Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to welcome everybody to the General Government and Social Services Committee. I'll call the meeting to order. The first item on our agenda are the approval of committee summaries, a few dates back to the end of calendar year 2014 in the General Government Committee. And the special committee was our organizational meeting. Is there a motion to approve? It's a motion by Council Member Scutchfield, second by Council Member Aker. Any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Motion carries. The second item on our agenda are items in committee. And we know that six of our ten committee members are newcomers to the council this term. Just to provide a little background, I'm going to ask Craig Benz, our staff of the committee, to help us with this, and you'll find that on page 11. Accompanying the listing of items in committee are a memo that I've submitted in regards to ethics, and we'll talk about that in just a moment, and then also a memo that Craig drafted as it relates to budget link referrals from last summer. The first item is workforce investment and training. We plan on having a report on that item next month in March. The second item is building security. It's been heard a few times in committee, and we've all noticed some of the improvements that have been made here in the government center. Are there any questions or any additional work that's needed or desired of the committee? Hearing none, is there a motion to remove? Motion by Council Member Gibbs, second by Council Member Akers. Further discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. That motion carries. Item number three is on our agenda for today. We'll have that as an update, which may allow for us to conclude our committee work on that item. Agenda item number four, I'm going to refer to Craig Benz. It was referred by Council Member Myers in a previous term. Craig, if you can provide insight to that item. Sure. As you said, Council Member Myers had originally scheduled that item. It was to be on the committee agenda, the general government committee in December of last year, but he had requested it pulled prior to the meeting. So there's no further action on that item at this time. Thank you, Craig. It's a motion by Councilman Breakers to remove, second by Councilmember Henson. Discussion? All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. That motion is removed. The next few items are council links, and I'll also ask Craig to provide guidance. He provided a memo that you'll find on pages 13 and 14 that give the new council members insight to the budget link process. Craig? Certainly. So there's four items on your referrals list that were general services link referrals that the Vice Mayor Gorton had actually referred to the committee. And two of those are being heard today, the Parks Foundation item as well as the Lyric Strategic Plan. There is, or actually, the Aquatics Program item as well as the Lyric Strategic Plan. The Parks Foundation item was heard back in September, and as I understand it, that's still active. and the safe parks position, the third item on there, is tentatively scheduled to be heard in March or April by this committee. So those are active items. Thank you, Craig. And just further background, committee members. The budget link process, of course, we work on helping the administration craft the budget that they submit in April. but historically over the last few years the budget links may or may not choose to provide funding for an item and in some cases where they don't provide funding for an item there's a desire to ask for more information and hence these items have come to us in committee one thing I would like to do is to help the committee move these items forward is to identify actively serving committee members or council members to sponsor or take ownership and take leadership on these items. The first item, number five, we're going to be having an update here soon, but I've asked Council Member Scutchfield if she would be interested in leading this effort. She serves as one of our designees on the Park Advisory Board, and she's agreed. Council Member Scutchfield, would you like to just briefly share the discussion you guys have had at the Parks Advisory Board as it relates to aquatics? I think we discussed it in broad terms, but basically I did mention that the council in the fund balance discussion had approved the aquatics master plan or program design, and we also discussed the possibility of a comprehensive parks plan in the future. Very excited. The board is very excited about the obvious dedication that this council has to the Parks Department. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Scotchfield. Council Member, excuse me, Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to comment generally about the referrals from the links. We have talked in council a little bit about changing that procedure a little bit so that when the links finish their work, any item that does not directly impact the budget, which typically has been referred to a committee, that we compile all of those. And as a council of the whole, we look at the whole list to see whether they merit reference or not. Typically, that's one council member in one link who thinks something ought to go to a committee, but we have no discussion about that. Then we end up with a lot of things on the committee's agenda, which have the general links, and they get referred officially from the vice mayor. But the previous vice mayor didn't always know exactly what it was because she wasn't on that link, and I would be in the same position. Anyway, I just wanted to give council members a heads up that we'd be interested in treating it a little bit differently so that there's a little more of a vetting of those items before they get placed in a committee. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Going back to number five, thank you, Council Member Scutchfield. Craig will identify Council Member Scutchfield as the lead for number five. Number six is the Lyric Theater strategic plan. We'll have an update here on our agenda. and that item may be prepared for committee conclusion. Number seven is the Parks Foundation, which was heard in the fall of 2014. Is there anybody that wishes to discuss the Parks Foundation and perhaps how we go about doing that? Of course, we know that Commissioner Reed and his staff are putting in a lot of work over at Parks in the interim of having a new director in place. But do we want to keep this item in committee, or is there a council member that wishes to Council Member Scutchfield? If someone else wants to take it on, but since I serve on the parks board, I have no problem taking this on as well. I know that in the parks we actually discussed this as well on funding sources for different things that we have coming on and hopefully being able to take advantage of us having an actual policy at this point. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Scutchfield. Vice Mayor, you're okay. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. I'm happy to let Council Member Scutchfield take the lead. And I would just like to ask the Chair or Craig if we could get an update on that in maybe the next, I don't know, three months or so. I mean, give, I know Jeff is busy, So give them a few months, but I don't remember exactly where we stand on the foundation, if it's been created or where we are in that process. So I think especially for the new council members, too, that would be a good update to share. We can do, definitely can do. And thank you, Council Member A. Thank you. Council Member Scutchfield, we appreciate your service again on this item. Item number eight is safe parks position. Council Member Henson will lead us in that effort. and we hope to have an update to the committee here in the next month or so. I'm hoping to give a little summary for those. Yes, ma'am. For those of you that are new to the committee, I can give you just a little brief summary of what Safe Park's position. There was a task force that was created that Council Member Ford and I served on. I chaired the task force to look at our parks throughout the city in hopes of making them a safer place where people are not afraid to go. So one of the recommendations of that task force was to create a position for someone that would really take these parks on and look at them and create activities there and different things. So that's what this position is about. And I believe that it's supported by Jeff Reed. And it will be in this year's budget. but we will have this coming forward in committee soon. So, and you can get with me if you have any questions and want to know more. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Henson. Next is the review of the ethics ordinance. On page 12 of your packet, you will find a memo that I've circulated to the committee of, and I plan, and with this memo, I hereby appoint a subcommittee for the purpose of the ethics ordinance review. you. The committee will consist of Councilmember Angela Evans, who will serve as the chair. Prior to her council work, Councilmember Evans not only served on the Ethics Commission, but was a chairperson of that commission, so she'll bring some expertise. Councilmember Susan Lamb, who in her previous role to being a council member served as a council clerk, so she has some familiarity as well. Councilmembers Richard Maloney, Councilmember Scutchfield, and myself will also be the remaining members of that subcommittee. Their charge is going to be to look towards legislative reference to the Code of Ethics, which is Article 16 of the Urban County Charter, and also the Ethics Act, which is Chapter 25, the Code of Ordinances. And we're going to ask the subcommittee to be prepared to report to us its preliminary work product within the next 60 days. So again, thank you, Council Members, for your willingness to serve. As we finish the list, item number 10, the Bluegrass International Center, Council Member Lamb referred to that, and we're going to have a presentation here later this afternoon. And last but not least, the EMS service fees. We were planning to have this heard in committee this evening, this afternoon rather. Council Member Henson is leading that charge, and we'll bring that back at a future date. Are there any other questions in regards to items in committee? Item number three on our agenda is a standardized cell phone procurement process. Again, this was an item that we referred. One thing, council members, that you'll find is that our committee work really can't go forth without the cooperation of the administration. So I thank CAO Hamilton and all her commissioners and division directors. Without further ado, we'll want to invite our donor Valsenti to the podium to give us an update of what they've brought forward. Welcome. Good afternoon. This is really more of a review of some of the operating principles that we're already using. So let me refer to page 19. Page 19 has the schedules of the two companies and their outline plans that we are using, Verizon and AT&T. These are plans that we use for government, and we have been able to employ them. I think recently you reviewed, for instance, the parks needed new cell phones. So let me talk about the CAO policy. And rather than talk about the individual pages, I want to reduce it to three points. How do we get one? How do we pay for it? And then what are our responsibilities? So how do we get one? Well, it's really determined by the position that you have and whether you need a cell phone or whether you need a tablet or you need some kind of an other device that has maybe more memory or more capability than a plain cell phone to do your job. And there are many people who do require that. We have people that are out in the field all the time that are very rarely in their office, both from a law enforcement perspective and also in the parks area, et cetera. We are now looking at tablets. Is there a way to gather data on a tablet and then being able to bring it back and load up the data rather than in paper form? So there are many, many uses. But that requires the approval of your director and also the approval of the commissioner of the department. So that is how these items are procured. Then they do come and fill out a form for computer services, and that form basically states also what the roles and responsibilities will be, and I'll discuss that in just a minute. So how do we pay for this? Since this is with the agreement of the department, the department assumes the responsibility for the bill and is required, actually, to review that should there be some overage or go over the plan that is picked initially. And that has actually worked pretty well, so there is no centralized billing. The third item that really needs to be discussed is the responsibility of the person who has the device. Probably the most important thing is if you lose the device or if it is stolen, you need to notify your management and computer services immediately. And there's a really, really very, very relevant reason for that. We're not only concerned about the device, we're concerned about the information on the device. And I think that we have to make sure that that is almost primary as we think about the device. Secondly, there is a sheet in here, and you can see the acceptable use policy asks that the employee who is granted this device make minimal personal calls. You know very well that they're going to get a personal call of some kind. They have to make an appointment, but that is kept to a minimum. Secondly, that they not share the device, either with their family members or other coworkers, et cetera, because it is your personal device and you're responsible for it. So probably those are the reasons that we want to make sure that people sign that policy and that they understand what their responsibility is. I'll be happy to entertain a question. Thank you, Aldona, for your update. Council Member Lamb. Thank you for this presentation. I was just curious if there had been any discussion about if there was damage to the device, like if somebody dropped it in water or anything, what would be happening? I'm not sure that I can answer that appropriately, but we could certainly find that out. Sometimes people take out insurance on the device so in case it is damaged, that there is a way to actually get it repaired, because some people can't live without that cell phone and do their job. So the insurance would be up to the individuals then? Well, you know, that is something that I'll have to check, but I know when I bought mine, I bought some insurance. Absolutely. I too. But I'll be happy to come back to you with that. Thank you, Council Member Lamb. Next up is Council Member Maloney. Thank you for the presentation. A couple questions. Do you just have one group you work with, like the Verizon GT, or do you work with Sprint, or you work with all kinds of them? How does that work? Well, I'll tell you, I asked Todd to be here today, and right now these are the two plans that we have in place. I will assume that if we need other plans, that we could probably look at those. Todd? We do. Verizon and AT&T both have contracts that we can buy off of in an agreement with the state. T-Mobile and Sprint, we could also do the same thing with them. Most of our employees have AT&T, and some of them have Verizon, and we've found that all the pricing is pretty much the same just depending on which plan you're on. There's not a whole lot of difference in the plans. Now, a question I have on that, all these plans now come out with unlimited techs, unlimited. Do we go for those, or do we still have ones that if they go over, do we have to charge? We do. I think all of the plans that we're on now, they are pooled minutes. So if you have, like, you know, 30 people, they all have 300 minutes a month. Those minutes are all pooled. So if one guy does 600 minutes and somebody else does 10, you're not going to get charged with any overage charge. We don't run into that problem like we used to. So you all don't have that, anybody going over charge or anything like that? I have not seen that happen in several years. Okay. Well, that was a question there. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Maloney. Thank you, Todd Slayton, our Director of Central Purchasing. Next is Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I had a question. I know some companies are like doing a reimbursement for cell phones. I don't know if that's something we do or consider doing because I know it's difficult to have two phones. I know it is. And actually, we've talked about it briefly, but this is really not a program that we've considered, mainly because it's another administrative burden. Okay. Now, many of our employees actually bring their own device. Right. And they'll use it for their own. And they'll use it both and pay their own bill. Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Aldona, are employees allowed to choose any phone that they want? Is it based on, I guess, the availability of the budgets in each division department? It is. It's based on budgets and also what kind of a device is needed to do their job. It's really based on what is required. Some people only require voice capability and maybe some text capability. Some are required that they're going to have to document, take some data, send pictures, et cetera. And so how is that process, I guess, monitored, or where is the approval level? The approval level is at the director level and at the commissioner level in each of the departments. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Evans. Yes. What's the direction or I guess the instruction regarding the use as it pertains to open records? Has that been discussed with? Yes, it has been discussed a lot, especially in terms of when we bring our own devices. But open records, we are subject to open records. Making sure that that's known. It is very well known. Okay. Okay. Council members, are there any other questions? I have just one question or request of Aldona. Thank you for this work. This was referred to committee because the council members had an interest and a concern of this, and Aldona and her staff have gone back forth and they've brought forth a CAO policy. If you can briefly talk to the impact and how that applies to the policy that our interest has brought forth as it relates to this subject. Well, in a way, I've kind of discussed that policy, but let me just make sure that it's understood. No device is issued unless there's agreement from both the director and the commissioner in our department that it is required for their position, for their job, to do the work. This is for plans that are paid for by the government. So in other words, there is an intent then that this would be monitored within the department, that there are funds available to get the device or lease the device. In some cases, we can lease a tablet if that's required, but that the funds are available and will be monitored because there is no central billing. So that's really the first part. The second part is really, again, make sure that the funds are available and that that is budgeted early. Sometimes you might think that you only need 10 phones, but longer term, I think almost everyone at some point to do their job is going to require some kind of an intelligent device. And third, we want to make sure that that responsibility, that the employee understands the responsibility. In other words, the ability to notify us immediately should it be stolen, lost, or damaged, really. And by the way, we do sometimes have some loaners so that you could continue to do your job. And third, the thing about sharing the device, about the damage of the device, because that is a security issue. And I think that that is pretty well understood now. I won't tell you that it's perfect. I think we always have to make sure that we go through that. And by the way, an employee has to sign that form, that I understand these responsibilities. and a copy of those are in your handouts. Again, thank you, Adona. Committee members, are there any further questions? Is there any further action of the committee or is the committee satisfied with the policy brought forth and implemented by the CAO's office? If so, is there a motion to remove from committee? I move to remove. Motion by Council Member Akers, second by Council Member Henson. Further discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. That motion carries. Thank you, Aldona, for your word. The next item on the agenda is the aquatics program design. Again, this item was a budget link referral that was brought forth as Vice Mayor Kay described us a few moments ago. The significant dynamic with this referral is that subsequent to the budget link referral, the council during this budget fund balance reallocations last fall appropriated, I believe, $150,000 towards this effort. And so we have with us Mr. Roger Damon from the Department of General Service. Welcome, Roger. Thank you so much. I'll just make this a brief update on where we are. There we go. All right, so we are working on the RFP for the Aquatics Master Plan, and we've broken down the scope into five segments. The first segment is demographics and market analysis that we'll ask the consultant to do. And they'll just be some basic information that we'll ask them to gather some population statistics and other demographics, and especially the state of aquatics, what is going on in the bluegrass region. And then the second segment is public input, which is going to be very critical for this study, for it to be successful. The first item we have up there is an aquatic steering committee, which will be put together to guide the consultant to ensure that everything is being done according to our scope. And then we'll have focus groups, and the on-site input will be at the pools, which we found was done in some other communities and was very successful. Town hall meetings, and we'll use social media, and a dedicated website, and then also a hard copy and online survey. The service delivery opportunities, we'll have the consultant look at what we are currently doing with our programming and how we can improve. But one of the specific things we wanted to identify was needs for swimming instruction for traditionally underserved populations and also look at underserved market segments within the aquatics community. And then also an analysis of management practices for personnel recruitment and retention. Facility feasibility study will ask them to look at the feasibility of nontraditional water features, specifically splash pads but other possible water features that might be added to parks that don't have water features currently. And then also the feasibility of an indoor aquatics facility and potentially a multi-sport facility to include an aquatics facility. The fourth segment is funding sources and economic impact. and we're just going to ask the consultant to look at potential revenue streams and financial options and also public-private funding sources and then also the economic impact for each of their recommendations. The timeline is that we have already actually completed the draft scope since we put this together, so that has been put together. Next, we're appointing an aquatics review committee to look at the draft, and then we will put together a finalized draft along with purchasing and then we plan to actually advertise the end of this month or beginning of March. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Roger, for your update. Council members, I want to thank Roger and all of our presenters for their brevity and succinctness in bringing forth these reports, but that does not preclude questions that council members may have. If there are any questions, comments, input as it pertains to aquatics. Thank you very much, Roger. Appreciate your work. Good luck. Next on our agenda is the Bluegrass International Center, and I would like to turn the attention to Councilmember Lamb for introduction of our presenters. Thanks. It is with great pleasure that I get to introduce Isabel Taylor. She's the Multicultural Affairs Coordinator for the city and who has a wonderful presentation about the Bluegrass International Community Center. And thank you for bringing this to us today. Thank you very much, Councilmember Lamb. Thank you all very much, and I appreciate this opportunity, and I would also like to take a quick moment to welcome and thank community members who have come to talk about, if there's time, to talk about the International Center. The Bluegrass International Center will be a central location where we actively seek to engage international and local residents and leverage their contributions and assets for the welfare of the entire community. We're going to do this by using a three-tier strategy. A working group has designed five committees, and those committees are working on an individual level, institutional level, and also including, of course, LFUCG participation. So at those three levels, we are engaging our community. The mission statement, as you can see, says that it's to support the city and its residents to thrive in today's global environment through encouragement of civic engagement, mutual understanding, and economic and artistic diversity. I'd like for you to take a look at these numbers. Several of you of the newcomers were in our group, our tour for social services, and we discussed some of these numbers, facts and figures, but I want to put everybody on the same page. And so I'd like for you to see that just in the time period when I've been tracking information for LFUCG, the international population growth is 222%. At this rate of growth, I estimate that in a couple of years, our international population will be at least 20%. It's currently at 16.4%. I estimate that we currently have 50,000 to 52,000 foreign-born residents and citizens. They speak over 119 foreign languages. Of course, many of our international residents speak very fluent English. but those that do not require access to services. The complexity of that number of languages and that number of people can be seen here through the breakdown of international languages. We have 35 from Africa, 11 from the Middle East, 22 from Europe, and so forth, 26 from Asia. So it creates cultural and linguistic challenges. Identifying two major gaps for services to this population of residents. The foremost is English, what we call ESL. English is a second language. We need a very broad spectrum of literacy from the literacy perspective all the way through to university level advanced English, which very highly educated immigrants need to pursue their careers, their postgraduate careers. We also need job-related ESL and driver's education ESL. We have no way to do outreach. to this number of people with the number of languages. So a central location for LFUCG, for health purposes, public safety purposes, and for business is necessary. We lack infrastructure in at least three areas that we want to focus on. Trained interpreters. We have 119 languages that we've identified, but we have trained interpreters for maybe 15 to 20 languages. So we need to develop that. We need interpreters to train in confidentiality, impartiality, American laws and values. And we also need to train our local staff and people on how to use interpreters. We need education for our local population, but also for our newcomers. There's a lot of misinformation. Newcomers come with stereotypes about Americans, and Americans have stereotypes about the newcomers. We need American laws and culture education, and we need a place to provide cross-cultural education and opportunities to use those skills and to develop those skills for our graduate students, for our staff, for our businesses. Business is asking for this, and so that's why I included them in there. And then there's a lack of workforce and entrepreneurial support for this population. Those challenges, which I've just mentioned, are also opportunities. Immigrants are nearly twice as likely as native-born to start businesses. They're called an economic engine for a reason. And locally, we see that. the medical field, in research. There's been a lot of investment, both in funding and in brain power from all over the world. We have, just in the restaurant industry also, creating jobs, restaurants from every part of the world. From Asia alone, we have restaurants from Japan, Korea, Thailand, China. So we have a great variety and diversity to enjoy. But probably more importantly for LFUCG, they create jobs and create revenue. International expertise is another area where we have amazing opportunities. We have people from all over the world who have multidisciplinary expertise in areas of IT, areas of science, business, international trade. We have people here with 30 years' experience working with multinational organizations, corporations, the UN. We need a repository where we can reach them. We have global and artistic and cultural expression needs that the community wants to enjoy. And I have an example of how surprised I was when we had a Kentucky filmmaker who did a film on Molly, Molly Musicians. And we had standing room only over at the Public Library Theater. and the questions after the documentary were so knowledgeable, and it was local people. So we have a lot of interest in global and artistic expression. I want to focus on one part that is near and dear to my heart, and that is international trade. And the reason I bring that up is because currently Kentucky is enjoying an export growth unmatched in the rest of the United States. We have close to 26% export growth in the last few years at a time when the U.S. growth was 6.7. The surrounding states are nowhere near that. And the incredible part is that this has been achieved with only 5% of Kentucky businesses participating in the international arena. What we have locally are foreign language speakers who can open markets. They have the knowledge, the experience. They can overcome language barriers and cultural barriers to do effective international trade. So what I'd like to see is international internships and partnerships with existing businesses to open and expand ventures locally and internationally. The divisions of LFUCG that are participating from the start are, of course, the Department of Social Services have been very generous. as have the Division of Emergency Management and the Division of General Services to support the beginning of the center. Aging services, adult and tenant services, family services, and youth services are providing staff a half day a week to start. And we're going to be doing outreach, training, just even before we open the center so that we can have them be very much have input into how we develop the center. I'd like to show you some community involvement. I have something like 200 people who have either called or written or asked to participate in the International Center and a working group of community leaders and experts. created these five committees, civic engagement, arts and cultural programming, ESL, which is English, professional development, and driver's education. I want to take a moment to credit UK and particularly Lisa Higgins-Horde and Dr. Randolph Hollingsworth for the tremendous university and community leadership that they have provided. Lisa hosted a presentation on the proposed center at UK, and she invited about 40 different staff, administration, and professors. From there, Dr. Hollingsworth contacted the Bluegrass Higher Education Consortium and provided a presentation, a brief presentation, of the proposed international center. they voted unanimously to support this center because they too need, for their students and their staff, they need global and multicultural competence. So thank you, UK. There's three committees. We have five, but I wanted to show you the extent and depth and breadth of community involvement with these committees. I'm just going to go through them very, very quickly. With the civic engagement, I do want to point out Dr. Brody, Crystal Brody from Georgetown College is one of the committee members, and she is from Germany. And she said when she first got to Lexington a few years ago, she knew no one, she didn't know where to go, what to do, how to contact people, and how to meet people who had the same interests. as she. So she wanted to have mentors, local mentors who could meet international people with their same interests. And the committee, I think, is working on a Lexington Ambassadors program that we can connect people from all over the world. arts and culture this committee is amazing I walked into a meeting this past week and I expected to see five or six community leaders there there were about 30 or 40 people around the table and I'm very very happy to say that Nathan Semram from the LexArts is co-chairing with Professor Wang from the Chinese American Association. One of the primary objectives of the Arts and Cultural Committee is to create a gallery and an exhibition space at the center and elsewhere and to provide opportunities for greater international artistic expression to share and to integrate with the existing cultural and arts movement in Lexington. ESL literacy, I'm just pointing out, look how full of university professors this committee is, chaired by the Georgetown College ESL and the University of Kentucky ESL experts. Also, BCTC, who is the only institution in our area that is funded by the state for adult literacy and adult English education. Transylvania University, Midway College, and so forth. It's really amazing how much interest and excitement there is. Immediate goals. We want to set up some internships because we need to staff the center. We need to schedule all the organizations that have expressed interest. staff with schedule the interns, schedule the organizations that are interested, and schedule our own staff. We need to train everyone that's coming to volunteer and work there on cross-cultural communication and how to use language line. Also, we want to create an International Affairs Advisory Commission. We have the coordinate of ordinances establishing that commission with law, and you will be getting the final draft shortly. And we want to focus very quickly on a creation of an international center website because the international community communicates through IT much more so than our local people. So that's the creation of that. It's very important. Long term, we want continued input and support from the international and local leaders in business, the arts, and academia. And again, underscoring that the center is here to support the city and its residents to thrive in the global environment and to provide civic engagement, mutual understanding, and economic and artistic diversity opportunities. The center is located... I'm probably running out of time, so I'm going quickly. The center is located at 1306 for Sales Road. We were targeting March 15th, but we may need to move that back because we want to make sure that we are staffed and ready to go before we're open to the public. This is my contact information. and if you have questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Isabel, thank you for your report. Committee members, are there questions? First up is Council Member Maloney. Isabel, I just want to thank you for doing this. This should have been done a long time ago, and I appreciate you doing this. This is great. The question I have for you is, and we talked about a couple of staff that you need. I mean, this is amazing. You know, 119, well, I thought it was 111 last time I talked, you know, it's up to 119. And I think a lot of reasons why Luskingen is doing so great, surplus, is that we have this kind of open welcome for the folks from all over the world to come here because we've got jobs and opportunities. But to me, I think we need to go a little bit further, and what you're doing is right, but I want to make sure we do it right, that you have the help to get this done. I don't want you to be doing it, but I'll buy yourself. because this is something that you need help with, and I would request that you meet with, I know Beth is leaving us. I don't want to say anything bad about that, but I will. But whoever takes Beth's place or whoever, you definitely put it in your budget, what you need, because I think this is an opportunity. when you see 25% coming into this state, Lusting can take the lead on something like this. And not just here, everybody start taking this model, not just Lusting, but all over the world. I want to be ahead, and I want you to get the credit for it, and you need the staff, and whatever it does that have to be done, I want to help you get there. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful. I can't take the credit because Beth, of course, has encouraged, and the CAO, Sally Hamilton, has been very, very supportive. And also the community at large. We know that there's leadership here in this room and elsewhere that we're not alone in wanting and creating this, but we'll take all the help that you can give us. Thank you, Council Member Maloney. And to Isabel's point, there is a crowd who has come to join and we do have a sign-in sheet of about seven folks who signed up. After questions from Council Members, time permitting, I believe we'll be able to allow folks to come and address that committee very shortly. Thank you. Next is Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. I'm here to help you, if you'd like to have my help. I love the research that you've done. It's fantastic. I encourage you to use the UK's Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. being a graduate myself. I guess I'm a little partial to that meeting with them on Friday. Fantastic. I was going to just encourage you and offer to help in any way to do that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Isabel, this is great. It's very thorough, and I love the growth that Lexington is experiencing. As a parent of a child in Spanish immersion, I appreciate the cultural differences and growth in our community. And that's one thing that I would suggest, too, is that we reach out, and not just to the Spanish Immersion Program, but other schools that I know are teaching German and teaching Chinese and probably other languages that I'm not familiar with. But I would love to see, for instance, my son volunteer at this organization and meet people from other cultures outside of just the Latino cultures that he is working with now. And also, I was taken back by the 25.9% export growth that we have, that Kentucky has, versus our neighbors and versus the United States. And can you, do you have any more information on what those exports are or any information? Or can you just point me to a website and I can look it up? Yeah, the website is right there on Kentucky exports. But the funny part is that when the Kentucky exports person was giving a talk on this, he asked the audience to name the top five exports, and not a single one of us could guess. The top export is... Bourbon? No. No. I'm going to guess coal. It's aerospace, parts, and machinery. Aerospace. It's in the billions. That's the number one. Okay. And thank you very much for mentioning the language ability that is developing here. I would also like to encourage our foreign language speakers who are coming here that speak 119 languages to help support their children to keep those languages. Because they're learning English. They will learn English. But it would be amazing for this community to have their languages reach university level and be able to do research and business at that level in those languages. And as you mentioned, the cross-cultural sort of training of local cultures and sharing those, you know, that's where I think some of our immersion kids could help out with, you know, cultural differences, you know, with children from other countries. Yes, and there's tutoring opportunities too. Thank you. I think it's really exciting, and I agree with Council Member Maloney that you probably need more support than what you currently have. So I look forward to hearing more about that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Evans. I had a question as it relates to the interpreters since you're talking about the language. Because I believe that to formally use interpreters, they have to be certified now, I think. Only for medical facilities, they have to have medical interpreter certifications. And for the legal, that's required. For us, the Department of Justice, for Title VI purposes, it requires that we have trained interpreters. And they prefer the medical interpreting. It's just a suggestion. It's not a real requirement, a mandate. But they prefer it because medical interpreters get training on confidentiality and impartiality and all kinds of other skills. Yeah, I was just curious how you were, what your standard was going to be for that, because those are a lot of languages, and, you know, that would require a lot of individuals. So I was just curious if you were just trying to. In the past eight years, well, actually the past six years, We've been working with, I'm a member of the board of an organization that's called Southeastern Medical Interpreters Association, and they have been bringing training, because we don't have local training, and they've been bringing training once or twice a year, and they've been obtaining funds from just generous donations to give scholarships to people that are coming from all over the world so that if they're bilingual, if they're multilingual, that they get training, and then they are able to provide those services to their communities. I have letters, for instance, from the Russian community who were so grateful that SAMIA, the Southeastern Medical Interpreters Association, trained two Russian-Ukrainian speakers for their community. At that time, they had no one to help them go to the hospital, help them go to court, et cetera. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Evans. Next is Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Isabel, for the presentation and for all the work. And I think yesterday I was at the police promotion ceremony, and Reverend Polk, is that correct? He said, when you do something well, it's in your heart. And that's the way I see you, so I just wanted to mention that. And I know that we're very blessed as a community in so many ways, and this is just adding to it. So I think it's a need that has been there, we know, for a long time. So thank you very much for your work, and I'm here to help, too. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Councilmember Henson, who has the fortune that the center will be located in your district. Council District 11. Councilmember Lamb. Thank you, Councilmember Ford. I'm just so excited about you all thinking proactively and moving this forward. It's going to touch on so many areas that we probably don't even realize the magnitude of it. And so I just really appreciate that, and I look forward to also hearing from our members in the community as well. So thank you, Isabel. Thank you, Councilmember Lamb. Isabel, thank you for your report. Before we call on the members who've signed up to speak to provide comment to the committee, I want to say that I echo what has been said already. Isabel does a great job with this program. It has for many years. But the commissioner's office has been a great support for this initiative, and I wanted to offer the microphone to Commissioner Beth Mills if she wanted to give a few comments of her support for this program. Briefly, Commissioner Mills, not to put you on the spot, but I know you're on the spot. Good afternoon. You know, we tend to build programs that present opportunities in social services. And there was an international advocacy group, though, that came and met with the mayor and COO Hamilton and said, what can we do? And they came to Isabella and I and said, what can we do? So we've got to say the administration has been very open to this from day one. And as it turns out, our youth services, which was on Versailles Road, has moved over here to the Phoenix building with Partners for Youth. So we had space. So we're thinking, okay, we've got space. Let's open this center. So it was just kind of, you know, on the spur of the moment. And moving forward for this budget year, I do want to tell you as far as support, Isabel does have a program specialist, which this council and mayor provided in last year's budget, so she's not a solo artist anymore. We'll be getting ready to hire someone new for that position. But we will need professional service money in operating for next year. We're going to hire a lot of interpreters and people to do education through professional services. We would like one of the council members, certainly one or two of you all, to serve on this commission once it's formed. And it's starting out in social services, but watch out. If we get into all the business and arts and things like that, this may be way beyond social services. This is a community-wide thing. We just started at my shop because we had the opportunity. So wouldn't it be great if Lexington had an international area that you could bring tourists to, that we became known as a city that has this great international community and showcase it? And I think it's possible, especially with Isabella around. So thank you. Thank you so much, Commissioner. The sign-in list that we have, we want to ask folks if, we want to call your name, if you would come to the podium, provide your name, your address, and you'll have three minutes. First up is Ms. Gloria Rhee. Your name, address, and three minutes. Welcome. I'll probably take less than three minutes, but my name is Gloria Rhee. I live at 2384 the Woods Lane, 40502. A little background. I formed a not-for-profit dealing with culture and diversity called the Humanitarian in 1997. I have served as chair of our Human Rights Commission. I've been on the NCCJ board. I served also on the Lexington Commission on Race Relations, and also am proud to be on the College of Social Work Advisory Board. I came here in 1991 and found a community that was not terribly welcoming of people who were different, and I made it a commitment of myself to try to change that. I believe in opportunity and inclusion for all, and as well, I truly believe that it's to the betterment of everybody who lives here to be exposed to people of other cultures and other ways of thinking. When I started the humanitarian, people asked me, and I went to see everybody, college presidents, everybody. They wanted to know, why is it important to do this? And 17 years ago, I started talking about the fact that we lived in a global environment, that our kids could talk to anybody in 10 seconds anywhere in the world, and we needed to understand where people came from. So with that said, I would like to make a commitment to volunteer for Isabel Center to help this community move forward in this direction. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Ms. Barbara Klein. Good afternoon. I'm Barbara Klein, 3004 Island Drive. I come here as the Director of Kentucky Refugee Ministries. Since our office opened here in Lexington in 1998, this community has welcomed over 2,500 refugees from 33 different countries. We are the only local refugee resettlement agency, and the refugees that we resettle have all been admitted to the United States through the U.S. State Department. All are victims of violence, persecution, discrimination, severe trauma, sometimes ethnic cleansing. and all have lost everything, or almost everything, and they've even lost the protection of their home countries. Our agency works intensely with clients for the first six months to a year, but beyond that time, our funding is limited, and clearly our clients still have many needs. We have high hopes for this international center. I think it will make a tremendous difference in the lives of refugees as well as other immigrants and international residents. It'll be a safe place, a place that understands the needs for culturally competent and language-appropriate services. It'll be a place that can refer clients to the services in our city that they need, and it will save our clients from going from door to door seeking help. It'll be a place where international community groups can meet and help the newest newcomers from their communities. It'll be a place where English classes and tutoring can help non-English speakers. A place where young people can access tutoring and instruction in the arts. It can give tax help and expert referral services. Not only will our newest Americans benefit, but community agencies that struggle with non-English speakers will have clients who have been referred to the proper providers. Schools will have additional help with children who can come for after-school programs for homework help or tutoring or activities that help with their acculturation. It's a win-win-win proposition. New Americans, including refugees, will benefit from additional access to culturally appropriate services. Community providers will benefit with more suitable referrals to their agencies. And the whole community wins because all residents will have more help becoming self-sufficient, productive, and valuable members of our community. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Klein. Next is Nathan Zamoron. Your address in three minutes. Welcome. Thank you. I live at 2027 Rainbow Road, and I want to thank Isabel for inviting me here, and I'm honored to serve as a co-chair of the Art Committee along with Dr. Chiazong Wang, and we will be committed to ensuring high-quality arts programming, the development of a gallery, as well as very inclusive and diverse high level of art programs that is offered by the center. So I look forward to that process and bringing LexArts involvement in the center. We also, I think there's a great opportunity for, along with Councilmember Henson's efforts, to develop the aesthetics of the Versailles Road corridor and how the center might be able to play a role in connecting the cultural diversity of the participants and of this community. So I think there's really a lot of wonderful partners here in the community and I feel honored to be part of this. So thank you. Thank you, Nathan. Next we have Mr. Guyon-Johnstone. And forgive me if I mispronounce your first name. I have a good pass. Okay, great. Good afternoon. My name is Guyon Johnstone, 328 Duke Road. I am the immigration attorney and program director at Maxwell Street Legal Clinic, a small nonprofit that's part of a larger organization known as Kentucky Equal Justice Center. We provide immigration legal services to low-income immigrants and refugees in our community. And Isabel spoke a lot of the need for such an international center for our community. I cannot speak enough about how much we need this. Maxwell Street Legal Clinic has sort of become, in a sense, a de facto community center because of the lack of anywhere else for immigrants to turn. And so we get phone calls from lots of immigrants, social workers, teachers, pastors, asking questions pertaining not to immigration law at all, which is what we do, but to issues relating to immigrants and where to refer them and where to turn them. And I have staff here who see this every single day. And so it would be just so, so important to our community to have a bilingual staff there at the international center, multilingual better yet, to better serve these needs. And Maxwell Street, we're fully committed to providing volunteer services, interns to help teach civics classes, to offer immigration legal screenings, to do community education presentations on immigration law, on the Affordable Care Act, on workers' rights. And I've also been asked to speak on behalf of an organization known as Casa de la Cultura, which is involved in arts and crafts and workshops, and they have also committed to providing members of the international community to help with the arts committee. Thank you. The next speaker, I apologize I can't read the name, but I know the speaker resides at 3716 Trent Circle. Welcome, sir. If you can give us your name, you'll have three minutes. Hi, my name is Saad. I came to United States on December 2013. I'm as an immigrant come to the United States I hold civil engineering from my country so when you come here there's many organizations here support refugees so I face difficult to work as I were in my country So this may be the international center. We built many hopes to this international center to help us to work here as our career. Sometimes I submit for many positions here. I have more than 12 years of experience in construction. They told me that you are right, you have experience, you have everything, but you must obligate your certificate because you are from another country. Not me, but most of the educated refugees face the same problem here. So maybe under the umbrella of the International Center, maybe you will have some of the program to make us involved in the community and to obligate our career for that. So I thank you Mr. Taylor to invite me here and I thank you if you support this International Center. That maybe it would benefit me, but it would benefit more than refugees here and immigrants here in New York City. So thank you for that. Thank you, sir. Next is Timito Buda Adhikari. Namaste and good afternoon to all. I'm Buda Adhikari, representative of the botanist community in Lexington, Kentucky. Today, my happiness knows no bounds to have this great opportunity to share our painful and sorrowful story among you all, great personalities. Currently here in Lexington, Kentucky, nearly 200 Wootenai families and around 400 individuals are living in Morris, Minns, in Lexington, Kentucky. So I'd like to give a great thanks for helpers to live in these cities to Ms. Barbara, who is just giving a leadership to all his associates to help us to stay in Lexington, Kentucky. By looking around our communities, Brittany's community here in Lexington, Kentucky, our elderly peoples are basically confined in their homes and apartments, staying monotonously with much worries and frustrations. As a result, depression might cause their mental health issue. Healthy and middle-aged people are struggling to become self-sufficient and for better futures. In addition, our children and youth are losing their societal values. Increasing video games, Facebook usage, and long watching TV hours has made our children and youth unproductive and close-minded. If these children and youth are given opportunity and right platforms where they can interact and exchange their ideas and knowledge with other children from different communities, they would soon enhance their creative talents and make this community better. Lastly, on behalf of the Buddhist community in Lexington, Kentucky, myself personally, I would like to extend heartfelt thanks to Multicultural Affairs Coordinator Ms. Isabel Taylor and her cooperative associates who initiated this grand concept of opening International Community Center in Lexington, Kentucky. I believe this is a great platform where different community people can expose their hidden talents, knowledge, and ideas to all other Lexingtonians and help to make Lexington a better place to live. So let's join all our hands to reach our goals in peak of success. Thank you and done a while. Thank you, sir. The last registered speaker we have is Robin Diaz. Welcome, Robin. If you could pronounce your name, your address, and you'll have three minutes. Okay, thank you. My name is Robin Diaz-Doh, and I'm the human trafficking advocate with Kentucky Rescue and Restore, and also a Patterson grad. I work for Kentucky Rescue and Restore, which is a coalition created in 2008 by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. And my job is to increase identification of human trafficking victims through training and education and also to provide direct services to victims in Kentucky. And I'm specifically assigned to the Lexington area and the surrounding counties. So the immigrant community here is a vulnerable population. And we have a high level, we see in our clients a high level of exploitation for both labor and sexual exploitation among the foreign national population in the state. The majority of our foreign national clients are from the Lexington area. So this center would be mutually beneficial to us and to the victims. We see that it could be a place that victims could disclose. It would be a comfortable place for them to come and disclose their current situation. And it could be a place that we could provide direct services to the clients. It's definitely a prevalent issue in our area. Our most recent statistics show that out of our 160 clients, 35% of them are currently foreign nationals, and most of those being from the Lexington area. So with the center, it's most important for us, for the new immigrants to know their rights, and also for us to be able to educate them on the services that are available for them. So thank you. Thank you, Robin. Seeing no other speakers signed up, I'll return attention back to the committee. Council Member Lamb, thank you for bringing this to committee. Do you have any final comments or any guidance, instructions, or thoughts for the committee? related to this item well i am you know i just have remember back to the first day that is a belt a year was talking to me about this river down at the courthouse and uh... she was so excited and course you know it doesn't take much when she knows my else got really exciting idea that i get excited as well and so i was just so pleased and then uh... there were other aspects of that too but i just and i just am thrilled This is such a good day in Lexington to see such a wonderful group of people come together. And this is why I'm here, sitting here, because I'm so proud of this community and our government employees, too. And so I'm hoping that I look forward to Social Services is about to bring forward the draft ordinances that are going to be setting up the committees and the commissions and all that. And I think that's very important to the structure of this is that it is set by ordinance and it's fully vetted. So I'm hoping that you'll bring that back forward to this commission or this committee and that we can go and move forward in a pretty quickly fashion. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member Lamb. Next is Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair. I just want to kind of add on to what Council Member Lamb just said. I know from my years in the community, many of the people who are sitting in this room who have not spoken, who could tell us a lot about what they have done, how important it's been to the community, how much the immigrants who come here enrich our community. I believe it's an issue that's not gotten the kind of visibility it deserves. I hope this will be not the beginning, but the continuation of an effort to raise for the rest of the community the importance of this issue and of providing services to the people who come to our community as immigrants. So thank you for bringing all this forward. Thank you, Council Member Lamb. Thank you all for being here. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Hearing no further discussion, Council Member Lamb will leave this item in committee for future updates. And thank you, Isabel, and thank you, Commissioner Mills. Committee, our last and final item of business this afternoon. is the Lyric Theater strategic plan and update. This was referred again as a budget link item. And we would like to welcome Ms. Paula King, a member of the board of directors for the Lyric Theater. Paula, welcome. Thank you. I got quick. That one. I'm not tech-sevy. So if I mess up just say okay. I'll do it. I'll figure it out. Maybe. Okay, she showed me. Thank you. All right, I just want to give a little background on the Lyric Theater. Actually, I'm Paula King. I'm the treasurer of the Board of Directors for the Lyric Theater. And I was one of the persons that facilitated the strategic plan, so I got to present. So I just want to give you a little background. So we have a lot of new council members, just so you'll know. The facility is owned by the Urban County Government. It did open in October 2010. We did have a business plan that was done in 2009, but unfortunately it did contain a business model that has not worked for us. The board is all volunteer. We had our first director. She left. We have a new director. These are some of our analytics, the total number of events. Just to give you a little bit of background, we have gone from 2011 to 2014. We have increased our total events significantly. It's about a 293% increase overall. You can see by the bars the different months and our top months and the different years. So if you've got any questions, I'd be glad to answer those on some of the events that we have at the Lyric. We have the building utilization summary. For those of you who don't know, we do community rentals. We have a theater. We have the gallery and the museum. So this is just a little bit of information about the type of events that we have at the Lyric. We have for-profit rentals, which is at 36%. The Lyric events are about 23%, and then our community rentals are about 27%. Well, actually, the community rentals are at 14%, and the theater is at 27%. the budget we've gone from 2011 FY11 to FY14 from 65% of our budget coming from the urban county government down to 32% in FY14 so we are making progress as far as being somewhat independent although we don't anticipate ever being truly independent from the urban county government. We did just complete our first audit this past year for FY14. It was a clean opinion, so we are proud of that. Those are available. If you would like them, I have them in my office, and I'd be glad to send you one. Just let Chris know, Councilman Ford know, and we will be glad to give you a copy of the audit for your records if you so desire. As far as the strategic plan, the timeline and the contributors and the content is what we're going to go over. It's not the timeline. We met with the CIO, Aldana. She was kind enough to give us her expertise, and we had representatives from the mayor's office and the council office who worked with us, and we needed their help because we didn't know how to do a strategic plan. We hadn't done one ourselves. Back when they did one in 2009, they hired a consultant, so we didn't hire a consultant. We did this and we wanted to do it ourselves so that it could be we could own it ourselves so that was most important for us so she met with the board on july the 10th and we began in july through the process going through the existing plan and updating it to what we felt was relevant for the current year and moving forward for the lyric We had the Lyric staff there, the executive director, myself, the board of directors, and we had workshops that were open to all who wanted to participate, and we had some outside participants participate with us as far as the strategic plan. The mission, it contains a mission, a vision, core values, outcome metrics, goals, strength, and weakness analysis. This is nothing new, nothing fancy. It's what's normally in a strategic plan, but we just made it personal for us. As far as our mission goes, we preserve, present, and celebrate diverse cultures and community inclusion with a special emphasis on the African-American experience. The only thing we did really with our mission, vision, and core values is really we took what was already there. We didn't really change the work that the task force did. They had task force. They had work groups back in 2009. And we weren't taking anything away from the work that they did because they did a lot of work for the Lyric in preparation for it opening. The only thing we did was just streamline the mission statement for something that we can actually internalize. It's a mission statement that we can state at events and something that we believe in. The vision, we want to be a leading artist and cultural center informed by the African American experience. Some of our core values include providing the cultural education and programming outreach, highest quality of artistic presentation, creating opportunities for community inclusion, and promoting the artistic experience as a unique and vital dimension of individual growth and community life. So these are what we want to achieve in everything that we do and everything that we present at the Lyric. The outcome matrix and goals, these are detailed. They're not anything fancy. It's what we came up with for us. We wanted something that we could work with. We had lots of great discussions around coming up with our matrix and goals. The exercises involving getting to these five core outcomes was pretty important, and we took the time. All of the board members participated over the three workshops. Not all at the same time, but we've had input for everyone. So our first outcome was enhancing program to engage the community. Right now, we want to be able to do a major performance at least every quarter. And that's important to us so that we can be able to present back to the community an event that not only will they enjoy, but it's also going to enhance the community as well. And that's our year one, two, three goals. And we continue to have smaller events, community events. We have back-to-school events. We're going to have the convocation for Black History Month, just different events for the community, things that, like I said, not necessarily are big, but they have an impact on the community. And then, of course, as we continue to move toward years four and five, we want to increase those from once a quarter to hopefully six a year. But all of that depends upon financial situations and lots of different factors, Not to mean that we can't achieve them, though. Our second outcome in the major school is to strengthen fundraising and financial solvency. I'm sure this is the one you all prefer us to do, most of all. But so we're going to do the best we can. What looks like we and the reason why we operate at a loss on most of our major performances is that right now we don't have sponsors. That's one of the things that we're lacking. One of the things we have to develop is obtaining sponsors, obtaining contributors, so that when we do put on an event, we can actually make some money off of it. But it's not about, sometimes the events aren't about making money, it's about presenting the events. We did the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, It was a great event. I mean, it was a unique event. And the kids enjoyed it. We had a school function for them. But we didn't make much money off of that. And I guess the difference between us and a lot of the other theaters is we can't charge $75 for an event because of where we're located and our mission. The people will not come at $75. You can get people that will come. you're going to outprice our community. And we're there for our community, and we're trying to produce quality events for our community, and we know where we're located. So we're not going to charge $7,500, $100 for an event just to make money. So we are a little different in that, and if you're an accountant, it doesn't sit well with you, but we're not in that business. And that's all I'm going to say. I'm sorry. So the goal is, like I said, for the net loss, we're averaging about $4,000, like I said, one through three, and to reduce that net loss in the further out years. And again, the goal, the key is to get potential sponsors to actually sponsor the events, and that will definitely reduce the loss. another one is increased visitors to gallery space and museums we have great events if you haven't been over there to the gallery or the museum you should come we just finished up with the Frank X. Walker event African American heroes it was great it was greatly attended so if you get a chance right now in the UK they have their sculptures there they are beautiful just come and see we do have great exhibits and if we can get more sponsors, we can bring in bigger. We're looking to bring in, we'd like to bring in international exhibits, but international exhibits cost money. But we've actually, to have the limited dollars that we have, we've been able to bring in great exhibits, so we're looking forward to moving forward on that. And then we want to, of course, increase marketing efforts and raise awareness. If we can increase our community events by 10%, That means we are doing more in the community and we are outreaching to more members of the community, which is one of our goals. We want to increase the number of paid theater rentals by two. The theater, of course, is the main hub of the Lyric, but it's also expensive to rent the theater because it does cost money to pay for a theater-related event, and not all events can happen in a theater. We want to increase the number of new donors by 20%. Our donorship has increased, but they're small donors, as I tell people. But we take all donations. So we take $10 donations, $20 donations, and we get a lot of those from when people purchase tickets. They're asked if they want to donate. So we get those small donations, and those donations do add up. But we'd like to increase our donors by 20%. We did participate in the Good Giving Challenge. We had about 25 people contribute. We made $2,700, and that's a good first year. But other people make lots more money, but that's okay. So we tried, and we will continue to try with our efforts. We want to sustain a healthy volunteer program. We have about 25 core volunteers with another 25 participating here and there as needed. And our last goal is to nurturing board governors. We want to be able to present to the council by September some new bylaws. We need to restructure our board in order to be able to move forward, because some of it has. We have to have a member of the original work group that set up the Lyric. And, of course, those members are getting older and can't participate, So we don't want to limit ourselves on our board membership from those who are interested in serving on the board, because it is a volunteer board. We need those who are interested and believe in the lyric in order to be able to serve on the board. Some of our strengths. It's a top-notch facility. If you haven't been, come by. Wood Songs loves it. We love it. It looks great. Still looks great. It has a unique niche. It has a great history. We do have support from the Urban County Government, and we would not be open without your support, so we thank you again and again for all your support financially and time and everything. We have operational manager stability, as you've just seen. Like I said, we had our first audit. We did well, and that was a lot of work because that was our first audit. So we put a lot of work into it, but it was worth the effort because we did get a clean opinion. Some of our weaknesses, of course, we need to diversify funding sources. We need other funding sources. Minimize our loss on major performances, secure major sponsors, community awareness, and we have that constant battle between affordability and quality. But it is what it is, and we don't want to necessarily take away the quality just for affordability. That's our whole goal. We're just trying to produce quality events at affordable prices. So if you've got any questions, I'm here to answer your questions. Thank you, Paula, for your presentation. And we do have council members signed up to speak, beginning with Council Member Maloney. Paula, I want to start off by thanking you and your board for where you all are today in a short time. Because when I was CAO, we had to go through a lot of changes with the lyric. and I commend you guys what you all done in this short time. This is amazing. I see your plans. I think it's wonderful. The one thing I was wondering about the sponsor is if y'all tried to or has anyone tried to work with the Lutton Civic Center Board to meet with their folks on how they are able to get sponsors. I know, I mean, they do great with raising money and all that. I was just wondering if there's a way that you guys could somehow work with them in finding a way? Did they come up with an idea of maybe getting some sponsors? We haven't worked with them, but we'd be glad to work with them. We take any sponsors, any names, any help that you can give as far as how we can increase sponsorship. We take all advice. Be glad to write it down, and if you send me a contact, I'll be glad to contact them. And what I'm saying, that's what their expertise are, and that's what they have to do the same thing you all do to bring concerts, to bring events to the Rupp Arena. And with that tool that they have, I mean, it seems like to me you all could work out maybe a marketing contract or something with them to let them go out and, I mean, maybe get a lot of money for doing this, but to help you guys with more funding in there, I thought that might be an opportunity there for you. And just so you know, we actually also are getting ready to hire a part-time development fundraising person. That's a hindrance for us right now, too, as well, because we only have a staff of three full-time. And between all the events and everything that's going on, they stay busy. So fundraising is something that we need to concentrate on. So we're going to hire a person dedicated to developing and fundraising. And when we say developing, we want that person to establish these relationships with these people in the community so that we can get some sponsorships. Because you have to build those relationships. People don't just give you money because you make an ask. They want to develop. It works better if you have a relationship and you're able to contribute and have that conversation and sit down. So we hope with the new position that we will be able to move forward a whole lot more on the development and sponsorship. But thank you. Again, thank you, board, and you all for working hard for where you are today. Thank you, Council Member Maloney. Next is Council Member Evans. Just a couple of questions, a comment. I think we've all had to raise money for our campaign, And so I don't think we would say just go for the ask. I mean, if there's anybody, I mean, yes, we understand relationships, and that's very important, but never discredit just asking someone because you never know what you'll get. But the question I had, you'd said that you all don't anticipate being independent anytime soon, and understandably so, but do you all have a goal of how much you want to decrease your dependence, your financial dependence on the government? Do you have a time period of that or reduce it by so much in so many years? Have you all thought about that? Okay. And I know it's brand new. No, no, you're fine. I like to tell the truth. So you may not like my response, but truth is the light of the world. So in response to that question, that's what was wrong with the 2009 plan. It actually started out with asking for a dollar amount and going steadily down. This year we would have only asked for $75,000 from the government versus we got $160,000. So we did not, in our plan, deliberately go through a pattern of saying we're going to reduce what we need from the government because we don't know. Now, the goal would be as sponsorship increases, we would reduce our requests from the urban county government. And in this year's, in FY16, we actually did reduce our ask in our request for the urban county government. And that's because we should have carryover money left. But I don't want to stand here and say that we have a plan and that we're going to every year ask for less. It only works if our sponsorship increases. And we are well aware of your desire for us to increase our sponsorship. And we know we have an obligation to increase our sponsorship. But the reality is it has not happened. Again, we hope the development person will be able to successfully increase our sponsorship. And that would be the goal. But we don't have it written down that way anywhere because we did not want to write down goals we could not achieve. That was what was wrong with the 2009 plan. We didn't give you a document that you would like and wouldn't be true to us. So it is. Sorry. Hopefully I answered your question. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Councilmember Gibbs. Thank you chair. Ms. King, thank you so much for your presentation. I just want to say I love the facility. Thank you for all you do over there. My wife and I go there for every concert we possibly can. I was just wondering about one small thing just so I can help decipher some of this. But for example, we oftentimes go for the Troubadour concert series. Is that a flat-out rental or does it matter to you how many people show up for that? For the Woodsongs? Yes. Of course it matters. No, not the Woodsongs, the Troubadour. Oh, the The troubadours are paid events. Woodstones actually pays us for those events. So they rent the facility for the event. Yes, they rent the facility. So you don't care if it's, yeah, of course not, that's a harsh word to put it, but you don't suffer any financial harm if it's only half full? No. Okay. Thank you, that's all. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Gibbs. Next is Council Member Scotchfield. Thank you, Chair. I just had a couple of questions. Obviously, you had the audit that went through. One of the questions, what was your budget last year? The total budget was actually, for FY14, it was $506,524. Okay. And then what was the income that you all brought in last year? That was the total revenue. Okay, so that was the revenue. So the revenue matched budget? No. The budget would have been $536,000. Okay. Okay. And I guess, you know, I understand, you know, obviously you're in an area of town where you are cognizant of the fact that you want people to be able to afford to come to the events. And I'm really glad to hear that you've hired somebody to do fund development because I think you've still got to balance the two because you can't succeed if you're not making money. because at the end of the day, at some point, you're going to lose the funding you've got. So I'm really glad to hear that you all brought somebody in to focus on that firsthand. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Scotchfield. Next is Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Paula, I too want to commend you all for the work that you do, the board, Rashida. I mean, I think that it's a great asset to the community. I've been there for many events myself. And I am also pleased to see the decrease in the dependence, although the government supports lots of good agencies and programs in the community, and so I don't think that it's unreasonable for us to support this one as well. That being said, when you mentioned revising the bylaws and changing maybe the board makeup, I don't know what your board makeup is now or what it's required to be, But does it allow for private bank presidents, for example, or others in the community to be a part of the board, or is it more, I guess, agency, program, memberships? No, there are some at-large spots where we could have a banker if someone was interested. Coming from the nonprofit world, and my last nonprofit job was actually in development, that's the key is in your board of having those people who can get people to write checks or they themselves write checks. So I hope that that will help you all when you change the bylaws and work on that, that allows you to free up some spots where you can get some more people like that engaged. And the 160 that you received from the government last year, was that, do we pay for personnel salaries at all? Do we pay just for building maintenance, or is it just general operating expenses? The urban county government's part primarily pays for personnel costs. Most of the operating is actually, we recoup through the rental costs. So it's primarily personnel costs. Okay. So is the, how many positions are there? There are three full-time positions and three part-time. Okay. And so we just sort of subsidize each of those. There's not necessarily people on the payroll of the city. That's correct. Correct. Okay. Well, again, I think that you all are doing good. And I know that Good Giving Guide is a lot of time and a lot of work. And so I think that you did great for your first year. And keep that up. Thank you. I know that it's time-consuming, too. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Council Member Ford. Ms. King, thank you for this wonderful presentation. And I guess I was just curious about the rental fees as to, I know you really can't make a lot of money with rental fees, but I'm just curious how they compare with other facilities in the community and if that's something that you could use to help increase your revenue. We just actually last year looked at our community room rentals and we adjusted those accordingly. So, I mean, the number of events that happen in our community room, it stays full. So it's not an issue. The theater, however, we are looking at those rates right now and seeing if those adjustments need to be made. And that's one of our plans. One of our outcomes is to review our rates annually so that we can make sure that we are competitive and that we can afford to do some things. So we have not looked at our theater rates, but we are in the process of looking at them to see if they need to be revised. So that is something that we hope to do annually to make sure that we are competitive, and that's not one of the problems areas that we have. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your involvement in our community. Thank you. Thank you, Paula. I want to ask the committee to allow me to turn the chair over to Vice Chair Akers. Sure. Council Member Ford. Thank you. Paula, thank you. And I want the committee to know just from my perspective as a First District Council member, by ordinance. I serve as one of the 15 members on the board of directors, and I can attest that we have a very good group there. I do support our efforts to review that to better find better fits. We can always improve the makeup of folks that are on the board, But I will say that the Lyric is going in the right direction, in my opinion, and has come a mighty long ways kind of from where we started. If you guys, the Lyric opened up a few months before I took office, before Vice Mayor Kay took office. And so a lot of the work of the task force and all the advocates was already done. And so from 2011, we began a new company, basically. and it was rocky at first, but I will tell you that from the outcry of the community initially and our response, which is to make the facility inclusive and welcoming and diverse at that, that we've really gone on different areas. I will say that we do need urban county government support. The urban county government owns the facility, and the urban county government has been working very closely with our management there at the facility now to help better manage facility costs and those things. Our revenues have gone up, but we're still only in year five. Our chair is here, Mr. Abdul-Muhammad, who is a finance guy by trade, and he has led and we appreciate his efforts to kind of lead us. and then Paula serving as treasurer and her experience here in the government with grants and finances. So we're doing quite well there. One thing that I will say just in closing is that the Lyric may not be flush with money. We're not in dire straits. The organization is not in dire straits. We're in a much better place than we've been. But we can account for all the beans in the pot, as the audit just attests. We need more beans in the pot to add to the flavor, so to speak, of what we can offer. But we can account to this government and to the community for what we're doing. And then truly in closing, I think visibly folks are seeing what's going on at the Lyric. If you're in the East End or if you're traveling through downtown, you can see the increase of participation in visitors at the Lyric. So it's a lot of hard work. we're heading in the right direction but I do want to thank the budget link that referred this item I will say that the lyric board intended surely to have an audit done here pretty soon and we also intended to have a strategic plan but the attention that the council has given only encouraged us to kind of speed that process up and now in the last six months we've produced both and we're really proud of that. So appreciate your support and Paula, you and all the members of the board of directors including Linda and Melissa as well. Thank you Vice Chair Akers. You're welcome. The one thing I would thank you. The one thing that I would ask is the charge as Craig indicated in his memo from the budget link was just to ask the lyric to complete a strategic plan and bring it forward. We've done that. If there's not any other further business of the committee to keep the docket lean and trim, we'd entertain a motion to remove. Motion by Council Member Evans, second by Council Member Henson. Is there any discussion? All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. That motion carries. Thank you Paula. Thank you. Thank you to you and your board you and our board Committee we've concluded the work of the committee Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, March 3rd But there is no further business I'd entertain a motion to adjourn Moved by Councilmember Akers, second by Councilmember Bledsoe. We stand adjourned Thank you.