# Budget and Finance and Economic Development Committee - February 23, 2016 > Auto-transcribed civic record · February 23, 2016 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3882 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3882?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2016-02-23 - **Last revised**: February 23, 2016 - **Length**: 17,750 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 Budget, Finance & Economic Development Committee convened on February 23, 2016, at 1:00 PM with Stinnett presiding as the meeting officer. The committee addressed six agenda items during the session, covering a mix of administrative approvals, financial updates, and informational presentations. The committee took three formal votes during the meeting, approving both the January 26, 2016 committee summary and a contingency fund draft ordinance. The remaining four agenda items were informational in nature, including the January financials report, a SCORE presentation, a Downtown Development Authority update, and discussion of an occupational license fee exemption. No public comments were heard during this committee meeting, allowing the committee to focus on its regular business and informational updates from various city departments and partner organizations. ## Attendance All council members were present for the February 23, 2016 meeting. **Present:** Stinnett, Moloney, Kay, Lamb, Farmer, Scutchfield, F. Brown, Mossotti, Bledsoe, Hensley, Akers, J. Brown, and Gibbs (13 members) **Absent:** None **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions The committee took action on three items during the February 23, 2016 meeting. **December 1, 2015 Committee Summary Approval** [timestamp: 00:00] Scutchfield motioned to approve the December 1, 2015 Committee Summary, with Farmer providing the second. The motion passed unanimously. **Economic Contingency Fund Ordinance Amendments** [timestamp: 02:00] F. Brown motioned to approve amendments to the Economic Contingency Fund Ordinance, seconded by Scutchfield. The motion passed unanimously. **Monthly Deposit Requirement Suspension** [timestamp: 04:00] Kay motioned to approve suspending the $50,000 monthly deposit requirement if the 10% goal is reached, with F. Brown seconding the motion. This item required a roll call vote, which passed 7-2 with no abstentions. The seven members voting in favor were: • Bledsoe • F. Brown • Kay • Mossotti • Stinnett • Lamb • Hensley Moloney cast the lone recorded vote against the motion. The vote count indicates one additional member voted against the measure, though their name was not recorded in the available data. All three motions were approved, with the final item being the only contested vote of the meeting. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included one financial item for consideration. **Monthly Financial Update** The board received a monthly financial update during the meeting. This was presented as an informational item with no specific dollar amounts, vendors, or resolution numbers associated with the report. No action was required on this agenda item. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this meeting record.* ## Contested Items The February 23, 2016 meeting featured one significant area of contention regarding the Downtown Development Authority's role and effectiveness. **Downtown Development Authority's Role and Effectiveness** Council members engaged in a heated discussion about the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), expressing significant frustration over what they perceived as a lack of tangible results from the organization. The debate centered on concerns about duplication of efforts among various downtown organizations and questions about the DDA's overall effectiveness in achieving its stated goals. Multiple council members voiced their dissatisfaction with the current state of downtown development efforts, though the specific names of participating council members and the exact nature of their complaints were not detailed in the available records. The discussion appears to have been particularly contentious, with members openly questioning whether the DDA was fulfilling its intended purpose and providing adequate value to the community. The core issue revolved around accountability and results, with council members seeking more concrete evidence of the DDA's impact on downtown development initiatives. Concerns were also raised about potential overlap and inefficiency among different organizations working on downtown issues, suggesting a need for better coordination or restructuring of responsibilities. The outcome of this heated discussion was not specified in the available documentation, leaving unclear whether any immediate action was taken or if the matter was tabled for future consideration. The intensity of the debate suggests this was an ongoing concern that had been building among council members prior to this meeting. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this contested item discussion.* ## Approval of January 26, 2016 Committee Summary [timestamp: 00:00] The committee reviewed the summary of their January 26, 2016 meeting as the first item of business. Stinnett led the discussion of this agenda item. The committee examined the written summary documenting the proceedings and decisions from their previous meeting held on January 26, 2016. Following their review of the meeting summary, the committee voted to approve the document as presented. The January 26, 2016 committee summary was officially approved without any noted revisions or concerns raised during the discussion. ## January Financials [timestamp: 01:00] Commissioner O'Mara presented the financial update for January during this informational agenda item. The presentation focused on two primary areas: unemployment rates and revenue streams affecting the jurisdiction's financial position. The financial report served as a routine monthly update to inform the board and public about the current fiscal status. Commissioner O'Mara delivered the presentation, providing data and analysis on the January financial performance. Key components of the presentation included: • Current unemployment rate statistics for January • Analysis of various revenue streams impacting the budget • Monthly financial performance indicators This agenda item was designated as informational, meaning no formal action or voting was required. The presentation allowed commissioners and the public to stay informed about the financial health and economic indicators relevant to the jurisdiction's operations and planning. The financial update represents part of the regular oversight and transparency measures, ensuring stakeholders have access to current economic data that influences municipal decision-making and budget planning processes. ## SCORE Presentation [timestamp: 05:00] Vincent Smith from SCORE Chapter 276 delivered a presentation to the meeting, providing an overview of the organization's activities and how they utilize their funding. SCORE is a nonprofit organization that focuses on mentoring small businesses and entrepreneurs. During his presentation, Smith emphasized SCORE's primary role in providing mentorship services to small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs in the community. He outlined the chapter's various activities and programs designed to support local business development and growth. Smith also addressed how SCORE Chapter 276 uses its funding, detailing the organization's financial stewardship and resource allocation. The presentation served to inform the meeting attendees about SCORE's ongoing work in the business community and their impact on local economic development through their mentoring programs. The agenda item was classified as informational, with no formal action taken following the presentation. The session provided an opportunity for SCORE to report on their activities and maintain transparency regarding their use of resources while keeping local officials informed about their community business support initiatives. ## Downtown Development Authority [timestamp: 10:00] Jeff Fugate presented updates on the Downtown Development Authority's current projects and initiatives during agenda item 4. The presentation covered progress on two major downtown development efforts: Town Branch Commons and the Old Courthouse. Fugate provided status updates on these key downtown revitalization projects, though specific details about timelines, budgets, or construction progress were not detailed in the available materials. The Town Branch Commons and Old Courthouse represent significant investments in the downtown area's infrastructure and historic preservation efforts. This was an informational presentation with no action items or decisions required from the governing body. The update served to keep officials informed about the Downtown Development Authority's ongoing work in the downtown district. ## Occupational License Fee Exemption [timestamp: 20:00] Council member Hensley introduced a discussion regarding potential adjustments to the city's occupational license fee structure, specifically focusing on creating exemptions for minimum wage earners. The agenda item was presented as an informational discussion to explore options for modifying the current occupational license fee requirements. Hensley led the conversation about whether the city should consider providing fee exemptions or reductions for workers earning minimum wage, though specific details about the current fee structure or proposed exemption amounts were not detailed in the available materials. This item was categorized as a discussion item rather than an action item, indicating the council was in the preliminary stages of considering this policy change. No formal vote or decision was made during this meeting regarding the occupational license fee exemption proposal. The discussion appears to have been part of the council's broader consideration of policies that could provide financial relief to lower-income workers within the city's jurisdiction. The outcome was informational, suggesting this topic may return to future council meetings for further deliberation or potential action. ## Contingency Fund Draft Ordinance [timestamp: 25:00] The committee reviewed proposed amendments to the Economic Contingency Fund Ordinance during agenda item 6. The discussion focused on modifications to the fund's operational structure, including revisions to funding goals and withdrawal procedures. Key speakers O'Mara and Farmer led the discussion on the draft ordinance changes. The amendments addressed how the contingency fund would be managed and accessed, with particular attention to the procedures governing withdrawals from the fund. The proposed changes also included adjustments to the funding goals for the Economic Contingency Fund, though specific dollar amounts or percentage targets were not detailed in the available materials. The discussion centered on ensuring the fund would be adequately maintained while providing appropriate access mechanisms for legitimate contingency needs. The committee ultimately approved the draft ordinance amendments following the discussion between the key participants. The approval moves the revised Economic Contingency Fund Ordinance forward in the legislative process, incorporating the discussed changes to funding goals and withdrawal procedures. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of December 1, 2015 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of Economic Contingency Fund Ordinance amendments - **Motion** — passed (7-2): Approval to suspend $50K monthly deposit requirement if 10% goal is reached --- ## Full transcript You could have let me know You could have tried to see the distance between us But it seemed too far for you to go So far to go Do you remember? Do you remember? To you To all of my life It's my love all the pain You know people are far out of time They just can't wait to get hurt again Tell me do you remember To remember The things we won't recall And feelings we'll never find It's taken so long to see it Cause we never seem to have the time There was always something more important to do More important to say That I love you Wasn't one of those things And now it's too late Now it's too late Now it's over Do you remember the old song? Do you remember? Do you remember the old song? Do you remember the old song? Tell me, do you remember? Now it's old. Do you remember the old song? Tell me now, tell me now Tell me now, tell me now Do you remember? Do you want to dance and hold my hand? Tell me you're my lover, man. Oh, baby. Do you wanna dance? Dance Dance We could dance Under the moonlight Hug and kiss All through the night Oh baby Tell me Do you wanna dance With me baby Thank you. On our agenda is approval of last month's summary. Do I have a motion? I will. Second. Motion and a second. Are there any edits, changes? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Next up is our January financials. As always, Commissioner O'Mara, welcome with good news. Thank you, Chair. This is the update, financial update, for the year to date through January. And as usual, we'll start with unemployment rates. Again, there's more good news. We compare favorably on all factors there. The U.S. stayed unchanged at 5% between November and December. Kentucky went up slightly. They went from 4.9 to 5.3, November to December. The Lexington Metropolitan Service area was unchanged at 3.7 for November and December, and as usual, we are slightly below all three at 3.6, both in November and December. And then the one we do have January for the U.S., which has gone down below 5% at 4.9. So good news on the unemployment. Next is just a three-month rolling average, trying to get rid of a little bit of the month-to-month noise, but it tells pretty much the same story. And then finally, we have our comparative economic indicators. We talked about the unemployment. The employment, we're still waiting for the September data to be released at the national level. We are slightly down on permits issued January 16 over January 15, 937 versus 1134. We're slightly up in new businesses, 202 this year versus 197, same period last year. Home sales are up, 640 this year over 571 in January of 2015. And the one we want to see go down, 22 foreclosures versus 33, same time last year. Any questions on economic indicators? Then I'll turn this over to Rusty Cook, and he'll have the top four revenues for you. Thank you, Commissioner. Welcome, Director. Thank you, Chair. As Commissioner said, I'll go through the top four as we have in prior months. First slide is just looking at the monthly budget versus the actuals for the month. You can see we're up 2.9, just slightly under 3 million, and I'll go into more detail on why we are up on that on the next slide. Looking at it from a year-to-date perspective, we are 5.3 million over budget through the first seven months. What happened on this month is we had some businesses pay early. When we did the budget, we looked at three years' worth of history, kind of got a trend of where we were, and then I looked at due dates for every period. January 31st is the due date for the December returns, and it was actually February 1st due to this weekend on the 31st. Net profit is on the employee withholding. That was $3.5 million we received in January early compared to when it was budgeted and when it was received in the prior year. Net profit's up $1.3 million. That's actually just good growth this year. We're seeing positive growth, which is great. The insurance is down $102,000 versus budget. All the returns come in or payments come in in January and February. That'll flatten out the next month. We'll be back above a little bit. And then franchise fees is a $1.7 million decrease versus budget, and that's due to an over-aggressive budget for this year, as previously mentioned. And then we did have a mild fall and early winter up until January. So we should see January pick up a little bit, but not much. When you look at the comparison versus prior year, you can also see where we received those payments early. We're up $11.7 million. Employee withholding is up $9.3 million. At the end of December, that was actually only up $5.3 million. So you see the additional payments that came now versus in February. Net profit is strong growth at $1.4 million. Insurance is up $500,000 versus last year, which is strong growth. And then franchise fees up $443,000, and that's due to a payment received last year in February instead of January. This is information only slide on the lien collections and nuisance abatement. Before we do the rest of the revenues and expenses, is there any questions on top four? Thank you. Thank you, Director. Budget Director, Melissa, welcome. All right. Rusty's talked about the top four, so I'll just go into the others. We have a 9% variance in the services category. That's not actually due to detention center, what I say a lot of times when we are in the service category. This is due to excess fees and collections. We received payments a little bit earlier this year than we did in the prior year from the county clerk and the sheriff's office this year. The fines and forfeitures were down 30%, and that's just fines and forfeitures are down. The property sale, I've mentioned this every month for a while now, we sold some vehicles, so that's not something we can predict every year what we're going to be selling. So that's why we have such a large variance there. The 38% variance in investment income, once again, that's the adjustment costs to market, and so that's an accounting entry, so it's not real dollars, so we can't really say that we have that $100,000. It's just an accounting entry. The miscellaneous income, other income, is due to a FEMA payment that we received. This FEMA payment was from one of the ice storms, so you can imagine that's hard to predict that we're going to get a payment many years later after an ice storm. So let's move to the operating side. Our personnel variance is $1.3 million. I'll point out last month our variance was 2.4, and I mentioned that the personal variances would be going down because of January being such a large month for retirements, and the sick checks are also in January. So we've whittled away that. And part of that $1.3 million variance, about $500,000 of that is for the 27th payroll that we put back every year. And so we have that spread out over the year, but we don't actually book that until the end of the year, whenever the CAFR is being done. So part of that variance is kind of inflated by that, so it's really about an $800,000 variance in personnel right now. The operating variance is $2 million, which is an 8% variance. Some of our categories that are driving that are professional services, utilities, repairs and maintenance, which in that repairs and maintenance was still the $400,000 that we transferred over for salt and snow removal. So that'll go down also. and then supplies and grant match are also some of the reasons we're having the operating the i'll point out the operating capital expenditures if you all remember earlier in the year we were running over in this category over budget well now you can see it's caught up to you know what i said was people were buying stuff earlier and now that's catching up and it's starting to show so if you take where we are with our expenses and where we are with the revenues we've gotten about $11.2 million variance right now. We know some of that isn't our true variance because of certain timing things. About $500,000 of it is the 27th pay that's in there, so I wouldn't say that $11.2 is a valid number. It's just the number for this month. And then here we are compared to prior year. We're up 8% in our revenues over the prior year. And then here's the expenses for the prior year, so you can see we've got about $11 million more in expenses, but that makes sense because our budget was quite a bit higher for FY16 than it was for FY15. So are there any questions? Thank you. Before we go on to our next items, does anybody have any questions? Anyone else? Anyone? Councilmember Maloney, you're up. Oh, I guess I could just quit. There we go. Melissa, question. Last year when I, you know how I got up on y'all, about $10 million surplus. Well, right now we're looking at $4 million, which is pretty good. Is that correct compared to last year on the variance? On this, what's that $4 million, $270 million? Go back. There. That's where we stand right now with expenses. So where are we on surplus and all that? The 11.2 is that number because that's revenues and expenditures. So we do have a little bit of a surplus? We'll still have a little bit of a surplus. How much is that surplus? I wish I could tell you. I don't know because things will shake out. Like I said, the $500,000 is going to come out for the 27th pay, so you can deduce it by that much. Some timing differences with some of the revenues that we've received will reduce that amount. So it's really hard to say a number right now. Well, I mean, we're doing better on surpluses than we did last year. Are we spending? I mean, are we getting more? We're running closer to budget right now. Close to budget. Closer than we were last year. But we're still a little bit over saving surplus. Yes, we still have a surplus right now. We don't have a number of what we have right now on surplus? Well, the variance right now is 11.2. How much? What the books are showing is 11.2. But we know that's not, we know there are some things that will be coming out, so that will go down slightly. So, okay, that's what I didn't know. Thank you. You're welcome. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. My question has to do with maybe some projections. You've got total revenue. Slide back to a couple of slides there. You've got cash flow variance, and you've got, there you go, the total revenue of $182,000, almost $183 million as compared to budget. That's a 4% increase. And then go back to the January year-to-date comparisons, not with last year's, but the seven. The next slide, I believe. seven months into January 31, 2016. Actual to budget. Oh, you meant this one. Is this one? That's the one. Okay. I'm looking at, no, one more. One more? Yep. This one? Exactly. When I see that 8% revenue amount over there, that's actual, isn't it? That's actual revenue over the prior year revenue up to this point. Over the prior year revenue. And when we did the budget last year, and I'm sure Bill will know, but we projected our budget team for a physical year 16. 16 to be a 3.9% increase. Okay, 3.9% increase. So that 3.9, does it compare with that 8%? No, we're actually 4% above our 3.9. Yeah, but it's comparative numbers. We're talking about the same percentage, percentile. In other words, we're double what we had projected in our budgeting process. Our percentage, yes. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? All right. Thank you, Director. Next on our agenda, we have the SCORE presentation. Council Member Bledsoe, would you like to give us an introduction? I will. Thank you, Chair. Last year, the Planning, Government, Service, and Economic Development link heard from SCORE during our, obviously, budget discussions. They currently have or have been receiving about $7,000 out of a $16,000 total operating budget and have been for a number of years. I think Council Member Jay McCord was really instrumental in starting this partnership. And I know we have, as part of their PSA, they need to present once a year to Council of kind of what they've been doing the last year. And as context, one of the things in our budget length that we discussed was we measure our ESR grants so carefully, Deliverables, what they're doing, how much money they get. Likewise, we should be doing the same with our economic development agencies. For instance, No Lie is a new one this year that's kind of added on as part of that portfolio. So I hope that you'll give your full attention to our friends from SCORE who are going to do their annual presentation. Thank you, Council Member, and welcome. I know it's been a while since the Council's had an update, so we welcome you today and look forward to your update. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Vincent Smith. I'm the acting chapter chair of the score. Okay, basically what came to us was basically we're looking for, I'll say, four things. One was an overview. What do we do with your funds? What is our total budget? And what are our metrics, we'll say, as defined in the quarterly reports that we do in the finding? So, to me, the, let me, there we go. So we gave you a page that sort of gives you an overview of the vision and mission, but basically the elevator pitch as to who SCORE is is that we're a volunteer-based nonprofit organization that's an outreach of the Small Business Administration that offers free mentoring and counseling to startups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. This also includes nonprofits. So from that, basically our mission, we'll say, is to help small businesses in counseling and also in education, which is where the workshops come in. I don't know whether anybody can really see this, but there's over 300 chapters in the country. There's three in Kentucky. it's a national organization that sort of the foundation or the thinking of it was really started in the 50s and was formalized and created in 1964 so it's been in existence for over 50 years. If we get into what we'll call the funding, this page basically outlines what our budget is and where the funding is going. So again, if you go down, you can see where in 2015, you're looking at actual numbers here. Total expenditures were $13,057. Of that money, we're looking at, we get pretty much $7,000 from you all, and we get slightly more from the SCORE Foundation and the SBA, and you represent sort of in that 42% to 45% of our total funding. One of the things I think that's important to understand with how SCORE operates, at least in Lexington, is we have an office over in Waller Avenue. Our rent at Waller Avenue is paid by the GSA, so you have sort of government money coming into the city as far as that goes. The office itself is pretty basic, but it's nice and clean and safe. And we did have a paint job done a couple of years ago. And it's also furnished by furnishings that we basically have reached out to the community, Lexmark and such, and asked them if they had any furniture that they wanted to donate. So I think it's important to really understand that the whole chapter's mentality is sort of one of frugalness with whatever we're doing with one's funding. Okay, and then you can see here, sort of at the top, that basically the funding that we use is mostly goes into marketing, participating in events, running workshops, and entities like that. Okay, if you want to get to sort of the metrics, this is sort of a handout sheet that SCORE creates for us. It has statistics that are developed from Price Waterhouse audit of all the data from the different SCORE chapters. And so in 2014, which is the most recent report that we have of this such, it's basically saying that the SCORE chapter is responsible for creating 205 new businesses in 2014. Also, to me, of interest is kind of you're looking at 79% of the business clients increase their revenues in 2014. So we don't only work with startups. We're also working with existing businesses to try to better their business. This is the next sheet here. we kind of broke down who we were working with in 2015 by zip code, which we thought may have some sort of merit as to where the clients are coming from. Basically, Fayette County in general is two-thirds of all the people that we work with. There might be some other people, obviously, out of the county. Sometimes people come in, they want to develop a business, and then they move out. Maybe they came from out of town and moved in, and we can't really capture where they are because they're giving us zip codes that are even out of the state. But overall, I think if you look at our top metric here, if you look at the top in 2015, we had what we consider 936 customer services. That includes face-to-face mentoring and includes people that come to the workshops that we have. The next page basically breaks down the workshops that we ran in 2015. You have a total of 18 workshops here. You can see the number of hours that were put in and the people that came into it. We have a program that we're moving into where we're anticipating having maybe less workshops, but more people participating in them as sort of a way of just a better way of growing rather than having too many workshops with really not a whole lot of people showing up. So then finally, at least as far as the presentation goes, in summary, our marketing efforts consist of monthly newsletters, email blasts, workshops, business opportunities, and networking events. We happen to be a... We partner with the Awesome Inc. in their pitch contest. It gives us good exposure within the startup community. And also, we've become a little bit more sophisticated with how we run our websites, and we're really studying and seeing how we can use some of the metrics that we're getting off of tracking it with Google Analytics and such. Currently, we have 20 volunteers. We're always recruiting. It's a tough number to maintain because sort of the average mentor lasts maybe three to five years, so there's sort of an attrition. So you think you're gaining on it, and then you're losing people. That's basically what we are. one of the things that I wanted to sort of read into the record, we'll say, is just a quote I found. Most startup companies fail, and it is a smart public policy to help entrepreneurs increase their odds of succeeding, but the biggest loss to our economy is not all startups that didn't make it. It's the ones that might have been but weren't created. Okay, so if you look at sort of the landscape within Lexington, really what SCORE represents is there's a lot of people out there, I think, that are always willing to help small businesses and try to get it going. And it's my belief, and truly my belief, there's really no documentation of this, that SCORE itself is the most approachable. We're the less intimidating. We pretty much are easy for people to come in and talk to us. The services are basically free. But I think it's more than just saying it's free. It's just the whole mentality of volunteers are really only volunteering because they really want to help. And I think this transmits to the people that are a little bashful. They're kind of scared. Maybe it's a cook or a lady that just cuts hair, and she really doesn't know much about business. And the whole process can be a little intimidating. And with us, it's like, come in. Let's talk about your business, okay? We don't have like, well, this is what you've got to do. We need a business plan. We need to know, you know, you've got to register here. You've got to register there. And even though we do all those things, we do it in sort of a comfort level after the fact when you've already developed a relationship with somebody by listening to them describe what they would like to do for their business. That's where I am right now. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. We have a couple of questions so far. Councilor Massadi is first up. Thank you, Council Member Bledsoe, for bringing this to our attention, and thank you for presenting today. Here I am. I'm just curious, how do you get this information out to those people who are concerned about getting involved with this program? With SCORE, well, I mean, you have a website. You're trying to engage in the community. I guess I want to know how they know you exist. Well, it's a lot of, first of all, we've been in business 50 years. So you have a certain amount of word of mouth. It's not that uncommon for someone who's trying to think about business when their sister-in-law says, you know, they got this organization called SCORE. Why don't you find out what they're all about? I don't know who they are. Okay. You have events like, let's just say, I think it was October, maybe November. Lexington ran this Entrepreneurship Week, if you were familiar with that. And they had a variety of different events going on. And so we would have different people go to the different events there, and you'd just go out and meet people. And I say, how are you doing? You know, I'm with SCORE. Are you familiar with SCORE? And let's say they say, no, I'm not familiar with SCORE. Well, then you go into this sort of elevator pitch. well, SCORE is, you know, we're a volunteer-based non-profit organization that offers free mentoring and counseling to start-up small business entrepreneurs. And here you are. You're a startup. We should get together. Oh, I think it's a great program. I'm just wondering if people know about it. Yeah, yeah. One way to do it is that plus we participate in other networking events that Lexington Commerce has. And we do the awesome Inc. scenario. So it's basically you've got word of mouth. You have sort of email marketing that we blast out to different people. We advertise to workshops, and then when you go to the workshops, you try to capture those people as mentoring people. And that's about it right now. Do you have, like, a link on the Commerce Lexington page or anything like that, where they can access you via that? No, we don't have a link on the Lexington Commerce page. Now I'm just thinking. No, no, everybody. All ideas are good ideas if people are willing to pitch in with what we are. And we ourselves have some restrictions from just a national basis. In other words, we, you know, first of all, everything we talk about is in strict confidentiality. That's, say, one rule. The other rule is we're not in a position to be able to promote other businesses. We're not supposed to say, oh, we know a great guy to do this. We're supposed to give people choices, and then they make it. So sometimes, and I'm not saying the Chamber is probably a great idea, and we're looking to engage ourselves more with the Chamber than what we have in the past, but they may have requirements that may work against our national sort of method of operating. I'm just trying to help people find you. That's all. Absolutely. We appreciate it. And my thought is if we could get the word out, whether you could hook up with its Chamber of Commerce or with the U.K. or some other organization that's affiliated. Well, as an example, I don't know whether you really noticed. I mean, we were able to get an article in Business Lexington that just came out like a month ago, and it went out pretty well. We have coming up, we're going to have an interview with Tom Martin, of the Herald-Leader, so that's another something that gives us some exposure when it does get into the paper. And we're starting to engage with the paper as far as trying to publicize some of the workshops, and we also have a Mentor of the Year, which we'll see when that shows up in the paper, that says what this lady, Barbara Ellibrook, did last year, and how she was able to help so many people in the nonprofit community, and you never know how far someone's going to edit down what you sent them, but it was pretty powerful what she was able to accomplish. And I know if I was a nonprofit, I'd be thinking I'm looking up this lady and going to find out what's going on. I think it's a great organization, and I appreciate what you all do. I know you're all volunteer, and I know you've got a lot of intellectual capacity to help others. I just want to make sure that people know you're available to help. That's what my thought was. Absolutely. We appreciate your support. Thank you. Next up, we have Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I think this is a good presentation, and hopefully this will get a little bit more information out. Looking at your financial picture, I see where you've got your operating expenses, but are you all a 501c3, which would—I'm sorry, Mr.— You're incorporated as a nonprofit organization in the state of Kentucky. Are you a 501c3 where you can accept donations? I—I—yes. Yes. I knew we were 501 something. Somebody is filing your 990 tax return then or information purposes. I hope. If you're a 501c3, there's a difference there. You can be a nonprofit organization under the state of Kentucky and qualify for any type of donations, but they're not deductible by the person that's given it to you. So you can get a donation, and I suspect you're considered an outside agency. So you get $7,000 from the urban county government, and you don't have to be an organization that allows them to deduct because it's another government. But anyway, that's the explanation. But looking back, if you know a little bit of history, you got $7,000 in your budget last year from urban county government? Yes, sir. And what's been the past history of that amount for the last five to ten years? Does anybody know? It's been seven for a while. Been a flat seven for a while? $400,000, and then went to seven. Okay, okay, so you got the $7,000. And what about your balance sheet? I didn't see a balance sheet in here, and that would be what cash you had on hand at the particular year end. I assume, well, I don't want to assume, but are you on a June 30th year end, or are you on a December 31 year end? 9.30? So you're on federal government year end. Right, we're on the federal government. But so generally speaking at 930 or any time, any monthly, and you would have a balance in your bank account and you would have a reserve. Do you know what that would be? I mean, have you built up any money? Four to five thousand. You need to come to the mic if you're going to answer. Gary is our acting treasurer. Okay. What kind of reserve have you got? We've got about five to six thousand dollars. Okay. I just want to make sure you wasn't hoarding up a lot of money and not spending it on advertising. No, we spend most of the money we get in. We're required by SCORE to have a certain reserve level, and we're towards the lower end of that. So that gives me a little bit of history. But as far as back to the donation that you're operating, you're getting $7,000 from the government. Are you getting any outside donations from any other? We have in the past. We have not for the past couple of years. and all of our tax filings are done by the SCORE national office, so we don't really deal with those locally. We just supply the information to them, and they do all the nonprofit tax returns. All right. Thank you. All right. Next up, Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair. I know Mr. Smith and I had coffee last year, and I really appreciated that. And although I have known about SCORE ever since I first came into the government because I knew about it when I was in economic development. And as a result of us having coffee last year, we actually ended up putting a little bit of information in our newsletter to educate our constituents about that. So I would urge my colleagues to give a little blurb in your newsletter also because I think we can use those tools. The advertising and recruitment, obviously you're all's budget, is pretty small. comparatively for that, do you have someone that's real tech savvy that can help to figure out about some more social media options and try to utilize more social media? The answer to your question is that we just, it looks like we're going to have an intern coming out of the U.K. that essentially has this big, long major that basically you can reduce the social media. And so I'm really positively thinking we're going to get him involved in understanding what SCORE does. We have a couple of projects ready to go that he can work on that will benefit him. And then he's going to analyze our social media and also help us get more of our people involved in contributing to the social media because everybody that has Facebook knows that a lot of it's just being able to throw some pictures and a little story that seems to be interesting up there. So we're moving in that direction. Good. And right now it's looking good, you know, as long as you didn't get run over by a bus or something. That's good. Well, I mean, it's very important, and I'm glad that you have looked to an intern because I think that that's really a good collaborative effort with UK, too. Absolutely, yeah. And they can learn from you guys, too. So I appreciate it, and I appreciate Council Member Bledsoe having this presentation today, and keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for recognizing me today. Thank you for coming down. I was on the budget link last year and met you guys, and so I appreciate this report, and I hope that our colleagues do as well to learn a little bit more about you all and to get you all some publicity here at the mic today. Do you charge for your workshops, or are they free as well? In recent times, most of the workshops have been free. We have a plan going into the future where we're maybe going to charge like $25 to try to raise a little bit of income so that we can kind of become more promotional in the workshops and develop it. so we're going to give it a try. But generally, the last couple of years, mostly they've been free. The theory was to try to attract as many people as we could. And then, of course, you want to convert those over into regular clients, we'll say, versus someone just passing in the night taking advantage of a workshop. And where do you hold the workshops? Are they at your offices or different locations? It's a lot of different venues. There's a lot of different spaces around. Sometimes we can partner with somebody who has a space available. If you don't charge anything, you can use the libraries. That's one advantage there. We have had some workshops in the downtown library as well as some of the branch libraries. And also SCORE itself has certain partnerships. One of them is, which we haven't really taken advantage of for our workshop, is that Regis, you know, that sort of like rent an office out on Harrodsburg Road, that we would have access to the facilities there as a sort of a score partner, so to speak. And I see from your list of workshops, there's a heavy focus, it looks like, on nonprofits. So what is your reasoning? This goes back to our mentor of the year, Barbara Ellerbrook. Okay. Okay, she's like, at least last year, she was like a super dynamo. So she's a volunteer with SCORE, and then she... She's a volunteer with SCORE. Her background is in the nonprofits. As you guys are probably aware, there's an amazing number of nonprofits around Lexington, whether they're taking care of horses or people or whatever they're doing. There's a lot of them. And so she's gotten a pretty good following, and she sort of understands what I'm going to call the political landscape that these people kind of are hiding in sometimes. and, you know, it's the thing. They're prime candidates for looking for some guidance, and she really is able to develop a following there, and she had a tremendously successful year last year, and we're counting on her heavily for years in the future. I was just curious. When I think of entrepreneurs, not that nonprofits are not, but that's just not typically what I think of, So I just was curious of why the heavy focus there. But I understand you want to take advantage of anyone who's willing to bring people and bring them in and educate. And I know I came from the nonprofit world. Yeah, and there's still people that are working there. So it still is a source of employment. And I know it doesn't have the same robustness if you had somebody that opens a certain business and you feel like they're really pumping into the economy. But they are part of the economy. But the reason there's such a focus there is because of the one lady. And then can you tell us, if you know, how the other two chapters in Kentucky are funded, Louisville and Paducah? Yeah, I don't really know. We know that they both get money from the SCORE Foundation, from the SBA, the same as we do. As far as local funding, I don't know the answer to those questions. Okay. That's all that I have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Maloney. I appreciate what you're doing. Now, have you talked to Community Venture Corporation? I mean, they help people start up businesses. We have talked to them, and we ran a workshop with them last year. Okay, good. Okay. And it's kind of when you really think about a small business, you know, one of the things that eventually is going to crop into the picture is financing anyway. Okay, so we have to maintain an awareness of what are the available monies in Lexington, whether it's banks or whether it's some kind of grants. And they're one of the easier funding sources because of the way that they're just set up to be an easier funding source with the way they accept different types of collateral. I know Marilyn Clark used to run our local business, helping people start our business and all that. I don't know who the person is now, but have you worked with the Fayette County, I mean Urban County Government, where we have groups that have come in and try to become minority businesses and that kind of, and try to get them, help them go on further. Have you all worked with that group here at the Urban County Government with that list? If we do, we probably could do a better job. On the front end of when we meet somebody, we try to capture all that statistical data, whether they're a minority, what the percentage of the ownership is, where they're in the military. And we've had, quite frankly, probably more success with the military end of it. They're a little bit easier to identify, maybe. Well, I shouldn't say that they're easier to identify. They have more people helping them now, so you can kind of find out where they're hanging out. But we could probably do a better job of getting them more involved where the monies are. Okay. Thank you. Next up, Customer Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. I just want to tie a little ribbon on this. But also, forgive me if I'm wrong, but didn't you do a veterans initiative? We did have a workshop event in November. That was exclusively to veterans, correct, to try to help them? Exclusively for veteran businesses and we'll call it people that would support them. Okay, so there was a variety of, and those we had like tables, we'll say, if someone was already catering to the veterans that they had a booth there, so to speak, but really like a table where people could talk. And we had a variety of different speakers from the SBA all the way down to the community ventures describing what was available, what the future might hold. And for me, one of the more interesting aspects that they were talking about was in sort of this GI Bill, which was used for education. There's a possibility that they might say, well, if you're not going to go to school, we might give you some funding to start a business. So that seemed attractive. That was still kind of more in the works than something that was available. Thank you for saying that. I know this council in particular has been interested on veterans' initiatives, not just from the educational but from a business perspective and how to help extend the hand up. So I really appreciate you taking on that initiative. I know they wanted to highlight that for everyone. Thank you. Thank you for coming down and for doing this and just for kind of the public awareness campaign that's important. And I think we can do some takeaways and put it in our newsletter and encourage. I think the mentoring is really important. It's something that others aren't offering at this kind of one-on-one level. So I hope this has been helpful, and I appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for bringing it to the committee, and we appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Smith, for being here. We appreciate it. Next up on our agenda, we have the annual presentation from our DDA. Councilman Akers, did you want to say anything before I call up Mr. Fugate? Yes, thank you, Chair. I guess this sort of follows along the last presentation. The DDA was also in our budget link last year, And so I had a couple questions, and I think others do too. I often get asked exactly what the DDA does in town, and so I thought this would be helpful as we approach budget discussions again this year. And to just have a general update on what all is going on in downtown, and I know that lots of people are interested. Very good. Here we go. Mr. Fugate, welcome. And also Board Chair Tom Harris is with us too. Thank you all both for being here. Absolutely. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Members. Glad to be with you guys. And just to reiterate, Tom Harris is with me today, and Tom is not only my recently appointed board chair, he is also the longest-serving member of the Downtown Development Authority. So he knows where, well, he's seen it all. So glad to have him here. So let's see. Whoops. Come back here. Okay. So just to remind you, we are an independent public agency. We were created by this body around 2001. and Council Member Brown has left, but just for his edification, we're a Chapter 53. So we're a not-for-profit corporation in the state of Kentucky, but we are not a 501c3. We have a board of nine people. They're appointed by the mayor and approved by you. And we have multiple funders, but clearly LFUCG is the most important and significant funder we deal with. We're often asked, where do we work, right? So what does downtown mean? And depending on who you ask, downtown can be three blocks or it can be anything inside News Circle. And I wanted to throw this map up here to kind of give you an idea of the areas that we really pay attention to, right? So, of course, Main Street, right? And in particular, Courthouse Square, which picks up Short Street, Courthouse, 21C. You'll notice everybody's favorite question mark right here, which is, of course, LCC. And so as we wait to see what happens in Frankfurt, we'll know whether we'll adjust our work's planning accordingly. Distillery District, Jefferson Street, North Limestone, great things happening out here along Midland and the Warehouse Block. And then to our south, of course, UK is a huge presence. In fact, it's always amazing to me that UK's budget is much larger than yours. So they are a huge presence. And we'll talk a little bit about this Euclid Avenue corridor, which is really the first attempt in quite a while to try to bring university and downtown together as a development plan. So we do take a broader view than just Main Street, and I think that's an important thing to hammer home here. Just so you know what the geography is, more or less, this is the infill and redevelopment area, which by definition is the city as it was built up to 1929, which is a very specific definition, but more or less, that's what we're talking about here. So what do we do? This is the fancy words we put on the website, but what does it mean in practicality? So we do the early work. We're the tip of the spear on a lot of projects, and a lot of projects that right now are actually getting a lot of attention, right? 21C Hotel, we were the first call. Old Courthouse, you guys are going to be learning a lot more about that this spring. Town Branch, even City Hall, we did a significant amount of work a couple years back on that to do the early work and figure out where the problem areas were and try to find a plausible way forward. We're also a data clearinghouse. We're often the first call for outside developers or outside tenants who are looking to invest in downtown Lexington. We do policy work, most notably contributed heavily to the Affordable Housing Fund and the creation of that and the policies that went into that, as well as currently working with a couple of you on the design excellence guidelines, however they come together. And then I want to take a moment to talk about the why piece here. So Fayette County, we have no booms, we have no bust. and that has allowed us to basically have a very stable real estate economy and see growth, right? However, there's nothing inevitable about this. If you were to, if you look at the distribution of ages, and in particular our workforce, if you back out the student population, which has the option of staying or going, that's the conclusion of their studies, and you look at the fact that we're not having babies fast enough to fill the jobs we have so if you believe that jobs go to where the people are today then we need to recruit the people and so what are we doing about it well first of all we're going to accept the fact that the next generation of workforce is the millennials right and what do we know about the millennials is they don't think like us, and they don't do what we do. And when I say we, I count myself there, because I was born in 1976. That was the lowest live birth year since World War II. I am insignificant. But all of those people back behind me, they are going to be the people who pay our retirement. So we want to make sure that they're living here in Lexington. So with that in mind, the Downtown Development Authority prioritizes certain projects, particularly as prioritized with the purchase of service agreement with the city. and so the courthouse has occupied a lot of our time. Pulling together the Town Branch Commons, the myriad public and private parts of that. We're taking a hard look at the Euclid Avenue College Town Partnership, and we look forward to working with the council on how do we even sort of get our hands around that. But we have UK as a strong partner in trying to think about what we might do to enhance that area while keeping its unique character. New things that we were able to work on this past year through outside funding. primarily sponsored through the national funders like the Knight Foundation or through Bluegrass Community Foundation, had a lot to do with quality of life issues. We've monitored all of those as livable leks. The most tangible one you've probably seen on the street are the wayfinding signs that went up prior to Reader's Cup. We've also, tangibly, you have seen what was happening on Short Street. We'll come back to that in a sec. and then we've recently launched what's called the main streets initiative or it's called main streets refresh it's a nationally funded project of the national trust of historic preservation we're partnering with bluegrass community foundation in the east end and no lie cdc on in the north limestone neighborhood and then our ongoing work which is really a big part of what we do first contact with project developers one that's been in the news recently is lucky's market They called us first, and we worked with them for three years. We facilitate the development by convening the right people, putting the right people and partners together. 21C is the one that we get to cut the ribbon on soon, but I can also tell you that just this morning was meeting with a major downtown institution and making sure that they were talking to the right people as they planned for their redevelopment of their site. And then finally, the marketing of Lexington, which is done not just through advertising, but really about having good data, easy to find. And if you go to our website, you'll see that we have really invested in having data there that the development community is looking for. So highlights from the past year, the biggest one being there are almost $6 million of transportation award that we've gotten towards the kickoff town branch construction phase. That was set up by the delivery of a strategic business plan, which you guys received in May of 2015. I'm pretty excited about the old courthouse development team has been assembled, and pre-development is underway. and I believe there will be more on that in the coming weeks. We did get useful quantitative and qualitative data from the Short Street Project. The data you got probably came in the form of phone calls and emails, but we actually did a fair amount of measurements. We've got those. We've also been cataloging all the feedback. We'll look forward to giving you a much more in-depth report out on that along with Commissioner Hoskins-Squire later in the spring. Like I mentioned earlier, pedestrian wayfinding. we got national media coverage for the walk uk pop-up wayfinding signs which you may have seen around town it's two minute walk to coffee this way and then finally 21 museum hotel construction is nearing completion the first call on that was over four years ago it gives you an idea that our work is timely but it is time intensive and so there are no quick wins uh there are only uh shall shall we say, persistent ones. I wanted to share with you a couple pages, just to talk about general trends downtown. These are from our upcoming annual market inventory. I mentioned marketing. This is one of the things we try to put out every year. It probably doesn't translate great on this screen, but the big takeaway is that we have netted 17 new bars, restaurants, or retail shops in the downtown area. And again, our downtown area takes sort of a larger area. What's not on here, but I think it's worth noting as well, is again, in 2015, redevelopment of Kroger, which more or less doubled its size, and the location of Lucky's Grocery just off the map here. So we've got two downtown grocery stores within a mile. I think it's 1.2 or 1.4 miles to this spot right here I measured. And then this is the big one. This is recently completed under construction or pre-development. And the trend that's worth noticing here is that this chart last year, the under construction was heavily driven by UK. And the announcements were heavily driven by UK and BCTC, so it was public institutions. Now what you're seeing is that the public institution, the public spending, is moving into recently completed and under construction, and the announcements are being driven by the private side. So we're seeing a trend where the private sector is following the public sector in terms of getting things built and announcing projects. So we're looking forward to working on those. So with that, this is me, in case you didn't know, and I look forward to any of your questions. Thank you, sir. First up, we have Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Jeff, for this presentation. Absolutely. I think that 1.5, we can thank you, Kay, for quite a bit of that chunk. Absolutely. So thank you for that. But one of the things that you and the downtime management group and others, you all are correlated under deliverables, meaning they're very correlated. It's hard to know who caused some of these things. It would be easy for each group to say, well, we did, and here are all the reasons why. So I find it challenging, and I think it asks the question that we talked about certainly in our budget link, which was, is there a way to maybe bring these groups together? You're all working on the same geographic distance and space. You have different missions and different strategies for getting there. We kind of wonder if it's better for communication, for synergy, for deliverables. Is that something that, you know, we kind of pitched the idea last year of talking about it. Have you made any progress maybe in that discussion? Sure, and clearly this sort of rises to the level of board discussion, and so with that, I'll let Tom Harris speak to that issue. Thank you for that question. For the record, Tom Harris, I'm chair of Downtown Development Authority. It's interesting on timing that you should ask because as I just came in in January, the Downtown Lexington Corporation has new leadership. And so we have gotten together just in the past few weeks and have put together a working committee that would look at without regard to board missions, directors, obviously with the management district. There's a new player in the whole mix of this. And so we've put together a working group with no predisposition of where we're going or what the outcome would be. But we plan to come back with a recommendation. Yes, we think this is a good idea. No, we don't think this is a good idea that we would recommend to both boards as well as council. We've asked some of the expertise. You know, we've done this before. When we look at 20 years ago or so, we took a quasi-entity in Lexington United, a member-based organization in the Lexington Chamber of Commerce, and then added the Workforce Development Board. So it's challenging mixing that quasi-government agency with a member base. But I think there are opportunities. The leadership of both organizations are very interested in pursuing whether it makes sense or not. So hopefully within the next several months, we'll have a recommendation for our boards as well as you all. Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your willingness to at least engage the issue. You know, certainly we're funding all of those groups at some form or another. And I'd like to have more synergy if we could. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Bledsoe. And I would ask, have you all looked at the Courthouse Area Design Board, too? I mean, but you all can bring that up at an appropriate time. I'll catch you off. Councilman Massadi. Thank you, Chair. Jeff, you mentioned in your presentation that you had been working on City Hall a couple years back. Yes, ma'am. And, of course, you know that's been on our burner, front and center. Absolutely. Do you have any of that information that can help us? Because, obviously, you said you've been working on it for a couple years that you can provide. Absolutely. In fact, it has clearly been shared with the administration. And so a lot of— Is there anything you can tell us today that you had worked on that maybe would be beneficial to us? Well, certainly you need a new building. And there are, depending on how you look at it, if you amortize the savings from this building, it should go a long way towards amortizing new construction. Now, there's a lot of due diligence to be done in addition to figuring that out. Did you guys do site surveys? I mean, I just wonder how in-depth you went on this. Primarily at that time, we were focused mostly on the transit center, in all honesty. So we were looking at that because it was a publicly owned property. A lot of the back-of-the-envelope calculations are transferable. So as you get into site selection, we did not do a general site survey, which I understand is really the need at the moment. it was more looking at just the plausibility of could you justifiably undertake a new building given the savings you get out of this. And it turns out, yes, you could justify it, but there is still a lot of work to be done. So as far as the transit center, did it pass the test? That's a policy decision that would clearly fall to you guys in terms of, and I don't remember off the top of my mind, it's been a couple of years since we've really been into it. But what I remember is that, again, it was sort of at a higher level, and so it was a plausibility test, not necessarily a feasibility test. And so the feasibility is really the point at which it seems that we are right now. Well, anything that you might have that you had worked on, you said, a couple years ago, that would benefit us in our deliberations, because obviously that's something that we're going to be working on real closely. And did you have any involvement in CenterPoint at all? You know, it's been quite a while since we've been involved directly with that project. All right. Thank you. Next up, Council Member Maloney. I just want to thank Council Member Blesso for her question, because I think it's a good idea to hope you all go back to the board and look at that, because it just seems like DLC and you guys do a lot of things in common, and we just try to unite everybody to one. If it can happen, that would be great. The question I have for you guys, you, is Jeff, I see you've got town brands in common. Are you the main guy for that? This actually goes to that point of who gets to take credit. And I tell you what, you don't build a project like this without involving a heck of a lot of people. So we have carried the ball to this point. However, it would be unwise for us to continue to carry the ball because it has now gotten more complex, right? What we were able to do and what we have done over the years, I'm going to get my little list here. So we managed and raised the initial private investment, which is north of a quarter million dollars, money that the city did not put into this project. That was early money. We hosted the design competition. We managed the design feasibility study, which determined that we could actually fit it into the downtown we have. We managed the strategic business plan, again paid for privately. That was presented to the council in May of 2015. We wrote the grant narratives for the TAP and the CMAC grants that were awarded. We've recruited key fundraising consultants, and with the consultants we've recruited potential community leadership, and that community leadership is going to come together in the form of a mayor's task force. And then with the consultants we've also recruited potential donor leadership, and the donors are basically standing by waiting to see how the community leadership comes together. So the handoff is about to happen is the best way to put it. The question I have since we brought that up is the Bluegrass Community Foundation. Yes, sir. We voted on here last year, I believe, $180,000, maybe more, I'm not sure, to raise money. Do you have a day-to-day communication or week-to-week communication? So how much money do they have raised or where they are on that? Do you have a relationship with them on that? Sure. So the way to think about this capital campaign is it doesn't look, it looks very different than political fundraising, right? So political fundraising, you have a dinner, people can only give you a certain amount, right? With cultivation, best practices suggest that in order to raise $50 million, we're going to need over 220 donors, okay? In order to get the 220 donors, we need 566 prospects. So if you think about the hours, the staff hours that go into setting up those meetings, cultivation, also no one's going to give you a significant sum of money. And significant is in the eye of the beholder, right? So maybe it's $5 million, maybe it's $5,000, but a significant sum of money without multiple meetings and multiple cultivation touches. And so that work is underway. However, we're not going to put the thermometer out front with the fundraising goal on it because the cultivation is happening now. We're getting people excited about the project, but they're very interested in seeing that there's a political will to pull it off. And that is going to be the continual work of this task force and what will probably become a leadership council that will be the interface between the public and the private as we move forward. So we've raised a lot. Have they done well raising money yet? Are you trying to say you're not allowed to tell us now because they're doing a fundraiser? What I'm telling you is that if you're expecting a major donor announcement a few months into the undertaking, you're not going to get it. Do what now? If you're looking for a major donor announcement a few months into the undertaking, you're not going to get it. And I think that anybody who works in large gifts understands that it takes time and cultivation because they're not piggy banks or ATMs, right? These are people who are giving because they're part of the project. And so as the project is coming together, and we're dealing with folks who are very savvy givers, which means they want to know that there are backstops, that there are controls, and that there are protections for their funds, just as the public has every right to expect the exact same thing. And so working through those will be an important part of actually getting contributions in a bank account. Okay, and then last question. I've got a lot of time here. a comment. You're working on Euclid Avenue and I know I'm excited about the money you all have for that. Now, when I was working with Charlie, when I was Commissioner of Public Works, there was a lot of work that's going to be done in the next five to ten years that they're going to have to tear that whole street up. I just don't want you to, and that's one thing we didn't want to do, is go in and put money into something and then turn around and lose all that money because we tear everything up. So hopefully we've got a plan and it's going on. I assume you would. Absolutely great point. And in fact, that is what we're trying to plan for is right now, depending on how exactly the schedule falls, is 2019 or 2020 that they're looking at trunk line through Euclid Avenue. So having a streetscape and the planning in place by then is very important so that we know what we're putting back. And I just want to reiterate, I remember Councilman farmer was here when i said it we look forward to working with the council on figuring out how best to pull together this plan for euclid avenue because it is not a small area plan it's a little different the question that was put to the consultants was what is economically feasible on this corridor right what could be built now you can look at what they came back with and see it as a warning sign in which case we want to change things or you look at what they came back with and say, you know what, this is, you know, these are the type of projects that we want the university and the public and the private sector to work together on making happen. And so working through that is going to be key. Public outreach is going to be key and the streetscape contribution of the city is going to be key in all of this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Thank you, sir. Councilmember Gibbs. Thank you, Chair. Next presentation, Jeff. I have a question. It might be too specific, actually, but we've got a major hole downtown which we know about and there's a second pretty major hole and that's a lack of a drug store and i wonder if trying to find us a drug store identifying a location identifying a company is something would fall within the scope of your job or is that something we should leave to a private real estate interest but you know i'm convinced there's a market for it and we just don't have one and i was wondering if you if you guys investigated that or it's just not part of your job but thank thanks it's a very specific question um i think the answer to that is is that um drug stores like a lot of retail operations have very specific criteria they're looking for um and i know that the commercial brokers in the room can really speak to this is is that the downtown drugstore has morphed into the edge of downtown drive-through drugstore and it's in in terms of of site selection, what we're likely to be more successful at would be locating something that captures departing traffic at the edges as opposed to something sort of in the heart of downtown. That said, the right amount of subsidy, you can accomplish anything. However, that would be outside of our purview and really bring us back to the public and sort of say, is that something we want to pursue as a public policy matter? And so I would leave it at that and just say that we certainly would be the first ones to work with anybody from out of town looking to do that. But we also understand that there are some, you know, that basically just market challenges. It's the same thing with grocery stores. They're getting bigger, not smaller. And so as consolidation of these retail operations continue, we're going to be seeing more of that sort of very specific site selection issues. Say we wanted to develop some incentives to bring a grocery store in, I'm sorry, a drug store in, what would that entail? Would that come back to the council to develop that? I would decline to make policy on the fly here, but it's certainly something we could look into. What it probably looks more like is subsidizing the actual development so that they're able to offer cheaper rents to particular tenants. and that's something that can be done, but it takes a lot of resources. There's a grocery store in Louisville that they were able to buy the rent way down, but they did so by putting lots and lots and lots of public subsidy into the building itself. Okay. I'm very interested in this because I really think it's a problem. I mean, we have I don't know how many hundreds of people living in Christchurch apartments, and I bet nearly everyone there has several prescriptions. There's a base downtown. I would transfer my prescriptions if we had one within walking distance of this building. I think we're missing an opportunity, but I don't have any idea how to pursue it, and I was hoping that maybe you did know how to pursue it. I travel a fair amount, and I see cities much smaller than ours with drugstores downtown without drive-thrus in many cases, and I just don't get why we can't pull it off here. But again, probably not within the scope of your job, but I'd like to have more discussions about that. I think it would really enhance our downtown. But thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I'd love to continue the conversation. Next up, we have Councilmember Farmer. Welcome and thank you for your report today. Appreciate your service. Mr. Harris, thank you to your whole board. I just wanted to go over the Euclid Avenue part one more time. Yes, sir. You mentioned, just do the timing, because I'd always kind of had it in my mind. I didn't know which was the one or the two, but we know we're going to tear up the entire street, So we're going to take the opportunity to tear it up and build it up all at the same time. So just give me that one more time. As I understand it. Yes. As I understand it is that currently underway, is the streetscape underway now or has it not been? I'm not sure. Either underway or shortly to be underway is the design for streetscape along Euclid, basically from Rose to Ashland. I believe. And that was part of what you said. There was a public outreach part to that, and there was some work to be done on that. There was work to be done on the street-scale design. That's what I'm very interested in. Okay. Yes, sir. That is in anticipation of the fact that the trunk line will be replaced here in 2019, 2020. That's what I understand. So there will be no work before, but you go ahead and get your design in place. That is the public infrastructure piece of the overall vision, right? Okay. And then so then the other thing that the plan addresses really are development opportunities along the corridor, looking at key corners that could be redeveloped in an economically feasible way or almost economically feasible way that may be beneficial to the neighborhood in terms of services. So either additional housing, additional services and tenants that are more service-oriented, right? So your drugstore, laundromat, that kind of thing. All of this would be undertaken by the private sector, informed by the public sector. And so any outreach, the outreach and public input really needs to go into that as well, because if looking at those feasible projects, you take the position that some of these things are not what we want, whether it be additional housing or such, then protections need to be put in place because we're that close to them being feasible economically, which means somebody will probably want to do it. Well, I think it's very beneficial that it's broken up into sections because while it's a beautiful boulevard, I mean, it has the potential to be a much more beautiful boulevard than it is, It has different needs at different spots along the way. And certainly addressing the U.K. community where it comes so close in contact with it in such a different way than before is something we should look at in a holistic approach. So I think that's all great. In doing your whole report, did you elect to leave out CenterPoint, or were you told to leave it out, or are we supposed to overlook it? Everyone was talking about CenterPoint today. It is simply this. We have not been involved with Centerpoint for a couple of years now. Okay. We have not been a significant part of that project or part of the conversation for a while. Are there any other downtown people that have kind of opted out with you then, or just them? Because that's what I take. I hear that as an opt-out. Thanks, but no thanks. If I'm wrong, please correct me. Because we want you to be successful at every corner, and we've got four open ones right down here. We do. We do. And if they haven't, that's okay, man. It's okay. We want people inside the wagon train. I look forward to seeing how this evolves, and I think there's lots of opportunity. Wow. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Chair. Councilman Akers. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the report. I think I was surprised that you didn't include the DDA's actual budget and where you derive funding. Okay. So can you tell us how much of your, what percentage of the organization's budget comes from the city? Yeah, hold on a sec. Right, all of that is included in the quarterly reports, but since they weigh in at about 15 pages, I understand why you might not want to weigh through them. We are at... Just give us your annual budget, and then how much of that comes from city funding. Right, so the city contribution basically has been flat for the last two years, and it's been about $3.48 and some change. That's been the city contribution. We have raised, from outside sources, a few hundred thousand in addition to that each year. So our budget ends up being a little north of $600,000, and the city contribution is about $350,000 or so. So it fluctuates some depending on the projects. and in fact just a quick stat is that basically we have raised inclusive of the tap of the CMAC grant but we've raised $6.8 million externally since 2012 so if you back out it's about $1.9 million or so that has come in either to us directly or to partners on projects that we're taking significant leadership on Okay, thank you. I just think that that's important. I mean, that was one of the main reasons I wanted, and we talked about it in budget meetings, was your salary, the percentage of your budget, and does it overlap some of the other organizations in town that we also pay their salaries and pay a large percentage of their budgets? And so can we consolidate some of these and potentially save the city money and still accomplish, I think, the overall goals of the administration and council? so I want to talk about you the I guess the first thing I would like to discuss is the boundaries of this downtown area we debated this recently with the discussion of center point of where to locate town hall a new city hall and what constitutes downtown and I know that it is not I mean even the DLC has its own definition of downtown and obviously you know if we I doubt that anyone wants, well, I don't know anyone, but I think when we talk about a new city hall, I don't see it going out to South Broadway. I don't see it locating Euclid Avenue, for instance. I'm curious, because I think that we do have dire needs and plenty of projects in the downtown core, so I'm curious why your scope extends to South Broadway, to Euclid Avenue, and I'm curious about the distillery district. As you know, I've been an advocate for that area since I've been on council and before. And the administration and the DDA at the time told me that the distillery district was not part of the DDA's purview whenever I asked for your all's facilitation assistance with the TIF project and TIF funding and that endeavor that then failed because, you know, lots of reasons. But when you reference, for instance, 17 new restaurants and bars that have opened, and eight of which have been in the Distillery District, which really were not a project of the DDA. And you have a list of lots of projects on Jefferson that weren't a part of the DDA. And National Avenue, I don't think that the DDA was involved. I mean, if you were, correct me and let me know what you did. But I just, I really am curious about what you have done and what your organization has done specifically for downtown and not in partnership with things that are already existing. We were already going to replace mainline trunk sewer projects on Euclid. Distillery District was happening of its own accord. The Red Mile is a private project happening on its own. So I understand that you're at the table in those discussions and that someone should be. but I'd really like specifics on what some outcomes and initiatives the DDA has taken on and then accomplished. Okay, we've got a bunch of questions in there. I said a lot there. I'm sorry. Thank you. Well, let me... My time's up. Your time's up. Thank you, Ed. Let me try to... Let me start at the beginning then. So in terms of distribution of paying attention, right? So this may sound like heresy coming from me, but there's nothing sacred about downtown. There's nothing sacred about Main Street. What's important is what Main Street can do for Lexington and for the whole community. What's important is what investment does for Lexington and Lexington's economy and the city that that investment builds and what it does to attract and retain that workforce that we talked about. So the strategy here is not how do we have a quaint Main Street. The strategy is how do we drive investment in Lexington, Kentucky. So with that in mind, the opportunities for that investment are broader than just the three blocks of Main Street or the three blocks of Shore Street. So, yeah, we could, yes, we could drill down and we could really focus on three blocks. They have plenty to keep us busy. The question is, will it actually deliver the investment and the return on investment that you're actually talking about, right? Which is, we are an economic development agency. And my definition of economic development is very simple. It's other people's money coming into this community and staying here. And so, investment matters. It can't just be pushing the same dollar around. We've got to bring in an outside investment and keep it in the community because that is what grows our economy. Distillery district. We have a very good working relationship with the property owners, with the master broker over there. We have been working quietly behind the scenes with an undisclosed major tenant and investor for over three years. So we have been quite involved in that district. And the TIF stuff is kind of under the bridge in terms of so much so that I don't remember it all. But I would say that the distillery district is a great growth area, and so we're paying attention to it. And sometimes the best thing we can do is just stay out of the way, right? I offered the final slides as trends, overall trends of the downtown. So economic development is not as simple as creating widgets, right? You're trying to harness larger trends that you have no control over. And so the best thing we can do is set the table, right? The best thing we can do is set the table so that that investment can come here. And the things that we know overall is that for 15 years, that investment has paid higher returns in other slightly larger midsize cities, Nashville, Indianapolis, Louisville, Columbus. Well, we're now catching up to our returns being similar to theirs. So we're on the front edge of seeing that investment starting to come. That's why these trends are important. and we're starting to see that we are getting announcements of investment that actually not too long ago no bank would have taken on. And so this is an important indicator to us that the economic development is moving. And so when you want to get into what does the DDA do, a lot of it is convening, right? A lot of it is putting the right people in front of the right people, right? and you're only going to get those kind of deals come together that drive that investment if the right people are talking to each other, right? But we also do a lot of the tip of the spear stuff, right? We got out front on the old courthouse. So whether or not you agree with whether that is a priority project, what you can't argue with is the amount of effort that went into figuring out a plausible way forward for a project where we were able to identify the potential future use, the financing strategy, key consultants, and then manage the conditions assessment, which really laid the groundwork for jumping off and moving forward. The amount of effort has gone into the planning and pre-development for the town branch commons. Again, you may debate whether or not it is the right project to prioritize, but the effort that we put into it has been significant in terms of, again, putting together a feasible design, testing that, putting together a strategic plan, sizing the project, putting together fundraising goals, identifying the consultants we need, putting them around the table, and now getting it to a place where it can plausibly move forward, so much so that we have got state funds and local funds into the project. So we lay the groundwork for those projects. That's what we do on a day-to-day. and we're happy to hand it off to others to carry it across the finish line because that allows us to turn our resources to the next project and looking for the next opportunity for investment in Lexington. Okay, thank you. I'll yield my time. Thank you. You're welcome to chime back in to Councilman Maloney. Thank you. I need to follow up on the comment that Councilmember Farmer said about the center point, And not only Centerpoint, but Rupp Arena and all that. Why weren't you involved in any of that? And who's driving the boat? That's the question. I mean, to me, these are the most important issues we've dealt with. That are big importance to downtown Lexington. Now, I kind of agree with Council Member Akers that we're getting outside and putting all these wonderful ideas. I agree with what she said on all that. But to me, downtown Luttonton, the biggest project going on is I think we should have been involved with Senate Foreign. To me, you represent the city. We pay your salary. I'm not trying to throw you, but I need to know who's driving the boat and why you were not involved with Rupp Arena, which I think, reading your mission, that's the main part of your heart and soul is to do that kind of development. Well, so to speak to the center point, at the end of the day, it's still a private development. And so the private developers invite people to the table. To what? It's that the private development invites people to the table. So it is still a private development, and that is where the breakdown falls. As far as Reparino, we were very involved with the planning two years ago. We are acutely aware of what's going on currently. In fact, the DDA board provided its unanimous support, just as you did, for going to the state to move the convention center forward. The planning over there is greatly influenced and integrated with the town branch commons concept. So we're right at the table on Rupp Arena. And I just think you need to be more involved. I don't know who's delaying you or whatever the problem is, but like going back to the courthouse. I don't mean to say this, but I personally don't. I see that lady right there. It's done the courthouse all herself. That's my impression, and I don't mean to say it in a way like that, but Sally Hamilton, I give credit for doing what the courthouse is. And to me, she's doing jobs that I don't think she should be doing, but she's doing jobs that somebody had to step up. And I feel, though, she had done the courthouse. I don't see you. I mean, you may have brought some tenants or something, but to me, the signature club, the signature on that courthouse is going to be that lady right there. And to me, to say that you've done courthouse, and I want to give credit where credit due, and that lady right there deserves credit. And I know she's supposed to be present to us in the next couple weeks, but hopefully we'll get something out of that. But back to where you are, where were you in that? She hired the consultant. She hired all that. We had an RFP and all that. Where did you place it? I know you probably were sitting in those meetings making recommendations and all that. And I know John Sheed has been involved with putting out the bids on how to fix the thing up and all that. So I'm not trying to, but I just want to give credit where credit does. There is no one I'd rather hand the football to than Sally Hamilton. Do what? There's nobody I'd rather hand the football to than Sally Hamilton. I didn't hear you. What now? There is no one I would rather hand the football to than Sally Hamilton. Well, that to me is, I just want to give credit for doing it. I just want to commend you for what you've done. And just to say that you're involved with the courthouse, I think we need to point where the person is. And to me, that's where it is. And if that goes back to town branch, I'm trying to find the quarterback for town branch. I've yet to find a quarterback for Town Branch I mean you may be having meetings and all that but I think there's just so many peaches flying all over the place on Town Branch that's why I'm not, nobody convinced me that I'm a big fan of it right now because first I thought we were going to start by Rupp Arena now we're starting over here at Midland it's just that's the confusion I have and I just think somebody has to take the quarterback like this lady does here She does a tremendous job, and somebody needs to follow her on that. She may go write a book, and I guarantee you it would be a great book to learn how she does it. But I think that's something you all need to do. And I just feel like if you're going to take a lead on something, be sure you come in here with the right stuff and all that. Who gets credit and all that? And I'm not trying to, but that's the only part I have concerns about. Council Member Akers. Thank you. I want to also say that I agree with Council Member Maloney over there. so we should all take note and put that in the minutes today. I agree when I think we all said when you made the comment of that, you know, there's no one you'd rather hand the football to than Sally Hamilton. Well, that's a great testament to Sally, and we all know that she is an amazing human capable of great feats. I think the question is why should you hand the ball off? I think that's what we're all asking is why can't you just keep the ball and run it into the end zone instead of handing it back to Sally? Why did Sally, I mean, she also steered the entire Senior Citizen Center. And, of course, that is technically, I guess, out of downtown, maybe by an eighth of a mile based on your map. I think that's part of our question, is why does our CAO, who has plenty of her own responsibilities here within the city hall, that she shouldn't probably be overseeing the development of a historic project in the center of downtown when we have a downtown development organization tasked with that, supposedly. And then to go back, you mentioned what you're doing now in the distillery district. what I asked for and what the developers then asked for years ago was sewers in the west end of the distillery district there still are not sewers on Manchester so that they cannot have toilets in public businesses that serve the public so the developers there had to build and pay for their own pump station in order to open these eight new businesses and serve the public the city has not still laid new replaced sewers and I know it's expensive but that is within a few blocks of Rupp Arena, and yet we don't have, there's still a distillery that has porta potties outside of it. So I just, I mean, if you say you're about downtown, then be about downtown and maybe focus more. Maybe that's what we need to do is reel it in and focus. Thank you. And then next we have Councilor Massati. Thank you, Chair. I guess, Jeff, what some of us are feeling is just frustration. You know, we have a lot of different projects going on, and number one, a lot of times we're not apprised. Like, I didn't know you were working for the past two years on the city hall at all. I had no idea. And I think that's real important for us to be aware of that and to know what you've found in studies or what you've decided to do. Because, again, we're just duplication of effort, and we don't have that time. Second of all, I know we just hired a courthouse project manager. So I guess I'm a little concerned if we've got the CAO who's in charge of not only this whole government, now the courthouse, and we've got a courthouse project manager, where does your role in all this fit in? And it just gets real frustrating for me that it seems like, again, that we've got a lot of projects going on, but I'm not sure of the quantitative results, or I'm not sure who is taking care of the projects, and I just need some more clarification. Sure. Maybe you can do that now. Well, I can give you, so what we do is the pre-development piece, right? And you'll find with any construction, any real estate development, that typically the person who starts it, who lays the groundwork, who figures out the project, is seldom the person who's actually managing the construction. Oh, sure, I understand that. And so we're really no different. We are not staffed to have construction managers on staff. We are not staffed with grizzled old project managers. We could be, but that's a conversation that we have not had in the past about that being sort of a function or a part of the contract you want us to do. So really, effectively, in order to get these projects moving is they had to be handed to the city because it was your building, or in the case of the town branch, it's your right-of-way, and we're going to continue to work on that. And with 21C, it was your contribution, right? So it was like each one of these, it has to come back to this body because this body really is the one who's calling the shots. and then your staff is the one that has often stepped in once we've sort of flipped over the rocks and figured out a plausible way to move forward. And so you're absolutely right, Council Member Maloney. Sally Hamilton is the one that's going to get it done and has been working to get it done. Hopefully we were useful in handing her something that gave her a head start. And so I think that that's the role we have been playing. if there is a need for us or whatever future organization there may be to play a different role, then that should really be articulated, I think, in the agreement in the PSA with that entity, and we should really put our heads together and figure out how to staff that. So if we really want a sort of full-time project manager for public projects downtown, then that's a staffing need, and we can look at how to do that. So I understand. So you're mostly on the front end. We're mostly on the front end. You initiate the projects, and then once you feel that they're at a certain point, you kind of determine where they end up, where they lie. And again, I think Council Member Maloney brings up a big point when saying that the courthouse now is under CAO Hamilton. As it should be. Well, yeah, but she's got a lot of stuff to do. Well, that's true. Not only that, like I said, she runs the government, so I guess I understand now your scope a little bit better. Thank you. Absolutely. And then next we have Councilman Skutchfield. Thank you, Chair. I'll try to be short. Thank you. I think part of the problem that myself, and I won't speak for all, but some of my colleagues come to, is we feel like we get the same report every year that there's a lot of stuff going on, but we haven't seen a lot of stuff come to fruition. We also see so much duplication between the LDA, DDA, Commerce Lexington. We have Will Fortune that's been hired by the government to do group project as a project manager overall. We have a project manager for the courthouse. We have Kevin Adkins that's doing financials for the government. We have Sally that's taking on different things. And both your board and other boards that are supposed to be working downtown are all appointed by the government, so therefore they're also government entities. It's a lot of duplication, and right now it's gotten to the point where I feel like you've got confusing. somebody has a courthouse but somebody doesn't have town branch and I just, it needs to be more streamlined and we need, stop wasting resources I mean if we give you $300,000 a year, how much are we giving to these other organizations that are supposed to be doing the same thing but yet it doesn't seem like we're all talking to each other and that makes me really concerned that's all I have Anyone else on this topic? Well, Mr. Fugate, I will say a couple things. One, you know, your work involves a lot of networking, a lot of knowledge base, and knowing where to find the answers. And when people come to town, that's important. But also by your title, Downtown Development Authority, I think sometimes it can put a misleading target on your back. I think, you know, as Councilman Blitzel started off with, that needs to be addressed. Is that really the appropriate terminology today? Right. Is it really appropriate to have the DLC, the Courthouse Area Design Board, and others? And I think those are all questions we can address as we move forward. And are you all planning on reporting back? How soon are you all going to report back? If you'll come to the microphone, just tell us just so it's. Sure. We've had one initial meeting with a small core of our executive committee and officers for the DLC. and we've kind of established who we want on our working committee. We've scheduled the first meeting. That's all I can tell you at this point, and I think we are all very expedient in our process, and hopefully within the next few months we'll have a recommendation one way or the other. And I'll just say that why it's unique, and I've been on both boards. I've been on Downtown Lexington Corporation. I've been on DDA for a long time, and people always ask, you know, what do you do differently? And, you know, like the merger of Lexington United and the Chamber, DLC is member-based. You know, yes, they contract with the city to do events, but that's relatively new. But their focus is on short-term activities driving traffic to downtown, entertainment value, the soft things. Whereas DDA, from the very origins 15 years ago, is about more the hardscape, the infrastructure. And like Jeff said many times later, the first line of defense, or offense really, is when a call comes in, inventory, what's available downtown for developers, working hand-in-hand with developers to finding locations for them. Now, are we subsidizing those developers? No, but we're walking them through the process, connecting them with the right people in the city government to help spur that development. So a lot of it is creating a culture of wanting to be here. No, maybe we didn't create the bar on Jefferson Street, but the overall culture of, yes, I feel good about downtown. I feel good about that investment. That's what spurs that investment and that long-term infrastructure. Well, thank you. Very nice summation. I would just say that we're working on our budget, and we approve it by the end of June. And both agencies are in our budget for full funding. We don't know what the mayor is going to recommend for the next year, but if we maybe can have some pathway before we approve the budget, that would be obviously advantageous to the council on that front. And again, thank you both for being here. Next up we have the occupational license fee exemption by Council Member Hensley. Before we get to that, we're going to have to move the contingency fund draft ordinance to our March 15th meeting, which will be in two weeks, basically. We don't have enough time today to get through both, and we want to give it due consideration before the mayor presents his budget. So we'll definitely have that as the first item on our March 15th meeting because we have a short meeting span based on our calendar. So next up, Councilman Hensley, do you want to introduce this topic? Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. and everybody forgive me for sounding like a frog. During the minimum wage discussion, this ordinance adjustment I proposed came out of some thoughts of what we might be able to do with the occupational license fees that we currently get and maybe some of the increases that we might get in the future of about $2 million. One of the thoughts, and I just want to have a dialogue over this today to throw some thoughts out there and not act on anything today. But one of the thoughts I had would maybe to take the changes of the found money that we might have from the minimum wage, put those into programs like the Mayor's training program that used to exist, or into agencies like the Community Action Council for Workforce Development or make those funds available through grants for workforce development to try to help those people who have minimum wage increase their wage through training. And really, that was the idea at the moment, and that's the short version of the thoughts I have. Were you going to go through the presentation, or did you have someone in the audience that was going to, or was it just for information only? Just for consumption for today, and maybe we can take this up next month. So I really didn't have anything to act on today. Okay. Well, are there any questions about this topic from committee members or discussion items? Well, we'll leave it as information only, and if we're going to keep it in committee, we need to have action either next committee meeting or we can remove it either way. Okay. All right, well, we do have enough time. If the committee wishes, we've got 21 minutes. Do we want to go ahead and try to tackle the contingency discussion again, or do we want to wait until next meeting? What's the pleasure of the committee? You all ready to keep moving? All right. Mr. O'Mara, you're on again. Thank you, Chair. attached in your packet was a draft of the contingency ordinance with the amendments that were discussed by council or suggested to look at again from our last meeting i can go over them with you the first one is in section two item number five which asks for the monthly deposit the amount of fifty thousand to be suspended once you make the ten percent funding goal. So that's been added. On item 7A, to have a better definition of what unanticipated or unforeseen extraordinary needs of an emergency nature might be. And we look to state law and reference that in the ordinance, as well as what is called significant liability occurs. So we have a definition of an emergency out of state law to reference, and then we put the word significant liability. And then finally, at the very end, due to withdrawals, on item C, asked to make a two-thirds majority rather than a simple majority for items to be withdrawn. So we made those amendments for your consideration, and that would be as the draft is today. Commissioner, thank you. And Council Member Farmer was instrumental in putting this in the committee, been working on it. Council Member Farmer? Thank you, sir. I think that based on the last couple months of questions and observations, we made a couple of changes to this at our last meeting, and I think that it covers all the parts that people had questions about. I mean, you never know. So I don't really have a question. I was just going to make a motion to approve this and send it on to the full council. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second by Council Member Massadi. Discussion on the motion. Council Member Hensley. One question I had about this is I know we're changing the language and the availability of the funds quite a bit. And have you all discussed with Pat Dugger and Deem about the use of these funds in the event of an emergency, if we would have to access these funds before we would be able to access presidential declaration or state declaration funds? that there seems to be a pile of money that we might have to spend off in a disaster that the other parts of the government might think we need to spend before accepting their funding is my fear. Well, I see those as two separate items of discussion. Let me explain why I see that. If you're referring to a declared emergency and whether you qualify for FEMA reimbursement and FEMA, yes, there is a percentage that each county has to meet depending on the size of the county. And unfortunately, we're a large county, and we have to spend north of a million dollars before we qualify versus a Taylor County or a smaller county that has a much lower threshold. But that's a FEMA reimbursement qualification, separate from whether we as a city need to access a contingency fund to meet an emergency need. FEMA is not looking at where you got the money, but how much you spent is my understanding. Okay. I was afraid that they might think of how much you have before they give you some. They've already looked at what our total budget is. Okay. And that's the calculation that we're under currently, as I understand it. Okay. Thank you. Next up, we have Councilman Maloney. How do you manage this? I've been reading this book now. It's confusing. All right. How do you minister this? Is it going to be easy? I mean, you're looking at a lot of different changes in here, some changes. Are you going to be able to minister this? Is it going to be simple to minister this, or is it going to be a whole new way of ministering this program? Well, it's definitely different. I don't know that it's harder. There may be more dialogue between the administration and the council as to when is an appropriate use of the funds. Currently, it is so restricted that dialogue has never occurred. So this would bring the opportunity up to have that dialogue and have that discussion. But I don't see it as overly complex. I see it as more in line with our sister cities and the standards that are out there in other contingency ordinances across the country. So this is going to be a lot better than what is written now, is what you're telling us. I think it is a step in the right direction. Yes, sir. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. I guess my take on this is that it both gives us more flexibility and it gives us more control. So the flexibility is in the way in which emergencies are defined, and the control is that instead of needing a majority of council, it needs two-thirds of council to approve getting into the contingency fund. and then there's one other thing which is cap it at 10% of our annual funds. And it seems to me that clarifies what we need to do and how we need to do it. We don't have to get into the details of what a specific emergency might be, but it gives us the opportunity to discuss that, as you said, and make a decision based on our judgment about whether this is appropriate or not. So I'm in favor of the motion. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Anyone else? All right, we have a motion on the floor to move this on to the full council. Council, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that passes. And that's the end of our item, our agenda. I will note a couple things. One, in our minute summaries going forward, you'll see some of our financial charts are going to be now in the minutes. I want to thank our budget analysts for getting those in there as well. Also on our chart, on items referred to committee, we're putting statuses on each thing so you know exactly where they are in the process. So if there are any updates that need to be done, just contact our budget analyst, and she'll be happy to work with you in updating the status of each item. Anything further before the committee? All right, motion to adjourn. Second. Motion and second. All in favor say aye. Aye. We're adjourned. Thank you. Ayes, guys. Thank you.