Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll go ahead and get started. Welcome, everyone, to the December 1st Budget Finance and Economic Development Meeting. First on our agenda, we have approval of the committee summary from October 27th. Do I have a motion? Approval. Second. A motion and a second. Any additions, changes, deletions? All right. Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That passes. Next up on our agenda are the October financials for the general fund. Commissioner, welcome. Thank you, Chair. Okay. This is our update through the month of September and follows the same course that we have in the past. The first thing is unemployment rate. And as you can see, the rate is going down. The slope of the curve is the way we want to see it. and Fayette County has the lowest of the comparisons that we have. In September, Fayette County was 3.4% unemployment. That compares to 3.5% in the month of August. The MSA of the area around Fayette County is at 3.5%, and that compares to a 3.7% in the month before. Kentucky is sitting at 5.0 compared to 5.2 the month before, and the United States at large was at 5.1, and that was unchanged from August at 5.1. I would point out to you, if I knew how to point, but you see these little loops in the graph, and they keep going down. But that's to warn you that we usually see our lowest unemployment of the year around the major retail time at the end of the year. And then in January, February, we see a spike go back up. So I would say that our prediction would be that we would see a little mitigation, a little lower unemployment through December, and then to see that seasonal spike. So just to warn you. But as you can see, even with those spikes, the trend has been going down, down, down. Now, I don't know how much further we can go below the 3.5% range, but we can always hope. This next is just a three-month smoothing. It kind of takes some of those spikes out. And the next is selected economic indicators. We just showed that the unemployment is favorably lower at 3.4% for Fayette County. The employment, which the latest information released by the federal government is March, is sitting at 185,000, and that compares to 180,000 March a year ago. Our county building permits are slightly down. They're at about 1,400, and that compares to about 1,600 last month. The new business license are up both compared to the month before and the same period last year. And home sales are virtually flat. They're at 1,054 this month compared to 1,072. That's both above the 850 range that was the same time last year. And we see that periodic spike in foreclosures. We're back into the 40s. We're at 43. that compared to 12 last month, but it was at 41 the month before. Questions on the economic indicators at this point? Hold on, we do have one. Council Member Forremer. Thank you. Just on page 9, or what is page 4 of your presentation, comparison of economic indicators, just it says, where are we here? The second one, quarterly fate county employment. And we just don't have a number for June, September. Just a lag or something? Correct. It takes about six months or more for the federal government, and they only publish it quarterly. So we have not received the June numbers yet. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, sir. All right. I'll turn it over to Director Cook for revenue. Welcome, Rusty. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. As I've done in prior months, we'll go through the top four. The first slide is just a look at it from the current month budget to actuals only. And I want to point out you'll see that we're over $2.8 million in the month of October only. And you'll see that as a trend, and that's because we have timing differences. Unfortunately, we plan our budget based on historical data, and if somebody pays early, that's what happens. An example on this, our due date was typically October 31st for the end of September returns. 31st fell on Saturday, pushed the due date to Monday. However, a few of our taxpayers actually made their payments on that Friday, surprisingly, when they had not done so in the past. So when you look at it compared to our year-to-date, we're up $4.8 million. Majority of that is in employee withholding, $3.7 million, and that is a timing difference with some taxpayers. Net profit, however, $835,000 is not. That's from the economy, as Bill mentioned, doing well. and we had a strong fall filing season. Insurance is up $508,000. Part of that is growth, while some of that is the timing because those returns are also due on the 31st of the month. And the franchise fees is below $260,000, which we've had that trend as we've talked about previously. We did receive a payment in the month of October that's been in November for the last four years, which was surprising. It also came on the last day of the month. Excuse me. Comparing to prior year, we're up 8.1 million due to those timing differences. If you back those out, we're still setting at about $4 or $5 million ahead of prior year, which is showing strong growth. All four categories are up over prior year, even without the timing differences, which is something we want to see. The next month, in the middle of the month of a quarter, is when we'll get a better look at where we are from a trend as we're heading into the December season. And the last slide is the slide for information purposes on nuisance abatement lien collections. Is there any questions today? Yes, first we have Councilor Maloney up. 14 payroll withholdings. And I see where we have a $3,703,000. Am I ahead of you guys? No, you're right on. You're there. Am I ahead of you? Never mind. I guess we haven't gone off of page 14 yet. I'm sorry. We can talk about the top four here, council member, if you'd like, on the employee withholding. I can try to answer your question. Payroll withholdings. But I'm looking at some other numbers. Well, anyway, a similar question I have is that we're coming in well under budget on employment withholding. for him. My question goes to you is, I noticed we've got a couple things that have been walk on the docket that are put on there, new jobs and all that. Is that part of the money that we have the withholdings in there? That would be on the expense purpose. That would be on the other one. That's why I thought I might have been ahead of you. I didn't know. Thank you. Well, let me break down your question. The $3.7 million favorable, variance in withholding is mostly a timing difference where some taxpayers paid us early and we anticipate that that will mitigate in next month's year to date. The second part of your question is in the council work session where we are recognizing some revenue. It is from the net profit line, the next line down, the favorable variance of 835. And as Rusty said, we think that's a real number. We think there is a trend there, and it's not a timing difference. So we felt comfortable recognizing the $202,000 of revenue there in order to have a budget for the proposed police safety officers. To clear something up here, I assume this was before when I came back on the council, is when did we allow to take some net income like this and go ahead and spend it? Did we give the administration the power, even though it's not in their plan or something, as they go along, something pops up? We want to use so-and-so employees. Did we give them the authority to do that? I'm just trying to get a clear cut, because I think those are the kind of questions that will be coming up. I just want to know those things. I'd be glad to comment on that. We've recognized revenue in each of the last three years through a budget amendment before the year is out. one point to make that this is earlier than we usually recognize the revenue. We usually wait until after December. But if you remember in the spring, we've recognized revenue to better reflect what actual revenues are going to come in. The reason we went ahead and did it now is because we felt that net profit favorable variance was real and that it was not a timing difference. And so we felt comfortable recognizing a portion of that. And it's a budget amendment that we have brought forward, which are like the other budget amendments that always come to council, require two approval readings by council. So, and I'm fine. I just want to know what authorities we have given, because usually we're educated enough to know, like, some things like are coming on the docket. We have advance notice. we go through public safety or something like that to know this is what we're committing. I just didn't know how this is new to me because I've been off to council for a while, but I did not know that we give you all the authority that we can put something on the docket. The only time we discuss it will be when you all put it on the docket. That's what I wanted to get clarification on. Thank you. Next up we have Council Member Brown. Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. Same item. This is something new for me. You've been doing it the last three years, but certainly I don't remember us doing it for the 11 years I was on before. And I have a problem with this in that it's not being vetted appropriately. This budget amendment that affected anything in that adopted budget or actual should come to this committee first. Let us discuss it because, and I know this happens, and it's happened, I think, I guess it happened last, early in this year here, but I wasn't paying as much attention to it as I am on this particular thing. We've got a budget amendment in there, I believe for $400 and some thousand dollars. And it says it's coming out of net profits for this year. It's the first thing. I don't know anything about it other than what I read, but it seems like to me that this committee ought to have heads up on something like that. And then on the other side, that budget amendment addresses a work session item that's going to talk about those 10 safety officers, which also hasn't been vetted in the committee. So I'm just concerned that we're putting some things out there in a rush order that this council, especially by committee, has not had that information before. And I know it's coming from the administration. They give it to you. You're just following through and saying we've got those dollars. But we need to look at this, Chair, and this committee. We need to look at this new policy that's out there that I wasn't aware of where you can take monies out of net profit revenues and for whatever you want to budget for without it having some type of process. Thank you. Do you want to respond? I got another question. Well, I would say that I'm approaching and seeing this differently from what you've spoken about. I can think of numerous times where there have been budget amendments to the revenue. As a matter of fact, in previous budget directors, they would normally come 1st of February and recognize additional revenue based on the first six months of the year. the exact same way that we're doing it now through a budget amendment to council. So the fact that we're recognizing revenue in the current year to me is not unique. The uniqueness may be that it's in the 1st of December instead of the 1st of February, but I guess my memory and my perception of this not being a new process is different from yours. I can't remember budget amendments coming to It is a new process You say it's only three years old It's new to me Well I said we did it the last three years I didn't mean that that was the first time It was done under In the Pam Miller administration In the TI administration Actually in each administration That I can remember I think it's a matter of timing Rather than a newness of the process can also can't remember it coming forward to the Budget and Finance Committee. But it's council's will, whatever you prefer the process to be. Council Member Brown, if you're referring to something on our new work session docket today that's new, we can always refer it here for discussion. So you can make that motion at 3 if that's something you want to entertain. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. We skipped a little early. So if I can go back to page 4 or page 9 in our packet, for the new business licenses, it occurred to me we track new businesses. Do we track businesses that close? And I was just curious if there's a way to do that or if we've ever done that in the past. Good luck on that. No, we do not. With our new software, we may be able to start doing that going forward because we will have a close date. But in some cases, businesses don't necessarily tell us until we get a return a year down the road. Or we do an audit because they did not file their tax return. So then we'll go out and, oh, we closed our business, and they'll give us proof of when it was closed at that time. I think that would be great. I mean, I guess the same thing, that they don't have to tell us that they're closing. But I think it would be really helpful just to look at economic development as a whole. If we're looking at how many new businesses are coming in, how many are also closing, just to have a more complete picture than just this one. I think that's a good question. and we can look at it with our saw and kind of start tracking it just to see where it is, because I don't really know how. The good thing is it actually flags it really good, but we're at the mercy of the businesses. Okay. But we'll look into it. I like that. I appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. I'm not sure if anybody's here to address my question, but last month I'd asked about the nuisance abatement and lien collections, and I was interested in understanding why there's such wide variance. I was also interested in actually if we could get a longer timeline so that we could see the changes over month to month. But in any event, that was my question. Well, making the information available to you, sir, in regards to the liens, is a month to month. We can make that available to you. However, what I was told that you needed addressed specifically is the ebb and flow, why one month it may be significantly higher than the others? Is that what the question is, sir? Actually, it was more that what I was seeing, and I have not got now, I don't have the historical information in front of me. What I was seeing in FY16 was a substantial decline in the penalty and interest section. Every month, a substantial decline from the previous year. I raised that question in August, and then in September, the collections went up in a most dramatic fashion. So I just want an explanation for that. What I've been able to capture, I took office yesterday. So what I've been able to gather in the last few days. We should have said welcome. For those of you watching at home, can you tell us your name and new title? My name is Ken Armstrong. I'm the brand new director of code enforcement for the city. I just started yesterday. Thank you. With that being said. No chief, but director. Yes, I was an assistant chief with the police department for 25 years. So this is my new position. I have spoken to Commissioner Paulson. He made me aware of some of the issues that may be brought up today. And I have to be honest with you. I will have to get back to you on some of this. But I see a decline whenever it specifically is in regards to the liens process. Is that what you're specifically asking about this time, or are you talking about the actual income and penalties? I'm sorry. It's both the penalties and the liens and the way that that shows up. and perhaps since you are new yesterday, it might be more useful for you to come back to us. Well, I may be able to answer your question today, or we can do a sidebar later, but what I've been able to gather up to this point is that the totality for the year, this year whenever it comes to liens being filed, is actually going to be the highest it has to have been in five years. What I have been able to find in my discussions with some of the individuals, the ebb and flow can occur for simple things as weather. If we want to file or have civil penalties that we want to file on a certain location, what we will do sometimes is actually extend the amount of time before we issue the civil penalty or ask for a lien in the situation based on weather to make sure an individual has the opportunity to correct the issue. We have a lot of rain and it deals specifically with a roof, work with a private owner to get that taken care of, and that can delay it. There are personnel issues that have happened recently also that has delayed the filing of some civil penalties and some of the liens that are currently in place. And there will actually be a spike specifically in November that you'll see over the last few months of liens being filed and civil penalties because we have been able to correct that personnel issue. Well, I think that's helpful. Could you, is it reasonable to ask next month for you to bring to us and include in the packet essentially the same information that we have on this sheet except starting in January of 2015 so that we can see what the historical record is? And then, again, there may be further explanation. Frankly, my concern was that what I was seeing looked like there was less vigorous enforcement. No, in actuality, this year alone, if you want to talk about liens only, we've served more than we have in five years. I'm seeing liens and penalties. Liens and penalties. Civil penalties, which when are not paid for by the individual, then become liens. Both of them are at highs this year. Okay. Well, it would be helpful to see that. I'd appreciate it. With that being said, I would clarify one thing. With liens, one lien is not necessarily equal to the other. Some are $100 liens, while another may be $1,000 lien. So that may affect the numbers as well, but I'll have that information at the next council meeting. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Hensley. Thank you, Chair. I think maybe this question might be for one of the finance guys, Director Cook. So I spoke to the mayor about this right after I was appointed, kind of half-jokingly. I've started five companies in Lexington, and the first piece of mail that you get from the city is something about send us some money. So as you have these new businesses making these applications, is there some kind of – at what point could we have a welcome, thank you for coming to our city and starting a business? Well, for us, we don't know about a new business until we find out who they are, and then we have to send them a letter to get them registered. If they don't register, we don't know they're here. Right. So through our audits is how we actually find them, or our new accounts folks that go out and actually find them. Now, after the fact, maybe someone wants to take a new business listing and send out a welcome note, I think would be probably a good thing. But we don't really know who they are until they actually register or we find them out on the street. Right. So, I mean, so at some point when they register, I mean, could, if I've told you that I've started a new business, Could the city then generate some thank you for taking a risk and starting a business in our fine city? I don't know if we would in finance, but. I'm looking for suggestions. Yeah. What? Your office. My office. Yeah. So anyway, I was just. It's a thought. Thank you for that suggestion. The one thing that Rusty wanted to say is our taxes are self-reported. We don't send a bill. We don't measure and then send an assessment. They are self-reported, based, and self-measured by the taxpayer. So we're actually at the end of the process from the beginning. But with that being said, economic development process, we'll be glad to look at that. I mean, I understand that, you know, I tell you I'm here first, but it's like at some point it's like I'm here. be nice as a business owner to say i'm glad the city thinks i'm here so just i've heard this among many business owners this is not my pet peeve um we'll be glad to look at it thank you thank you sir council member scutchfield this is along those same lines and i was going to say something earlier but i kind of it was an off segue i opened my own small business a year ago paid my $100 fee, whatever, registration taxes going into 2015. Last month, I got a letter from Fayette County saying, we noticed you opened a new business and haven't paid. Well, if you all, and I know Richard over here knows, most people get my last name wrong. And the way they had sent it to me was Scratchfield instead of Sketchfield. But they found me, and this was our government. so I don't see how it isn't possible for them to find us because they found me twice. Yeah, you don't have to answer that. Anyone else have any questions before we move on? Good topics so far. We go ahead and keep us going to page 14. All right. All right. Since we've had a lot of lively discussion on the top floor, we'll just move into the other revenues here. We have a positive variance in the other licenses and permits, and that's from some of our licensing fees. You'll notice we also have a positive variance of $100,000 in avalorum as well. That is due to motor vehicle tax. They're up over budget. The services category were up almost $850,000, and that is due to some of our detention center fees and EMS fees, the variance there. And then the property sales, I checked into that. Council Member Bledsoe had specifically asked about that last month, and we've sold some vehicles. And so that's what that is the sale of. It's not actual land property. It is vehicles. So Fleet Services got rid of some of our older vehicles. The investment income, that's just an accounting entry, so it looks like we have $125,000 variance, but that could change next month. It just depends on the market. And then the other income, that's just in some miscellaneous revenue that we've received that we didn't budget for. So that's that $300,000 variance. Now we'll go to the expense side. On personnel, for the first four months, we are $238,000 within budget, so we are within 0.4% of our budget on personnel. We're tracking that very closely. You all know we made some changes to how we budget personnel this fiscal year because we had been over-budgeting personnel, and so we're obviously tracking much closer than we have in previous years, and we're going to continue to watch that. Our operating expenses, we are actually overspent for the first four months based on prior years. So we're watching that. We meet with the divisions on a monthly basis to go over their spend. It's just a timing thing. People are spending money earlier. They're starting projects earlier in the year. One of the big drivers of that is our professional services. So we've had a lot of projects going on, big projects in IT. We've got a project in budgeting. Revenue has projects going on. So there's a lot of projects, a lot of things going on that we've spent some money sooner than we have in prior years. Debt service is just a timing issue. And then the partner agencies, that's a timing of one of our payments. So while it shows up as an $800,000 variance, it may not be there next month because it's just a timing issue there. so if you take out that timing variance for the partner agencies we are pretty much right at budget for the first four months of the year so like i said we're going to be monitoring it closely if you add in the revenue and i know rusty said that some of this revenue is due to a timing difference on an early payment but where we stand right now is seven million dollars to the good for the first four months and like i said we know that's not an accurate picture because we did have that timing variance in the revenue that was quite large. So that is our expenses. And then the next two slides are for reference. It just shows current year to prior year. So you can see we've got $9 million more revenue this year than we had at this time last year. And then you can see on the expense side the variance there. Are there any questions? First up we have Councilmember Maloney. I think you know what I'm gonna ask. I always ask this question every time. The net income we have got on page 12 we got over $3,743,000 and compared to last year the little last was $725,000 around that number compared to where we were last this year from last year. I'm on the... I'm sorry. Which page are you on? Twelve. Twelve. Twelve. That one? Last. No. The... Compared to last year. Oh, okay. Sorry. This one. This is where you are? Keep going. One more page. Okay, sorry. Oh, keep going up. Are we done this one yet? Are you on page 12? Yeah, you're on this page right here. Yeah, I'm on that one. I'm asking the last question on the $3,743,000 that we have surplus right now. Compared to last year, we had $4 million worth of surplus. We're $725 better this year than we were last year. But we end up having, what, $20 million surplus last year, something like that. are we on the verge of having another I mean, and I know it's too early I always ask these questions early but are we compared to last year, we're very close to what we're doing this time last year than we were on a surplus Hold on, Melissa, Councilman Maloney this is compared to last year, this is not current year if you flip back two pages you'll see the current year on page 10 Page 10 is the current year If that's what you're asking, I just I want to make sure there's a difference. So with $7 million surplus? Well, no, because there's a timing difference with the revenue. The timing difference was about $3 or $4 million of it was a timing difference with the revenue. So if you took that into consideration, we're at $3 to $4 million there instead of $7. So for last year? No, for the current year. Okay. So we're $3 or $4 million down. no we're three or four million to the good for the current year budget over I'll be back next year same question thank you sir anyone else have any questions on what miss lucro presented okay seeing none thank you next on our agenda is an update on the urban services fund specifically the streetlight funding Commissioner O'Mara welcome and just to kind of give some background from my colleagues who weren't here the council made a major change in how we funded streetlights a couple years ago and this is just to give us an update on is that funding holding is a property tax still the appropriate way to going forward or is it time to look at something more permanent to fix this fund once and for all so Commissioner O'Mara I'll let you take over thank you that was a good recap but in order to talk about streetlights we have to talk about the total urban service fund excuse me this is a dedicated fund that is funded by property taxes for specific services those services are refuge streetlight and street cleaning so we have to take those three programs and look at them within the total urban service fund and that's what we try to do each year both while we're doing budgeting and then again when we close the books at the end of June 30. So what we want to do today is look at that total urban service fund and the three programs within it, refuse, street light, and street cleaning. Now what we've done is prepared a 10-year forecast, and forecasts are based on assumptions. So let me go over just a few of the assumptions that we used in order to come up with this forecast. We assumed revenue and expense growth depending on what type it was, such as a 5% utility growth, but a 2% increase and other services, those kind of things. We looked at either the revenue or the expense and assigned an assumption of an annual growth rate. We also saw that the capital spend for each three of the programs was materially different, so we used different assumptions depending on which program. In Refuge, we looked at the last five-year actual capital expenditure average and used that as our basis to project out what they will spend in the future years. In streetlights, we reinstituted the $300,000 a year capital budget to expand streetlights within the urban service area, thinking that would keep up with the new construction. And then if we were expanding the number of streetlights, we also had to expand the total base for the utility expense. So we grew the utility expense in streetlights not just for inflation, but also for the expanding number of streetlights. And then street cleaning, there hasn't been a lot of capital spent there, and there is need. So we used their capital improvement plan, the most recent one that they had given us, and used that as a basis to project out what kind of spend rate they will do. So given that, the total urban service fund is currently a total revenue of $37.8 million with total expenses of about $35 million, another $3.7 million of capital. That would have a negative cash flow for the year of about $800,000 loss. We then have the transfer from the general fund to this to supplement the streetlights of $2.3 million. That made a positive cash flow for the fund for 2015 of $1.5 million. Using the estimates that we were talking about, We're looking at, in 2016, a total urban service fund cash flow positive of $650,000. By 2020, it would be at $328,000, and by 2025, you would have a negative cash flow of $735,000. If you go up to the middle line, the projected loss before transfer grows from $799,015 to $6.5 million in 2025. And that would require a transfer from the general fund of about $4.5 million. And then when we get to the streetlights, they have actually spent some of the other programs' money. So we have them paying that back over 10 years, and that's that additional $324,000 that would come to pay back the fund for streetlights. Clear as mud. Okay, let me go through the different programs, and hopefully that total will make sense to you. So for refuge, in 2015, total revenue was $3.6 million. Expenses were $27.4. They spent about $2.8 million in capital. They had a positive cash flow of $1.4 million. They have a fund balance of $30.8 million. And at the very bottom is the part I think that you want to concentrate on. They currently have a tax rate for those people receiving refuge of $14.1431 per $100 of assessment. The actual cost in 2015 was .1401. However, if you go to 2025, if the tax rate stays where it is, it would be .1431, and the tax rate to completely support the refuge services, what we call a cost of service rate, would be 1485. So if the current assumptions and the capital replacement, the operating expenses keep going, that by 2025 the property tax rate would be insufficient to support the program for refuge collection. Council members, do we have any questions on just the refuge piece? Only. Anything at all? Great. I want to wait for these all three. Okay, that's fine. But we're going to try to take them one at a time so we don't confuse the issues. Okay. Okay, Councilman Brown. You might have to go back to the last slide, but where you got the total down there, fund balance, that's a total for all three funds, is not? That is correct. So, all right, then go to your slide on refuge. This is refuge portion of that fund balance. Okay, and how much is that, 29? 29.4 and 14. 30 million? 30, 31 million. Okay, so there's a transfer. Where's the transfer from the general fund on there? It is not in this program. It's in the streetlight program. So when I get to streetlights, I'll show the transfer from the general fund. Okay, so can we use that general? I guess my only question I have right now is can we use that fund balance for any one of the three funds? Well, I'm an accountant instead of a lawyer. but my understanding as an accountant is those are dedicated funds that can only be used for this program. You didn't answer my question. I gave you what my understanding was. For which program? You're talking about for— Only refuge. Okay, so you're saying that the $30 million there fund balance, most of the fund balance that you showed on the previous slide is all refuge area. It is. So that's where we've got plenty of money. At the current time. Well, you've got it all the way out to $33 million for 2025. So law says we cannot move that around other than our tax rate. We had the same issue come up with the snow idea a couple weeks ago, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah. And we wrote you all a memo on that. It's the same idea. If you all pass a tax for a specific reason, there are significant legal issues with trying to then spend that money for something else. Okay, let me ask one other question. We've got a rate for each one of these funds. Is that correct? Could we not lower a fund in here and raise a fund in the other one so that we could get balanced out a little bit better on fund balance? Changing of the tax rates can be done once a year. Right. But what's the problem there? If you raise one and lower the other, you still have not raised taxes for the individual property owner. That is correct. Okay. The rest of the story is in the state of Kentucky, there is a requirement that if a tax rate is more than 4%, it is subject to taxpayer recall. And so there's been hesitancy to ever raise any one tax by more than 4%. But according to that, we haven't been raising the taxes in those particular areas because nobody wants, well, I don't say nobody, but I don't like tax increases. But I sure like taxes to be fair. So if you increase one and delete another one, I don't call it that. Well, the other thing you need to keep in mind is not everyone has all three types of services. I know. If you raise one and try to lower it, they may not have the one you're lowering. So you put a monkey wrench in it right quick, don't you? Okay. But hold that thought, Councilman Brown, when we get to streetlights. Commissioner, we've got one more. Councilman Masati. Thank you, Chair. And, Bill, I know this is a question way below your pay grade. What is the break-even number on the house where private is better than public? Do you happen to know that? 250 now? It's gone up then. I would have to look and see. I've done that before, but I don't recall what the number is. We calculated that on the task force three years ago. It's 224, so it's probably going up the last three years. I have a lot of neighborhoods that always ask that question, and I just thought maybe you knew the magic number. I don't recall it, but it's probably the 224. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Bill, we passed an ordinance earlier this year where we were able to move some of that surplus in refuges for other things, like the landfill costs was having a big pile of money built up, and we had some problems over here. for the transfer station, and we were able to, are we still, have we gotten a real good definition that, because when they originally wrote this law, it really should have been a package in the wall, and they really put it in the two different packages, that the landfill would eventually with the number one priority to get fixed, well, it has got fixed. Right now, all we're doing is making sure we stay in compliance, and that money that we have that's in compliance is not very much compared to what we have set millions of dollars in that account. While we have issues for, like, the transfer stations and other things, the definition should be that all this should be under one roof and not be separately. Now, I think we have been able to fix that problem. Is that right? Because I thought we were able to take some of that money and put it in a transfer station. If I could, you're very, this is a very good illustration of how complex all of these issues are and how they're interwoven. And today I only came prepared to talk about the property tax-based urban service district. You're now talking about a fee-based landfill fee, which is itself dedicated and has its restrictions on what it can and can't be used for. and there has been discussion of whether the landfill fee is an appropriate cost to fund the transfer station or the urban service fee refuge is the appropriate place to fund the transfer station. And that's the discussion that you're referring to. The question I have on that page 22, I don't know, the loss, where you got $550,000. Where are you getting that money? Is that money coming from the general fund to pay for that, or is that money coming out of the red? It comes out of the fund balance that's dedicated to Refuge. You see it's third line from the bottom, the fund balance. So if any one year when you have fund balance, if you run a negative, then you would use that fund balance to supplement that loss. So this money isn't coming out of the other landfill, the two differences. It could if we get this definition straight, we could definitely unite them both to what they really should be. Because when they wrote this ordinance, it's because we were out of compliance. And I know this is not the place to fight for this, but I still think all this rest of cash revenue we have can be defined. And that's something I've asked Laura to look into. But we wouldn't even be able to be helpful. We could help these things that come in red and keep them blocked. So I'm hoping that we can fix this problem in the next six months. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Maloney. Seeing no other questions, please continue. Okay, so we've talked about the first program. Now let's go to the streetlights. Streetlights has an additional line. We've put a square around it to draw attention, and that's where we have adopted the policy to supplement the streetlight program with a subsidy from the general fund, a transfer from the general fund to cover the projected losses each year with streetlights. If you look at 2014, there's a $4.2 million revenue. The total expenses were 5.8 with another $212,000 of capital. They ran a $1.8 million loss. There's a transfer from the general fund for $2.5 million, which put the projected net income at $682. but the next line shows you that they had already spent $3.5 million of fund balance to keep the program afloat from the refuge or the street cleaning fund balance. And then the last two are, again, illustrating what the current tax rate is. It's $0.021 or $0.2.1, and you would have to be $0.3.08 to fund the activities in 2014. that becomes .0461 opposed to the .021 by 2025. So you would be 91% underfunded, basically, just from your tax rate. And from real dollars, if you come up to the projected net income and loss there in the middle, it's running a $5.5 million deficit. We would have to match that with the transfer from the general fund, and then we would still owe that $324,000 back to make the other funds whole. By the end of the 10 years, that borrowing, if you would, from other fund balance would have been paid back. A couple questions. Council Member Maloney. I just want to make a clarification here on this. We're kicking the money from the general funds. This same issue came up four years ago. We were in the red big time. That time, the council decided to raise franchise fees to offset this cost. Understand the franchise fee goes to the general funds. So before we all get up in arms about thinking we're robbing the general funds to pay this fee, it really was set to take the general fund's money to pay this. And we're doing better than what we are. Someday we're going to have to catch up with it again. But I just want to educate the council on that, that to make this perfect, you're going to have to raise the fee drastically. We showed the three examples to make the break even for now forever, which would be a great big leap. But the franchise fee was a big help. And understand that there are some extra money coming out. franchise fees that's going back into general funds. Not all the franchise fees paid for all this on top of some additional, got semester funding. So we're probably making anywhere, I'm just guessing, anywhere from maybe a million to two million dollars extra, maybe, or maybe less than that, that's going back into real general funds. But most of that franchise fee is paid for, these streetlights. So I just want everybody to be clear on this. It's not like we just read we're robbing the general fund to pay this thing it's really we passed something to make to get more money to general fund to pay for these lights so I just want to make it clear councilman or Bledsoe thank you chair I just have a few clarifying questions just for myself how many how many streetlights don't have an owner so how many of these are on private residential streets and how many are on business or don't have a payer don't have someone paying the streetlight in front of them. Do you understand my question? I do. Do you have an answer? I don't. Okay. None of these are on private streets. None of these? None of these. So all the ones in the revenue are generated from public streets. Public streets. All right. Let me clarify my question. Is that right? No, it's not right. Residential versus commercial versus. I can answer that. Okay. Excuse me. I now understand your question. I didn't mean private, like. Okay. All of this revenue is from property taxes, whether it's a business property tax or whether it's a residential property tax. In addition, we, the general fund, has always paid about $200,000 to the streetlight fund for streetlights that are on our right-of-way. That are on. That's what I was trying to get at. It's about $200,000 a year. Okay. So. Think Richmond Road going out to the interstate. Right. That's how we move that money over there. Okay. Okay. So what is the cost? Is it the cost of the actual energy, or is it the cost of maintaining the streetlights or putting them up in general? It's all. We pay a tariff to Kentucky Utilities, which is all-encompassing. It is not metered like how much do you use. We pay a flat tariff per light per month for our street lights. Do you know what the tipping point would be if we invest in some capital projects for LED lights instead? I'm guessing it would be huge. I'm just curious. The problem we have is that KU does not have a tariff for LED lights at this time. And we've done some experimental work with that in Triangle Park, not Triangle Park, in Phoenix Park, on trying to see what that looks like and whether it generates enough lighting for street lighting. But at the end of the day, until the PSC creates a tariff that allows us to fully go into that utilization, it doesn't make sense for us. We would be doing something that we're not getting the economic benefit of. Sure. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Bill, this is hard for me to understand. I guess I want to know, why is this such a moving target all the time? Why is this one particular streetlights, this component, why is it such a moving target all the time? It seems that we're pretty stable in the other ones when we get to this and this. The costs exceed the property tax rate assessment. And we're never, ever going to be able, and that's never going to be able, unless we raise the taxes on it. Even though what Richard said about the franchise fee, that still doesn't cover it. Well, we have modeled that the general fund would cover it. That's what's in the box in the middle of the page. So we're currently in at the 2-3, the 2-1. By 2025, that would be the 5.5 million that would need to come from the general fund. But this, more than any other fund, we have to subsidize, correct? Yes. Just because of the cost, you're saying? The cost exceed the revenue from property taxes. And there's no other model that we can? that's what we're getting to okay all right i'll hold that pop in thank you council member hensley i didn't see you sorry that's fine thank you chair um commissioner martin um on the led light that you experimented with I called the wrong name. Charlie. Was there a cost savings in the test that you saw? I mean, were you all able to measure that? I would have to get James Bush to come and give you a report on that because it dealt with, it's like 10 or 12 streetlights that are in that area, and I can't recall the data on that. But we can get that information for you, and I'll provide it to you. The reason I was asking it, I mean, if there is a, if we're paying basically a managed services fee for street lights to KU, if the tariff is only supporting non-LED lights, why wouldn't we ask to send a resolution or some notice to the Public Service Commission telling them to create a tariff so that we can use LED lights if there's that much of a cost? James would have to give you a report on what the test has shown to date. It also deals with how much the LED lights cost over the current lights and how long they last versus the current lights. So you've got to look at the whole picture instead of just one little segment of it. It's a little more, it's not totally complicated, but it's a little more, There's more data to it than just us getting a tariff, and that's why the PSC to date has not done anything on that. I agree that down the road that's something that needs to be done, and I think KU agrees with us on that. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else on streetlights? If not, I'll ask for a couple things going forward. I know we did this two years ago, but can we get other funding options that Councilmember Massadi alluded to for our next meeting, such as a flat fee. We talked about that. That was around $5.59. Going all franchise fee. That motion was made two years ago and failed 8 to 7. But if you raise the franchise fee another 1% and do away with the property tax, it pays it forever. Because keep in mind, that franchise fee is tied with the utility rate they charge us. So every time they raise rates, we get more franchise fee. That would be another model. And then the third model would be, obviously, at the bottom, raise property tax so it actually matches what it's costing us. And can we put those three options side by side so we can have some frank discussion on long term, how we're going to solve this? Because seeing all that red up there doesn't make sense to keep going down this path. You only want this for streetlights, analysis for streetlights. Well, yeah, I mean, this is the big one. We can talk about street cleaning as well if we need to. Thank you. Carry on, street cleaning. All right, the third program is street cleaning. In 2015, they generated $1.8 million through property taxes. Their spend was $1.5 with another half a million dollars in capital, which gave them a net loss for the year of $266,000. Their fund balance in 2015 was $3.8 million. If you then go with those capital spends and those revenue and expense assumptions, By 2015, their loss is about half a million dollars a year, but they have exhausted their fund balance. They're now in the red by $444,000. If you look at their property tax rate, currently it's in 2015, it was .00097. the true cost of service was 0114 by 2025. If you keep it compared to the current rate of .00097, the actual cost of service is 0126, about 21% increase in tax rate by that point. Got a couple on this one, too, Commissioner. First up, Councillor Maloney. Thank you. let's get back to where we can be creative on these kind of things. For instance, I think street cleaning has a lot to do to keep what goes in our sewer treatment plants, I mean, our serum water and sewer. I'm wondering if there's a way that we could use some of this cost to offset that use instead of we have to raise the taxes. But a lot of this stuff is really made to stay in compliance with the EPA. And I was wondering how we could possibly tap in some of that fee there. Can that be possible? I mean, I know it is a water quality EPA issue. We keep those streets clean. Well, I would comment that the street cleaning has an operating expense that has to be covered by some sort of revenue. So current model is a property tax assessment. Another model is fee-based. and we currently have a sewer user fee, those fees are going to be going up in order to cover the EPA. If you want to incorporate these fees to be covered with the sewer rates, then that would just have the sewer rates go up higher. I'm not just throwing an idea like that. I mean, when you individually raise the tax, like people notice that. Now, when you raise it with just stormwater, it don't have to be as much. we're just going to try to do a percentage. You won't see such a big deal on your, and I know it's still going to be the same money coming out, but it just seems like to me it'd be less burdened to do it on a sewer feed than it would be to try to raise the taxes up on this one. And you can see, I mean, I'm just trying to figure out an easier way to do as long as we say in compliance with the EPA. Councilmember Brown, Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. A question there. It looks like to me when you're doing your projected net income on street cleaning, we've got losses there going forward, even for this year. But it looks like the capital item is one that's forcing us into that net loss. That's correct. What are you talking about each year? Is that one vehicle per year that you are projecting to buy? Yes, about half a million, I think. Is it two? Two. So how many vehicles do we have out there at present that covers our street cleaning? And something we're all going to see and G with these new trucks Richard says there's 11. Is that sound about right? So we're going to replace 11 with 2, 4, 6, 8 within the 10 years. Is that a fair assessment? Has somebody looked at that? I thought these things lasted a lot longer. We're getting one this year. We needed to. We're getting one. And keep in mind we're adding more streets like we've got Citation Boulevard that's miles long. So that actual for fiscal year 15 is not correct because you only added one? I can't tell you what other capital. I can just tell you that we're in the process of ordering one. You see what I'm talking about, Bill? You said you had two up there. You asked me about a half a million, whether that was one or two. Yeah, they said two. But we're only really doing one. So 2015 looks better. this is all about the assumptions we used in order to build this 10-year assumption understand that and we knew that we were behind in replacement of street clean equipment it was it was put on the back burner uh during during the downturn and so we knew we had an aged fleet and so we kept that spend rate for the 10 years that answers it thank you thank you anyone else on the street cleaning I would ask can you maybe for next meeting as well come back with maybe a different model going forward in terms of what needs to be the true tax rate to cover this and also when we did the water quality management fee as part of our discussion on the task force we asked about incorporating street cleaning into the water quality management because most of the street cleaning benefits water quality in some way or form why not incorporate the 1.6 million expense into the water quality fee instead of going this method going forward. I don't know if that's feasible still, but we did have that discussion when we had the water quality fee and created that years ago. It may be a combination of water quality fee and sanitary sewer fee, since again, it's affecting both of them. Councilman Hensley, did you have a... Just one final question on the street cleaning. Do those assets run 24 hours a day, three shifts, or how do we staff those? If we were buying a half-million, quarter-million dollar truck, how are those utilized? I'll have to get back with you on that. I know that we have plans to do it all the time, but some of that had to do with when we get to C&G vehicles because they're quieter in the residential areas. Of course, they cost more money. All right. Thank you. But I'll get that information for you. OK, thanks. Vice Mayor Kaye. Thank you, Chair. Bill, you've said that not everyone pays all these fees. Is that true of street cleaning as well, or is that? Yes. So which? OK, so who pays and who does not pay on street cleaning? How is that? It's determined when the properties come online as to what services they are to receive inside the urban service area i couldn't tell you the rules of how those are determined uh maybe up to the developer so some streets get cleaned and some don't i think most new development is put in full urban services area which is all three services there are some limited exceptions to that but if typically a new development goes into full urban services area which is all three services which includes street cleaning as part of that. So in the places that do not get street cleaning, that's again a remnant of... I think it's a remnant of... If you're in full urban services area, you get all of them. What I don't remember off the top of my head is if we have a district outside of full urban services area where you get street cleaning. I don't remember that. But you all have like eight or ten different tax districts that are set up that have a combination of these different services. I don't think there is one for sure that's just street cleaning. I think you may be able to get street cleaning in combination with one of the other two, Streetlight or the refuse service. But typically, if you're getting street cleaning, it's because you're in the full urban services area. Okay. So maybe this is a question for Bill. Is it possible to get at least a close estimate of the percentage of areas in Fayette County that receive each of these services? So is street cleaning, you know, are we getting 85% of the properties? Is that possible? Yes, we can do that. Because I think that would help me understand exactly where the equity issue lies. because right now, essentially, anything that is not paid by the people who are getting the services is paid by everybody. It comes out of the general fund. We're making up the deficit with the general fund. That's something that everybody pays taxes on. On streetlights? On streetlights, on streetlights only. Well, as you project out, we have some other, I guess we have deficits on street cleaning when we get far enough out. Right, correct. But in any event, so it's primarily on street lights. Anyway, that would help me understand kind of what the fair allocation would be. Be glad to do it. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Maloney. Going back to my knowing a little bit about this is I think every street has to be cleaned once a year. Every street. Now, some of those who pay this extra fee get extra service. They get the truck to go around three or four or whatever time. But by my knowledge, every street is supposed to get once a year. But that's going to bring back to the question that I have. if we go and work with water quality, because all these streets have storm waters and a sense of state, those streets that are not paying the regular fees, maybe we should put them on the list to stay in compliance with the EPA. That's why I was bringing that up to make sure that we do now. And that's from the history that I've been told. And we're going to have that option. and we're going to bring in the next meeting and look at that option. Anything else on the street cleaning? I would just point out, too, keep in mind that nonprofits, government entities, the school system, they don't pay any of these taxes, but we perform the service. So when Councilman Bledsoe asked about street lights, the ones in front of our building, we don't pay for it, but we get them out there. So that's where some of that general fund use comes in to play. So just keep that in mind, too. I think last check, and Bill, I don't know if you can find this number, what percentage of taxpayers or nonprofits and government entities that don't pay property tax I think it was in the 20% range but that's one out of five properties don't pay these fees but get the services so just keep that in mind as well anything else Commissioner not on the subject all right who's going to present next on the contingency fund you're up again good afternoon yeah in your name Councilman Councilman Farmer did you want to say anything before he gets started this was an issue you had in committee I think that the stuff in the packet is a great summary of the conversation we had last time if we give approval they'll be able to draw up the appropriate ordinance changes and bring them forward to us in January thank you sir thank you Councilman and I will be a substitute. Tyler graduated and went on to other venues, and we wish him well, so I will try to fill his shoes on this presentation on contingency fund. But I do want to have a special thank you to the mayor's fellows who have been instrumental in doing research and helping us answer some of these best practice questions that we had in doing this analysis. So council asked for us to review the contingency fund. And so after going through that intense review of what people were doing, we found that there wasn't one best, there wasn't one common, that it was pretty much all across the board, that we had some uniquenesses of our situation that we did not find in other places. So we tried to come back and say, what is it that we think would be a good thing for council to take under consideration if they wanted to amend or change the current Economic Contingency Fund ordinance? So back when the ordinance was established, we did not have a contingency fund balance. We had just come out of some economic hardships where there was very tight budgets. Revenues were up, and so council decided that that would be a good time to establish an ordinance and to try to build that contingency fund up. It's now at 9.1%, approaching the 10% goal that has been bounding around. but we found that the actual triggers or the calculations necessary to allow the city to have access to these funds are very complex and didn't seem to be realistic after going through the biggest downturn in 50 years and the calculations saying that basically, nope, hands off, you really can't use these dollars. So with that background, we're wanting to introduce to you a name change to memorialize the goal to look at the deposit process and what the eligible uses of the fund might be, what the triggers would be when we should be able to access the funds, and the process to withdraw the fund. So these are things that we wanted to bring to your attention for your consideration for amendment. The first is a name change. It says an economic contingency designation, And we think that contingency designation is a more encompassing and accurate description. The eligible uses could be something other than an economic emergency. And that many cities, well, most cities do not have an economic only. They have a contingency fund. And so it's open for what those are. Now, the parameters are important, and we'll get to that in a minute. But given that observation and the parameters we're supporting, we suggest the name change. Next is we have talked about a 10% goal, but it is not in the ordinance. And so memorializing that the goal is 10% we thought would be bringing it up to date with what current expectations are. I am using the goal, though, so that it is up to the current situation in economic times as to how fast we get there and how we maintain it. The next is the deposits. We currently require a $50,000 a month deposit to the economic contingency, and then 25% of the unassigned general fund is required to put into the fund. It doesn't say what to do when you reach your goal. So at this point, we would continue to add to the contingency fund in excess of 10% at whatever that calculation is. A proposal for consideration would be to maintain the $50,000 a month to show that we are continually growing the fund and that once a year the Department of Finance would report out to the Budget Finance and Economic Development Committee the dollar amount necessary to reach or maintain the 10% stated goal. And then both the administration and council then would decide what deposit in addition to the $50,000 a month would be decided upon each year. And that maintains a commitment to the fund but allows the flexibility according to whatever the current economic trends are. Eligible uses, we currently have extraordinary needs of an emergency nature. That's really not defined. I gave an example of that, which I think was what they were referring to. And then a revenue stabilization in the event of unanticipated revenue shortfalls over a three-year calculation. And we are proposing adding a third, which is an unanticipated situation of an unusual nature have presented a need for a nonrecurring expenditure. Now that's very wordy. I tried to come up with something that was less, but I finally just left it alone because we pulled it out of Columbus, Ohio. They have a triple A bonding rating, so it seemed to work well for them. And so we wanted that to be in consideration in addition to an emergency nature or an economic stabilization. The triggers, we currently have this mathematical equation that looks at only the three top revenue sources and what their three-year trend is. It has to be more than 10% down and this kind of thing. We propose removing that equation and going with a majority council vote is required for eligible uses of proposals. In this way, we would have something that is not so restrictive and mathematically just didn't seem to stand the test through, as I said, a very severe economic downturn and we had it so stringent that the access really wasn't there. And then finally, the request process, we currently have a requirement to submit that mathematical calculation to the CAO we would propose that any request be submitted to the CAO, whether by the administration or the council, with the information about what the uses and the costs would be. And this would make sure there would be full disclosure of any proposal, and the use of funds would have a justification with it. So that's four points of discussion, and we welcome council's comment. Very precise. Thank you, Commissioner. First up, we have Councilmember Bill Farmer, Jr. Thank you. Others have questions. I was going to offer a motion on this, and rather than complicate the conversation, let's ask questions first. I'll pass. Thank you, sir. Councilmember Brown. Thank you, Chair. I guess I need a little history lesson because we had the first ordinance was in 96, which I was a part of. And help, if I remember correctly, Dr. David Stevens and I drew most of this up. And then along in 2006, and I'm not sure what the thinking was there. I don't know if anybody on the council here was here in 2006. But the ordinance was changed completely and really got complex and, you know, looked like it was just really restrictive. and can somebody tell me why they went to that extreme? Was it broke to start with, I guess? Anybody know? Well, I can give you my perception and then we can have other people share, but the fund was not growing very rapidly. It was a very, very flat increase. And so I believe... Flat. Flat, okay. Slight rise, not measurable. And so there was concern that it would not grow to a sufficient number quickly enough. That's the background that I'm aware of. And that number was 5%, correct? That number was 5% in the original ordinance. Okay. Is that it? Well, he answered me from what his knowledge is. I don't know what was all this input. And when Dr. Stevens and myself and Ed Lane sat down on this, one of the big thrusts was to get money into the fund because we definitely were well underfunded. But the other big issue was how do we keep councils and mayors in the future from just robbing this fund and never letting us actually grow money? So that was the reason why we added the equations and made it – and maybe made it too tough to get money out. But there was a reason so we can get to the $31 million and change or 10 percent of our general fund without people robbing it all the time. And that was the fear. Because that's what was happening. And if I may answer, I don't think it's ever been robbed. Because the equation won't let you. Exactly. Well, I don't think the original, it wasn't robbed for the 10 years that the original ordinance was. But no money was going into it either. So that was the other big issue. Well, a little bit was going into it, but right. Look how far it is. Yeah. This was what was going on fire. I don't have any problem with getting more into it. But I think there's, you know, as I've already stated, I don't I think it max it should max out. And then I also I think this is too restrictive because what's the fund for to start with if it's not an emergency fund? And I don't think it even qualifies as an emergency fund much when you go through all these calculations and everything. So I just I think we need to make it a little simpler. Council member or vice mayor. Thank you, Chair. I feel a couple of questions. The first is on page 31 in our packet, page 5 in the slide. It says the contingency designation shall maintain a goal of 10%, et cetera. When you say maintain, I'm kind of following up on what Council Member Fred Brown has just asked. Does that mean that the way that you think about that is that we would be at 10% and not exceed 10%? We would not fall below it if possible, but we would also not exceed 10%. So that's how I interpret maintain, but I'm curious as to whether that's how you interpret it. Well, what we were trying to say was memorialize this 10% goal that is talked about but is not in the ordinance anywhere, and then that the goal would be to maintain 10%, not to make it 25%. Now, council can choose to, but the goal is to obtain and then maintain 10%. Okay, so if we were at 10%, then the way that you think about it, your recommendation to council would be continue with the $50,000 a month, but don't add any more funds because we're at 10%. Well, actually, our modeling says the $50,000 a month wouldn't maintain 10% because of revenue growth, so that there would be a necessary to add something in addition to that. But that would be up to council to decide whether to add more to get to the 10% or to get to 9.8, 9.7, whatever. Yeah. It's showing that flexibility, even though we're maintaining a goal of 10%. Okay. The second question has to do with the loosening of the requirements and making it possible to use that fund for a variety of purposes, which I think is a good idea. If we were to do that, would that change the way in which the administration thinks about year-to-year budgeting? And I ask that question because we've had a fund balance every year. Is this true? Even the tight years we ended up at the end of the year with a little bit of money. Well, $500,000. Yeah, so there's been either a small or medium or a large fund balance at the end of every fiscal year, which we've then allocated. But the way that I think about that is that there were many needs that did not get included in the original budget because we were budgeting conservatively. We wanted to be careful not to put those expenditures in a budget when the projections might not justify that. There might be a downturn. if we loosen the restrictions on the contingency fund, does that make it possible to be a little less conservative in estimates going forward so that we end up with less of a fund balance, which I think creates its own problems? Is that possible? Vice Mayor, let me dance around that, if I could, please. Do you want to do a poker or a waltz? I have. I get in equal amount of trouble for having overspent the budget as well as underspent the budget. Because either one is opportunity lost. And so our goal is to try to better manage the actuals closer to the budget. we have been had an upturn we have been conservative wanting to make sure this upturn was real and and i acknowledge that but i also acknowledge that we just came from years where we actually reduce staff and let people go that's painful as well so the art of budgeting and managing is to be as close as possible. And that will continue to be our goal. We will continue to have to read the tea leaves to see how we feel the economy is faring in central Kentucky. I think I understand. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair. Having served under five different mayors, I can see the different strategies from each one that would be different as far as how that they would have a scenario of an emergency nature. And I was wondering if you had specific scenarios from other cities where contingency funds had been utilized that were other than economic or emergency. We did. My mind's kind of fuzzy as to remembering it. They were usually one time in nature and were not like expanding staff. However, some, to give full credence to the research we got, there are some that say you can spend it on something that will increase revenue, equal to or in excess of the investment. So then you're into economic development and whether those projected revenues come to pass or not. So it's been used for all sorts of items, usually one time in nature or specific contained programs that are being energized or brought forward as new. Okay, thanks. The other thing I would suggest or request that I'm a process-driven person most of the time, And I wondered if we could include some type of a process for introducing this to the council so that it just doesn't appear on our work session five days, work session agenda five days prior to our work sessions. and I look at my colleagues as I say this because I think that it would be beneficial for us to have some time to digest any type of emergency uses or whatever uses, scenarios that the administrations would like to use in the future. and in order for the council to be able to best make decisions then we have to be able to vet it and have proper timing so i don't know if there's a place in this ordinance i would suspect suspect that there is that we could put in there that the process that the administration would need to be bringing that forward at least i know that if it's an emergency situation that's one thing But if it is not an emergency situation, then I would suggest that there be a time frame in there of at least two weeks at a minimum, I would think. I mean, just because that way we can have a proper time to vet it. So thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Brown, you're back up. I'm not sure on what the procedure is here because I've already spoken once. But can we ask questions on each particular item? Do we still get some time to do that? Anyway, I'm on here, so I'll ask you. Three minutes. Bill, just a question on the slide before. I'm looking at the ordinance of 2006, and under Section 4 it says, number two, a budget to deposit of $50,000 per month will be required in each fiscal year until the economic contingency designation is at least equal to 10% of the last completed fiscal year total general service district fund revenue starting with 2007 fiscal year. I think you stated that it's still not the one. On your current, the proposal there, it's already in the budget. According to this amended budget, I mean, this amended ordinance, it has the 10% in there. then i stand corrected i didn't think that we had the actual 10 stated as a goal but i guess i'm reading the original okay i just thank you chair all right anyone else on this topic all right so are you going to prepare some ordinance changes and bring us back a rough draft if council wishes would be glad to do that customer farmer it's your item is that what you were looking for with today's discussion or you had a motion I have emotions at this point. I don't there were a couple of questions about some of the substantive parts of this Are any of those? not serviced by moving forward and having them bring this back in in legislative language, I think the vice mayor and Councilmember lamb or those things if we if we have a motion now to have them codify this and bring it back I guess to committee strike me then I would move that we have the administration move forward with codifying these changes. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second by Vice Mayor. Any discussion? Councilman Brown. On your motion there, does that mean it will come back to us with an ordinance written? Yes, sir, back to this committee. Back to the committee as a written ordinance based on the proposal from the administration. Yes, sir. Then we can digest it. As you wish. Thank you. All right. Seeing no further discussion, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. That passes. Thank you very much. Last item on our agenda are items referred to committee. We won't go through each one, but next in January we will have the folks from our auditors here to discuss our CAFR, and I believe a copy of the CAFR is ready to go. It will be distributed to council members hopefully this week before we go on break. So we'll have that CAFR presented to us in a formal presentation in January, along with the Urban Service Streetlight and Street Clean Information, the Contingency Fund, and our normal updates. Anything else before the committee today? All right, see you then. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Motion and second. All in favor say aye. Any opposed? We're adjourned. Thank you all. Any opposed? We're adjourned. All in favor say aye. Any opposed? We're adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you.