Құչն қНАқ, Құҹүӄүр, ҚұрңңҢҚ ҒүЮІІҚ spine therapy ғә, әә� APPT darling Амаңтарға бұл көп құпқайды Иә, Құрңғың көп көп көп көп көп құпқайды Бұл көп көп көп көп көп көп көп көп көп көп көп көп көп Құрғанған бар ойладық Welcome to the podium. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us. Ashley, who suffers from serious mental illness, is arrested for a violation of a domestic violence order. Her pretrial report reflects that she is a high risk for not coming to court, so the judge imposes a financial bond she can't afford. Ashley is ordered to be assessed for competency at the jail. After a week in jail, New Vista comes back with a report recommending a formal evaluation by Eastern State Hospital. It takes about two months or longer to obtain a formal report whereby Ashley is either at FCDC or Eastern State at a cost of $120 a day. Eastern State deems Ashley unable to participate in her defense. A week later, the prosecutor moves to dismiss Ashley's case after she's been held in custody for approximately three months. Ashley is released from custody, untreated for her mental illness, having lost her housing. Within a week next, she's rearrested for another violation of a DVO, and the process starts over again. Without community supports, Ashley, like so many others, will continue to spiral into a life of criminal activity, homelessness, possible chronic drug and alcohol abuse and victimization. This court is meant to intervene in lives such as Ashley's and break this destructive cycle. The Fayette County Mental Health Court was founded upon a concept of criminal justice reform to promote human dignity, restore personhood and decriminalize mental illness. These values and actual goals are embedded in every facet of our court through a process through a fidelity to therapeutic justice. Participants are held accountable to the court, which includes personal and societal responsibilities, and they are to ask to become leaders in their own lives and to install a spirit of health, stimulation and sobriety. Moreover, many people with mental illness just want the opportunity to be heard, and this court provides them with that opportunity. Throughout Lexington, police, fire department, EMTs, medical personnel, judges, attorneys, medical professionals and mental health specialists have demanded an alternative for those who suffer from mental illness. This court provides them with that alternative. One key difference between our court and less successful models that we've seen across the country is this team is almost entirely composed of NAMI advocates as opposed to state employees. This allows for a more specialized advocacy from beyond the restraints that many state employees are tethered to. That is only possible through the funding that has been provided here. We find our participants undiagnosed, misdiagnosed and virtually all untreated. Our team is experienced in assisting the most vulnerable members of our community. For example, currently five of our participants are victims of sex trafficking. Once in our program, participants who face impossible challenges have advanced to a structured crime-free life due in great part to the important peer-to-peer support that they receive. This court is equipped to join the seriously mentally ill with existing services to affect a change and transformation, alleviate drug addiction, reduce homelessness and recidivism, and prevent potential violent acts which would endanger others. I certainly appreciate that you all face very difficult decisions this budgetary season, but I wish to express my sincere thanks and gratitude for your past partnership with this court. And now I respectfully and humbly ask for your help in continuing to fund this court at continued levels of support. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for giving us time to speak on this important subject. My name is Brian Martin. I'm with the Lexington Police Department. I'm with the Narcotics Enforcement Unit, and I'm also our mental health trainer in CIT. And if you all don't know what CIT is, that is Crisis Intervention Team. And it's a partnership between advocates, law enforcement, and mental health professionals. And I'm proud to say our department is nearly entirely trained. We are as part of our recruit curriculum, and the reason for that is we see the need for more training when it comes to dealing with those in crisis. One of our biggest partners, obviously, is NAMI. They are the advocacy side of our training. And over the last several years, I've been given the honor to knowing the folks with NAMI and what they are doing. During the training, we tell our officers, you know, the mental health system is broken, and that's beyond this body or any police officer's ability to change. We have lots of people that are out there very vulnerable. But during that training, we talk about, let's decriminalize, let's look for symptoms of mental illness. Well, being a broken system, if we're not taking people to jail, then what? We always ask that question. If not this, then what? We can't leave the person at McDonald's who comes in every day and stands on the table and screams profanities at customers. They will look oddly at a police officer who just walks away from that saying, oh, they're just mentally ill. So we need an alternative. And the mental health court has been that alternative for us. I'm not saying it's the silver bullet, but I am saying it is a piece of the puzzle. The accountability part of having Judge Tackett and the courts coming behind it is huge. I think most of us have compassion on those who are sick, but the accountability piece is the biggest part. Our officers use mental health court as their resource. If we do have to arrest somebody and we do suspect mental illness, we have no problem contacting them, giving them a referral, and they have been a huge resource. Just to speak a little bit to recidivism, and I know Judge Tackett did it very eloquently, these folks don't represent just a call. It will be multiple calls, literally hundreds of calls one person can represent. So with that in mind, it is a huge drain on resources for our fire department and for the police, because we have to respond to that person over and over again. It leads to a lot of frustration as you can well imagine. I would urge that you all take that into account. I know you already have, because this partnership has been going on for quite a while. Thank you for making this resource something we can reach out to, because this really is a hopeless situation in so many cases. This court has been some hope, and that's what we need when we're addressing those in crisis with mental health. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, and sorry for the distraction. I'm not sure what this excess noise is up here or in the chamber, but hopefully somebody will be able to determine it and maybe make it stop. So I apologize for the distraction. So thank you, Ms. Gunning. Go ahead. Hi you guys. I finally know that I don't have to talk to the whole room now, and I know how to stand here and address you appropriately. I'm so happy about that. I'm going to talk to you like I pray. Thanks. Help. Wow. Okay. So the first thing I do when I pray is I give thanks and gratitude for what's already come my way, and I want to thank you, because I believe that our budget is a moral document. I believe our budget tells us what our priorities as a community and a human connection to our people is. So I appreciate the fact that you use human kindness as you decide how best to spend the very finite funds that we have, and I'm very grateful that we are a part of that, and I really want to let you know that we appreciate, as a small nonprofit organization, how difficult it is to make decisions that can be life and death for your citizenry and for the people that depend on you when you have such finite dollars. So I really want to thank you. I want to thank you also for being excellent partners, for listening. It was by having listening ears and seeing eyes that you were able to open your minds to the fact that what we're doing now clearly is not working. So what's the definition of insanity? The definition of insanity, as Albert Einstein thought of it, was to keep doing the same things and expecting a different result. So I also want to thank you for doing something different, because with NAMI as a partner in this, our lived experience speaks to what's going to work and what's not going to work. Many of you know my husband and I have a son who has schizophrenia, who tried to murder us one day on our way out the door to work. So this is very personal, not only for us, but for all of the parents and families and people with serious mental illness that we represent. I wanted to let you know that I need your help. There's something that's been sorely and terribly overlooked in our fight in this opiate crisis. 80% of people that we see in our court have serious mental illness and co-occurring substance use disorder. And I'm not only talking about opiates, I'm talking about polysubstance use disorder. When you have a serious mental illness and a serious substance use problem disorder, there's a huge issue in getting treatment and help for you. Guess what? No one will take you. Traditional treatment programs turn people with serious mental illness away in throngs. Why? Because they're not allowed to take the very medicine in the drug treatment program that keeps their mind operating. They're not allowed to use their psychotropic meds in a program that treats addiction. So what happens to these people? They can get treated for their mental illness, and then if they recover enough to where they could sit in a treatment program and partake, they can't go in with their medicine. So very quickly they're going to spiral down into their illness and into their acute symptoms. So we're missing this whole population of SMI as we talk about our opiate and drug crisis. I want you to know that NAMI Lexington is a co-investor with you in this program. We have a lot of skin in the game. Most of our discretionary funding that we raise through walks, through galas, through anything, any kind of fundraiser we do, we put a lot of that money into helping to sustain this court and Participation Station. So we have skin in the game. Participation Station, one of our programs, provides synergy for the mental health court. I don't think our court would work as well if we didn't have Participation Station. Participation Station is a recovery-oriented program which operates on the Boston Psych model of psychiatric rehabilitation. And one of the things I like to tell people in Frankfurt and anyone that will listen is you cannot rehab somebody that hasn't been habbed. Okay? If you don't have any skills for living in the world, to grocery shop, to budget, to manage medication, to remember to go to a doctor appointment, there's very little chance that you're going to be successful in rehabilitation. So Participation Station handles the part of habilitating people, giving them the necessary life skills to complete and compete in the world as we know it. I want you to know that we facilitate this court also by having a huge amount of in-kind investment from our community. We have forensic psychologists from Eastern State Hospital. We have a data project with UK and the Sociology Department to help us do our statistics and our outcomes, which we're very proud of because, quite frankly, our outcomes were so good we were like, are we screwing this up? Can it really be this much better than the national average? And guess what? It was true. So we got extra eyes. We got experts also looking in on what we're doing. And also that should make you feel good as we co-partner with our dollars that we're in pretty good hands as far as oversight and outcomes goes. Now for the wow part. We have a graduate and we have the flyers here who just published her first book and she's on Amazon. She was one of our first or second group of graduates. She was a young woman who had lost everything in her life, including her children, her home, her job, her entire family. And now could I have just hold it up real quick? She's a published author on Amazon. We'll be having a book signing for her in Mental Health Month in May. She has totally reclaimed her life and is working full-time, is publishing books, and is a foster mom to a 13-year-old daughter. So your ROI is not only a return on your investment of dollars, but it's recovery on investment. So thanks, help, wow. Okay. Now I know that you haven't even began to go through your PowerPoint presentation, but we have we do have a process here of 15 minutes time. So I want you to be able to go through your presentation, but Mr. Gunning, how long do you think, can you do it in like less than five minutes? Is that? Yes, I can. Okay. And I know you all have it and saw it last year, so. Oh, okay. I don't feel like I have to. I'm happy to if you want me to. Okay. Or we can go to questions on it. It does talk about our outcomes and the return on investment, which is important. And you're familiar with that from last year. Okay. Why don't I do this? Why don't I just, so you can go through each of the, you know, so that the public, because the public sees the presentation too, so. So I would ask if my colleagues, give him five more minutes. All right. There's a motion by Council Member Ellinger, seconded by Council Member Farmer. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? So, Mr. Gunning, go ahead. Thank you. We start out thanking you for the last two years of investment, $370,000. It's allowed us to do some things that are very important, given that in the first three years, we had to educate people about what we were doing with this court. And we had an average of 36 referrals a year. I think we were, people were watching to see, you know, what are they doing? Is it going to work? So on and so forth. Legal community has obviously bought in. In 2018, we had 65 referrals. In 2019, 128. So it's exploded. We're maxed out right now. And just going to have to put people on a waiting list. But that's the best you can do when things are going well. People come into our program either homeless or precariously housed. No one has stable housing when they come in. They leave with stable housing. Our sobriety numbers are kind of mind boggling. Nationally, for this type of program, there's only a 10% success rate. And you can see that we're blowing those numbers up. So this speaks to a team that is not providers, that doesn't have some of the restrictions of, you know, regulation and so forth. It's people with lived experience, it's family members and consumers, who are wrapping these folks up and facilitating their ability to access services and then be compliant with those services. So 80% are dual diagnosed, as Kelly mentioned earlier. We have people coming in basically 80% unemployed and leaving 80% employed. The ones that are not leaving employed are hooked up in the community doing volunteer work, and they're working with their families. So they're productive. The return on investment, when you look at the last two years since we became a program that wasn't in a pilot status, we've saved 15,064 days of incarceration. That's $72 a day, which is pretty for the jail. You can see the cost savings, $1,084,000. But we've also run across that nationwide folks with serious mental illness concern 60% more resources in a local jail than other individuals. So if you use that number, we're really looking at $115.20 per day per diem, or $1,735,000 savings. So that's the reality of it. We've also found the national number for savings per quarter for law enforcement. This one's going to just explode every year as we go further because we're going to have more and more quarters of savings. But right now that comes to a $1,057,000. So you put all that together and whether you're looking at the per diem or the actual with the additional resources it takes for the folks in jail, and then the cost savings to the police department, where do you get these kinds of rate of returns? So again, we thank you for the opportunity. We thought this would work and it is working well and we're happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you. I always enjoy this update because you know the power of it is in the numbers. The power is the results. So I would open it up to my colleagues and if anybody has any questions or comments I would entertain those now. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you. I was, I realized I went first and I'm not a member of this committee, so thank you for recognizing me. Judge Tackett, you said in the very beginning, very momentarily, that a number of percent of women were trafficked. Can you go back to that? Did you say 50%? Currently, right now, I believe we have five, 18, so a quarter of our participants have been involved and victimized by human trafficking. Specifically, I mean, I'm just starting to learn as this is an epidemic. As Council probably knows, you know, this is something that is not new and it's going to be exploding. You can sell a drug once. How many times can you sell a human being? So folks that are certainly, I mean, a lot of the folks we come with, come in contact with, don't have the education that most of us are, you know, used to. Many of them are not high school graduates. They have serious mental illness. They are the most vulnerable, especially young women. A lot of them have got previous, and I'm not the expert here, you can ask this to the experts, but they come with a history of probably previous sexual trauma, too. It's so easy to get them addicted and to get them in a line to be trafficked. So the ones who have serious mental illness, the young women and men, for that matter, I'm sure it can occur. We don't have any men, it's all women at this point, but have been subjected to or are exposed and potentially vulnerable to being trafficked. So it's something that I'm sure the Police Department is looking into. I know that they are, and we're getting referrals along those lines, too. Of course, you all are probably well aware of the well, and they've partnered with us as far as sending people there, too. So we get, you know, they come to us and we will divert them to the well to get them sober and also to, you know, protect them for potential predators. Thank you for clarifying that. I thought you said five, and I was just curious about the representation. This is about 25 percent. That's alarming. I know we've, with the number of nonprofits that I work with, the trafficking issue, especially where we are geographically, has continued to rise. And so I just appreciate that connection that you're making for women and men, for that matter, in that situation. So I appreciate all your work, and no questions. The data is unbelievable, and the number of people who are using it to go from 30 to 60 to 128 is incredible. So thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Chair. And I, too, really appreciate the work that you do. It's such a wonderful option to the incarceration whole arena. So the numbers speak for themselves. I didn't get that very well. I had a question. The participation station, is that like a physical program that has a beginning and an end? Or how do these folks, what is it really, is my question. What it is, it's a physical location on Sparta Court. We have about 6,000 people go through there every year. Our highest day of individuals was 51 recently, this past month. These are 51 individuals that come there for education and skills building, socialization, and really psychiatric rehabilitation, which focuses on the area of living, learning, work, and social. And it's a well-rounded program, and we just celebrated our 10th anniversary of that physical location in December. Right. That's good information. It's peer operated. It's totally run peer-to-peer, which means the peers run it, they make the rules, they offer the classes, but it's within a psych rehab curriculum. Okay. And you said the peers, so you've got other folks that have graduated, moved out of that program. Yes. Not only mental health court graduates, but they've graduated as adult peer specialists through the Kentucky Certification System. Okay. Great. Thanks for sharing that information. Thanks, Chair. Council Member Fred Brown. Thanks, Chair. A few questions here. What kind of budget do you all have for your annual year? I know what we have given you for the past two years, is that your complete budget? Last year was $807,000. Do you have a financial statement that's prepared for you, or an audit, or any type of like that? And I ask that because generally when we're looking at programs that we fund, we like to have some accountability, and that type of thing as to what your budgeted dollars are using and how much we're putting in against your budget. And that goes a long way. And I don't know, I didn't see that information in here. No, we just submitted the program budget, but we're glad to submit the overall budget. I see it here now. Okay. Budget and budget justification. Right. It's on page starts on page 23 of our packet. Yes, they did submit that. Okay. I didn't look at the detail there. Well, it doesn't look like it's a complete, doesn't look like a complete budget. It just talks about $171,000 in expenses, but he just said $800,000 was his budget. I thought you were asking about NAMI Lexington's overall budget. Yes, I was. Okay. Our overall budget is $807,000. Yes, that's what I said. NAMI. Yes. You know, when you come back with a program like this and show the results, I mean, that's what we're looking for, so that the government dollars can be maxed out. And I think you all have proven that by, you know, by your statistics that you've given. What's the expansion? I mean, what can you do to expand? Obviously, you're not reaching everybody. We've got a population out there. We probably don't even know the number. Well, with more funding, we could hire some more caseworkers. Okay. Our team is pretty well stretched right now with what we have in the court. As Kelly mentioned and Judge mentioned, you know, these folks have high acuity levels. They have really complex situations and backgrounds. They need a lot of services. So we're basically facilitating them getting to where they need to be for those services and holding them accountable to being compliant. Are you all getting any grant funding from NIMH, National Institute of Mental Health? We are not. Have you tried or is that? We're not qualified to get that money directly. That would have to come through either the Department of Behavioral Health at state level, or I believe the city can apply for National Institute of Mental Health money as well. Okay. What's the situation I noticed, Judge, when he indicated the time period of getting somebody actually in the program was kind of staggering? I mean, how come you have to wait three months before you can get somebody evaluated? That may be a little bit confusing. What I was specifying there in that example is those are people who are not part of our program. That's just a typical everyday person in the life of a district or a circuit court judge who has been put through the system just to be kind of kicked out, untreated. So that's kind of actually where we are, Councilmember Brown. That's the status quo. We'll hold people for three months and not treat them. And what I was trying to do by that example, which may have been unclear, was to show that this is a court that actually will intervene in that person's life and drag them out of that system where the state's not paying and the city's not paying for them to be incarcerated for three months just to be kicked out to reoffend in the future. So your plan is to speed this process up and get people involved in the program? Yes, certainly. I mean, in fact, if I could speak to that, too. We have children around us usually about two weeks to get them evaluated to make sure that the court, you know, is the judge, the referring judge sends them to us. But to that extent, I just want to mention this since this is a question, is that we have a waiting list now. We've actually got judges across the state who want to refer us cases because this model works. That's impossible in some respects because our prosecutors are like, no, we're not going to take responsibility for these cases coming out of the county. But that's how good we've done in this model versus, you know, similar models outside of this county. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilmember James Brown. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for today's presentation. I know I had the opportunity as well as other councilmembers to come and see how you actually operate. And I think it was amazing how folks around the table, when you started talking about a participant, were knowledgeable about where they were in the program, what needs to be done, what's the next step. And I think that's just an example of how you can think outside the box and actually be effective and actually show a rate of return on the investment that is beneficial, not just to the folks that are providing funding, but also the community at large. The thing that concerns me is the fact that it seems like, you know, we have to make a decision as city government to fund the program, and I think we all support it. Is there any way to seek sustainable funding, whether it's through the state or whether it's through, I wouldn't want to put you in the ESR program, but I just wonder if there's a way that it doesn't seem like it's something that's at risk every year for funding. Can somebody speak to that? Well, yesterday we had the pleasure to meet with Chris Ford, Commissioner Ford, and we broached that very subject with him, and that's something I believe we'll be having future meetings about. Because just like the city was able to be inventive with the paramedicine team, which is one of our other partners, that we actually kind of co-developed the core in that team to work together. So we were able to find matching funds and other funds through other sources for them by thinking out of the box or really with the mayor thinking out of the box. And we're hopeful that we'll be able to give some partnerships going with that, because you're right, it's a nightmare to think about having to come and ask for funding and worry about whether or not what's going to happen to these individuals that are involved in the court should something happen with the funding. So we're looking at it every day, all the time. We're looking. And I appreciate that, and I think we as a city are committed to being a part of the answer to that equation. And congratulations to the past graduate on your book and all the things that you're doing. It just shows that this program is something that we need more of in this community. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Evans. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the update, as always, and, you know, I'm a fan. I do have some questions just about where you got the $72 per day, if that's Fayette County or if that's a nation number. That's Fayette County. That's Fayette County, okay. And then the 60% additional resources needed for persons with serious mental illness is a national number that we found. I don't think FCDC actually tracks that. And FCDC has a different situation than most local jails anyway with having services from New Vista inside jail. I don't know what that does to that. But the $72 per day came from FCDC last year. Okay. I'm going to try not to get on my soapbox, but, I mean, this is how things should be. We should be operating because this is, as she said, a drain on all of our resources. But I'm just curious about, because we do have a jail problem. I'm going to shift gears here for a minute. I guess it's probably directed towards Judge Tackett because, you know, we've got people sitting in our jail that are undiagnosed, you know, that can't get into the program. And, you know, their city mayor and I'm sure you and your colleagues know that we've got a population problem over at the jail. And, quite frankly, we're shocked to see that we're pretty high on not reducing bonds and allowing people to get resources and do other things in that. So how are your colleagues viewing this? How can we help that? Because, again, we know that a lot of people sitting in our jail waiting for trial, you know, just there for just waiting, you know, and not on necessarily a waiting list to get into another program. But, you know, I kind of see all of this goes hand in hand. So I know it's a different kind of topic, but it goes with our bond reduction system as well and not using bonds. So how are the judges over there participating, willing to participate? I know you don't necessarily want to speak for all of them, but it is a financial concern on all realms, especially when we know there are people that are undiagnosed sitting there too and might not necessarily ask for the help. Well, it is certainly something that's sort of a hot topic. A lot of the numbers that you see probably were reflective of before I took the bench, actually. I think that they did a study in 2018. However, with that said, you know, the district court judges and the circuit court judges were bound by the tools that we have, which are just, you know, basically a pretrial assessment. I used to be a pretrial officer, so I can kind of speak intelligently about this. You meet with a potential person, verify whether they're working, whether they live in the county, whether they've been to court or not, you know, whether they would substantiate a risk. And there's a risk level assessed, you know, whether they're low risk or high risk or moderate risk on two factors, coming to court or reoffending. So folks who are potential dangers, and that's one thing that the, you know, electric district court judges, you know, we've got a colleague I know specifically that thinks public safety is, you know, job one, two, and three, you know, of what he does. So he's very, you know, in tune as to making sure that people who constitute a risk to others, you know, don't, you know, get out where they could perpetuate that risk and then also come back to court. You'll see that I think that there's actually a, we're talking about it, there's a bill being filed to expand administrative release, taking that discretion out of the district court judges' hands. But you're right, Councilman Evans, you know, folks are innocent of charges before, you know, brought to trial, and it's something that we're really taking into consideration. I will say for purposes of the mental health court, though, that, you know, a lot of times when we find, you know, incarceration and remaining folks into custody is a tool that we have in our toolbox, which is wonderful, you know. I mean, it's not like going to a provider and someone's noncompliant and they can just walk out. You know, we can actually remand folks into custody, which is part of that accountability, which is, you know, kind of married to this court, and, you know, 99.9% of the time I feel like we remand people for their safety because they have become a danger to themselves until we can get them stabilized. A lot of times we get them stabilized, especially on like a long-term injectable drug, they get to stabilize, and then we ease them back out into being remanded into society and into, like, you know, stabilized housing, you know. But that's something that we have as a tool that we can use. So it's helpful. But to your larger point about, you know, the whole bond, I think it's to be continued. I'm sure the legislature will have some things to say, but those are the things that we're, you know, the judges are, we're just given the tools that we work with, and if someone's a high risk on coming to court or a high risk on potentially reoffending, you know, I'd frankly rather see that person, you know, be in custody pre-trial so the police aren't out there, you know, with those headaches. If they're low risk, we're letting them go. All right. Angela, I'm so glad that you asked that question. You know, since 1971 we've had a war on drugs. In the 60s they closed down all the hospitals that treat mental illness because it was called warehousing. We need to be asking some very serious questions about a property out on Newtown Pike, on Citation Boulevard, on Bully Lane. Why is Eastern State Hospital sitting more than half empty when our jail is full of people with serious mental illness? We incarcerate in Kentucky at a rate of three to one the seriously mentally ill over getting them into treatment. Now, I think if we got started, we cannot incarcerate an addict out of being addicted. We cannot incarcerate serious mental illness out of someone that has a biological brain disease. Those people have no business in the jail. Now, if they've committed a serious crime, that's a whole other thing. But by and large, we incarcerate more than any developed country in the world. We've got to stop putting these people that are not going to benefit from the criminal justice system into the criminal justice system. The big word on everybody's lips in Frankfurt this session is criminal justice reform. Why? Because the jails are so full that they are dangerous. They're dangerous for the people that are in them, and they're dangerous for the people that work there. And they're serving no ends to a means like this. If you would give me the money that you're giving the jails and I could spread this program statewide like I did Participation Station, I guarantee you that we would not have the number of seriously mentally ill and co-occurringly addicted people in jail. Thus, we would free up a lot of space. All right. Council Member Maloney. Thank you. I want to echo what you just said because when they shut Eastern State down, it became a major issue in my district. And I saw what happened in those folks that are walking down the street and on the sales road. And I commend you for what you all have done. I see a big change in it. And I agree we need to use those facilities. And the question I have that's on that same line is when they go through your program, this is amazing what you're doing. This is incredible. My biggest fear is the day when they get out. Where do they go? Most of them I think should go back to Eastern State or some facility like that. My worst fear, they go into the places that I don't think they get the proper care. And they're back on the streets in another. And to me, who monitors that and how do we get what you just said to bring it back into Eastern State and bring those folks back in there because the day they shut that down is the day it really just hurt their lives and endangered not only them but a lot of other people. And you're right. We've got to put them where they need to be professionally. How can we do that? And my biggest fear is I'm worried we're putting them in the hands of people that don't know how to take care of them. They claim they do. They claim they get that check. They get that money. And then you see these folks out back on the streets. Shouldn't be out there. And back in that behavior, not getting their medication. How do we fix that? And, I mean, I know you all are doing a tremendous job, what you're doing. But I think we've got to go to the next step and how. If it's got to go to the state, we've got to go somewhere. So I appreciate your comment on that. I'll defer to Kelly, but I wanted to make a point first. I've talked with folks who are at a very high level in mental health about the problem that we have getting people into the hospital. And what I have heard is that it's an interpretation of the statutes that you can interpret a very narrow focus if you wish to and one that you can drive a bus through. This is the exact words that I've heard. We're talking about danger to self or others. Danger to self should not be only suicidal ideation. If you're living in an apartment that has a gas furnace and you unhook the vent pipe from that furnace because the FBI has bugged it, and you may know the story I'm talking about, that person is a danger not only to himself but others in that apartment complex. But he was not suicidal. Those are the kinds of stories that we hear over and over and that we talk about over and over, yet we still get some folks that want to interpret this imminent danger. The word imminent is not even in the statute. But they want to interpret this as suicidal or homicidal. And you can be a danger to yourself and other people without being suicidal or homicidal. I don't know if it's going to take a regulation at state level for interpretation, for this is how you interpret the statute or what it's going to take. But until we have something, it's going to be dictated by funding. The census is going to be lower when you've spent a lot of money in the previous quarter, and it's going to rise when you're looking like, okay, you're going to meet your budget. That's my opinion. You won't probably hear that from anyone else. To echo on that, I would ask that you all put a resolution together so we can forward it to our colleagues in Frankfort. Because this council knows how important this is. We know how important it is. We've got to start somewhere. We've kicked the can down too long for the last 20 years when we shut down these. This is a tragedy, and we've got to figure out how to fix it. And what you're saying is, and Frankfort needs to wake up. And showing these numbers, we can save a lot of money. And this is how you sell it, because you know how tight them guys are over there. They don't know half the time what they're doing. But this shows the fact. We've got to get real serious on this issue. To me, it's a tragedy. And it's sad that these folks are being treated the way they are. And if you can figure out a resolution, I would be glad to get this council. We will push it through and try to get it in Frankfort. We would be happy to participate in that process. I wanted to let you know you were concerned about what do the people do after this program. We're learning as we go. And what we've learned is we're building an aftercare program. And because we have participation station and they work in tandem with each other, we can send graduates from the mental health court over to participation station, and we do, to still be engaged in their recovery skills groups, their wellness recovery action planning groups, crisis groups, all of those things, to keep them engaged. That's the thing that's missing out of all this. And, you know, we have a $153,000 budget for participation station. And we have people there that were arrested every week, sometimes multiple times, that haven't been arrested in eight years. At this mental health court, it's $170,000 plus whatever discretionary funds NAMI can scrape together, plus whatever in-kind services we get. My friend Mark Birdwhistle used to call that paperclip money to the state. And he used to tell me, honey, I should be able to find that in a couch up here somewhere. But to date, they have not. So, you know, we're doing a lot of good with very little money. And that's what I really want the powers that be to get their minds around. The money's there. We're just not spending it appropriately. Thank you. And I noticed there are some other people in the room that are affiliated with NAMI, and I don't want us to leave without having the opportunity to recognize all that are involved with NAMI that are with us today. And if you'll just hold your hands up so my colleagues can see, because I think there's yes. Okay. I thought there were some more. Thank you all for your involvement and for everything that you're doing with this program. You know, it's sad to see the statistics, but in the same sentence, it's good that we're seeing the progress and the results. And all to the credit of you all that are sitting here and the participants and the peer reviews and all that. So if there are no further comments from my colleagues, we want to thank you again for this presentation. And we will continue monitoring this as we go forward. And thank you so much. And Godspeed. So thank you. We will go on to the next presentation. It's the Summer Youth Job Training Program. And I want to recognize Councilmember James Brown to introduce this. So, Councilmember. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, this time last year I put this item in committee, not in a silo. Myself and other councilmembers were not just talking about this program. I think some folks in the community were talking about this program, how it's been successful and ways that we can look to build off of its success and work to make it more sustainable. So we put together a work group. And those that are part of the work group, if you're here today, can you just hold up your hands just to let you know. It's a pretty good-sized work group. I'll read through the names. Bessie Dexter with Commerce Lexington, Brianna Persily with Partners for Youth, Commissioner Ford, Daryl Smith with Kentucky Utilities, our own Elodie Dickinson with Workforce Development, Reverend Keith Tyler with Antioch Baptist Church, Kirby Neal with Safe Summer Lexington, Kim Lyons with Fayette County Public School, Mary Kate Gray with Kentucky Utilities, Michael Johnson in Park and Recreation, Monica Conrad in Parks, Stephanie Hong and Todd Johnson with the Builders Institute or Builders Industry. So what we did over the last year was actually broke down the program, talked about ways that we can improve it, and actually have some recommendations. I don't want to go too far into the program, so I'll turn it over to Commissioner Ford to go through it. Oh, and then I'll also, Council Member Amanda Mays-Bledsoe was also part of the work group. So I apologize for not mentioning you at the time. I'm just a man. I make mistakes. All right. So with that, I'll turn it over to Commissioner Ford. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the committee. As Council Member Brown mentioned, we have a purpose today, and we're going to briefly share a background of the Summer Youth Program and our participation in it for the last few years. Hilary Angelucci from the Council Office is going to come up in just a moment, and she's going to focus on the work group's recommendations, and then I'll come back to close out with an update on 2020. The purpose and impact. The Summer Youth Job Training Program provides opportunity for Lexington youth to gain work experience, develop interpersonal skills, explore their career interests, and also to earn some money during the summertime while they are in this program. Many communities across the nation, such as Lexington, have variations of youth employment programs that promote youth development through the summer, so we're not unique. But our local background is our Division of Youth Services began administering, then, the Summer Youth Employment Program in 2007, and that was as a result of the closure of the Mayor's Training Center. That was a program response. It was designed or not designed. It was a stopgap response, if you will. But we've been fortunate to engage this program, and we've seen it as an opportunity and not a burden. In 2012, when I was then a member of the Council, the Commission on Youth Development and Public Safety recommended expanding the Youth Employment Program, and that has come to fruition. Since then, the program has increased from 150 youth workers to, today, 300 youth workers. Needed and needed administrative support has also been added, and we particularly want to thank Councilmember James Brown and Councilmember Bledsoe, who have been staunch supporters and allowed that expansion, helped that expansion to occur. In 2017, UK's College of Agriculture, through its Department of Community and Leadership Development, conducted an evaluation survey of current and former program participants, and what the survey findings concluded was that it was a positive experience for those that participated and that there was a desire to have more options as it related to work sites and work experiences. Our local program model is a public-private partnership. Our youth workers are assigned to part-time jobs in area businesses, government agencies, and community organizations. Our youth earn $10.10 per hour, and they work up to a maximum of 20 hours per week. It has traditionally been a six-week program, and the 2020 schedule runs from Monday, June 8, through Friday, July 17. All of the youth workers' wages and employment-related costs are paid by the city government's general fund and a fiscal year 19 budget is approximately $364,000. During our discussion with the work group, you know, the question often arose, well, is the summer youth job training program, is it youth development or is it workforce development? Is it more, give or more, or take? And I think what we've concluded is it's a variation of both. It's an opportunity for youth to gain experience, sometime their first experience on a work site, and it's also an opportunity for them to explore. They may very well connect with that summer experience, but they also may, on the other end of the spectrum, decide or discover that this area may not be what their interests are, but that's what the program is designed for. You see photos of youth who participated in the program last year, and we like to mention that participating employers do not incur direct wage costs as participation in the program. However, each work site's investment in the training, supervision, and mentorship of youth workers is an invaluable component of the public-private partnership. To put it plainly, we could not operate this program if it were not for business work sites who invested in our youth. In the picture there, you see some youth on their job sites. In the far corner, you see a photo. At last year's recognition of the work sites, our youth services director, Stephanie Hall, who's pictured there and who's also here with us today, and then we also have program administrator Maddie Morton. Maddie Morton is in our staff, and she was here 13 years ago. She's still here with us now, and she led the StopGap programmatic response, and for the last 13 years, her unit has led summer youth. This year, we are transitioning, and Maddie's team is going to refocus away from its direct role in the summer youth, but they're going to refocus its team of social workers and case managers to the needs of parents and guardians and families in our community that may need their service in a time of crisis. So we're excited for the role that she'll play as we move the program forward. I'll now ask Hillary to come up and talk about the work group's activities. Hello. Thank you all for letting me present today. So for the summer youth job training program work group, Councilmember James Brown put this work group together to first review the current summer youth job training program and then find ways to grow and improve it by remodeling it. We recognized early in the process that improvements were going to take time and likely go in phases. Councilmember Brown placed the item in committee on January 29, 2019, to improve the program and make it more sustainable. The work group met three times between June and December, each meeting over an hour and a half. They were substantial meetings with a lot of ideas. The group hit the ground running in June, asking all sorts of questions about the existing program to truly understand its inner workings, while also suggesting ideas, resources, and examples to explore. We established a sub-work group to explore, research, and develop the ideas and issues identified in that initial work group meeting. The small group returned to the full group in September with pockets full of information and opportunity to consider for the program. We took that information and started working on how to implement those opportunities. The first step of the work group was to understand the current program, its history, and who the program serves. Here's a snapshot of 2019, last summer. We employed 305 youth, 55% were female and 45% were male, and 75% were African American. There were 110 work sites. The employers were a host to several work sites and several workers. Private businesses employed 98 workers. Fayette County Public Schools employed 41, and LFUCG employed 24 workers. In an effort to align the youth's interest with their job, the youth participants could choose from three categories, Good Works, Service Points, and Explorer Team. Over the summer, the sub-work group deconstructed the program from start to finish, looking at the process and the timeline. We recognized several areas that needed attention, including the very broad target youth audience, 14- to 17-year-olds with very different needs, the lack of an opportunity for the staff to expand business partnerships, and the application process and time entry of time worked needed modernization. In July and August, the sub-work group made up of Chris Ford, Stephanie Hong, Brianna Pursley, Elodie Dickinson, Betsy Dexter, James Brown, and myself got to work. We referenced recent workforce studies to make sure our workforce needs were considered during this improvement process. The City of Nashville works with thousands of youth each year through their program called Opportunity Now. What's even cooler is their partnership with a company called WorkBay and their workforce development technology platform that includes career exploration, online training, educational resources, and an online portfolio builder. It's important to recognize that while the youth employees are always going to be the primary focus of the program, the employers are the essential clients to the program who we rely on for it to be successful and to enable valuable work experience for these young people. Betsy Dexter, Elodie Dickinson, and I conducted a handful of phone interviews with employers. There, we gained valuable perspective on the benefits of the program and the challenges employers are faced with. In particular, it helped us identify the different maturity levels in youth participants that led to some changes in 2020. Probably the most valuable experience we had in our research stage, mainly because of the carpool van that Councilmember James Brown drove to Louisville with an air conditioning that only seemed to work on the highway on maybe one of the hottest days of the summer, was our trip to Louisville to learn about the SummerWorks program. That's their youth employment program that's operated by Kentuckiana Works and YouthBuild. SummerWorks is a leading example throughout the country for its program's success. Our biggest takeaway from that program is their ability to leverage additional funding and partners to expand the program. It's something for our program to aspire to. Oh, I haven't switched any of these. Sorry. Here we go. Okay. The sub-workgroup reported all of its work to the full workgroup in September. It became evident that immediate improvements, the low-hanging fruit, were necessary and achievable. Commissioner Ford, Stephanie Hong, and Brianna Pursley got to work preparing to implement our short-term priorities in 2020. The workgroup concluded its work in 2019 with seven recommendations for the summer youth job training program to focus on going into 2020 and beyond. So recommendations one through four focus on our youth participants for the program. Recommendation number one, the differences between 14-year-olds and 17-year-olds are great, particularly for employability. We recognize that 14-year-olds need experiences more geared towards getting them ready to work, and those opportunities need more exploration. For recommendation number two, we recognize the importance of soft skills training for our youth. The initial implementation of this recommendation is underway through a new partnership with Fayette County Public Schools, which Commissioner Ford is going to speak about in just a moment. Recommendations three and four both focus on the ideas that we learned from our research of other youth employment programs that will elevate our youth employment experience. For recommendations five through seven, they focus on the program more generally. Commissioner Ford and his team have already made significant improvements to recommendation number five starting for the program in 2020. Recommendation six, here we focus on long-term sustainability of the program, something that Councilmember Bledsoe and Betsy Dexter helped maintain the workgroup's focus on. It's very apparent that growth of the program is possible and desired, but it requires partnerships and cost-share investment. Recommendation number seven, our last and final recommendation, create a Youth Employment Advisory Commission that is tasked with devising strategies, cultivating collaborative partnerships, and drafting policy recommendations to enhance youth employment in Lexington for ages 14 through 24. We recommended this commission because there is more work to be done. The workgroup focused on the first couple of phases to improve the summer youth job training program, but that's just one little part of youth employment. If the Council supported the creation of this commission, it could model a membership similar to the workgroup, focusing on ages 14 through 24, addressing the needs, issues, and opportunities for all. No one in the community is focusing on youth employment, and there is an opportunity to be had to better meet the needs of our youth. So I'm going to pass this back over to Chris to wrap it up, and then we'll take questions. Thank you, Hillary. 20 expanding partnerships in 2020. This year, Partners for Youth, who's led by Executive Director Breonna Persily, who's here with us in the audience today, is being charged with leading the recruitment effort to attract more local businesses and community-based organizations to serve as worksites, and we've already begun that effort. Our worksite invitation period opened on January 17th, and it's going to remain open through March 13th, and we've scheduled a worksite orientation for those employers throughout the community who hope to join us this summer, and that will be held on March 25th. And our pilot partnership, and pilot partnership is important to note. With Fayette County Public Schools, through their college and career readiness initiative, we're going to identify 10th, 11th, and 12th graders, and our partners at Fayette County Schools are actually leading that effort as we speak. The application period opened last week, February 3rd, and it's going to remain open through February 28th. But as opposed to years past where students would come to our office at Youth Services, they're going to report to their respective career and college readiness initiative at the local high school. Again, it's going to be rising 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. We are projecting to allocate 45 slots across the six area high schools, and then we're also going to reserve 30 slots for what we're calling community-at-large students, and those students may attend either private school or they may be homeschooled. So it's important for youth leading the worksite recruitment and Fayette County Public Schools focusing on youth, their students, our students. That is the revised model for this year. As it relates to the recommendations, Hillary mentioned maturity and readiness to work on the worksite. In previous years, the age group was 14 through 17. This year we don't have an age group. We are focusing on rising 10th, 11th, and 12th graders, and these will be students who at least will have walked the high school hallways at least one year. And so that's a change. The exploring the partnerships with the high schools we mentioned there, that's recommendation number two, because of the good work that they're doing in soft skill training. Number five, technology. If you go to the city's website, and I want to thank Nick Brock and the team up in our public information office for working with Brianna, lexingtonky.gov backslash s-y-j-t-p, or if you go to the search engine and type in summer youth jobs, all the information is there. So if you are an interested worksite, information about our program is there, and you can actually apply online through our form stack technology there. We're also excited because one of the recommendations from Rethink Lex is going to benefit our program immensely. With all city employees being required now their payroll to be direct deposited, that will really help us administratively through those three pay periods during the summer that we have all those youth. In closing, recommendation number six, expanded career interests. And, again, that was highlighted in the evaluation study. On the applications for the youth workers this year, we've identified 23, 24 career interest areas, and I believe those are modeled off of those areas that our friends at Commerce Lex uses. So we also hope that that will be a tool to attract even a wider pool of worksites. And we'll be glad to take any questions. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. This is great information, so I'm really excited about this. I will entertain opening it up for my colleagues to ask any questions or make comments. Okay. Council Member Plowman. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Ford, could you address kind of the outreach and marketing on this? And then also you mentioned the criteria, the qualifications of profile of who we're going after. Yes, great question. In regards to the outreach, we are right in the midst of letting our worksites know. So we are what we've considered on a soft launch. Brianna's team over at Partners for Youth has been in contact beginning last fall with worksites that participated in the program last year. And then we've communicated with them now. After our presentation this afternoon, we're going to amplify and elevate our outreach through our social media networks. Our friends at the Chamber also pledged to help us get the word out to our worksites. So if you're near your worksite, Partners for Youth is your main point of contact where you can get more information. And, again, having all the information transparently concise on the city's website I think will help folks more know about the program. On the pilot partnership with Fayette County Schools, we are really delegating and entrusting our partners to identify those kids. We hope many of which they already work with through their career academies and their efforts there. But if folks still need information, they can contact us and we can let them know about that. Councilmember, we never have a problem with the students being aware of the program. We're fortunate to have 300 slots. The application pool in years past have gone into 500 and 600. It is the employer base, the worksites, that we're really focusing on growing and diversifying. Quickly, thank you. We have 105 worksites at this point, and I noticed one of the recommendations was to explore more on the public-private because without money, just a small amount of money, we could split it with them. And I would think that a lot of businesses out there would be able and willing. And as we're looking moving forward with our budgets, more of those type of partnerships are going to make a difference. So I'm glad to see that on the recommendation that it's going to be explored. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Evans. Thank you, Chair. On the note of businesses, this says that there are 110 worksites. That means 110 different locations that students were going to. That was 2019. That's correct, Councilwoman. So, yeah, and 33 of them, that's roughly 36 or so that are just private businesses. And knowing that CommerceLux has way more than 36 members, what is that? And I'm not trying to call them out, but that seems to be right up their alley with this when we're talking about, you know, is it workforce development? And that seems to be their biggest concern, that we need to create a workforce, and this is a perfect opportunity. What's been that discussion with them in encouraging more of their members and beyond? I think a great question, Councilmember. I think awareness. I think that community-wide we understand the importance of youth development, and I think in general folks are supportive of our youth being engaged in the summertime. But a worksite is much different than any other programming or summer activity, and I think that's what the workgroup really learned. I can't interrupt, but you say awareness. What do you mean by that? Because this is, I mean. We want to do a better, we at Urban County Government want to do a better job to engage and employ, invite employers and worksites to be a part of the program. I guess I'm trying to help you out, because I would think CommerceLux, that would be part of their role, because they have direct access to businesses. So I guess I'm trying. And they've been very helpful. Betsy Dexter is here with us, and she's part of the workgroup. And, again, they are, in the next few days, as Councilmember Plowman's questioned, they're going to help get this information to inform their members. One thing we did learn, though, Councilmember, in regards to the worksite, is that while there's no direct wage cost to the employers, they are very much investing manpower, energy, time to bring our youth on. And so we want to make that a positive experience, not only for the youth, but we want it to be beneficial to the company, and we truly want to increase that number from 33 private worksites upward. And so the Chamber can help us, and we're going to try to do our job to incent and make it an attractive forum to join us. How they're going to do, there it is, how they're going to advertise more? Yes, ma'am. In the upcoming conversation, it was great to work with here lately in a different subject. They highlighted in their business focus magazine our work on the census. That was in the February edition that goes out to all their businesses. They're going to do a similar feature in regards to summer youth job training programs that we hope will hit the mailbox, the magazine will hit the mailbox, before the March 13th deadline and the March 25th worksite. And then they've also indicated they're also going to share that electronically through social media. So they're engaged with us and supportive. Okay. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to echo some of the comments that Commissioner Ford and Council Member James Brown have talked about. This was a really hardworking committee. I mean, the hours spent trying to be thorough and considerate and thoughtful and intentional with using general fund dollars, because that's what this is, $360,000 in general fund dollars to invest in our youth and employ the future leaders and future workforce for our city. And that is a tough challenge ahead. I want to comment. Brianna has been phenomenal about expanding our private sector footprint. In fact, it's down to if students can't get to where they need to go, it's not helpful. So we have to have worksites in every district around neighborhoods where kids can go and have a meaningful work experience where they can walk or at least bike or potentially get a bus safely, too. And so that logistically is a large challenge. And so she's done a great job trying to have that in mind as we build that database of private sector investments. And then Betsy and Kim Lyons at the school have been phenomenal, trying to make sure that as they're building their school system of the career, the tracks, that we're mirroring that with what's happening in the summer. So ideally a student who's on a track in the medical field, let's say at the high school, will then be able to continue that work that summer in an environment in the medical field, which complements both their school experience and their summer experience, and we get to have a small piece of that pie. And so it's been a really tough conversation, but it's been really, really good and very, very intentional. And lastly, I just mentioned the crucial buy-in of our public sector and private sector partners. If we don't have the private sector come up and say, yes, I'll take one, I'll take two, I'll take three, and let them come into our space, it's really hard for it to be a meaningful work experience that counts towards our development. So my plea is for everyone who's a private sector investor out there, join us in this effort, because I think it will be a phenomenal experience, and it could be from a citywide perspective really grow to being something that's a national model. So I'm really proud of the work we've done, and I think it has really a lot of potential moving forward. So thank you for all your hard work, Commissioner, and Hillary especially as well. Thank you. Council Member Maloney. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate what you're doing, Chris. This is one of my favorite programs. But as you know, unemployment is well over here, and then summer coming up, and Lexington is ready to become our national spotlight again this year. And I always think to me there's chances that we can match some of this money with some of these businesses, because a lot of these businesses are going to have to get ready for the British Cup. And during the summer is when you really want to get things done to be prepared for the British Cup. And I know we need to figure out how to join in with the partnership with Kingman Chambers and all that, but they're going to be looking for people. And most of the work that's going to be done is during the summer, because you're looking around at that point everything is really going to have to be prepared to be ahead of it. They're not going to wait until October. They're going to be way in advance. And I'd just like to see if there's a way that we can take those dollars and match them with the private sectors and say we've got people here who know how important it is. And some of these kids could go on into those jobs when they graduate, but to show how important those jobs are for this. But this is a great year to sell this product and get our businesses on board. Go back. We know budget is tough. I like somehow if we can, for every dollar we put up, somebody there may have some of it. But have we ever looked at it that way, that we, because this is going to be a great year to sell Lexington and everybody's going to look for somebody to do something this year to make Lexington be sure to look great when the world comes to see us. Yes, Council Member, great point, and very briefly in response. I think we want, on summer youth, which is a six-week program, we want to be as efficient and productive as we can, impactful as we can. But we did recognize that it is only a six-week program. So we spend a lot of time, we invest a lot of time for a very short window. And that's why one of the recommendations related to the advisory commission, youth employment is 365. We really want to look at how we can engage. Understanding that the summer youth job training program, we hope, will always be an anchor. But how can we take the summer youth job training program and the partnerships through EBCE that Fayette County Schools already has, how can we focus on that gap of those young folks who are out of school but not fully into the workforce, and then kids who go to school in the daytime and they go to work in the evening. It's really a great opportunity, and I don't think we would have recognized it had it not been the efforts of the work group. So you raise a good point, Councilmember, is that this can be the start of a lot of important conversations of youth employment. Councilmember, I just wanted to add that recommendation number six, I think, is focusing on that grander partnership, and it's a financial partnership. All the leading examples of other summer youth employment programs across the country are serving thousands and thousands of kids each summer, and they're doing it through partnerships, financial partnerships. And so that is definitely on the radar of this group and I think something that we're hoping to achieve. Councilmember James-Brown. Actually, I would. I really appreciate this. I know, Brianna, and I've talked about this back at the Social Services Advisory Board and, of course, Commissioner Ford. I want to thank everybody that's been involved in this process. I'm thrilled that you have taken the time to go in and kind of reinvent to make it even more magnifying. I'm one of the areas of government back 20 years ago, well, I guess 13 years ago, that we used to have over in the council clerk's office. Every year we had a summer youth job, and it was great. And so I'm thrilled that we're continuing this program and we're making it more robust. And, you know, I'd love to know somehow how to track it over the course of years and see and watch the successes that none of us even have any clue as to those that were 13 years ago that were involved in this and that have gone on and that just one little nugget of summer youth employment that helped them to become something even further down the road than they ever anticipated. So I appreciate this, and this is the feel-good day, I think, of information, and I'm appreciative of everything. And hopefully this will be a great summer just yet again. So, Council Member Brown, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chairman. Excuse me. Thank you, Chair. I think it's timely that you said track this program and see some of its successes as we go along. I like to think that I'm one of the successes since I was part of the program when I was a teenager when it was with the Marist Training Center. So, you know, so that's. But now, just kind of wrapping up, I'd like to give a nod to Ms. Maddie Morton, who has been running this program since 2007, along with most recently Ms. Pat Sidney. I think they've done a good job of executing this program with all the challenges that existed with them having to do the paperwork, with them having to manage payrolls, job placement, and that sort of thing. I think they've done an excellent job. And right now I think this is an opportunity, and I'm looking forward to how we can move this program along with the help of Brianna and Partners for the Youth and Stephanie Hong and then Elodie and also Betsy and all the other partners involved with the efforts. I think what the recommendations today are targeted at is ways that we can look at expanding this program. And the way that we can expand this program, and I think Council Member Bledsoe said it best, is we have to align with the efforts from our business community, Fayette County Public Schools, and then what we learned in Louisville is they're actually doing a better job than us at leveraging state and federal funds to expand this program. And I think some of the changes that we're proposing and that we need to continue to look at will allow us to do the same and move from 300 youth to thousands of youth going forward. You know, nobody ever gets excited about creating a new commission or a new advisory group, but I think we recognize early on that this is an ever-changing thing and the best way to keep this conversation going and to be able to maneuver and to change with the time is to create an advisory group or somebody that's looking at youth employment across the board and not just during the summer but throughout the entire year. So we're not asking for any action today. We just kind of want Council to digest this information. If you have any thoughts, please contact Commissioner Ford, Department of Social Services, or myself or Council Member Bledsoe that we can maybe give you some additional information or look to adjust our recommendations. And then we may come back at a later date with a resolution in regards to the recommendations and maybe an ordinance for the commission. And then also let me take this opportunity to thank Hillary for all the work that she's done. She's done a great job of compiling information, herding us as cats, and I think she's the one that reserved that van with the broke air condition that we drove. But it all worked out. So thank everybody for their work with this, and we'll follow back up. Thank you, Chair. Sure. Absolutely. All right. Thanks, everybody, for this. Now we'll move on to the next presentation. And we're on the homestretch. Council Member Ellinger, do you want to introduce? Thank you, Chair. In our last link, budget cycle, we had this issue that was brought up with historic preservation. We thought it would be nice if they came in and gave us an update of what's going on. So we've had them come down here and give us an update. So welcome. Thank you very much. Betty Kerr, pleased to be with you all this afternoon. And I know you've got things still left, so I'm going to try to move along, but also at the same time want you to get what you would find of interest, I hope. I thought that we would commence with my figuring out how to use this, which would be helpful. I don't think that it's – I think that the presentation is needing to be – oh, is that the way it is? It needs something. Let's see. There we go. I thought we'd start by telling you who we are and what we have as our staff team. Division of Historic Preservation is under the Chief Administrative Officer, under Ms. Hamilton. And in addition to myself as division director, we have three historic preservation specialists. At the present time, that is Barry Dennis, Amelia Armstrong, and we've had a recent retirement, and so that's that third spot. Randy Shipp retired after many years of good service, and we appreciate that. So we are in the process of filling that position. And then the other position of administrative specialist, our person who was in that position passed away about a year plus ago now and tied to the budget constraints, we have not been able to fill that position. It is still on the books but unfunded at this time. So that does present us a challenge, I'll be honest with you, in terms of minutes of our public hearings and the legal notices required for the same and so forth and so on, but certainly we are respectful of the situation and doing the best we can. Our program, I think some of you are quite familiar with, and maybe not everybody as much so, but we work with all aspects of things to do with Lexington-Fayette County. So in town, urban context things, out in the countryside, and certainly everything in between. Historic buildings, historic sites, historic resources, research, all the things that go to putting those pieces together. Starting, the main thing that people know of us is we work with the historic districts, Lexington's local historic districts, of which there are 16 at this point. That includes the most recently designated district of Pensacola Park and two local historic landmarks for a total of over 2,700 properties. The staff meets and consults with property owners regarding their repairs, assisting them with technical advice as they're formulating their applications for permits, and inspecting to ensure that their work being done is in compliance with those permits as reflected and approved by either the staff and or the Board of Architectural Review. With that, we also do inspections on an ongoing basis of all the historic areas, monitoring those projects that are underway. Usually there are about 150 to 175 active construction projects going on that we're monitoring throughout day-to-day and week-to-week. Staff reviews applications for their property owners or their applicants, contractors, representatives, proposals, writes the staff reports. We seem to have some weird typo there. Providing the technical information, putting in those reports how these applications meet the design review guidelines, or in some instances, if they do not meet the guidelines, what the issues are, and present those reports to the Board of Architectural Review and upon occasion at the Planning Commission if there are appeals. The Planning Commission is the appellant body. I would go sideways just a second and mention on average throughout all of our numbers, we have figured for you on over an average of the last five years. And so on average, we have anywhere from one to five appeals to the Planning Commission annually. So we work with all aspects of the process to designate a new historic district when those come along. And you're familiar with that rather recently because of Pensacola Park. But they seem to come in unplanned intervals, if you can put it that way. And, of course, those applications are driven by the property owners and come from the ground up. The government does not go out and encourage people to, hey, you live in a great neighborhood, you need to make it a local district or a National Register district. They always are driven by those property owners coming to the government for that sort of assistance. As I mentioned, our figures I've put together for you for today are a five-year overview from 2015 through 2019. And the office on those averages receives approximately 400 certificate of appropriateness or permit applications per year. We refer to them as COAs. Approximately 96% of those COA applications, after they are received and reviewed, either at the staff level or through the Board of Architectural Review, about 96% of those applications annually are approved. And then approximately 4% of those applications are denied by the BOAR. Approximately 65% of those applications annually are by nature of what the scope of work is that the property owner or their representative is asking for. The Board has mandated, the BOAR has mandated to the staff the ability and the responsibility for issuing permits for a certain array of work, things that don't result in any change of substance, re-roofing, fences in backyards. We do send front yard fences to the board for obvious reasons. People on their street need to know what's going on, need to know what a neighbor is going to do that's going to be in a front yard next to them, that sort of thing. It's a very important part of this process that the public have the opportunity to know what's being applied for of things that will create some changes in their near neighbors or in their neighborhood or further afield. And so that's a part of the Board of Architectural Review's intent, is to assure that people have that opportunity to have awareness, to come look at the plans if they're interested in it, and certainly talk to the staff about it and also come and participate in the hearings. So approximately 35% of the applications annually are by nature of what people are asking for. New additions, demolition, whole new constructions, swimming pools, things that are long-term outcomes and are a change. They are heard by the Board of Architectural Review. It's a five-member board appointed, of course, by the mayor, confirmed by you all. And they meet twice a month, second and fourth Wednesday of each month. The National Register of Historic Places, we work a great deal with this program. This is a designation, obviously, as it sounds, from the federal level. And Lexington has over 28 National Register districts currently listed. That's a 40-year accumulation of efforts by citizens and staffs and government. It represents over 10,000 properties, as I say, urban and rural. And it results in Fayette County having the second-highest number of National Register-designated properties in the state. We do the architectural survey work and research, writing those National Register technical reports to make those nominations possible and go forward. They're reviewed at the state level and on the federal level. And we also work with qualified consultants that meet the Secretary of the Interior's standards for such projects to accomplish the same as funds are available. We are such a small staff that it is very finite how much of that in an ongoing basis we can be doing. But when funds are available, sometimes in a private-public partnership through grants and such, we work with qualified consultants. Then the Historic Preservation Commission, which is a 15-member body that, again, is appointed by the mayor and confirmed by you all. It's an education board, and its primary responsibility is to review these nominations to the National Register of Historic Places. And so they do that very well. It leaves them with a lot to go into with those nominations. They're usually pretty substantial. They are then forwarded on to the mayor for the mayor's review and concurrence, and then you as council will see them coming across your hearing docket to support that in going on to Frankfurt and to Washington. The Section 106 process, it's the review of any projects that use federal funds. We work with the Grants Division on this and other pieces of the urban county government, absolutely. And these we usually do, this is any time federal money is involved, so HUD money being spent on a modest house in neighborhoods all the way up to things like the old post office that was a multi-multimillion dollar project, again, involving federal funds. We review approximately 114 of these federally funded projects a year, and if they have any federal money in it, it kicks in this 106 review. That's just the number of the section of the legislation that demands that. These reviews are done by our office in conjunction with our memorandum of agreement, which is held by the LFUCG, with the state through the Kentucky Heritage Council, and all done in accordance with the Secretary of Interior's standards, the federal mandate. Stone fences, we have an ordinance to protect stone fences, and our office is who carries that out. Any stone wall, dry stack stone wall that is within the public right-of-way is protected by this ordinance, and so anybody out doing development or needing to cut a new driveway and things like that has to go through this process per ordinance, and there will be a review. If some section has to be removed, the intent of the ordinance is that a length of fence appropriately rebuilt will be put in an appropriate spot to meet the intent of retaining our significant historic stone walls. Demolition permits for all of Fayette County that go to building inspection are forwarded to our office for review, again, by ordinance, and we are charged with that ordinance in reviewing if the object or building, I should say, being proposed to be torn down is over 50 years old or older and has architectural and or historic significance, and if so, we're charged with putting a 30-day hold on the issuance of that permit and during that 30 days accomplishing the documentation of that structure before it's to be torn down, and that consists of measuring up the building, photographing it well, doing a bit of sand burn insurance map work, just enough to begin a begin point of putting together what will be a longstanding archive for this. We review countywide approximately 117 applications, demolition applications per year, and on average end up holding about 27 structures. There's no magic to that number. Some years it could be we don't hold but one or two. It just depends on the nature of what people apply for, but everybody has the right, short of being in a historic district, local historic district, to tear those buildings down. It's just a matter of accomplishing the ordinance first, which is to document significant ones before they are lost. LFUCG owned historic properties, our division works considerably with other divisions, particularly facilities, John Sheed, all of his crew, parks department people and such, to assure that we're all on the same page to do appropriate repairs and fixes to our historic buildings, of which there are about 45 historic properties, including mostly structures, some sites, Gratz Park, Woodland Park, that sort of thing, under that program. And then ongoing programs and special projects, we do a ton of other things that really won't fit into a talk like this today, but we work considerably with a lot of the other divisions, which I think we're all getting a lot better at, and I say that government-wide. I've been here in the government a long time, as I think you all know, and it's really terrific at this point in our operations and in the last several years to see how much we're all communicating with each other internally, day to day, on things that are intertwined. And so we're very appreciative of that. So we work with building inspection, general services, engineering, code enforcement, environmental quality, grants, as I've mentioned, planning, law, fire, CAO's office, and others certainly as needed. We work a great deal with citizens and citizen groups on a number of topics, but one example is state historic markers, you know, the monopole with the big sign on top with the state seal, all telling important stories about our history and our community. And we've been involved in some recent ones that have gone here around City Hall that have brought a whole different piece of Lexington's story to our community, which I've been very excited about. And then we respond to citizens, of course, with all sorts of inquiries on topics about not only historic preservation specific to structures, but the history of Lexington-Fayette County, our historic resources, our neighborhoods. We're kind of the ask us of the urban county government when it comes to those things. And sometimes, you know, we'll get this, you won't believe what this one's calling about, but it makes life interesting. Some of the more recent projects that we've worked with include the Historic Courthouse and its site renovation, which we were quite involved with, and then also the renovation of the Historic Scholar Clock, which was mostly, really entirely, the funding for that was done through private donation. And it's right there on Main Street. Everybody loves the eyes, by the way, on the eyeglasses. We had to have those recreated from a historic photograph. And then research and project review. These are both 106 review projects, Legacy and Town Branch Trails. And we've also been doing a lot of research to go with interpretive signage to go with that, and still have a lot more to do on that. But we just do a full gamut of things, and this is kind of the tip of the iceberg. But do you have questions? Thank you, Ms. Kerr. I appreciate the information. I will open up the floor for my colleagues. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. The vacancies, how many vacancies do you have right now? Well, we technically have two, one of which we're in the process of filling, that being the Historic Preservation Specialist, and the other is our admin position, our administrative position, which we're not in a position to be filling at the present time according to the budget situation. We've been told we need to not be filling that position. So you are advertising for the other position? For the Historic Preservation Specialist. That's correct. Okay. How have things been working out for you being under the CAO? Is that? Just fine. Just fine. She's going to come and hit me again. Don't look behind you. So we work together very well, and both individually, that's really not the point, I'd say programmatically it works together very well. And so many of the things that we're involved with do have these tentacles that go out into other pieces of the government. And so I find being under the CAO's office really a good alignment. Okay. And it's been very helpful. And I didn't ask you to put you on the spot. I just, you know, when we first had those conversations last year, I was a big proponent of you being under general services just because I thought it would give you access to vehicles and maybe building data that might be beneficial. I understand and appreciated your interest at the time and continuing interest. And we do still need a vehicle. I will be honest with you, we do still need a vehicle. Our staff is still driving and myself driving our personal vehicles. But, again, you know, we're just rowing the boat together and doing what we need to do. And Ms. Hamilton knows enough of me to know that I speak rather plainly, and I appreciate the fact that you all allow that to be the case. And so don't ever hesitate to ask. If I needed to tell you things were not working out well, you'd hear it. But they are. Thank you. And thank you for all you do. I know a lot of the pictures that were shown today were first district building stock. And, you know, I didn't see the work that you have recently done in Duncan Park where we're building those columns to the Morton House. But I appreciate your effort with that. That changed the whole orientation of how that side of the park and how it orientates to the building. It just looks phenomenal. Well, good, good. I'm glad. I'm much appreciative of getting your all's assistance to make that possible because we're talking about the gate posts to Castlewood and, oh, sorry, to Duncan Park and the Morton House, the historic Morton House. And it's historically and from our community's life day to day, I think, really important to have those facts. So thank you. Council Member Plowman. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Ms. Kerr, for the presentation. I didn't realize that you did all that. I really didn't. I'm going through the list. I'm like, well, it's a busy office. This is really targeted towards the 12th District. But do you have like a mile number of how many stone fences there are in the county? You know, I do not. But I do know that we have lost about 80 percent of what Fayette County had, say, 100 years ago of stone fences. And so it suggests, certainly from my perception, that the remaining dry stack stone fences are very, very precious. They are. And how do we enforce that? Well, the ordinance, obviously, as I've mentioned, only covers the stone walls that are within the public right-of-way. And, of course, from legal perspective, we can't protect something on somebody's private property. We're not empowered as a government to do that, short of them having something like an H-1 overlay, which certainly would be a possibility if a property owner wanted to put an H-1 overlay on something like, you know, a farm that included a bunch of stone fences and so forth. But there's, other than educating people about how important these walls are, and if we had any grant funds to help for matching grants about repairs, that would be a wonderful carrot. Are you aware of any organizations out there besides city government that are involved in preservation? The Dry Stack Stone Conservancy is a wonderful private organization that teaches people to be certified masons for dry stack work. And, honestly, their work is as vital as a property owner committing to have the work done, because without the trained craftsmen, most people don't know how to do this. So it's a pairing that's very important. But we would love any and all suggestions about any ways to help further the protection and preservation of these. Great. Thank you. I'll try to look into that. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I'll try to be brief. I appreciate all of your work and all of your presentation today. Mine's a follow-up on the dry stone walls, too. So do you maintain an inventory as such? Well, we have them. They're all mapped through GIS, basically. And so any street address, we can pull it up and see how many linear feet and all that. I just don't have that number off the top of my head. No, no, no. I was just asking. I mean, I was unfamiliar with this specific wrinkle. We talked back and forth in doing other corridors things, and I realized there was some jurisdictional value over the stone walls on Old Paris Pike or Paris Pike. But we've come across several things in corridors work where there's a fence that needs help or there's a fence that needs to be repaired or there's a fence that needs to be added on to. And I just wondered if you kept an accurate public and private law. Well, what we do, it's address-driven. And so if an issue comes up, then we pull up that address, see what's involved, what the resource consists of, how much coverage, whether it's, you know, 40 feet of fence or 400 feet of fence, and then advise from there. That's all constituent-driven or action-driven somehow? It is largely complaint-driven to a point. And also we as staff in all of our comings and goings looking at these properties under all the programs we're talking about, we try to have open eyes. Drive by and see something. And so if anybody sees anything where, you know, one of the things that happens with these dry stack stone walls is that they're vulnerable to theft. Really? Of the stone? To the materials finding homes elsewhere. We won't go into how that's done because we don't want to provide a primer to anybody on how to accomplish it. But easily. But there are some construction means that are known also to make it not very easy to take these stones right away. You'd be amazed what goes into these topics. You know, here you think it's just, isn't that pretty? But like all things, a lot of things go into it. The dry stone folks do a great job, and they train people here and all over the country to help folks in other jurisdictions. So you're bringing it on. It was very much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Betty, for doing this. I had a question. When you were talking about the demolition, you said you go through this process unless you said it's a historic district. I think you put that caveat in there. Yes. And then in that situation, what happens then on the? Right. If someone makes an application to the regular channels going to building inspection for a permit and the property, it's flagged on the computer. All our historic districts are flagged so that they are immediately show them that it's in a local historic district, in which case they tell them they can't issue a permit, that they have to come to Historic Preservation. The same is true for building permits and so forth. And when they come to Historic Preservation for a demolition application, then as with any application for work within a historic district, we get their information and put it through the review process. And every demolition request goes to the Board of Architectural Review. The staff is not empowered to handle any of those. And that includes people who want to tear off additions to the back of their house or tear down a garage or just demolition is all heard by the BOAR because it's very final, obviously. And so it doesn't mean they could not tear something down in a local historic district, but it would need to be something that is not of significance in order to most likely have the possibility of getting approval. And then you mentioned the Natural Registry District. Yes. By being in an H-1, does that help you get on with the National Registry to go through that? It works both ways. By being an H-1, that is a lot of information that has been gathered that then can be utilized for a National Register nomination, which is what's happening right now with Pensacola Park. All the survey and data research put together for the H-1 nomination is being utilized and a National Register nomination is pending in Frankfurt. It will be heard the 14th of April. So, yes, they do complement each other. And then flip into that, sometimes areas are already a National Register district and then decide some years or months later to pursue local, and all that data and survey is helpful in the reverse. Thank you. Thank you for all you do. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. It appears that we have lost our quorum. So we're not taking official action right now, but I guess everybody had to escape the room. So, Ms. Kerr, thank you so much for this presentation. And I want to apologize to Ms. Ruddock for having to sit here today. We thought that I guess the first presentation took a little bit longer than anticipated. So, in light of that, thank you, Ms. Kerr, for this presentation today. I know you and I worked together on numerous projects in my former capacity, and I do appreciate that. So, yes, we can move to adjourn. Is there a motion to move to adjourn? Second. All right. There being a motion by Council Member Farmer, seconded by Council Member Plowman, is there any discussion on that motion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.