# Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee - March 15, 2016 > Auto-transcribed civic record · March 15, 2016 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3898 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3898?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2016-03-15 - **Last revised**: March 15, 2016 - **Length**: 14,663 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 met on March 15, 2016, at 1:00 PM with Stinnett presiding as the committee chair. The committee addressed six agenda items during the session, with one item requiring formal approval and five items presented for informational purposes. The committee took three votes during the meeting and heard presentations from two local arts organizations, though no public comments were received. The meeting focused primarily on budget-related matters including urban services funding data, occupational license fee exemptions, and presentations from The Lyric Theatre and LexArts seeking committee consideration. ## Attendance All council members were present for the March 15, 2016 meeting. **Present:** Stinnett, Moloney, Kay, Lamb, Farmer, Scutchfield, F. Brown, Mossotti, Bledsoe, Hensley, Aker, and Gibbs **Absent:** None **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions The committee took three unanimous votes during the March 15, 2016 meeting. **Approval of January 25, 2016 Committee Summary** Mossotti made a motion to approve the January 25, 2016 Committee Summary, which was seconded by Bledsoe. The motion passed unanimously. **Approval of Contingency Fund Draft Ordinance** Farmer made a motion to approve the Contingency Fund Draft Ordinance, with Mossotti providing the second. The motion passed unanimously. **Adjournment** Farmer moved to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Mossotti. The motion to adjourn passed unanimously. All three votes were conducted by unanimous consent without formal roll call votes recorded. No specific vote counts, individual member votes, or conditions were documented for any of the motions. Transcript timestamps were not available for the voting portions of the meeting. ## Contested Items The meeting featured one primary area of contention regarding municipal infrastructure funding. **Streetlight Funding** A heated discussion emerged over the funding mechanism for streetlight infrastructure and maintenance. The debate centered on concerns about utilizing franchise fees as a funding source for streetlight operations. Council members expressed disagreement about the sustainability and appropriateness of this funding approach. The discussion highlighted the need to identify a more sustainable long-term solution for streetlight funding, though the specific details of alternative proposals and the positions of individual council members were not detailed in the available materials. The outcome of this contentious discussion was not specified in the provided information. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps, participant names, and resolution details were not available in the source materials for this contested item.* ## Approval of February 23, 2016 Committee Summary The committee reviewed and approved the summary of their February 23, 2016 meeting as the first item on their agenda. Stinnett participated in the discussion of this agenda item. The committee considered the written summary of their previous meeting proceedings for accuracy and completeness. Following their review, the committee voted to approve the February 23, 2016 committee summary without any noted corrections or amendments. **Outcome:** The February 23, 2016 committee summary was approved. ## Urban Services Fund – Additional Data Stinnett presented additional data regarding the Urban Services Fund during this informational agenda item. The presentation focused on two key components of the fund: franchise fees and streetlight funding. **Key Presentation Elements:** • Franchise fee data and analysis • Streetlight funding information and requirements • Additional financial data related to urban services operations The presentation served as an informational update to provide council members and the public with supplementary details about the Urban Services Fund's structure and funding sources. Stinnett delivered the presentation to enhance understanding of how franchise fees contribute to the fund and how streetlight infrastructure is financed through this mechanism. This agenda item was purely informational in nature, with no action items or decisions required from the council. The additional data presentation aimed to provide transparency and clarity regarding the Urban Services Fund's financial components and operational aspects. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item.* ## Occupational License Fee Exemption During the March 15, 2016 meeting, agenda item 3 addressed the topic of exempting individuals earning minimum wage from occupational license fees. The discussion was led by Hensley and Kay, who examined the potential policy change. The speakers focused on whether workers earning minimum wage should be required to pay occupational license fees, which could represent a significant financial burden for low-income earners. The discussion explored the implications of creating an exemption based on income level, specifically targeting those at the minimum wage threshold. Hensley and Kay presented the issue as part of ongoing considerations regarding occupational licensing requirements and their impact on workers at different income levels. The conversation examined how such fees might affect minimum wage earners' ability to obtain necessary occupational licenses and enter certain professions. The agenda item was classified as a discussion item, indicating that the meeting served as an informational session rather than a decision-making forum. No formal action was taken during this portion of the meeting, and the outcome was noted as informational, suggesting that the discussion was intended to gather input and explore the topic rather than reach a final determination. The exemption proposal represents a consideration of the economic burden that occupational licensing fees may place on the lowest-paid workers in the jurisdiction, though the specific details of any proposed exemption criteria or implementation timeline were not detailed in the available meeting information. ## The Lyric Theatre Presentation Scutchfield delivered a presentation on the Lyric Theatre during agenda item 4, providing an overview of the theater's strategic plan and current financial status. The presentation covered the Lyric Theatre's operational framework and future planning initiatives. Scutchfield discussed the organization's strategic direction, outlining key priorities and goals for the theater's continued development and community engagement. A significant portion of the presentation focused on the theater's financial position. Scutchfield provided details about the current financial status, including revenue streams, operational expenses, and budget considerations that impact the theater's programming and facility management. This agenda item was informational in nature, with Scutchfield serving as the primary speaker throughout the presentation. The discussion aimed to keep meeting attendees informed about the Lyric Theatre's operations, strategic planning efforts, and financial health rather than seeking specific decisions or approvals. The presentation concluded without requiring formal action from the meeting participants, fulfilling its purpose of providing a comprehensive update on the theater's current status and future planning initiatives. ## LexArts Presentation Scutchfield delivered a presentation on LexArts during agenda item 5, providing an overview of the organization's current initiatives and financial status. The presentation covered LexArts' ongoing programs and activities, though specific details about individual initiatives were not captured in the available meeting documentation. Scutchfield also addressed the organization's financial position as part of the briefing to council members. This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken by the council following the presentation. The session provided council members with an update on LexArts' operations and current status within the community. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item.* ## Items Referred to Committee During agenda item 6, the committee reviewed various matters that had been referred to them for consideration. Stinnett served as the key speaker for this discussion item. The session was informational in nature, with the committee examining the items that required their attention and review. This agenda item provided an opportunity for the committee to organize and prioritize the various matters that had been directed to them from other bodies or through the standard referral process. No specific transcript timestamp was available for this portion of the meeting, and the discussion concluded without requiring any formal action or decision from the committee members. The item served its intended purpose of keeping committee members informed about their upcoming responsibilities and workload. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of January 25, 2016 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of Contingency Fund Draft Ordinance - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Adjournment --- ## Full transcript For me something tall and strong, make it a hurricane before I go insane. It's only half past twelve, but I don't care. He don't care. I don't care. It's five o'clock somewhere. What time zone am I on? What country am I in? It doesn't matter, it's five o'clock somewhere. It's always on 5 in Margaritaville, come to think of it I heard that You've been there, haven't you? Yes, sir I've seen your boat there I've been to Margaritaville a few times All right, well, that's good Stumble my way back Okay, well, we just want to make sure you can keep it between the navigational beacons Between the buoys, I got it All right, well, it's 5 o'clock, let's go somewhere I'm ready, crank it up Let's get out of here I'm gone I'm sorry. guitar solo Where they walk and I walk, they twist and I kiss, they shimmy and I shimmy, they fly and I fly. Well, they're out there having fun in that more California sun. Well, I'm going out west out on the coast, where the California girls are really the most. Well, they walk in our home They twist, in our twist They see me, in our ship They fly, in our fight Well, they're out there having fun In that one, California sun Well, the girls are frisky and old frisco A pretty little chick wherever you go And in there was And I was Big face And I was This silly And I'll see you in the fly And I'll find Well, they're out there a heavy bond Being in the North California sun Yeah, they're out there a heavy bond Being in the North California sun She used to be my only enemy And never let her be free Catching me in places that I knew I shouldn't be Every other day across the line I didn't mean to be so bad I never thought you would become a friend I never had Back then I didn't know why Why you were misunderstood So now I see through your eyes All that you did was love Mama, I love you Mama, I care Mama, I love you Mama, my friend You're my friend I didn't want to hear it then But I'm not ashamed to say it now Every little thing you said and did was right for me I had a lot of time to think about About the way I used to be I never had a sense of my responsibility Back then I didn't know why Why you were misunderstood So now I see through your eyes All that you did was love Mama, I love you Mama, I came Mama, I love you Mama, my friend You will be my mama We're loving you, you're not in me I hope that's true, I'm guaranteed Oh, my love, you're my love You're not in me Oh, my love, that's true I'm getting through Oh, my love, you're my love You're not in me Love, my love, that's true I'm getting through Oh, my love, you're my love You're not in me Love, my love, that's true Let's get it. Thank you. Don't leave now Please don't take my heart away Promise me just one more night We'll go our separate ways We always had time on our sides Now it's fading fast Every second, every moment We've got to, we've got to make it last I touch you once, I touch you twice I won't let go every price I need you now like I need you now You always said we'd still be friends someday If you leave, I won't cry I'll always waste one single day But if you leave, don't look back I'll be running the other way Seven years went under the bridge Like time was standing still Heaven knows what happens now You've got to, you've got to stay away I touch you once, I touch you twice I won't let go at any price I need you now like I need you then You're always saying we need you again I'll touch you once, I'll touch you twice I won't let go at any price I need you now like I need you then You always said we'd still be friends I'll touch you once, I'll touch you twice I won't let go at any price I need you now like I need you then You always said we'd meet again someday Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Thunderbird Thunderbird Let's take a boat to Bermuda Let's take a plane to St. Paul Let's grab a kayak to Quincy or Nile Let's get away from it all Let's take a trip in a trailer No need to come back at all Let's take a powder to Boston for chowder Let's get away from it all We'll travel round from town to town We'll visit every state I repeat, I love you sweet In all the 48 Let's go again to Niagara This time we'll peek at the fall Let's leave our hut, dear Get out of our rut, dear Let's get away from it all We'll travel round from town to town We'll visit every state And I'll repeat that I love you sweet ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ORCHESTRA PLAYS Okay, everyone will take their seats. We'll go ahead and get started. Today is March 15th. It's the Budget, Finance, and Economic Development Committee. Welcome, everyone. First on our agenda is the approval of the February 23rd Committee Summary. Move approval. Motion and a second. Motion and a second to approve. Any amendments, changes, discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that passes. And again, normally we would have our monthly financials at this point, but given the fact that our calendar made it such that we have a budget meeting two weeks from our last meeting, the updated financials will be presented as part of our annual budget. When the mayor presents his budget, we'll get those numbers there when we come back from break. So that's not on our agenda today. Next up is a follow-up from last meeting on the Urban Services Fund. This is in relationship to the streetlights and the street cleaning options on how we fund them going forward. Wes, welcome. I understand Commissioner O'Mara is sick, so if he's watching, we hope he gets better. We hope he does too, yes. Okay, so this is follow-up on two items. Oh, sorry. One is the funding of the streetlights with franchise fees, and we'll be looking at the revenue projection, cost to residence, and then programmatic issues and conclusions based on that. And then a second one will be funding street cleaning with the water quality management fee. And what we'll look at there will be the availability of the funds, the legal impact, and conclusions. So looking historically and forecasting out into the future, in 2015 you're looking at about a $1.9 million deficit between the total expense for streetlights and the revenue that the streetlight fee brings in. That is going to continue to grow with revenue growing fairly gradually and expenses continue to grow at a more rapid pace to be about $5.4 million projected in 2025. So what we were tasked with looking at was looking at increasing the franchise fees for three of our utilities to the 5% rate, which is the maximum allowable under our franchise agreements, and seeing if that could cover the revenue necessary to fund the Streetlight program. So currently we receive 4% franchise fee from electric, 4% from gas, and 3% from water. And if we were looking at increasing all of those from their current rates to 5%, then we'd be looking at about $6.2 million in additional revenue in FY17. Okay, Wes, hold on right there. Yes, sir. We have a question on that slide. Councilor Massadi first. Hi, Wes. Explain to me, when we increase our franchise fee, what amount goes to us as far as the LFUCG? What amount? Do you know? The amount of the franchise fee that goes to us? Well, I know the amount you're saying raising it to 3%, correct? Yes. In that previous slide. Of that 3%, what portion do we get? 3%, 2.5%, 2%? I believe all of that portion of the franchise fee comes to us. Okay, because there's been some concern about KWC raising its rates. And so I'm just wondering how this is all playing as far as end effect to the consumer. Right. Because that's going to get passed through to the consumer too, correct? Yes, it will. Okay, so we've got a bump here. and then they're going to try to increase or attempt to increase the rate as well. So my concern is the consumer. These are the fees that we charge as a percentage of the consumer's bill. So whatever the consumer's bill is, it would be this amount of it would come to us. And I understand it needs to be in line. Obviously, the other two are 4%, and this is 3%. But again, they're asking for quite a large increase. So that was my concern. Okay. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Councilman Maloney. I don't try to be nice. Now, when we raised this franchise fee three or four years ago, and it was electrical we raised, most of it coming to pay for the streetlights. Now that $4 million that we got increased, only two-point-something needed to pay for what we were losing money right now. Am I correct on that? as far as the amount that's currently going from the general fund to cover streetlights? The general fund, we know how much we're at. We would shortfall $2 million or something like that, from my understanding, two years ago. Am I wrong on that? I'm almost, I know I'm right, so I thought you all put $2 million out of that $4 million that you got additional to help balance. The first year that the franchise fee was increased, we put about $2.53 million in for a transfer from general fund to urban service fund. Looking at the actual expenses, we've been able to lower that over the last couple years. And so in the FY16 budget, we have a transfer of $2.2 million from the general fund over to the streetlights. And this is why I'm trying to figure out, instead of raising this thing 5% or whatever we're looking at, how long is it before we have to go to 5%? Because I don't want to do it this year. It seems like to me to get up to that $4 million, we need another $1,800,000 or something. When will we reach that $4 million out of the 2.2 that you're taking out now? How many years were before you have to use all that $4 million? Before we got to meet, before I even talked about raising 5%. Or whatever. What is, how much did we, from what I, that's what Bill O'Meara and I get into it. Because Bill O'Meara and I get into it, and Bill's not here today. I'm not trying to pick on Bill, but Bill says it's general funds money. The reason we raised that franchise fee was for one reason. It was to pay these light bills. And I found out we ended up paying the life bill on top of some additional revenue we got in, and you all put that into general funds. What I'm trying to say is that additional that you all put into general funds, how long is it before we use all that additional general funds up before we even have to look at a 5% raise? Based on what Melissa and I were just talking about, it looks like about 2021 or 2022. How much? In 2021 or 2022. Before we have to look at this 5% raise to pay for the difference if we raise that $4 million up to it. I know you're coming up here, Law. Come on up here. I think part of the answer to your question is it depends on how you budget things year to year as well. That extra money, as I understand it, is being spent in the budget, and you all will have a budget in front of you all to consider shortly. I do not believe that they have added any additional increase into what they're planning in this year's budget. So for planning purposes, I believe, and I don't want to misstate this, that they have not built in you all raising this fee this year as part of this year's budget. That's correct. So, Melissa, when the new budget coming in, I know we have, how much do you, are you all going to keep the same amount that you asked for last year? We're still putting the budget together right now, but we're looking at a number very close to what we have this current fiscal year. So, and I thought, I'm not trying, but to me when we raise that fee, there should be a gap that we can continue to get that. And I know you're all using your money, but it should be a one-time use money for that $4 million. It should not be, whatever remaining out of that 2.3 you're using. Let's say you're using 2.3. Make it simple. Using $2 million right now, you've got an additional $2 million. The reason why we voted for it was to pay streetlights. That $2 million that we're using in the general fund should be one-time events. As we go along, when the time comes and you add more streetlights on, you ought to start a deduction from that $2 million instead of, I hope to God you all are doing that. I hope you're not using that money for ongoing to pay for salaries and all that kind of stuff. What we do is every year when we put the budget together, we look at the streetlight expenses, and we look at our streetlight revenues, and we have to see where our difference is, and that's how we determine what the number is. It's based on the expenses. So it could vary year to year depending on how many streetlights we're installing, how much the tariff has gone up, and things like that. Okay. I just have a problem looking at this 5% when we've already raised. And I'm hoping my colleagues, I wasn't. I was on the other side. I was on the dark side when we did this. I pushed for this to get the good side to vote for it. Councilman Maloney, just to clarify, we're not proposing to raise this to 5%. This was as part of the request by this committee. But what it will also be doing will be offsetting the streetlight fee that's currently charged. And so this is an examination of if you increased your franchise fees to 5% on electric, gas, and water, would that be enough to cover all of the streetlight expense and be able to take away the streetlight fee that's currently charged to consumers and to citizens. You're saying gas and water goes in? I don't think we can define gas and water going into an electrical bill. I mean. Well, let's be clear. I mean, your time's up. Councilman Maloney, the rates that you see there are 4% and 3% accordingly. This shows raising them 1%. 100% of that goes into the general fund. Period. How we choose to spend it in the budget is up to us. If we want to put some towards streetlights the way it is now, we can. But it all goes through the general fund no matter what right now. Council Member Hensley, you're up next. Thank you, Chair. Wes, as I've been on council and started to understand this streetlight funding mechanism, one of the questions that I have is more basic than looking at the current revenues coming in, but understanding how you determine the density of the street lights that are there and do we need them anymore. As I drive around Lexington in the past couple of months and start paying attention to how many lights are out for an expended period of time and no one is fixing them, it would be my thought that maybe we don't need that light if it's not being reported that it's out. and going back and challenging streets and our environmental quality and public works committees to say, let's do a study of how many lots we have and do we actually need them and how are we actually allocating those versus just a carte blanche, you know, raising the fees to fund the lots and growing something into perpetuity. That's the only comment I have. I wouldn't support increasing the fees until we took a look at that. And that would impact the expense side, but as far as the revenue, we're just looking at whether this can offset the street light fee. Right, and thank you for providing that chart. I will say or ask David Barber, can you clarify from a legal standpoint, David, can you clarify, can we raise just electric and not gas and water and leave them at a different rate? Is that allowable as a scenario? Because they're really not tied to what you're talking about as what you described. There's a dedicated fund issue that came up when you all considered this originally, and you don't have necessarily the latitude to make this a dedicated funding source, which is why it goes into the general fund. We would prefer that the franchises have equal franchise fee rates because you start to get into why you have a distinction between the particular rates for these utilities. the way we normally look at it it's kind of akin to what they would pay to rent the use of the right-of-way so they don't have to get a bunch of easements that's really legally why we're allowed to assess the fee so we've always felt most comfortable when they are the same amount rather than trying to increase one versus the other but it's permissible you just feel more comfortable yeah all right councilman side of you to follow up yes um mr barbary So based on your last statement, if we would make the water franchise equivalent to the gas and electric, is our law department prepared? I think you already have. Did you file anything against the water increase in Frankfurt already? Yeah, we've already intervened in the case, and we are working with the Attorney General and hiring experts to basically advocate against the rate increase. So yes, we are actively involved in that case. We just asked the first round of discovery, and I don't recall whether they've actually scheduled a date for the hearing. It will probably be later on this spring or early summer. So based on your experience through the years, if we were to raise that so it is equal to the other rates, our chances of also getting, or KAWC's chances of getting their full ask? Historically, they have not gotten their full asks. historically they probably get somewhere between 50 percent and two-thirds of what they asked for you don't ever know in a particular case but historically based upon what they have asked for and what they have received it's been somewhere in the range of 50 percent to two-thirds of what they asked for so i would anticipate for planning purposes that they are going to get most of what they asked for that's what we've told our budgeting folks to plan for as far as our water rates going into next year. And that's my concern. If we bump that up and they get even 50 or two-thirds percent, it all funnels back to the consumer. That's correct. All right. Thank you. All right. Councilman Long, do you have a follow-up on this slide? Councilman, thank you. David, I have a question for you. The water increase that we raise, we pay a fee every year for our power hydrants. Am I right on that? Yes, sir. then why don't we use that money to pay our fire hydrants and use the electric to pay our street lights? That's why I think we need to be calm in what the use is for. I don't want to be thinning on the money out there at general funds. I think you're using general funds to pay for the fire hydrants now. Well, they're like me. They want to use this money to pay street lights. I'm talking using the water. Right, I understand what you're saying. But as a practical matter, the general funds are paying for the fire hydrants now. So if you raise the water rate, that money could be used out of the general funds to pay for fire hydrants. All right, anyone else on this slide before we move on? Okay, Wes, take us forward. All right. So currently we supplement $2.1 million. We're looking at FY17 from the general fund for the streetlights. Based on the proposal to increase all of the franchise fee rates to 5%, that would generate an additional $6.2 million worth of revenue. Currently, we have to allocate any increase up to 5%. There has to be some of that set aside for the right-of-way fund based on the way we currently have it structured. And so that would leave $7.8 million based on the additional increase in the franchise fees and the current general fund supplement to fund streetlights. So if we look at the current program, it's running a deficit of $2.1 million. If we were to increase all of the rates to 5%, the expenses, you would have $7.8 million worth of revenue. your expenses are $6.9 million, and so you would have $900,000 surplus in the Streetlight Fund. In 2022, the franchise fee revenue would be approximately $8.6 million. Expenses are estimated to go up to $8.2 million, and you would have a $400,000 surplus in the Streetlight Fund. In fiscal year 25, we'd be looking at $10 million of franchise fee revenue. And again, this is with all the rates at 5%, and this is that additional revenue from franchise fees plus the supplement and an expense of $10.5 million, and you would start to run a deficit in the streetlight fund again of $450,000 estimated. So with the current average annual utility bill, the difference that you would see, and this is looking at the average bill, would be $6 for gas, $12 for electric, and $8 for water for a total of $26. The franchise fee for the average house would increase $26 a year, and the proposal would be, based on the request from the Budget and Finance Committee last time, to eliminate the streetlight property tax, and individuals who did not currently pay that would pay an additional $26 a year. Anyone who paid the current street light tax and paid the additional revenue to the franchise fees on their utility bills would pay about $10 less a year because they would no longer be paying the $36 tax. And this is based on information we received from the PVA for a $173,000 property. average property owner pays $36 for street lights on their property tax. Some of the issues that we have with this that we identified, one is that looking through an expense, funding a specific recurring expense through franchise fees revenues can be difficult because franchise fees can vary. They're very volatile. Just looking through the committee packet in your all's minutes, it looks like in January year-to-date, franchise fees were down 12% compared to budget, and so that would create issues with the funding of the streetlight fund through franchise fees. The general fund being the government's main operating fund and the monies in the fund are not designed for a specific purpose, and other high-priority projects could be funded putting pressure on the streetlight funding. Programmatically, we're looking at can people now request a streetlight because they are paying for There are private streetlight areas. There are about nine private streetlight areas in Lexington that they could potentially look at switching to public streetlights because they're now paying the fee. And the streetlight program could expand and cost the program would increase, which would also put pressure on that revenue. So as far as our conclusions, an increase to franchise fees to 5% would increase in revenue by $6.2 million. The 5% franchise fee could fund the current Streetlight program, but the growth in the Streetlight program would continue to be greater than franchise fee revenues in the future, as currently forecasted. And as a result, the administration's recommendation is to not fund the Streetlight program solely through franchise fees. I'm happy to take questions here for this piece of it. Thank you, Chair. Wes, one point of clarification that I want to make. You mentioned the data being provided to you from the PVA, and I know there's been a lot of talk about fair share in the 12th district. That's just about the average property value. Okay. But you're talking about changing from a tax to a fee-based property, and right now the 12th district is the largest property tax contributor to the general fund, and so I want to make sure that we're not moving to a tax that would tax us for streetlights that we don't have. I mean, where's the revenue that you're talking about coming from, just inside of the whole county or inside a defined area? It would be on top of everyone's utility bill, and so this would increase everyone's electric, gas, and water bill if this were to be increased. and if the individuals in the 12th district are not paying the streetlight tax, then they would receive an additional fee we're averaging at $26 based on average bills. But I remember when Commissioner Omar was there before, he was talking about taking this to a fee per parcel of land, and at that time it wasn't clear where those parcels are. I mean, do you all have that projected out? I mean, is it the whole county you're talking about? As far as the franchise fee increase, the franchise fees are charged to everyone. And so in order to break them out, that's billed by the electric companies. And so that would be a requirement of them to break those out. I'm just making sure that we're talking about 73% of the county doesn't have street lights. So thanks. We'll make sure about that. Next up, Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for the presentation. You're welcome. I just want to clarify one point, which I think we've gone back and forth on. And it may just be a language problem, but in your last slide, do not fund the Streetlight program solely through the franchise fee. But we've been told, I think, clearly, that that's not, under any circumstance, it's not a dedicated fee. That money goes into the general fund. We then make a determination about how to spend the money. Correct. so there's no way, and we're not trying to, under any circumstance, dedicate those funds. It's just a matter of looking at the, I don't want to diminish the importance, it's kind of a bookkeeping issue. Money comes in, money comes out. Where's it coming from, where's it going to? And we can do whatever we want with that. So, just to be clear, it's not about this particular fee being dedicated to that use. Is that correct? That's correct. Thank you. Anyone else on the streetlight piece before we move forward? I would just like to say a couple things, Wes. One, keep in mind our rates we pay for our streetlights are based on our electric rates that they file with the PSC. So we don't have a mechanism to keep up with our streetlights when those costs go up. The franchise fee, if those rates go up, it would bring us more revenue. So I guess on your recommendation, do not fund it strictly solely through this method. What method are you all recommending? Because we can't leave here and say, well, we're going to have a $2 million deficit and do nothing about it. That's what past councils did, and that's why we're in this problem. Because the property tax will never, ever be enough to fund this program. And we're certainly open to looking at different methodologies, as the council may prefer. This is the one we were tasked with looking at last time. And so we'll certainly take it. So can you all bring back a recommendation, which you all would feel comfortable recommending on how to fix this? Because the administration is the one that has to manage this program. And going forward, it's not going to be solvent anytime soon. And we need to do something that's going to sure it up forever or get us to a path that's better than we have now. So if you all could do that in the coming meetings, that would be great. Absolutely. Okay. Councilman Maloney, do you have a final thought? I want to echo what Councilman Sanders said. I agree that we've been kicking this can along. And to me, we do have a little window to play with for the next few years until we use the franchise fees to catch up with the streetlights. And when that day comes, we'll probably be back here like we did three years ago with the proposal that you all have four different ways. And the last one was the franchise fees, which we raised 1% to last another five more years or eight years of Band-Aid approach. So I think the council and our colleagues will let you know what happened four years ago. It might have been a different time, but I agree with councilmen's saying we're going to have to do something this time, or we just keep kicking the can down the road, and we'll be back here in another three years, four years to pay these streetlights off. So, I mean, a former colleague that we had here, Ed Lane, he, who I about died, made a motion to raise the taxes. And we didn't have the votes to go on board with that, so that's why the franchise fees came in. But hopefully, I know what your recommendation is going to be. You're going to come back to what we did three, four years ago, or those ideas are going to come in front of us. But this time, I think we've got a new council and a new body here. We need to figure out how we're going to fix the problems instead of kicking the can down. Thank you. Okay, Wes, street cleaning. All right, and this is looking at using the water quality management fee to fund street cleaning. So currently, annual operating street cleaning costs are $1.8 million, and street cleaning capital needs are $622,000. The current water quality fund balance is $18.9 million. The EPA required spending by 2021 from this fee is $18.7 million. So as we forecasted this out, and based on the required capital spend and the amount coming in for the water quality management fee, by 2022, the street cleaning fund, if funded by water quality management, would have a deficit of $5.8 million. And by 2025, that deficit with street cleaning included would be approximately $35 million. with the street cleaning it would normally be viewed as a measurable service and so we need to look at different billing rates based on the number of service and the amount of service that people received around around the city if an individual is paying a fee then they have to be provided with the service currently all properties all developed properties within Fayette County pay the fee and only those paying the tax that are in that taxing district receive the street cleaning services and currently the water quality management fee is not structured in a way that would allow the addition of street cleaning that would it would need to be modified significantly and that would likely include an increase in the existing fees and so our conclusions the use the water quality management fund to pay for street cleaning is problematic. The scope of the fund would need to be increased. We would need to look at how different levels of services would be billed. Would we need to look at tiered billing based on the amount of services that people received? And we would also need to look at what increase would be required to support the program based on, as we saw in a few slides back, the deficit of estimated $35 million if this were used to fund the street cleaning fee to 2025. and so the recommendation from the administration is do not fund the street cleaning program solely through the water quality management fee. Anyone have any questions for Wes on street cleaning? All right. Wes, thank you for pitch hitting there, and we appreciate the options and reviewing those. Will you be able to get us back on the street lights and street cleaning, our recommended path going forward? by June meeting? By the June meeting? I think we should be able to do that, yes. Okay, thank you. All right, next on our agenda is the Lyric Theater presentation. Who is here? Oh, yeah, come on up, and whenever you're ready. I know Council Member Scotchfield couldn't be here today, but we welcome you and welcome the annual presentation. welcome whenever you're ready that one's a Lux Arts all right thank you for having me I'm Donald Mason executive director of the Lyric Theater, my first time seeing some of your faces. We are here to talk a little bit about how the Lyric has evolved with our budget. To give you a background, we opened in 2010. I'm the third director being hired in October 2015. We developed a strategic plan that would span from 2015 to 2019 as an update to the 2009 business plan that was initiated before the building opened. The board is an all-volunteer board and Abdul Muhammad is our current board chair. Paula King, who works here with the city, is our current treasurer. these are the things we are looking to expand on constantly looking to enhance our programming and engage the community that's really one of our biggest tenants strengthen fundraising and financial solvency increase the visitors to the gallery space and museum which is free and open to the public every single day increase marketing efforts and a way raise awareness we still feel like a lot of Lexington is not aware that we exist, that we've been open for almost six years now. And then continuing to nurture our board governance and make sure that we have a strong board helping us move forward. This slide was, we weren't able to update it with the 2015 in time, but just to show you each year, each month, we have continued to grow our events and that is going to continue to grow. We have very extremely reasonable rates for the city and we have great word of mouth so people continue to come to us and use our facility for an assortment of events. And this is the breakdown. It's pretty well spread almost evenly across for-profit rentals and community rentals. make up a majority of our building utilization. We do a quarter and looking to expand that for lyric-specific programming and the theater usage as well. One of those is my task to try to increase traffic into the theater for concerts and performances and such because that is our best room in the house. as you see that we have the community room the Dewey Street community room is the most used room in our facility we have weddings birthday parties you name it business launches speaking engagements so that was one of the tenants very beginning of the lyric to have a room or facility that is open to the community to use because not everybody is going to use the theater space. 49 events we sponsored either directly or in part and then 70 events inside the theater itself. Any questions so far? I'm not sure if you want me to stop at any point. We'll keep going. This is our budget. This is the total budget versus the urban county government's allocation. You will see the percentages that are there for each fiscal year. And we have decreased, which is our goal and your goal. This is the total revenue that was budgeted versus the actual revenue that was received. that for FY16 that one's through December 31st 2015. I don't know if you have any questions but I'll keep moving and we'll come back to your questions. Then we have the expenses. These are from FY16 back to FY11, the actual revenue versus the actual expenses. Last year was the first time we actually had a a negative, but that was because mainly, primarily, the urban county government changed how they did their deposits, so we actually got to deposit the quarter after instead of the quarter before, so that's the only reason why that's a negative for FY15. And 16 will balance itself out before the year ends. That's our goal. And these are expenses versus budget for FY15 actuals, and it shows you the expenses through December 31st of 2015 versus the budget. And the percentages are, you know, everything's running according to. This will be, we're finally at full staff, so we have four full-time positions and two part-time positions. so our payroll benefits are definitely more than FY15, but we're at full staff and we expect and hope to stay at full staff, so that's why that number is more compared to actually FY15. The performer program expenses has to do with all of our performances, and sometimes that's not just our performances, but it's other people's performances as well. Same thing with the box office. Box office expenses occur because we do ticket sales for all of the performances that come through the facility. So that number varies as well depending upon the number of events and the number of ticketed events versus free events. Any questions? Donald's here, like I said, to answer your program questions, and I'm here to answer your physical questions. Very good. Thank you, Paula. First up, Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to thank them for this presentation. Sorry for the baritone today. But not only is Donald the director of Lyric, but he's also one of my constituents. And so we've connected, and we try to make sure that every time we send the newsletter out, that we include the programming from the Lyric Theater to help to engage the community. So I want to encourage my colleagues to do the same, to try to make sure that we get the word out to our community about the wonderful programs that are being held at the Lyric Theater. And thank you all for all your great work and continued support of the community. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilman Maloney? No? Anyone else? I just had one question from the administration. Does anyone have our debt service that we do for the bond for the building? Do we know where we're at and how many years we have left? can you get back to us on that and just email to all the committee to see where we're at on our debt service because I think we're pretty far into it. So we shouldn't have too much longer in terms of bonding. Thank you all. Mr. Mason, thank you and welcome and appreciate you being here today. We'll take our next guest as well before we get to the occupational discussion. Let's go. Alright. Lex Arts. And again, Council Member for Scottsville since her regrets. But Nan, welcome. Thank you. And I will remind my, or let my committee know, Nan was our guest mayor for a mock council meeting a few weeks back, and she did an excellent job, and I think she has a future in politics if she ever wanted one, but this room is owed hat to her. So welcome once again to the podium, and thank you for being here. Well, thank you. Thanks to all of you for having us today. This is, I think, our first presentation to this committee because we are recently under your aegis and very happy to be so. I especially want to thank Teresa Greider who helped us get ready for today. And if you have any questions or if I've made any omissions, those are mine. And mine alone will be happy to fill those in. So we're very glad to be here. I have two staff members with me. Our Community Arts Director, Nathan Zamron, who's well known to a few of you, and Alma Kotezevich, who's our Director of Finance and Operations. And one of our board members sits with you. Council Member Brown is perhaps the newest member of our board, and we're very happy to have you. And Lori Houlihan sits on the LexArts board as well. What I'm going to do here is run very quickly through the five areas that per our contract we execute for the city through you all, and then I'll go back and we'll go into a little more depth. We're charged with planning and marketing arts events throughout the city and the county. And here's a little list here. We support arts education initiatives. Here are just a few. We have a lot to do, as our friends on the Corridors Commission and Council Member Akers know with public art. We support artists and arts organizations through a variety of programs that provide income to local artists and businesses. And then this is really our overall mission statement, to provide high-quality arts experiences for all. So to event planning and marketing, up at the top is probably our best-known program, Gallery Hop, We've had a really great year. And the next one is March 18th. Please come. And this reminds me, we've brought you, I should have done this at the beginning, my colleagues here have some information for you, if they may approach and distribute. And one of them is a Gallery Hop brochure. I think you'll see there the wonderful number of organizations that participate in that. And I can take no credit for Gallery Hop. It's been in place for 20 years and I'm new. but I think it has a lot to do with the level of activity that's now going on downtown, one of those early forays. We do other public events around our campaign. The finale will happen in July. We've just kicked off our campaign for this year, and we'll talk about that in a bit. Free performances and snacks. The idea is that art is for everyone, and we want everyone to celebrate with us. Our showcase weekend has just happened, but we're passing out the brochure so that you can see the amazing number of entities that joined us in that. This is part of our campaign awareness, but really a showcase of the tremendous collaborations that we have throughout our arts community here. There were 38 events, 30 organizations, including the Lyric, seven venues. One of them was the Lyric. We're guessing about 1,000 visitors. and it was fun to do it with St. Patrick's Day. You have two copies of Art Matters. This is our quarterly magazine that goes to up to 6,000 households depending on the issue. And the one that has the young bass file players on it is our annual report as well. ArtScope is an email that goes to our 6,300 opt-in subscribers, a curated calendar of arts events every week. So these are the main things that we're doing to get the word out about what's going on in the entire arts community, whether we're directly involved or not. Arts education initiatives, we do some on our own, but mostly through the wonderful efforts of the organizations that we support through our Fund for the Arts campaign. And the number here is a typo and a goal. We actually reach over 200,000 children in Fayette County and beyond through all these kinds of arts programs, but we would really rather reach half a million. And with your help someday, we will. Our own Youth Arts Council does projects for youth and participates in programs like the ones you see here. The only one in the state that we know of. We think we're growing the next generation of arts supporters through the Youth Arts Council. We do some direct programming at Arts Place, our beautiful building at Mill Street at Church as well. These are kids participating in the creation of one of the murals in the Euclid Avenue Kroger, which is probably a great segue to our public art activity. Next up is the Oliver Lewis Way Bridge, and it has been such a joy to work with Councilmember Akers. This has been kind of a longer time coming than we thought, but the celebration on April 8th is now confirmed, correct? Lord Willen and the Crick don't rise, but the artist Christopher Weed will be here on the 21st, and it will be interesting to see what happens on Oliver Lewis Way as the bridge goes up, as the bridge lights go up. It was a public process in large measure that LexArts organized for this. A request for qualifications, a request for proposals, a committee, public input. but really an ideal process for getting this kind of public art project done. And I'm betting that the reception of the community will reflect that participation. Many of you here are also on the Corridors Commission, so you know about the Corridors beautification that we facilitated in conjunction with Breeders' Cup on Newtown Pike, Main Street, and Versailles Road. lots of collaboration with many folks at the city, and we're very grateful for that. Some of these projects are being purchased. One will go, I don't have a picture of it, but it will go in front of Global Lex with Council Member Hensley's help. And I think the blue cat has found a permanent home as well. Henson, thank you. New kid card, playing the new kid card, thanks. And now that we have a great many murals and sculptures and other kinds of undefinable public art, we're going to be developing a plan for maintaining the existing works that are there. Regular inspection, documentation, helping with conservation, helping work out who pays for what. That's something that's going on here. What you see are some of the components of Concordia on top of the downtown arts center. Rust is part of its aesthetic appeal. but Rust never sleeps, an example of why we need to keep an eye on things. We also support many artists and arts organizations through a variety of programs. I don't have a picture here of Arts Place, and I should. We're at full occupancy with our renters, including the Lexington Ballet, the Lexington Philharmonic, the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, and many others. We're supporting local arts agencies through our Business Volunteers for the Arts program. We're a franchise, essentially, for Americans for the Arts. It's a national program, and our startup has just received some national recognition that we're very proud of. So we'll be looking for more ways to partner with members of the business community to advise the arts. It's been a busy year for murals. just part of one in the Euclid Avenue Kroger. We were also asked to commission murals for Shinaway Road and Tate's Creek Road here in Lexington and others in adjacent counties. We're becoming a model nationwide for this kind of process for murals and Kroger's all over the nation. The Lexington Legends had us do a mural that was interactive. These are teeny tiny baseball bats that participants could autograph and they make a great big mustache there at Whitaker Ballpark. And all of this work with public art and artists, I need to give a shout out to Nathan, who is really kind of a one-man show there with all the collaborators in the community. It's tremendous work. Nathan also manages our art purchase programs. We've done purchases and commissions for all of these organizations that you see on the slide. And the numbers are really quite impressive. we're proud of the way we've been able to contribute to the livelihood of artists regionally. In fiscal 2015, almost $200,000 worth of commissions, and so far we're projecting almost $475,000 worth of commissions going to regional artists. In the next year, we have other commissions coming up as well, as you can see. Promoting high-quality arts experiences for all is really a blanket statement of what we do, and this includes our United Arts Fund activities, where we raise money for the arts and then re-grant it to a number of wonderful organizations every year. We just kicked off the campaign. We will have a goal this year of 1.1 million up incrementally from last year, but I want to say our sights are set higher for coming years. And as the mayor has said, and as we're now realizing our community needs, we would like to double that goal in the next three to five years. We're trying to figure out exactly how to do that, but we will surely need your help. We are also advocates for the arts under this part of our mission. In addition to the business volunteers for the arts, we're working with Americans for the Arts, conducting an arts and economic prosperity survey. The last one we conducted was in 2010, so it's time for an update. And it's also a good opportunity for us to work with interns at the University of Kentucky. They're learning a lot about the infrastructure of our arts community here as they put together comprehensive lists and interact with audiences. We advocate at the state level, too, and a little bit more now that the spotlight is on budget cuts happening in Frankfurt. So we go to Frankfurt and speak up for the arts, and we hosted a meeting not long ago to let others air their concerns about what was going on at the state level. We provide technical assistance to all kinds of organizations throughout Lexington. and ten of them right now we serve as bookkeeper, fiscal agent. They can have contributions run through us so that their donors can have tax deductibility up until the point the organizations become independent tax-exempt organizations. This is a view of the Art in Motion bus shelter at 3rd and Elm Tree, and that project is just about wrapped up. Alma Kytasevich is a very important person to lots of very small arts organizations that don't have the staffing or the expertise yet to manage their own affairs. She's a great mentor as well as a practical helper. This last slide is a little hard to see probably. It's summed up at the last page of your Art Matters with the bass players on the front. And probably the signal thing that this shows is that of the 35% of our budget that is public funding, 30% of it comes from the Lexington Fayette County urban government. And we are very grateful for that. We are one of the best supported United Arts funds in the nation, percentage-wise, because of that support from the city. And we could not do what we do without that commitment. So we are very grateful. What questions do you have at this point? What else might you like to see? All right, first up, thank you, we have Richard Councilman Maloney. I just want to give you a compliment on, I've been on the council since 1986. And what you all have done in the last few years, it's a tremendous improvement. And I mean, a lot of my friends are real active into the program. They're tickled to death, and they want me to commend you. Thank you. They come to me every day thinking that we're doing something like that. My question really is to Kevin Atkins. Kevin, I need to ask you a question about the budget. You remember you and I worked with the parking garage and putting it all under the parking authority and doing, and able to see what tremendous progress was being done with the parking authority. And I brought this up a few years ago, and I think it's been tossed around a little bit, but I just didn't know if there was still an opportunity if we could put all the arts and all the lyrics and everything under one umbrella and do similar to what we did with the parking authority, which I know some of these buildings we need a lot of improvement to. and by allowing them, the organization to own that, like the parking authority, they were able to go out and bond and fix these buildings up. And not only that, if they partnership with the right people, say if we can somehow get the Civic Center involved with their marketing in a different area that they could help the Lyric with some programs that can come down there and get some good concerts down there and all that, I just don't want the city to be holding up these projects. That's what I'm saying. We are in the business for basic service. And to me, this is an opportunity that I don't feel like we've escalated to where its capabilities are. And when I go through other cities throughout the world and see the great art entertainment cities, there's always one umbrella that everything's under. and it's a private sector and the city combined, and it helped them to escalate this into it. Do we ever look in trying to figure out if we could do something similar? Can it be done? If it can't, I understand, but I'm trying to do some creative way of thinking out where other cities, I know the city of Cincinnati and the city of San Francisco, they're not putting their hands deep into like we are right now with the origin. I think we're really holding you all back from what you're capable of doing, and that's just my opinion. I'm not trying to be – I think the sky's the limit if we put the right group in there, the funding and all that. Has there ever been an opportunity to look into something like that? I think the reason the parking garage transfer worked so well is you remember we had the expertise at the parking authority. They knew garages. They were able to take on what the government really didn't have the background in doing prior. And I think garages like the Helix really are a good example of when you put things in the hands of the experts, the product that you can end up with. But to answer your question, to my knowledge, we have not looked at it. I think we would welcome that if that's something the council would like us to do. I think it would be a question of do all the missions and how do they align, would they fit under one umbrella and where they fit and it made it better for everybody and, as you say, expand everybody's abilities. I just think just, I just feel like we're holding everybody back because we're not in the business. And I mean what I said. What you all have done in the last 30 years is amazing. And I think we haven't even touched what you're capable of really doing to this city. And I don't want to be holding us back. But we've got a tool out there that can give you all a better opportunity to go a lot farther than just dragging on the city's recommendation. I know we own all these buildings downtown. and if we could get rid of these buildings and put it under that umbrella. I mean, we can always look at the Civic Center and see if there's a way we can work with them. And I just think there's all kinds of opportunities there. I just don't want to be holding it. Well, I think we can take a look at all the entities that do arts, whether it's theater or other, and take a look and see if there would be the opportunity to do the same type of thing. Thank you. Yeah, Councilman, I think that was brought up about six months ago to put Kentucky, Lyric, and the Lexington Arts, see how we could put them under one umbrella for marketing, for staffing levels to help everyone. I think that those discussions are going on. I know our CAO said she was going to help look into that as well, so hopefully we can have something back to the council. Councilman Lamb. Thank you, Chair. Ms. Plummer, thank you for this great presentation today. And I guess the murals that are all over the city, I was just wondering if you would expand a little bit on how do those grow? Do people approach you or, I mean, do you approach people about different spaces? The answer to all that is probably yes. And Nathan, who's been through most of the Lexington Mural Project, can add to that a little bit. But sometimes people approach us. Sometimes murals just appear. There's an organization called Prohibition that we fund that probably is responsible for some of the most new murals, like the turkey on the parking structure and Louis Armstrong down on the mission. But they happen in all kinds of different ways, and Nathan, you should probably explain that. We have instigated certain mural sites. And back in 2008, we kind of launched the Lexington Mural Project with a series of four murals at that time. And with that first investment of some of the public art fund monies, we did a mural on Al's Bar and had the Neighborhood Association involved with, you know, coming up with what the icons of that neighborhood were that were important that could kind of serve as a place marker for the neighborhood. and so we did one then in Alsporn North Lyme celebrating the history of jazz to Southland Drive and the Farmer's Market and the jazz or the bluegrass that happened there. So we really work with neighborhoods a lot of times and people will suggest walls to us that they would like a mural on. If it is public dollars being utilized either from LexArts or otherwise, then we always make sure to do an open call for artists, for anyone in the community to be able to step forward and say that they would like to participate as that lead artist. We do like to see artists getting paid for their time and expertise in what they're doing. And so that is one thing that we've made sure of, is any time public wall or public dollars are being utilized, that we do an open process and allow the community to participate in that selection process as well. and there are other ways of approaching murals that we have been in support of, like Prohibition, when it's private dollars and private walls, and then really it's up to the site owners and those organizers to decide the artists that are participating, and so we have seen a few of those murals appearing each year. Have you all ever been approached about Boulevard? It's actually art that is on the road. I believe that did come up some during the legacy trail talks about what they were calling tapas at the time, that it was artworks that were going to be done to kind of identify the pathway and kind of create some color along that pathway. I think there's definitely some interest in that around the country, you know, creating temporary and permanent installations that would be on the surface of streets and pathways. And I realize that we would have to involve and engage our traffic engineering during those discussions, but I know one of our neighborhoods has been asking about that, too. So I just wondered if you all had ever dealt with that component. We would be happy to have a conversation and explore any opportunity that you would like to invest some thought and ideas into to see what kind of more types of public art we can make here in the community. All right, thanks. And I want to make sure that I connect with you all, too, because we'll start making sure that we, just like with the Lyric Theater, we'll start making sure we put your information in our newsletter so that we can try to engage more in the community. So thank you for today's proposal. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Hensley. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to say thank you for coming in for this presentation today. You know, outside of council, I've been very involved with FlexArts in the past years, worked with Alma. Hensley Elam provided the IT support at greatly discounted rates for a long time for you guys. And then my design company, Shatterbox, we produced the annual report for you all for a number of years. We host a gallery hop. We did the horse mania. We did the bourbon barrels. We have an art installation now in our lobby. So you guys do a great work. We really appreciate what you all do, and if we can help you all in any way, please come talk to us. Talk to me. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate your involvement. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Welcome. So glad to see you guys. I wanted to follow up on what Council Member Hensley just said. I think that business advisors group that you just mentioned, too, could be really valuable. I think it's smart to have them just as a nonprofit advising with for-profit entities is always a good pairing. But also, just like what he mentioned about his own private business and that being a partnership for purchasing art and displaying public art and all that. So I hope that we can expand it and grow as public art is one of my passions that you all know about. And then Kroger, I wanted to just put in a plug for Leastown Road. Kroger is expanding also, so I don't know if they've talked to you all or reached out, but if you'll mention it next time you talk to Kroger and tell them that that's my district and we'd really like some murals out there, that'd be great. Ask that a lot. There was one more thing I forgot now. It was like the main thing I was going to say. Well, oh, the murals. Will someone mention the website where people can go? because there is like a map and an app that you can tour all the murals. And can we share that? There's a link on our website, lexarts.org. If you find the drop-down menu for public art, it'll be under there. Yes, someone has very kindly put that together. It's really great. So for people that come into town or, you know, if you just want to take your family out on weekends and go see all the different murals downtown, it's a really great walking tour. And that reminds me to say that there's also an interactive app for Gallery Hop, a real-time map, so that you can see what's happening when we are. We used this last weekend for Art Showcase weekend as well. So we're going on beyond print in our getting to people. And the Oliver Lewis Way Bridge, yes, it has not been formally announced, but that event lighting will happen on Friday, April 8th in conjunction with Keeneland's opening day. So it will happen at Brown Dusk. So be on the lookout for an announcement for that. There's going to be a really large celebration. So I'm very excited to finally see it come to life. And I just wanted, I'm sure you all know a little bit about how hard Councilmember Akers has worked on this. But she's raised lots of money and has been at our site every step of the way with her enthusiasm and her persuasive skills. and it's been really, really great to work with her and it's going to be a beautiful, beautiful result. Well, and to your all's credit too, and Nathan specifically, that this did start about two years ago, I think, give or take. And with Corridor's commission funding was the impetus for the first call for artists. I mean, it was an international call and lots of people's time and energies have been involved in just selecting the artists and then the community input and all of those meetings as well. Thank you. It's been great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. And next up we have Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair, for allowing me to speak, even though I'm not on this committee. But I would say I appreciate both presentations from the Lyric and LexArt, and I do enjoy serving on both those boards. And I just wanted to echo everyone else's sentiments, and I appreciate the hard work both you, Nan, and Donald, do in all the efforts with the arts community. Thanks. Thank you for your help. Anyone else? All right, very good. Thank you, Nan. Okay, last on our agenda is a discussion on the occupational license fee exemption. Council Member Hensley, are you going to present or are you going to do it all? I think I will present. Okay. Back in November, we had some great dialogue over the minimum wage increase that's going into July. And so what I would like everybody to do is just skip in your packet to the slide that starts with a funding mechanism for jobs training. And if we can pull that slide up. It's on 40, I think. Yes, page 40. So originally, the proposal for this was an ordinance change to abate the revenues that were related to people making minimum wage jobs. In the past six months, I think we've adjusted that to a job funding training mechanism. So next slide, please. So what I would like you all to consider today is create a grants-based program that would basically be a competitively bid grant that organizations could come to the city to create vocational-type job training for people that are aimed at minimum wage income. And this would be a policy that the council, I would ask you all to help me implement this. and then we would sustain the program through annual income through the minimum wage revenue increases. Next slide. Since I've been on council in past years, the training issue keeps coming up. I've heard other council members express this interest, that we need to do something targeted toward training for minimum wage earners. and it's a gateway and I think everybody on council believes it's a valuable economic development tool for individuals and for the community. And in the past, we've not had a viable funding mechanism to dedicate funds specifically to that, and I think now we might have that. Next slide. So rewind the tape. We're going back to 2015. We passed minimum wage ordinance, and it was designed specifically to benefit a population that's making low income. So out of that income, we now have an increase in revenue that's related to increasing the minimum wage that would be found money basically to the government in the next year based on policy that we changed. Next slide. So I asked Bill O'Mara, Commissioner O'Mara, to give us an estimate. And the estimate that he estimates for physical year 2017 is that that minimum wage ordinance will generate about $1 million in new revenue, above and beyond what we would have had available in the previous years as a result of increasing minimum wage. so knowing that we've got a million dollars in new money coming in I thought I would throw this out to you all as an idea for funding this jobs program and if you could move on to the next slide so instead of passively allocating the new revenue to other programs within the government that we are in it's in other words instead of us spending the money on things that we're doing I'd like to actively reinvest that money back into a specific targeted population. Next slide. What I would like us to do in this committee is identify resources to help us create a more detailed proposal of how we would manage that money and where that money would go, what programs would be eligible for that program. like, for example, the Home Builders Association of Lexington has a program where they train new construction workers and plumbers and electricians and that kind of labor force and get some parameters around the apparatus that would manage these funds and collaborate with those departments, finance, social services, chief development officer, and other personnel that may be identified from your guys' perspective. Next slide, please. And that's it. So in a nutshell, you know, I would like to take this million dollars roughly of new income that we're getting for minimum wage increase and put it toward a competitive grant program for job training with your guys' help. Thank you. All right. Before we open up the questions, did you also have that million, is that net, or is that just the additional revenue, not taking into effect the additional expenses? That was, I think, as we were explaining, that was net. That was net. A net. I believe. Council Member Mossade. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Hensley. I know Council Member Lamb and I had this discussion at length when we were working on the ordinance about promoting job training, And I think one great resource would be Community Action Council. That's what they do. And I think they could serve as a great advisory capacity at least to get us started in which direction, because we used to have a mayor's training center here, and that went by the wayside. So I think I would be supportive of when we get down to the specifics of a more detailed program and how we could go ahead and fund this consistently, how it's going to be implemented. Thank you for bringing it forward. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Russ. The only question I have is that the item on the agenda was the minimum wage occupational license fee exemption. Are you dropping that? Is this in place of that? I think, you know, the last time that we, last month, we were starting to discuss this and actually came up with a request to develop an objective with that ordinance change. And so I think it will drop the ordinance change that we discussed back in November. I don't think that's the target. But to amend this to become the creation of this jobs training program. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Hensley, I appreciate you bringing this forward. I do think this is a very good thought process. I guess my questions would revolve around, obviously, I don't know if it would be a good practice to make assumptions that we're going to have the million. I don't know if it's something that we start working on as far as trying to project what we think and then maybe implement something maybe six months after that we start seeing if there is, you know, see what the numbers are that are coming in. I really think this is good. I do want us to put more into workforce. You know, we've got to start doing something, and I do concur with utilizing some of the existing organizations that actually provide services, and maybe we can tag team on top of that. So I'm really appreciative of this, and I look forward to working forward on this. So thank you. Thank you. Anyone else have any questions or comments on this? I would just end by saying on this one issue, there's a couple of avenues that we're looking at taking in the budget. One would be a workforce development coordinator, which would potentially be the administrator of this fund. I know we have a lot of organizations that say they do job training or offer this and that, but no one's really organizing that. No one's really providing a method so citizens know what's really out there and what really are measured outcomes. Are they really providing training? And I think that was some of the issues we had since 2007 when these conversations were happening on workforce development. So I think we have an opportunity to take a lead and develop a liaison to our community to see what's really being done and give us that snapshot. The other thing is, I know Wes, our chair of our jobs fund board, is here, but that could be another avenue that could administer this. I know Councilman Lamb is on the jobs fund, but we do a lot of training. We provide money for a lot of training of new positions in our community. So that could also be an avenue to administer this should we want to go down its path. So we'll bring this back in June because we'll also have a discussion on our agenda about workforce development with the Business Education Network coming back to us that we funded last year. So hopefully we'll have some data, and this may tie into that presentation in June. Thank you. The only concern I would have would be, you know, with the budget starting in 2017, if we don't have some concrete idea that the administration can have that we're wanting this money for 2017, that they would spend it in 2017. So I would put that to your guys' thought to opine on. We can always leave it in fund balance and then talk about it later. Thank you. Councilman Lamb, did you have a follow-up? I did. I just had a follow-up. Is the $1 million based on the anticipated first year? Because I know there's a tier. and so obviously that would change and increase, I would assume, the numbers after the second and third year as well. That's correct. It may not be even a million. I mean, that's just a swag that Commissioner O'Mara came up with. And so, you know, what I'm looking for is a mechanism that they can use to tell us what they estimate that revenue to be. You know, I mean, that was just a swag that he gave us. So in the second year, it would be more than that. and so on until the third year increase implemented. But, you know, reciprocal of that is we should be lowering those people that are earning a minimum wage if the training programs are effective. And Community Action Council is actually a great suggestion. We actually developed software for the Community Action Council that manages all the funds through the whole state of Kentucky, and I've sent some emails back to discuss that a couple months ago. And I do think that what Councilmember Stennett was talking about, if we did go ahead and encourage the administration to consider the Workforce Development Officer, that person could actually be the one to take this on and to carry this forward. So thank you all very much. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. I guess my thought about this is that while we want to move quickly, we want to move carefully. So we've talked off and on about the range of job development programs that are in the community. I've never seen a comprehensive kind of listing, a catalog. Here's all of the kinds of things that are being done, Community Action Council, KCTCS, the ad, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, private, public. I think that before we kind of move forward, even though it's budget season, that we ought to look at all that. And I'd certainly like to, not necessarily today, but eventually, to hear from Chief Development Officer Atkins about his take on what he sees being done now. I mean, that includes the Commerce. Lexington has a program. There's lots of programs. What I think we don't want to do is just set up another way to duplicate some of what's being done. We want to do something that actually addresses the question of what are the kinds of jobs that are out there that we could be training people for. Because I think a part of the concern and the critique of past programs has been that they set up a program to train a certain kind of job. There's no jobs out there in the marketplace, but they have the program. They have the person who's qualified to present the program. Now we're training people, and there's nothing at the end of the pipeline. And that's been a critique for years. So I would like to see, perhaps in June, if we get, number one, a comprehensive listing of all the programs that exist and some sense of what they're doing now that works and doesn't work and how we might add to that. So thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next up, Council Member Maloney. I've got two questions. First, David, Barbie, I need to ask you about the Supreme Court ruling right now on the minimum wage. Where are we on that and how is that coming along? Will that have an impact on? I'll get you a more definitive update, but my understanding is there probably has not been a whole lot of progress since the last time we updated you all on that. And I'm hoping we're going to win and everything, but I'm just wondering, will this have an impact? Do we do this now? Do we have to wait until the Supreme Court ruling before we start putting any money aside? because, I mean, I'm not trying to make it. It may be funny to you, but I'm for it. I want it to pass, but I'm just wondering before we start putting money out there, what's the rule? That's why it's law. Are we going to pay something for the court? That's not funny. That's what I'm saying. You can laugh all you want. My other question goes to you. It goes back to what I brought up last week. Job training is going tremendous. I hear great things what we're doing. The problem we're having is when I went to those manufacturers and I go to our city employees where we try to get truck drivers, they might flunk the drug tests. And I would want to report on how many jobs are out there that people can't fill because of flunking drug tests. And it's a question, are we doing, are we, does the chicken come first or the egg come first? If we're going to go do this workforce and put all this money in the workforce and we've got drug problems, how is that going to help? I mean, I'm not trying to make this sound bad, but this is the number one issue that I had when I went to those manufacturers last week. And our city truck, I mean, we had HR, I mean, get up and say that the truck drivers are flunking their taxes. They can't pass any. So I think we need to get a handle on where we want to go with our money before we spend it. And I think the minimum wage is going to pass. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but to me, I just don't want to be sitting here throwing things out there. We have yet got a concrete answer. And if it ends up we don't pass it, we're going to have to pay something back. If I'm right on that, or I don't know how we're going to have to pay that back. But just to throw a lot of things out. If we're going to have the workforce come in here, please tell us how many jobs are available, how many people are plunking drug tests. And before I sit here and start really what direction I'm going to start improving our budget next year, if we're going to spend money on workforce or we're going to spend money on drug problems or we're going to spend money on how we're going to beat this. But there's a lot of unanswered questions we've got to put this, we've got to get a handle of this. And I just think right now we're just pissing, throwing it out there piece by piece. Let's get a hold of this. I think it's very important, and I'm getting two different sides of the story. And before we go, I just want to point out, too, this council took a bold step last year when we created the Office of Substance Abuse and Violence Intervention, Council Member Maloney. So I think we did take it serious. I know Glenn Brown was there at our kickoff meeting, but Commissioner Ford has taken this, and Amy Baker, and it's exploding. We have a new website that you'll see all around town. So this council is addressing that, and we have put money back behind that. So I didn't want people out there thinking we haven't tried to get that. I met with Amy last week. We had a good conversation. Well, that's good. I'm glad you're up to Steve. And she's having people come in and getting help, which is great. But her problem is, and she's agreeing with me, how do we get all the people to get the message that we are there? Or how do we fix that problem when you've got manufacturers and they're losing jobs every day, can't get nobody qualified because they're on drugs. We've made great strides towards that goal. Council Member Hensley, you're up. Do you have a follow-up? Sure. There's two comments. It's one on the index of who's doing the training to Vice Mayor Kay. The Council on Post-Secondary Education probably has a good handle on that. I know if you're doing training in the state of Kentucky, you're supposed to be registered with them and pay them fees to do training. So I believe the information you're asking exists. However, this proposal is not for the city to be a training program. It is to fund competitively those programs that already exist. So I don't know that we need to do any more homework on training programs because that's done. And then to the question on the timing with the Supreme Court, I mean, we passed a minimum wage ordinance waiting on the Supreme Court decision. So I would say we need to be wrapped around the same apparatus ready in July to take those funds in and spend them back into the economy to get it back into the hands of those constituents as fast as can to get them off minimum wage. So that's, well, the two comments. Councilor Lamb. Thank you. And just one more comment on the Workforce Development Officer component. I look at that the same as I look at what Charlie Lanter and Rick McQuady are doing for the city. And we just had a presentation last week and look at how they are collaborating with private and public and the strides that they have made. And I think that a workforce development officer could be that very same component in this workforce area. And I do think that we could talk about going ahead and asking the administration to consider that kind of a position. I mean, we're the ones that have to create it and vote on it and everything after the first of the fiscal year. So we still can stop that if something happens and things don't move forward with the minimum wage or whatever. So, I mean, we still have full control of that, but I do think that we do need to move forward in that, and I do encourage the administration to consider that in their budget reviews, and I think that this is exactly what we need to be doing. So, thank you. Thank you, Councilman Lamb. Councilman Massadi. Thank you, Chair. Albeit whatever happens with the minimum wage ordinance, we probably need to be thinking about this regardless. We're not going to find out how much money we're going to get from the revenue from the minimum wage of 2018 anyways. So this may be something that we need to just go ahead and move forward with. Obviously, it's a big issue to everyone. So thank you. Anyone else? And thank you for that, Councilman Masati. I'll just say if we're not growing jobs, our budget's not growing. So that should be our number one goal in growing revenue. Last on our agenda are items referred to committee. I know there's a couple, three and four will come off because we've had the presentations today. We'll have item two at our June meeting, a follow-up. Any other changes on here? Vice Mayor Kay. Yes, on number nine, which has both my name and Council Member Hensley's name. I presume you want to delete that and replace it with this discussion of the jobs training program, and it would be Council Member Hensley's item. We can do that. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Any other changes or modifications? All right. Seeing none, all in favor of adjourning. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Second. Motion and second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we're adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you all. And your smile has offended you.