approval today, but we do have a summary approval. Is there a motion? Second. I have a motion from Councilmember DeCamp and a second from Councilmember Gordon to approve the summary of March 4th. Is there any discussion? Those in favor of them, please vote aye. Aye. Those opposed, no. Motion carries. We have no budget amendments, so we're down to new business items. Is there a motion? Move approval. I have a motion by Councilmember Gordon and a second by Councilmember Blevins to approve the items of new business. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll proceed to vote. Those in favor of approving the new business items, let it be known by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, no. Motion carries. We're now down to the presentations, and the first is from our Services Committee. Thank you, Mayor. We met on March 4th, and we had three items on the agenda. The first item, the Immigration Report Response, was presented by Shea Raybolt, the Chief of Staff, and we went through all seven of the recommendations from the Commission, and you all should have this in front of you. I'm not going to go through each one of them, but we went through each one, had the respective person come and talk about them. The next item that we talked about, and along with Ms. Raybolt, we also had the Commonwealth Attorney, Ray Larson, came and spoke to us, too, about what they're doing in the Commonwealth Attorney's Office. The next item we dealt with was the Panhandling Update, and we decided the consensus to leave the ordinance existing as is. And then the third issue was the graffiti, and at this point we're still waiting on the ordinance because they wanted to speak with the County Attorney before we went forward. We adjourned at 2.16, and there were no motions before the Services Committee. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Any questions for Councilmember Ellinger? All right. We'll move on to the Budget and Finance Committee report. Councilmember Stephens. Thank you, Mayor. The Budget and Finance Committee met at its usual time. On February 26th, all members of the Committee were present, as well as some additional members from the Council. The meeting consisted of a report from the Department of Finance, Kena Cole told us about the bad news coming up. One is that we're going to be about 5 to 6 million short meeting our budget and expenses for this year, but that with the present state of employment and so forth, we probably could manage that without undue hardship. The second news, however, that she brought to us was a little more grave in that we're probably 25 to 30 million dollars short on revenue for next year with proposed expenditures, which means that some serious decisions will have to be made between now and July 1. And we look forward to your report, which I think will be on the first week or so, or second week of work session in April. That's correct. April 8th. Right. In the packet is a report with the numbers that she presented to us, and unless there are other questions, that completed our meeting. The meeting will also, we'll have a regular meeting on the fourth Tuesday of this month, and after that, and your presentation, the Budget and Finance Committee will morph into the Committee of the Whole and morph through the budget as it is presented by you. I would like to remind the members of the Council that the links have been appointed, and I think everybody knows which link they're on. At least that information has been circulated. If you have questions about it, please contact me or Mr. Southers. There will be no budget hearings this year in the Mayor's Office, so I think the links can start their work as of now if they haven't already done so. And that completes my report, unless there is a question. Yes, ma'am. Dr. Stevens, I just wanted to note on page 20 of the packet, which is page 5 of the Budget and Finance Committee minutes, the top line, I think perhaps we should insert million after 3.8 so that we know how many digits there are after that number. Tell me again, that's on page 20, which line? Yes, the first line, Commissioner Coe stated, it is 3.86 payout. It should say $3.8 million. Instead of $3.80? Yes, someone might get confused on that. We have a very healthy workforce, but I think we have a little more than $3.80 in black sick pay. So you would move to change to add million. I'll second that. The motion has been made and seconded to add millions to 3.8, and I would certainly support that. All right. Any discussion on the motion? Those in favor, please vote aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Council Member James. Thank you. All right. Any further questions for Dr. Stevens? All right. That concludes the Budget and Finance Committee report. Now, my recollection from our council meeting last Thursday night is that item C and D have been deleted from this week's agenda. Both of those items have been moved to next week, and that item F will be next, and then we'll finish up with the post-secondary education from Mr. Calgo. So, Council Member Gorton. Thank you very much, Mayor. This is a very exciting presentation we're going to see. As many of you know, teenage drinking is a very serious problem in our society, and one of the most creative ways in Lexington that it's being addressed is through the Keep It Real program. So without any other words, I want to introduce two special people who have made it happen. First is Arthur Rouse from Video Editing Services, and I can't, come on up here, I can't thank you enough for all your volunteering that you do, Arthur. And then Mike Kleinpeter from Blue Grass Prevention Center, who also has given his expertise, and they have information and some videos to show you. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having us today, members of the council, Mayor Newberry. These videos are short, by the way, four 30-second videos, just so we have a little context. I would like to say that with the problem of underage drinking in high school, we have tried to address that in a creative way, and what we've done is we've offered the students an opportunity to make their own public service announcements about the dangers of underage drinking. And what this does is it engages them in the conversation about the dangers of underage drinking without having to have adults monitor the conversation or force the message upon them. And so by doing this, they come up with some pretty interesting methods of communicating with each other and the general public about this problem. And the outreach among the young people is tremendous. It takes two or three or four people to make the video, and then they influence maybe 20, 15, 20, 25 other people in the making of the video among their friends and peers and family members and whatnot. And then we post these videos that are made in the 17-county region. On the Internet, there's a voting period where the general public can vote on the videos. The winner receives a substantial prize. We offer them time on MTV here regionally through the Insight Cable Company. Now we've started offering them appearances in the movie theaters. I think your handout there gives you a little bit of a taste of the numbers that we've reached. A lot of young people are being reached by this, and consequently, every year has been better for the program, more entries, better entries. We've had interest from other states, as a matter of fact. They've seen the website and contacted us from Florida, from Texas. We have a perennial powerhouse, Elizabethtown, that's not in the 17-county district, but they're so interested in this concept that they participate yearly. And so what I want to do right now before Mike gives you a little more detail is show you four of the winners from this year's Keep It Real contest. I think the first one is what we consider to be the best cinematography. This is an entry from Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School. Great. In the world today, everything is about rushing, rushing, getting someplace fast, going there and not caring about the consequences. Some things are worth waiting for. Some things need to wait. Excellent work by high school students, I might say. I'm going to let these continue to run. This next entry is from Bryan Station High School. This was the People's Choice, the winner of the votes on the Internet, which was a horse race. I think it was 19,000 votes and the other was only 200 votes behind. Your inches from my fingertips. I've come as close as I can get. I'm reaching, but the rest is up to you. I don't ever want to miss being here with you like this. That was the People's Choice winner from Bryan Station High School. Alex Thompson has entered, I think this might be his third year. He's always got a good entry. He's going to graduate, so we hope to see him somewhere at UK or staying in the region with his talent as a communicator and a young filmmaker. My friends drink. Most of my high school friends, all of my friends in college, something like 40,000 kids die every year. They haven't. I haven't. They say your life flashes before your eyes. And then this was the grand prize winner this year, the second year that Garrard County High School has won this award. They've had some phenomenal entries, obviously. Well, they're two out of two. They've had two entries and they've won Best Picture twice. Everyone has a future. The decisions you make as a teenager will become the foundation for building the rest of your life. Poor choices made while intoxicated can be what separates your future from your dreams. Underage drinking is illegal, yet people ages 12 to 21 drink 20% of all alcohol consumed in the U.S. today. Construct a solid foundation. If you are under 21, don't drink. Okay, thank you. Those are the four entries that we wanted to show you today out of 62 that came in this year. And what I want to impress on you and what I think is obvious is that the young people really have a tremendous capacity to communicate, and we hope that by communicating with each other rather than us communicating to them, that they intrinsically adopt this notion that if you're underage, don't drink. And so thank you for participating. Thank you, Mary Newberry, for being there for the second year. Thanks for the council support. And Linda Gorton, thank you very much. I'd like to introduce Mike Kleinpeter from Blue Grass Prevention Center, who will finish up our presentation today. Thank you, Arthur. This year, we've got two new exciting events going on. On April 22, Lexington Legends will be hosting a Keep It Real Day at the UF Baseball Field. The winners will be throwing out the first pitch, the grand prize winner there, and you'll also see participants throwing, we have baseballs and stuff like that for them to throw out in the crowd as promotional pieces. We'll recognize all participants in Keep It Real who attend. The second event we have going on is we're showing the winning video in the cinemas nearby. The cinemas we'll be showing them in are the Fayette Mall, Hamburg Pavilion 16, Lexington Green Movies, Movies 10, the Richmond Mall Cinemas 8, and the Danville Cinemas 8. They'll be playing in May and December at those cinemas in the pre-show in the spot known as the 20. So feel free to go out and check them out, and we want to thank you for your time. You guys have a good evening. Thank you. Any questions for our guests? Thank you very much. Appreciate you coming by. Great program. Thank you very much. It's now my pleasure to welcome to the podium a former member of the council and the interim president of the Council on Post-Secondary Education, Lexington's own Brad Calgo. Glad to have you here this afternoon. Glad to be here, Mayor. Thank you for the opportunity. And members of the council, I thank you as well. I thank you also for your service to the people of Lexington and for the opportunity to speak with you today. Having labored in this vineyard myself, I know that the work you do is challenging and very important. This may be something of a test to see whether I can begin and end a presentation in 12 minutes or less. It's a test I intend to pass, and I think I can because my message is a fairly simple one, and that is that Lexington and higher education are partners. Lexington and higher education are partners. Their relationship to each other is one of interdependency, and in pursuit of its own best interests, each partner must uphold its own end of an implied bargain that binds us together. My appearance here today is intended to reflect my own belief that local statesmen like yourself represent valuable allies, helpful guides, and important resources to colleges and universities within communities across the state. So I want to talk to you about higher education in Kentucky, and specifically in Lexington, beginning with the role of the Council on Post-Secondary Education. As you probably know, colleges and universities in Kentucky are organized in a very decentralized model, and the wisdom of that is that it was intended to accommodate the extreme diversity across our state. But those colleges and universities comprise an organic system. They're bound together in pursuit of statewide priorities. In Kentucky, higher education is a goal-driven business. Let me repeat that again. Higher education in Kentucky is a goal-driven business. It's driven by the goals that were embedded into our Higher Education Reform Act, known as House Bill 1, that was adopted some ten and a half years ago. And it's the council, a name you'll be familiar with, in this case, Council on Post-Secondary Education, by its budgetary and policymaking responsibilities, seeks to ensure that those statewide goals are achieved on each of our campuses. In Lexington, we best remember House Bill 1 for the fact that it committed the University of Kentucky to becoming one of the top 20 public research institutions in the country. And under the leadership of Dr. Lee Todd, it's pursuing that mission with great success. Our other premier goal is that by the year 2020, Kentucky's educational attainment will equal or exceed the national average. To do that, we'll need to increase the number of college graduates who live and work within our borders from 400,000 at the turn of the century to 800,000 in the year 2020. If we were able to achieve that, we will have accomplished the greatest economic transformation in any 20-year period in the history of the state. That's the goal that you've heard described as the double the numbers goal. And it reflects Kentucky's understanding that higher education is Kentucky's single best economic development strategy. I want to show you a slide. As a matter of fact, you may have a print of it in front of you. It's the one that looks like this. The data that's displayed here didn't exist ten and a half years ago at the time this law was adopted. But this data certainly serves to confirm the wisdom of our double the numbers goal. What we've done is to take all 50 states and for each state provide two numbers. One on the lower axis is the percentage of that state's population with a bachelor's degree or more. And on the vertical axis, the per capita income of that state. When you plot those two figures against each other for all 50 states, a remarkable pattern emerges. It shows an almost linear relationship between those two figures. And it reveals the fact that here in Kentucky, if our objective is to increase per capita income to the point where Kentuckians would participate in the mainstream of American life, we have no route to get there but to increase the number of college graduates living in Kentucky. That simply reflects the common wisdom that the more education that you have, the more your lifetime earnings are. It's one of those most linear relationships in American society that the more education you have, the more your earning is likely to be. We like to say the more you learn, the more you earn. And a college graduate is, in Kentucky, likely to earn over his working lifetime over a million dollars more than a college or a high school graduate. What does all that mean to the city of Lexington? Well, here in my hometown, the Athens of the West, higher education has been and remains what economists call a base industry. Just like the automobiles in Georgetown, higher education is what we sell to the rest of the world. It brings to our local economy dollars from the rest of the state and from the rest of the nation and beyond. Not just the public dollars in the form of operating expenses or capital projects or publicly financed tuition, but all those private dollars that pay tuition, books, room and board, and an amazing volume of private contributions to public and private institutions. Horses give Lexington our signature, but it's higher education that's our biggest niche business. I'm not just talking about Big Blue or even the institutions located here in Fayette County. Within a stone's throw of Lexington, we have a constellation of diverse higher education institutions that make this by far the most higher education intensive area of the state of Kentucky. It's sometimes said that here in Kentucky, here in central Kentucky, we're in the import-export business. We import dumb students and we export smart ones. But we don't export all the smart ones. We keep a good number of them here. And when they're here, they stay and provide the fuel for innovation and a big talent pool for Lexington's new economy jobs. And the fact that the average Kentucky college graduate, as I said, will make over a million dollars in his working career more than a high school graduate has to be pretty important to a city whose budget is built on the community's payroll. Lexington is a college town grown large, but it's even more than that because we're also the home of what New Age economists have identified as the single best economic engine that a city of the 21st century can have, and that's a world-class research institution, the University of Kentucky. But the benefits here are not merely financial. Colleges and universities bring people into our neighborhoods from all over the world, and they bring with them some fresh energy and some new ideas, and they make Lexington a creative and progressive place to work and live. In short, the benefits of that implied bargain are profoundly positive and pervasive, but they do come with some responsibilities. For their part, the colleges and universities play an increasing role as catalysts for our local economies, what we call the doctrine of regional stewardship. They are like in-house consulting firms. They are reservoirs of problem-solving capacity. For your part, I'm not here to advocate any particular program or any particular accommodation for those that are in the Lexington neighborhood, but I am asking that you continue to use your best judgment, recognizing the importance of this partnership, and to be opportunistic in advancing our mutual best interests between the community and higher education. I'd want you to know that you have a friend at the Council on Postsecondary Education, and if there's something that I can do to help this partnership, I would consider it an honor to do so, and I hope you'll feel free to call. I'd also ask you to remember the opportunities to support Stu Silverman and the Fayette County Public Schools, because if our state is to achieve its double-the-numbers goal, it's essential that every single county in the state, every single county, must progress along the path that's been described in our double-the-numbers plan adopted by the Council just last September. And it's somewhat ironic that in this community of generally high educational attainment, we have pockets of low achievement that have the effect of depressing the quality of life for those who are there. This is still an important mission, and your value as opportunities through the bully pulpit is extremely important. In closing, I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that sometime after your new mayor was elected, he and your new vice mayor paid a visit to the state budget director, and I was never so impressed as to see that one of their four biggest requests of the state budget priority process was to ensure that one of these institutions of higher education was adequately funded. And, Mayor and Vice Mayor, I'd want you to know that your appearance over there that day made a big difference. It made a big difference within the administration of which I was a part. It certainly made a lasting impression to everyone to whom you brought that message. That message and your Lexington First Fund ideas are good ideas, and they epitomize the very thing that I'm talking about here. Again, I hope you'll remember that you have a friend at the Council on Post-Secondary Education. I applaud you for all your work here, and if I may be of any help, please feel free to call me. Thank you very much, Mr. Cowgill. Council Member Gordon. Brad, thank you very much. I really appreciate what you had to say and appreciate your work on the state level. I have one question. If we were to look at this graph and have Fayette County in there, do you know about where Fayette County would fall? It seems to me about, do I recall that maybe 38 or 39 percent of our population has a bachelor's degree or higher? I should have looked that up, and I'm sorry I don't know the answer. When you look at that graph, if you can look at it closely enough to see the states themselves, you'll see that Kentucky is what I call the tail end of the rocket. A lot of potential for moving upward and to the right. We've prepared, Council Member Gordon, a similar chart to this based on the county data from within the state of Kentucky. And not too surprisingly, the same exact pattern emerges. And again, when you consider that a county, or in this case the state, is merely an aggregation of individuals, and when you put individuals together, and some of them have a lot of education, more in some states than in others, you wouldn't be surprised to see this sort of relationship because it proves what we've all told our children, and that is that if you want to enjoy that quality of life, that level of income, higher education is the way to do it. I'll be happy to get you that information so that you can see where Fayette County ranks in this. And it ranks, by the rest of the state, relatively high. I appreciate that. I think what you said that's so critical for Kentucky is county by county. Every county, we've got to work to get every county up to a higher level. And, of course, we have a big part in that, too, here. So I'd enjoy seeing that county by county graph. So thank you again. Thank you. Council Member James. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I had a question as to whether, if you have a graph similar as to what you presented, that talks about the cost of in-state tuition versus out-of-state tuition. Do you have any data, or do you know, like, just offhand, whether you see a trend in where there's an affordable in-state tuition that retains those that are living currently in the state or in that city to want to attend that college and then remain in the city instead of moving elsewhere? I don't have any data that would show that sort of a correlation. It would be a very interesting one to provide. Theories are quite diverse among the states of the United States in terms of how they treat tuition and how they treat the variation between in-state and out-of-state tuition. Here in Kentucky, for two or three years at least, and to be repeated again this year, the council has said that non-resident tuition has to be at least a multiple of 1.7 times whatever in-state tuition is. Okay. And several of the institutions are significantly more than that. Our first obligation, obviously, is to try to make post-secondary education as accessible to our native population as we can, because those are the taxpayers who, through these appropriations, are making that possible. I suspect that over a period of time, as the University of Kentucky approaches its top 20 status, it may come to the point where, like several of the other so-called public abbeys, it will be able to raise its non-resident tuition because the power of this magnet will be strong enough. People from other states will want to come to Lexington. They'll be willing to pay more and the revenue generated by that non-resident tuition will help to provide a subsidy for tuition. Let me take advantage of the opportunity to say, since we're sort of headed in the direction of tuition somewhere after the end of this legislative session, that affordability is sort of a function of three things. One is the level of funding that our public institutions receive from the General Assembly. And the other two are tuition set by the Council on Post-Secondary Education as part of its statutory authority. And the other is our financial aid program. Those three policies have to work together so as to ensure that we achieve this double the numbers goal. When I look at that goal through the eyes of a former budget director, my natural inclination is to wonder, is there enough money in the state of Kentucky to make that goal a reality? And I don't just mean enough money in the public treasury. I mean enough money in the purses and wallets of all the moms and dads who pay a portion of that cost. Education is a tremendous investment. The return on investment is terrific. But we have to be careful to ensure that through the combination of financial aid and tuition policy, it's affordable to the entire spectrum of Kentuckians. How do you feel like that's working? You mentioned the financial aid component, the tuition and the funding for public institutions. How, if you could rank that right now from a one to ten, how are we doing right now with collaboration of those three entities? That's a good question. And I guess by the raising of the question, I have the concern that they are not as well integrated as they should be. Like so many other states, Kentucky is not alone. But it tends to allocate responsibility for each of those three policies, general funds, support, tuition, and financial aid to different organizations, creating the possibility that they won't be merged with each other as well as they should. Naturally, we're concerned at this moment with the level of general fund support from the state, because if that were to be reduced or significantly reduced, it raises the question of whether we'll continue to be able to make progress toward our double the numbers goals in the 12 years or so remaining. I've told people that, you know, 12 years seen again through the eyes of a budget director is six budgets. And that's about like saying that you're on one goal line of the football field and your objective is to get to the other goal line in six plays. Basically, every play has to be a first down. You can't afford any fumbles or any interceptions or any thrown for a loss sort of situation. Every single play counts. And so I hope that to the extent you have an opportunity to exercise influence as respected people within this community to remind your legislative delegation and other leaders in Frankfurt of the importance, not just to the city of Lexington, but to our state as a whole, of providing the level of funding that will continue to make the progress that we've made. Over the last 10 years, if you saw numbers, they would look pretty much like that one does up there. They would be upward and to the right. You'd see a tremendous increase in the level of research done in this county. You'd see a tremendous increase in enrollment. You'd see a big increase in community college participation. You'd see an increase in the number of graduates. And all of that has been made possible by the fact that the people of Kentucky, acting through their legislators throughout that 10-year period, have been willing to make a commitment or an investment in higher education significantly greater than we ever had in the period prior to that House Bill 1. Are we at a point where we can see the results of the KEYS program at this point? I think so. I have been encouraging leaders in Frankfurt to consider that when the legislative session has concluded that this is something that really needs to be studied again, I have the idea that it might be possible to realign our financial aid interests and programs in the state of Kentucky in a way that would give us a more effective use of our financial aid dollars than what we're doing right now. The ideal financial aid program, as you would understand, is intended to hit what I call the tipping point. We have a lot of students in the state of Kentucky whose parents have planned for them to go to college all of their lives. They're going to college anyway. Our objective, obviously, and yours as well in your capacity as budget makers, is to allocate public dollars in a way that achieves an outcome that would not otherwise occur. We need to take that approach carefully in the area of financial aid and ensure that we're using that financial aid to make it possible to go to college for students who would otherwise not be going to college. So I think that's a ripe subject for review and analysis in the near future. In fact, had it not been for the state's financial condition, I think we might be in the business of reviewing that even as we speak. For now, I think that project has sort of taken a back seat, awaiting the end of the session and some serious analysis. Okay. I look forward to that. If you do receive that and it's something you feel like you can share with council, that would be something I'd be interested in. Happy to do that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Very interesting, actually, this little piece of paper. I've been looking at it intently. And a couple of observations. If you look up toward the head of the arrow, you'll see that Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia are all near the top. Two of those are bedroom communities, whole bedroom communities for Washington, D.C., and two others for New York City, which I'm sure probably skews them a little bit upward. There is another. The corollary of this is that the higher income families, a culture exists within those families that their children will go to college. And so, you know, there's two different things tugging there that obviously if we can ratchet up the income, that should reflect also on more people in college and more people would be able to afford to college. So as I say, this is interesting. I don't know what else I can glean over it, but I will be glad to report back to the council the next time we get together next week. Well, you're certainly correct in your observation. A chart like this merely shows correlation. It doesn't show causation. There would be room for wondering which came first, the wealth or the education. Did the high education produce high wealth, or did the high wealth produce high education? In my mind, at the very least, it proves that you can't go north on that graph without also going to the right. It is within the internal economics of our society simply not possible to do that. It also means, I think, that this double numbers goal that we have is not merely a goal for higher education. We could crank out more graduates from our institutions, but if they all left the state of Kentucky in pursuit of the sort of career opportunities that college graduates are eligible to pursue, we will not have actually advanced the objective. These are residents, not graduates. Now, in order to have more residents, we need to produce more graduates, but this is as much an economic development goal as you would well understand as it is a higher education goal. So we need not only to provide resources to make it possible for these to be accessible to students in a quality sort of a way, but in addition, economic development initiatives need to focus on the sort of job opportunities that these students will want to pursue when they get out of college. I would think also that we would like for them to go to college in one place or another in the state of Kentucky. They have more of a tendency to stay here as opposed to go to the University of Mississippi or Colorado or I'm naming some of the famous party schools now and stay in Denver or Boulder wherever they may end up lighting and not necessarily come back to Kentucky. Again, thank you for what you're doing, and I'm sure we're all on board, even though we're probably dragging down the average income a little bit up here. Thank you, sir. Council Member Stephens. Thank you. Brad, I've had the privilege of serving as chairman of the College of Medicine at the University of Kentucky Scholarship and Financial Aid Committee for the last ten years or so. We have a real problem in that each year the tuition has gone up. In the last few years, about ten percent each year, but when you start with tuition at the College of Medicine, it's compounded much higher. Now the next year our tuition is going to be $27,000 per year per Kentucky resident. It's about $50,000 for non-residents, of which there are 23 this year out of 103 in the class. And, of course, ten percent on the undergraduate tuition is not nearly as large a number as ten percent on the medical school. And we've attempted to try to prevail and add a fixed number to the tuition at College of Medicine rather than a percent. But I wondered what your prediction is for us this year. Are we going to have to raise the tuition another ten or 12 percent, do you think? I wouldn't be able to offer a prediction, Dr. Stevens, I guess, until after we see what comes out of the budget process from the General Assembly. So we've deliberately moved the date of the next council meeting for the resolution to issues until after the General Assembly has completed its work on the budget. Your point, again, is very well taken. We have recently been updating a study we call the affordability study. It was done first about two years ago. Now we have some fresher data we're looking at. One of the most significant findings is just the volume of borrowing that is going on by students within the state of Kentucky. It's really quite remarkable. And it doesn't bear any particular pattern with respect to family income. That is to say the level of borrowing is high and it has increased at every level. It's not a uniquely lower income thing, nor is it a uniquely higher income thing. So that's when you raise tuition by these double digits, as we've had in several recent years, that's one of the consequences is that borrowing increases. Yes, the average debt in last year's medical school graduating class was $140,000 per student. And some of the students, particularly from out of state, have $250,000, $300,000 worth of debt. And that's not good for the provision of medical care. They're forced to go into specialties, which they may not prefer, but which have a higher rate of remuneration, go to places where they can make more money, which is not in some of our needy counties. So I think it's in the public interest for you and other people who are making decisions in Frankfurt to try and help us rectify that if you can. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Blevins. Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank you for coming today, too, Mr. Kalko. I think your role is very important. Some years ago, it might have just been the last budget cycle, the post-secondary, the kindergarten through high school groups all got together in the budget cycle. Instead of fighting each other, they went in unified to say that education is the single most important thing we can do as an economic development driver, social ills. I mean, everything you look at, education drives the betterment of every problem we have in society. And I like what Bob Sexton from the Pritchard Committee said, every time we underfund education, we're eating our seed corn. And I highly agree with that. I want to touch on the affordability and tuition problem from two aspects. One is a community leader, and one is a parent that's facing it. We are, as far as I know, the last five years or so, the University of Kentucky has raised their tuition in the neighborhood of 8 to 10 percent every year, sometimes above double digits, sometimes below, but always very high and close to 10 percent. If you try to project yourself as a saving family that's trying to get a child to college, that's a game you can't keep up with. I don't care who you are unless you're working five and ten jobs. We have to put a stop to that. Otherwise, we're going to have a top 20 university that no Kentuckian can attend. And I think the loan rates that you're showing and seeing those trends already tell us that we're there. We're killing our families that are trying to put kids in school. So I would encourage you to, again, fight for the best budget you can for the post-secondary education system, in concert with KDE as well, but also to put a sharp pencil to our tuition increases. Because it's my understanding, even if we fund the business plan that Dr. Todd has had, we will still have large increases in tuition for the next few years. That's part of that business plan. I don't think we can sustain that. We have to derail that trend because we're just going to get to a point where nobody can attend our own university, our own flagship university. That's my concern. I don't know that you can solve it today, but work hard and we'll throw our effort to anything we can do to help. I'd like to hear what you have to say. Well, I very much appreciate your comments. And I would just tell you that the council takes this responsibility extremely seriously. Over the period of time, there's been something of an evolution of the council's perception of its role. The law throughout this ten-and-a-half-year period that I was talking about has vested the responsibility for establishing tuition rates in the council. But there was a long period of time in which the council assumed that it had the ability and the desire to delegate that responsibility directly to the institutions so that they could fix tuition as they liked. I'm not questioning the decisions that they made. I'm only saying that it was made on the campuses, not in Frankfurt. During the last administration, as you know, rates of increase became something of a concern to the last gubernatorial administration to the point where it began exercising influence over the council to accept a more deliberate responsibility in the area of tuition. But it did that, Representative Blevins, at the outset of the process, establishing what it called parameters, or what was, in effect, a range of acceptable percentage rates of increase. I have the impression that that system didn't work particularly well because it tended to migrate tuition rates toward the upper end of the range, and it was somewhat counterintuitive in terms of the way the process should work. Ultimately, in a rational system, you would want to establish the level of public support coming through the state's budget, and then you would want to have received as much information as you can in terms of the affordability of various rates among the families that are having to pay them, and then you would make the decision based on as much of that information as you can get. I've decided we're going to do it that way this year, and the council has agreed with that approach. In fact, under the current circumstances, we couldn't really do it any other way. Back in the fall, as you appropriately remembered, we were able to achieve something of a consortium of the public institutions to come to Frankfurt and advocate collectively for adequate funding of higher education. All of that assumed that we were going to be north of the budget line. From January 1 until now, we've all been south of the budget line. That is, we've been talking about fewer dollars in the years ahead than in the years past. So long as that's the case, or at least the possibility of that is the case, we're not able to set any parameters on tuition. We simply need to be collecting as much of that affordability data as we can so that we'll be prepared to make the best decision that we can, and to take into account, again, all these other financial aid sort of factors as well. Well, I'm really pleased to hear that you're taking that approach, because I think that's the proper way to do it, figure out what it takes to get a child from Kentucky through our schools, and then set the rates accordingly. And we may have to just bite the bullet. I also want you to know I respect that you've now seen both sides of this argument. As the administration, there's a certain push on the universities to be more efficient when you go through that budget cycle. And likewise, when you're at the universities, you need the money to get the job done. But there's a natural tug and pull there that needs to occur. The problem is the victims are the students and the families that are trying to pay for it. And the last five or six years, and for the next five or six years, appear to be dark and gloomy. And I hope you're successful with that new approach. I really would support that. Thanks. That's all I had, Mayor. Vice Mayor Gray. Brad, I know you well enough to know that you and I share a common ailment of sort of being statistical junkies. So I'm going to ask this question because I feel certain that you know it, even though I'm going to be a little bit contrarian about this. When you look at the graph that you showed us, I'm curious if you were to overlay a Kentucky GDP or arguably maybe even Fayette County, but just say Kentucky's GDP on this. And would the domestic product of the state, is it charting in a particular path consistent with this? I mean, has it stayed? How would you describe it, the end of the rocket or the trailing end, the tail of the rocket? If you were to look back over about the last 30 years, taking the state as a whole, and you were trying to summarize Kentucky's financial condition by a single number, that being per capita income, or more specifically the percentage of Kentucky's per capita income from the United States per capita income, you'd see that it's been virtually flat right at 82%. And that's a remarkable thing when you think about it. For all the public policy programs that have passed in and out of our state over the course of that 30-year period of time, it's a profoundly sobering thought to think that trying as best we could, there was some fattishness going on within that period of time, obviously, but the effort was genuine and its objective was to raise Kentucky's per capita income to the point where it would be closer at least to 100% of the national average than to this 82% figure. Why is it so intransigent? Why do we seem to be stuck at that very point? It's an issue that I spend a lot of time talking about, and I sort of alluded to a minute ago when I was talking to Councilmember Beard when I said, what comes first? Does the wealth cause the education? Does the education cause the wealth? Or could there be a third factor out there, something like ambition, something that's sort of cultural that results in both the education and the wealth? There's a lot going on within our state, but when policymakers look at a chart like that and they think using the very best policy science that's available, how can we move our state forward? It gets into some fairly complicated questions, but clearly that relationship demonstrated by that graph up there holds, I think, a lot of intrinsic wisdom. It says we need to make the best investment that we can with the available dollars. We don't want to run everybody out of the state with taxes that are excessive, but that's clearly the best return on investment that you can get. So the context of really my question, you and I have had these conversations. Anecdotally, you hear so many kids today, it seems, my nieces and nephews, who have gone off to other places, and you're talking about your kids not long ago, and you hear that often, and I think you hear it especially in Fayette County, and then the continuing message is that they don't have the job opportunities back here. So the extent to which we are investing a lot, and arguably, admittedly, Fayette County and Lexington is a recipient and beneficiary of the investment we make at the University of Kentucky, the state makes, but now what's the budget, $2 billion a year at UK? Does that include the medical center, or that's just, okay. And the state's investment is $350 million? Sixty. You're right. So the real question is, or the nagging, difficult question that I have is, are we investing more and educating young people and not providing, not able to provide the opportunities through business, through professions, that then the educated students and graduates are seeking? And, you know, there's a whole lot of alchemy in that. It's sort of like you said. There's a whole lot behind that. How does wealth creation occur? How does opportunity creation occur? But, you know, sometimes I wonder, you know, it's really relatively easy to fund something. It's real hard to create industry and business and professional opportunities. And that's sort of the question that I'm sure you've considered. And so I'm curious about that one. Well, it's a very, very interesting question. I'm fond of telling people that one of the things I like about this job is that I think God only permits a very limited number of people to grapple with these issues on a full-time basis and get paid for it. Fortunately, I have one of those jobs, and so that's one of the things I like the most about it. It seems to me, Jimmy, that if you were to look back over the last 20 years, what you'd see taken as a whole is a state that knew that it was not strong economically and largely because it was not strong educationally. So we undertook basically two strategies at the same time. One is actually best represented by the Kentucky Education Reform Act, and the other was a genuinely intensive economic development strategy focused on manufacturing. And the idea was maybe manufacturing, particularly some of the manufacturing that we recruited into the state, was not exactly the end game. But if it kept mom and dad employed and it kept food on the table while we invested in the K-12 education in order that sister and junior would have a new focus on education, that was really the vision, and that we would come to a point sometime early in the 21st century where we would actually start getting some traction. I won't say it didn't work, but I will say the job got a lot more complicated with the globalization of the economy. And now we find the people who are in manufacturing businesses across the state competing with very low-wage people all across the world. And our strategy now has to be reconsidered. And I think one of the things that happens under those circumstances is to look at our institutions, particularly our research institutions, and the possibility of reorienting our economic development toward more of a new economy, innovation-driven sort of businesses. I think that's where we're going. I don't, in my wildest dreams, imagine that there's any wand I could wave even an inch at a time up that chart right there. And I suspect each of you is old enough and wise enough to realize that the progress we make as a city or as a state is made by getting up every day and going back to work and plowing in the field one more time. And, yes, we have made a lot of progress. And, Jimmy, if there were any doubt as to whether, over the last ten years, the investment that we've made in higher education has yielded desirable results, I would tell you, let me provide for you those sorts of charts that show graduation, enrollment, research. The investment is, in fact, paying back with good dividends. I think there's room, though, in the higher education field to realize that this period of 23 years in which we are going to hit our 2020 goals could be divided into what I'll call Reform 1.0 and Reform 2.0. And the goals of those two phases could have been different. I'm not sure that anybody ever articulated it this way. But within that first ten years, one of the things we did in Kentucky was to bring onto campuses sons and daughters of people who never saw campus. Some graduated. Some didn't. Our graduation rates in Kentucky are not all that you would want them to be. But at least that family has had the experience of putting a child into an institution of higher learning. When that person has a child, that's not as alien a concept as it was before. So progress is made, ultimately, in a generational level. And, again, now we're at the point where, in my opinion, as I was saying to Andrea here a minute ago, I think we need, among other things, to ensure that we're using our always limited public dollars to ensure that we're getting the maximum impact in terms of graduation that we can. Graduates, after all, was what we wanted at the end of the day. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. That phrase you just used, always limited public dollars. Can we really invest in education, in our people, in the future of a generation of Kentuckians who can afford to stay in Kentucky and help to make this state what it can be? Can we really do that without increasing public investment in education? And can we do that unless we face the reality of raising revenues through taxation? I mean, why is it that we talk so much about education with two hands tied behind our back? I mean, are we really serious about educating the people of our state and making education affordable and not doing it on the backs of our students who have to get out of the state in order to pay back their debts? I'm very much in agreement with the sentiments of that question, and I've been spending lots of hours of every day devoted to advocacy on that very point. That is to help our policy makers in Frankfurt understand the importance of this investment. And our council, as you may know, has adopted a resolution urging the General Assembly to take action. We haven't specified any particular strategy to ensure that adequate funding is available, even if that means additional revenue sources to our general fund. That's the action that our council has taken. But that's a culture, you know, we ultimately really have to change, this self-destroying view that taxation is an evil, something to be avoided, something to be cut, something to be constricted. I don't think we can move forward as a society unless we change that, and I appreciate all the work you're doing to bring that about. Well, thank you. Whether we get as much as we want or as much as we think the state needs, the amount that we think would have made a good investment, in any event, our responsibility is to take the dollars that are available and ensure that we're advancing the state's goals with them as best we can. To that end, I anticipate the council, after the conclusion of this session, regardless of the budget, is going to be spending a lot of time in this area of degree productivity and ensuring that we're making as much progress toward that goal as we can. Mayor, it's been a pleasure to be with you. I'm very grateful for all of your time. Again, I thank you for your work and your interest in this subject. Thank you so much. It's very helpful to have you remind us of what a significant part of the Lexington mix higher education is, and we're very grateful for all your work. I just ask, going forward, to the degree we might be helpful in achieving some of the goals that your council has, please let us know. Will do. Thank you. That takes us down now to the council report. And I'll go back to Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a few announcements here. Tonight, the McConnell's Trace Neighborhood Association will hold its annual meeting 7 p.m. in the Bracktown Baptist Church. And following the meeting, the McConnell's Trace Greenways Committee will meet to further plan for progress on greenways in the neighborhood. And I look forward to joining the folks from McConnell's Trace in those meetings this evening. Coming up this weekend, Friday, March 14th from 5 to 7 p.m., and then Saturday from 10 to 10 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon, there will be public meetings both to be held in the ballroom of the government center on the streetscape gateways study. Citizens will have an opportunity to view some preliminary designs, ask questions, hear some presentations, and provide their views, provide their input on this really important, significant study that will change the face of our downtown, and we all hope make it much more inviting. Finally, Monday, March 17th, which I gather also is St. Patrick's Day, the Winburn Neighborhood Association will hold its monthly meeting at 6.30 p.m. in the Martin Luther King Park Community Center. Thank you, Mayor. That's my report. Thanks. Council Member Stevens. I want to announce two meetings. One tonight at Henry Clay High School, the Visioning 2040 public meeting will be held. All citizens are invited, even though it's at Henry Clay High School. And Mr. Charlie Bowen, I understand, will represent the initiative. And I don't know if you're going to be there tonight or not, are you, Mayor? I plan to be there for a portion of it. Good. And then tomorrow night, the Infill and Redevelopment Steering Committee will have its second public meeting to discuss the work that's been going on over the last year or so in building a report and some recommendations to the government for what can be done to facilitate and improve and perhaps finance infill and redevelopment in our community. Also, this will be presented to the council next Tuesday at the Planning Committee, so you can get a preview on whether you're on the Planning Committee or not. I'm sure you'd be welcome, any council person to come, or the public also. I'd like to move approval of the Neighborhood Development Fund, but I have an amendment to make to it. So I would first make the motion to approve it. I have a second by Councilmember Stennett to approve the NDF. Councilmember Stephens? I'm sorry I wasn't here last week when this was passed around, but I had some business I had to take care of on the West Coast. But I would like to amend this appropriation for the Boy Scout Troop 911 to add my contribution of $110. Yes, I think that brings it to $1,000. If there's no objection, we'll make that change by unanimous consent. Any further discussion on the NDF? And those in favor of approving the NDF as amended, please let it be known by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you. That completes my report. Councilmember Beard? Thank you, Mayor. A couple of things. On Thursday the 13th at 7 o'clock, the Bellowood Neighborhood Association will meet at the Tates Creek Library. And then this is maybe more of a question than a direct comment. We have the streetscape activities from 10 until 2 at the ballroom, but we also have St. Patrick's Day parade right in the middle of that. And is that going to impair people being able to get here? And, you know, maybe somebody from the administration might have that one already solved. My recollection is the St. Patrick's Day parade is in the afternoon, right? Yes. At 1.30 or 2 o'clock. And I think the presentation is that morning in the council chambers. I mean in the ballroom, rather. Well, it says from 10 until 2. I assumed it was going to be a come and go kind of thing and people wouldn't be down there for four hours. A further presentation here at 1 o'clock, though. A further presentation here at 1 o'clock, isn't it? 12 o'clock, I'm sorry. 12 o'clock. It doesn't particularly concern me. In fact, it may help traffic a little bit with the foot traffic, people coming in while they're here for the parade. I hope they will. That's the point. Anything further? No. That's all I had. Council Member Stinnon. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of things. One, tonight, as many of you know, there's a big basketball game down at Eastern Kentucky University at McBrayer Arena between my Brown Station defenders and Lexington Catholics. You'll see who plays next week here in the Sweet 16. I wish everyone could come out and support both teams, actually, because both being from Lexington, we're guaranteed a Lexington school to be in the Sweet 16 this year. And that game starts tonight at 7.30 down again at McBrayer Arena and Eastern's campus. Also along the Brown Station theme, Monday night on St. Patrick's Day night, the school system will be hosting a forum at Brown Station beginning at 7 p.m. for all those interested in Brown Station's future. That means teachers, students, parents, alumni, et cetera, to come on March 17th to voice their concerns about the high school, voice the things they like, voice the things they don't like. So I would hope the community would come out. Again, Council Member James and Council Member Blues were at the last forum. And this one will be much different, and it will give everyone an opportunity to speak their piece regarding the future of Brown Station. And then last but not least, given our discussion earlier in the Intergovernmental Committee in regards to pay equity or pay inversion, whichever you want to call it today, I will make a motion to put the pay equity ordinance, the 197-2002 ordinance that was passed by this Council, into the Intergovernment Committee for review. So moved. Second. Thank you. You're welcome. Is there any discussion? Those in favor then of, I'm sorry, Council Member Lane. Just a quick question. Wouldn't that be more appropriate to go into budget and finance as opposed to Intergovernmental? Not at this point. It does have monetary impact, of course, but I think at this point, the review of the actual ordinance and why we still need it and the theory behind it would definitely need to be explored in InterGov, and maybe later on we can look at budget impact. Okay. That makes sense. Thank you. Any further discussion on the motion to refer the pay equity ordinance to the Services Committee? No, it's the InterGov. I'm sorry, Intergovernmental Committee. Seeing none, those in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Anything further? Mayor. Vice Mayor Gray. Thank you, Mayor. Tom Martin, who's the Chairman of the Downtown Entertainment Task Force, asked me to announce that the firm that, consulting firm by the name of Responsible Hospitality Institute, the Responsible Hospitality Institute has initiated its audit of Lexington's downtown entertainment venues or its offerings, and the first meeting of that group actually occurred today. And if your aides, if the council members or your aides haven't been contacted already, I know that they are planning to do so, to have meetings with each of the council members. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Stephens. An addendum for my report, and please excuse my indulgence, but I wanted to report on a citizen in the Fifth District who lives in the Fairway neighborhood. Mrs. Catherine Duff will be celebrating her 100th birthday. And in commemoration of that, even our state has awarded her a colonelcy. So our happy birthdays to Colonel Catherine Duff on her 100th year. Thank you very much. Any further council reports? I see none. There's no mayor's report today, so the last item on our agenda is public comment on any issues not on the agenda. Does anyone wish to address the council? I see none. Motion to adjourn would be in order. Second. I have a motion by Council Member DeCamp, second by Council Member Gorton. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you.