# Budget Committee of the Whole - May 26, 2015 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 26, 2015 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3661 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3661?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2015-05-26 - **Last revised**: July 15, 2026 - **Length**: 27,133 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council met on May 26, 2015, at 10:00 AM in the Council Chambers, with Vice Mayor Kay presiding. The council considered five agenda items, all of which were approved during the meeting. The session included four motions and votes, and the council heard six public comments from members of the community. The agenda focused on departmental link summaries across five major areas: General Government, General Services & Planning, Finance & Social Services, Environmental Quality & Public Works, and Public Safety. ## Attendance **Present:** - Vice Mayor Kay - Councilmember Scotchfield - Councilmember Akers - Councilmember Brown - Councilmember Evans - Councilmember Henson - Councilmember Stennett - Councilmember Bledsoe - Councilmember Massadi - Councilmember Farmer - Councilmember Lamb - Councilmember Brackett - Councilmember Mossadi - Councilmember Meg - Councilmember Anchors **Absent:** - Councilmember Gibbs **Late:** None recorded ## Votes and Decisions The council took four votes during this meeting: **Motion to move $24,000 for new cabinets from bond to fund balance** [timestamp: 0:16:01] Councilmember Brown moved this motion. The motion passed by voice vote. **Motion to move $150,000 for People's Bank relocation from bond to fund balance** [timestamp: 1:14:03] Councilmember Brown moved this motion. The motion failed by voice vote. **Motion to move $50,000 for tax revenue software from capital to 15 budget** [timestamp: 1:42:09] Councilmember Brown moved this motion. The motion failed by voice vote. **Motion to allow Salvation Army to speak during budget discussion** [timestamp: 1:50:34] Councilmember Brown moved this motion, seconded by Councilmember Lamb. The motion failed by voice vote with 9 ayes and 3 nays. Voting in favor were: - Councilmember Brown - Councilmember Akers - Councilmember Evans - Councilmember Henson - Councilmember Stennett - Councilmember Bledsoe - Councilmember Massadi - Councilmember Farmer - Councilmember Lamb Voting against were: - Councilmember Mossadi - Councilmember Meg - Councilmember Anchors ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included appropriations and grants totaling several million dollars across multiple departments and initiatives. **Public Safety and Emergency Services** The largest appropriations supported public safety infrastructure and equipment. The police department received $800,000 for vehicle allocation and $600,000 for a body camera pilot program. The fire department received $27,850 for a quartermaster technician position and $25,500 for an administrative specialist position. Fire department divisional infrastructure repairs were funded at $500,000, and the Jordan Building project received $400,000. Public safety emergency systems received significant funding: $1,548,700 for a public safety operations center radio tower, $60,000 for an outdoor warning system upgrade, and $30,000 for public safety sirens. Additional public safety funding included $90,250 for virtual desktop interface, $69,500 for a radio repeater at the courthouse, and $176,400 for a fire alarm panel. Smaller allocations supported the CERT program ($3,800), alert notification maintenance ($5,000), and ENS actual cost ($2,500). **Information Technology and Administrative Systems** The largest single appropriation was $3,248,270 for LexServe billing and collection software. A budgeting enterprise system received $1,000,000. The Chief Information Officer received $200,000 for professional services, $10,000 for additional training, and $25,000 for internet connectivity with Time Warner Cable. Tax revenue software was funded at $50,000, and the Division of Revenue received $50,000 for tax revenue software. Central Purchasing received $25,000 for newspaper advertising bids and $24,000 for software maintenance. **Other Departments and Community Grants** The coroner's office received $24,000 for new cabinets. People's Bank relocation was funded at $150,000. Parks and Recreation received $100,000 for a Safe Parks position. Planning Department professional services received $175,000. Risk Management dues were funded at $4,000. Neighborhood Action Match Grants received $20,000, and a new internship program received $10,000. Fund analytics software was funded at $20,000. **Community and Economic Development Grants** Grants to external organizations included: Explorium ($25,000), NOLI CDC ($25,000 for operating support, $45,000 for neighborhood business growth, and $55,000 for public improvement initiatives), World Trade Center ($50,000 for a one-on-one program), LexArts ($50,000 for Oliver Lewis Way Bridge), Commerce Lexington ($50,000 for a workforce study), and Lyric Theater ($30,000 for programming). ## Public Comment Several councilmembers raised concerns about specific budget allocations and processes during the meeting. **Salvation Army Funding** Councilmember Stennett expressed concern about a disconnect between the Salvation Army and the ESR grant process, requesting clarification on how the process was followed [timestamp: 1:52:06]. **Jordan Building Project** Councilmember Bledsoe asked for clarification on the Jordan Building project's funding and whether it was prioritized higher than the new fire station at Masterson [timestamp: 2:31:22]. **Body Cameras** Multiple councilmembers raised concerns about the proposed body camera allocation: - Councilmember Evans expressed concern that $600,000 was being allocated without knowing the full cost, particularly regarding storage and staffing needs [timestamp: 2:45:47]. - Councilmember Stinnard emphasized the need for caution in adopting body cameras due to undetermined costs and the potential for misuse of funds [timestamp: 2:48:02]. - Councilmember Scotchfield warned against spending $600,000 without knowing the final cost, expressing concern that the equipment could become outdated quickly [timestamp: 2:50:08]. **Domestic Violence Director Position** Councilmember Lamb requested that the council's recommendation to study the domestic violence director position be acknowledged [timestamp: 3:01:24]. ## Contested Items The May 26, 2015 meeting included several items that generated significant debate among council members. **Salvation Army Funding** Multiple council members expressed concern about the ESR grant process and the Salvation Army's funding allocation. The primary issue centered on a disconnect between the grant process and its outcomes, raising questions about whether the funding mechanism was achieving its intended results. **Body Cameras** Council members engaged in heated discussion over a $600,000 allocation for body cameras. Concerns raised included undetermined costs beyond the initial allocation, questions about data storage requirements, staffing needs to manage the program, and the risk of committing substantial funds to technology that could become outdated. The debate reflected uncertainty about the full scope and long-term financial implications of the body camera initiative. **Jordan Building Project** The council was divided on the Jordan Building project funding approach. The disagreement centered on whether to fund the project from the fund balance or through bonding. Council members expressed concerns about project prioritization and the implications for long-term financial planning, indicating fundamental differences in how the council viewed the project's urgency relative to other municipal needs. **People's Bank Relocation** Council members engaged in heated debate regarding the use of public funds to relocate a private building. The core concern involved the appropriateness of using municipal resources for a private entity's relocation, with council members raising questions about establishing precedent and ensuring adequate public benefit from the expenditure. ## General Government Link Summary The General Government Link reviewed and made recommendations on 25 departmental budgets during this discussion [timestamp: 00:06:04]. The committee addressed the Mayor's Proposed Budget, accepting it for most departments while providing specific recommendations for targeted adjustments. **Key Participants** The discussion involved Councilmember Scotchfield, Councilmember Brown, and Councilmember Akers. **Actions and Recommendations** The committee's review resulted in recommendations that included: * Accepting the Mayor's Proposed Budget for the majority of departments * Recommending funding increases for select departments * Recommending funding reductions for select departments * Requesting RFI (Request for Information) submissions from certain departments * Recommending audits of specific departmental operations **Outcome** The General Government Link's recommendations on the 25 departmental budgets were approved. ## General Services & Planning Link Summary The General Services & Planning Link reviewed and made recommendations on 13 departmental budgets during this discussion item [timestamp: 0:50:52]. **Key Participants** The discussion involved Councilmember Akers, Councilmember Stennett, and Councilmember Bledsoe. **Content and Recommendations** The Link reviewed departmental budgets and made specific recommendations addressing: * Support for the Mayor's Proposed Budget * Capital projects * Staffing levels * Non-budgetary actions including collaboration requirements and reporting requirements **Outcome** The agenda item was approved. ## Finance & Social Services Link Summary The Finance & Social Services Link reviewed and made recommendations on six departmental budgets during this discussion item. [timestamp: 1:36:40] **Key Participants** The discussion involved Councilmember Lamb, Councilmember Evans, and Councilmember Henson. **Content and Recommendations** The Link reviewed departmental budgets and made specific recommendations supporting the Mayor's Proposed Budget. These recommendations included funding increases for certain departments, software acquisitions, and non-budgetary actions. **Outcome** The agenda item was approved. ## Environmental Quality & Public Works Link Summary The Environmental Quality & Public Works Link committee reviewed and made recommendations on six departmental budgets during this discussion [timestamp: 2:09:50]. Key participants in this agenda item included Councilmember Farmer and Councilmember Stennett. The committee's work focused on supporting the Mayor's Proposed Budget while providing specific recommendations across multiple areas: * Capital projects * Staffing levels * Policy actions The committee approved the recommendations and outcomes of their budget review process. The discussion resulted in an approved outcome for this agenda item. ## Public Safety Link Summary The Public Safety Link reviewed and made recommendations on 10 departmental budgets during this agenda item [timestamp: 2:22:11]. The discussion was led by Councilmember Fred Brown and Councilmember Mossadi. The Public Safety Link supported the Mayor's Proposed Budget and provided specific recommendations across three areas: * Capital projects * Staffing * Non-budgetary actions The outcome of this agenda item was approved. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Motion to move $24,000 for new cabinets from bond to fund balance - **Motion** — failed (0-0): Motion to move $150,000 for People's Bank relocation from bond to fund balance - **Motion** — failed (0-0): Motion to move $50,000 for tax revenue software from capital to 15 budget - **Motion** — failed (9-3): Motion to allow Salvation Army to speak during budget discussion --- ## Full transcript People leave their way to say hello I've heard this letter as we go Oh yeah, yeah I'm here without you baby But you're still on my lonely mind I think about you baby And I dream about you all Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. It's the May 26th meeting. This is a Lynx report out. And just so everybody will kind of be on the same page, this is an opportunity for Council to give preliminary consideration to all of the recommendations that have come from the five links. And there may be people here who wish to speak on an issue. If we have time at the end, we'll allow public comment, but not until that point. Is there anything else we need to do before we launch? If not, we'll start with general government, Councilmember Scotchfield. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My link was James Brown, Kevin Stennett, myself, and we covered general government link. I'll just go over in the packet one by one each one of the recommendations that we came up with. If you have any questions, please let me know. Excuse me. First is Board of Elections. We, after reviewing, we recommend accepting the mayor's proposed budget. I'll just pause if people have questions. Yes, if anybody wishes to speak to any of these issues, please sign in so I'll know that you're in line. Thank you. But keep rolling, and if we have to go back, we will. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Chief Administrative Officer, there was $66,180,000. Includes the request for the continuum of care coordinator position and an upgrade of the current admin officer to admin officer senior. Those were included in the budget. Regarding the proposal, we accept the mayor's proposed budget. I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice now. And we will request a closed session regarding some of the other items probably next week. It's a personnel. Chief Development Officer, we accept the mayor's proposed budget. Chief Information Officer, there was $650,000 for Microsoft Enterprise Agreement in the 2015 reallocations. There was capital for security and network infrastructure at $1 million, on-base enhancement at $100,000, PeopleSoft security and upgrades of $500,000, and collaboration tool of $100,000. We do accept the mayor's proposed budget, recommend adding $10,000 for additional training and $25,000 for internet connectivity with Time Warner Cable. The fund balance request asking for $200,000 for additional professional services. Council Member Brown. Yes, I'd like to speak to this. the fund balance request asking for $200,000, that's to come out of the current surplus. Is that correct? And not to be bonded? In the fall, yes, not to be bonded. Not to be bonded. Is any of the new and expanded list capital projects up there, are any of those under bond? Teresa, can you answer that? Let me check. off the top of my head. Can we make requests when we're looking at each one of these? Yes. Is that the protocol? But does finance have that information handy? If you wouldn't mind. I'm going to come back. Thank you. Is there anything in the bonding? That's all I'm asking. Yes. The PeopleSoft security and functional upgrades, the collaboration tool, OnBase, and information security and network infrastructure are all in the bond. So the OnBase enhancement, $100,000, and the collaboration tool, $100,000, are in the bond program? Yes, they are. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Councilmember Akers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Jenny, the $200,000, is that a request from the link, or is that a request from the department? There was actually a request, I believe, for more than $200,000. Basically, there are so many. What we were told is there are so many specialized things that are needed that we have to ask for someone else with expertise outside of government to handle. we just we can't find this it's it's a very in-demand field sure and so this allows it's not the full amount that they had requested though okay and so it was not part of the reallocation that's already been approved obviously correct okay all right thank you councilmember evans just a question on the people soft security and upgrades is that going to prevent what was going on the beginning of the year? Because I've heard from several different employees that there always seems to be some glitch at the turnover of the new year, and I know we had some issues this year. Are those upgrades going to fix that? Welcome, CIO. When you talk about glitches, let me try to address it from a couple of different perspectives. Number one, with the new year, we've had new enrollments for benefits, so there were some issues earlier this year. That work is going on right now to fix that. But what we have requested in the budget is to make some changes to the very basic substructure of PeopleSoft, which has not been upgraded in many, many years. So that money is for security enhancements, new ways of handling it with online kind of interactions, and then also to be able to make those changes with a tool set that has not been upgraded in many years. does that answer your question i don't think so um i mean and i'm coming from the new perspective i've just heard from city workers that someone's check is always something always happens and i actually got phone calls this year from people that have been in the system they weren't new employees um there's just we've had whatever i i don't know what that problem is but i was just curious to know if that's going to help solve that. I can't tell you that that will help solve that, but what we are working on that hopefully will help to solve that is really the issues with the enrollment for benefits. As you know, with the Affordable Care Act, we expanded tremendously in terms of the benefits that were offered, and now those benefits are being brought back into PeopleSoft. So I'm hoping that we will have a lot less issues with that. thank you uh council member bledsoe thank you chair i just don't want to make an assumption here that 25 000 for internet connectivity is that within this building to enhance or elsewhere as a department we act as a pass-through for time warner bills for everything outside of this building so in other words on family care center or anybody else needs time warner which we do not provide we are the pass-through and we pay all the bills okay okay so that's adding they're adding internet services we actually had asked for that total amount because that is like I said we paid the bills and that is what estimated the bills will be for this coming year okay thank you Seeing no one else signed up to speak, perhaps, again, in terms of procedure, if someone has a motion to amend anything, we'll take those. Otherwise, we'll assume that this is accepted for the moment. So please proceed. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next is circuit judges. We accept the mayor's proposed budget. Citizens advocate. We accept the mayor's proposed budget. The Commonwealth Attorney accepts the proposed budget but recommends $92,000 for an additional civil attorney, Greg Howard's gang violence unit, and extra litigation costs as they provided. This would not fund all three of those things. It was requested from the Commonwealth Attorney, and this amount was, and he believes that using this he would be able to get all three of those things done. But that would not fund fully each one of those things, but that would assist him. Computer services, accept mayor's proposed budget. For the coroner's office, accept mayor's proposed budget, but do recommend this was requested capital for $24,000 worth new cabinets. These are our understanding. These cabinets are, how do you describe it? The body cabinets. So they're not cabinets. To what? Not filing cabinets. Correct. Okay. Okay. Council Member Brown. Yes. I noticed you've got it as a capital. Is that out of the bond, $24,000 for the new cabinets? Yes. I'd like to make a motion whenever I can. If there's no one else signed up, go right ahead. I would move that the recommended amount of $24,000 for the new cabinets be paid out of the surplus in the fall. Second. I have a motion and a second. Does anybody wish to speak to the motion? I will say this is one of the items that I... actually agree with you on one of the items. There very well might be more later, but I know that our link had discussed this as well. I had thought that it would be a good idea to take it out of fund balance. I believe there was some discussion and the agreement was out of, but I will support your motion. No one else signed up to speak. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. All right. Next, Council Clerk, we accept the mayor's proposed budget recommendation for an RFI for a voting system for the council chambers. It's something they are looking at in the near future, and we thought an RFI would be prudent so that we could have a discussion, possibly out of fund balance, for next year. okay so this is a non-budgetary recommendation for this year and i think as we've agreed we want to accumulate all of those and then look at them as a group and determine where they need to be forwarded to the administration or they become a committee issue so if everybody's comfortable with that that's fine thank you council office accept mayor's proposed budget recommend a reduction in and professional services by 20,000 and moved personnel. This was an amount that should be decreased because we've now hired someone in the position that the 20,000 was originally set aside for, our accountant. Do you wish to speak, Council Member Brown? Okay. Is that information we all need, or are we ready to go on? Well, Vice Mayor, I just wanted to mention I believe it's a non-budgetary item. It doesn't affect the budget. I believe anything that... Funds, but it doesn't increase, or... I think anything that moves funds... That's fine. I believe. I mean, that would be... Yeah, okay. County attorney, accept mayor's proposed budget. County clerk, accept... Council Member Masotti. Thank you, Council Member Scotchfield. Last year we had a discussion in Ray Larson's office about a position that we were trying to fill. Is that position in here? Do you remember? It was halftime. We were trying to make it full-time. I thought it was county attorney. Okay. I'm sorry. I made a mistake then. It should have been Commonwealth attorney. It's okay. I think, Councilman Muscuchfield, we're ready to proceed. I need to go back and change this. I apologize. Thank you, Councilmember Massadi. Regarding the county attorney, our recommendation is what I had listed under the Commonwealth attorney. Okay, that's what I thought. So if I can go back and correct, basically the county attorney was a recommendation of the mayor's proposed budget, but the increased increase of the $92,000. That was for the county attorney. I reported that incorrectly. So that position is there. Under the Commonwealth attorney. Okay. So Commonwealth attorney is accept the mayor's proposed budget. the county attorney is accept mayor's proposed budget and add $92,000 for the gang violence, Greg Howard. I was remembering from last year there was a position that we didn't fund full-time. It was going to be in the mayor. I think we talked about that last year. And we could not put it in because it was a recurring position in Ray Larson's office. I just want to know if that was addressed or not. Do you recall that at all? I recall that, but it was not discussed when Mr. Larson came in. It's funded. Thank you. It's funded. But I will say that I'm trying to report that we did switch up those. The county attorney and the commonwealth attorney, our recommendations are for the commonwealth attorney, except the mayor's proposed budget, county attorney is the, except mayor's proposed budget, but add the 92. Okay. Thank you. Another question. Council Member Akers. Thank you. Jenny, do you recall if that the extra $48,000 in the Commonwealth Attorney's budget, is that for that new position? I believe it is. Okay. Just clarifying. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay, moving on. County Clerk, accept the Mayor's proposed budget. We also discussed an RFI. No, that's for the Council. County Clerk, I apologize. But accept the Mayor's proposed budget. County Clerk Elections, accept the Mayor's proposed budget. County Judge Executive, accept the Mayor's proposed budget Enterprise Solutions, accept the Mayor's proposed budget Government Communications $56,710 includes a new position of Information Officer and associated computer system, new position of customer service specialist, hired part-time to full-time basis, increase in professional services for the branding campaign, mobile app maintenance and language line, PSO? PSOC. Okay, PSOC, I'm sorry, $50,000 in fiscal year 15 reallocation for Lexical 311 phone system. We do accept the mayor's proposed budget and recommend an RFI for GTV app, and this would be a non-budgetary recommendation. There are no questions? I'm sorry. Council Member Akers. Sorry. For all of the new and expanded lists in the first box, is $56,000 for all of that, or is that just for the one information officer position? And then none of the others have amounts. Is that correct? I mean, it can't be for all of those, I guess. It's not. Okay. And can you tell me or someone tell me what PSOC is? Okay, so is that capital money? What is... I'm sorry, what's your question? All right, so there's a whole string of new expanded slash capital projects. So are these new position, I guess, as personnel, is the PSOC under capital? Is that bonded under capital? No. It is bonded. Okay, it's all bonded. Melissa? The government communications, the LexCol portion of the PSOC, that is partially bonded, and then it's also out of their other funds, out of the Urban Service, the Water Quality or Sanitary Seward. The funds that support LexCol also have funding for the PSOC for the LexCol portion as well as the bond. Okay, and can you tell me how much the increase in professional services for this branding campaign is costing? Let me check. Because I believe they had some... I'm going to have to get back with you on that because I don't see it lined out in here. So I thought that... Let me check on that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My question there on the new and expanded is the items that are bonded. I think you brought up, somebody mentioned that they were bonded. Can they answer that, the amount of the bond of these particular items? We don't have any cost amounts on these, and we don't have where the money is coming from. That would be a new position of customer service specialist hired part-time. That's not bonding, is it? No, that's not. The only thing bonded there is the general funds portion of the Public Safety Operations Center, and that's 172.210 is the amount that's bonded. Okay, and that's the only thing in there that's bonded? That's the only thing on that list that's bonded. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Grants and special services. Accept Mayor's proposed budget. Human Rights Commission. We accept the Mayor's proposed budget. We also recommend funding HRC an additional $16,830 for strategic planning and to fund a housing compliance worker. That would be a part-time worker. Human Resources. The $43,770 includes an HR manager in compensation. We accept the mayor's proposed budget but recommend a third-party audit on the function of the HR department and recommend that the HR manager for compensation study not be funded. So that would decrease by the $43,770. Questions? Yes. I got a question. I'm a little confused on there. It says recommend a third-party audit on the function of the HR department. That would require us to do a contractual arrangement, I believe, or could that be included in the financial audit that we have? And I'll ask Mr. O'Meara to answer that question. Would this be something outside their scope? Yes, sir, it would. So to recommend a third party, we're talking about somebody with auditing or experience of that type to come in and review that. Could not our own internal audit department do that? You can request internal audit department. The audit that I believe that we're looking for, our link discussed, is more of an audit of the workload of everyone in HR to give us a better understanding. I don't believe it's within the purview of what currently is done. But you specifically recommend somebody outside government doing that? Correct. And that would have a budgetary implication? Yes. I still have the question to attach to that is, could our internal audit department do this same thing? That's my question because that's their area of expertise. Yeah. Councilman, Ms. Gushfield, did the link consider that and conclude that the audit would be more effective? We thought that that would be more prudent for the government to have HR not be reviewing their own. Yeah. The internal audit doesn't review itself. Okay. Councilman, Ms. Stennett. And I appreciate Councilman Brown's suggestion, but I think this is not looking at the financials of the department. It's looking more at staffing and our work capacity and our load. We haven't really had a review of HR, and obviously, I don't have to tell the new people, but the ones that have been here as well, there seems to be a morale issue with how things are functioning in HR. And before we add additional positions, we haven't had a look at it since I've been here about staffing, what their workload is, especially since the state law changed and changed on how we go through the applications and how we can narrow it down. There's more leeway to departments to make a decision when hiring. So I think there's a lot of things at play, and we don't know what the cost will be to Councilman Acres' question because we need an RFI. We need to see who's out there can evaluate our staffing needs in there and how we're processing new positions. The other thing that came up, and it may not be an HR issue, but we need to rule it out, is why does it take so long to hire people? You know, it's six months. We're budgeting vacancies at six months, and that seems to be an issue across government. So it's to put to rest some of those things and see how we need to build an HR department that functions well for all of us and that employees can get behind and everyone can work with. So that's the rationale behind this. Before we add positions to a department, let's make sure it's functioning correctly to the best of our ability. Thank you. Councilmember Massadi. Thank you, Chair. I agree with you. I'm just assuming that we would have to have some type of number here, whether it's $50,000, $100,000, or something to at least put a placeholder in the budget for this, basically for this audit. Somebody's got to be attached to it to be able to go forward. So would you not put that in there now? I would not wait until October fund balance discussion, if we have to, before we get a real number. I want to make sure it's a real number. Right now we don't have a real number. It's just a recommendation to move forward. If council chooses to accept it, then we can go out and get a real number. That's fine. And find it in the budget. Thank you. Nobody else signed up? Lexington Public Library, accept the proposed budget. Law includes property and casualty claims, accept mayor's proposed budget. Regarding the mayor's office, There was $483,690,000, including two new positions, administrative aid to the Mayor Senior, construction manager, and professional services funds for a new project management section. They requested upgrades to the administration, aid to the mayor senior, an executive assistant to the mayor, capital for Old Courthouse, and Town Branch Park, $750,000 in the fiscal year 15 reallocations for the new government center study. We accept the mayor's proposed budget, but we do request the administration to discuss personnel increases. Yeah, it should be personnel. They don't have to discuss personal things. It's a little typo. One of the things, I believe the bank movement, that was included in this section. Can you give us an update on that right now? I'm sorry, it's not. It's in a different section. I believe that's in historic preservation. Okay, we'll wait on that. Thank you. Cabinet thought that that was a matter. Council Member Akers. Thank you. Jamie, since I see you here now. I can leave. Well, I'll find you sometime. All right, so there's a new position request here for an administrative aid to the mayor, and there's several administrative aides to the mayor, I believe. So my question going back to one of the prior sections, the general gov link of a request for professional services for the branding campaign. Isn't that something that could be handled just by an administrative person in the mayor's office or one of his staff that we don't need to hire? Do you know what that amount is and why we need that? I think there's a presentation coming to the council in the next few weeks about this. I don't know what the budget entails specifically. But I believe it's for outside services or dollars that could be spent in terms of implementing the branding campaign. I don't believe it's for personnel expense. Yes, Melissa doesn't have it. That's why I just thought somebody. Okay. I thought maybe Scott or Jamie would know. We can go on. That's fine. Thank you. I think Council Member Akers has the answer she needs for the moment. Or do you have something to add, Jamie? No, I don't. Not right now. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you. Council Member Scutchfield. I was just curious about requesting the discussion of personnel increases. I know on today's work session, one of these positions is on, if I'm remembering correctly from our work session packet. So, I mean, what's the intention of or when do we anticipate there to be a discussion? I think we could ask for it right now. Okay. the intention because you know I mean I I mean I have lots of questions regarding why were these positions included in the mag study and I know there was discussion about that that they weren't included but the documents that I looked at it appears that the mayor's office staff was included in the MAG study, and there were no changes recommended. So I just really would like to know more clarification on that. We went through this in detail. I think the physicians themselves were included in the MAG study. However, we did not fill out JAQs like many of the people in government did. And I think that probably addresses that question. Do you have others? So I guess I'm confused that if it was included in the study but you didn't fill out the JAQs, you know, that's a confliction because if you were included in the study, then I would have thought that you would have had to fill out the JAQs. And I'm just really... We weren't the only ones that didn't fill out JAQs. So there were numerous positions that did not fill out JAQs? I'm going to get HR come down and explain this to you because it's quite complicated. And I've had some discussions on this with Tammy Walters, but I still am confused as to, you know, and I have concerns with this. Point of order, Vice Mayor, I'm a little uncomfortable. bit should he be talking about an issue that directly affects his salary i mean is there someone else that should be the more appropriate person to discuss this i mean i'm just curious is there someone else who can do this jamie who's not directly affected welcome CAO. Thank you. I can address the issue. I think that the issue that's on the agenda today, and to my understanding, and Bill can correct me, that's not one of the positions up there. Jamie's position, I presume that's what you want me to talk about now. I think the question was more generally about the... Susan, why don't you reframe the question? Well, I mean, I was just wanting to know why that JAQs were not filled out for the MAG study for the mayor's office. And apparently there are other positions that were not. And I don't know how that was chosen. And I mean, and the bottom of the line, I just, I have a problem with giving this huge, large of a raise to employees. I just think that it sets a bad precedent, and I just have a serious concern with it, and I guess that's what I should just say at the end of it. I mean, I would like to know how was it decided who filled out JAQs and who didn't for the MAG study? Okay, and I would feel more comfortable, Councilmember Lamb, with HR addressing that smart. I can address the salary issues that will come up today in the mayor's office, but for that, I think you will. She'll be here in just a moment. Alright, thanks. I'll wait until Mr. Maxwell gets here then, and I can ask my questions. Thank you. So we'll come back to this. Mr. Maxwell is coming in the room. And Vice Mayor, if I can, to the administration or to whom ever. I mean, for all of the presentations today, it would be really helpful if everybody was here that whenever we asked questions that various departments would be present. I think that that's a pretty reasonable request. Thank you. You're welcome. Mr. Maxwell. Susan. Yes, Mr. Maxwell, I was just curious if you could expound on why certain positions did not have to fill out the JAQ at the time that the MAG study was done? All positions were asked to fill out the JAQ. All full-time positions were asked to fill it out. Some did not, but we had about a, going off memory, about an 80% fill out rate. And I think we covered probably a higher percentage of that of all the positions. Now, some that didn't have a JAQ were either slotted by the consultants or they made decisions based on the data that they had in their database. I'm not sure if that answers your question. Well, I mean, it does, and it just even perplexes me even more. I mean, I don't understand why all positions weren't measured and that's 20 percent or however many percent were not. If they didn't fill out a JAQ, then I don't understand why. I just – I'm – Well, let me put it like this. There's 3,000 employees. It's not easy to get every single person to do every job. Now, we did ask for it, and we can't force people to do it, but we tried. And here's the way the compensation worked. There's two legs to it. One is where they do the JAQs. That's one side of it, and they study the jobs. The other side is where they do a market analysis, and then they see what's paid for. they benchmark a certain number of positions. I think about 60 is what they benchmarked. Then they develop a pay grade, a pay line. They do a linear regression analysis, and they develop the pay grades. Now, some people, for most positions, we did have JAQs. There were a few that we did not. But for those that we did not, the consultants looked at those positions. They looked at the market, and they looked at it from an internal equity perspective where they could slot them in this pay structure. And that's what they did. It's a sound study. Okay. And I'm not questioning the study. I am questioning the process, the way it was handled. because, okay, if you had 80% of the employees that filled out their JAQs at the time and they were dealt with during the study, then that leaves those that didn't fill out a JAQ, then now they can come along and fill out a JAQ and be studied by the Division of Human Resources and have increases. And I think that's an inequity there. and I just have to share my concerns with it. So thank you for explaining. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. Mr. Maxwell, if you don't mind. I think the issue is consistency. There are some that have filled out these questionnaires and some haven't. What can we do to make sure that there is consistency? Can something be done, or you're saying because it was studied, basically we've done our job? Well, I think that in terms of the compensation program, it's an ongoing. If we're going to have an ongoing valid compensation program, we need to continue to look at classifications as things change. And we also, by the way, have to have somebody that's going to, we have to have a section that's going to promote that and work on that. And I just heard that the compensation manager position was turned down. We need that position. We need that position to keep the compensation program going. And, you know, we have been, I hear about the audit and these other things. we have been working short-handed since we started this a year and a half ago. And I don't know how we're going to go on without additional help. Well, I appreciate your candor. It's certainly something that we need to have done. I think a lot of the concern is, too, is the amount of increase. I mean, there's a lot of large increases as compared to other employees in the government. So that's a concern to me as well. So if we can go forward and try to iron out the wrinkles, I think that's what everyone wants to do. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Council Member Akers. John, for clarification so that I make sure I understand, after the completion of the MAG study, did HR or the study recommend any increases in mayor's staff salaries? I believe there were some there was some recommendations, I believe. Tammy, can you? The question that you have is that there's a number of positions that have been reclassed in the mayor's office that would not have been part of the study. So there was people who left and people who moved up in job promotions. So if their title changed after the study, then they weren't part of the study. Right. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And, John, I don't have a question for you right now, so you don't have to stand up unless you just want to. But let me bring some clarity to this, and I appreciate Council Member Lamb's questions about the comp study, and that's part of our rationale with hiring a manager. I'm not against hiring a manager specifically, but I think there's some issues we need to iron out before we get to add additional personnel. And to be fair to HR, they actually asked for two more positions, and one wasn't funded, which I think they probably need more, but I don't want to manage the department. I just want to take a look at it because there are issues with the comp study, but I don't want that to flow over to what we're talking about here, and that's the mayor's office. Keep in mind, the council didn't fill out JAQs. For our employees, these are at-will employees. So it's a little bit different than having every employee fill out a JAQ, and there'd be no way to fill out a JAQ for every employee in government. There's just no way. The other issue is how many appeals were there, CAO? 107? Yes, sir. 100 and something appeals to the comp study. They were having to work through, and who's working through those? It's your office, right? Yeah. HR worked through those, and I went over it with them, and they are in the budget. We came back with a lot. Yeah, so the same budget we're all talking about today includes people who are not part of the comp study that have been adjusted and changed. So it's unfair to sit here and target these folks and not going to look at every position that was changing in the budget. If we want to do that, I don't have a problem with that. But right now we're talking about the mayor's office, and I know Mr. Emmons is here to justify the two positions that are in there, and he can speak because he is their supervisor. His position is not in the budget to be adjusted. His JQ was finished well after the budget was completed. So he's here to talk about his two positions that we reviewed during the budget discussion. So I think he should be able to finish what he was going to start with his two positions that he supervises, Vice Mayor, and we can move to a different topic. The project manager is also in there, and he can also talk about that as well. But to get into these other issues, I think it's a whole other discussion that can be put into your committee, and we can take over the comp study and go back and revisit that. Mr. Emmons, are you interested in responding before I recognize Councilmember Lamb? I think that was a nice summary. Thank you. I would say that the, let me go back briefly. The construction manager position, again, we proposed the Office for Project Management, and that manager position would fill that office. Essentially, it would create the structure for improving the way that we implement and build large capital projects here in the government, and also perhaps small capital projects. I think we budgeted $180,000. It's about $200,000 for both personnel expense as well as operating expense for that office. And then the administrative aid to the mayors is just an administrative support position that we don't have today. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you. I just want to respond to Council Member Stenet's suggestions. I am all for a full vetted discussion on this. I think that there are some concerns with this, and I do think that it does relate to these positions. And so, therefore, I look forward to further discussion on this matter. But obviously, we have one of the decisions in front of us at work session today. So I think that my comments were relative to this discussion, and I do look forward to more discussion as we will have in work session. Thank you. Thank you. Nobody else signed up? Ready to move. There is one additional thing that is not included on our recommendation that I'd like to include at this time. The LINC also requests an additional $20,000 for the Neighborhood Action Match Grants, the NAMG, to go from $80,000 to $100,000. Okay. No comments? Property Valuation Administration. There is a $27,500 in the reallocation for fiscal year 15 for the office remodel. That has already been approved by council. Otherwise, we accept the mayor's proposed budget. And last is risk management. There was an increase in professional services for appraisal of insurable assets. One of the items that I don't have on here that we did request is that they possibly look to our PVA to see if our PVA could help provide those services in determining the cost of appraisal. So that non-financial button. Otherwise, we accept the mayor's proposed budget, recommend an additional $500 for a total of $4,000 for dues. I see nobody signed up. With that, I conclude my report. Thank you very much. We'll go right to the next item, which is general services and planning. Councilmember Akers. First of all, really quickly, I'd like to go back to page 4 in the chief information officer section, Councilmember Sketchfield. The fund balance request of $200,000 for professional services, what was their total? Did they not receive professional services? They did not. It was short that amount, and I believe that from last year. And we thought that this would be a good item to come out of fund balance. So can someone, Aldona, can you speak to this? How much was the total request for professional services, and why do you suppose the difference? The total requested was for $700,000, and I think the recommendation was $500,000. And the reason for that is that our spending is not linear. The way that the recommendations were made were made on the basis of the expenses incurred every single month. We will actually use up our entire amount for this year. We're asking for that same amount for this coming year. And that additional $200,000, by the way, is for security. It is for some of the work that we're doing on our Internet, on our website, et cetera. These are folks that we, frankly, cannot hire. So we do not ask for additional staff, but we ask for professional services. And so last year was your budget also $700,000 for this? Okay. All right, that's all I have. Thank you. Now I'll move on to it. Now you can begin your report. Start my section. Okay. First of all, I want to start off by thanking my colleagues, Council Member Bledsoe and Council Member Gibbs, for serving on this link with me, and particularly their legislative aides, Jamie Giles and Sally Warfield. We could not have done this. I could not have done this without their help. So the first up we have, well, I have a PowerPoint. So I just noticed that the PowerPoint does not, looks like it probably doesn't follow along with the PDFs in your packet. So you can just look for those in your packet. So I'm going to start off with the economic development agencies. And this was in the order that we interviewed everyone with our link. Can you at least tell us what page we might be on? Okay. I'm sorry, but I mean, we're... Well, I thought that everyone was going to get a copy of the PowerPoint, but they didn't. Page 43. Okay, starting on page 43. And why do I push this? There we go. All right, first up was Commerce Lexington. They requested a $50,000 increase in the budget this year for a planned workforce study. LINC recommended accepting the mayor's proposed budget. And our non-budgetary LINC recommendations that we just request when they bring forth that study from the workforce study, that we would like to see an action plan to ensure follow-up, along with regular updates to council. Next one is the World Trade Center, and I guess we're going to go back through the packet, so that's page 42. There were no operating changes. Personnel, they requested an additional $20,000 to grow their one-on-one programming. The mayor's proposed budget included an additional $10,000 of that request. The LINC recommended actually removing that additional $10,000 from the mayor's proposed budget and maintain funding from last year's levels. We also, for non-budgetary recommendations, requested that the World Trade Center report to the Economic Development Committee at least once a year and encourage increased engagement with LFUCG. Next up, we have SCORE, page 41. There were no changes requested from last year. The link recommended accepting the mayor's proposed budget. This is a very small budget, as you'll see, of $7,000. So there was discussion among the link members that SCORE duplicates services provided by Commerce Lexington. and the Kentucky Small Business Development Center. So we recommended that SCORE partner with Commerce Lexington to share and grow their resources, perhaps locate their offices there. They pay rent in a separate facility, and we thought that that might be a better solution. And then we would also like to refer the issue of collaboration among all economic development agencies to the Budget, Finance, and Economic Development Committee. And I will go ahead and make that motion. We're going to take all of those non-budgetary items at the same time. So when are we going to do that? Including referrals. That's my understanding of what Council agreed. Any non-budgetary items would all be taken together, and we'll determine then whether they go to a committee or not. But we're not taking separate votes at this time. If I'm misrepresenting, then somebody like me just let me know. Okay, so do you have a date? Do you know what the plan is when we're going to do that? We do not. We'll see what... We have an official meeting here, and we have a quorum of the council, so I can't make a motion is what you're saying. I believe that motions are appropriate for changes to the link's recommendations. And that's what this meeting is for. If you want to suspend the rules, I'd entertain a motion. There are no rules to suspend. Well, let me put it differently. I will gladly entertain a motion to overrule my ruling as the chair, but that's not relevant at this point. We'll take 10 votes. Or how many people we have present, we'll give it to. Still take 10 votes. It's fine. We can do it at another date that we don't yet have set. That's fine. Okay. Next up is Downtown Lexington Corporation, page 40. There were no changes from fiscal year 15. The link recommends accepting the mayor's proposed budget. and I'll just skip over the non-budgetary recommendations. Next up is the Lyric Theater, page 39. The Lyric actually requested a decrease in funding from last year, $30,000 less. There were no personnel transfers or capital changes. The link recommends accepting the mayor's proposed budget. Page 37 is NOLI CDC. This is the first time that the North Limestone Community Development Corporation has ever been funded by the council. Our request of funding from the mayor's proposed budget, they've requested $50,000 for operating expenses, including a two-person staff. They included $55,000 for public space improvements and $45,000 for neighborhood business growth. There were no personnel transfers or actually personnel were included in their operating. The link recommended accepting the mayor's proposed budget, and we did have several non-budgetary recommendations. I have a couple of council members lined up. Council Member Stenet. Actually, mine was I was logged in before the Lyric was finished. She moved on pretty quickly there. Question on the Lyric, Mr. Mayor, you probably will have to answer this. The bonding, I didn't see it listed here. How much are we paying on the debt service for the Lyric, and how much longer do we have to go on that bond? Do we know that? It's in addition to the annual operating we're paying. I do not know the answer to that, but I'll be glad to get to you. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Massadi. Thank you, Chair. On the Noli, we've got a couple of positions that are, I'm assuming, that will be recurring positions. So how are we taking care of that? The two on the 50K for operating expenses, including a two-person staff, that's going to be continual every year? Or this is just a one-time allocation? Well, yeah. I mean, every year these agencies come and request funding, so it's really their budget we are assisting with. So it's... Just wanted a clarification. Yeah, they're not, I mean, they're not internal employees. Okay. Do you know what I mean? Okay. Next up we have LexArts, and that's on page 38 in your packet. There were no changes from fiscal year 15 requested. They actually did request an additional $50,000, which we removed from their request because those funds were included in the amended fiscal year 15 reallocation fund. Next up is the Downtown Development Authority, page 36 in your packet. There were no changes requested from fiscal year 15, and the link recommends accepting the mayor's proposed budget. Next we have planning, page 35. Planning office requested an additional $175,000 for professional services for the Windburn and Cardinal Valley small area plans. They requested a new position, two new positions, administrative officer, no one, administrative officer to support neighborhood and design excellence. The link supports the increase in professional services for the small area plans. Two-thirds of the link supported the funding for the new administrative officer position. And so the majority opinion is to accept the mayor's proposed budget. Any questions? I have a question, yes. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. That's page, is that page 26 that you're? Page 35. Well, I've got on page 26 I've got 175,000 additional funds for professional services. You're right. That's the other planning office, yes. Page 26. 26 is what we're on, right? Yes, not planning commissioner, yes. Just planning department. Okay, I've got a question on that. I know Council Member Henson is not here, but I believe she is. All right. She snuck in. I mean, if I may, Vice Mayor, I'd like to ask her a question. I believe Cardinal Valley is in your area. And if I'm not mistaken, professional services have all been finished on Cardinal Valley. Is that correct? As far as the small area plan is complete, but this is moving forward. That's not what it says. It just says for professional services for the Windburn and Cardinal Valley small area plan. The reason I'm asking is because I've got Armstrong Mill small area plan, which I didn't inject into this for additional going forward funds. then that would be a question I was under the impression they were complete so mine's complete and yours is complete well Commissioner you are correct there are two different small area plans this is one that finished a little earlier and there was a little more defined product at that time that was put into planning's budget and again this is a budgetary issue that from a planning perspective is something that's coming out of this these small area plans What's the $175,000 for, sir? It is for a, moving forward, kind of a coordination effort between, I'm trying to think of the best way to describe this. It's with, oh gosh, I tried to get Chris to come here. He's on his way. It is for a report out from the small area plan that discusses, I'm just trying to think, community center. There's a couple different groups involved, including the library. potentially, and a few others that are trying to work on a piece of property that is within the small area plan to try to turn in a community center. And this is facilitating that action item. So this is something that falls more squarely in the planning budget. That's why it's in this budget as opposed to, you know, other report outs from other small area plans. I don't think that answers my question or the confusion. I must not have understood your question correctly. Well, you've got $175,000 additional funds for professional services. and I understand professional services are where we contracted the contractual arrangement for them to go through planning and bring the small area plan forward. Cardinal Valley has been completed, and so has Armstrong Mill Road area plan. Has Winburn been completed? I don't know who the district that is. No, that is for a new small area plan in the Winburn area. There's two different parts to that. So one is for a small area plan in Wimber, and one is for something that came out of the Cardinal Valley. So what's the breakdown on the 175, then? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, we can get to that. Two different projects on that. Correct. It is two different projects. Because if the councilman indulged me, I thought I was going to bring something forward as an 8th District resident for some additions, and I didn't put it into the links program. maybe I should have for the Armstrong Mill Road plan. You did. No, Council Member Henson didn't. This came from Chris King, the director of planning, put this in the budget. This is something that's coming from the planning division. Right. So Chris King didn't even bring up the other plan then. Again, there's two different things. The breakdown is $100,000 for Winburn, $75,000 for Cardinal Valley, and again, that Cardinal Valley is for professional services for this neighborhood center that is coming out of that report. And these are not capital projects? They are not. Okay, thank you. And, again, that's why they're in this budget as opposed to another budget. Thank you. Council Member Akers. So, Derek, the $75,000, we're going to hire an outside consultant then to facilitate this community center, is what you're saying? That is my understanding. Okay. So Chris King is not here. He is on his. I've asked everyone to come. I did it quite quickly. Okay. So I'm hoping that if not, he's hearing it probably coming. Yeah, I understand that, and they are on their way. It's a timing issue, so we're trying to make sure they didn't have to come for too much of the preceding one. Okay. First day back from a long weekend, they're all trying to catch up. Okay. I think we're ready to move on. Chris just entered the room. If you have any questions, he might be able to address them. Chris always loves it when I do that when he first walks in. Do you want to ask your question again? Chris. Welcome. Hi, can you explain what the $75,000 for the Cardinal Valley Small Area Plan is for, why we would need outside professional services for that? That's for the feasibility study for the community center. So it's not for the plan itself. The plan itself is completed. This is for one of the major implementation projects to try to bring new life into the Oxford Circle area. And that would be for that, excuse me, feasibility study for the joint community center. Okay. And Fred Brown left. Okay, so. Oh, he's, all right. I was like, I was sort of asking that for him. Okay. Okay, moving on to historic preservation, that is page 27 in your packet. The only change from fiscal year 15 was $150,000 in capital funds for the People's Bank relocation. That was actually, I believe, two-thirds of the link, again, supported this funding. So I guess as a majority, we accepted the mayor's proposed budget. Questions here? Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'd like to have an update on where we're at, because the last thing we heard was it was going to be demolished, and they didn't need the money. And then we heard over the holiday that, lo and behold, they might need the money. So give us an update and tell us where we're at publicly as a council. Right. So Thursday they went to the LCC board for looking for a location. And what they came away from at that point was another 60 days to work with three members of the LCC board to find a location on that high street lot. They've talked with the property owner, the Langley group, and they are okay with that. That fits with the timeline with what they're doing as well in terms of the theater. So at this point, there was also an issue in terms of are they needing money from the LCC board. I think where they're working on through that 60-day period is to figure out what improvements might need to be done to that facility and to move the building to that particular lot wherever they find a spot for it and whether or not there may be costs associated with that that LCC may be able to contribute to. They are raising money from multiple sources. The $150,000 is part of that overall money for the move and fit up both the building and the site. So what's the total amount they're trying to raise? I believe it's around $800,000. And there's already $300,000 or so that's been committed from a local community foundation. And the LCC money that they would ask for is addition to the $800,000? No, it's part of that funding. And at this point, I think where they are is trying to figure out is if, rather than ask for a specific ask, Could that money be used to fit this in terms of wherever they find a site on that high street lot? Would that money best be come for that rather than an actual ask of 150,000? So and I guess the justification because we've had these issues in the past where we're using public tax dollars to fund a private organization's attempt to move a building. Because LCC would also be public tax dollars because we give them all of our hotel tax. So they'd be getting two pots of public money. And I'm not sure all the public agrees with this. So how do we justify using $150,000 to move this building from the public? Well, that's always an interesting discussion when it comes to historic preservation. And that's one that, you know, I think both sides would make strong arguments for it. I think those that are in favor of saving this building say it is a very unique building and that the retask or the repurposing of this building will be for community benefit. They are planning to put in that building a nonprofit that will actually have public outreach. It's going to be called the People's Portal. And I know that they would be willing to discuss more about what it is that their plan is to council throughout this budget-link process if there is a desire for that. But that is their goal, is their mission in terms of moving that bank. It's not going to be moved just to be sitting on another site. I think that's something they've all meant very clear. But the issue you bring up is one that I'm sure the other side that says it's not worth it would try to argue strongly. From a historic preservation standpoint, these are tough decisions that we deal with on a regular basis, and I think it is a unique building. And in terms of moving forward, it would have a unique purpose in the community, one that hopefully would provide some real benefit. And the nonprofit, has it already been set up that's going to be housed there? Yes, and I'm struggling for the name. See if I can pull it up real quick. They are an existing foundation in which they already have programming, and this will be their first chance to be within Fayette County. Okay, so there is no existing program. There is. It is existing. It's not something that's being created for this purpose. It is already in existence, and their goal with this is to have more of a foothold here in Fayette County. But they haven't done any programming here in Fayette County? Correct. Okay, this will be their first. That is my understanding is that they have not, and this is their goal is to try to move in here to do more programming, get more outreach. So in terms of precedent setting moving forward, how do we say yes to this one and another historic building comes to us and we say no to. What criteria are we going to use as a policy to move forward? That's a good question and one we have not really set up. I mean, this has been, I think, when it comes to these issues, they have been ad hoc. And I don't think there is anything that really states in terms of a policy how we move forward as a government in terms of this. I will say this. It's not something that comes forward all that often either. So this is in terms of moving a building. We don't move buildings that often because of expense and because of the difficulty of doing it. And this is one that, you know, there is a groundswell of support. I can tell you that when they were very close to the demolition a few weeks ago, there was quite a few people that really responded strongly. So it is tough in terms of how we get involved. In terms of making a set policy, I don't know if we can. I don't know how we can do the cost-benefit that we can really say yes or no with just looking at numbers. I think there's more to it when it comes to historic preservation. And I wouldn't disagree there's more to it. But the nonprofit, what kind of nonprofit is it? And again, I think my preference is if we can get you that information. They've got a packet, and we can get it to you in terms of what it is. They put that together, and they'll be happy to share it with you in terms of what that information, in terms of what they're programming and everything about it. That'd be good. If you want to talk about that. Sorry, I can answer these questions. Jamie and I were at the LCC board meeting. The foundation is called the Warwick Foundation. and Clay Lancaster, who was an architect, native of Lexington, and was an architect for his career, left all of his personal belongings and estate to this Warwick Foundation, and they promote architectural rehabilitation and restoration and preservation, also cross-cultural understanding, which I think is the premise for the People's Portal. but the members of the board of the foundation are i believe there's two uk professors and it's it's primarily local lexington people that make up the board of the foundation thank you your time is up you can come back if you wish council member brown thank you vice mayor uh i understand this 150 000 is coming out of the bond program for a $150,000 one-shot deal. We're going to bond it for 20 years. Is that the understanding? That is correct. I would like to make a motion at this point, come out of the bonding fund and go into fund balance for 16. I have a motion. Is there a second? I have a second. I thought I was making a motion. Hearing none, that motion dies for lack of a second. I'm sorry, it would be $15,000. It would be out of the $15,000 budget. The $150,000 would be out of the $15,000 budget, which would be October or November when we could realize that. I have a motion. Is there a second? Hearing none, that dies for lack of a second. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Can I have a little bit more information on the nonprofit, but maybe Dowell, how long it's been in existence. I just don't know much about it to feel comfortable about the plan and how they're going to go forward. Google it. You know, I may not be the person to answer these questions. I did volunteer for the Warwick Foundation when I was in college, so it's at least been around since late 90s, early 2000s. There's actually a property near Bardstown or near Bloomfield, Kentucky, that's preserved. The Warwick Foundation maintains the property. There's some unique architectural buildings on the property. What else can I say about it? I'm just not familiar with it, that's all. Well, you don't have to prove it today. Yeah, it's called the Warwick Foundation, and Clay Lancaster left his estate to the Warwick Foundation. I don't know what other information you need. Just basically viability. That's what I was concerned about. And as I understand, the $300,000 that the Warwick Foundation is, quote, unquote, donating for this purpose, $250,000 is through grant funds and $50,000 is from their foundation capital. And so that every year that they would come back to us and ask for assistance in order to continue the programming, is that correct? I don't know the answer to that question. Maybe, Jamie, do you know? That question came up at the LCC board meeting on Thursday of last week. They would supply the ongoing operations and maintenance costs. The foundation would or the LCC? The foundation would. And I believe that the arrangement would be a long-term ground lease with LCC, so LCC would maintain ownership of the property. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Gibbs I just want to say a little bit more about the Warwick Foundation I am familiar with them I'm a member of the organization it it's to preserve the legacy of clay Lancaster was a major famous landscape architect historian he did a lot of work in this area did a lot of work throughout the country but particularly in this area one thing he did is he took a lot of photographs of estates that are now destroyed for example the LRC and a lot of these photographs have been put together in a book by James Birchfield, which is very much worth looking at. He also wrote the definitive book on bungalows. It's called The American Bungalow. And interestingly, there's an appendix to The American Bungalow called My Father's Bungalow, which is in Belcourt, where Clay Lancaster grew up. So Lancaster is a really major player in the history of architecture, particularly in this area. And this is a really solid organization. If you've never been to the Warwick Estate, which is in Mercer County, it's very much worth the trip. And so I'm delighted that they want to do something to take on this project here. And they have the financial wherewithal, is my understanding, to do the maintenance on the project. Thank you for your information. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Anybody else wish to speak? Seeing none, we can proceed. Okay, next up we have the PDR program, and that's on page 28 of your packet. The changes or the request this year was $1.15 million in capital to be bonded for use by the PDR program. The link recommends accepting the mayor's proposed budget. The link would also like an update on the federal and internal audits at a future planning and public safety committee meeting. I have two people signed up. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just a little bit of history on the bonding. I noticed going forward that the purchase of development rights is $1,150,000 for $16,000, and then it's projected out at $2 million for each year thereafter. I think when we first set this up back in the late 90s, early 2000, maybe it was the mid-90s, but we set up the PDR program. We were funding that out of general fund. When did that concept change, and when did we go to the bonding process? I'm not really disagreeing with the bonding process on this, but if somebody can give me a little history there. I know we used to fund it out of general fund as part of our general budget. Commissioner? I'll have to look at the history there. It's been part of our bond package for quite a few years, so I'm not sure how far back that goes, but I can get that for you. I knew that we'd started it that way, and that was the intent, but obviously with the impact on budgetary items and anything you can take out of general fund and bond, supposedly that's good. This is a general fund bond. Right. I understand that, but it's not a general fund budget item as such other than the principal and interest payment. So, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Has the audit, the federal audit, Councilman Person-Acres, has it been completed? Is that what we're saying, and we want to present it at a... Again, two points. As mentioned before, this is not an audit of PDR. This is an audit of our federal partner, and as of this point, the audit has not been completed. Our federal partner? Correct. This is not of PDR. This is the National Resource Conservation Service. The audit is of them. It is not of us, but we are happy to report on that when that audit is completed. So what impact will it have on us and our ability to run the program? We'll have to see when the audit is finished. It deals with secondary appraisals, so we're still trying to wait to see until the audit is finished. It is not complete as of now. And is it a financial audit, an operation audit? It is an operation mostly. Okay. And when do you think it will be completed? They told us it will be completed already. So it's government doing the audit? It is. It's the Office of Inspector General. It was supposed to be done at the end of April, and we're still waiting. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Nobody else signed up? And, Derek, is there also an internal audit here in the city that's being done on the program? There's not? He says. There is not an audit, no. We are creating a database just of the general program. We are not doing an internal audit, no. Okay. Next item. Next up, we have the Department of Engineering, and that is on page 29 of your packet. They requested software enhancements, including OnBase, Acela, and Acela right-of-way management. They requested a new engineering tech principal position for new development, and they requested 1.635700 in capital. Let's see. The new position for development is they anticipate a slight increase in the number of permits to be filed for fiscal year 16 that would help offset those costs. And the link recommended accepting the mayor's proposed budget. Next. Next is facilities and fleet, and that is on page 31 of your packet. operating costs include new senior citizen center operations, CMM software subscription services, and renovation of the fifth floor council offices. Personnel were none. Transfers of $3.2 million out. The link actually recommended reducing or cutting the $80,000 allocated for the fifth floor renovations, and capital bonding is listed there. You can also see those. The courthouse campus, main water valve, DAC renovation, arts place repairs, Black and Williams Center, roof and windows, police west roll call exterior, DAC boiler, police Carnegie Center, lots of building repairs. I have a question. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. On the council office, why the recommendation to remove the $80,000, And did you hear from our directors of facility management on why that's recommended to be done? We did. Yes, he participated in the link, and we asked him about it. He said this has been planned for several years, that the council needed new carpet and painting, but that the increased cost would actually come from removal of asbestos once the carpet is pulled. So that's why it would cost $80,000 for those who wonder why carpet and paint cost so much. and we just the link didn't feel that that was a top priority right now that the city needed to spend money on so asbestos removal and mitigation is not a top priority for our health and safety asbestos is perfectly fine as long as you don't disturb the carpet but it's in the carpet so that's our problem in the carpet it's under the carpet well but you got to get to it and there's hose in the carpet up there that has it so we'll debate that here shortly john she can you come up for a second. And if I would just also like to say any individual council members is welcome to, you know, do your own office, but I didn't think that the entire fifth floor needed to be redone. We didn't think. Dom C., does this include the conference room that the rest of the government uses as well on the fifth floor? That is correct. Okay, so it includes all the conference rooms. It's not just our offices. That's for the entire fifth floor. And then is there economies of scale here that getting it all done at once, is there a cost savings? The two reasons we want to do it, one is obviously the economy of scales. The other one also is the scheduling. Once we looked at it, if you were going to treat office per office and selected areas scheduling-wise, that would have been problematic versus just coming in after the council's gone on break this summer, being able to just go ahead, go through the entire floor, take care of any kind of environmental issues. it's really not a renovation, I'll be honest with you. It's more like a repair and so forth because last few years we've been going through quite a bit of funding issues, as you all know. So a lot of, it's not just the fifth floor, all of other areas have also, we've kind of been postponing any other works such as this. So we feel like at this point, it's definitely you can justify going through and making this investment. And it's not that installing the new flooring and obviously we're going to be putting in some much more efficient lighting system in that floor. I believe this is not something that's just looked at as a lost money. All the environmental abatement we're going to be doing in this building, you know, regardless of the future plans for it, that's an added value because that is so much less environmental remediation that's going to be involved. eventually with rehabbing that building, irregardless of who's going to be doing it and what funding would be. But at this point, we felt like traditionally we've been hitting one office here, one office there, and so forth. And when we look back at the last five years, we felt that at this point it would be advantageous to everyone to go ahead, buy the book, and just go in during the summer break and take care of all those areas once and for all. and we really will be taken care of for the next seven to ten years. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Back to bonding. Under the facilities and fleet management, under the bonding that's requested, general repairs of $645,000, is that the breakdown that's listed in the bottom of the page here, or is there a breakdown on that $645,000? No, we categorize our requests for our CIP planning into different categories. The general repairs, a lot of the items that you see up there under capital bonding falls under general repairs. The only thing that we do, what we call line items, are roofing ones. So we ask, we group the roofing projects together. We group the HVAC projects together. and then we also do the environmental ones separately. Then what is leaving you with is the general repairs, and then what you've got is the ADA and code issues and items and life safety. Well, I'm not an advocate of bonding repairs and maintenance. Those are not capital projects unless they have a life to them. And I keep on hammering on this and hammering on it. we've got $645,000 in bonding, and I don't think we need to bond all that, but I would request a breakdown on that $645,000 so that I can make a motion later on. I'll be glad to. A lot of those items were what we call deferred maintenance due to the complete lack of funding for a variety of reasons. I understand that, but repair and maintenance is supposed to be an ongoing annual type of expense. The installation of a brand-new roof with a 20-year life. That's different. So those are the ones that a lot of these that we put in there, obviously the threshold is five years or more. A lot of these meet that criteria. You could give me the breakdown on that $645,000 as to the life of the individual. Sure. And I think I'd give me some information to make a motion. I'll be glad to. Thank you. Council Member Gibbs. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I want to make sure that asbestos is where it is. It's no danger to us. Is that correct? Yes. Asbestos, as long as what you've got, the asbestos is actually in the mastic that was utilized to adhere the original tile, floor tile, to the flooring. And then right now it has a carpet on it. Obviously, as was noted before, was if you've got carpet areas that have been worn out and so forth, obviously we'll increase the chance of exposure. And really overall, our plan is as we move forward with some of these projects, trying to go ahead and address that issue and trying to do the remediation as needed. Again, there are two ways to approach this. one is that you would put together quite a bit of funding all of a sudden, all at once, and do the whole thing. But that would be problematic when it comes in terms of financing as well as the scheduling, because the area has to be vacated, has to be isolated, and then you'll have the crew that go in and take care of the abatement. Can't do it with a building this size without really affecting the day-to-day operation of the government. So the decision is, as any time we have the opportunity to be able to go in and on floor per floor basis, that's our recommendation. So that's part of the standard operating procedure every time we look at a project, each of these floors. Okay, so is the carpet in such bad shape in any area? Some areas. As a matter of fact, one of the issues we have with this specific carpet, a lot of it just comes up and starts rolling on you. It's because originally when they installed this carpet, rather than having carpet that has the rubber backing incorporated as part of the carpet, they got the rubber backing, installed that a long time ago, and then they put the carpet on top of the rubber back. So now you've got these two that are moving at different rates, and that's where you get some delaminations. And in some cases, at the least, it would be tripping hazard. and most it would be areas where it's going to be worn out prematurely and expose the asbestos and the towel underneath. Okay, thanks, Sergeant. Thanks, Vice Mayor. No one else signed up to speak? We can move on. Next up is Parks and Recreation. That is on page 32 of your packet. operating costs this year they requested cell phone service the cricket plan apparently ran out expired they also requested DAC renovations personnel they increased requested an increase from part-time to full-time for rec supervisor and rec supervisor senior they requested two new part-time positions, program leader, and staff assistant. There's bonding listed over there as well of $1.889 million for a variety of parks projects throughout the city. And then the mayor's proposed budget did not include funding for a safe parks position, and the link recommended funding that at 50% for the remainder of the fiscal year. Thank you. Councilmember Massotti. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Reed, you look like you're just having a good time back there, so come on up. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. On the capital bonding, these look great. We always get into the discussion of, are they shovel ready? Can we get them done? It happens every year. Can you give us a little update on that? We're doing better. Okay. and we're in the process of doing better still. We are moving some of the backlog. The type of projects that we plan here, with council's guidance, you have recommended that we actually contract out more work so we can move it quicker. That's what we're doing on courts, court repair, parking lot maintenance, our renovations. the short answer is yes we can move and move these projects that's what I needed to hear thank you thank you councilmember stennett thank you vice mayor commissioner what is our balance from our fund balance allocation last year all those projects I don't have the number exactly what the fund balance is we are we've got a number of projects including your dog it's not mine Unless you're going to name it after me. Well, yes, the Kevin's done at Dog Park. Name it. It's true. We are getting that balance down. We started Waverly Courts this week. Can you give us a list of how much is left? Because if we add this to your workload, you know, I know you're doing well on getting knocked down. That was a good question. I mean, can we really get all this done? It's pretty aggressive. And again, we didn't make this up. They brought it to us. Yes, it is. Can you let us know when you get a chance? Thank you. And then in terms of parks, seasonal, have we already hired? Do we have enough money in the budget? Yes, we have enough to cover. There's some movement between some part-time money, but yes. And what about contract mowing? We are doing, you know, the changes that were made in mowing, I think we're seeing a great improvement in the quality of the work that's being done within the parks as a result of park giving up county roads. and those type of things. Yes, we have sufficient funding, and yes, we're doing well there. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Next item. Next up, we have code enforcement, and that is on page 33 of your packet. Code enforcement requested funding for a communications effort in off-campus student housing near UK. no personnel transfer or capital, and the link recommends accepting the mayor's proposed budget. Next is building inspection. That's on page 34 of your packet. They requested two new positions under personnel, building inspector and building inspector senior. Funds for these positions will be received from HVAC inspections, and the link recommends accepting the mayor's proposed budget. And last, we have Commissioner of Planning, page 35 of your packet. Commissioner of Planning requested a new position of administrative specialist senior to help with the PDR program, the affordable housing program, and administrative officers. Transfers of $2 million, capital of $1 million. Link recommends accepting the mayor's proposed budget. And that is all I have. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Let's see if we can get one more done before we take a break. Finance and Social Services, Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I will first want to thank Council Members Evans and Henson and for their involvement in this budget link and for the council members' aides for preparing the budget link information. And I guess we'll start with the Department of Finance, and we do have a PowerPoint as well. The Commissioner of Finance will be the first, And the new and expanded services were the new internship program, which will provide research and analytical functions for the department. And the other new and expanded service is the new fund analytics software, which will provide budgetary matrix. Sorry, Council Member Lamb, I'm going to interrupt. Council members, do we need a break? Yes. Take a 10-minute break. Sounds good to me. Okay. We are ready to get started. Councilmember Lamb, if you would. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I don't really want to, do you want me to start over? I mean, or just, everybody heard what I already said, right? You did not have council's full attention. Everybody had to go, so. All right, we'll start with, I thank councilmembers Evans and Henson for participating in this project. We had great discussions. great discussions and i'll start with the commissioner finance and they have two new and expanded services one was a new internship program and the one is the new analytics new fund analytics software but we support the mayor's proposed budget and just fyi the city employees pension fund burial assistance professional services was omitted from their proposed request and it will be added as a late a late a late item list so that was approved the division of accounting no new expanded services we support the mayor's budget mayor's proposed budget division so this is now sequential 44 45 you're following the order in a packet for council members. Okay. I can, do you want me to reference the page numbers? Okie dokie. I can do that. I can multitask. All right. So Commissioner Finance was 44 and accounting was 45 and now we're on 46. Division of Budgeting. The new and expanded services list was a million dollars for the budgeting enterprise system, which is going to allow them to move from using Excel to using an actual budget enterprise software package to prepare a budget, which is a fantastic idea. And that was included in the mayor's proposed budget, so we support the mayor's proposed budget. On page 47, Division of Central Purchasing, new and expanded services. They are actually taking, adding the newspaper advertising bids in the actual purchasing's, their budget, and they're taking that money from the council clerk's office, who has been actually paying for it for years. And then the software maintenance is $24,000, and that is actually, it's a new software, and it's going to be a little more robust for their purchasing procurement system. and we do and that was included in the mayor's proposed budget so we we approved that or we support that excuse me page 48 is the part division of revenue and they have some new and expanded services and the 50 000 for a tax revenue software which is a capital project and that is is it will go live in August. It actually has been between two fiscal years, and it will aid in multiple collection, recording, and auditing efforts for collected tax revenue. And the LexServe billing and collection software is also in the mayor's proposed budget and for the $3,248,270, and it does not have to be, it's not bonded. so that's good isn't it it shows the categories that the funds that the money will come out of and we support the mayor's proposed budget for the division of revenue I have a question from a council member, council member Brown thank you vice mayor yeah I would like to recommend that the 50,000 tax revenue software be taken out of a capital project and put in the 15 budget so moved i have a motion is there a second hearing none that dies for lack of a second all right i will move forward the explorium actually falls under the department of finance and so we have the purchase of services agreement with the explorium and they had requested the 250 $50,000 from the mayor's proposed budget and the mayor's proposed budget was Approved 200,000 so we thought we would take and meet them in the middle and give them 25,000 and basically it's to help them with their their major cost is the lease of the building space and so We want to make sure that they can continue giving great education to our children and families and offer So that they can continue with that. So we recommended increasing the mayor's proposed budget by 25,000 and And then I guess that's everything for the Department of Finance Are any questions and We'll move on to social services commissioner Page 50 in your packet And they actually social services has a lot of new things this year because they have expanded and taken and moved their some of their services into different areas. The first thing is the expansion of the former multicultural services program. they're moving forty four hundred and forty four thousand six hundred and fifty dollars to the new bluegrass international community center also known as the lexington global engagement center the one thing with the social services commissioner's office was that they actually had for the savvy program they had created a new position and what they ended up doing instead of using the new position that they had funded is they had actually taken and just re out they've upgraded the the current existing position because they're both program coordinator program administrators so that meant that only five thousand two hundred and sixty dollars had to be used for upgrading that position so that left thirty eight thousand five hundred and ten dollars available within their our budget links so we took to go back the twenty five thousand that we gave to the explorium we're taking that from this thirty eight thousand five ten so it doesn't have to come off the top anywhere so um the creation uh as you can see the creation of the new uh the savvy program was 79 370 and all of that was included in the mayor's proposed budget and so we we support that going on to number page 51 the partner agency allocation clearly we are this was formerly it's known as the extended social resources and the emergency shelter program funding it was formerly known as the partner agency allocations and in 2014 per resolution 736 2014 the council approved a new two-year funding program and this new system involves a series of applications meetings and review panels which chooses funding to programs of local agencies the purpose of this program is to provide program support at no more than 20 percent of the non-profits operating budget the capital follows more traditional grant funding programs additionally the council agreed that 1% of the general fund which is the 3 million 30,000 would be allocated to the ESR and the emergency shelter funding the nf y 16 a total of seven hundred and fifty seven thousand five hundred was approved for the emergency shelter funding with the remainder of two million two hundred and seventy two thousand five hundred being used for the extended social resources organizations so and that information is in the packet there and we we recommend we support the mayor's proposed budget of the 33 million thirty thousand i have a council member signed up council member massadi Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you, Council Member Lamb. I'm assuming the Salvation Army falls under this particular issue, particular part we're talking about now, correct? It does. It is one of the organizations that was funded. Yes, ma'am. Okay. I just feel like there's a real disconnect here. I've gotten so many emails, as the rest of us have, and I just really need some clarification. I'm not sure where we are with this. So can somebody help me here? please. Commissioner Ford, thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member, Sadi, Vice Mayor, Kay, and Council Members. In regards to the extended social resources, ESR, as Council Member Lamb mentioned, it's $3.03 million. It's a competitive grant program, and it is a competitive grant program that has been proposed by the Department of Social Services at the time when Commissioner Mills, my predecessor, was in office. And it's still relatively new. Over the last three or four years, we have attempted to work with our network of social service providers through a competitive grant process, and this is that process. We've had many agencies apply. There was a mandatory meeting that was held last fall that outlined all the rules. The policy guidance for this program, ESR, was adopted by council last fall, And we believe the department has, as best we can, attempted to follow that policy. And again, it's a competitive process. And the outcomes were distributed to you guys on May 7th with our grant recommendations. Thank you. Thank you. Let me finish. I'm sorry. Could I have someone from the Salvation Army speak to that as well? Because, again, there's been so much information that's been given to us in saying that it's erroneous what has been done. and that grants were not utilized and so forth. So I'd like some clarification, please. Point of order. Before we ask someone to speak, what I said at the beginning was we would hold public comment until the end. Okay, I will withdraw, but we'll come back to that then. Thank you. That's okay. That's fine. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Yes, mine was under the same type of question as Council Member Masati. We're going to hold public comment then? Yes. Do we need to make a motion for the public to be able to speak? If Council would like to amend the agreement that we made at the beginning and allow, in this particular case, comment from the public, then Council can do that. I would like to change it and make a motion because simply for time's sake, and I know there's a number of people here from the Salvation Army. If they speak now, they won't have to wait two or three more hours to speak, and we'll get the same information. But I would request or make a motion that we allow the Salvation Army to answer questions that we may raise. Second. I have a motion and a second. Councilmember Lamb. I'd like to speak to the motion, And we have had lots of questions about when it is proper time to speak on this. And we have to remember there is a public hearing today at 3 o'clock for the mayor's proposed budget. And I have been trying to make sure that I've been consistent in telling everybody that that would be the proper time, that any organization or agency would be able to bring to us their concerns about what we're proposing today. So I just want to speak to that. Thank you. Does anybody else wish to speak to this motion? If not, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. All opposed? I think we'll need to log in your vote. Need one more. Two absent. That motion fails nine to three. Anything else? Council Member Masada, you're good? I'm fine, thank you. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner Ford, how many on the ESR grants, how many unique agencies were awarded grants? not the total number of grants, but how many were unique agencies? Do we have that number? Because I know some agencies receive multiple grants. That's correct. Over 40. I believe it was 42, 43. I can confirm, but through my memo to the council, it was over 40 local organizations. And then can you also get us how many organizations also receive CDBG funding as well as the ESR grants? I can provide that for you. Don't have it. Okay, that's fine. just now, but we can make that. Thank you. And I'll just say a couple comments, not for you, but a couple comments. This is a new process, one that I did not support last year when we changed it up in the fall. I think what we've done now is box some of our traditional organizations that don't really fit in one of these five boxes into a programming-only need versus their overall mission and their overall value to our community. I think as a council, we agreed to go by this process, whether we'd like it or not. I'm not sure we should go back I can alter that process at this point. I think what's been done and has been scored, I think there are some changes we can make going forward. But I do think it's our prerogative as a council to add any additional money we want to add to it at any time until that budget's passed. We have that luxury since we're the final vote on that budget. So I'm going to leave that open right now before I make any individual recommendations on that. But going forward, I appreciate all the work that was done with the process, Commissioner Ford. I know you were instrumental in getting us to this point. I do think there's some tweaks next year. I know some agencies presented multiple applications, and I think that needs to be looked at as well because it gave them multiple chances to get funding, and some did. But I also don't want to hurt our community, and I think there are opportunities out there with some agencies that we get as a council can make adjustments, and I think that's why we're here to do. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I second that. Thank you. Let me go to Council Member Farmer, who's not had a chance to speak yet. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to solicit a list of what the allocations are and to what entities they are, which I don't see listed in the budget page that it refers to here on page 234. I'd just like to see a list of who this proposed through the whatever matrix we're using now, the $3 million would go to that the link has sanctioned, just for part of the discussion as we move forward. Council member former weekend we provided a memo to the council dated May 7th But we can we can hurry and get those back down here this this morning. That'd be good. Thank you very much I think we just we want to be I appreciate we want to wait and let everybody speak at one time but We've heard a lot from just one entity. I think it's interesting We need to work to take care of that as specifically as possible. Thank you. Thank you councilmember Henson Thank you vice mayor Commissioner Ford, I almost said Council Member Ford. The funding for the emergency shelter is separate. Is that not correct? It is correct, Council Member Henson. And just briefly to provide information in regards to the process. Again, this was a process that we have tweaked annually from the department. $3 million was the request as a policy directive of council, which represents 1% of fiscal year 14 revenues, CAFER numbers. So it's $3 million. A concern in a prior year grant cycle was the impact on the outcome and its impact on emergency shelters. So the council, of which I was part of that body at the time, we decided to carve out monies particularly for emergency shelters. And now we also have the fortune to have Charlie Lantern leading our Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention. So of the $3 million to simply, 75% is for the six core areas of traditional social and human services. And 25%, roughly three-quarters of a million dollars, is primarily for emergency shelter, basic needs. Thank you. And I guess I would ask Charlie if he doesn't mind coming up. And Charlie, haven't there been changes to the processes of – can you talk a little bit about the transitional housing and how that would affect the funding for the Salvation Armies? Sure. So this was the first year that applicants had to apply separately for emergency shelter funds and then basically all other types of expanded social resources. So it was a completely separate application. It was a very different application because the application for emergency shelter was specific to things you would want to evaluate when evaluating emergency shelter, average length of stay, exits to permanent housing, those sort of elements, which wouldn't be relevant in a non-emergency shelter program. So for that reason, for Salvation Army, this would have been the first year they had to break the emergency shelter program and the transitional living program into two separate funding applications. In this particular case, what happened, the emergency shelter fund, emergency shelter application was funded for $227,500. That's what's recommended. And the transitional living application was not recommended for funding. Does that answer your question? Did they submit an application for transitional? Yes, it was submitted through the ESR process and did not score high enough to be funded. Okay. I agree with, and I do appreciate so much all the work that's been done, both through social services and your office, Charlie. But I think there is a real disconnect somewhere along the line in that the Salvation Army is not understanding the process as much as maybe they should or could. And if, you know, I don't know, it just seems that every year we're dealing with this, and I would like to get it corrected if at all possible. Vice Mayor, if I may, and to Council Member Henson, I think it's very important to state this publicly. The demand that came out to that November, I believe it was 19th, mandatory meeting. And that meeting was mandatory because we wanted all of the agencies to come in a fair venue and understand the process that was going forward. We've had a lot of feedback from agencies, some who have been awarded and a few which have not been awarded to the level of their satisfaction. And I think what we're seeing is that an understanding of the process. We do respect this as it pertains now to this public appeal and dissent. We understand that is part of public service. We don't begrudge that at all. But we do want to say for the record, of all the agencies that applied, there was $6.8 million in requests. And we were afforded $3 million of this funding. And we're very glad to have that level of funding. But there's also additional funds that our government, through affordable housing, homelessness, HUD funding, is my projection, rough numbers, that we are projected to outlay close to $7 million to the support of social services, human services, and housing needs across our community. There may always not be enough resource to meet all the demands, but we do feel that we're giving a gallon effort, and it's been a process. 6.8 versus 3 million to award. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you. Commissioner Ford, back to Councilmember Farmer's request, can you add in there on that chart, it wasn't on the May 7th memo, but what the agency received from us last year? We can. It'd make it a little easier because a lot of people are referencing that number, whatever it may be. And also, can you give us who was on the review committee as well? Can you get that information to us? We can. And I will get that information, a comparison of 16 recommendations versus 15. In regards to the inclusive nature of the process, if I may, Council Member Stenet, is that we deployed a team of about three dozen, 36 folks, to serve on our scoring committees. The criteria was laid out well in advance as part of the application process, and each evaluator were able to review the applications based on that criteria. After those scores were assigned based on their presentation and proposal, we then employed via the department a work group, which I'm very thankful that we had great participation here inside the building. Grants, housing, budget, they were all very, very helpful in that process. But we can provide that comparison. One thing I would note, and I submit this respectfully, is that a grant process is a grant process, and it's much different than a funding appropriation. appropriation. Our funding appropriation that our departments and divisions are accustomed to really kind of goes in line to what is needed with slight changes year in and year out. A grant process is almost, in an athletic analogy, it's a different season. And to address the up and downs of that, one of the recommendations is to go to a two-year funding cycle. But we'll gladly make that comparison and provide that to council. Yeah, I just want to give a little context to and the emails we've been getting and receiving as well, and know who took part in rating all the organizations. I'm glad you said what you said at the end because, again, I think there are some agencies that don't fit into a grant application, a two-year process. I think there's some that this council should weigh each year. That meets the demand of our community because that demand does change. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yes, sir. Thank you. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. I'll just have one follow-up. Charlie, you mentioned in the email this morning that there was a policy change by this council a year ago, really to move from transitional housing to housing first. Is that why maybe some of these did not score as high as maybe previous years? No, I don't think that would have factored into the scoring. The housing first project was scored completely separate through the set aside of innovative funding for homelessness versus transitional housing. I think where your confusion may lie is some comments I've made previously about whether transitional housing is a best practice model. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development does not consider transitional housing a best practice model unless it serves people who are in substance use or abuse recovery or fleeing domestic violence. So does that factor into our scoring? No, actually, I don't believe it does because the ESR scoring process, I don't think, takes that into account. However, it's worth noting. HUD does not fund transitional housing unless it serves those populations. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I'd like to pass the chair for the moment to Councilmember Stinnett, if he will. I'd like to speak to this question. We've received a fair amount of information about this, both from the advocates for the Salvation Army and from people on our own staff and other people in the community. And I've been kind of laboring to think through what I think are the really most important pieces of it. And where I end up is with a few thoughts. One, unlike any other part of the budget, this is a part of the budget that completely reflects policy decisions by this council. The rest of the budget is constructed primarily with administration information, but essentially the administration followed our lead and direction. We work with the commissioner to create a process that was, we thought as fair and open and transparent as possible. So I'm really reluctant to second guess that process. Unless someone can come forward and show me that the process wasn't followed fairly, it seems to me we set it up, we did the best we could, and these are the results we get. if we open this back up in any way, and I fully understand that this council can do basically whatever it wants with this budget, and people may feel that it's important to make separate motions and bring those forward to council about particular agencies. My concern is that if we do that for one agency, I'm not sure how we can justify not doing it for any other agency that comes forward and feels like it did not get its fair share. I have been contacted by other agencies, which did not either get their full funding or got zero funding. And I've said to them, absent some compelling evidence, I'm inclined to support the process that we set up and the way that it was carried out. In the particular case of the Salvation Army, they applied for shelter funds. They were one of four groups that got funded. The top group in that category got 79% of what it asked for. The bottom organization got 52% of what it asked for. The Salvation Army got 70%. and on the two competitive grants that they also submitted, they were well down below the cutoff point for zero funding. I think we ought to respect that and I'm open to further conversation about it and I understand individual council members may make motions to the contrary, but at this point, I would urge council members to stay with these numbers. Thank you. Does anybody else wish to speak to this question? If not, move on. Okay, and I guess I will just say one more thing that for my colleagues and for the public is that the budget link was following the process set out in the resolution. we were trying to you know very process driven and making sure that we follow the proper protocol so what I do know is that if the resolution and the process needs to be reviewed then I think that it would be under this council's purview to do so but I just want everybody to understand that our budget link was following the process that has been set out and approved by the prior the former council and I hope that you understand that there's a respect component to that so that's what i can say and and thank you all now as we move forward we'll go to page 52 to the adult and tenant services and basically there's no new or expanded services and we support the mayor's proposed budget page 53 is the aging services now remember this is the new newly formed division that is going to be over the senior center we support the mayor's budget on that the mayor's proposed budget page 54 we've got the division of family services and we are supporting the mayor's proposed budget and i guess since we're not going to be talking about the the unbudgeted issues we'll bring that up later as far as the positions that they have requested what we want them to be we want to look into it further page 55 division of youth services they had requested and received funding from a new public service supervisor full-time and we support the mayor's proposed budget on that as well I believe that's everything for our budget link so thank you thank you that would bring us to the environmental equality and public works councilmember Farmer thank you thank you vice mayor environmental quality and public works link this included myself councilmember Ed Lane and councilmember Richard Maloney so if y'all have questions I'd appreciate if you direct them to me They bailed out on you. So I'm left in the enviable position of arguing with myself, potentially. We covered water quality, the commissioner's office, environmental services, streets and roads, waste management, and traffic engineering. I think this starts in your packet on page 56, which is environmental policy, which is ably led by Susan Pluger. and really in our discussion there just highlighted the one recommendation there which is something that they had left out was $2,500 for overtime which they had said when we had our link meeting this had been omitted and they wanted it in there to be approved. Also this is a great area where we're going to see a lot of things going on between now and October with all the Breeders' Cup activity. So not really anything else specific there. Moving on to the Commissioner's office. Let's see here. Really, we just supported the budget there. The office is not very big. It runs fairly lean. We had some good, throughout our entire link process, we had really good budget discussion, but we also had really good policy and background discussion, although nothing led to anything specific in this area, and we want to approve the mayor's proposed budget there. So we move on to page 58, which is the vision of streets and roads, which this is the area that got the most ink and the most interest. There were several things that they had asked for that the administration did not see fit to take action on. We did in three or four different areas here. As you look up, you can see the new and expanded services up there that include some of the things that we're going to be bonding for and some things that will take care of streets and a lot of work to be done in terms of what all of our new tools are going to be with our pavement management system and trying to address, I think, base failures and pavement failures. As you can see down here, this is the area where we made really the most changes. I think we would love still to add more funds here for more paving when the opportunity provides itself later in the fall. But specifically here, this was some fees related to rootware that would be, that would go on to our, what is in essence our, that we use them year round, but in the winter they have salt in them. So this would be able to apply the GPS rootware to our salt trucks and make that function even more efficient than it already is, or however we're going to restructure it coming through our committee work on that right now. Specifically, there was two positions that they wanted to have added that we, among the three of us concurred with and an administrative specialist position that wasn't included and an operations person. And there's a question, and I would just ask for staff to respond to that specifically, unless I can. Council Member Stinnett. Well, I was going to, you rang in. I just want you to, you know, right on. Thank you. I was going to go to the paving numbers. I thought it was $5 million total for neighborhood paving. Is that correct? Anybody can come to the mic. And then 2.5 was major roads, and then 2.5 was maintenance and repair. So you need to add the 3.1 from the MAP funds to your number to get to the total number that's going to be for residential paving. My memory is it's 7.5 million. I think that's correct. No, that's not how that was presented. Melissa Scott's got a question. It's 7.6 for residential. Four and half of that is from the bond, and 3.1 is for MAP, and 2.4 for major arterial paving. So it's not 5 million for neighborhoods? No, it would be 7.6. Well, takeout, that's major roads are in there, too. No, major roads are on top of that at 2.4. So it's 7.6? Mm-hmm, for neighborhoods. Okay, so it has 4.5 up there. Is that what you understand? 4.5 is in the bond, and then 3.1 is from MAP, so that's probably why it's in there. It's on the same page so we know what to expect, because I think the council, when the mayor delivered his budget, said 5 million for neighborhood roads. And it was 2.5 for major auteurs and 2.5 for the high friction payments and all that. I just want to make sure everyone's clear on what to expect when everyone gets their list and we're divvying up funding. Yeah, the high friction asphalt was $100,000 in the bond. Yeah. There was other things in there, maintenance and base failures. Yeah, the other maintenance stuff. Face failures. But the actual paving is 7.6 for neighborhoods and 2.4 for major arterials. All right, very good. So the high friction, everything's on top of all that? Yes, it is. Okay, that's even better. Thank you. A question. Oh, wait a minute. A question. House of the members. Thank you. I guess you have more on that page, or are you ready to? I've got a question on that page. I'm sorry. Council Member Brown. On that same subject, where does Manowar fit into this 10-day impact? I thought it was part of the neighborhood. I know we already did in the fiscal year 15, but what about? So out of the $2.4 million that's for non-residential streets, part of that money the administration is going to use for the next phase of Manowar that would take it from Takes Creek to Nicholasville. They did it. Whoever did it, they did a great job. ATM did a wonderful job. Manowar has done now. Traveling on it. Yeah. Council members. It's a very good job. I hope that will continue all the way around as we progress on it. Thank you. Thank you. I think we might benefit from having a look at an accounting of the MAP funds themselves because that way we could see where all the MAP funds are going to include the 2.1 on top of the 4.5. 3.1, excuse me. Another great reason to have the MAP funds in front of us. So I would ask you to provide that to us if you would just along the way here as we move forward and just For my edification just speak to the two positions that we're recommending here The specialist and the supervisor so their their use and their need if you would please Anybody In the division streets and roads Could you repeat that please? We were adding on based on our conversation the administrative specialist position and the operations supervisor. Tell us what they're going to do. Of course, the admin specialist will be in our office helping. Presently, we only have two. And so that will be in addition to our office staff, which is obviously very critical to our operation. And then the operations supervisor, we used to have four, and now we only have one supervising the day-to-day operation, such as the 69 employees. So I've wanted one more so we can kind of split those duties up. I just wanted you to give voice to us so people understand what we're talking about. Thank you very much. Unless there's other questions there, those were all the thoughts we had about streets and roads. We moved on to traffic engineering, which, as you can tell, has a little bit in there for fiber optic stuff that we appreciate. Added some in for neighborhood traffic management, a little bit for the I-75 and Manowar traffic signal. Here there was, again, $4,000 that they omitted that they wanted us to add back in. This has to do with what I would call continuing education travel, because it was things to keep people certified in certain uses within that area. That was the only change we really, it was one that they came to us with in traffic engineering. All right, and then Division of Waste Management. As you can tell in the previous one. I'm sorry. Councilman Meg, is this in the previous page? Yes. For traffic engineering, Councilman Farmer, can you tell me what fiber optic R&M means, the R&M part? You know, I'd love to pretend to know. Repairs and maintenance. I'm all over that. Okay. That's all I needed. Thank you. All right, so good on traffic engineering then? All right, so then to waste management, which here, as I was saying, includes the new deputy director there. And then this is something that for us to just, there's an action item here in potential policy about how and where we use the landfill funds and how we may want to reuse them in a different area to free up funds in the, what we used to call 115, but it's now 1115. And this is a policy discussion I think we can take up in committee, I think rather fruitfully, because we had a really great discussion about it that day. And then, as you can see down here, and one of the members of the link isn't here. There was some conversation about the location and strategy for our compressed natural gas fast fill refueling station, which is something right now we're working to add to the new Lex Tran building on Loudoun Avenue. So there was some commentary about that, but I think all very positive, nothing negative there. Next was the Division of Water Quality. We're on page 61 now. Let me see. Some classwork up there in the expanded services. We supported the budget here. And then again, and this is things for us to take up potentially later. I think both of them are really important. Consider changing stormwater projects priority list in order to better comply with the EPA consent decree. For those of us that have been around long enough, this project list was and is set in stone. I mean, very much have to go down the list and do it exactly in this order. And I think since we're coming up against kind of a dynamic situation in terms of what we're trying to accomplish across the city in a certain timeline, I think they're asking for the opportunity to just work the list in its best possible fashion rather than what we always used to refer to, in my opinion, as the bang for the buck. We used to try to complete the projects that got the most, that made the most good just one right after the other. And I think now since we're into more of a watershed approach and we need to work on our compliance across the board, They're asking at a future time for us to give them the opportunity to do so in a different than what was the old priority list fashion. And then this number two here is really for the group that's working with the Kentucky American and its franchise update, which is an ongoing conversation. And this has to do with how many shutoffs they'll let us get in during a certain day. And this has to do with us being able to enforce the fact that the LexServe bill is out there and it is delinquent. And there's been some, they have limited the amount of the shutoffs during certain days and times. We're trying to get to a situation where we can get a little bit more out of that opportunity because it's the way we get people to pay bills in their final analysis. So nothing really to take action on there, but two really great items to follow up on. And I think that completes that Lex report. Thank you. Thank you. Perfect. It allows us to move on to the public safety link, and that will be Councilmember Fred Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor Kay. The public safety links was chaired by myself and Councilmember Mossadi, and Vice Mayor Kay were on that committee with me. And the first item, I think, on our list will be page 62. That will be corrections. They had new and expanded services, capital item, virtual desktop interface, $90,250, and a jail management system upgrade, meaning a half. And then in the reallocation by the mayor, the radio repeater at courthouse was $69,500 and a fire alarm panel, $176,400. The committee concurred with the mayor's proposed budget on those items, except that we recommend that the virtual desktop interface of $90,250 would, instead of bonding it, go into fund balance surplus, be paid out of some fund balance surplus. No questions. Moving forward. 63 would be public safety Public safety Capital projects install new sirens for $30,000 This is enhanced 9-11 and slash emergency management combined Install new sirens for $30,000 Upgrade outdoor warning system for $60,000 And public safety operations center radio tower for $1,548,700 We, the committee concurred with that, except that there was a couple of additions. One addition, no, there was three additions. The committee wanted to provide $3,800 for the CERT program, $5,000 for alert notification maintenance, and $2,500 for ENS actual cost out of fund balance surplus. These three items were requested by the director at the time, and our committee agreed to go ahead and fund that. They were small items, but they indicated that there was a need. So these are over and above the mayor's proposed budget. The other item, the installation of the new sirens for $30,000 and the outdoor warning system upgrade of $60,000, were not major items amounts. So out of the committee, we recommend that the fund balance surplus be used instead of bonding. Okay. I have a council member with a question. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to ask, during your link meetings, I know that the issue with the sirens has come up every year. and if we are getting caught up to where we need to be, if that was discussed, maybe Pat could come up. Yes, we're much closer. This will put us near the end. And after this, I think we have two more years of $60,000 apiece, and we'll have everything re-upgraded. Are you adding new ones? This is the first year we've asked for one new additional. Because I would think as our city grows, we would need more. We are continuing to look at that. Yes, ma'am. And I think, you know, I hear from the public. I think it's important to them. So thank you. You're welcome. Commissioner, did you want to add anything? No, I think Pat pretty well covered it. I would like to remind you, though, that the purpose of the sirens is not for people that are inside their homes to hear them. They're for folks out in parks and public places outside. That's right. Thank you. Thank you. We did address the questions that you had there, and that was the same answers. Councilmember Akers. Just really quick, Pat, can you tell us where the new siren will be located? Yes, we're going to put it at the Picadome Golf Course. It does not have a siren currently, so that area is what we'll do next. Great. Thank you. Thank you. No other speakers. Proceed. Ready. The next item is going to be fire and EMS. I believe it's a – yes. The items that were in the budget, new and expanded, two skills trades workers and one fleet manager in maintenance, exercise equipment. There was a capital item, divisional infrastructure repairs and upgrades, $500,000. And there was items in the fiscal year 15 reallocation that the mayor brought forth. And those items are listed on there, light and heavy vehicles, protective equipment, power stretchers and installation, heavy hose, air cylinders, station and roof apron construction. Those were all in the mayor's proposed budget. We did not change anything there. We did have some recommendations. After discussion with proper personnel in the fire department, the committee wanted to provide funding for two additional positions, a quartermaster technician funded at 50%, $27,850, and administrative specialist, $25,500, funded at 50%, whose duties would be at the discretion of the fire chief. These are funded at 50% because that's how the budget system is working, but those ongoing, once you hired those two individuals, you would double that. That would be their impact on the budget. Those are items. Council Member Brackett. Discussions were made and questions were asked, and we came up with that. have a couple people waiting to comment uh council member bledsoe thank you chair can you i'm not familiar with the jordan building project can you that's why you don't know about it i'm just on the first item okay i'll wait to she's because we'll wait as well all right second item we wanted to fund the divisional infrastructure repairs and upgrades $500,000 with fund balance surplus instead of bonding. And then the fund the Jordan Building project $400,000 that is not currently funded in the mayor's proposed budget with fund balance surplus. And this was an item that we had a lot of discussion on. So go for it. Now I have, Council Member. You want an explanation there? I believe I need to bring the fire chief up or somebody out of the fire department's office. We'll see. Council Member Akers? Akers could better explain it, the process. Yeah, I'll let her explain what the project is, and then I'll ask my question. Thank you. Actually, the project, if anybody's familiar with 3rd Street, which I'm sure Vice Mayor Kay is very familiar with 3rd Street, right across from the fire station is an old two-story brick structure that actually has our building maintenance attached to it. but the original two-story brick structure has actually been condemned for several years, has had severe maintenance issues for a long time. Recently, about two weeks ago, during the last big storm we had, we do now have a risk management claim on it because it's in such poor repair. The whole second floor started to cave in. But attached to that building is our current building maintenance, our wood shop, our radio shop. So for several years, we've been trying to get that all taken down and reconstructed. We've got major roof leaks. It's been a long-going thing we've been trying to get done for a long time. And we recently have money that was partly grant money that was given to us. So we want to put that with the $400,000 and reconstruct a new building on some property that we currently own between West Short Street and Noble Street. West 2nd and Noble Street. Between, say that again, West Short and East Short and Noble Street, Second and Noble Street. It's like right behind the station, right front of the station. Okay. We've had really some old warehouses, essentially. Okay. So I guess my first question is, why would we not bond building construction? because this is definitely more than a 20-year project. So I think that it should be bonded and not used from surplus, and I'm guessing you all didn't make a recommendation of how it was funded. Yeah, we don't have any recommendation on that. And then I guess I didn't see any mention in here of additional funding to move the new fire station and Masterson Station forward. So is this building, the Jordan repairs or the construction of this Jordan building, is that a higher priority than the fire station at Masterson? The new fire station? We're finishing up purchasing the land for the new fire station at 24, but currently there's going to be some time frame before we can actually, we can even start building for Station 24. The road's not quite finished through there. Everything's not quite ready to start construction, so we wouldn't be able to move forward on that project until at least next year anyway. Has design already been funded? the design has already started yes and they're hoping to maybe mirror station two and make some adjustments to it and be able to use the same design so you do have funds for design going forward you do have the funds already allocated for design i'd have to double check but i think they're hoping to use the same plan again so we're going to have to spend all new funds for design again okay that's all i have thank you thank you thank you council member bledsoe i just have one more follow-up yes you mentioned grant money was going to be coming that you would match towards this jordan it's already we've already had it where did it come from it came from um csept how much was it 145 000 okay thank you thank you thank you anybody else yeah let me shed a little bit more light on the cao would come up uh we when we when we were in links uh this popped up as as not being funded and we discussed it with the fire chief and and that's where we got the information that there was something in process there the funding there was out of that sep grant of 145 000 and then there was a 2014 fund balance of 300 000 that still hasn't been used and then there's some other costs there that make up the other 400 000 so it's quite a project there but i think the the administration, you can speak to that, was not sure on what we needed to do. But when we saw the problems that the city owns a piece of property that has already been neglected, well, not neglected, but condemned, I think, that we needed to rise to the occasion and put some funding in there. And, Commissioner, if you want to add to that. I really don't have anything to add. I think our issue, too, was the future. That's a pretty valuable piece of property up there. And we didn't know and certainly understand the demolition of that property up there, but it's reuse we wanted to look at. Well, I think going forward, all the Lynx was trying to do is get the money in there to do something with the property. And I think the administration needs to come back to us as a council in the future and let us know what else can be done with that property up there. It doesn't necessarily have to have this building on it. There's some other things going on, but we felt like it at least needed to be torn down. Yes, sir. Going forward from that will be some other costs. Okay, I have Council Member Akers. Council Member Masadi. Thank you, Council Member Eggers. Just wanted to add to that. We were told that this building was being not only maintained, but there was personnel in there, and it's full of asbestos. So, I mean, there's a big concern with that. So we had to act on it pretty quickly. Thank you. Council Member Evans. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I was curious about the fire station on New Circle Road and how does that factor into the budget? I believe the chief said that maybe that would be used for storage, but there were so many issues, maintenance issues with that building. I'm trying to figure out or just asking how that factors into the budget. Are there plans for that? Because I know some council members had concerns about that. I'm assuming you're talking about the current station too? Yes. It's going to be relocated? Yes. Yes. And long-term plans right now would be once we get the station, all the personnel moved, and find out if we're going to keep the building permanently or if the city is going to choose to not keep it permanently. But for right now, we would definitely use it for storage. We have a lot, especially on 3rd Street, we have a lot of trailers and a lot of extra reserve apparatus that sit out in the weather all the time. So we definitely would use that facility for now until we could figure out what the long-term plan is for it. And are there maintenance plans or funds for maintenance? I mean, I just got the impression. For the old station number two? Yes. We just did a lot of upgrades on that station not too long ago to fix the roof repairs and things like that that need to be done. Just let me add, I know that project is something that Chief Jackson would like to keep in inventory, but we're still having discussions about that and whether or not when the new buildings are built that you just heard about whether there will actually be a need for that. Council Member Anchors, were you back in line? No. Okay. Point forward. Yes, sir. The police department. They had, under the mayor's proposed budget, there was new and expanded, was 10 recruit officers. Capital, they had body cameras and paddock property. And then there was reallocations. The mayor made some reallocations for 15 for tasers, door access system, body armor, vehicles, portable radios, ATAC workstations, mobile data computers. The LINC met and discussed those items with other items, and it doesn't show there, but there was $3,003,000 requested for vehicle allocation. The LINC's committee, we discussed this issue. It was only funded by the mayor for $2,500,000. We discussed it, and to stay on the maintenance plan and the vehicle allocation and to keep it going forward, we felt like that the $800,000 ought to be reinstated so that they could stay on their master plan because what it did was reduce their master plan down by $800,000. And we're going forward on this. This is all bonded. We're going forward on this for X number of dollars each year. So we felt like if we did have some extra money this year, that certainly this would be an area that we could trade off with some of those other smaller items. Any questions on that one? Council Member Massadi. I don't have any questions, but we talked at length about the body cameras, and I know that you all know how difficult of a subject that is. I guess from what we were told, that this was just sort of the initial $600,000. And, Commissioner, correct me if I'm wrong, is basically going to be delving into the whole issue of body cameras. Because you've got to determine, we were talking about timing when you put the camera on, how we're going to regulate this. And the biggest thing is how we're going to store it. That's going to be a huge cost. So, Commissioner, if you want to expound on that because the public's watching, it's pretty important. The whole issue of body cameras is a complicated one. And I think a lot of people, when the initial discussion about body cameras started happening, hadn't really thought through some of the issues that we have. One of the things that we found very quickly was is that in order to meet standards to produce and preserve evidence so it would be feasible to use it in court and to retrieve it and have a search capability on the evidence that's stored, the video that's stored, there's a significant amount of cost to that. One preliminary estimate for us was $600,000 a year, which would be a recurring cost, and that would probably be a minimum amount. That is, if you actively manage the data, you go in and have a schedule set up, and for anything that you didn't think would be evidentiary in nature or to be used in a complaint against an officer, that you would discard that and then allow more to be kept on the server. So it's like a, the way I liken it, it's like an average daily balance in a bank account. That $600,000 would be for a certain level of storage not to be exceeded. If you actively manage it, you get rid of some and you add some all the time. So it's a very laborious process. In addition to that, when we capture the video, the number of open records requests now is going to skyrocket, we think. so it would necessitate adding one or two people just to deal with open records requests from having the video that we currently don't have. So there are a lot of issues with it that need to be vetted. I know nationally we're keeping up with it. We're following it very closely, and a lot of people are trying to figure out how best to manage this and to implement it. So we want to do the right thing. We want to have the best program we can when we do choose to implement it. Thank you. And the committee felt like this was more or less seed money and we didn't know really the total cost to be able to bond. So the recommendation was to use a surplus fund balance and pay for it going forward. And then certainly the costs are going to be greater and we may have to bond depending on the program and after they do the initial testing. So that was kind of the reasoning for that. Council Member Akers. Thank you. So the $600,000 would be to actually buy the cameras. Is that correct, Commissioner? I mean, and we talked about this recently at a meeting in your, at the police department. Go ahead. Right. $600,000 is just the initial money like Council Member Brown mentioned for the seed money, which could be used for hardware and or storage. And part of our study right now will identify where that would be divided and how much for each and things like that. And so who is involved in this study that you're mentioning? In determining, because that's been my concern. I want to make sure that we know the costs long-term, that we know how much storage, that we know how many staff it's going to require and that we know what it will look like with open records, the safety requirements that will be required for domestic violence victims, for children, et cetera. Do we have all of those questions answered before we spend $600,000, or should we have, is my question. Well, we're working with the CIO and Aldona and all those folks. We have a project manager and a project team that's working in conjunction with her. and just looking at all those aspects and every aspect that agencies have experienced already and doing that as part of our research. Okay. And so who all is part of this project team and project? Just internal project team. Okay. In conjunction with her folks. And so do you all believe that you will start using body cameras before the end of next year, by June 30th of 16? That's what we'll know as we get into this a little more and about what some of the major issues are as we look at some of the concerns about storage and digital solutions for those. Okay. So for the $600,000, you really don't have exactly what you're going to spend it on. You don't know? Not yet. And we were looking at folks like Google and different enterprises coming in and things that are developing. Things are developing almost daily in this arena. So we want to be mindful of that, be very conservative and very smart about spending in regards to that. So we're going to look at all those as they develop. Okay. Commissioner, do you want to? Councilmember Akers, I think it's important to note, too, that we're proceeding cautiously and looking at it very thoroughly with all the options. I know Aldona just mentioned to me earlier that one of the things we're hoping to have good results from is a presentation from Google that's coming in, and they're going to offer some cloud storage. So we want to make sure we get the best system that we do. So I think it's important to note that we're not going to start out having a system immediately, July 1, at the beginning of the fiscal year. So it would be more reasonable to think that that would follow some months later when we choose a system and acquire the hardware. So this should be enough to do that for a partial year. But we just don't know yet until we choose the solution that we're going to use. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Council Member Evans. Don't go too far, Commissioner. He can come back. He sat down. Well, I guess I'm still a little concerned because I believe I heard from several people that people are in favor of the body cameras. My concern is that when the public knows we've given or if we decide to give $600,000 for that purpose, they're expecting to see some real results and expect, God forbid, they get pulled over by an officer that they're going to see those cameras. So I guess my concern is if there's still so many discussions and you don't know what you're going to get and how much that is really going to cost, unless you know that talking to Google or whoever is going to cost you $6,000, and I don't think that's what I heard, how can we justify that full $600,000 when it's not going to be poor equipment and you're still discussing the process and doing your due diligence. I mean, I think that's the concern of having an agency having $600,000 that kind of admitted you're not going to be able to fully use in a year. So just help me understand that a little bit better. Well, I think we all want to move in that direction, certainly. But the technology and, you know, the cloud storage of the video that's taken and so forth, all of that is evolving so quickly right now. It's hard to really get a handle on it to know what the best system and what that exact cost is going to be. The estimates that we had, the number that I threw out, $600,000 a year, was from one vendor, and it was a ballpark figure. They said an agency your size if we assumed that they, you know, videoed X amount per shift with so many officers. And that's how they gave us a ballpark figure if we actively managed the data. Hopefully some of the solutions will be less expensive than that. We have been testing body cameras for quite some time, the cameras, but the solutions to store the data is the real $64 question. I know that didn't answer your question maybe as well as you would like, but we all would like to choose the right solution and move in that direction. And I would hope that we do our due diligence so that we get the best system that we can that will better serve citizens in the future if we do that. Thank you. Council Member Stinnard, I want to pass the chair to you if I can once again. and I served on this link. And I think the underlying intention of moving to body cameras is to provide evidence and support of whomever is involved in an incident. It's a protection for citizens. It's also a protection for the police force. But the early adopters have encountered significant problems. And I think it's really important, and this is to your point, Council Member Evans. I think it's important to say to the public, we're not ready to jump in. We think this is something we need to do at some level in some way, but the costs right now are absolutely undetermined. And at some point, I think we need to measure those costs against other ways we could use that same amount of money to improve the policing that we now have in other traditional ways. I know that the body cameras are a, this is a part of the problem. They're a hot item. They're the next big thing. I just don't want to see us kind of rushing into adopting something that then turns out to be incredibly expensive without yielding a whole lot of what we really need. So the frame I would put on it is that we would be allocating $600,000 to enable the commissioner and the police chief and others to have some flexibility as they think through how they're going to move next, but not to create the expectation that within the year we're going to have a body camera system. I think we need to be very careful about that because I think, unfortunately, when the average citizen, including me, hears we'd like to have some body cameras, it sounds like, oh, just go out and buy some body cameras and put them on. Well, it turns out that's not true. So I think we just have to be very cautious in how we proceed. Thank you. now comes member scotchfield no wait a minute you got somebody else Fred sorry thank you vice mayor and I'm gonna touch on the body armor as well I think the biggest concern is we buy something and we put it out there we're gonna buy six hundred thousand dollars worth of something not knowing what we're doing put it in a closet and with technology moving as quick as it can we put it in a closet for even four months and all of a sudden we have six hundred thousand dollars worth of outdated equipment and we don't have the plan to implement so i don't like spending the money without knowing what the final price tag would be because we also know that phones can you know things it could be cheaper in four months when we have everything together and i think it's better for us to wait thank you thank you And nobody else signed up to speak. Councilmember Brown. Last item on the public links to police area. This is a non-funding recommendation. We didn't want to make the police department too mad about us getting into their business. But we wanted, and the process is, is there's going to be some new officers on the street. And the process is, is that when the officers come on the street, they get reassigned. and I think who we got here that can speak to? Major Holland. Is the chief here? Somebody could speak to it or back me up on this, on our thinking, was that we know you're going to have some new police recruits, and they always go to patrol. That's kind of the first step. But it frees up a few officers to do these other items that are other areas of concern. And the concern that the committee had was that we would like for you all to at least, we're requesting that six additional officers go to the clear unit as the size of the overall force is increased. And that with the officers assigned to the best community needs that we need. I think several council members have expressed the thought that they would like to have a clear officer. I certainly would like to have one over in my area. So we felt like if we could get six, we could almost spread them around the city very well. And that clear officers, if you've been on the council for a while, you know what the impact on that is for neighborhood. It's neighborhood policing is what it is. So if you've got anything to add to that, sir. That's right. The ten authorized positions, the first backbone of the police department, the first place they go is to fill in the need for patrol. But as the staffing develops, then the chief certainly entertains the idea of looking at special operations and the clear unit and those needs there, certainly. Thank you. Okay. Last item is the public safety commissioner's link. On that, we had new and expanded public information officer of $42,980 was approved by the mayor's budget. We had Capital Public Safety Operations Center, the $2,757,970. And then in this, we had Animal Care and Control. They also have a total in the mayor's proposed budget of $1,288,940. So that kind of made up the Public Safety Commissioner's link. What we had is a recommendation. A public safety link is in agreement with the mayor's proposed budget for the Commissioner's Office of Public Safety and the Animal Care and Control. Down in the bottom area, we had just some information purposes. The personnel costs in this department include police and fire pension, and that's those large numbers that are at the top of the schedule there. The employee's salary is included in the accounting department. That was all the information we had out of the Public Safety Commissioner's link. I have a Council Member Akers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm sorry. I apparently wasn't, I mean, I was paying attention, but under corrections, I wanted to ask someone from that department or division, I don't see any proposals for new staff or additional staff, and I wanted to ask about staffing at the jail. And, I mean, I know there's lots of turnover. We see it on the docket week after week. So I just wondered if you could speak to that and the plan for staffing at the jail. I can. I apologize. Director Ballard was on his way down, and I texted him after you all finished his and said you can disregard and not come. Sorry. We've had a number of discussions about staffing at the jail. I know Director Ballard's had quite a time trying to get to full staff. He's had between 38 and 42 vacancies here since I've been commissioner. We are looking at some new things. We're working with human resources. We, as a public safety team, have gotten together and kind of put our heads together. One of the things that we're pretty excited about and seem to be seeing some good results with are the fact that HR is now sending letters out to people who are on both the police and fire eligibility list. that look like they're maybe not going to make it in the police and fire class. And we're trying to recruit from a public safety standpoint. We're saying, you know, we're happy that you, you know, we're applying with the police department or fire department. Many people have come from community corrections, have started their initial step there and have moved into police and fire. We have vacancies there. We'd really like to entertain you applying with community corrections and giving that consideration. And within the first week of those letters going out, I think he had told me that he had 38 phone calls just from the letters. So he's excited about that and more, I'm sure, have come now. We think my goal is to get him to full staff and that we're going to work really hard to try to do that. And once we get to full staff, I think we'll be in a better position to assess. But certainly at full staff, that's going to affect his overtime usage and a number of other things. That was going to be one of my next questions was how much of your personnel is overtime? Oh, goodness. Off the top of my head, I can't tell you. But his overtime costs are significant, but we hope to be able to manage those better. I mean, he has to have someone watching a certain area, and if someone calls in sick, he has to fill the slot. He can't just, you know, assume it. So hopefully that will have a good effect, and I'm hoping we have good results from the recruitment efforts. And I just read in the paper, I guess, over the weekend that the state has actually is going to raise their pay for the state corrections workers. So then I wonder how that will impact, because that's one thing that Director Ballard has mentioned, that we lose people often to the state correction system. So how does our pay scale compare to the state's new pay scale? It's my understanding that ours is still much better than what the starting salary under the proposal is. state corrections increased I think 13 or 13.6 percent was what they had announced but it's still the starting salary is $22,000 or something like that so it's not it's not significant. I know we would like to do some things to even be more effective in recruiting with our initial salaries and those kinds of things but those are part of the bargaining process that we're going through right now with corrections. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilmember Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner, once again, before you sit down, I was going to wait until a work session to bring this up, but, Darren, we have a budget amendment work session to move money to the overtime account, the hazardous duty overtime. Can you bring the accounting on that and what the total year-to-date overtime is? And corrections has been expended. That includes that amount as well. We can bring that. And what funds we're decreasing to provide overtime to? Okay. You can bring that by the 3 o'clock meeting. Hopefully we'll try to get Rodney and Gina down there, the gurus, with it. Okay. Thank you. Stay up there, Commissioner. Commissioner, don't. I guess I can wrap it up. Just a very good response. I wanted to just acknowledge the authorized strength of each of the divisions. I think corrections is 470, right around that? What's the corrections? That sounds a little bit high for me. Well, the police is 570. That sounds about right on authorized strength there. 570, and with the new budget will be 580, the authorized. Authorized, and that's what's going to be in the budget. That's not how many they have, but that's what the authorized is. The fire department is authorized. 562. Okay. And then corrections is, I thought it was around 4. 353. 353 for corrections. For corrections? Yeah, I knew it was under 4. And that's authorized? Yes. Okay, okay. So I just wanted that information to get out to the public that everything that's authorized is budgeted, but the numbers are always less than that authorized when you're talking about actual dollars being spent. But we're trying to get to that authorized strength, which there's always difficulty. That concludes my links. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anything left for council members to comment on before we – I will ask for public comment. Council Member Lamb. Sorry. Excuse me. I was confused as to whether we were supposed to report out about non-budgetary, and I know that some of us did and some of us didn't, so I felt remiss, and I want to make sure I go back and speak on two that are non-budgetary issues within the social services, and I wanted to know if it would be okay at this time. If I may, I think the way to handle this is whether people spoke now or not, that we will get a list of all the non-budgetary recommendations, and we'll look for a time for council to meet, this committee of the whole, and go through that list, and you can speak at that time if you want, although if you want to now, that's okay since other people have. But, I mean, my sense is that what we want to do is look at the whole list, go through them, and allocate them as we think is appropriate as a body. Well, I just wanted to make sure that the department and divisions realized and what we were going to do with a couple of what we were going to recommend. I don't want them thinking that we were ignoring their request, in other words, is what I'm saying. In that case, go right ahead. Okay. All right. Well, it's just two things, and, I mean, you know, I just would like to do this. And this is to do with the Department of Social Services. The council budget link recommended the evaluation of the current part-time contract of the domestic violence director position. The department requested change in this position to become a full-time employee of LFUCG. And so it was not included in the mayor's proposed budget. But we wanted the budget council link wanted to recommend that this be studied and presented during the General Government and Social Services Committee regarding the pros and cons of having this become a full-time city employee. So I just wanted people to understand that we didn't ignore that request. And the other thing is that in the Division of Family Services, they had requested two new positions to deal with the Family Service Coordination Program, and the council budgetly recommended considering the addition of these positions in FY17 when the new program has had more time to operate and work out any kinks and that way we'll have more statistics. I just wanted to say that for the record. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to ask who is kind of keeping track of the totals, total changes recommended by each link. Do we have? Okay, Teresa. So we can see, I mean, I know my length, you know, how much we recommended to cut and how much we added and so what that total difference is. But so that we all know, I guess, who's going to determine whether is it the mayor that has to figure out where the difference is made up or does council have to do that? Council's responsibility. Right. And I presume staff is going to provide us with the information we need on a rolling basis. Okay. And I see the heads nodding yes. And so will that come at the next budget meeting, or when will we discuss, I guess, those total differences and changes in allocations? I would say as soon as they have that information, I'd like to see them circulated to council, and then we can use that as we go through the next set of meetings, if that's acceptable. Okay, great. Thank you. You're welcome. Councilman Hortstinett. Well, I was actually just going to go through the process for all the new people and what's going to happen next. And then, Stacey, do you have the calendar with you so you can remind everyone when our next meetings are by chance? I know it's next Tuesday is when we'll be looking at this list from today. So they're going to put together the list of pluses, additions, and changes. They'll have a bond list of what the links have asked to be bonded. They'll have the non-budget recommendation list as well that we can take up, as the vice-merced, at a later date. So our next meeting is next Tuesday, 11 a.m. I think it's at 9. Put 11 in this schedule. Yeah. You all have the schedule. I can't bring it up in here because the Internet is not here. I can't get Internet in here at all. It should be 11. 11 to 1. Okay. And that will include council member recommendations. And then council member recommendations are due by Friday. And if you're going to recommend to fund something new, please put it on there if you want to fund it from the general fund. You're going to fund it from bonding. what your recommendation is on how to get the money because it's up to the individual council member to find that money and recommend that. And did I miss anything, Vice Mayor? No, but I did send an email about the individual recommendations and a suggestion about a way to proceed, basically to do it on a random basis so that no individual set of requests is automatically at the top. We'll see if people are comfortable with that. Councilmember Massadi. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And Councilmember Stenet, you bring up a good point about funding either from the, you know, general fund or from bonding. I had that discussion last week with Teresa Greider, our budget analyst, and it's a little difficult because she doesn't have all that information. So I don't know if we can be provided that prior to our recommendation list on Friday because it's kind of a fluid process. I understand that. But if you can give us maybe a rundown of what you know to date from budgeting so we know how we can proceed, that would be helpful. I think it's also fair to say that while you give it your best shot about where those funds are going to come from, Council with eight votes can reallocate, get it from someplace else, or not fund it at all, of course. So if you have an idea about where those funds can come from, put it in there. But if you don't have all the data you need, put a placeholder in, and we'll work on it. Is anybody else? Nobody else has signed up to speak. Is there anybody signed up from the public seeing none? and then council member stennett just want to remind everyone also that the late items from the administration will also come on tuesday and we'll also need to adopt a revenue number on tuesday before we go through the individual recommendations and the the the appropriate order for doing that is first get the number second get the late items third do the links or council individual then links no we won't okay yes council individual then links okay other questions comments anything else if not I'll entertain a motion to adjourn portion of second all in favor say aye we stand adjourned Thank you.