's already signed it of us now. We'd have to go back to all 16 fiscal courts again. Okay. So consider doing that and amending this agreement to say that WIB will be separate from the fiduciary, the fiscal agent will be separate from the ad. That's just a thought. Okay. All right. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Myers. I want to thank Judge Wilson, Mayor Berner, attorney. I appreciate you guys. And Kevin, thank you for facilitating the visit and this discussion this afternoon. And we definitely look forward to following up. So thank you for your travels here to Lexington today. Thank you. In the interest of time, this is a very short presentation. It's six slides. But after the first two, there's some decision points for this committee on each slide. We have a pre-application meeting in November. So with your permission, Chairman, and the Council, it might be best to go through as much of this as we can until 1 o'clock, and then we can finish it in October so we can prepare for November. Would that be suitable with you all? That would be fine, Commissioner. Okay, great. The first thing we have to look at, our partner agency grant, I want to say first of all, the first two slides will be what we've decided over the past three years. And I'm going to go under the assumption that the things that this council's approved, we want to keep. What we're doing today is tinkering with what we already have, which we continue to do. But given the awards this year, I think everybody's been pretty happy with what we've had until now. The first decision point is this title. We've had a discussion in here whether we're funding programs or agencies and funds. Extended social resources, grants. A, I like the word grants because it makes clear that it is a grant. It is not a fund. It's a finite grant with an application process. Extended social resources, ESR, is kind of a social service term. We have CDBG grants. We like to use acronyms. This is extended to the social programs that are offered within our internal department. I kind of like that term because we are funding programs, yes, but the PSAs have to be entered into with an agency. So if we call them agency or we call them programs. So I guess the first question is, is this title acceptable and is this what we want to call this process going forward? Any discussion? Is this okay with everyone? Councilmember Councilmember Kay Thank you Chair Yes mostly yes but the last thing you said about the difference between funding programs and agencies I understand I think we all understand that the money goes to agencies but Council had a fairly long discussion about not funding agencies per se Yes about funding programs of agencies so that we don't get into a loop about whether the agency itself, what they're doing and what they're not doing. What we're looking at is programs that they're proposing for these special funds. That's why we left the term programs and agencies out of this title. Sounds good to me. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Beth. Thank you, Council Member Kay. Next is Council Member Scutchfield. Thank you, Chair. And I guess to follow up, I mean, I think obviously the money has to go to the organization because otherwise the program cannot be done. And our reporting procedure will keep track of what goes on in the programs. And I know that Craig and I have had ongoing attempts at discussions. But, you know, obviously the reporting program, the reporting component of this, to me, is the most important thing. Because we're not doing the service to the community if what we're funding isn't being done. That's correct. Thank you. Thanks, Council Member. Okay. So this title's okay. The next two slides are just our current parameters, and I'm just using these as a reminder. Again, I'm assuming that we all like these parameters because we've decided on these over the years. We have the four essential requirements. The next slide. We have the four essential requirements, and I would like the committee to know that we have already set the pre-application meeting for this year for November 19th, The Farish Theater at 4 o'clock for any partner agencies who are watching this will be advertised widely. The library has offered to put this on their webpage this year as an event. So because we have this November 19th deadline, what we want to do is get through all of these changes in time for us to prepare the pre-application. These are the four requirements. Last year we added that you get a week for review beyond the deadline. And the six categories of service here, when you look at these six, especially with basic human needs, this is going to meet most of the services. I can't imagine any services that are not in my department that wouldn't be met in those six. Next slide. Oh, I've got one of these. I don't have to keep yelling at you. I didn't notice this. My apologies. These are the current parameters for scoring. It goes through this intense process. We know that the grant reviewers cannot always be the same person because every individual has to do this many. We get to the work group that recommends individual awards. The last thing that we currently have are the bonus points. These points came up as a result of the barriers to self-sufficiency study, which this council commissioned with the College of Social Work and the Martin School. Then we added the last one, plus or minus five points because of the outcomes from our reviews with the agencies. So these are the bonus points that are added, and these are all things that we do currently. See, I can't do it myself. Oh, you did it all the time. I did it too long. Okay. Funding recommendations. The first thing we need to decide, it is always nice when we have this pre-application meeting, And in years past, except for the very first year that I was here, that amount has always changed. And I think this year the council came up with the idea that 1% of the general fund budget would go to fund social service agencies. That doesn't mean that has to remain, but we need a starting number to give agencies. So I'll go through this slide maybe and then you open it up for discussions, Chairman Ford. So it's currently 1%. we need some direction from you all. What amount do we start with when we announce to partner agencies about available funds? You could leave it at 1%. You could leave it at the dollar amount it was. We need to come up with something as a starting point when we talk to them so they know about available funds. The second decision point on here, we now have an Office of Homeless Prevention Services. So it would be our recommendation to separate out the funds for emergency shelter This is not services that are provided by agencies who serve the homeless, just emergency shelter and move those to the Office of Homeless Prevention. By definition, there are only four programs in our community which do emergency shelter. Arbor Youth Services, Greenhouse 17, which is Domestic Violence Shelter, the Hope Center, and the Salvation Army. Not their funds for programs, but their funds for shelter is currently about $700,000. We rounded, and that's about 22% of the total amount. So I guess our first two decisions are, do we want to separate out emergency shelter, and do we want to reach an amount, what kind of amount do we start with when we announce this at pre-application? Commissioner, let me open the floor to committee members if there are any comments or thoughts or questions. Council Member Kay? It's hard to log in because the former... There we go. Thank you. Well, thank you, Chair. I guess my first question is, I think I favor this separation, because I think a part of what we got into last year is that there are some things that we believe government ought to do, period, and that got confused with these optional grants. And so shelter, I think, is one of those things, emergency shelter. My question would be, if that's separated out, that would be taking those funds, that rough amount of money, and allocating it within the Office of Homelessness to administer. Is that correct? That's correct, and they would have their own parameters for awarding this money. We would just take 22% of this decided amount, transfer it to Charlie Lantern's office, and it would be his purview on how to disseminate those funds. Okay, I think given the way that we've set up this office, that that would be a good thing to do. That would be my inclination would be to support this. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Kay. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Mills, I'd also agree. I think the 1% probably is very close to where we ought to be headed. And I was thinking about this last night as I was reading the comments. And it's obvious that we need a target. And I think if we start with 1%, that's probably pretty close. At the same time, we never know what kind of other budget conflicts we're going to have, particularly this early. And so I would suggest that there needs to be some discussion about that and what kind of budget conflict we might be anticipating. Because it might be, the 1% might simply not be possible, and you need to know that sooner than later. So I think that is a problem that we need to address. And I do like the idea of separating the funds for the emergency shelter. One thing I wanted to ask, and just simply it's my own fault, I can't remember. I mean, we talked about moving the structure of homeless, the Office of Homeless Prevention into social services. Have we done that? Where are we on that? It's an item in committee, Council Member Clark, and we're going to discuss that. We're not going to move forward with that at this time. It's an item I referred into committee, but we'll probably allow them to continue to proceed on towards at least one year into the budget time to go forward. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. I was just kind of wondering where that discussion was now. I do remember that. And so I make these comments not as a member of this committee, by the way, but of extreme interest in what's going on. So thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Council Member. Next is Council Member Scutchfield. Okay. Thank you, Chair. In thinking about doing that, we talk about doing things for aging services as well and other areas. Are we going to run into this, we do it for one area that we have another agency, disperse the funds? I'm playing devil's advocate here and trying to look at it from every direction. I mean, obviously, you know, we have different levels for each one, different areas that we kind of look at the funding. I'm just trying to make sure that we anticipate every possible question and concern that we have. The reason I think this may be different, the social service funds are supposed to be for things that we don't do within our department. We do aging within our department. So the aging funds that we do would be different. We don't have a separate office for aging in urban county government. We do have a separate office for homeless prevention now. If we had a separate aging office that wasn't in my department, I might consider that. Okay. And that's, again, I just want to make sure that we ask. That's a good question. Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Thanks, Council Member Scotchfield. Commissioner Mills. Okay. So I can announce 1%. We can bring this up again in October. But I know last year CAO Hamilton got up at the pre-application minute and said, absolutely, we're going to only award what we did last year. And we turned out with fund balance to do very differently. But, you know, so I'm not saying it's not carved in stone. But we do have to have something to tell these agencies so they kind of have an idea of what to ask for. Commissioner, let me chime in. And we're about 15 minutes, and I know you're before the end of this meeting, and I know you're going to just a few more slides. But committee, I think it may be helpful. Again, we're a committee and don't have the full membership here today. At the conclusion of your presentation, it might be helpful for us to review and go through the action items you would like the committee to consider. Because we're also going to need to forward those and share those to the entire council. So we'll do a series of motions at the conclusion of your presentation. and my staff's taking notes just so long as we have a package to present at the pre-app meeting and if we have to develop new tools, we need to get to work on them. Another big thing that we're asking this year, let me move to the next one, applications and ratings being done on a biannual basis. There is some precedent for this in the community. The United Way awards grants every three years. In the grant world, it's not uncommon. We have just applied for a Violence Against Women grant, which is $400,000 for three years, and it's very prescriptive. We're going to give eight of these grants in the community, $400,000 maximum. They're for three years. Agencies are used to doing applications once every two years. This is something that I would like the group to consider is doing it on a biannual basis. So this is how this would work. Say we award agency A $50,000. we would award them $100,000 for two years, but it would have to be 50 and 50 because of the way our budget year runs. Okay. There would be that the money had to be spent at the end of each fiscal year, and should the program have to change their outcomes after year one, as they look at it, we would give them that opportunity. We give them that anyway now if they have to change their outcomes. However, say we could put in the PSA that funds are not available year two. We have an economic downturn for some reason. We could put in there that we can amend those funds. What my suggestion would be is once these agencies are ranked and scored, that they would get, suppose they're going to get 75% of the 50,000. That's how they arrived at the 50,000 because they were a 75% agency. They would be 75% of the available money in year two if we have to reduce funding. That would be the way we would deal with that. Two more points in this one. The next point in this one would be we have always announced each program and how much they're getting by the time the mayor does his budget address the first week of April. What this does is squeeze our timeline. Their applications have to be in January for us to have all these meetings, decide who gets what, and get all that in the mayor's budget. The proposal here is to say the urban county government is going to award X number of dollars for the ESR grants, $300,000, $200,000, whatever. And we do not give the specific detail in the mayor's budget address. What this would do would allow the work group to take longer in looking at the percentages and how the funding comes up rather than one one-hour meeting. It would also allow agencies to get their grant applications to us a little later and take more time in scoring them because we don't have to meet that April deadline. So that's the timeline for awards, comments or questions about these two proposals. We see none just now, Commissioner. Do what? I said we see none just now. Okay. So, and I would let you know that Melissa Murphy, our counsel, has looked at the issue of binding one counsel to another's decision. And she feels like that we can go ahead and do a two-year process. If y'all had any questions for her, she has looked into us for the legal ramifications of that. So we're proposing going to a two-year basis and just putting the total amount in the mayor's budget and going to specifics later. Okay. Do you want to continue? We're going to wait until October. Okay. Process changes. This has been turned down in the past, but when you apply for grants in the real world, there's X number of dollars and X number of programs that you can apply for. We're suggesting that again. No agency can request more than a specified amount for all programs. We do allow them to request up to 20 percent of their last year's budget, which gives a huge advantage to big agencies. But this way we could say no agency could request more than X number of dollars for all of their programs combined, and that would allow us to fund more programs. But that is up to you all to decide. We also think that even though we're funding programs, we don't think that an agency should be able to apply for maybe more than three. What we have found over the years is agencies tend to do better when they ask for funds for programs that are their largest programs or their funds that offer the most services. We have found a real struggle. I'm not saying these are not innovation grants, but for agencies who want $50,000 to a brand-new program, they're having trouble. because you have to get the program started, you get money every quarter, and then you have to show your outcomes. And if you don't, you have to give money back. That's been the case in one of our things that was a new program. So you can do an innovation grant if you want to, but it's very difficult to do. So that's why we recommended that. And then the final recommendation on the process is we have agencies who are applying for Partners for Youth Grassroots Grants and applying for grants here for the same program. We would like to have one exclude the other if at all possible. Again, we are not meant to be an agency's total funding for that program. We're meant to be about 20% of that program because we're not a major funding. If it's a $5,000 program and they get $3,000 from PFY and $2,000 from partner agencies, we funded the entire program. Any questions or comments about that slide? Yes, Commissioner. We have Council Member Scutchfield. Yes. Thank you. And thank you, Chair. One of the things that, Beth, you and I have talked about on several occasions is rewarding organizations that work together. And that's going to be in here. It is. Okay. Because I know we've talked about that. And when you were talking about the number of programs they can, you know, getting extra points or something along those lines when different, you know, I know, again, I worked for Girl Scouts. So I know Girl Scouts work together with the – Like collaboration. The Kentucky Department of – I can't – KDR. I can't remember the acronym. But they worked together, and they were able to come up with a great program. That's in the next slide, I think. Okay, perfect, and you're ahead of me. The other thing that I had is you talk about eligible, if they get the partner program grant, or what is it going to be called now? ESR grant. ESR grant. They can't have also gotten partner for youth grant. The same program. Right. I want us to make sure that we also look at anything else they may be getting funding for through government. You see a lot of people that try to double dip. And, I mean, NDFs are one thing that I don't know that that's something that can be touched upon. We do ask in the application if they get any CDBG funds, if they get any home funds, what they're getting from, like, Irene Gooding's shop. Right. I just worry about the look of impropriety when you have one organization that knows how to work the system better than the other. So. I agree. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Council Member Scotchfield. Next is Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair. On this question of capping, I've been on the other side of this issue. I believe that the intention of Council has been to fund new and creative programs. And so wherever they're coming from, whether it's large or small, it seems to me that that ought to be the criteria. If we are not just looking for innovation, then I think the council needs to take a half step back and say that and allow for funding for programs that are already ongoing or that are going to be tweaked, whatever. But it seems to me we are either in the business of doing innovation or we're not, or we're doing both. But whatever it is, I would like the council to basically be clear about that in terms of its policy, and then have the process reflect that. But I don't, I'm uncomfortable basically saying we're really looking for innovation, and then we put restrictions on where those innovations can come from. So that's a first thought on my side. But thank you, Chair. Thanks, Council Member Kaye. Okay. There's three more, and we can discuss all of these in October. Well, there's actually several more. You all can read, but I'll try to get through this real quickly. There can be a pre-application. Many grants have a letter of intent. We had some this year that may not have made the list if there was a pre-application. My division directors and I can go through this. One of the programs was just simply a money pass-through. They want money from this government to give money to clients, and I don't think that is the intent of what this is. We had one program that was going to serve 13 clients on a Monday afternoon during the school year. You know, that's a decision call. And if it's a direct, it must show that it's a direct impact on the area of service, and we don't want a service that's duplicated. For example, we do hands program with young mothers in my department, so we wouldn't want to fund a hands program. If we need money for hands, give it to my department, don't give it to a partner agency. So I would venture to say with our department could probably go through some grants and eliminate some with a letter of an intent and just leave the ones that look like the intentions for applying if the council would allow us to do so. Collaborative grants, exactly what Councilmember Scutchfield spoke to. We can come up with a process for that before November if approved. It would allow smaller agencies to apply for more because of the 20% rule. They could apply together, and one of them could be a fiscal agent. We could give bonus points for agencies that do that. The last couple points that are very important, I think the grant should be considered a finite award. Every year we've kind of moved them around. But if we have longer to do the process and it's two years, once it's the grant, it's the grant. And I think at some point we need to say this is what you get. And to that end, once the detailed awards are made, I would say that if the council budget link wants to discuss awards, they discuss it with the funding work group and the commissioner of social service rather than the individual agencies. I do know that this year when some of the individual agencies came and they all do good work, and it's so hard for the council to hear from them individually, but some of them talked about programs they did that were not necessarily the programs that we were funding, and I'm not sure that the council had a way to discern that. So it's just a proposal that the budget link be an internal link rather than one with the outside agencies because of the grant. If I do not receive my VAWA grant, I will not be allowed to go to Washington and complain to Joe Biden or the U.S. House. If it's a grant, it's a grant. the final I think that's it right that's that's the last one so well and Commissioner thank you I think that last recommendation will be welcomed by the link councilmember beard a full day meeting with those agencies gladly of course committee I've had a change of heart we're a little short on numbers today just above a quorum commissioner help me please if you would in regards the timeline. Great presentation today. We're of no need to take action today. Could we possibly revisit some of the action items you would request at our October 21st meeting? Yes, we took meetings today and we can get back to this committee via email and say, would y'all be prepared to make some decisions on this in October? And then that way we could incorporate all those for the November 19th meeting. That would give us a good two weeks to get ready for the pre-application meeting. Thank you, Commissioner. Let us allow this item to roll over to the top of the October 21st meeting, and then we'll take good action and have discussion to get it to Council. Thanks, Commissioner. Thank you. Are there any concerns in regards to the last page items in committee? Is there a motion to adjourn? Second. Motion is second by Council Member Scutchfield, Council Member Ellinger. We stand adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.