...abilities. The End ¶¶ ¶¶ Looks like we have a quorum, so welcome to the General Government and Social Services Committee on September, no, it's October, October 6th, I don't know my month of the year. October 6, 2015. So the first item on the agenda is the summary for our agenda from last meeting. And we need to make an adjustment on the motion of Council Member Evans. It states that there were eight. The vote was 8 to 2, and actually it's 2 to 8. The motion failed by a 2 to 8 vote. so I would like to recommend that we approve those okay all right so is there a motion to approve the summary with with okay all righty the first of the motion was made by councilmember Henson second of my councilmember Scutchfield. Is there any discussion on that motion? There being none, all in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? Thank you. All right, that motion passes. Now the next item on our agenda is the revision of the CAO policy. And this was brought forth before the committee at the request of the CAO. And I believe Ms. Walters, the Deputy Director of the Division of Human Resources is going to begin this presentation and thank you miss walters thank you good afternoon i'm just here to give you a brief update of the just a few minor changes we've made to the policy can you see oh It seems unhappy. Do we have technical difficulties? Cool. The first one was correct. No problem. So just quickly, I'm going to cover a few points in the current policy, a few items in the revised policy. We'll talk a little bit about timekeeping, and then I'll answer any questions you might have. So the current policy was last updated in 1998. It does have some outdated information, uses some old payroll accounts that we used to use before we moved to PeopleSoft, some time reporting codes that we no longer use, and also the communication methods started becoming outdated with all kinds of new ways of getting information across now. Some of the language is confusing. We had a lot of questions any time there was a weather incident about how to report the time, what should I use, how many hours do I get, and a lot of that rotated around flexible work schedules. The proposed policy, one of the big changes, and I mentioned time reporting or payroll codes, it exempted part-time, seasonal, and temporary employees that were in certain accounting codes. and now we just open that up and it's eligible to every LFUCG employee that could be impacted by the weather event. We have updated some communication methods. You probably noticed that we added social media using our internal and external websites, and also a really great feature that Glenn's going to talk about in just a few minutes, a text alert system or an emergency notification system that will really get information out to employees very quickly. We clearly defined the payroll reporting code. We now use WTHR for weather, and it addresses the normal daily schedule. So if there are employees who work flexible schedules, it accommodates those folks as well. It also provides some flexibility for non-emergency personnel who are required to work. In the past, it just said if you are required to work, then you can bank the time. Now, if you are a non-emergency personnel and still required to work by your supervisor, you can also bank that time. So it gives people some extra opportunities who might not have had it in the previous version. And then the next slide, and I'm sorry, that is a little bit small. It really just provides some examples. You know, what do I do if, you know, I work 10-hour shifts, 7 to 530. If there's a two-hour delay and we open at 10, how many hours do I report? For most people who work 8 to 5, it would only be two hours. So we're being very clear that that is actually three hours because it's your normal work day and you have missed three hours of work due to the event. If it's canceled for a full day, you report 10 hours of weather instead of someone else's full day who might only have an eight-hour shift. If you work Monday through Thursday and the weather event is on Friday, What do you do? Well, you report the hours that you worked Monday through Thursday, and you don't have a need to report anything for Friday. So that's the kind of things that really we just wanted to have some clarification so employees have a better understanding before the next weather event hopefully doesn't happen, but just in case. That's all I have for you. Thank you. I realize this was strictly for a heads-up, and it was brought forward by the CAO's office, So thank you. Are there any questions from the committee members? I think there's another part to this. Mr. Brown? Okay. We're going to come up and talk about the emergency notification. Okay. There's three parts to this, as I remember. Good afternoon. One of the things that we thought was lacking was in between divisions, knowing when they're not supposed to report to work, whatever the reason. But similar to the school system, Doreen, if you'll come on up, she'll be setting this up a little bit. She's with emergency management. But what we've done is we're going to start collecting ways of contacting employees so we can get the word out to them by way of cell phone or we can leave a message at home or get in touch with them. But we felt that it was very important to also not only just get a list of all of our employees, but we can have notifications for various emergencies by what building they work in, what department they work in. If it's something that happens in the government center, like we had the recent situation where we had the electrical problem, we could have notified everyone just within the government center that you didn't have to report to work today. So we're trying to look at this policy, but we're also not looking at the policy, but we want to make sure that we're contacting our employees because some employees don't wake up early enough to watch something that might be scrolling across the bottom of the screen on the news that morning. They might have woke up late because the power went out. But we're coming up with this, and start as a Friday at our director's meeting. the payroll coordinators will come in, and Doreen is going to explain to them what information needs to be collected from each employee in your division. And, of course, it is optional as to whether or not they want to sign up for this notification system. But we're going to encourage all employees to sign up for this notification system so we can make sure that this policy is well-rounded as far as how we contact our employees. Do you have anything you wanted to add? questions okay any particular questions about this system itself Doreen's here to answer any of those that you may have are there any questions Councilmember Evans I don't know if it's so much a question or a comment because that that was one of the concerns I had in looking at the changes for the inclement weather policy, it was in B, where it struck out that each department would notify their employees. So that's being struck out because you're trying to find another way to inform employees. Okay, because that was my concern. I was thinking about the person that's not in the office or out there. So okay, that answered a concern. So I appreciate looking into some other options to notify employees. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Are there any other questions? No? Well, thank you all for the presentation today. That was very informative. And so now I guess we will move on to the next agenda item, which is actually about comp time carrying over policy. And, again, this was brought forth from the CAO's office, and the presentation will be given by Ms. Jennifer. Hello. Thank you all for having us. So this presentation has been revised slightly since we first reached out to Councilmember Lamb. CAO Sally Hamilton had tasked a small working group, myself, Tyler Scott from the Finance Commissioner's Office, Tammy Walters from HR, and Glenda George from Department of Law and then our payroll group to take a look at the potential of raising our vacation time carryover from year to year and also increasing the amount of compensatory time that people could get. And so we worked on this for a couple of weeks, and Paul Schoeniger gave us some information about various municipalities around the country. We looked at those, looked at the state, and looked around Kentucky. And what we found was that we actually have a quite generous compensatory policy and a quite generous vacation policy and vacation carryover policy. And, of course, like with anything, there's exceptions to the rules, which is what we're here to talk to you about just briefly today. So instead of coming to you and asking to increase both of those via ordinance change, we'd actually like to come forward today and ask for a slight ordinance change that would allow the CAO to make exceptions based on emergencies or extenuating circumstances that could happen, and that's the language that's in your packet today. And essentially how it would work if it comes to the end of the year and we have specific employees that for whatever reason they were removing snow or we had an IT emergency or whatever the case may be and they couldn't use their vacation time by the end of the year, they would be able to apply through the CAO's office to have that extended through the end of the fiscal year. And so that ordinance change we would hope you would consider today and then pass on to the full committee or to the full council for their approval as well. So I'm here to answer any questions, and, of course, CAO Hamilton and Glenda George are here today too. I will open up the floor. So basically what they've decided, I mean, if I can paraphrase, I believe you all decided that there wasn't really going to be any comp time presentation as a result of your research. So now we just moved on to the vacation time over policy discussion. So that's where we are on the agenda now. And so is there any discussion on this from the committee members? Well, I mean, oh, Ms. Henson, Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. So, Jen, I guess I would be, thank you for bringing this forward, and I think it's something that we needed to look at. But would it be, is there things we could put in place to make it not subjective? Well, we had talked about that during our discussions, and so we essentially had, if you'll look in your packet, We had the weather, I'll sort of read to you what we've talked about. We had the weather, should there be something that happens, weather-related, something that happens with work demands, and I gave the example of the IT department, say something came up with emails or IT-related types of things, and they were required to be here all through the weekend, various weekends in a row for whatever reason. We did consult with law department about leaving sort of these other exceptions in there, because there's always that one thing you can't plan for. And we were worried that if something did come up that we hadn't thought about, we'd have to come back to the group for another ordinance change. So again, these do have to be approved by the CAO's office. They won't just be sort of willy-nilly, and you can just get it every time you ask for the extension. So we thought about that long and hard and decided to leave that sort of exception in there just in case something comes up that we didn't expect or didn't anticipate. So it would be like a supervisor would request it from the CAO and then she would have to approve it? She would. Overall. We would. Yes. And part of this ordinance you'll see in there, the second paragraph, is that we would also let Stacey Maynard, the council administrator, know that we had given them that privilege to use it until the end of the fiscal year so you all knew that that had happened. Okay. And that would be with every instance. Sounds good. Thank you. You're welcome. If there, I actually have a quick question about it myself. The, in the past, there have been ordinances that were approved to approve, extend, like, divisions, or, like, in one situation, it was the sworn employees in the Division of Fire. So are these going to be on an employee basis as opposed to a divisional basis? I mean, are they still going to remain on a division basis? We had talked about that, and I guess Sally can speak to that, but I think there may be particular. What you have to think about is I would say let's keep it at the employee level because there will be certain people, say we have a snow event. There could be some workers, some employees out at Streets and Roads that had used a lot of their vacation up, and they wouldn't be in this predicament, if you will. There will be other people that maybe hadn't used all their vacation, We're planning to use it in December, and then we had a snow event or whatever the case may be. So I think we had discussed, and Sally can correct me if I'm wrong, but that it would be by an employee basis because all their vacation hour accruals will be so different. So I would imagine it wouldn't impact a whole division, but I suppose it could. Are there further comments by the committee members? No? Is there a motion on the floor? I'll move approval. Sorry. I will move approval of the new CAO policy for comp time. Is that what it's called, Jan? It's the vacation leave or vacation carryover. Mm-hmm. Carryover, right. Uh-huh. So moved. for clarification i believe it's um would be the the ordinance that's in our packet that's uh on page 22 so council member henson or are you okay with that yes i would move approval of the ordinance pertaining to vacation leave and carryover there's no number on here so council member Bledsoe you seconded that motion are you okay with that change all right is there any discussion on the motion there being none all in favor please say aye any opposed thank you we appreciate that very much thank you all right now we'll move on to the next agenda item is the board's agencies and commissions and councilmember Scotchfield I I believe that you referred that into committee, and so thank you. Thank you, Chair. I believe Jamie has provided the information in our packets. I don't believe he has a presentation, per se, prepared for us, but I did, Jamie, if we could just kind of start out. In a brief, how many boards and commissions do we have? I didn't bring that summary document with me, but I believe the committee got a presentation from the council clerk's office two months ago or so about boards, and I believe the numbers that were off the top of my head, it's approximately 80 boards and commissions and about 600 individual board members, board and commission members, of which represent about 800 spots. You know, you have people that actually are appointed into multiple boards and commissions. So that's the summary. And Chair, if you would, I'll go ahead and let you take questions from committee members, and then I might follow up with some others. Sure. Are there committee members that have questions? Councilmember Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. One question I had would be pertaining to, and I know there's some boards in here that require we have members appointed from selective council districts. If I could, I don't know if any of the others would like to have it, but I would like to have just a brief grouping or something sent to me by email stating what appointments would come out of my district so that I can start looking for qualified people. I don't think there's a lot of those, but there are some under ordinance that would require us as each district to have one or two representatives on a particular committee. I think that's a good recommendation or suggestion. We have a few. I'm looking here at the Environmental Commission. That's one example. Looks like, you know, about half of the district-level spots are filled and the other half are vacant, although it's a very, very large commission, probably 40 members. So, but yes, we can certainly do that. And I think one of the takeaways I was hoping to get today was to come up with a process where we can update you perhaps on a quarterly basis. We do try to distribute these lists, but they're large lists. There are hundreds of spots. It's hard to sort through it. So if there's a way we can organize it better that helps you give us feedback, that's what I would like to take away. Councilmember Maloney. Thank you. I was looking over all these boards that have vacancies and all that, And I'm trying to remember some ways when I was on the council a long time ago, we used to have something that was sent to us monthly or every three months. Now, some of these boards, the positions of vacancy, are going to have to be a certain type of group of people to sponsor. And I can understand that council members want to be able to pick that. But some of these boards where council members can help you make your job a lot easier on that, I would recommend that you send out the list every three months or something so we can at least tell our constituents, because we get these calls all the time. People want to be on certain boards to make y'all's job a little bit easier. So, I mean, I'm looking at some of these. You've got 11 vacancies in some boards here. I just assume we could help y'all out and try to fill these vacancies out. Yep, I think that's a good suggestion. It seems like to me you all are relying on a computer. You're relying on people getting on Facebook, whatever. And a lot of people can't do that. And I don't know how you have time to do all that. We have constituents that call us daily sometimes. I mean, not daily, but we run out in public wanting to be on a board. And thus having this kind of information makes it easy for you guys and it makes it easy for us. And it also keeps us having these boards filled up. So I'm just here to try to get an idea to help you guys. I appreciate that. We take input from lots of different sources. We don't just rely on people applying through the website. I would say, though, that through the website update that we're going through right now, we're hoping to create a new site where it's very clear to everyone that wants to look on where those vacancies exist and make it as up-to-date as we can. Obviously, the list we sent you last Thursday is probably out of date. we probably had a vacancy or a resignation or a term expiration between then and today. But thank you. And one example, like the environmental, we've got like a 11-12 vacancy. We've got council members that have neighborhood meetings that have some of this stuff affect their neighborhoods, and they can get neighborhood association members to be on there. And I think there's a way you can fill these up pretty quick. Thanks. All right, further comments? Council Member Sketchfield. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to follow up, and I know I mentioned something to Jamie about this earlier, and we've talked about this in the past. With 80 commissions and boards taking a look at this to bring it forward to us, do you see boards that would make sense to combine and merge? Potentially. I think that happened in 2007, if I'm not mistaken, that they went through an exercise where they consolidated some boards. I think we can take another look at that. I'd say one of the things that is on my to-do list for the next couple months is to appoint the newly formed downtown management district board. And there might be an opportunity because of the services that that group will provide to talk through some, whether or not there can be some efficiencies found through perhaps a merger of some things. I'm not sure exactly how that might look, but that could be a conversation that we have. I guess there are several boards and commissions in taking a look at this that aren't currently very active. How many, and you might not know the exact number, how many boards or commissions would you say are in an inactive status? I'd say it's only a handful, probably less than half a dozen that are truly inactive. I think some of the ones that were marked on here as inactive aren't actually inactive. I'd have to go back through there and make sure that's right. I saw a couple that jumped out at me that weren't inactive. They might not be as active as maybe someone would like. Okay, and I think I would like to kind of keep this updated on a regular basis. I think there's a lot of things in here that I wasn't provided when I first took office regarding what different commissions and boards there are, which ones are appointed by particular council members. Could you tell us, since we're all here, typically what is the process when there is an opening on a board and how the process goes to try to get on a board? Well, it goes through a couple different routes, I think. Some folks apply directly through our website or call our office and express interest to a certain board or a particular set of boards. the other way is that it could be someone that the mayor knows that's interested in the board or someone in our office or it could be a council member or perhaps a staff person that might staff one of these boards or commissions recommends to us so there are multiple ways that we get names but then depending on the board or commission we may have multiple folks interested and have to do an interview process so it depends on the board And it depends on the number of vacancies, obviously. I guess one last follow-up question. I know some of the boards require confirmation with the council. Approximately how many boards require this additional step? I think it's three. It's the Planning Commission, Board of Adjustment, Ethics, and I think that's it. That's all I have right now. Thanks. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Jamie, thanks for, I appreciate getting this information. And I had a question. Did the Town and Gown Commission dissolve? No, it's not dissolved. I'd have to go back and it's got some vacancies, but from what I understand that the Town and Gown Commission was formed for the purpose that is written in this packet. We can go through that if you'd like. But regardless, it seemed that from what I was told, and I wasn't at the meetings, but I was told that it became more of a session where neighborhood folks came and expressed concerns and frustrations rather than a board that was actually accomplishing what they were set up to be. I agree. And I think, well, I won't get into a lot of detail, but I think that perhaps it could be refreshed and repurposed. Because I think it's important that the university and the city have this relationship. Yeah, I agree. And I just noticed it wasn't on the list, so I was curious. And I was representing three council districts, I believe, on the commission. I'm sorry, there's a lot of information here. It is on the one list, but it's not. Right. It's got the first district council member, third district council member, and the 11th district council member. Right. along with 13 others. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Maloney. Can I clarify again to me? Because I was on that committee when they first opened. I was the one who put the 11th District on there. Can you explain to me why they're getting ready to town again, or does it still continue? What was the reason again? I want to hear your definition. I didn't hear it well. I said that it had been inactive. I said we could potentially repurpose that board because I think it's an important one, but we're not dissolving it. Is that your question? Well, I mean, when we did that originally, it was to set a better relationship with downtown and with the University of Kentucky. Now, to me, I wouldn't be getting rid of it. I hope, I wish it was still going on. It was a good board. We were able to accomplish a couple ordinances out of there. It's a party planner. We came out of that committee. We also live where you work. And with all the construction and everything going around UK campus, and what Council Member from the 3rd District, I assume he would want this to be an ongoing, because University of Kentucky is a big play in this, and we have some important people here. I don't want to see us kind of let that committee fall apart. I know there's other committees that have been formed. I know there's a certain management plan for UK that they put together and all that. But this town and gown is a totally unique situation, and I thought it was a great conference what we did, and it built a good relationship with the University of Kentucky. And from what I was going to ask that question, I have yet to see any meetings in the last year. I don't know how long it's been going on without any meetings, But every time to work with University of Kentucky in downtown is now because there's a lot going on. And I just hope we continue on with this because it's done an important issue for this community. And I hope we don't let this fall through the cracks. Councilman Ravens. Excuse me. Henson, I'm thanking you and looking this way. Thank you, Chair. And just to clarify a little bit, I know that one reason it's probably inactive is because the co-chair was Vice Mayor Gordman. So it sounds like it would be helpful. I think, you know, it was a good commission that could make a difference. So Council Member Maloney is willing to chair it. No, I think we should hold a meeting and have an election or whatever. Yeah, we agree with you. I think it achieved what it was set up to achieve, and I think it probably just got off track a bit because they didn't have a work plan in front of them. That's right. Thank you. Councilmember Evans. Thank you, Chair. I guess I kind of reiterate what Councilmember Maloney was saying, that any way we can help you as council members, I think we're all, well, I'll speak for myself, that I'm willing to help you. Because this was my introduction into local government, being on the Ethics Commission. Didn't know what I was getting into at the time, but nevertheless. less. So I really do think it is valuable, even boards that meet quarterly, ones that we don't think are as prestigious as others. So yeah, if it's an annual list or if you can communicate with us which ones that you're still looking for board members, I am certainly more than willing to pass that along to my constituents so you can make your job easier because there isn't anybody, you know, one person dedicated to this. You know, at the state level, you know, you've got at least two people dedicated to this, so solely dedicated to it, but that's, we're not, I guess, blessed enough to have that. So I know it's a few different people trying to make sure things are going, but is that Something, perhaps, that we need to look into, perhaps creating, I don't want to talk about creating a new position, but, I mean, is that, because it is, I mean, this is a lot of information, and this is just one small part of government, so I'm just curious if you all have thought about that, having someone do this, at least, you know, the majority of their duties, as opposed to just trying to keep it going? Or have you all had that discussion? I'm just curious. I wouldn't recommend that we create a new position for it. I think in the past, Shantae's here, and she can talk about it if she'd like. But she did it for a long time. She now works for Council Member Brown. But she did a great job, and that was a big part of what she was doing. But since then, we've actually separated the board's duties into two, And I think it's working pretty well. I don't really see many glitches in the system at this point. I think if there were one, it would be staff members assigned to these individual boards and commissions and reporting back, perhaps. That way all the information can get consolidated so that it's easy to report to you guys as this report was produced. But they did a nice job in putting this together. I'm not sure that everything's there, but a good deal of it is. So I think it's going pretty well. Councilmember Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. I'll just echo one thing that Councilmember Sketchfield said. There's a lot of, it seems to be repeat stuff on here. In any ways, we can look for efficiencies to kind of, even if we have to expand some of them, but shrink the responsibilities so they're meeting more frequently, you meet quorum easier, those kinds of things might be a good idea. The second thing is I know there's a group out there that I think Commerce Select is kind of working with, but they do that Emerge Young Professionals Networking All Day program. And it's kind of with United Way, kind of with Commerce Lex, but it's geared to young professionals in our area. I think it would be nice to have more younger professionals on more of our boards. You know, they can't know what it's like to be on a big board until they start on a smaller board. And maybe some of the ways we can use the smaller ones that are hard to fill, we can find some younger professionals so they can learn about our city better, learn about maybe through Leadership Lexington, bringing them in that way or other ideas. It's just a thought to kind of broader expand maybe our pool. Thanks, Chair. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I'd just say, too, that diversity isn't important to us when we're making these appointments. And it's never an easy thing to accomplish because there's only so many folks that are interested in certain efforts. And so whether it be age or race or ethnicity or gender, we're always thinking about it. We're trying to do better. And I actually have another question. What deems a board to be inactive? I mean, is it something legally, or is it something that the mayor's office has the purview to do? I think what you're saying in front of you is just our characterization of how these boards are acting. I don't think there's an official inactive status that law has given us the authority to approve, no. So these would just be opinion-driven from our office. Okay. Because obviously they're not meeting, I think would probably be the definition of inactive. Okay. I just think that the word inactive is kind of, I mean, if it's an inactive board, then do we still need it even? I mean, so I just think that's the exercise we need to go through, you know, to really dig into that. I don't think you need to dissolve something without really investigating it. Okay. Are there other questions? All right. We appreciate this information, and I believe just a report quarterly would be something that would be very helpful, and I appreciate all the conversation here. Thank you. Then our final presentation today is on the aquatics program design, and Councilmember Scutchfield, would you like to introduce that? If I could introduce, I guess, Monica Conrad, I guess starting to be not so new, but the new-ish parks director. This was one of the first things that she was charged with once she was hired. We have three council members that currently serve on the Aquatic Steering Committee, Amanda Bledsoe, James Brown, and myself. I am currently chairing the committee. and we've had meetings monthly. I think we're making progress. They did a phenomenal job. The company that we hired to do the master plan has gone out to all of the city pools this summer, talked to people in person, gone out instead of, you know, they've also done the paper and online surveys, but I think going to the pools where the patrons are and finding out what they want instead of reaching out to people that maybe had never been into a parks pool gave us a good. But I know Monica will give us more of an update on what they provided us. Great. Thank you. Thanks for inviting us to provide this master plan update today. I, along with several of the parks team, with Brian Rogers and Roger Damon from General Services, Commissioner Reed, Jennifer from the CAO's office, along with Pat Hoagland and Keith from Branstad or Carroll have been putting a lot of work into this master plan, and we're excited to give you an update today. Today we're going to review the current issues, the master plan timeline that we developed, an overview of the division's aquatic plan goals, the progress to date, an analysis of demographics and locations, and then answer your questions at the end. Issues facing our aquatics division today, we've seen a steady decline in attendance and subsequent revenues from 2008 to 2015. While some of this is certainly attributable to weather, we also know we have dated facilities with a lot of pools that have a lot of years on them. in the fall of 2014 council recognized the need for this comprehensive aquatic study and allocated 150,000 to develop the aquatics master plan in january the rfp selection committee was named which included council members acres maize bledsoe and scutchfield in may the plan really started to take shape the contract was awarded to lexington-based consulting firm Branstetter Carroll. Later in May, we started the public input phase. Around this same time, we worked with IT division to initiate credit cards at our pools, which resulted in over 7,000 transactions, which is great. We also created a steering committee, including the three council members, James Brown, Mace Bledsoe, and Sketchfield, and representatives from across the community, members from the parks advisory board, therapeutic representative from Cardinal Hill, recreational swimmers, lap swimmers, competitive swimmers. In developing the divisional goals for the aquatics plan, we knew it was vital to have citizen engagement. Pat will provide some additional information about some of those meetings and pool events that we had that Councilmember Sketchfield mentioned earlier. Together, via the steering committee, citizens and stakeholder groups, we're developing a vision for the future of Lexington Aquatics. Perhaps most importantly, we had the goal to encourage the importance of swimming as a life skill, as well as an accessible recreational pastime. According to the CDC, about 10 people die from unintentional drowning every day. Of these, two are children aged 14 and younger. In the summer of 2015, our team conducted over 600 swim lessons, which is an integral part of our daily programming. And now I'm going to turn it over to Pat Hoagland from Brandstetter Carroll, and he's going to give you some more information about our progress. Thank you, Monica. And it's a pleasure to be here today with you to share some of the preliminary information and the progress we've made so far on the master plan. In the beginning of the process, the CAO, the commissioner and director, visited four other facilities around the communities. We started hearing more and more about people going to Frankfurt and Georgetown and Lake Reba and Richmond to see those facilities. So the pictures there on the top pictures are of the new facility that opened this year in Frankfurt. It's about a $6 million facility. At the bottom left is an aerial view of that facility as well. They had over 80,000 people visit that facility in a shortened season because construction wasn't finished until well after the typical opening time. The bottom middle is Paradise Cove in Richmond, which gets about 55,000 people on average since they opened in 2008. And they average about a $47,000 surplus over their operating costs every year. That's something that we're not experiencing here. And the bottom right is a Georgetown pavilion, which Georgetown offers both an indoor and an outdoor aquatic facility at different locations, but they offer both indoor and outdoor aquatics. Their indoor facility has the Laplanes as well as a family-oriented aquatic facility. Some other regional type of facilities that we'll be looking at, Neighborhood Pools, an example, is one on the left at Plain City, Ohio. It's a smaller facility, similar to the one at Castlewood or Douglas, a smaller facility. In the center, on the bottom there, is a spray ground, a splash pad that we're discussing the possibility of here in Lexington. The example here is in Centerville, Ohio. The fountain in front of the courthouse is an example of a type of a spray ground, more decorative, but these take a lot of different shapes. Louisville's got 30 spray grounds. Fifteen that are newer facilities. Another fifteen that are where they took old wading pools out and just put like a single element spraying. So they're becoming very popular, but they don't replace swimming. That's one thing. You can't teach lessons at these facilities, but they don't require lifeguards, and they're a lot of fun. And then on the right is another example of a large indoor facility down in Cary, North Carolina, the Triangle Aquatic Center that's developed by a foundation. $22 million facility, and they just get about a 72,000-square-foot area in the facility. They have 600 kids in their own swim program and a lot of rentals on that. But they only recover about 75% of their operating costs. All done, the rest of that 25% is made up through donations, sponsorships, and corporate sponsors. So that's something to look for as a potential model to look at. And we'll be looking at it a little bit more as well. The progress on the master plan, so the information we're giving you is preliminary. It's a real key piece in the public engagement part of this that we should have this month, and that's the results of the statistically valid mail survey, a random sample. So we don't have that piece yet. And the nice part about that piece is that it reaches those users and non-users. It's really tough to get people to come to an event at a pool if they aren't interested in swimming. And the 18,000 e-mails that we send out to people are lists of people that are involved in programs. So, and, or you learn through your swim coach or your swim team or through your lessons to get involved in this process. But over 5,000 people have been engaged so far, which is great. We had a web survey that was also a handout version of that, available in English and Spanish. We've had over 2,600 of those completed so far. The in-person engagement is primarily at the pools and also the public workshops and the stakeholder meetings. The public workshops, it's getting difficult all the time to get people out to those meetings. The final one had about 35 people, so that was the better of the other ones. And again, the 500 people in the mail survey that will be getting those results here soon. So here's some preliminary takeaways from the information we're hearing so far. Again, this is all preliminary information. There will be much more detail later when we get those other surveys we can compare it to. So the interviewed adults is primarily the people that have completed the surveys, because those are mostly completed by adults. And the top things they're saying that they'd like to see there are the indoor year-round facility so they can swim throughout the year. Longer days and the longer season. Improving the existing poles and restrooms We heard that pretty strong and clear Lazy River They have examples of those in Georgetown And in Juniper Hills over in Frankfort and Splash Pads Another element, sort of the top five things We heard from that group The interviewed families, again, mostly those people That came to the public workshops or at the events A lot of people came out The nice thing about that one was it was also the children We gave them each $1,000 in play money and they could vote in various boxes for different facilities they'd like to see. And it was a fun exercise. Once you give people that $1,000, they don't walk away without doing something with it. And it was fun to see the kids actually getting involved in this. And we had boards up all over showing examples of spray grounds and lazy rivers and all the different types of features that you could see so people could get a little bit of education. If they hadn't been to pools outside of Lexington, they could see what other communities are offering. And it was amazing to me how many people knew that the slides in Frankfurt weren't up yet at the beginning and how many people were waiting for those slides to go in and how many people had been to other pools on a regular basis leaving lexington to go to these other communities so they interviewed families the tall water slides you know especially the kids were putting money in there like crazy the lazy river was popular people of all ages including senior citizens indoor year-round facility again was right in the middle of the list near the top the water slides for small children, similar to what's out at Castlewood or at Southland where there are small slides. And then shade was important as well. A lot of people asking for a lot of shade, a lot of comments about, for example, Shillitoe. You have a nice big grass area around the pool, but you really can't get to it, and there's really no trees anywhere to get any shade other than the structures that have been put up over the years. Some of the other preliminary results, mainly from the web and handout survey again these are primarily users of your facilities and programs that are they're answering these questions which is a good group to listen to but we asked about fees and 67% said they were about right another 31% said they were too high so at least doesn't leave many that said they were too low aquatic use we tried to figure out you know what the perspective of these people was and 67% were recreational swimmers 6% competitive swimmers and 22% both. So we got a good mix there and that's pretty common with majority of people being recreational users at pools but competition use is also important. And in terms of accessibility we asked people how far they'd be willing to drive to go to a facility and 67% or two-thirds said they'd be willing to drive 15 minutes. So that plays into as we look at where should facilities go in the future. Against some more of those preliminary results, we asked people what's the most important improvements to them. Just the top five on the list. There was about another dozen or so. But a new family aquatic center, indoor lap pools, splash pads and spray grounds, lengthening the swim season, and indoor recreational pool were the top five on that list. Lazy rivers, upgrading the pools, shade and slides were some of the next ones on that list. The most important programs to offer, by far, was the swim classes. It's a very valuable program. The lap swim times, about people of a lot of different ages, not just competitive swimmers, but a lot of the master swimmers and other people that like to swim laps for fitness. Water fitness is very important. The youth swim teams, the aquatic events, and a few of the other ones were team water sports, therapeutic programs, senior programs, and rentals, snorkel and scuba classes. So there's some of the other ones on the list. We're doing some demographic analysis. I don't expect you to try to read this, but just one example showing the population change by census tracts. And basically, the darker red it is, it's losing population, and the brighter blue, the darker blue that it is, the more it's gaining population. And this is important, again, as we see those growing areas of the community to see where the future population is going to be when we look at the location of new pools. We're also mapping items such as where people within poverty levels live and children within the poverty level. So looking at all the socioeconomic as well as this without getting into that. A real key factor is the location of the facilities. And this one tells a pretty good story. It summarizes the area in the light green is everything within five minutes of one of your city pools. And then the area within the gold color is everything within 10 minutes of a family aquatic center, which includes Southland, Woodland, Castlewood, and Tate's Creek. So you start to see some gaps up in the upper left there in the northwest near Masterson Station Park. There's a gap up there in a growing population, one of the largest subdivisions in the state. Then also in the east, you start seeing gaps. And the little tiny dots you see in there, each one represents 40 people. So we can get the dot density. So we can start seeing where people live and where the facilities are. So in the area around Jacobson Park in the bottom right there, you see a lot of area where there's a little traveling time to get to it. And the Hamburg area as well, we've heard a lot of people mention. So as they start looking at facilities and where they're located, that'll play a part in this as well. Also shown on the map, or I don't expect you to see them very well, but we've mapped the YMCA, the neighborhood and the homeowners association pools, as well as the indoor pools at the universities, the YMCAs, the health and fitness clubs and fitness centers. So we've got quite a bit on the map. We also have other that are not shown on here, some of the apartment and condo pools as well, so we're mapping those. The next steps, through the end of October, we'll be continuing the citizen engagement and wrapping that up. So the web surveys that anybody can fill out have about another two weeks, And then we'll get the results from the statistically valid survey and put those two together, a series of charts, to compare the results of those. And then we're doing a lot of stakeholder groups this month, talking to those specific groups that have interest in use of the pools, you know, the swim coaches. We met with the police department today. We're meeting with the fire department, meeting with Transylvania and U.K., public schools, private schools, day camps, daycare users that use the facility. So a lot of different groups that are active in the pools. We also met with several of the seniors that use Picadome primarily, but they had moved to Tate's Creek at the end of the year. Met with them. They were still in the pool doing their aerobics while we were talking to them. It was a fun group. So a lot of other groups we're talking to, getting some good insight from the people that use the pools. And that's very valuable. Then the survey results will be completed by the end of the month. Then we'll be completing the analysis. We're performing an analysis of each of the pools. We have a team of architects, engineers, landscape architects going out and looking at each of the pools in detail. And we looked at them when there was water in the pool. Now we're looking at them with water out of the pool so you can walk around inside the pool area and see the conditions. We've done this in a lot of other communities, and it's worked well. We'll be completing the demographic analysis and also benchmarking in a market analysis. are getting information from all those pools in the communities around us. We've got most of them now. Their statistics, their attendance, and their operating expenses, as well as some of the indoor facilities, such as the Mary T. Maher Center in Louisville is sending us their information. There's another in Indianapolis one in Nashville that are sending us some information on their indoor facilities so we can have some comparison numbers. Then we'll have another committee meeting near the end of the month to go through some of that information. And by the end of November, we'll start looking at some of the facility options to meet some of those gaps in the needs and some preliminary recommendations. And then by the end of the year, having a draft action plan to identify some of the recommended strategies to meet the aquatic needs of the community. And with that, we'll open it up to any questions. Council members? Mr. Councilmember Fred Brown? Thank you, Chair. If I understand correct, you're not done with the study. Correct. Okay, so some of the questions I have, I guess I'll put them on hold, but there's a couple of things that I'd like for somebody to consider, whether it's parks or your area. One would be to give us some type of history on the pools that we have, when they were built and when they were last renovated. Okay. That information, you may have it, it may be readily available now, but I think that should be something that we want to address. Are you getting ready to answer that? Yeah. The Picardome was built in 1980. Silato Pool was built in 88. Castlewood was in 96 as a new totally completely changed facility there. Southland and Woodland were both done in 97. Again, the buildings at both of those facilities stayed, they were renovated. Tate's Creek was renovated and expanded in 2002, and Douglas Poole was in 2005. Okay, Tate's Creek was 1999. You've got some misinformation, unless there's some renovation. You had given me on that, so. But it was rebuilt completely in 1999. Okay. We had a grand opening that year. And if you did some other improvements, I think there were some improvements made to the buildings out there, to the meeting rooms, probably in 2002. Okay. And we'll send you that updated list as well. So that's the newest pool, and here we're looking at almost 15 years on the newest pool. Douglas being the newest one. We basically have not kept up with our pool system, so to speak, as our population grows. So you're looking at all that information there? Correct. Okay. And then does anybody have the information on the particular pools as to revenue and expenses on how those particular pools are doing? Do we have a breakdown on that, or can we get that? We'll be glad to give you that information. We need to dig in that a little bit further. We're just finishing up our 2015 revenues expenses. We'll be happy to send that along. Okay, I think that would be a good breakdown. I would hope all of them are operating in the black, but I doubt that. But that doesn't mean we don't need pools out there, and I think we're probably behind times with other communities our size for not having some real good pools. The other thing, I think we need to look at the infrastructure real close on improvements on some of those pools that were in the 80s as to what needs to be done there. I don't know what's in the budget as far as repairs and maintenance, but that's certainly an area that, and I say this from experience, When we, in 1997 or 8, Tates Creek Pool was going to be, it was in such bad repair they had to close it one summer, and they were going to just bulldoze it over and not even have a pool out there. But we were able to save it, and we put $2 million into building a new pool. I know that firsthand because it's in my district. and that's the last major monies we put in probably so I'm sure we're behind times on that and I guess the other major thing was we need to think outside the box a little bit and start looking at what we need to do on covering these pools or having an indoor pool of some facility of that type right there I know there's dollars involved in that but we're also, this is part of the park system And I think it's an important part. And I think, to me, pools attract the youngsters and the individuals. It keeps them out of troubled areas. It gives them something to do in the summers. And I think it's a great activity. And I think we need to promote it more. And once we get all the other information, I think this council needs to look at it real good. And I know there's dollars involved, gang. but we got a rainy day fund so we're okay thank you thank you thank you councilmember Bledsoe thank you chair I just want to say thanks to Brian and Lindsay and Monica you all have done a great job Pat you've done a phenomenal job I think in trying to steer this committee it's hard to get input from everyone and I think you've done a great job as far as I can see making sure we're getting every demographic every person that we possibly can to have input from and I think at the end of the process we can legitimately say this is a city plan and the city feels this way now how much we can afford it's a whole different discussion but i'm grateful that we can have integrity on this side of it so i wanted to say thank you and um it's going to be i look forward to seeing kind of the end result what your suggestions are so there you go thanks chair council member hansen Thank you. My mic's not on. I know you met with the Commission for Citizens with Disabilities and you got a lot of input there. And I don't remember you mentioning accessibility as for individuals with disabilities in your presentation, but I just wanted to point out that that is on your radar, correct? Oh, yes. And, you know, just like our playgrounds, I think we should have as many pools and playgrounds accessible above the ADA requirements as possible. I also, I was wanting to ask if there may be some children in the city, low-income children, that wouldn't have that opportunity to go get the swim lessons. And you talked about how Monica, how important that is. So I had some ideas how I think there might be some partnership availability to reach out to those children if they're not within walking distance of a pool, which many of them aren't. But when you look at the demographics, it looks like they are close enough to a pool, and I know how costly it is to build a new pool. so I was just thinking that we might do some partnering with some non-government agencies and so forth to help with that issue and keep that in mind. Absolutely, and we look forward to speaking with you about those. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Council Member Evans. Thank you, Chair. uh i'd also like to thank you all for the work that you all have been doing i mean it as councilmember blitzow said yeah getting the input is is really a difficult thing and i think you all have done just about anything and everything you can can think of to to get that input from everybody so um kudos to you on that and uh i think going to what councilmember henson was saying and what you all did mention and so i'll put my pitch out there now you'll see that The 6th District is apparently a pool wasteland, so we will be having one with the Y coming. But as far as it goes for public pools, that's actually a reason I haven't been to a public pool in a while, because there's just not one readily available. And I grew up probably in your district, Councilmember Brown, and went to Tate's Crick Pool, I feel like, every day, every summer. growing up as a kid. So I really do believe in pools and think it's a great activity that everyone should be able to enjoy and everyone learn how to swim. That's also important. But I guess what my question or thought or concern would be, because, you know, we have these trends with the splash pads and everything else, is there something that attractions that are coming up maybe the next 20 years because you know if every city is going to have a splash pad or you know the the slides or something i mean that's it's going to be just a trend that everybody had is there something out there that's even newer that we might want to consider putting in yeah and i don't know if that's it's just a thought that i'm having that if every pool is going to the same thing then we're going to have the same problem we've got now you know 20 years from now because they're all going to be the same and then we're going to be looking for the next big thing so are we are we kind of thinking about that yeah i guess i'm just curious about that i'm not really sure what's going to be up there in 20 years but if 20 years ago you just said we were going to be putting lazy rivers and you know 35 foot tall and 40 foot tall slides in parks i I wouldn't have believed it. So it's constantly changing and evolving. I think the real big change happened in the mid-'80s or so. We started doing a lot more shallow water, which you started thinking about those kids that are in the wading pool, they're about 2 years old, and they're done there. And before you're comfortable in 3 1⁄2 feet of water, you're 8, 9, 10 years old. So what happens between 2 and 8? So we were missing that group when everything was rectangle-shaped. And now, you know, even in the 90s when you did a lot of your renovations, there was a lot more shallow water in those new pools, and that helped, you know, get the attendance up. So the idea is getting something that's for everybody. You know, you've got the lazy rivers, which we see seniors walking against the current, and, you know, people of all ages love the lazy rivers, but you can't always afford to do those at every pool. And the splash pads are something that they're not, it's not a trend that's going to go away. They're a lot less expensive way to develop pools because you don't need lifeguards. That's the biggest thing. You still have to recirculate the water with the chemicals and everything, just like a pool, but you don't have to have the more expensive lifeguards, and the personnel is a huge part of your cost. Slides seem to keep getting bigger, but not everywhere. We've actually got some communities that have gone back and said, we don't want all that. We want to design this just for our community. And so we sort of downsized some pools to make it not something that's going to be attracted to everybody in communities around us to go to, but more for the neighborhood. So there's a whole different level of pools that you can develop. There's the neighborhood pools, sort of the community pools, and then the family aquatic centers, which would attract people from outside. A lot of people have asked, some of the comments were things like shade and family restrooms and better restrooms and lockers. So a lot of the, in the extending the season. So a lot of things don't have anything to do with water that they're asking for as well. It's those other things. A lot of people just love the idea that you went to start using credit cards. It's so convenient for a lot of people. So people really appreciate that. So not everything has to do with water as well. It's the customer service and constantly evolving so you can meet the needs of the customers. Council Member Scutchfield. Thank you, Chair. And I guess I just wanted to bring up. On the steering committee, you've asked them for particular questions as well. On the steering committee, we have people that teach in the Master Swim Program. We have representatives from the Y there. We have different swim coaches from around Lexington. We have recreational swimmers that come and swim on a daily basis at Picadome. And we've had great questions and great ideas come from these people. You know, one of the ones, well, one of the ones that they brought up that talked about, you know, partnerships is working with the local schools to try to do more of an aquatics education. So we are trying to branch out and take a look at different opportunities because just because we put the pools in, if the kids don't know how to swim, we're not going to get them to the pools. And so we are kind of taking a look at the bigger picture, I think, to be able to make decisions. And for council, they're going to come with a recommendation. We can also think outside of the box with things that might be available in our community to increase the aquatics. I will say I loved at one of the town hall meetings the child that got the $1,000 in plate cash that came up and said, where's the candy? They didn't want to use it to rank the pools. They wanted the concession stand. So thank you, Chair. Thank you. I will chime in and say I appreciate this presentation as well, and I really do look forward to the results of it. I do think that we need to keep this in mind when we do have fund balance discussions. I've watched it over the years, and, you know, it's all about making things a priority. and I think this is we have some of the most beautiful park land in Fayette County ever and so I think we just need to make sure we take better care of it and we need to put money into it and that's something that we can give back to our constituents and it pays I think pays dearly so but thank you is there any other discussion of our committee? no? all right well thank you all very much for your time today thank you that takes us on to our next next items which is the items referred to committee and on the first on the list is the aquatics program design council member scutchfield do you want to leave it in here i think it would be appropriate to leave it until we're we're done absolutely sure okay and then we also have the parks foundation uh council member scutchfield i know i've spoken to commissioner read we're going to work on this hopefully we can have something to do with this either removing it or moving forward at some point okay because our next meeting is november 3rd so uh and then the next item is the ethics ordinance council member evans yes that needs to stay all right do you want us to uh maybe have something do you think we'll have a report in november for november 3rd we can a report in november yes okay the other thing we have to remember is is we don't actually have a scheduled december meeting for this committee so if it doesn't if it's not reported in november then the next thing we're looking at is in january so just to remind everybody the bluegrass international center i believe we can have a presentation on that in on november 3rd i believe so and the extended social resources councilmember bledsoe i believe we're looking at that for next year is that okay the board's agencies and commissions do we want it's something that i do think we need to have reported back to us but i don't necessarily think it needs to stay on the committee if we if we can just have an understanding that we would like a semi-yearly quarterly report on on the boards i think we can remove it so i'll make a motion to remove second all right motions by council member scutchfield second by mr fred council member fred brown is there any discussion on the motion there being none all in favor please say aye any opposed thank you okay council member maloney sorry uh i'm looking at the list of what's on there did we remember we i made a motion to put in the uh bike trails and that kind of is that going to be discussed next month or was that in a different committee can you remind me when you made that motion i mean craig and i've been what craig been working with me on that that one's an environmental quality and public work okay never mind but even though it's a park issue but okay thank you all right and then um we have the revision of the cao policy 14. i'll entertain a motion that we remove that from our okay council council member Henson made a motion second by councilmember Bledsoe is there any discussion on the motion there being none all in favor any opposed thank you all right and comp time carryover policy I'll entertain a motion to remove this item from committee council member Henson made a motion seconded by council member Evans is there any discussion on the motion there being none all in favor say aye any opposed thank you and then lastly uh vacation time carryover i'll entertain a motion to remove this item okay council member henson made the motion council member evan seconded it to remove uh is there any discussion on the motion there There being none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. And I believe, like I said, just a reminder, the next meeting is November 3rd. And that's it. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So much. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Thank you. you