# General Government & Social Services Committee - November 3, 2015 > Auto-transcribed civic record · November 3, 2015 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3815 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3815?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2015-11-03 - **Last revised**: July 15, 2026 - **Length**: 7,320 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 General Government & Social Services Committee met on November 3, 2015, at 1:00 P.M., with Lamb presiding. The committee addressed four agenda items during the session. The committee approved the Committee Summary and heard an informational update on the Lexington Global Engagement Center. Two items were deferred: the Review of Ethics Ordinance – Update and Items in Committee. The committee took one motion and vote during the meeting and heard three public comments. ## Attendance **Present:** Lamb, Evans, Akers, Bledsoe, F. Brown, Gibbs, Henson, Moloney, Scutchfield **Absent:** J. Brown ## Votes and Decisions **Ordinance 0130-26** [timestamp: 01:00:45] The Council voted on an amendment to Section 21-33 of the Code of Ordinances regarding vacation carryover deadlines. The ordinance would allow the Chief Administrative Officer to extend the deadline for vacation carryover to the end of a fiscal year under certain circumstances. Motion by Henson, seconded by Bledsoe. **Outcome: Passed unanimously** All nine Council members voted in favor: Lamb, Evans, Akers, Bledsoe, F. Brown, Gibbs, Henson, Moloney, and Scutchfield. No votes were cast against the measure. **Conditions of Approval:** - Approved extensions must be submitted in writing to the Division of Accounting with a copy to the Council Administrator - Employees granted an extension but separating from employment before the end of the fiscal year shall be paid for no more than 168 hours plus any hours accrued during the extension period ## Public Comment Three speakers addressed the council on workforce development and language services. **Isabel Taylor – Global Lex and Interpreter Needs** [timestamp: 00:35:37] Isabel Taylor presented on behalf of Global Lex, highlighting the organization's work with a growing international community. She identified an urgent need for multilingual staff and interpreter training, with particular emphasis on Spanish and French language services. Taylor requested council support for workforce development initiatives and funding for interpreter programs. **Councilmember Maloney – Workforce Development for Skilled Immigrants** [timestamp: 00:45:34] Councilmember Maloney addressed the need to connect skilled immigrants with job opportunities in skilled trades, specifically plumbing and HVAC work. He recommended establishing collaboration with Home Builders and the University of Kentucky to assist professionals in revalidating their credentials so they can work in their fields. **Councilmember Lamb – Support for Global Lex and Multilingual Government** [timestamp: 00:52:26] Councilmember Lamb expressed strong support for Global Lex's mission. He urged the administration to conduct a comprehensive review of job descriptions across government departments to identify positions that require or would benefit from multilingual abilities. Lamb advocated for the systemic integration of language skills as a criterion in government hiring and operations. ## Contested Items **Interpreter Staffing and Multilingual Government** The committee addressed concerns regarding interpreter staffing and multilingual capacity within Lexington-Faulton Urban County Government (LFUCG). While the committee unanimously supported Global Lex's mission, the discussion revealed significant disagreement about the adequacy of current multilingual staff and interpreter resources across the organization. Committee members expressed deep concern over the lack of multilingual staff and interpreter capacity, which prompted calls for systemic hiring reforms and targeted funding to address the gap. The debate centered on whether LFUCG had sufficient resources and personnel to serve its multilingual population effectively. The outcome reflected a split vote on the broader issue, though the committee maintained unanimous support for Global Lex's underlying mission. This distinction suggests that while members agreed on the organization's goals, they diverged on how to implement solutions and allocate resources to improve multilingual services across government operations. ## Approval of Committee Summary The committee reviewed and approved the summary from the October 6, 2015 meeting [timestamp: 00:11:04]. **Key Speakers** The discussion involved Lamb, Henson, and Scutchfield. **Correction and Approval** During the review, a correction was noted regarding a prior motion that had failed with a vote of 2-8. The committee incorporated this correction into the meeting summary. **Outcome** The motion to approve the committee summary passed without dissent. ## Review of Ethics Ordinance – Update [timestamp: 00:12:09] Councilmember Evans provided an update on the ongoing revision of the ethics ordinance. The subcommittee has completed its review of proposed changes to the ordinance and forwarded a draft to the Ethics Commission for their input and feedback. Evans indicated that the process is progressing toward completion, with a final report expected to be delivered in January 2016. The matter was deferred at this meeting. ## Lexington Global Engagement Center – Update Isabel Taylor presented an update on the Lexington Global Engagement Center's progress and initiatives [timestamp: 00:13:16]. **Visitor Engagement and Programs** The center has recorded 1,750 visits since June. Taylor highlighted a pilot driver's education program as a key initiative, noting that 20 out of 21 test takers passed the program, demonstrating its effectiveness. **Future Plans** The center is planning to develop cultural exhibits as part of its ongoing programming. **Challenges Identified** Taylor raised two significant challenges facing the organization: - **Interpreter Availability**: The center is experiencing difficulties securing adequate interpreter services to meet community needs. - **Workforce Integration for Skilled Immigrants**: The center faces obstacles in helping skilled immigrants integrate into the local workforce and find appropriate employment opportunities. **Outcome** This was an informational presentation with no formal action items or decisions required. ## Items in Committee [timestamp: 00:39:08] The committee voted to remove several items from the committee agenda during this discussion. The following items were removed: * Inclement Weather Policy * Comp Time Carry Over Policy * Vacation Time Carry Over Policy * Boards, Agencies & Commissions Key speakers during this agenda item included Scutchfield, Henson, Evans, and Bledsoe. All motions to remove these items from the committee agenda passed without dissent. **Outcome:** The items were deferred from the committee agenda. --- ## Decisions - **Ordinance 0130-26** — passed: Amendment to Section 21-33 of the Code of Ordinances to allow the Chief Administrative Officer to extend the deadline for vacation carryover to the end of a fiscal year under certain circumstances --- ## Full transcript You're gonna leave a mind on, on, on Moon, moon, moon Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon Moon, moon, moon Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon Don't you love her badly? Don't you need her badly? Don't you love her ways? Tell me what you say Don't you love her badly? Want to meet her daddy? Don't you love her face? Don't you love her as she's walking out the door Like she did one thousand times before Don't you love her ways Now tell me what you say Don't you love her as she's walking out the door All your love All your love All your love All your love All your love is wrong It's a single lonely song Of a deep blue dream Seven horses seem to be on the mark guitar solo All your love, all your love, all your love. Yeah, all your love is gone. So sing a lonely song of a deep blue dream. Seven horses sing to be on the mark. guitar solo Why don't you love her on my day Why don't you love her on my day Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo so guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I think we'll call this meeting to order, please. Welcome today to the November 3rd, 2015 General Government and Social Services Committee. And first we have our committee summary. And there's one amendment that needs to be, well, I think that Craig sent around the revised summary of the motion. there was one motion that came out in our packet that actually needed to approve an ordinance as opposed to a policy so but along with those hope has everybody seen the amended summary if there's any questions uh is there a motion to approve the summary all right motion made by council member bledsoe seconded by council member evans is there any discussion on the motion there being none all in favor say aye please aye thank you any opposed all right we'll move on forward the summary is approved and the first item is the review of the ethics ordinance would appreciate councilmember Evans if you would like to supply an update please thank you chair I think this is on we the subcommittee met October the 27th to review all of the changes that had been made and upon that review as a whole there were a couple of concerns that we still wanted to um to hash out but we did also want to send that rough draft to the ethics commission for their input we thought it was the appropriate time to have their their thoughts and concerns as well so we have done that and expect to have their comments um in the next month or so for our next meeting and we expect to have a final report out in january All right. Thank you, Councilmember Evans. And is there any discussion or any questions of Councilmember Evans? No. All right. And we'll move right forward with the Lexington Global Engagement Center. Ms. Isabel Yates is here today to provide us a wonderful presentation that we're really excited to hear about. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's Isabel Taylor. Oh, did I say Yates? Oh, I'm so sorry. That's Ms. Isabel. She had a longer run, yes. She's on my mind today in my heart. Thank you all very, very much for having me, giving me this opportunity to come and fill you in on what we've been doing at Global Lex. I'd like to start first with giving you an update on the international community because I think it affects several of the districts with respect to our new refugee arrivals. District 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 11, and I've put this in your packets. The very newest arrivals at the refugee center are being put in those apartment complexes. And I'm pointing that out because they are the ones that need the most services at the beginning until they acclimate and acculturate to Lexington. The last numbers that I gave you for the foreign-born population have once again increased from spring till now 4%. I look at the Fayette County Public Schools list of English language learner students. They went up from May till now present. They went up from 5,150 to 5,260. And there are two new languages in the group of languages that are learning English. The number of languages at the schools did not go up, but there are two new ones to add to our list, our macro list. So that makes it 133 languages that we are now serving. And keeping that in mind, we had a soft opening of Global Lex in June, May, late June, and late May and early June. We wanted to try a pilot program because we had to establish curriculum, and we had to establish all kinds of do we have the right people and will we have the right response from the community. So I will be telling you more about that particular pilot program. But from June to present, we count some 1,750 visits to Global Lex for adult education mostly, meetings, referrals, the art gallery, and, of course, the grand opening. So at the grand opening, it was on August 28, 2015. We had our first gallery exhibit with 13 artists from around the world participating, all of them citizens or residents of Lexington. And we had performers, about 17 performers from China, from Burundi, and from Cuba. I want to give a very, very quick but heartfelt big thanks to general services, social services, and those departments were particularly very, very helpful. They were part of opening Global Lex and allowing us to do that. And I particularly want to thank two of the division directors from social services, Christy Stambaugh and Joanna Rhodes. Since they have centers, they have been incredibly helpful in helping me see what the paperwork is that needs to be put in place, from intake material to releases of liability to risk assessments to security assessments. So a big thank you to both of them. Information technology, of course, has been tremendously helpful. We have seven computers available for our interns and for our two staff members. And Lexcall also provided us their 311 software that we can now pull up, and Vanessa and I have taken training on that. So we have two staff members at Global X, and they were both transferred from the commissioner's office to Global X. They are pre-existing staff. It's myself and my new assistant, Vanessa Grossel, who is here, Vanessa. And I want to thank her. She has been thrown into the deep end, and she has responded beautifully. So, again, I want to acknowledge her contribution and her help. I wanted to, this is a reminder of the presentation that I gave earlier in the spring. It was pointing out some of the challenges because of our lack of infrastructure in this part of the world. We do need interpreters. Keep in mind the 133 languages. We do need education and training both for ourselves, our staff, our community, and especially the newcomers. and workforce and entrepreneurial support. I'm adding time as one of the challenges because, as you know, this center is responding to multidisciplinary demands, including more and more demands from different LFUCG divisions for interpreter and translations. We used to have five personnel who could do translations to Spanish, for instance, Now there's only myself, and I just do not have the time. So that is a huge factor in the services that we can provide. We're constantly having to prioritize or respond to the issues that the local and the foreign-born communities bring. There's a great, big, wide variety to be sorted out, and we're having to train ourselves to do more training than I expected, and we're having to do research and programming the multilingual assistance, which, of course, all takes time. So this is just a reminder of what those challenges were, and responding to those challenges, we were proposing some goals. The immediate goals, I feel that we have gotten a good start, particularly in internships and collaboration with community partners, and some education and training. The creation of the Mayor's International Affairs Advisory Commission was established by your Ordinance 61 of 2015. So if I could just very briefly tell you a little bit about our interns, we rely on them a lot. We have four University of Kentucky students from the College of Medicine, the College of Public Health, International Studies, and that student, Jamie Love, speaks Arabic, and we have one Hispanic Studies student. From Asbury University, we have a gentleman who is sitting right here. Pastor Tiet Niyonizaghi is a Master of Social Work student, and he speaks French, Kirundi Swahili Kiriwandan. And I want again to thank Joanna Rhodes, because she is supervising his practicum at Global X. From Eastern Kentucky University, we have one business major, and she also is a fluent Arabic speaker. From Moorhead University, we have a pre-med student. In Transylvania University, we have a psychology major interested in cross-cultural communication skills and the psychology of globalization. We also have letters of interest from Georgetown, Midway, and Kentucky State. So as you can see, there is a community, a lot of interest from the academic community, and the students that are coming are very, very highly motivated and very helpful to us. We couldn't do it without them. Let's see. What we have not done well with is the internships that I proposed for professional immigrants. I would like to help them to transition. We are attracting a very, very high level of very highly educated immigrants from around the world, but there is no easy way for them to, or even a way for them to transition to working at their level here. So we probably, Amazon here has one of the highest level working group, and McDonald's has a university professor who teaches biology in his home country, and so we need to redirect that, and we need to give them assistance. They need counseling. They need internships to go into the level of their own jobs. We have many engineers who keep sending me their resumes because they need to connect with our local companies and our local groups that need their expertise. So that's one thing that I would really like to focus on. There has not been sufficient time or even training. But I do want to mention that there is a national program that is called Step by Step that I would like to focus on. Steps to success, it's put out by organizations that work towards integrating professionals in the U.S. And it includes counseling, targeted ESL for workforce development. And so that transition assistance, we are, I'm looking at a couple of internships that perhaps some of our divisions could think about for our very highly educated and for our skilled workforce coming from overseas. And contacting Toyota to see if some of their programs might fit some of our more highly educated. So education with targeted ESL, we've had a lot of collaboration from the community, the academic community and the community at large. For instance, with our ESL programs, UK professors, Georgetown College professors, Transy, There's a huge academic community that is providing us with assistance with curriculum, evaluating standards. And our Fayette County attorney, Larry Roberts, also looked at our driver's education curriculum because he wanted his instructor to know, is this national standard that we are providing? and it was, so we're very, very pleased that we've had some input from some very knowledgeable people. The service, oh, and also in your packet, I put, just to give you an idea of the type of deep level contribution that we're getting from our academic community, I put in there a survey that was done for us for ESL teachers our ESL committee wanted to know what is the standard across the board what kind of support do our adult learner teachers need because there's there's churches there's different schools there's individuals that help with English learning but we don't know what standards or what tools they use. So if they need support, this survey is asking that question. What do you need from us at GlobalX to support you as an ESL teacher? A lot of volunteers are out there, but what are they doing and is it effective? So if you take a look at that survey, you can see the quality of the kind of expertise that is being offered by our community to GlobalX. Arts and culture is probably our busiest area. We are going now on our second gallery exhibit. We started with an international art exhibit, and because of some of the comments that have come into the mayor's office, they're asking, what are we doing for our Syrian refugees? And really, you can't separate Syria and Iraq. It's all combined. And so we have refugees from all over the world, and particularly from that part of the world. And I thought it was a good time to have an exhibit introducing the Middle East through its art, through its culture, and then maybe have a mini-symposium sometime around the 20th of November. and we've been incredibly lucky that Haydar Hatemi lives here in Lexington. He is a world-renowned artist specializing in Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire and his work is just outstanding. I don't know if you saw a newspaper article on him in, was it the neighborhood? The South Sider, yes. And again, there's a link to that article so that you can see the quality of exhibit that we're going to be having and the generosity of his family to loan his paintings to us. So we're very, very excited about that. I think it will open a lot of dialogue on that part of the world and what is going on geopolitically. We also have at GlobalX contributed and had collaboration from FLACA, the Foundation for Latin American Arts and Culture, the UK Confucius Institute, BIAC, which is the Bluegrass Indo-American Association, the Kentucky Chinese American Association, and many others. We have a French cultural component right now that we have, that Aurore Daré, our sister city intern, set up for us with the French embassy in Chicago. We are having quarterly reunions, and our first is November 7th at the Global X. So there's a lot going on culturally, and it's all integrated education and culture. I want to stop at this point and just single out in our education and training one of the programs that we felt was one of the most important to offer to the international community. it's the most demanded, other than job assistance, it really is the most demanded by our population. This was the pilot program that we started with an eight-week program, but it ended up needing to be ten weeks. and we had what I wanted was 10 to 12 students who speak French who we could go through a class and see the results, see how they are doing taking their driver's exam. Obviously, we didn't have a car or a modular thing to do at Global X, but at least we could train them in the laws and the rules of the road. The first meeting that we called, 69 people showed up, and they spoke about five or six languages. French, Swahili, I think Urundi, Lingala, some other languages. Fortunately for us, our interpreter slash ESL instructor spoke all those languages, and so we took them all on. Yeah, and we ended up having, instead of one class, we ended up having five classes a week, two in the morning, two in the afternoon, and one on Saturday, all at the same level, all starting out with explaining the rules of the road. Because you know the Kentucky Manual is only in English. And so if you want to get a car, if you want to drive, and you don't speak English, it's nearly impossible. So of the 69 people that we're taking, and we did classes in the morning and in the afternoon for the reason that a lot of the people that were taking classes with us are entry-level workers. And so their manager might say, come in this week in the morning. Next week, come in in the afternoon. And then they would have to drop out if we didn't have that option. So it worked well. So far, of those, we've had 21 people take the exam that we know of. They've all elected to take it in English. So we're very proud of that fact. And of the 21, 20 have passed their exam. So again, I think we're on the right road, on the right path. And I do want to say that Vanessa reported to a group of Kentucky-wide people that were, it's kind of a Kentucky-wide immigrant group that the Kentucky Human Rights Commission has annually. and she was on a panel and she was explaining what we were doing at Global Lex and she mentioned our driver's education program and she told me she got a standing ovation from people from all over Kentucky and was also approached by Owensboro, Louisville, and Bowling Green to see what we're doing because they need it too. And so I understand that Friday we have a group from Owensboro showing up so that they can actually watch. Now we've moved into Nepali Bhutanese group. The French and the five other Congolese languages and Burundi languages have graduated. And so now we've started a group for the Bhutanese Nepali. And they will be observing that group. So we're very proud. We're doing something, I think, that is very innovative. We're trying to do it, we can't do it as slowly as we would like to because the need is so great. But I think that we're very pleased with the results. So I think instead of reading out my conclusion for you and telling you what we've managed in nine weeks, I'd like to give you an anecdote of what happened with a gentleman that walked in before we opened, Global X. Our art exhibit was already up there from artists from all over the world who are immigrants who have immigrated here. And I was back in my office, and one of the student interns ran back there, and she said, there's a very angry gentleman out in front. I said, why is he even in here? You know, the doors have been locked. And they said, well, he slipped in, and he's very angry. So I walked out there, and the gentleman, you know, I was going to say hello, and the gentleman said, well, I'm a redneck, and I am proud of it. And I said, well, welcome. You know, welcome to the center. He said, what is this? And I said, well, you know, this is our exhibit from immigrants from all over the world. and sometime I want to have a Kentucky exhibit because there is such a rich wealth of art and culture in the Appalachian region and the music, I love the music, and I was very genuine. I really love the music from that part of the world. And so he started relaxing and I said, like, take a look at this. It was a painting of a little deer, and it looks like it's out in the Kentucky background, right, because it's mountainous and lots of trees. He said, that is beautiful. He got up to it, and he was looking at it, and I said, this is by a Chinese artist. And then this painting is by a Swedish immigrant. And this painting is of all these beautiful horses is by an Irish immigrant. And then we went painting by painting. And he turned around with a big smile on his face at the very end when he told me he liked the elephant the best from Africa. And he said, I had no idea. I just simply had no idea. And he said, you know, my ancestors came from somewhere, and they must have had the same reasons for coming. and and to me that that just validated everything we're doing with the gallery because it's it's those aha moments that that that are so meaningful and if i could count the number of times people have said i had no idea um you know we could we could stay here forever but thank you very much for the opportunity to come and talk to you do you have any questions thank you council members if you all have any questions. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Isabel, for the presentation. And I would urge my colleagues to visit the International Center if you haven't done so. It is absolutely beautiful and amazing. I did have one question. Yes, ma'am. One of your challenges listed is the interpreters. So are you looking to, I guess I wanted a better explanation of how we might address this. If you use interns and students, are there services available? What could we do to better? Well, what I'm looking at is more long-term and to provide more stability for not only LFUCG, but area hospitals that are the ones that are in the front line of needing the 133. We might need Spanish more than anything else or French or Arabic, but they need everything. And one of the things that I would like to do is I've been working with two organizations. One is the Southeastern Medical Interpreters Association, and they work hard to bring at least once a year to bring training to Lexington from outside for medical interpreter training, which I feel is very important because it has American values of impartiality, and it has the legal component of confidentiality, concepts that are not necessarily spread around the world. And so it's very important that if you have an interpreter, they're not interjecting their own personal biases and that they are knowing not to go and talk to everybody else about personal issues. So the training is very important, and I'm working also with, I'm on the board of the Southeastern Medical Interpreters Association, and we try to fundraise so that we can, one person, we give about four or five scholarships when we can. It costs about $400 or $500 to train one person for the Bridging the Gap program, which is about 40 hours long. So we have provided, LFUCG has provided a location where people can come and study there, and we don't charge for that. But I do request that an LFUCG person who is bilingual be allowed to take the training free in return. Now, we need to move faster than that. Catholic Charities also brought some training this summer at their own expense, and that helps. However, I think it is part of a workforce development area because a lot of people that are coming are multilingual. And if they can work as interpreters during the time that they're studying to revalidate their credentials or to do something else, that helps us. It helps them. So bringing more training, bringing a broader cross-section of multilingual people will help us. So I'm looking at that. I'm also looking at internships to help with that. So do you have money budgeted for that, for the interpreters? I have. The bulk of my budget for this year was in professional services, which includes interpreters. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to follow up a little bit on you're doing a great job with two people. I mean, I can't even believe how much you've accomplished in such a short period of time. And you have a lot of help. I can't even imagine what you'll be doing. You'll be taking over government. But I just want to follow up on some of the questions you said about interpreters. So on LexCol, we don't have any Spanish-speaking interpreters? No, no longer. We used to have a bilingual person at LexCol, and she left. We do have LanguageLine. Language line is a telephone interpreter service, and that's available really to anyone is my understanding. I may be wrong, but I think that through 311 and 911 has language line, and the Department of Social Services has language line. And so if someone comes into Global X, for instance, and we don't have an intern or someone that speaks, Kiriwandan, we can pick up LanguageLine and request it. Okay. So am I hearing you say that maybe LanguageLine helps for a lot of the specialties, but maybe I'm thinking it's particularly Spanish where there's, you know, a number on that list. Maybe we need to focus more on that in the future. I that would be my recommendation is to hire more qualified multilingual people and particularly in Spanish. We if I'm not there, there is no Spanish at Global X right now. And I don't have time to translate everything that comes into my email. I agree. I don't think that's the best use of your time or talent as well. I would love to see us try to use some of our college or universities, so internship programs maybe, to help supplement some of that. I think you're doing a great job at least reaching out and having those conversations, and that's really important. I mean, I think Global Lex is awesome and could be awesome as an umbrella organization and connector, and you seem to be envisioning that very, very well. Trying. It's a matter of how do we help you do that well, and that's what I'm just sowing it out there so we can be thinking about future hirings. And the other thing I was going to ask you about, I mean, the driver's education program is really interesting. Then you sit down here, referrals. I asked that question on, this is on your immediate goal page on 12. Do you have, are referrals, like do you have ambassadors out recruiting people or? What we have are, it's multiple things. And we have a very good connection. I've had good connection with the bigger communities, not all of the communities, obviously, but the bigger communities I try to have contacts with. Usually it's through interpreters, but they become community leaders. And they're the ones that I send out all my information to on emergency management, on anything else that I feel is relevant to our international population, and even cultural events. I will send it out to them. So we have a good two-way communication system, not for all of the, I mean, we've got 54,000 people who are foreign-born that speak 133 languages. So we're continuously trying to make those connections with the different language speakers. We also have, I love the fact that with our driver's education course, it seemed the ideal time to take a break in the middle and start doing some of our training, like on American culture, on our laws, DWI, open containers, how to manage if you have a home, some of our regulations. Some of the things are just very alien concepts. And we do want to have groups doing maybe an eight-week course on American culture and laws. But I find that the driver's education, that's what brings people in. They're desperate to get driver's education. And so we have a large group of people there already. And so if we can get them there, what's been happening with our referrals is the people that are coming in for some classes. We'll say, I need, we'll notice. They need glasses. They need the dentist. They need maybe food bank. They might need something else. Maybe they're having trouble at school, and we can call that school for them and be an advocate. So there's a very broad range of things that if we have a program, people come in, and little by little, it's trickling out to the community. We haven't done any major advertising because I don't think the level of staffing that we have right now we can handle it. So we haven't really done any promotion. I would agree. My time is up. You've done a great job. My neighbor is South Korean just had her citizen service two weeks ago, and she was telling me all about it. And I watched her son while she went. And it was Cincinnati. It was so neat. There were six languages on my court. Six on my court. and I have to wave a lot because I don't speak Chinese. And so the grandmother, we just wave, and I keep saying I want her granddaughter to teach me enough so I can have a conversation at the bus stop. There is mango languages that the public library provides for free. It's like Rosetta Stone. I wish I had time. Yeah. That's true. But I'm really grateful for what you're doing and anything we can do to be supportive of it. We've got a lot of help. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Maloney. Thank you. Great job. I commend what you've done in the short time you've had this, and I'm excited to support it. Councilmember Lamb and I talked about some of the issues that we're looking at, the challenge that you have, and that's the education and training and the workforce. And one thing that I want to give you a tool out there that I don't know if anybody knows that we have is the trade are very highly needed in this state, from HVAC to plumbers to building inspectors and all those kind of things. And a couple things that we have, Home Builders has started a program to help people who want to be electricians, HVAC and plumbing and all those things. So I would recommend you highly report to be with Todd Johnson, and he would be glad to have that. Now, some of these people that are coming over here may already qualify for some of this stuff. And I know rules are a little bit different and changed, but the good news is a lot of these countries support the International Building Code, which the state of Kentucky is under the International Building Code, which goes all over the world. So those are some advantages that we could have that some of these folks have already had a lot of talent that they won't need a lot of this study to go over there. But I would direct them directly because the jobs are needed out there for them. Because the average person is over 60 years old for plumbers, HVAC, electricians. They're needed. So there's a lot of things. And I think Councilman Lamb might get a little bit more detailed into, like, when you have engineers that come over here, you have doctors that come over here, you've got people looking for jobs. and I know they've got different regulations that they have to, and I hope you all have a relationship with the University of Kentucky, which I think you do, to try to see how much maybe they have to take a semester to make up for what they really need, because they already probably know the main, to be a doctor, to be in the United States, or an engineer, or any kind of, I assume that you have a good relationship to figure out how we can get what they're needed, to start jobs here is sometimes um for instance doctors that are trained in iraq or around they study in english and so they can come and take their boards here their kentucky boards and pass them the problem is when we have a very highly educated person that doesn't speak english and then they need to very quickly fast track and there's the the spectrum is very very wide as to beginner English to maybe advanced English, but their American accent needs to be helped so that people can understand them. And we have talked to a lot of the university people, and they usually say this is a Frankfurt issue. The levels of career degrees and the translating one to the other, so there's a lot of advocacy that I think we need to do. because sometimes the levels may be extremely high overseas, but they just may not meet one or two Kentucky things. So the language and the Kentucky requirements. But it's something that I think we can transition people through internships so they understand their job language quicker. If you're an engineer, you're going to pick up things a lot faster. If you're a plumber, you may not know English, but you're going to pick it up faster if you're interning with someone and you're understanding what's going on but maybe don't have the language. But that's how I hope that people can pick up the language is through internships. Well, thank you. But definitely get in touch with Todd. He would be a good person to work with for the home builders. Will do. Okay? Thank you. Thank you. And I'd like to chime in here now that I've seen colleagues. Isabel and I met two or three months ago, I guess, and she was telling me some of these outstanding stories. And, I mean, the work that you and your staff are doing are just fantastic, phenomenal for this community, and I just applaud you all. It's not a 40-hour job. It's more like an 80-plus hour-a-week job. I mean, it's amazing what you all are doing. Now, as far as I know you all asked some questions about the resources for the interpreters, that was my question. You know, I want to know how I can help, but I don't want to create work that you can't, that you don't have the resources to handle. So I guess what I'm asking is, is how can we help? How can this council help you guys to be able to do more or to do what you're doing now and to do it better? Are there any specific points that, I mean, I know there's probably tons, but I know I'm putting you on the spot here. Well, I think that the commissioner and the administration have targeted certain areas that we want to work on. And the one I personally feel is our weakest is the workforce development. So that's where I could use a lot more help, whether it's through people who have knowledge of pulling it all together. We do, I think there's a wide variety of areas, but for the professional development, we need counseling for them. We need a person that is able to devote their time to creating those internships, to making those contacts with the, say somebody like Maddie, but at the adult level, that creates that kind of a program for us. I don't know if the workforce development dollars fit into this, but we can use, Vanessa is trying to write grants for all, but she really, the time is so limited that we also need grant writing assistance. Spanish translations, I think, across LFUCG. If we had one person, that would be my recommendation for all divisions to be able to pull from that resource. We could house them at the Global X, and they could help man the front desk. You know, just there's almost anything you can think of we can use. Right, right. Okay. Well, I think that this is very important for us to know how we can help. Actually, I have a question of CAO Hamilton, if you don't mind. We are talking about multilingual in the urban county government. Have we ever gone through our job descriptions and actually identified the areas that are – I know that we do this over in police, and I know we have addressed it in social services, but are there other areas in government where we could actually identify that a multilingual should, you know, that should be in our job responsibilities for hiring? Is that? We have never, to my knowledge, we have never done that. Okay. I think we could easily go back, though, just through subject matter and do that very quickly. And see, and I think it's a good idea. I think we should see that. And to go to just address some of the things that Isabel has said, too, I think what our first goal was was to get this center set up physically. And I think she's done such a good job, and General Services has really come through on all of this and made this possible. And our next budget request will focus on what is the next thing we need to do. I think you've got to be careful here, or we need to be careful from the administration's point of view, is we take this to where we don't build up expectations that can't be delivered, that we go at this in steps and in very organized steps. So you'll be seeing a budget that when we talk to Isabel that takes this to the next level, and we probably obviously do not have the interpreters there. And I think it brings up exactly what you've asked. we need to look at this across the board because interpreters are something that can be shared. And at the same time, we are looking for deaf and hard of hearing interpreters, so we need to take a look all across. So it's a great question, and we'll look at it. I would appreciate that. I think that is something that this government certainly, I know from my days across the hall here, I don't know how many times that we would have someone come into our office, and there was that language barrier. And I notoriously, I called Isabella. I was like, help, because we had no way of helping them. It was a complete language. And then we started using language line. And so I truly understand how that our government needs to be more. I mean, we have 54,000 in this county. So we need to recognize that, and we need to step up. And so I would appreciate it if you guys would start checking into that. I don't think that will be any hurt to ask. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hamilton. And the other thing on the driver's ed book, I know Isabel and I talked about that, and I don't know, I have not had a chance to check into this, but I think that we need to check with our circuit clerk, and we need to find out if anything is being examined at the state level about the driver's license handbook. In the last three or four years, we've had very high-level meetings with the governor, the secretary of transportation, and they are members from Louisville, from Lexington, from Bolingar, from other areas have met to try and get them to, it's about a $9,000 expense to translate it from one language to the next, but it's a one-time expense. and I think that at least with our top five groups, so it's going to take a little more advocacy. Okay. Well, what I'm going to suggest to my colleagues here that we actually find out how we can push for this to start pushing for it on a local level. I mean, I think that we can certainly ask it to be considered. And the other part that I was talking to Councilmember Maloney about earlier was about the welfare-to-work grants that used to be used with the Mayor's Training Center. And they were for on-the-job training and workforce development. And I know that, well, I don't know that those funds, those type of grant funds could be utilized for this. But I would think that there could be something else out there on the federal level that could be helpful in that same respect. So I would like to reach out to Commissioner Ford and the CAO Hamilton for you all to look into this and see if there is something in existence out there as far as funding through grants that we can utilize to help with this because there is a dire need for that. And I feel like that process is already out there. So I think we just need to find where the right mechanisms to put it in place. and I can't imagine that we're the first city government to go down this road, so we just need to find out where it has been utilized. And I think that's everything that I have. Again, I applaud you guys for all your wonderful work and your efforts, and thank you for the wonderful presentation today. Thank you. And is there anything else from my colleagues on this presentation? No? All right. Well, that leads us down to our referred items. We have the aquatics program design, Council Member Scutchfield. I believe we agreed to keep this in committee for early next year. Is that still? All right. And then the same with the Parks Foundation. We'll keep that in there as well. All right. The ethics ordinance. I believe Councilmember Evans has expressed it possibly early in 2016. And the Bluegrass International Center, after today's presentation, I don't know. I'm thinking that maybe should we, would you all entertain an idea to leave it in here for another update in a year and see if there's something else we need to be doing to help with this, or what do you all think? No thoughts? A year from now? Or unless Isabel brings it back to us with something that she wants to update us on before that. I like to keep in touch with her on this. So, okay. And then we have the extended social resources that will be slated for March. I believe we're scheduled for that. So I guess that is it. And this is our final meeting for this year. And so this is pretty exciting. I guess the next meeting will be in January. Oh, Vice Mayor Kay. Before we adjourn, and I'm not a member of the committee, so I appreciate being recognized. On the ESI process, I understood that we were going to get something back, that there was going to be a group that worked on revising that process and that we were going to get something back for this coming cycle. So I'm curious about where we are with that. Yes, sir. Vice Mayor, we've begun our review since in the interim of our last visit hearing committee. We are going to target and definitely be prepared by March of 2016. There's a possibility if we've progressed along far enough along that we may be able to get back to the committee with an interim report early in 2016. We hope to have a comprehensive report in March 16, but still shooting for early if there's progress to report. great thank you thank you chair thank you so is there no further discussion I'll entertain a motion to adjourn thank you and all in favor any opposed thank you I'm going to go. I can tell you my love, you will still be strong After the poison summer have gone Thank you. I know you're...