Hey. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. General services, then public works, then general government. Okay. Yeah. Council Member James. I just have a procedural question. We're reporting out today only reporting what the links recommendations are. There's not a discussion of anything today. Good question. You know, I think perhaps we can play it by ear a little bit, but we do have scheduled on June 2nd and June 3rd. On June 2nd, we have scheduled Council Link and individual council recommendations submitted to council administrator and budget analyst. And I was going to inquire about myself about that and how the June 2nd and June 3rd. Okay. I see what we're doing here. What we've got is we have a deadline showing on our schedule for the recommendations to be submitted to the council administrator and the budget analyst. So we actually have a next scheduled meeting on June 3rd at 1130 to review and discuss the possible changes. There's also been some conversation about a budget retreat and that would give us more time to have conversation associated with these questions and these issues. And Rebecca is polling everyone to try to get a date for that and a time for that. So my own sense would be that we could play it by ear today, get some questions. But if you all will give me a little bit of liberty, if we look like we're going to hit the wall on a two-hour time limit to where we were hitting 3 o'clock, then we may need to pull back on questions. Is that fair? All right. What is fair? Mr. Stindy. Well, I think in the past, I think it serves us better if we take each link and fully vent any questions we have, because having to come back to it, that does kind of break up the debate and the spirit of it. But I don't think we've ever got through all five links in one go. So don't try. I mean, I'm just saying don't break your back trying up there. Right.   I would more rather go into in-depth on each one and get it out of the way and then move forward. Okay. And I'm hearing conversation over here that confirms that. So what we'll do is we'll take it as we go, right, questions as we go. All right. No objections to that. All right. Let's rock and roll, then. Okay. First, the first link, then, that we'll report will be public safety. And Mr. Ed Lane is chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess I should mention in the beginning that the council members on the Public Safety Link Committee were myself, Jim Gray, and Casey Crosby. And the departments that are covered under Public Safety are the Commissioner's Office, D9-E911, Community Corrections, Police, Fire and EMS, and Code Enforcement. And could you put up ñ good, you've got that up for me. This is just a brief analysis of the revenues for the general fund from the last five years actual, the estimated for fiscal year ë08 and fiscal year ë09. So you can see some of the estimated trend for revenues. You'll notice that the estimate for ë09 is down from the estimate from ë08. The public safety cost is shown on the second line. I'm sorry, keep that chart up, please. On the second line, the public safety cost is shown. And you can see that it's amounted from somewhere between 46% up to last ñ this year's budget was 54.3%. And for the upcoming year, it's 53.7%. We can go to the second chart now, please. Okay, this shows the budget for public safety for fiscal year ë06. That should be ë07, ë08, and ë09. There's a typo in there. And you can see that the Commissioner's Office has a decrease from last year in the amount of 5.7 million. That is actually a 5.9 million savings in the contribution to the Police and Firefighters Fund, which will be compensated for by contribution from a proposed $70 million bond. DEEM 9-1-1 has a decrease in the general fund of 1.5 million. Part of that, or the primary portion of it, is the fact that we've raised the line fee for 9-1-1 on the telephone hard lines. And that revenue will reduce the deficit in the E-9-1-1 account, which the general fund does not have to make up for. Then the rest of the accounts are basically almost even. The net effect is that the budgeted amount goes from 153.5 million to 146.6 million, which is a 6.9 million decrease. And the change from the previous year is down 4.5 percent. Okay, at this point, we're going to ñ I gave a handout, but we'll skip over to the DEEM E-9-1-1 section, which is on page 3. And I just sort of reviewed the fact that the landlines are going to reduce the cost to the general fund by approximately 1.5 million. And the link committee, upon review of this, is recommending approval of the Mayor's budget. So at this time, David Lucas might like to come up and say a couple of words. Thank you very much. Thanks for letting me go early in the agenda today. The 9-1-1 fee is being proposed to increase from $1.31 to $2.10. That's a monthly fee on landline phones. That is ñ we'll bring in an additional 1.04 million, which will offset the general fund subsidy of the 9-1-1 expenditures. 9-1-1 expenditures are strictly regulated by KRS, and so we follow that strictly and expend all 9-1-1 funds appropriately. The additional $400,000 in additional revenues will be coming from an increase we'll see from the state. The state handles all the wireless funds, and we'll be getting wireless 9-1-1 funds from them. And also we are doing some additional efficiencies in the division, which between those two will net us another $400,000. That's how we get the total of $1.4 million relief to the general fund. The additional aspect of the fee proposal is to be effective June 1st so that we can get a full fiscal calendar year's worth of collections. Additional is a 4.5% annual increase. That is different than how we did the increase when we did it ñ when we went from 95 cents to $1.31. When we did that increase, we actually did projections on the revenues needed and set it at one fee. We thought it would be more prudent to set the fee lower at the $2.10 and do increases as we go rather than set it at $2.20 or $2.25 and collect the money early and go out. Actually, this allows the fee to be lower and collect as we go. Roberts. I just have a quick question. Since this is an item of business at work session today, it basically will become a moot point after ñ isn't this the same thing that's on our work session docket today for vote? Yes, it is. To put it on the docket. Thank you. Councilmember James. Mr. Lucas, when do you foresee the next increase? Will it be the next fiscal year or the next calendar year? We're ñ the 4.5, it would be the third ñ the June 1st of every year. June 1st. Yes.  Thank you. Any other questions? Commissioner Bennett, please. Commissioner Bennett. I might just expand a little bit on the recommendation for the annual 4.5 percent increase. What we've seen historically from year to year, and it's held pretty true over the last probably five years, is roughly a 4 percent decrease in the number of land lines or the number of subscribers that pay the 9-1-1 fee. So every year, just like clockwork, we lose 4 percent revenue, which puts the E9-1-1 fund in deficit, which then necessitates the general fund having to subsidize that operation. What we've tried to do in putting this annual 4.5 percent increase in is just let us tread water. It basically keeps us even. It doesn't increase our revenues every year, but at least it keeps us from losing revenue every year. Now, we are obviously looking at alternate ways to collect this fee to get it on a more stable base, but until we get there, we're at least trying to keep the program even. So that's the rationale behind the recommendation. We could have put a higher rate in, which would have let us gain revenue each year, but it was going to be a 6, 8 percent increase each year, and we didn't think that was appropriate at this time. So we just tried to put enough in to break even. May I ask you a question? Sure. The increase from the state wireless funds, is that in direct correlation to the decrease of the 4 percent land line? No. And David's on that board, so he can explain. No, it is not. We actually had legislation changed last session, the session before this one, where we changed how that was distributed. It was a 50-50 split, and now it's an 80-20, so the locals actually get a higher rate, and that just initiated halfway through the past fiscal year, so we'll see the full benefit of that in the upcoming fiscal year. Okay. Do you see conversation leading to something a little bit more compatible, being that more people are going to wireless instead of land lines? Yes, we are. We actually had a bill introduced last session to move away from our traditional billing on phones on to another medium. It did not get through committee, but we're going to — we've been working with throughout the state to get that changed. So hopefully we can get it to a more stable condition by the time I'm here next year. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you, David. Mr. Williams. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We'll go back to the top of page 3 to — and you can put that second chart back up, please, if you don't mind. And this is the commissioner's office, and the — there are two — two major changes there. One, as I mentioned earlier, $50 million is going to be bonded and placed into the Police and Firefighters Pension Fund. And under the way, the deficit — because we are underfunded in there, we have been making a deficit payment out of the general fund to pay for the deficit. By bonding this, we will be able to catch up the underfunded liability, and the — there will be revenues generated on that money that will, you know, go back into that fund for the retirement of the firefighters and police officers. Essentially, that will affect a $5.9 million savings annually, and that is — would be credited to the commissioner's office at this time, although technically it would be coming as a line item out of Police and Firefighters when that is done in the accounting department. This, I think, is a good thing to do because the — by funding the Police and Firefighters Fund, we eliminate any underfunding on that. It starts earning full return on the investment so that the fund will be fully, you know, funded when the retirement period comes up. What we would do in fiscal year 2010, which will be after this upcoming fiscal year, is that's when the first payments will be made into the — to pay for the pension fund, and a good portion of that payment will be the money that we are not paying in as additional funding to pay for the underfunded liability. The — you know, the city will continue to make its regular payments on behalf of the police officers, but the savings will be where we're not having to pay for the amount we've been underfunded. And so that is more for explanation. There's not really a major change required. The other area is in the area of animal control, and it was recommended that three teams that are comprised of two animal control officers and one assistant and one vehicle for a total of nine employees and three vehicles be funded because of, you know, demand on the animal control area over — there was a task force. I think Councilmember Stennett shared that. You know, it's our feeling that because of the austere nature of our budget this year, it would be hard to justify putting in three teams, but we are recommending that one team be put in at a total cost of $71,000 per year. And this will save $142,000 from this line item. And that is recommended on the attached sheet. And I don't — I think what I'd prefer to do is let the Commissioner come up at the end of the comments on all this and answer any questions you might have, unless somebody would like to ask a question about that at this time. Okay. Is the Commissioner coming up? No. Councilmember Gordon, you've got a question now. Actually, this isn't so much a question as — I don't know if this is the proper time to discuss. You said you were going to kind of thoroughly vet these. I think that's what we decided, right? Yeah. I was just curious about the animal control positions because I had quite a long conversation with Burt Hawkins, who's, as you know, the former director out there, who's now a contract employee. And he and the board actually had kind of a different view on this, and I didn't know if that surfaced in your discussions or not. But what the board and Burt Hawkins were recommending is that we fund the three administrative staff positions because the animal control officers are currently doing administrative And if we were to fund — to create and fund the three administrative positions first, that would automatically free up one-and-a-half animal control officers who are currently doing administrative work. And then if, after January, we could fund — I think their thinking was, in January, fund two of the animal control officers — or part of the animal control officers, and then in March fund the others. And I didn't know if — it kind of made sense to me that we could automatically free up one-and-a-half animal control officers for less cost if we put into place those three administrative positions that they've asked for, the three staff positions. And I didn't know if that had surfaced in your link or not. Yeah. That did not come to our attention at the link meeting, but, you know, we certainly would be open to, you know, rejuggling the placement of those positions. I don't think there's an issue there. I think the primary concern is that this is an austere budget and, you know, there are a lot of people who like to have, you know, more police officers. So I just felt that the appropriate number at this time — and we have some other funding issues, and public safety we'll get to, that we'll use — we need this money to cover some costs that are not really negotiable. So — but I would be open to that, and I think that our links committee would be open to that suggestion. Mr. Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. As Councilmember Lane alluded to, I did chair a task force presentation to this Council regarding animal care and control. And, you know, this issue, I would put it at one of our critical needs, just for the simple fact that we have six people, two of which are spending time on administrative duties, the other four trying to cover our whole city every day during the week. And right now it's just — they're not doing the job that we're capable of having them do because of staffing. And one of the main obstacles in enforcing our noise ordinance, the leash law, and several other laws that pertain to animal care and control is having the staff to respond. I know no one's going to sit in here and advocate having our police officers start responding, but that's going to be our only other alternative to doing our animal care and control duties that we're required to do by state. This is a simple solution to add the six officers, and I don't have a problem with stair-stepping over the year. It may save us, you know, $30,000, $40,000 out of the original $212,000, which is fine to get the administrative staff up and running. But to cut and not do anything at all and just do two animal care and control officers and one assistant with no vehicles is unacceptable. And it's unacceptable to the citizens that continually have dog problems, people that can't walk their dogs through their neighborhoods, people that have the barking dog problems. There's several things. And this is an opportunity for this Council to once and for all put it back to what it was 10 — well, actually, eight years ago, the staffing levels, because they were cut in half, and get this program back up and running to where it should be and allow our police officers to do their job, because they're getting the calls, too. And we're just not responding as a city. So I'm disappointed to see this. I understand, you know, we're trying to be in a tight budget, but $142,000 savings on a problem that is probably number one in top five for sure in most of our offices in terms of calls is a drop in the bucket. And I would like to see this obviously change, and I'll be working with Councilmember Gordon to bring back a different proposal, one that will allow us to do everything we want to do, but it will stair-step it over the next budget cycle. Thank you. Councilmember Ellinger, then McCord, and then James. Thank you, Vice Mayor. What are the costs, the difference between the animal control officer and an assistant? That information was not provided, but it's my understanding that it's approximately $23,000 to $24,000 for an animal control officer, maybe $25,000, and then the balance would be in the assistant. And I might also mention that — And how much was the assistant? It's $71,000 for all three employees. That includes the benefit estimate. These employees are — they work, you know, not for the urban county government. They're basically funding for an outsourced person. Also, I would add that we did allow a budget in there for a vehicle. So our thought was we would put in one team, and then we would — you know, if we have money later in the year, we could always budget more money. Well, I've got to concur with you in the link in that when we can't fund police officers and firefighters, then I think that this has to come secondary to that. And, of course, we're all concerned about animal control, but it can't be my most critical need. I don't receive as many phone calls about that as I do about police officers and firefighters. So that's got to be my top priority here. And I've got to look at what we can and can't afford. And I think the administrative staff — I'm still not quite sure. You said $71,000. It's $24,000, you think, for the officers? So the staffing is probably $20,000? I don't have the exact number on that. I don't think it was provided to us. It wasn't? But I was just told generally that the control officers were in the range $23,000, $24,000. Can we get that information? Do you know the salary on that, Councilman? On the administrative support staff? Yes, sir. Approximately $18,000 a year. $18,000. And then the animal control is closer to $25,000 with benefits. And keep in mind, you made the comment that trying to compare this to fire and police is very different because they are a collective bargaining group. They are reoccurring revenues that increase every year. This will stay the same. These folks won't make increases every year when we increase government salaries. This is a contract. This is outside of our benefit pool in government. So this is very different funding these salaries and positions. Well, there's only so much money that we can fund, and I have to look at priorities, Councilman Stennett. And as far as my concern is, police and fire are top of my priority. Mr. McCord. Thank you. A couple of quick questions. Councilmember Gordon, can you tell me again, your conversation with Director Hawkins, former Director Hawkins, what was it that he had said or I guess his recommendation? He and the board had a discussion about the request for the six animal control officers and the three assistants and the recommendation from Mr. Stennett's committee. And he and the board came to the decision that we could get maybe bigger bang for a lower buck in the beginning by initially creating and funding the three assistants to do the desk work, because a lot of that now is being done by animal care and control officers. So he said that they could, if we would create those positions, they could immediately, on day one, free up one and a half animal control officers to go on the street. And did he mention how much the three assistants, that cost was? No. I think that's kind of the number. I don't have that. And then the idea was get those staffers up and running, free up one and a half officers to go back on the street, and then come the second half of the fiscal year, fund the other officers in a phased-in matter so that by probably the end of March, beginning of April, we would have them phased in. But it would save some funding up front and immediately get the, you know, the benefit of putting more animal care and control on the street. You know, I think that Councilmember Stennett, to Councilmember Ellinger's comment about he doesn't get very many calls, that's because you're not the district level. And I get as many calls as you do about barking dogs and loose dogs. And this is an area that really is a problem for a lot of folks in my district. And I appreciate all the work that you had done on this. And I know that we're in tight budget times, and so I think that this Council needs to do something. We need to move in a positive direction. I would lean more towards Councilmember Stennett's recommendation of taking care of the need, moving it off the docket, and just checking that one off the list and putting out some of this fire that does crop up in certain areas of town more so than others. But I understand that we've got issues. So I think the big thing is if we can get a hard number as to what the three assistants are, I think that would be good to bring back to this body. Councilmember Lane, what was the cost of the one team of two? What was that cost, $71,000? $71,000 per year. So it would seem like that we, you know, as a Council, we've got an option between $18,000, $71,000, and the full $200,000 and some thousand as a range. But, you know, recognize that this is another opportunity that we may have to fix a problem and get it fixed and move on to other things versus piecemealing something together, deferred maintenance. And this Council is in the middle of tons of deferred maintenance, both personnel wise as well as buildings wise, because this is kind of how we do things around here, is we put a little bit towards it and it doesn't really solve the problem. So I'm for doing something in this budget and moving it forward. I certainly would lean more towards Councilmember Stinnett's end than just three assistants. But I think if we can get some real numbers, that would be very helpful for me. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilwoman Gordon wants to respond. Just to finish, Mr. Hawkins and the Board felt very comfortable with the phase-in. They thought that would not – it would help them a great deal. So I think it's important to know they've kind of vetted that whole thing and felt very comfortable with it. Well, and also I think that Councilmember Ellinger and Councilmember Stinnett are really – you're saying the same thing about police and fire, that it is a very high, high priority, probably the highest priority for our government. And we have to start asking ourselves, you know, do we put the burden on our police to go answer barking dog problems, or do we allow them to work on some of the things that they're more specially trained for. And I think that we've got a situation here where there's a low-cost solve to the dog problem that frees up our professional folks to do the job they're tasked with. But regardless, they're going to get the calls. So I think that it's important for this body to know that this thing just doesn't go away because we've got one and a half more people out on the street. Councilmember Myers? Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess I would say that if you're looking at funding an agency, and the agency itself said that this is what we need as opposed to what has originally been recommended by the Mayor's budget, it would seem to make sense that we'd listen to the people that actually have to do the work. And if they said that hiring three assistants will free up one and a half animal coherent control officers, it seems to make sense that we'd listen to them since they're the ones charged with doing the work. There's also another subcommittee that looked at barking dogs a few years ago, and what we found was that the real problem with the barking dogs is not that the police were the ones that were charged with making the complaint calls. It's that the courts weren't doing anything once they made the call. That's the real issue. The issue is not whether or not police are making those calls. The issue is what the courts is going to do once the call's been made in resolving that issue so that the police don't feel like they're continuing to make calls but nothing's being done about it. And that's why Chief Beatty actually put in the policy in place to no longer have the police answer those calls. It wasn't that there were too many calls for the police to handle. It was that the court system wasn't working to resolve the issues once the police did their work. So I would lean more towards the recommendation of former Director Hawkins and his board that says we need the three assistants that will automatically free up the people that are doing, that are actually paid to go out and take care of those calls, to do those calls while the assistants do the paperwork. Thank you. Go ahead. Mr. Stafford. Just to clarify what Counselor Gordon and what you referred to, Counselor Myers, the three assistants, that's the initial. But we're talking about doing them all over the next 12 months but stair-stepping in the budget so that everything will be funded, the three assistants and six officers. I just want to make that clear. It's not just three assistants and that's it. It's doing it all but stair-stepping a little bit. Right. And I think that's a great point. And I would say that there's an opportunity there that when we do the three assistants that they may find that it actually frees up two full-time equivalents instead of one and a half so that as we do the stair-step, which I think is a great idea, it gives us an opportunity to maybe find out at the end of the day that we don't need everybody but that we can stair-step and get to where we all want to get to. Thank you. Counselor Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. The only thing I wanted to also say that I support the recommendations of the DOG Task Force. And I know this is a huge issue in the 11th District. We've had some very, very fatal happenings from dogs. So I just wanted to point out the seriousness of this issue and appreciate Councilmember Gordon and Stennett checking into that so that we can increase the animal control as much as possible. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Henson. Okay. A little bit of a time check here. We've been on this for 30 minutes. Maybe all the issues won't be as involved as this one. Councilmember Lane, as chair, you've got four more pages on your report, right? Okay. I'm just going to make a suggestion that maybe we ought to try the report for a little while and see how far that goes without questions and comments. But if you all feel strongly that we need to. Is that still? I'm getting different signals on this. Vice Mayor, in the years past, it's always taken at least two times to get through all these. Okay. We're just going to have to schedule another meeting. We might get through one or two today, maybe three. Okay. And then we'll have to get through the others the next meeting. What I was saying was I was getting different signals up here in the front. So we'll stick with that. Mr. Vice Mayor. I'm looking at the schedule, by the way, if you all want to just take a look at your June 3rd date. And my June 3rd is when we're scheduled for the next Committee of the Whole and just might be thinking about starting that in the morning with the pace that we're running right now, we're going to need that morning. Okay. Mr. Vice Mayor, I just want to say that public safety comprises about 55 percent of our budget. And I think public safety would be the top priority of our local government. So if we had to give a little extra time. I'm not truncating you at all. Yes, sir. All right. We're going to get on to the Division of Police. And the most important thing I can say is that the budget for fiscal year 08 and 09 are basically flat lined and that the budget for both years will be 57.4 million. And the main budget differential is that there was a recruit class of 25 police officers that were scheduled to start sometime this month, I suppose, to go into training. That class was delayed, and so we're not basically hiring 25 police officers that were authorized in last year's budget. We're not cutting any officers. We're just not adding those 25 officers. And then the police chief went over the budget, and that's, as I said, flat lined. So based on the recommendation of the commissioner and the police chief, we are recommending the approval of the budget as it was presented. We're not making any changes in that. Going to community corrections, we have a similar situation in that their budget increased from 30.6 million from 30.4 million, which is about a nine-tenths of 1% increase. The main differential there is that there are vacancies. There are about 50 vacancies currently in the corrections staff, and the plan is to fill 25 of those, so there will be about 25 vacancies remaining in the community corrections area. With regard to the division of ñ and, by the way, we recommended accepting the community corrections budget as presented in the mayor's budget. With regard to the division of fire and emergency services, there are several changes there which we need to go into in a little detail. That budget was increased from 54.6 million to 55.1 million, which is a 1% increase. And there are 19 sworn firefighter positions that are currently vacant that will not be filled in the coming year. The link recommended these additional line items. One, monthly fields for mobile data card services were not included in the mayor's proposed budget, and that is an additional cost of $53,500, if you want to put it that way. The funding for the EMS coordinator was cut by 10% of the budget, and that is a one-person, and so that cut was inappropriate, and that cost has been recommended to be reestablished. The budget for EMS operating supplies was cut, and under the policy of the mayor's office and fire, we are not cutting any operating supplies for emergency services, and that was not an error. That is an increase of $27,300. Funding for operating supplies and fire suppression was reduced to $46,000 in fiscal year 08, and we are asking that that be increased to $4,000. That is basically for paper supplies, operating supplies for all of our fire stations. And as I understand it, we've had to transfer funds in there because it was really inadequate for the current year. There was a budgetary error when the line items for fire recruiting training costs were consolidated in the budget, and that is an amount of $11,650. I beg your pardon. It was originally shown as $11,650, and the correct amount should have been $19,210, so we are recommending that that change be made. And then there were leases for radio communication towers, which were left out of the budget, and that's $29,400. So we're recommending, the LYNX Committee is recommending that all of those be approved and added to the budget. Then under capital expenditures, the fire chief feels strongly that we need to make some capital improvements or replace the training tower and training facility that we currently have. That is a multimillion-dollar capital expense, and we are not recommending that it be funded this year, but we are recommending, and there is funding in the budget, to, number one, have an engineer come in and inspect that tower and make sure it's safe for operations, and number two, to create a site criteria for the facility and to do a preliminary design on a new facility so that when we have funding available for that, maybe next year, we can go ahead and implement that immediately. If you go to the next chart, please, under code enforcement, we're asking for an increase in the abatement line item. According to code enforcement, we've had two supplemental payments into that account this year for a total of $45,000, and we're asking for a $28,000 increase. And this is another item that is currently before the council. This is perhaps set it up where we get reimbursed by property owners for works that we do to cut grass or do maintenance and repairs that the funds that we receive back when that is collected, we go back into the fund. It could recycle itself over time, and, therefore, this could ultimately reduce this cost. But currently, any of these funds that come in now go back into the general fund under revenue. That is a $28,000 increase. So if you look at our recap, the commissioner's office, we are recommending a $142,000 reduction for animal control. The mobile data cards for fire and EMS are $53,650. The EMS salary correction is $2370. The EMS operating supplies increase is $27,000. Fire suppression operating supply increase is $4,000. Fire recruit training, $7560. The radio tower lease that we left out, $29,400. And then code enforcement abatement funds for $28,000. That would require an additional capital cost of $9,980 under the public safety budget. Now, if you notice, if you scroll that up so I can get to the bottom there, one of the other things that we are recommending is that we continue the $50,000 into the economic contingency account, the rainy day fund, during fiscal year 2009. And this recommendation is based on the linked committee's concern that there is no contingency account for public safety or other departments of the urban county government or a significant budget surplus budgeted for the current general fund that we have. This recommendation is $600,000 and equals .0022% or about one-fifth of 1% of the total general fund budget for the fiscal year 2009. And, you know, I'm just very concerned that our budget is very tight. We have cut as much as we can. That's why there are very few changes in the budget for public safety, for example. And I think it's critical that we do have a line item for contingency that would go into the contingency account. And that is more or less summarizes my comments. I would like to call the commissioner up, and then it might be appropriate, if you have questions on any of these items, that he could address those for you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Bennett. Open for questions. Mr. Bennett. By the way, my monitor is not functioning right now. So if you all would give me the signal, please. Mr. Beard. Yes. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just had a couple of questions. Going back to the Division of Police, what is our current vacancy level in the Division of Police, officers? Because we're showing that Commissioner Coe passed out, according to January 1, we have 31 vacancies in the Division of Police. Has that increased, decreased from January? Do we know? We didn't have 31. Well, the 31 in January included the class of 25, the new class of 25, which we're not hiring. So as of that first pay period in January, we had from our existing complement of personnel six vacancies. Yes, we have had more. Lieutenant Holman? We have about 16 now. Okay. So the 31, we're saying we have 25 in the class that will graduate, that will take up? No, the 25 of that 31 was the class that was supposed to be starting in June, next month, that we're not hiring. So from the 595 number, our existing authorized strength, and that did not include those new positions, of the 595, in January we had six vacancies, and now we have 16. So we've had 10 additional officers leave since January. So we have 16 vacancies. And what is the thoughts on not going ahead and trying to get the 25 new ones in, or the 25 we authorized last year into the 09 budget? Have you all even looked at that since the original mayor's proposed budget? We have, and there's no money anywhere that we've seen to fund those with. I mean, the budget, as the mayor proposed it, I think we had like a $200,000 budgeted fund balance. That's all the money we would have had to work with if we wanted to hire those 25, and that wouldn't have been a drop in the bucket is what it would have taken. So is there a need to hire the 25? Let me ask you that. Provided the money was there, where are we at on, where are we trying to get to? I mean, I know the mayor had announced 50 new officers a year for three years to build us up, but it seems like we've kind of changed courses. So where is our real need at? If we have 16 vacancies and we didn't hire a 25 class, what is our true need right now? It's hard to say what the true need is without knowing where you want to be at the end of a three- to five-year period and what your benchmark is going to be for how do you measure whether you were successful or not. As you saw in the management audit, they were recommending a different measurement tool for determining how many officers we needed than the traditional one that's been used here, which was the number of officers per thousand. Also, the management audit recommended that tool only in the Bureau of Patrol. There has to be additional tools for the traffic, for Bureau investigation, some of those other areas. Those are the things that we're in the process of developing those measurements. Back on the original question, though, the mayor's original plan was to add 50 a year for three years, an additional 150 officers. I think he still would like to. I know he still would like to do that, but the budget at this point is what's precluding him from doing it. The budget at this point and the decline in revenues from the original projections have not only affected the 25 officers and police as well as those six vacancies, but it's affected the Division of Fire with positions that are going to be held open there. The decision, again, based on the budget, not to hire the 12 firefighters for EC-10, which was going to be a new class. It also plays into the decision to hold open 25 positions in corrections. So it's not just one division. It's pretty well across public safety, as it is with the other departments. And, again, it is budget-driven. Well, you mentioned Division of Fire. On January the 1st, we showed 31 open positions in fire. That included the 12 that were, again, it's a similar situation to the 25 in police. So we had 19. We had a net of 19. And if you had the 12, it would have been 31, but we didn't. So do we have any fire recruit classes going through right now? We don't have any going through right now. Chief and I have discussed starting one right after the 4th of July. I think it's July 6th, July 7th. We're still fine-tuning how many would be in that class. So you have the funding to fill those vacancies in the current budget? Yes, and we'll be looking at filling the police vacancies in excess of those six also and looking at scheduling classes at the appropriate time to do that. So you have enough money in the police budget and fire budget to fill the 16 vacancies in police and the 19 in fire? We have that in the FY09 budget. No, no. Of the 16 in police, 10 would be filled. Okay. The 19 that were vacant in January in fire would not be filled at all. Fire's current vacancy number, I think, is somewhere around 32, 33, with some additional anticipated retirements in the near future. We would be looking at filling the number in excess of that 19. And you said that funding is in the 09 budget currently? Yes. Okay. And then one last question. I know the link had recommended capital expenditure for the new fire management center, the training facility. Can you give us an update on the land? I thought two years ago this council and the prior administration secured land for this. Can you give us an update on where that is? A couple of years ago there was an announcement that we had, or as I recall, and I wasn't here when the announcement was made, but there was an announcement that the government had procured land adjacent to the federal medical center, the old federal prison, for construction of a fire station. The longer-term plan at that time was to construct a full new fire training center on about a 40 to 50-acre tract out there. We have been since then negotiating with the federal government. We've still not received the property since that time. Also, Fayette County Public Schools has expressed an interest in that same portion of property. So we've been trying to work with them to balance their needs and our needs and just work through a multitude of practical as well as political with the small P issues. So there are still some hurdles to overcome before we can? There are still discussions between us and Fayette County Public Schools and between both of us and GSA, the General Services Administration, federal government. Okay. One last comment. I don't have enough questions for Commissioner Bennett, but I know council members have asked the different numbers for adding back the 25 police officers. The personnel costs alone are $1.4 million, and the 12 EC unit personnel that we did not do yet, the total personnel cost only is $827,000. And I appreciate Jerry Southers getting those numbers together for us and Jim Deaton in budgeting. So just food for thought out there. Again, $1.4 million for 25 police officers and $827,000 for the 12 EC unit firefighters. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Beard, with your permission, can Council Member Crosby, she's got a tag-on question to this subject. Thank you. I just wanted to comment. In our links meeting it came up, I don't think you mentioned this, but should the mayor's proposed budget pass as it stands with the firefighters, if the maintenance goes into, say, general services, then there will be an additional six firefighters. I don't think you mentioned that. We'll go back on duty, so that will be an additional six. Right. There are currently a total of nine personnel in fire dedicated to building maintenance type operations. Three of those are civilians. Six of them are sworn firefighters. The management audit recommendation and the mayor's budget recommendation is that that responsibility be transferred to general services in the new property management division. The three civilian positions would be transferred from fire to general services. The six sworn positions would stay in fire to be redeployed to other firefighting activities, and then six additional civilian positions would be added in general services. So as a practical matter at the end of the day, of those 19 vacancies, six firefighters which are not currently doing firefighting duties, traditional firefighting duties, would be reassigned, leaving a net loss in terms of positions of 13. Not necessarily loss, but vacancies of 13. Thank you, Councilmember Crosby. I'd forgotten to add that. Okay. Councilmember Beard, then Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Ellinger. Commissioner, a couple of three questions. In the anticipation of 50 per year for the next three years, I guess I'm not comfortable at all with thinking we'll be sitting here this time next year with a 50 number looking us in the face, or a 75, depending upon which way you want to look at it, and shaking our heads and saying we just don't have the budget for this, and then we continue to fall back, fall back, fall back because the number keeps growing, and the anticipation of having the revenue to fill that need probably isn't going to grow as fast as the requirement. And I know there isn't an answer to that. That's just a comment I wanted to make. What do you do? You've got 16 vacancies right now in police. Not enough to have a class. It is enough to have a class. We can train a class of whatever size we need to. Obviously, they can become too big. If they're too small, they're not as efficient. But we can deal with class size. So if it was five people, you could handle five people, or would you bother? Would you train them another way, I guess, is my question. Well, I don't think we would necessarily train them another way. I think we would probably just wait a little longer to have the next recruit class. But we could. We could do five. If those five were absolutely critical, and I don't think we're to that point, obviously, but we could handle a recruit class of five. I said it wouldn't be nearly as efficient as training 20 or 30, but it could be done. Okay. I was making notes here, and, of course, as you hear everybody else talk, you get further ideas. My first initial note was gasoline has gone up roughly 27 percent since this budget was presented to the mayor by you all. What is that reflected with the flatlined police and fire? I'm sure you all just gobble up gasoline like. We use a little bit. Yeah. The gasoline, the vehicle operation and maintenance component of that actually was projected by Fleet Services, and Commissioner Cole or Richard Murray would have to speak to that more than I have because that's essentially a number we were given. When you look at the flatlined budget, that's basically the bottom line. Some accounts went down. Some accounts went up. Vehicle maintenance and fuel would have gone up. So then in that, the budget was essentially a zero growth. But some of those accounts did increase. I don't know what factors they used to project those numbers, but I know there was an increase projected.  But this leads me to something else. Why do we send a fire engine with an EMS unit? Response time. Many times an engine can get there much quicker than the EMS unit can and can start administering whatever care is needed. The engines, many of the engines have paramedics on them. At the very least, they have EMTs on them. And they can be there dealing with the patient quicker than the EC unit can get there. Then the EC unit can either take over administering care or do the transport if necessary. But if they're both sitting there at the same time, what would you make the assumption that they're sitting there and they're idling and burning that gas again? But the EMS unit is there. Why would not the pumper go away? It could. It just depends on what activities they're engaged in. It's time. You know, there may be multiple patients. It may be an extremely complicated medical situation. And Chief could address this much more than I. But it's not just a matter of sitting there and milking time. I mean, if they're going to be there, they're there for a needed reason. Well, this was on my street, and I happened to observe that. And I was just curious about that part of it. Sometimes what you see is not necessarily or what you think you see is not necessarily the reality. They may not have been dispatched just for a sick person. I've learned that in government for the last five and a half years. I bet you have. But it could have been for a different reason where we needed both an engine company and an EC unit there. You know, a fire report. You know, gasoline, potential gas leaks where you're going to have to have somebody dealing with both that and a potential patient. So there are multiple reasons for having those units there. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Councilmember. Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. We heard a lot of numbers, and I guess it would probably be helpful for the council if we could get from the Division of Police, Community Correction, Division of Fire, Emergency Services, if we could get their authorized strength, how many vacancies there are, how many are going to be filled, just to know where we stand. Sure. Because I've just tried to jot them all down, and it got kind of confusing where we stood on each one. We'll be glad to do that for you. And one of the questions I asked, I think Councilmember Stanton answered, is how much we added 25, because we made a commitment, and I'm not sure if we're living up to it, that we're going to add more police officers. And we're at 591, I think, is our authorized strength. Is that correct? 595, I think. 595. And we did add 25 this fiscal year. We added 25, I think, that class was hired in December. The plan was to hire 25 in December, 25 in June. So we did do the first half, and that's what increased the strength from 570, which it was last fiscal year, to the current 595. So we're at 595. We're looking at losing 16 but then filling 10? Yes. But if we could get those numbers just so I could have it in some kind of order. Sure. And then you made the statement about the management partners and what they recommend. What do you recommend as the commissioner? Because we need to hear from you what you think we need to have to make sure that we have our citizens safe in this community. Two components to that. Number one, what as a policy matter does the council and the government want to establish as the target? What management partners recommended was having, as a baseline, a certain percentage of the, and, again, this is patrol, a certain percentage of the officer's time free for officer-initiated activity, not responding to calls, not doing paperwork, but actually out there on their own doing additional police work. And as I recall, that benchmark was in the 30% to 33% range in terms of their time. The question is, is the government satisfied with that 33% threshold, or should it be 40%, or should it be 50%? What the government decides it wants, in terms of performance from the police department, is going to dictate how many people we have to add to get to that point. That's issue number one. Issue number two, in the non-patrol bureaus, special operations, traffic, bureau investigation, the same measures don't apply, and the same measures aren't at the same time.