# Council Work Session - June 14, 2016 > Auto-transcribed civic record · June 14, 2016 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3985 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3985?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2016-06-14 - **Last revised**: June 14, 2016 - **Length**: 17,263 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 Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government held a meeting on June 14, 2016, at 3:00 PM in the Council Chamber located at 200 E. Main St, Lexington, KY 40507. Vice Mayor Kay presided over the session. The council addressed nine agenda items during the meeting, taking nine motions and votes on various matters. One public comment was heard from a member of the public regarding issues on the agenda. The meeting included several action items that received approval, including requested rezonings and docket approval, approval of a summary, budget amendments, and new business. The council also heard informational presentations and reports, including continuing business presentations, council reports, and the mayor's report. Additionally, the meeting included a public comment period for issues not on the agenda, allowing community members to address the council on other matters. ## Attendance **Present:** Stinnett, Moloney, J. Brown, Gibbs, Lamb, Farmer, Scutchfield, F. Brown, Mossotti, Bledsoe, and Hensley **Absent:** Akers, Evans, and Henson **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included nine votes, all of which passed. **Allow Commissioner Reed to comment on an issue not on the agenda** — Motion by Lamb, seconded by F. Brown. Passed unanimously. **Approve the May 24, 2016 work session summary** — Motion by Farmer, seconded by Hensley. Passed unanimously. **Approve new business** — Motion by Farmer, seconded by Hensley. Passed unanimously. **Approve the proposed revisions to the procurement regulations** — Motion by Lamb, seconded by Hensley. Passed unanimously. **Ratify the Mayor's Proposed Budget for FY2017 as amended by the Council** — Motion by Stinnett, seconded by Bledsoe. Passed by roll call vote with 11 ayes and 1 nay. Those voting in favor were Kay, Stinnett, Moloney, J. Brown, Gibbs, Lamb, Scutchfield, F. Brown, Mossotti, Bledsoe, and Hensley. Farmer voted against. **Refer the issue of Proposed Ordinance – Enforcement of Engineering Manuals to the Environmental Quality & Public Works committee** — Motion by Farmer, seconded by Lamb. Passed unanimously. **Refer the Capacity Assurance Program (CAP) Presentation into the Environmental Quality & Public Works committee** — Motion by Farmer, seconded by Bledsoe. Passed unanimously. **Refer the issue of Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4) into the Environmental Quality & Public Works committee** — Motion by Farmer, seconded by Hensley. Passed unanimously. **Adjourn the meeting** — Motion by Stinnett, seconded by Scutchfield. Passed unanimously. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included approval of three financial agreements: **Transportation Services Contract** A Memorandum of Understanding with Fayette County Public Schools (L0597-16) was approved for transportation services in the amount of $6,404.30. **Grant to Lexington Rescue Mission** An agreement with Lexington Rescue Mission (L0655-16) was approved for a one-time grant of $10,000.00. **Compressed Natural Gas Fueling Station Grant** An agreement with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (L0654-16) was approved for a grant of $1,258,400.00 to support a Compressed Natural Gas fueling station. ## Public Comment [timestamp: 00:01:08] Jimmy Emmons addressed the council on behalf of planners and senior planners. He spoke in opposition to a proposed resolution or ordinance that would reclassify planners from exempt to non-exempt employees. Emmons urged the council to postpone the proposed action, citing concerns about the impact on planners' compensation. Specifically, he raised concerns about the loss of compensatory time (comp time) that would result from the reclassification. ## Contested Items **Planners' Employment Classification** A heated discussion arose regarding a proposed resolution or ordinance that would reclassify planners and senior planners from exempt to non-exempt employees. The central concern involved the potential loss of compensatory time and compliance implications under the Fair Labor Standards Act. This contentious matter generated significant debate among council members about the employment status and benefits of planning department staff. **Downtown Design Standards** The council was divided on whether to send a design standards proposal to the Planning Commission. The split vote reflected disagreement over two key issues: the appropriate incentives to include in the proposal and the proper role of the Planning Commission in the review process. Council members held differing views on how to proceed with the downtown design standards initiative. ## Public Comment - Issues on Agenda Public comments were invited on issues listed on the agenda during this portion of the meeting [timestamp: 00:00]. Jimmy Emmons spoke on behalf of planners and senior planners regarding a proposed resolution that would affect their employment classification. No additional details regarding the specific concerns raised or the nature of the proposed resolution were documented in the meeting record. The outcome of this public comment period was informational in nature. ## Requested Rezonings/ Docket Approval The council discussed requested rezonings and approved the docket for the meeting. The docket was approved by the council. ## Approval of Summary The council approved the summary of the previous work session held on May 24, 2016. ## Budget Amendments The council discussed and approved various budget amendments for the fiscal year. No specific speakers, presentation details, concerns, or individual amendments were identified in the available meeting records. The outcome of this agenda item was approval. ## New Business The council discussed and approved new business items during this portion of the meeting. The agenda included various authorizations and agreements that required council consideration. The items were approved by the council. ## Continuing Business/ Presentations The council received informational presentations on continuing business matters during this portion of the meeting. **Presentations Delivered:** - Summary from the Planning & Public Safety Committee - Presentation on the Downtown Lexington Management District FY2017 Proposed Budget The presentations were informational in nature, providing the council with updates and proposals for consideration. ## Council Reports Council members provided reports on various topics, including recent events and initiatives. The discussion was informational in nature, allowing members to share updates with the council. No specific speakers, detailed presentations, or particular concerns were documented in the available meeting records for this agenda item. ## Mayor's Report The Mayor provided a report on various topics and initiatives during this agenda item. The presentation was informational in nature, offering updates to the council and public on matters of municipal interest. No specific details regarding the topics covered, speakers involved, or particular initiatives discussed are available in the meeting record provided. ## Public Comment - Issues Not on Agenda Public comments were invited on issues not listed on the agenda. No specific speakers, presentations, or concerns were documented for this portion of the meeting. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Allow Commissioner Reed to comment on an issue not on the agenda - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve the May 24, 2016 work session summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve new business - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve the proposed revisions to the procurement regulations - **Motion** — passed (11-1): Ratify the Mayor’s Proposed Budget for FY2017 as amended by the Council - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Refer the issue of Proposed Ordinance – Enforcement of Engineering Manuals to the Environmental Quality & Public Works committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Refer the Capacity Assurance Program (CAP) Presentation into the Environmental Quality & Public Works committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Refer the issue of Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4) into the Environmental Quality & Public Works committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Adjourn the meeting --- ## Full transcript Mark spoke on the budget. We'll get back to Jimmy. This is for the issues on the agenda? Yeah. They're all for the contract. Okay. All right. All right. I'll call the meeting to order. Hey, Jake. Council Member Gibbs. All right. I'll call the meeting to order. This is the meeting of the work session of the council. And first on our agenda today is public comment for issues on the agenda. And the vice mayor has the list here that we have, and I'm assuming that this is correct. Is Jimmy Emmons here to speak on issues on the agenda? Okay, Jimmy. Mayor and members of the Council, I'm here today to speak to you on behalf of the planners and senior planners in the Division of Planning. There are seven other planners here that can also concede their time. Luckily, I will be speaking for all of the planners and senior planners. Luckily, I do not think that we will need all of that time that we could be conceded for the people that have signed up. We do expect to take about seven to nine minutes for our presentation. We have passed out to you our written letter that also includes the letter from your planners and senior planners to the council. It also includes at the back some of the supporting documentation from the Department of Labor, which also includes summaries on what it means to be a professional and special provisions for state and local governments. So to begin, on behalf of the planners and senior planners in the Division of Planning, we recommend that you postpone the proposed resolution or ordinance. It's in your packet, item A in your work session packet, that will change the classification of our positions from exempt to non-exempt employees. Your staff's primary concern about this change in status is the loss of comp time. That is a benefit that has been offered to your employees for decades. We believe that there are serious questions that have not been adequately addressed by Human Resources and that the Council has not been fully informed of all of your options on this matter. First, we believe that the planners, and especially the senior planners, do qualify under the professional exemption as defined by the Fair Labor Standards Act, or FLSA. Simply put, planners and senior planners meet the Department of Labor's definition for work requiring advanced knowledge. To quote the Department of Labor, professional work means work which is predominantly intellectual in character, which includes work requiring the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment. There are other parts of this designation that we believe make a strong case that our profession qualifies us under the professional exemption. However, should you agree with the interpretation of human resources that our position should be reclassified as non-exempt because we do not meet the Department of Labor's definition of a professional employee, we believe that you have not been made aware that the FLSA specifically grants state and local governments the flexibility and authority to offer comp time in lieu of a cash overtime payment. This is a special right that is given to state and local governments that is not available to the private sector employees. Your professional planners are in consensus that we would prefer to obtain and use comp time instead of an overtime cash payment. We believe that there will be a monetary benefit to the city should you choose either of the options that the planning staff is presenting to you. It's estimated that each of your senior planners earns and utilizes an average of 25 hours of comp time each year because we do have occasional periods where our work spikes and we work when it's necessary. We work so that we can help the council, the planning commission, the board of adjustment, and various other boards and commissions and the public. We've utilized this comp time to take off when our workload is calmer, and we have come to rely on this benefit that the Urban County Council has given us over the years. At our average salary, we believe that the government has realized a savings of about $8,000 a year or more under our current exempt status. It's difficult to see how such a change in status will be funded, since our current budget for the current year affords the entire Division of Planning only $500 for all overtime. This includes 30 professional and administrative support staff positions. Comp time affords the city more than just monetary benefits, though. The work that the planners and senior planners do provides a clear public service to the city. Often such public services do not end at 5 p.m. when the office door is closed. We're asked to present at public hearings, attend neighborhood meetings, facilitate comprehensive plan public input meetings, and help those customers that come to the counter at 4.50 p.m. And this is all in addition to participating in the special projects and events that we do, and that's all in addition to the daily duties that we perform. Oftentimes, these after 5 p.m. events occur during our busiest times of our year. With no overtime budget afforded to our division and no cop time, we believe that there will be a negative impact to the community and to the public at large. Cop time allows your staff the ability to be flexible at a moment's notice, which is often required due to unforeseen requests from those that we serve. Losing this flexibility will affect the level of service that we can provide, and we feel that it will inhibit our ability to provide high-quality work when it's needed. With only a few minutes to speak to you today, we wanted to impress upon you the negative consequences to the public and your employees by acting on this item at this time. We strongly urge you to table this item, forward it to the appropriate council committee, and allow us and the council the opportunity to further review this issue to ensure that you have the opportunity to consider all of your options. The FLSA is a good, and the final rule that goes into effect on December 1st, is a good law. It protects workers, but at the same time, it gives employers options on how you can best comply with that law. During our first meeting with the Division of Human Resources, we understood that the policy of comp time and exempt status were one and the same. After researching the matter on our own, we learned that these two issues are not the same and do not have to be tied to one another. And on a final note, because the new final rule only affects job salaries, not job duties, if the job duties portion of the law has not changed and our job duties have not changed, then if it's true that we've been misclassified as exempt employees for the last 40-plus years, based on our current job duties, then we believe that we are entitled under the FLSA for two to three years of back pay or back comp time rather than the one-time goodwill buyout of our current comp time balances as proposed. Thank you for your time and consideration. This is extremely important to us, and we do believe that it is important to you, and we believe that it's important to the community at large. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Jimmy. Did you say that others had yielded their time to you? Yes, sir. If I could, all of the planners and senior planners that are here today, could you stand up, raise your hand, make yourself know? Okay. So everybody, just let me make sure that I've got everybody. I had Tom Martin, Chris Taylor, Cindy Dietz, Scott Thompson. Let's see. Joshua Hicks, Cheryl Galt. Is that everybody? And Carney, yeah. Right, right. Okay. So everybody has. Is that good? All right. Thank you all very much. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Council. Yeah, thanks, Jimmy. I think Council Member Henson has a question or a comment. Let's make it. Jimmy, you said you would want to look into this further. Or do you know how long you would need? At this point, we've had very little time from the time that we were told that our status was changed until now. We have done an immense amount of work of reading through the Department of Labor laws and the Federal Labor Standards Act. and I believe that we could, as soon as possible, make a very good case that what we're saying to you today. We knew that we only had a few minutes and we're not trying to convince you. At this point, we're just trying to ask that this matter be postponed and put into the appropriate committee. Okay. And you would like for it to be placed into committee? That is our request today. Okay. Thank you. All right. Anybody? Council Member Stenet? Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. I guess, Mr. Maxwell, if Council did delay this, how much time do we have in terms of when we have to be compliant? Well, this is really the result of a complete, you know, this was all tied in. This portion was tied into our compensation study. We're just finishing up job descriptions, and as part of those job descriptions, we're just determining this exempt versus non-exempt status. So once that determination is made, and we have made that determination and independently engaged the HANA Resource Group to look at it, once that determinance is made, it is incumbent upon us to make that change. So really a delay here could be viewed, in my opinion, as a willful violation of the Act. But does the Act not give this body opportunity to make her own determinations in terms of who's exempt and who's not exempt? Well, you know, you can... Based on standards of... This body, I guess, could make that determination. I wouldn't advise this body to make that determination. Otherwise, we have 400 classifications. If you want to get into the business of making the determination of exempt and non-exempt, I think that would be a mistake. All right. But we're under no legal time frame. As far as I'm concerned, from a legal perspective, it is incumbent upon us to move forward and to make the determination with what we have found. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Aye, sir. Vice Mayor K. Thank you, Mayor. Kind of following up, were you aware or were your consultants aware of this question of the alternatives that state and local government agencies have when these determinations were made, and did you take those into account? Yes. Let me explain. What we're talking about here, Vice Mayor, is we're talking about two separate and distinct items. One is whether or not the planners and planner seniors are exempt. And that is a determination that should be made here by the administration in terms of applying FLSA standards. The second, which is completely and totally different, is deciding whether or not we want to change the way that we pay people, particularly non-exempt people. For instance, we have comp time for exempt employees right now. And we pay comp time. We do not pay comp time. We give time off for exempt employees up to 80 hours they can accumulate. For non-exempt employees, we pay just time and a half. We don't offer the comp time. Now, there's a lot of cities that do it the way we do it. There's some that do it the other way as well. For instance, the city of Louisville, they do it exactly like we do. They do not offer comp time for non-exempt. Elizabethtown, they don't offer comp time, period. Paducah, they don't offer comp time. The city of Cincinnati does offer comp time. So there are a number of, and this is a bigger decision. This decision is an operational decision because the comp time is different for non-exempt than it is for exempt. For non-exempt, for every hour of overtime you work, that translates into an hour and a half of comp time. In the exempt world, like we have here, it's hour for hour. So you have to take into consideration the operational effect that would have in terms of allowing additional time off if folks decided to take that time off. And in terms of the cost to implement, and quite frankly, we have spoken with our, and Aldona can address this as well, We have spoken with our Division of Enterprise Solutions, and this is a major project to do this for the non-exempt folks. So this is separate and distinct from determining the status of any particular classification. This comp time issue for non-exempt would be a, even though you could carve out some, under the law you can carve out some groups, from a fairness perspective and what most governments do that offer the non-exempt comp time, they offer it across their board for the non-exempt. So it's a bigger issue. Okay, I think I understand, but I think what you're saying is that there's at least a possibility that if this government chose to do so, we could do that carve out. And you're saying there's reasons not to do that? Yes. Okay. I have a question for law, if I can get someone to come forward. And I might just mention that I do have the HANA Resource Group that did the study, if you wanted to ask them, Lyle Hanna's here from the HANA Resource Group. Thank you for coming forward. I guess my question really is if we delay, since this is, at least for me, an issue that I've not thought about in depth until I began to get the emails about it, it is fairly complex. I understand there are some issues with, some technical issues with implementation, Can you help me understand what risk, if any, we would run if this body chose to delay this decision? Well, where we are now is the Division of Human Resources and our outside consultant, the HANA group, have looked at a group of job classifications and determined that they should be exempt, excuse me, non-exempt as opposed to exempt. And in terms of identifying positions that need to be classified differently, we really need to go ahead and move forward. If you wanted to continue this discussion and review it, have us present information about it, and then there's some determination, which I doubt there would be a change, but if there were some determination that we've done this incorrectly, then we could switch it back. But as of right now, because they've been classified as non-exempt based on the study, we really need to go ahead and move that forward without delaying it. Okay. My time's up. I might come back. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. I know, and I don't remember exactly when the original three employees from planning came forward. I mean, I know you all are here, but I know we removed them from the process so that they could go through and have further discussions. And I guess, and I do halfway remember that you all said that there were going to be more positions, But I guess I just didn't dream that it would be this many. And I know that in my committee, in the General Government Social Services Committee, we actually have the FLSA issue. And we are expecting to have a report and discussion on it, I think, in September, I think, because I don't have a meeting in August. So I heard Mr. Immans say something about this going into effect by December. That's a different issue. If you remember recently, the president signed into law the change in the salary test and lowered it so that more people would be eligible to receive overtime as opposed to comp time. I think it went down from $50,000 to $47,000. Is that correct? And that's what takes effect. We have to do that by December the 1st. So anyone who has a salary of $47,000 or lower, based on the amount of money that they make, will become non-exempt and eligible for overtime. But that's separate from this issue. Okay. So, and I'm still a little confused as to, and I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot, But if we, it doesn't sound like that there is a, I know that you all are saying it's important to go ahead and move forward, but I'm not seeing that, I'm not hearing that there is a timeline that this has to be done by, like yesterday. Well, normally when you do these types of studies and you have determined that an employee is misclassified, meaning that they're exempt and they should be eligible to receive overtime, the change in the status should be done as soon as they are identified because they become eligible for overtime and you're not paying that for any hours that they work over 40 hours a week. And so that technically is a violation of the law if you have employees who should be eligible to receive overtime and you're not paying it. And so we have now identified them as being non-exempt which is why we're stating that we need to go ahead and change their classification and start paying them overtime. Are there fines affiliated from the Department of Labor? Do we know of? There can be. If a complaint is filed against us, if we were audited and a complaint was filed against us, yes. Okay. And one final question, and this has to do with the budget, and so it might have to do with Mr. O'Mara. Commissioner O'Mara, please. Commissioner O'Mara, if we have not budgeted for this overtime? We have budgeted for this overtime, but at the time where we built the budget, we didn't know exactly where it would occur, so it's in a contingency account. And so there's a placeholder. we will be able to move that budget to wherever it's necessary. At the proper time. All right. All right. I will hold further questions until my colleagues speak again. All right. Council Member Masabi. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Maxwell, please. We've only heard from the Division of Planning. Are there other divisions that have the same issue? And how many would people with this ultimately affect? Well, we haven't, the HANA Resource Group hasn't gone through all yet. I think we have identified, don't hold me to this number, but somewhere around 40 employees that have been affected to date. They have another 75 classifications to go through. And I don't expect there will be very many of those, maybe a few, but not very many. The bigger group will come December 1st when, as Glenda pointed out, the salary threshold changes from $23,660 to $47,476. So anybody that earns under 47,476 that is currently exempt will automatically have to go to the non-exempt status. So I know that I told Council earlier that it would be a total of about 120 employees. It's affected 40 so far, and it's a combination of what will affect them when December 1st runs around, and then also the study that we're doing now. So it'll be about probably 85 or so total that'll be affected. So this is somewhat precedential then. Depending on what happens here will ultimately affect what happens in December. No. What happens in December is it's a hard threshold. If we have any exempt employees that may truly be exempt under what we call the duties test, but due to the salary threshold raising, they will no longer be exempt because they have to, in addition to being classified and passing the duties test, they will not pass the salaries test. So they'll have to move to the non-exempt position. And currently that's roughly 40 or 45. And we contracted Mr. Hanna and his group for their expertise in order to tell us how to do this, I'm assuming. Yes, yes. As part of finishing up our job descriptions and identifying the FLSA status, we did engage the Hanna Resource Group, who, by the way, is doing a lot of this around town. I mean, that's one of their expertise. So I'm highly confident. And by the way, even though we outsourced it on these particular planners, we did internally look at it as well, and we agreed with their determination. All right. Thank you for your response. Thank you. Councilman Maloney. I appreciate you all. I mean, I've been following this for a while, and I know there's a number you've got to say below to keep them on comp. and the number to go above, 40-something thousand. And I understand that you all decided to hire a consultant to come in to look at certain jobs. Are these the only jobs that will make it? I don't know what those salaries are, but let's just say, how many other jobs that are over $40,000 are going to follow under this class that they have to change? Are anybody else going to be changing their job description like this? The job status, I don't know offhand the numbers, how many are over 47,000. But I can tell you, what I told you is that we know that there's 40, roughly 40 out there that are earning under 47,000 that will have to go to the non-exempt status that are currently exempt come December 1. assuming if we were to take a snapshot today, not if there's any attrition. I understand that. I'm answering my question to you. I don't know how much these people are. Let's just say some of these people are making well over $40,000. Yes. Is there any other departments similar to this that are making over $40,000? Are they being zimped like they are? Have they been considered the same class they have? are they the only one in government that's been exempt? Well, we're looking at everybody. It binds a yes to no question. I don't know exactly what... It would be unfair for me to say there's going to be others that are making more. I can tell you this. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, while the threshold is $47,476, The absolute threshold will be $134,000. So anything between those numbers we'll be looking at dependent on what their job duties are and if they meet one of those five major exemptions. I am more confused than ever. I hope we don't. I mean, I think we need to discuss this, and I'm not going to motion be made right now until new business comes around. But I like to see every employee other than these that are making over the amount, they're going to have to go through what they're going through. And that would just make it fair. But if they're not, then I've got a problem if you're singling out this group and nobody else is getting it. I've got a serious issue. We're not singling out this group. And, by the way, you were the one that said in the meeting not too long ago in one of these meetings that you suggested that when we had the planners here the first time, that we should outsource this, and that's exactly what we did. So we went to an expert to outsource it, and this was their result, and we support that result. I have other comments, but that'll be later. I'm going to wait until the new business comes through, and then I'll make my statement and reason why I think we ought to do something different. Wait a minute. We've still got two more on here. Siobhan, Council Member Akers. Thank you, Mayor. So I agree. I think there's some confusion. So help me understand, I guess, the criteria for exempt and non-exempt, that we didn't want to just look at positions and make that determination. We hired this HANA group to do so, correct? That's correct. And so why did we need, besides Council Member Maloney's suggestion, why did we need an outside group to make that determination? I mean, isn't it set by some federal standard or laws? No. I'll give you the story of how that happened. Okay. We were asked a couple of years ago by, I was up at this podium and I remember Council Member Stenet saying, you know, we have problems with our compensation program. Bring us a compensation program. And I said, yeah, we'll get a compensation program. We'll bring it. He didn't say bring us a half a compensation program. He said bring us a compensation program. So that's what we did. That involves salary grades. That involves doing market testing, doing JAQs, slotting jobs in. The last thing of that is after the consultants did all that, they suggested that we do the job descriptions. So we were going to do the job descriptions internally, but due to some other factors that came up, we didn't get the opportunity to do it internally. And in fact, in the mayor's proposed budget a year ago, I had asked for two people. And instead of two people, I said, well, we need to do a top-to-bottom audit of HR and help determine whether or not we needed people. I guess that was part of it. So, you know, that's fine. But it took three or four months to do the RFP, five months to do the audit. It came back and it said, we need two people, okay? And also, you're behind on your job descriptions. You need to outsource that. That was the same time that Council Member Maloney said you need to outsource that. So that's what we did, and that's how we got to where we're at. Okay, that didn't explain the criteria for exempt versus non-exempt, though. Because in my experience and life experience and career, those who have some sort of professional, technical expertise, of required specific education to do a specific professional job have been considered exempt. Yes. And others have been non-exempt. So now that we have engineers being non-exempt and senior planners being non-exempt, I wonder, are attorneys also non-exempt? Who wouldn't be non-exempt? I mean, the mayor and the rest, I guess. Let me address that, okay? I tell you, can we look to Hannah Resource Group? Yeah, that would be great. Sure. Is that okay, Mayor? Let's see if we can take some heat out of the room and air this out just a little bit and try to answer everybody's questions. But a little background, okay, if you don't mind first. I started my career working for the urban county government in human resources, okay? And I was a personnel management. And so I was doing exempt non-exempt stuff in the 70s. But before I did that, I was on the planning staff in 1973. And I just want you to know that this city would not be what this city is today if we didn't have great planners, okay? Okay. Well, I just think I want you to know that we don't have a side in this, okay? Okay. Maybe I made that worse. Didn't mean to. But I just want you to know. Okay. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that I'm the only person in the state that's served as an expert witness in a trial on non-exempt stuff. So it is something we know a lot about. We not only do it for organizations in the city, we do it in organizations across the state and across the nation. So we have a lot of experience with it. It's not something we take lightly. I think we could share a few things with you that would help you see it's complex. If it was so simple, we'd all get it. But what we're going to do is give you some insight into their different rules about different kinds of jobs in the organization. And so the reason we can't answer your question is because we just got the assignment, and they said start with the toughest one or the one that's hottest right now. Do the planning jobs first. So we haven't even gotten to the other jobs yet. We have 80 others that we're looking at. So we have 80 others we're going to look at, and so we're just getting started. But because this was being considered right now, we were asked to look at this first. So that's why John couldn't give you the whole answer there, okay? But we have looked at these jobs very thoroughly, and we did come down and agree with what they said. Other cities across the nation are doing the same thing. How about if I tell you, just walk you through it, because here's the deal. You're going to get more of these probably, and you don't want to spend all summer doing this, because the fair labor standards changed, the regulations have changed, have caused people, all employers, to take a look at all jobs and try to figure out, are they exempt or are they not exempt? Are there ways we can exempt them from that law? And so that's the process we go through with every job classification you have, and you have over 400 of them. So we've identified 80 that are on the cusp that need to be given consideration first, and we're just starting to look at those. And as Lyle mentioned, so it's not simple, it's not black and white, but overall to look at a job to determine whether or not it should be exempt or non-exempt. So whether or not we have to pay overtime for this position. First off is the salary threshold requirement. There are multiple tiers of jobs. So first, do they meet the salary requirement? Second, there are a number of different categories that you can look at for duties of positions to determine whether or not they're exempt or not exempt. One of them is executive, and overall, does it supervise two or more employees is pretty much the general gist of it. No, it doesn't. The second is an administrative exemption. This one is, does it support the general operations of the business? So is it in marketing, human resources, public relations? In this case, planning is actually a function of government. So no, it doesn't hit that one. This professional category is really the one that they're arguing. There are two types of professionals. One of them is a learned professional, and one of them is creative professional. The creative professional, it doesn't meet. That's like graphic designers, people who are writers, editors, people who are creating stuff. So learned professional is somebody. There are four types of the test for the learned professional. They only actually mentioned one today, and that's the one in your letter, where the primary duty is the performance of work that requires an advanced knowledge, that requires consistent exercise and judgment. There are two other parts to that test, and you have to meet all of them in order to be exempt. The second part is that that advanced knowledge has to be in a field of science or learning. And so according to the DOL, the fields of science or learning are law, medicine, theology, accounting, actuarial computation, engineering, architecture, teaching, and other types of physical, chemical, and biological sciences, pharmacy, and other occupations. So, for example, nurses who have a BSN, a bachelor's degree in nursing, that that degree is required to enter the field of nursing. Or an engineer, like a civil engineer, in order to actually be an engineer in the profession, you need that professional degree. So we looked at, does planning require an actual specific degree in order to be a planner or a senior planner? And the answer, we actually, I went and sat with planners and interviewed them. We looked at JAQs. We looked at the job description. We did a very thorough review. JAQs are questionnaires that the employees filled out to explain to us their jobs. And in some of the questionnaires, some of the things on the JAQ were seeks a background in geography, landscape, architecture, economies, etc. There is no specific degree there. Another individual said the nature of the job requires working knowledge of or coursework related to geography, geology, history, urban planning, design, architecture, public admin, management, environmental science. You see, there is no one degree that you need a master's degree in planning to do this job. That's really what would require. So your job description does not say you need a master's degree in planning to do this job. Right. So, and then the fourth, I told you there were four requirements. One being the salary, two being the one that they mentioned, three being the field of science or learning, and four, the advanced knowledge must be customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction. And there's no standard or specific academic degree that's required to enter into this profession. So that's why this job would be non-exempt under the learned professional category. That does not mean they're not professionals. It just means they don't meet the duties test of the law. My time is up. Thank you. Council Member Evans. Sorry. Thank you for that explanation. It does help a little bit. I would argue that this is maybe why this needs to be a full-time job, because this is really, like you said, it is a very complex thing for us to grasp. I am still a little confused on this time frame, and I think, Glenda, you kind of said we are looking at two different issues. and this time frame issue, there's the concern of violating the law, but if we've still got 80 other employees we're still looking at, I don't understand the rush with the time frame in it. I think we've got a record of these employees who I think they'd have a difficult time arguing that they're due overtime when they're arguing to not be in a different category. So help me with that and pushing this forward so fast when there is such confusion and contention. Okay. Will you agree that once you've identified the thing, I'm not sure you need to go ahead. So we'll go ahead. Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure that they agree with my answer. It's unfortunate, but it's the law. Once you've identified it and made it public, you're supposed to act on the law. You know, like, if you don't know what the speed limit is and it's not posted anywhere, you couldn't be held accountable. But once you've found out what the speed limit is and you know you're out of line, you've got to slow down. That's the problem. And that's the issue is that we have identified that they have been misclassified, that they're exempt and they should be non-exempt. And once you've made that determination that a job class is identified incorrectly, you need to go ahead and make immediate measures to change that. The only reason that it wasn't done when this first came up is because of the same issue, exempt versus non-exempt, and the council asked that we hire an outside consultant to look at it to see if they agreed with what the Division of Human Resources had determined, and they did. So we really need to go ahead and move this forward because they have been identified as non-exempt and eligible to receive overtime. Hopefully that cleared it up. Okay. House Member Kaye. Vice Mayor Kaye. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I guess I may be stuck on a fine point. Okay. But let me follow it out. until council acts, I believe we haven't made the determination of what the classifications are. Is that correct? We're getting advice. We're getting a suggestion. We're getting a request to put it on our docket. But until we act, have we made a determination? We, in our review, have made that determination and then council has to approve us changing our documents to change the status, but regardless of that, they're misidentified, and that needs to be changed. You know, going on the docket for council approval is our process to make the change, but we've already identified them as being misclassified, and that does need to be corrected. Okay. And then what I gather is that making that determination is difficult and that there may be gray areas and there's judgment involved. Is that fair to say? I'll ask that both you and the consultants. No. I see. You just have to understand it all. Right. The Department of Labor is very good. The Wage and Hour Division is very good about providing us with guidance and examples and opinions about this exempt versus non-exempt classification. The Department of Law has looked at it. The Division of Human Resources has looked at it. The outside consultant has looked at it. And even though it can be technical and sometimes people do disagree, we're all in agreement that these positions have been misclassified. Okay. That's helpful. And then finally, again, I'm not sure I have a full understanding of this, but it sounds like, as a local government, we have the option to seek an exemption from this regulation. No. There is a state statute that gives local governments the option to pay comp time instead of overtime. That has nothing to do with whether or not the employee is classified as exempt or non-exempt. It just allows us to pay the comp time instead of the overtime. So we could leave these classifications as you have recommended, but make a determination that we would like to pay comp time instead of overtime to those employees. Is that correct? Yes, but that does, and I think that was one of the things that Mr. Maxwell was talking about a little earlier, and I may have to defer to computer services. it's not just as simple as just saying, okay, they're going to now receive comp time at time and a half. There are things that we have to do on the back end in PeopleSoft to make that work. And so we would have to do those things as well. So PeopleSoft, well, right now PeopleSoft is set up to give them comp time as opposed to overtime. PeopleSoft is not set up to do comp time at time and a half, but I will defer to the expert here. The first thing that has to happen is you have to create a policy, and that has to be done ahead of any kind of computer work. It then becomes a project. The system will accommodate it, but the policy has to be put in place. In other words, when do we pay it? How do we pay it? Some people may not want comp time. Some people may want that is all a policy issue. So before any computer work has to be done, this becomes a project with a project manager, a policy, a definition, and then the computer work starts. Okay. So what's before us today, what's on the docket, would not require any change in PeopleSoft. Is that correct? Well, if we take the option of payment versus taking comp time, we'll require, because you're actually issuing... So if we take action on this, if we approve this, then you will go ahead and you'll have to... There are other issues in terms of we can't just approve this for one small class of employees. We would have to offer that to all of the employees, and that is a totally different issue. Well, thank you. My time is up. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor, and this is my second time to speak, but I don't know. All I have to go on here is common sense. No expertise in human resources or exempt, non-exempt, whatever. But I do know what our planners do, and I know that their jobs are not routine in nature. So it just doesn't make sense for them to be non-exempt. You know, I can see if they come in and they do the same thing every day, day in and day out, but it is absolutely not that. And the same as Mr. Maxwell's or yours, Glenn, I just, you know, your jobs are not routine. You're doing something different every day. So I don't, I just can't understand, I can't wrap my head around the definitions that are being used. And I understand your point, and if this issue, I guess I think Council Member Lamb said if LSA was in committee, we'll be able to explain it further. but the regulations are pretty clear about what the criteria is for each of the exemptions that are set forth in the law, which I think the HANA group went through briefly. And while we do understand what the planners do and we appreciate all of their hard work in looking at the test that is set out in the law to be exempt, they don't meet that. And who made this? This is the Department of Labor. These are federal regulations. So that is their test. Can you give us that? Yes, absolutely. Can you give us a copy of it? I'd like to read it. Okay. But I'm just saying, common sense-wise, I don't care if that's from the Department of Labor. It just doesn't make sense that someone, you know, if they were making cookies all day long, yes, but they don't. Everything they do every day is different. Or, you know, so. Just like everything I do every day is different. And I don't disagree with that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that your classification should be exempt as opposed to non-exempt. Part of the challenge is that for years we've thought non-exempt means hourly, it means simple routine work. Right. That's just a very brief cursor assessment. That's not what it really says in the law. So you can have very complex things that you're doing on a daily basis and be non-exempt. And with this change in the law, it's going to be a whole lot more people who have complex jobs are going to be non-exempt. So we need to get away from this sort of stigma that that's a routine job because it is not and it's going to be far less come December 1st. So, you know, I guess I'm just trying to protect the city because I could come in here and pretend like I'm working and get lots of overtime. I mean, my boss probably wouldn't let me get by with that. But, you know, if I looked busy and I'm reading things and whatever, then I could get overtime. So I'm just saying it doesn't make sense. So thank you. We're glad to spend some more time with you. Councilman Maloney. What's the most you can do on comp time, and can you carry it over? I'm sorry, I didn't hear your question. Most comp time you can do in a year, and can you carry it over up to a certain amount? For exempt employees, we have the 80-hour cap. And so once an employee reaches the 80 hours, then they cannot accumulate any more comp time until their comp time balance is below 80. Let's say, for example, we did make a determination that we wanted to allow non-exempt employees to receive comp time in lieu of overtime. They would accumulate comp time at one and a half hours as opposed to the one hour as with exempt employees. once they reach the cap, we would then have to pay that out as overtime until their comp time balance was below the cap. Does that make sense? I think it makes sense. Now, the question I have, you all are making the decision that these employees are going to be in the process. that either we're going to exempt them from overtime or we're going to keep them in with the con. That is you all's decision. This body has to vote on that. This council does it. My question is, we're still in compliance with the FLSA, whatever, that if we don't do anything, as long as they're over $40,000, and just because you all went out and got a consultant or somebody to come in, And I'm not trying to be, I'm just trying to figure out here, I mean, you're hearing council members saying these jobs are different. And they may think it's different. Now, you've got two people sitting there fighting this thing, they're totally different jobs. So my question to you is, as long as they're over $40,000 and they're getting comp time and we decide not to do anything, will we be out of compliance? Yes, because they have been identified as being non-exempt. By them. But by us, we have not decided. Based on the law, regardless of whether or not you all decide that they are or aren't exempt, based on the regulations, they have been misidentified or misclassified, and these are non-exempt positions. So let's get the consultant. Okay. Who out of this group decide that they are in that category? Who out of, I'm sorry? Who decide in the administration that they are in that class? When we did the compensation study, the Division of Human Resources was assigned the task of reviewing the job descriptions and reviewing whether or not positions were classified as exempt or non-exempt, whether or not those classifications were correct. When we presented the first set of changes to you all, there were some questions about that, and we were asked to get a second opinion. And we did that with the consultant. And they have agreed with the determination of the Division of Human Resources in reviewing the Department of Labor guidelines. Okay, thank you. That's what I need to know. Thanks. Okay, Council Member Lamb. Thanks. Just two more questions. Just because there's been a lot of talk and a lot of answers. Okay. The process started with the employees filling out the JAQs back a couple of years ago when that process happened to check out the classification, correct? Okay. So my second question is, and I believe this is factual from last year's conversation, is that not everybody in the government, not all positions, filled out those JAQs. So I'm not going to ask for any responses. I just want to make that statement because I believe I'm correct in what I'm saying, if I remember correctly, which leads me to have even more concerns about this. because if not everybody is being held to the same standards, then I just, that's all I'll say. Thank you. All right. Council Member Akers. Okay, I'm going to try to be quick, too. I didn't really want to ask, but I'll throw it out there. Okay, so I don't know your name, but she's the female with the HANA group. Hi. Hello. Okay, so I have the Department of Labor standards for this professional exemption. And it says that all of the following tests must be met, and you mentioned them, their salary, the advanced knowledge, which we believe, they believe that they have, that it must be in a field of science or learning, and the advanced knowledge must be acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction. So do you think, I mean, they all do have degrees. I'm sure a degree is required to be their position, maybe not a specific degree, but a degree, and that they do have this acquired by prolonged course of specialized instruction, that they meet that. They meet part of it, but they don't have the specific degree. That's the issue. So this job could be exempt if it required a degree in planning, and everybody in the classification had a degree in planning. But we have people that are in this classification that have degrees from a variety of backgrounds, and that's what makes us non-exempt is because it doesn't have that specialized degree. But I don't see where it says that that specific degree is required in these federal regs. There are additional, so we can provide you with additional documentation from the DOL that goes into more explanation on what exactly it means when it says advanced knowledge and the prolonged course of specialized instruction. Do you have the definitions for each of those? I do. Okay, so does it, it should have a specialized degree there. It should say it requires a specialized degree and list a variety of fields. Right, but, and they do have degrees. I mean, it's not, it doesn't say that you must have a degree specific to your profession. I'm going to look for it really quick and tell you where it's at. Sure. And it's customarily. It's customarily, not specifically. That's just one of the tests. Okay, so it talks about work requiring... So the first part is the field of science or learning where it lists the types of degrees. The second is customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction. And it talks about academic training as a prerequisite for entrance into the field. And the best evidence is having the appropriate academic degree. There is no appropriate, one standard appropriate academic degree for this profession. So an architect that requires a degree in architecture would be an appropriate academic degree. A lawyer who needs a degree in law is an appropriate academic degree. There is no appropriate academic degree as an entrance into the profession. So is that in our HR regulations, I guess, John? So someone could have a degree in family and consumer sciences and could work for planning? I'm guessing that's not true. No. Or you could have a degree in culinary. No, and I'm not. Right. So there is specific degree, educational backgrounds required to work for planning that are different than law. There is a broad spectrum, including a business degree is in there, and there's a number of, you know, it's a pretty broad spectrum. My job wouldn't be a learned professional position. Like, my job technically would be a non-exempt position because my job as a consultant does not require a specific academic degree. Sure. I don't think anybody. So, like, I mean, anybody. But the word customarily in the very last bullet that is required, so customarily acquired by a prolonged course of intellectual instruction, I mean, that's pretty broad as well. It seems to me that these are very broad. I mean, in the fields of science and learning, that's pretty broad as far as most degrees are concerned at universities. And then this customarily acquired specialized instruction, that's also very broad. I mean, I think that it lends itself to exemption if we wanted to go that route. The DOL releases a lot of opinion letters on this subject. So they take a look at certain positions, and they say, would this position be exempt or not exempt? And there are letters written from people across the country where the DOL answers these. And there are a lot of jobs that we could go back and look at opinion letters where it says you need a specific degree to enter the profession. Not necessarily a specific degree for the job, but in order to work in this field, you need a specific degree. Okay, and John, lastly, for comp time, if we chose to provide comp time instead of overtime, it would be an hour and a half versus the one hour? Yeah, for every hour you work overtime, an hour and a half comp time. Okay, thank you. And as opposed to what we have now, you would have to pay that out at the end of employment or after you reach a certain threshold. Okay, thank you. Sorry to take it. Councilman Massadi. I'm trying to figure this all out I have by no means any HR expertise I have a law department and I have a consultant and I have a head of a division telling me that this is against the law however I've also been told that other municipalities do this differently so I've got one answer here and one answer there so I'm not exactly sure what is the correct answer so maybe someone can help me because it seems that there are exceptions as there are to every rule i think the point about other municipalities are doing this differently was only as it relates to paying overtime or comp time you know i mean different municipalities nothing to do with the exempt versus the non-exempt right not about the clarification versus non-exempt it's how you pay it out. Okay, that's what I need as far as clarification. Thank you. All right. Looks like that's all who signed on to speak. Thank you all very much. That allows us to move on to docket approval. Motion to approve the docket by Council Member Stenet. Is there a second? Second. Second by Council Member Henson. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, If we can vote, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Council Member Brown? Council Member Fred Brown? Yeah. Fred Brown. That's right. Not James Brown. Council Member Fred Brown. I've got an ordinance changing the zone from a townhouse residential zone to a professional office P1 zone. I'll not read all of it, but I'd like to put that on without a public hearing. Second. Motion by Council Member Fred Brown. seconded by Councilman Masati. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Now we can vote on the docket motion. All in favor of the motion to approve the docket, please indicate by saying aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Next is approving the summary. Is there a motion to approve? All right. Motion to approve by Councilman Massadi, seconded by Council Member Scotchfield. Is there any discussion? All right. If not, we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next is budget amendments. Is there a motion to approve? Motion approved by Council Member Stenet, seconded by Vice Mayor Kaye. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. If not, then we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next is new business. Motion to approve by Council Member Stennett. Second by Council Member Scotchfield. All right. Is there any discussion? Please sign on for discussion. Vice Mayor Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. I'm a little stymied about process here, but I believe that item A has to do with the whole issue that we've just been discussing. And I don't want to go back over the whole thing, but I guess I need to know if there's an opportunity, if there is a way to create an opportunity for Council to have a fuller discussion about this issue. This is the first. Well, I've heard clearly from law that there are some potential downsides to not moving forward. And I guess I'm interested in getting a sense from my colleagues about whether, on balance, we think that's a risk worth taking in order to give ourselves a chance to really vet this issue. And I would add one other thing. This is the first group. And in a sense, we're setting a precedent. So I think we need to be careful if we can be. So I'm not ready to make a motion to table, but I'm interested in hearing from other folks and what your pleasure is, if anybody's willing to speak to the issue. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Council Member Lamb. All right. I do have, are we still talking on the item A, or are we just going through our normal? Well, I think we're still on. Item A. The Vice Mayor asked if there was anybody who wishes to weigh in on the question, so I'm assuming that you were going to respond to that. Well, I mean, I can. I mean, I would like to put a motion on the floor to table it until all 80 are done. Second. All right. There's a motion to table, and there's a second. Well, it's not debatable, but there may be information that needs to be presented. Point of order. We've had this conversation about process before. If it's postponed to a particular time, it's debatable. If it's a motion to table, that just takes it off the agenda and it can't be brought back on until someone moves to bring it back on. I believe that's what I discovered when I looked at the rules last time we did this. Yeah, we talked about that. So if it's to postpone to a specific or a general time, then that's a debatable. I believe that's a debatable. Okay, all righty. Well, then I will ask the administration if you all can guesstimate when you think that you're going to have the 80 done. Please. And then I'll come up with your date. I want a question. Can we put this in a committee, the intergovernment committee? It is in committee. Then we'll table it until we just got it in the government committee. Okay. We wouldn't be able to bring it back until after break sometime. Okay. So how about my motion is to table this until either postpone it or table until after the September committee meeting, or if the administration brings it back before that saying that they've completed the 80. Is that too complicated? That gives two options. Second. All right, there's a motion and a table with a defined point in time. So that would allow us for some discussion. But is the motion clear to everybody? No. Okay. All right. All right, is there any discussion on the motion? All right, if not, then we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. No. All right. The motion, I believe the motion. Well, let's vote electronically just to make sure. All right. The motion passes. All right. All right. Is there anyone else? Council Member Stennett. Discussion on new business is where we are. Yes, sir. I had a question on item J. This is Charlie Lantern on the Lexington Rescue Mission, the one-time grant. I'm glad to see you doing this. I think it's definitely a long overdue. But the question I had, Charlie, for you, is this part of their ESR grant funding, or is this a grant on top of the ESR grant? No, sir. This comes from the Innovative Sustainable Solutions Fund. The $750,000 is allocated directly to my office. Okay. Okay, so this comes up a lot with this council about the ESR grants. Now they're two years, et cetera. How are we tracking that when they apply again? Does this go into consideration for the amount of money they get from government as a whole? Because this is giving additional money to a group who went through the ESR process, which I'm in favor of. I'm just asking long-term, what impact does this have taking it from your money? For this particular pot of funds, all of the allocations are driven by what is essentially our strategic plan, which is the Mayor's Commission on Homelessness Recommendations, and then also issues identified by the Homeless Prevention and Intervention Board. And then we identify, if it's a really small amount, we identify an existing project. If it's not, we do a large RFP. In this case, there was an existing program, so there was no need to reinvent the wheel. It was just a program that had maybe $500 and clearly could not serve very many people versus with $10,000. The issue was actually raised by the individual on our board who is homeless, saying that this was a big need within that community. It's huge, yeah. I support it. I'm just curious about, from our end, our process going forward. Maybe Commissioner Ford. I just want to make sure how this impacts their ESR grant when they come back to the council to reapply, because we've held this type of funding against other groups who want to get additional monies. But I just want to make sure we're all playing on the same level. Will this impact their ESR grant at all? No, sir. No, sir, it won't. We're going to be bringing to council the PSAs for the second year, fiscal year 17, to continuation. They're scheduled to receive $49,000. Their activity as it relates to ESR is in regards to job market, job creation in regards to that population. And Charlie mentioned how this funding is specific to the work with dealing with the homelessness issue. There are several agencies through town that may receive funds, as I mentioned earlier, globally across government, whether it be through grants, our office, ESR, homelessness, et cetera. But this does not impact their ESR. Good. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you, sir. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Just a quick E-E-E, double E. Just wanted to recognize the fact that Members Heritage Federal Credit Union was involved in donating some land and some easement there. I wanted to make sure they got some credit for that. This is a much-needed intersectional change, and it's a need for public safety as much as anything. So I'm appreciative of that. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Brown. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to find out more information on Item O. It has to do with the memorandum of agreement with VISITLEX for $35,000. Is that a co-sponsoring event, or are we paying the whole amount? We're not spending $35,000 on the event. We use the $35,000 based on what is in the budget for next year, so it will not exceed that. But, yes, it is a partnership. Mary Quinn from Visit Lex is co-hosting the event. She's actually co-hosting the reception. Okay, so it's cost-shared? she is she is hosting the reception we are hosting the dinner okay all right so host dinner reception okay how many people are we talking about roughly 120 120 okay all righty all right i just uh and then i was going to have a question on j item j but uh council member stennett had that and thank Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member Lamb. Council Member Sadi. Thank you, Mayor. I have a question on why. I guess either Commissioner Paulson or someone in reference to the Lex Tran Transit Center on Vine putting in the sidewalks and the streets and the et cetera, et cetera, the design phase. Have we put the Lex Trade building out of consideration for our office building? Oh, I can't answer that. I was going to speak to Tom Branch Commons. Well, we're spending, it looks like we've got this, I just wonder if this location was still under consideration for a new city hall. And it looks like we've got a lot of things going around there, and I just wondered if that's no longer in the mix. I can't answer that question. What's the question? We're spending, it looks like, about at the transit center. Almost, it looks like in future years, almost $2,495,418 for utilities, right-of-way, construction, et cetera. I'm just wondering if this location is still under consideration for the new city hall that we had talked about. Because obviously if we're spending the money, I'm just thinking it's kind of out of the mix. Glenn. Did I have one for Stump the Band? Yeah, it looked like he was coming up there, but then he changed his mind. We are still looking at properties in the downtown area. So we would say that that would still be in consideration. I just was wondering, because we're spending a bunch of money on this particular project, and I just was curious if this was, we're going to go ahead and spend the money and then maybe just determine that this city hall or this location was no longer under consideration because of the amount of money we're spending here. There is an idea of another location that we're looking at, but we're saying that this one probably would be one that is off the books for right now. Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's all, Mayor. Okay. Anybody else? Looks like that's all who signed on for new business. Council Member Akers. Sorry, I thought I had signed in. I apologize. Derek or someone about the Town Branch Trail, mid-block crossing, letter P? Oh, hello. So I understand what this is. I just was hoping that you might be able to provide an update about the crossing at Alexandria and where we stand with that. That's the question I get very often. Which crossing is that? So where the trail ends right now. So it's currently completed up to Alexandria, and we've been waiting on R.J. Corman to do something, and that's been waiting for two years or so, I think, for us to cross Alexandria and then do the next four phases that we have funded. Right. So I just wondered where we are waiting on them. Personally, we don't have any more information on that. It's still stalled where it was previously. So we can still construct sections one through six or one through five were funded for both design and construction through one through five and design on six, but we haven't resolved that yet. Okay. But we will. Any idea when? No. But I'll check back with our project manager, Keith, and get you an answer. Sure. At least a ballpark. Sure. It's gone on a really long time, and that's like the one, you know, we've got to cross Alexandria before we can, you know, take the trail into downtown. Right. All right. Thank you. And Kevin Atkins, on letter O, can you just, for the public's sake and those of us who don't know, talk a little bit about who the folks are coming into town for this Southern Legislative Conference and what they will be doing here. The Southern Legislative Conference is chaired by our State Senate President, Robert Stivers. The event is co-hosted by Senator Stivers and Speaker Stumbo. It includes, obviously, our members of the General Assembly, but it includes legislators from all the southern states across the country. It's a part of the Council of State Governments, which is housed here in Lexington, and they're broken out, if you will, into four geographic categories, and we're in the southern portion. So is this our first time hosting, or do we regularly host? It's Lexington's first time, and it is here because Senator Stivers got to choose the location as the chair, and he chose to have it in Lexington. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Councilor Evans. Thank you, Mayor. Just item M, that's pink pigeon, so I guess that would either be probably Derek, Commissioner Paulson. Sorry. Oh, okay. Just, I mean, I know about the project, but just a quick explanation of it for people that might be watching, the time frame of it. I know these funds are just for design, but just kind of the ultimate goal. and if there is a time frame on the project. Yes. Actually, we will be doing bid openings on the 24th of this month, which will take design through this fall, and we'll be able to begin construction, I think, early spring. So it's a fairly simple project, and we do have one potential scheduled snag, which is a gas line, I think. But we're working with the gas company on that to get that resolved. But as of right now, we expect to start construction in the spring. Do you know about how long that construction will take? It should just be a couple months because, again, it's a fairly simple project. We've got where the existing median is on Man of War and a single turn lane. We're going to take out part of that median, add a second turn lane. As a result of that, on to Pink Pigeon. As a result of that, we need to modify the Pink Pigeon median because it currently only accepts one lane. So we'll be modifying that. Again, fairly simple project in terms of actual construction, so it should only be a couple months, weather permitting. Can I hold you to that? You can call the contractor. Okay. All right. Thank you. That was my question. Thank you. May I have a question? Council Member Stenet? Hold on. Before you walk away, so you're saying this project won't even begin? This is the turn lane on Manowar under Pink Pigeon until the spring? Let me double-check my spreadsheet, but I'm pretty sure that's... Should be beginning this summer. Construction bid, not design. So we're opening the construction bids on the 24th. Right, so the construction... So we should do the construction, which should be before. In the fall. Sorry. Sorry, I got it, and the other man-to-wear project... Yeah, there's three other ones, or two other ones. Right, right. But this one's going to be done by Thanksgiving, before Hamburg holiday shopping season. Correct, correct. My apologies. Just making sure. No problem. There's three wheels to this piece, so thank you. All right. Okay. Looks like we can vote now. All in favor of the motion on new business, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. I'm going to turn the chair for continuing business and presentations and council reports over to the vice mayor. Thank you. And the next item on the agenda would be the committee summary from planning and public safety. Councilmember Massotti. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Planning and Public Safety meeting on May 10, 2016. It was called to order at 1 p.m. All committee members were present. Councilmembers Fred Brown and Maloney were also in attendance as non-voting members. A motion was made by Bledsoe to approve the April 12, 2016 Planning and Public Safety and Committee Summary, seconded by Kay. A motion passed without dissent. In reference to body cameras, Assistant Chief Dwayne Holman, Division of Police, gave us some information. He said the total budget for the five-year contract is $2.6 million. He stated that there would be 400 police officers that would utilize 800 cameras. He stated the agreement was a cloud-based solution, and the FY17 budget proposal included $600,000 for cameras, a body-worn camera administrator, and an assistant records custodian. The training will start in June, and the cameras will be gradually deployed to all patrol special operations and spread across the shifts throughout the three sectors. The biggest negative he encountered by other jurisdictions is that they move too quickly on deployment of the cameras. The second item was the trail system update. Scott Thompson Planning provided the update and said that Lexington now has 100 miles of trail segments, including 50 miles on-road and another 30 miles of shared-use or off-road facilities. It stated that in 2007, Lexington had 30 miles of total trail facilities. Discussion ensued. It talked around projects in reference to neighborhoods, paving, striping, incorporating park trail facilities, and talking about small area plans as far as being more effectively communicated to the administration when these things happen. ACRES requested that a staff provide a list with maps showing the built system in 2007 and 2016 among the list of unfunded projects. In response, Thompson stated the routine trail maintenance was provided by parks. He also stated in the FY17 Mayor's proposed budget, it included a line item for streets and roads for trail maintenance in the amount of $150,000. The next thing was design excellence, and that probably took the majority of the meeting. Vice Mayor Kaye introduced the topic. He reminded the committee that the design excellence subcommittee was formed in the Planning and Public Safety Committee in September of 2015. subcommittee identified several intended outcomes including creating a process that is consistent, predictable, and transparent, improving communication early in the design, encouraging superior design, encouraging designs to fit sensitively into the existing built environment, and eliminate the courthouse area design overlay process and its corresponding board. There were several others that were brought into the discussion. Basically, the design review had public support, and it outlined a master development agreement which would be reviewed and considered by the council at a public hearing. And also, it would say the design excellence officer would be authorized to consult, review, and approve projects without the need for board review. The chief development officer would also take the lead on any publicly supported project that would need a master development agreement. also Mr. Fugit described the types of projects that would have needed to comply with design guidelines if the design excellence ZOTA was already enacted and also Mr. Fugit stated that the subcommittee viewed the publicly supported project requirements in lieu of incentives and asked if there was any known opposition to the change in plans and that response was no there was a motion by Vice Mayor Kaye, seconded by Gibbs to refer the design excellence program to the Planning Commission. It was passed by a vote of 6 to 4. So moved, and the meeting was adjourned at 2.55 p.m. That's all, Vice Mayor. Are you making a motion on the motion that was approved? I guess I should. Yes, ma'am. I would make a motion that, um, to refer the, excuse me, to refer the design excellence proposal to the Planning Commission. So moved. I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Maloney. Thank you. I've been watching this for a while, and I know when it started. And the main, there are two reasons why I have concerns about. And the first reason is the incentive part. And that's why when we have the developers on board, when you get ready to tell people downtown that we're going to tell you how to build your building and how this is the way it's going to be, it's going to be different than any other way we build buildings, we ought to be getting incentives. And I've heard we're going to give them parking. That's not incentive, guys. Everybody has that parking. And doing incentives, you deal with the permits. You deal with the plans. you find ways to cut the discount, give them discounts, because they're going to do building to building different than what they usually do. And I just feel like we're going to end up hurting the process if we send it to planning. And I don't want to go to planning because you all saw what they did to the Zota. These folks do know nothing about incentives. They know what to zone the property for, and that's it. And the last two zone chains in Peggy's district, they were bad. And the last thing I want to do is send something to planning that I don't think they qualify for. And that's why you have these special meetings with council members, and especially when you're going to do fees and incentives and all that, don't give it to planning. Planning's got enough issues as it is. So I hope my colleague understands that this isn't a place to be sending something on that don't have the experience to do this. And I know everybody's going to say we have public hearings and all that. We did the PDR because the council came together and set up with the community as a whole. They didn't set up the planning. They were able to get the fees. We did the sewer fee increase. We didn't have to send it to somebody else because the council had meetings after meetings and had the right people in there. I've yet to see the right people in this meeting. I have yet to see a developer. come into one of these meetings and stand up and say, this is a good deal, but we need to work on incentives. And the only incentive I've heard is parking. So I hope the colleagues realize this is not the place to send it. So I'm voting against this, so I'm not going to support this. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My concern is that, much like Richard's, that maybe all the players have not gotten involved in this. And I realize it's been going on for some time. But I think we've got a new player in the group, and that's the downtown Lexington Management District, which I think comprises almost the same acreage that this particular item is on the landscape or the development of downtown. And I don't think they've played into this at all yet. I don't know that they need to. So I've got some reservations right now, and I can't support it at this point. Thank you. Council Member Stinnett, if you would take the chair, I'd appreciate it. Vice Mayor Kay. I'd like to be recognized. Thank you. Well, let me start by, I think, clarifying the process. Any zone text, any zone change, either is initiated by Council and then goes to the Planning Commission for them to approve or modify, or it goes to the Planning Commission to come back to Council. So what we've done in this case is said, let's send it to the Planning Commission, give them a chance to review it, let people come to their meetings. If they want to have public hearings, they'll do that. But we cannot unilaterally make a zone change as much as we might like to. It has to go to the Planning Commission either first or last. So we decided at the subcommittee level to recommend sending it to the Planning Commission first. Secondly, just to remind people, this is an issue that started with a task force, which meant for, I don't want to overstate this, so I'm going to be conservative and say three years, but I think it was closer to four. It then went to the planning committee, which discussed it, which allowed people to come to the sessions and voice their opinions. The committee then created a subcommittee, which included, besides myself and Council Member Stinnett, a couple of developers and a couple of architects. That group worked on the plan that had been developed by the task force and modified it. I would say substantially, but I'm still in support because I believe it still does enough to protect the existing landowners and people who have already invested in our downtown. And it does enough to protect the citizens from having another situation where developers go ahead and demolish a set of buildings, dig a hole in the ground, and then sit around it for eight years. so finally it's come back to the committee and the committee on a very close vote recommended sending it to the planning commission so what that means is that there'll now be another series of chances for review before it comes back to this council and then we can either amend it or pass it or reject it or do whatever we want to do so this is an opportunity for more public input on a plan that's been worked on for a long time. I think it's asking very little, actually, of the Council to agree to place it, to send it to the Planning Commission, and I hope people will be able to support it. Thank you. Back to you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Gibbs. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just want to address Council Member Fred Brown's comments. Fred, the downtown management district is almost wholly in my district. I was a major advocate for it. and I'm on their board, and I really don't see why the design standards would have anything to do with the work that we're going to do. We're going to work to enhance downtown, beautify downtown with what we've got, but design standards isn't anything that we're particularly interested in as far as I can tell. But I just wanted to throw that out there. Thank you. Thank you. I see nobody else signed up to speak. We can take a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. all opposed we'll take an electronic vote please log in that vote reflects that the motion fails That would allow us to move to the next item on the agenda, which is presentation by the Downtown Lexington Management District. Mr. Frazier, welcome. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Jim Frazier. I am the chairman of the Downtown Lexington Management District. I've got a brief slide presentation. You've had a long afternoon. I've got to witness a lot of it. So I will not, if you have any questions, you all know me well enough to stop and ask. I will attempt to answer or find someone who can. The contents are pretty self-explanatory. A little bit about us, I think you all know we were formed in May of 2015. There's 15 of us on the board, two council people, Vice Mayor Kay and Councilperson Gibbs, and we're glad to have them on the board with us with 13 other folks. where a number of things we're supposed to do, promote activity, beautification, landscape, maintenance, the things that you just heard Councilperson Gibbs discuss. The next slide is, you know, the district shape. It's an interesting size. We tried to do something with the logo, but it was hard to do that with that shape, so we gave up. But anyway, the next presentation, it's just our board makeup, individuals, who we are, what we do. And we have four officers, including myself, Ms. Phillips, Steve Grossman, and Ms. Weldman, are my fellow executive members and officers, and they're all very dedicated and good folks, and we're lucky to have them, quite frankly. The things we've done to date, we've gotten a lot done since March. We had our first meeting in March. We've had four meetings. We've already sent out an RFP for our vendor to do our work. The executive committee met yesterday in a presentation, and we voted, and we'll actually be voting on that vendor presentation in July. So we're off and running very quickly. We've already selected a website provider. That's been the AbleEngine folks, and that's in development. We've selected a logo. Some things will be rolled out very shortly. We've established a tax collection relationship with Sheriff Witt, as well as the Bank of the Bluegrass as our banking relationship. We received $25,000 from you all. Thank you very much. We will be paying it back, Ms. Henson, over a two-year period without interest, I might add. The organization, like I said, we established the board, elect the officers. We adopted the bylaws. We've gotten a lot of housekeeping matters done in the last four board meetings. The planning at this point is moving in toward what we want to do when we collect the money, the projects we want to obtain and deal with, as well as the development of an advisory board. Our bylaws provide for five slots for advisory board members, and we've been receiving applications and resumes for that, and we'll address those applications in the August meeting. And so we look forward to having five more members to come join us for more input. This is your budget priority. We have three buckets is what we've done. We've taken our net revenues and we've put them into three different categories, the day-to-day operations, which are fairly self-explanatory. This is where the bulk of your money is going to be spent or our money is going to be spent. This is our vendor we're going to outsource. the relationship our downtown ambassadors to work on our landscaping, beautification, and maintenance, as well as promotion and marketing, and additionally security services, though everyone seems to agree on our committee that we have a very secure downtown, and so that might not be a major priority. However, we will have more eyes on the street, and we think that will be a result of that will be more security. Capital improvements you see listed there. We initially are talking about some $20,000 on a fiscal year basis for direct capital projects and some additional matching grants with landowners we'll go to, or they will come to us and wish to do projects, and if we like them and we vote on them, we'll end up matching dollar for dollar up to a certain amount of money. $20,000 right now is our cap all-in for all matching gifts. We have $25,000 slated for the website. I will tell you we're getting that done for half of that. We competitively bid this, and we were able to negotiate a nice deal for our district. So that money is only the seed money you all gave us. Only half is that being used, so we use that to other good sources, we hope. The last bucket is up in the air, quite frankly. I think we haven't decided whether or not we're going to need a one-person administrator for this project. But the meetings that will be occurring next month, the July board meeting, will tell us a lot from our vendor selection whether or not we can obviate that particular position. That's a $45,000, $50,000 position a year, and we'd like not to be able to spend that money if it's possible. We'd rather put the money toward the projects and not layer it with infrastructure. Having said that, we don't want to fund it too thinly where we can't perform the duties of which we need to perform. So bucket number three is kind of in limbo at this point. This is a timeline. It kind of sketches out what our general hopes and dreams are with regard to moving forward. And that last FYI is supposed to be Q4, not Q2. But we've already, again, FYI won for us July to September. We've already in the process of selecting the vendor. I am finalizing, along with the board, the economic improvement plan that will go in our packet to be sent to all property owners before they get their bills. so they'll know, one, they're going to get an extra bill, and two, what they're going to be getting for it. So we're going to include the budget. We're going to include the economic improvement plan that we're going to adopt. Our board will be. And also, we're going to ask for feedback. We want to know what they want to know. This district is some roughly 500 people, and we want to know what they want to spend their money on in their district. So this packet will go out sometime, we hope, between July and September, prior to the bills coming out in October. For FQ2, again, we're going to collect the monies through the sheriff's office. At that point, we'll be in a position to start kicking off our day-to-day operations. You can see the rest of Q3 and Q4, what our goals and dreams and aspirations are. This is your budget revenue. Based upon what the PVAs told us, we have a $415,000 base revenue coming up for this fiscal year, and it's a prorated year for us. It's nine months since our operation did not exactly begin on the beginning of the year. So our $415,000 is revenue in. And believe it or not, the sheriff informs me that she has a 99% collection rate. She is going to be working at my law firm starting tomorrow morning, and I will no longer be here. But that's a great collection rate. 99% is incredible. So I'm very much in awe. We have your $25,000 loan reference tier for our total first year revenue of $435,850. Again, that's a short year pro rata based upon next year. You can see what I've got a full year of $410, not counting the $25,000 monies I got from you all. Here's our expense budget projected for our first year. Again, a short year, nine months operations. It's an estimate. The 168,750 is based on a 225 full-year vendor contract. That number is fluid. We haven't selected a vendor yet. We are looking at it. We've got it narrowed down to two. We'll know next month who we get, but we think that number is a good number to work from with regard to expenses. The rest of the items you can say delineated in there. You can see what we've talked about with regard to estimates of particular costs. Again, the administrator, which we show is an annualized $57,000. That is a question mark right now. We may or may not need that or want to do that. If we can get it done without it, I submit to you we will do so, but we'll know more about that this time next month. So your net on the expenses or your total expenses on the first year of $319,513, we're putting a reserve in place, and some of you may wonder why we're doing that. Well, because each year, our fiscal year, we have matched it up with your all's fiscal year, so we would kind of follow your cycle, and we thought it made sense to do that. But because we only get monies from October to January, we have to have some monies left over in January to do work between January and the next October. Therefore, we're going to try to put away $100,000 to accomplish that, so we're on a continuing 12-month basis trying to be able to deliver services to our constituents and not have to wait until the tax bills come out and the collections come in. So, therefore, we've established a reserve fund of $100,000. We're showing a contingency reserve of 3.5%, which is $14,380. And the purpose of that is you all have done budgeting more than I. You just never know. And so, hopefully, we won't need it. But if we do need it, great. And if not, we might use it for something else, another project, a smaller project. The idea is to spend the money that comes in in a way that the constituents want. So at the end of the day, we're going to basically drain this thing down to $2,400. So money's in, money's out. Hopefully people get to see the benefit of what they're paying their tax dollars for. The next steps, I or someone will be here on the 16th for a public hearing with regard to this proposed budget. Our next board meeting, we will finalize our economic improvement plan. We'll also be that time or very shortly thereafter finalizing a letter to mail our budget with this plan to all the district taxpayers, which I think is very important. They have to know what we're doing and what they're paying for before they get that bill in the mail. So that is a main priority for us. We'll be selecting the contract service provider in our next meeting in July. We have set a good morning aside to do the interviews, and then we're going to sit down and discuss it and cuss it and everything else. My goal is to come out of that meeting with a selected provider in July, which will allow us to get off enrolling to provide some services September, October. Even though we haven't got money in yet, I think we can negotiate a payment schedule that will be advantageous for us so we can show some benefit to the folks in this district this fall while we have people in town for Keeneland and the weather's good and people are downtown. So we're going to try to have some early successes, maybe a bit of low-hanging fruit, but that's okay. We want to show that there is a bang for the buck here. And last but not least, we're going to hold a public forum, hopefully here, if I can get two board members to help me secure the room here. I think it would be a great place to invite the constituents. Come, talk to us, ask us questions, and tell us what's on your mind. So we're going to hold an open forum. And our whole goal is to be completely transparent, to let them know where the money's going and where it's coming from. So that's, in a nutshell, kind of our plan. It's a bit aggressive, but we really think right now we're on task to make all these time frames. So I talk quickly, and I put a lot of information. If you all have any questions, I'll do my best to answer. Anybody? Great. Thank you. Yes, Kevin, Councilman, Stennett. Just had a quick question for you. On the marketing piece, you know, this is one of my concerns going into it. How much underneath that $180,000 will go directly towards marketing? Councilman, we really haven't gotten drilled down that deep. I mean, we've had conversations, you know, of $10,000, $15,000. Quite frankly, I think the vendor that we're going to select, and we'll know this time next month, we're going to try to put as much on that back, that contract, as we possibly can, because we're going to try to be great stewards of this money. So I'm not looking to go spend marketing dollars, but it potentially could happen. Okay, yeah. I mean, obviously my concern is more in the capital and things we see, and I think that's what we've been lacking. We're on the same page. Thank you for the quick presentation. Sure. I see nobody else signed up to comment, so thank you very much. Thank you all very much. That allows us to move into Council Reports. So if you would sign in if you would like to speak on Council Reports, starting with Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to say some remarks about the peace march that we had at Duncan Park this weekend. Ms. Anita Franklin, who lost her son in that park. He was an innocent bystander. I just kind of wanted to say thank you to Council Member Amanda Bledsoe. She made it out to the march Saturday. And I know other Council Members have made it in the past. Council Member Lamb, Stenet, and Maloney last year joined the community as we marched around the East End, and kind of bringing awareness to, you know, balancing the community and providing another positive opportunity in the park. So I just wanted to say that, and then I just kind of wanted to touch base about the Charleston trip that we went on this last week. I was impressed about how many council members attended that trip, how many people from the city attended that trip, and the opportunity that we had to visit the church in Charleston where that incident happened a year ago here recently. I think what was important is that, you know, from the conversation and what we heard about how that city handled that tragedy, I thought it was important that the visitors from Lexington listened to what that city did to address that tragedy. And I think it was an opportunity for us to learn and to talk and identify some of the issues that we may have here in our own city and to take a real good look at how we can address them. But I also think it was important that we identified some of the things that we are currently doing that are good things and to use what our city is currently doing to build off of and to move forward. So I just wanted to touch base on that trip and acknowledge everybody that took time out of their schedule to go and to have an opportunity to take the tie off or the dress off and have conversations with each other about how we can make Lexington better. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Massotti. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I agree with your assessment, Council Member Brown, especially the church that we had gone to. and how unforeseen the activity that just happened in Orlando. I mean, you never know when something like this is going to happen. And I think you all know my feeling about automatic weapons, and I think it's about time we do something about them because there's no place for them in my estimation. And also I just want to let everyone know that this Saturday there's a women's law enforcement symposium being held for the Lexington Police Department at 9.30 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. and that location will be at the Lexington Police Training Academy at Newtown Pike at the BCTC campus and it's free and actually breakfast is provided and I hope this will attract some young women into our police force because it's a great job and a courageous job and we certainly could use some great new faces and especially some new female faces in our department. That's all, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I, too, just want to echo the sentiment from Council Member Brown about the Charleston trip and how helpful it was to get outside the city limits and really have some conversations about serious issues. And the one word that I took away from the Charleston leadership was intentionality, and that's important that we be intentional with where we're seen and how we're interacting with our own community, which is why I joined Council Member Brown and others at the Peace Walk, was more just intentionality. And given that, I want to make sure people know that on Wednesday, which I guess is tomorrow, the coffee with the council member, I'm getting tired, is at 9 o'clock at Southland Park, and actually Senator Reggie Thomas is joining me for that coffee. And he represents half of my district, and we're looking forward to having a good discussion about a number of state issues and local issues. So that's tomorrow at 9 o'clock at Southland Park on Southland Drive. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Gibbs. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You may not know who he is, but you've probably all seen Harry Dean Stanton in various movies. His career spanned about 60 years. He's still alive. He lives in California. He was in blockbusters like Cool Hand Luke all the way to cult classics like Repo Man. He's from Lexington. He attended Lafayette High School, and he went to UK. In 2011, the Lexington Films Society organized the first Lexington Harry Dean Stanton Festival, and last weekend was the sixth annual event. They showed six films over three days at various venues, the Kentucky Theater, the Ferris Theater at the library, the break room, Green Lantern up on the north end. I made it to two films, but they're both very well attended and a very enthusiastic audience. This event is just another reason why Lexington is really taking off to be a great place to live. And I'd like to thank everyone who volunteered and sponsored the event, and particularly the co-chairs of the Lexington Film Society, and that's Lucy Jones and Sarah Wiley Van Meter. Thank you, Vice Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I, too, want to echo the sentiments of my colleagues about the Charleston trip. That was my first, and I do see the benefit of collaborating with over 200 Lexingtonians for three really fast days. And the Mother Emanuel experience on Friday morning was very emotional, but it was also a learning experience to know that what we need to work on and improve in our community, we do have a good community, but we can always improve. And leading to that, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the anguish and heartfelt that I felt and still feel over the tragedy that happened in Orlando this past weekend. And it was an act of hate that has caused much anger in the nation. And so I just think that we as a community need to come together. We need to put our selfish ways apart and come together as one and not think that anybody's any better than anybody else. and to know that we can make our community a better place and that we should continue thinking of the friends and families of all those who have been injured and killed in Orlando. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Stendert, again, if you'd take the chair, I'd like to make a comment. Thank you. I've been thinking about whether it's appropriate or not, but I'm going to go ahead and say that at the end of whatever it's been, six or seven years, it's a disappointment to me personally that this council is letting go of the opportunity to institute design standards. I want to thank all the people, staff, and all the people who volunteered their time over the years to work so hard to craft something that we believed was a reasonable compromise between protecting the downtown, protecting the investment that the city has made, and making sure that development was going to go forward. I hope that at some point in the future, Council will see fit to take this up again. Thank you. Thank you. I see nobody else signed up to speak. That will allow us to move to the mayor's report. Is there a motion? Motion and a second. Approved mayor's report. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. next is public comment for issues not on the agenda anybody signed up I see none I have a motion to adjourn is there a second second motion a second without objection we stand adjourned