# Council Work Session - Virtual Meeting - August 11, 2020 > Auto-transcribed civic record · August 11, 2020 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5183 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5183?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2020-08-11 - **Last revised**: August 11, 2020 - **Length**: 30,360 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council convened virtually on August 11, 2020, at 3:00 PM, with Mayor Linda Gorton presiding over the meeting. The council addressed two primary agenda items during the session, focusing on local park renaming and coronavirus relief funding matters. The meeting resulted in the approval of the renaming of Cheapside Park, marking a significant decision for the community. Additionally, the council received informational updates regarding next steps for the Coronavirus Relief Fund, providing guidance on the allocation and distribution of federal relief resources during the ongoing pandemic. Throughout the session, the council conducted three formal votes on various motions and heard one public comment from a community member. The virtual format allowed for continued civic engagement while maintaining public health protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring that essential city business could proceed safely and transparently. ## Attendance All council members were present for the August 11, 2020 meeting. **Present:** • Mayor Linda Gorton • Vice Mayor Kay • Council Member Lisa Higgins-Hord • Council Member Farmer • Council Member Plomin • Council Member Swanson • Council Member Mossotti • Council Member Ellinger • Council Member Mccurn • Council Member James Brown • Council Member Fred Brown • Council Member Reynolds • Council Member Bledsoe • Council Member Moloney • Council Member Worley • Council Member Lamb **Absent:** None **Late:** None The meeting achieved full attendance with all 16 members of the council present along with Mayor Gorton. ## Votes and Decisions The council conducted three formal votes during the August 11, 2020 meeting. **Docket Approval** [timestamp: 20:00] Council Member Farmer motioned to approve the docket as amended, with a second from Council Member Plomin. The motion passed unanimously with all 15 members voting in favor: • **Ayes (15):** Mayor Linda Gorton, Council Member Lisa Higgins-Hord, Council Member Farmer, Council Member Plomin, Council Member Swanson, Council Member Mossotti, Council Member Ellinger, Council Member Mccurn, Vice Mayor Kay, Council Member James Brown, Council Member Fred Brown, Council Member Reynolds, Council Member Bledsoe, Council Member Moloney, Council Member Worley, and Council Member Lamb **New Business Items** [timestamp: 1:30:00] Council Member Farmer motioned to approve new business items, seconded by Vice Mayor Kay. This motion also passed unanimously with all 15 members voting in favor, including the same roster of council members and Mayor Gorton. **Household Assistance Program Funding** [timestamp: 2:30:00] Vice Mayor Kay motioned to allocate $1.9 million to household assistance programs contingent upon a plan being in place, with Council Member Swanson providing the second. This motion passed by roll call vote with 13 ayes and 2 nays: • **Ayes (13):** Mayor Linda Gorton, Council Member Lisa Higgins-Hord, Council Member Farmer, Council Member Plomin, Council Member Swanson, Council Member Mossotti, Council Member Ellinger, Council Member Mccurn, Vice Mayor Kay, Council Member James Brown, Council Member Reynolds, Council Member Bledsoe, and Council Member Worley • **Nays (2):** Council Member Fred Brown and Council Member Moloney The funding allocation was approved with the condition that a plan must be in place before the funds can be distributed. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed one significant financial appropriation during the August 11, 2020 session. **Household Assistance Programs Appropriation** The council approved an appropriation of $1,900,000 for household assistance programs. This substantial allocation was designated to support community members facing financial hardship, though specific details about the recipient organizations or program administrators were not specified in the available meeting materials. The appropriation represents a significant commitment to social support services during what was a challenging period for many households. However, the meeting materials do not include specific resolution numbers, vendor information, or detailed breakdowns of how these funds would be distributed among different assistance programs. *Note: Transcript timestamps are not available for this meeting's financial discussions.* ## Public Comment During the public comment period, one community member addressed the council regarding a proposed park renaming initiative. **Christine Stanley** spoke in support of renaming Cheapside Park to Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park [timestamp: 10:00]. Stanley emphasized the significance of this proposed name change for the African-American community, describing it as an important step toward healing. She expressed her support for honoring Henry A. Tandy through this park designation, highlighting the meaningful impact such recognition would have on the community. The public comment period focused solely on this park renaming proposal, with Stanley being the only speaker to address the council during this portion of the meeting. ## Contested Items The meeting featured one significant contested item that resulted in a split vote among council members. **Allocation of Coronavirus Relief Funds** [timestamp: not available] The council engaged in debate over the allocation of $1.9 million in coronavirus relief funds designated for household assistance programs. The disagreement centered on concerns raised by some council members regarding both the timing of the proposed allocation and the specific details of how the funds would be distributed. While the extracted data indicates this was a contentious issue that resulted in a split vote, the specific positions taken by individual council members, the exact nature of their concerns about timing and program specifics, and the final outcome of the vote are not detailed in the available materials. The $1.9 million allocation represents a substantial amount of relief funding, making the debate over its proper distribution a significant matter for the community. The split vote suggests the council was divided on how best to proceed with these coronavirus relief efforts for household assistance. ## Renaming of Cheapside Park [timestamp: 30:00] The council considered a resolution to rename Cheapside Park to Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park during agenda item j. The discussion involved several key speakers who provided context and perspectives on the proposed name change. Monica Conrad, Debron Thomas, Russell Allen, Christine Stanley, and Foster Auckerman participated in the deliberations regarding this renaming initiative. The council members discussed the historical significance behind the proposed new name, examining the importance of Henry A. Tandy and how the renaming would honor his contributions to the community. The discussion included background information about both the current name "Cheapside Park" and the reasoning for selecting "Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park" as the replacement designation. Council members addressed various aspects of the renaming process, including the historical context that made this change appropriate and meaningful for the community. The centennial designation in the proposed name suggests this renaming may have been tied to a significant anniversary or milestone. After consideration of the historical context and significance of the name change, the council voted to approve the resolution. The park will officially be renamed from Cheapside Park to Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park, reflecting the council's decision to honor Henry A. Tandy's legacy through this public recognition. The approval of this agenda item represents the council's commitment to ensuring that public spaces reflect names and designations that appropriately honor individuals who have made meaningful contributions to the community's history and development. ## Coronavirus Relief Fund Next Steps [timestamp: 2:00:00] Brandi Peacher presented on the allocation of the Coronavirus Relief Fund during this agenda item. The presentation focused on proposing various uses for the available federal relief funds that the city had received in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Peacher outlined several potential allocation categories for the Coronavirus Relief Fund money, with household assistance being identified as one key area of focus. This would involve directing funds to help residents who had been financially impacted by the pandemic. Additionally, budget stabilization was proposed as another use for the relief funds, which would help the city maintain essential services and operations during the economic challenges brought on by the health crisis. Mayor Linda Gorton participated in the discussion alongside Peacher, though the specific nature of her contributions to the conversation was not detailed in the available information. The presentation was informational in nature, meaning no formal votes or binding decisions were made during this agenda item. Instead, the discussion served to inform council members and the public about potential options for deploying the federal relief funds that had been allocated to the city. The Coronavirus Relief Fund represented federal assistance provided to local governments to help address the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cities across the country received these funds with specific guidelines on how they could be used, typically requiring that expenditures be directly related to pandemic response and recovery efforts. This agenda item provided an opportunity for city leadership to consider how best to utilize these federal resources to benefit the community during the ongoing public health emergency. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (15-0): Approval of the docket as amended - **Motion** — passed (15-0): Approval of new business items - **Motion** — passed (13-2): Allocate $1.9 million to household assistance programs contingent upon a plan --- ## Full transcript She loves you, yeah! Thank you. ready to speak to every single thing that's on the agenda. So, and before we talk about when we get to new business, Monica is prepared to explain the process. DeBron, Thomas is going to talk about the history. and I think council member Lamb has a small short presentation from Foster Ackerman is that correct did you want to do that during new business or during your council report I was hoping to do it during the new business okay all right if that's okay with council we'll do those that he'll have three minutes, just like usual. And so. OK, that's OK. It's not a presentation, so he's not under presentations, right? Well, correct. But it's hard to do the history in three minutes, though, with all due respect. So I had to get council members that were willing to give our time. Okay. Well, we'll get a vote on it when we get there. That's fine with me. DeBron is going to be first to give history since he was involved. And then we'll do the, you know, however you've got that arranged. It's fine with me. So, Chris, are we ready to go live? Hey, you still can't see me, which is fine. Oh, we need Council Member Blutz. It won't let me start the video. Chris, are you able to fix that? Amanda, what if you go back out and log back in real quick? It says the host won't allow it. I'm happy to go back out and do it if you want. Stand by, Council Member. Let me check here. I'm sorry. I mean I showered and everything so oh I just clicked something that said allow you to do video oh it worked hey Vice Mayor Kay said he can't get in either what oh let's look at this here a minute Okay, there he is in the waiting room. There, now he should be able to get in. Vice Mayor? There's the Vice Mayor. All right. I don't know why you're going to let me in. We have everybody in, and welcome back from your council break. and I'll go ahead and read the COVID statement and we'll get started with the council work session for August 11, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, local state of emergency and Governor Beshear's executive orders regarding social distancing, this meeting of the Urban County Council is being held via video teleconference pursuant to Senate Bill 150 as signed by the governor on March 30th, 2020, and Attorney General Opinion 20-05, and in accordance with KRS 61.826, because it is not feasible to offer a primary physical location for this meeting. Welcome, everyone. I'd like to go ahead and call the meeting to order, and first order of business to welcome. um let's see council member lisa higgins horde is about 12 hours about three hours old as a council member welcome thank you yes i have information in front of me and i'm ready to go very good thank you um first up is public comment for issues on the agenda and quite honestly we have 23 people in our waiting room. So I am not, I'm looking through here to see if there's anyone who Brody Glenn, are you I do not know who's here for public comment. Is there a way for issues on the agenda. Richard Murphy, are you... Let me just try something. Okay, there's Brody Glenn. Brody? Brody? Yes, ma'am. Can you hear me? Yes, so sorry. We have a lot of people in the waiting room. Are you here for public comment for issues on the agenda? No, ma'am. So we're the developer for the self-storage projects, and Dick Murphy or Richard Murphy is our land use attorney. Now that's on the agenda, correct? Correct. So we're not for public comment. So you're not for public comment? Not for open comment. We're for those direct projects. All right. Well, I'm going to move you back into the waiting room where someone is. Thank you very much. No problem. Dick Murphy, did you want to make public comment on issues on the agenda? Mayor, I'm just here for the first three items, the first three zone changes in case there were any questions. Okay. All right. Very good. so we will be doing the docket approval next so how about I leave you right where you are if there are questions you'll be in in place for that and then let me look here okay Justin Stanley I don't know if Justin can you hear me hi I'm sorry mayor it's actually Christine I didn't get an opportunity to re-change my name I usually I could see it on the screen and I changed my name but I couldn't see it this time. No problem. Did you want to make public comment for issues on the agenda? Yes, Mayor, I did. Okay, you'll, what you need to do is now's the time and you'll have three minutes and you'll need to state your name and address for the record. And Hillary, are you keeping the time? Yes. Okay. So Hillary will blurt out when your three minutes is up. Okay. Christine, did you want to go ahead and start? Let's see. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay. Sorry. I don't know what happened there. But yeah, so my name is Christine Stanley, and I live on 206 East Spelport in Lexington, Kentucky, 40508. And my public comment was I was just here, and I apologize for being late. I had a deposition run late. But I was just here to answer any questions or provide any additional support. to the name change of Cheapside to Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park. I understand that this is a work session for council and it is on the agenda as to approve or disapprove that name change. and in three minutes I'll just try to kind of explain how important I think this is for the healing of the African-American community and even people of color in Lexington, Kentucky. I think it's always wonderful and nice to support the kind of ingenuity and strength and kind of contribution to Lexington, Kentucky that so many people have had here, including Mr. Tandy. And so I just wanted to kind of really express, I have been emailing with some council people, and I know that DeBron and Russell have also been emailing with some council people. And so we just wanted to kind of be here and really stress how I think important this will be and answer any questions that anyone may have. Okay, thank you very much for that. We appreciate your comments. You're welcome. Now, let's see, Christine, you'll be going back into the waiting room. And I would ask folks in the waiting room to please raise your blue hand if you wish to have public comment on issues on the agenda. Is there anyone else? Anybody want to put your blue hand up? All right. Okay. Now, next item on the agenda is the requested rezonings and docket approval. Could I hear a motion, please? Move approval. Second. All right. Council Member Farmer moves approval. Council Member Plowman seconds. is there any discussion for the docket and if you'll please raise your blue hand that will be helpful council member swanson thank you mayor i think this is the appropriate time for me to move to place item number one on the docket without a public hearing so moved do i hear a second Second. Who seconded, please? Council Member Masati. All right. Thank you. Are there any questions about the motion? Let's see. Council Member Higgins, did you have a question motion? or no I have a motion okay all right very good um is there any question about the motion since we've got people um with blue hands for uh motions about the docket just raise your real hand if you have a question about this motion all right I see none all right all those in favor will you please vote by raising your hand, your real hand? Okay, that is unanimous approval. Council Member Higgins-Hord. Yes, I have a motion. I move to place on the docket without a public hearing. Item number three, an ordinance changing the zone from a highway service business B3 zone to a wholesale and warehouse business B4 zone for 1.744 net, 2.745 gross acres for property located at 1540 Eastland Parkway, a portion of. So moved. Second. All right. Council Member Ellinger seconded. Is there any discussion? I see none. All those in favor, please raise your real hand. I did that right. all right that motion passes unanimously and you might want to mute yourself now and then we have council member mccern thank you mayor i have two motions i'll make separately here one after the next um okay i moved i moved a place in the docket item number two in ordinance changing the zone from neighborhood business B1 zone to a wholesale warehouse business B4 zone 0.69 gross acres from a light industrial I1 zone to a wholesale zone warehouse business B4 zone for 0.466 net acres from a planned neighborhood residential R3 zone to a wholesale and warehouse business B4 zone for .038 gross acres for property located at 132 and 148 Louis Place, including a request for conditional use permit without a public curing. So move. Is there a second? Second. Council Member Plowman seconds. Are there any questions? All right. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Okay. Thank you. That's unanimous yes vote. Mary, so one more. Oh, yes, you do. Thank you. I moved to place on the docket item number four, an ordinance changing the zone from a highway service business B3 zone to a high-density apartment R4 zone for 8.163 net acres from professional office P1 zone to a high-density R4 zone for 0.027 net acres. for property located at 2679 Leestown Road without a public hearing. All right. Is there a second? I move. Second. Council Member Swanson seconded. Are there any questions? I see no. In favor, please raise your hand. All right. That motion is unanimously approved. Does anyone else have anything for the docket? All right. All those in favor of approving the docket as amended, please raise your real hand. Okay, very good. That passed unanimously. Okay. Let's move on to approval of the summary from the July 7th Council Work Session. Do I hear a motion? All moved. Second. Thank you. Council Member Farmer moved. Council Member Ellinger seconded. Are there any questions? Okay. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Okay. Thank you. That's a unanimous approval. Next is budget amendments. Do I hear a motion? So moved. Second. All right. Council Member McCurn moved and Vice Mayor, did I hear you second? All right. Now, questions. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Item Journal 124459-60. Parks and Recreation, there's a donation fund there. It says to provide funds for bluegrass 10,000 expenses by recognizing race registration fees. Somebody explain that. I don't think we're having, we're not having bluegrass. Monica Conrad. Good afternoon. Council Member Brown, that was a virtual race that we held in the first week of July. So we were able to capture registration fees for folks who had already signed up. So it ended up yielding about 900 participants for our virtual race. Is that right? Well, that's good. What's the usual number when it's not virtual? Just over 3,000. So we did about a third. Okay, okay, fine. Thank you for that explanation. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. My first one is on journal 124274. It's kind of near the top. I'm just wondering, is this expenditure potentially COVID reinversible after the fact? 124274. Commissioner Albright. Thank you. I don't know that I can speak as to whether or not it's COVID reimbursable. I can certainly pursue that. This is really where we are experiencing a shortfall in the contract labor that we are using in waste management every day. We are short anywhere from 10 to 30 positions pretty regularly from the contractor. So this moved some funds over to seasonal labor where we've been able to advertise and fill about 20 positions so far. Whether it is or not, I appreciate knowing more about it. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. And then, gosh, there was one other big one, 124424-25, and it's near the end. It's another big one. I kind of had the same kind of question here. Council Member Farmer, this is Charlie. What was your question on that one? Oh, it's just, it's good size. So this is our second allocation of emergency solutions grant funding from HUD. Yes, sir. You'll remember back in June, May or June, I think it was, you all approved and accepted the first round. That round was actually significantly smaller. We got about 714,000 in the end for that round. We have since, really right after we all went on break, been awarded about a little over $3 million for a second round. This is from the CARES Act. It was appropriated in the CARES Act. It just took a little longer to get us this batch of money. And so this particular budget amendment appropriates the funds. There's also another item in New Business where you have more details on the actual expenditures. Thank you for linking those up for me. I appreciate it. Mayor, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Council members, does anyone else wish to speak to budget amendments? All right. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Okay, that passes unanimously. Next is new business, and I would like a motion, please. Move approval. Second. Council member Farmer moved approval. Vice Mayor Kay seconded. Now if you'll log in for questions please. And perhaps, Council, do you want to take the renaming first? Would that suit you? I see a few yeses. That's item J on the agenda. And let me, if we can just get a couple people in here. we have quite a large attendee list today which is really good so we have we have DeBron where are you DeBron Thomas I'm here Mayor there you are thank you and Russell Allen should be in. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, thank you, Christine Stanley and Foster Ackerman. So let's start with Monica Conrad. Monica, are you there? To talk about the process and then DeBron would like to talk a little bit about the history and then Susan, Council Member Lamb, will work with Foster Ackerman. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. So the Parks Advisory Board heard the suggestion to rename Cheapside Park back a couple of weeks ago, and this followed the same CAO policy that we followed for other renaming, which is CAO Policy 49. the naming policy for park lands, features, and facilities. The requests for naming are the same as when we went through the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center. So the requests can be made by citizens or organizations. They're directed to the Parks and Recreation Division. Then they are read and discussed with the Parks Advisory Board. And then, of course, considered by council who has the ultimate approval authority on those. So this went through our Parks Advisory Board and was voted on unanimously. And do I have any questions? Other questions? How do you want to, or do you want to go just to? Let's, what if we go through and hear from DeBron and in terms of the process and then get questions and then we have Foster Ackerman who's going to give a little brief history. Does that okay DeBron welcome DeBron Thomas and Russell Allen is also here and there you go DeBron you are live welcome. Well first of all thank you so much for having us also would be remiss of myself to say congratulations to a council member Lisa Higgins-Horde. I'm happy to be here today to attempt and work on behalf of something that has been a long time coming. You know as many of you know the space of Cheapside Park is home to an atrocity, well a lot of atrocities and there's also a lot of history in that space as well. And one of the reasons why we would like to rename the park after Mr. Tandy is for several reasons. First of all, Mr. Tandy's blood, sweat, and tears are literally in the fabric of the space of Cheapside. He and Albert Byrd laid the brickwork on the foundation of the courthouse, and Mr. Tandy also laid the brickwork on the foundation of the previous courthouse while he was working for the G.D. Wilkis Company, a company that he actually ended up kind of running after Mr. Wilkis got too old and needed someone else to handle day-to-day business. And for a Black man in the 1890s was a pretty big deal. And, you know, part of this work we understand is renaming of the space is not going to change any of the things that happened there. It's not going to change the good, the bad, or the ugly in that space, but it is one step forward towards truly moving really in a direction of healing and reconciliation. And there really is no other better person to rename the space other than Mr. Tandy. You know, he worked on the, you know, his work is in the Lexington Opera House. He did the brickwork on the Carnegie Center. There are many buildings that he helped erect throughout his lifetime that still stand. Also, he bought much land in the East End and the Kincaid Town area of Lexington and, you know, rented to many Black homeowners and many other African-Americans in our city. And part of the reason why that area of town became a highly populated of African-Americans was partially because of Mr. Tandy's generosity in giving back to the community. So what we're asking is for, you know, the renaming of the park. And then, you know, we have a couple of other things that we'd like to talk about as well. And I'm also here to answer any of the any questions that you may have regarding what we want specifically. And I can also answer, you know, as as Foster Ackerman can do as well, questions about the historical significance of Mr. Tandy. Thank you very much, DeBron, and DeBron and Russell Allen and Christine Stanley are all part of Take Back Cheapside. I appreciate you being here. Russell, did you want to speak to the history? No, DeBron pretty much is taking care of that, And I know Foster will also have some geos of information, but I'm also good to answer any questions. Okay. Okay. Very good. Thank you for being here. And again, Christine, thank you for being here. So, Council Member Lamb, did you want, well, let's first ask if there are any questions for Monica or Take Back Cheapside folks who've been in this process now since I think early June for this phase that we're going through, the renaming. Now, let's see. Vice Mayor, is your question about this? Yes, ma'am. Very good. Thank you. So a couple things. First, I think it would be useful if DeBron or Russell or Christine, if you're willing, to mention the other things that you included in your statement when you first posted about the name change. Because I think that they're important. and it's appropriate for people to understand that although you've stated it this way in writing I think it would be useful to have people hear now what these other things are and how you think about moving them forward if that's okay so I'm asking if you're willing to do that. Do you want that in with this discussion of the renaming? I do. Okay. Yes Vice Mayor I can I can speak to that. So specifically what we're asking, as I said before, a name change is only, you know, part of the process of healing. One of the things, one of the first things that we're asking, which is meant to pair with this name change, is a public apology for Lexington's role in the slave trade. Now, after the, and Foster Ackerman could probably also correct me on this, I believe it was after the completion of the fourth courthouse, every sale that happened in Cheapside, there was a broker that would go in between and have the sale signed off in the courthouse. So for every sale of a human being, there was a slave broker who would go into the courthouse and the city would sign off on the authorization of the sale. Therefore, the city of Lexington is directly responsible for having a role in the slave trade. So we're asking for a public apology, which is something that our United States government has not done. And I think that this could be one piece of healing and reconciliation that would go an extremely long way towards, you know, proving actual tangible goals and tangible work to really, you know, work towards the healing. The second would be we would like to work with the city and other community partners to bring monuments from the Equal Justice Initiative's Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. They have monuments dedicated to every single lynching that is recorded in our history. At the particular site, they have the monuments hanging and then they've made replicas of each of the individual monuments to be for each particular city or parish to take. As I understand, there are four in Fayette County that we would like to bring to Lexington and, you know, kind of create a discussion as to where they could go, but just the ownership of Lexington really taking that piece of the history. And then the third part would be, you know, focusing on an eventual redesign of the space which we would you know of course include you know many members of the community in and really engage in a long-form discussion about that particularly to the accessibility and accessibility of the space. Thank you very much DeBron. Thank you for that and I think that it's important to understand that this is just the first step. I did have one other question. Some people in hearing the name, the proposed name, had a curiosity about the centennial part of it. And I must confess that when I heard it, I couldn't exactly get why centennial was a part of that. And also I had a concern that if that is the full name, that it will be shorthanded and it'll start to be called Centennial Park rather than Henry Tandy Park. So I guess the question is, what's what's the appropriateness of including centennial and how how do people feel about that well the the purpose of using the word centennial in the name was meant to be a bridge connecting that you know last year was marked the 400th anniversary so to speak of the very first enslaved African Americans brought to the United States in 1619, and kind of also with a bridge of how we can move forward as a community. You know, the courthouse was built in 1898, and we've still got a long way to go in terms of really making things inclusive. And so having Centennial in the name just leads for a, you know, a more of a desire to connect, you know, and understand that the past is the past. It is our history and we have to own it, but we can move forward together as a community to truly create a more inclusive and just community. Okay, that's helpful. And I really do appreciate the work that you've put into this, really from the beginning, and that you're continuing to work on it. So thank you for that. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Does anyone else have questions for Monica or DeBron or Russell or Christine? Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. And I'll start by thanking DeBron and Russell and Christine for their work and effort in bringing this forward to us. I guess my question is for Monica. in regards to the Park Advisory Board taking this into consideration. I think you said before that it followed the protocols set forth in CAO policy. Were there any relevant questions that were asked at that meeting that would be good to reference today as far as what was the process that the Park Advisory Board took into considering this name change? Yes, thank you, Council Member Brown. Most of the discussion centered really around the history and Mr. Tandy's history. So the Parks Advisory Board was very much in favor of moving this project forward. Okay. So, and it was a unanimous vote? That is correct. Unanimously supported? Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. In regards to the Park Advisory Board, when they were sharing the history from DeBron and Russell, Did they have a responsibility to fact check the history themselves and make sure that it's consistent? And I think that's why Mr. Ackerman is with us today is to speak to that. But is that part of the Park Advisory Board's responsibility as well? It is not part of their responsibility to fact check those historical references. however our parks and planning department Michelle Kiseniak has done quite a bit of research on Mr. Tandy and had that information as well okay okay yeah I think some of the things that were shared was this is you know this is the first step in many and I think you know I think identifying Mr. Mr. Tandy as the person to rename the park out of rename the park after is only fitting because his involvement with the courthouse that's adjacent to the park and his status and some of the heights that he rose to as an African-American back in the time that, you know, our country's history where those opportunities were limited. So I think that speaks to several things that we want to put forth and push forward in our community. So So I support it, and I guess I'm interested in hearing what other council members have to say or the history about the park, about the space. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. And Mr. Thomas, we spoke a couple times about this, and I appreciate you doing all the work you have on this and moving this forward. This is just a first step. Now, you talked about the other three things, and what is the process about bringing those forward? And also, when you spoke on reconfiguring Fifth Third, the Cheapside, which will be the new Tandy Centennial Park, we have an agreement with Fifth Third on the pavilion there for 2025. What's your ideas when we look at reconfiguring that? What's our process for that? Well, first of all, thank you so much. I think I do believe that in our conversations, CEO Hamilton had had a conversation. conversation. I'm not 100% sure as to where those are in terms of the conversations between that and Fifth Third. But one of the things that we did bring up was that the Great Compromise, which led to enslaved Africans being considered three-fifths of a person, we feel like it's a little weird that Fifth Third, being the sponsor there, just in the name itself, given the, you know, the history, wasn't necessarily the most, I don't necessarily want to say fitting, but it just, it's just weird. And, you know, if we're really going to move forward, we need to really be mindful of wording and messaging. So that was just, that's just one piece. But I do know that But the plan is to have conversations with parks, I believe, as well to really open up a dialogue as to how to make that space more inclusive. Yeah, and I'll just piggyback on top of that. As far as the EJI memorials, there are several groups that we've engaged over this process that have at some point reached out to the EJI to determine whether or not we could accept the monuments. So we will be forming a group of those community organizations as well as ourselves and working with the city to reach out to those folks and just gauge their readiness to give the monuments out. I believe the last time that some folks from Lexington talked to them, they weren't exactly ready in their process to begin kind of the things that they needed to do as far as ceremonies and things of that nature. yeah and I also um wanted to comment on um kind of the the fifth third bank I believe we've we I don't know where they are in discussion but I think they had that naming right until 2025 um and so kind of like the process this whole you know four-part process is that we would address the steps that are possible at the earliest time that they are possible. So, you know, the renaming is something that we can do this week. And, you know, then we'll talk about the apology and the monument. So it's a group effort. These are all things that we would like to happen together, but it's something that we know will have to kind of take it as they come. And so the renaming of the Fifth Third area, I think if they're willing to rename it, but keep their advertising, that would be great. But they do have that space until 2025. Monica, did you want to add something? Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for those comments. I am remiss, Council Member James Brown, that the Parks Advisory Board did ask about the Fifth Third Pavilion. It does remain until April of 2025. And Fifth Third Bank has been a great partner for Lexington Parks and Recreation and for the city. so what we're bringing forward today is just the conversation that was in front of the parks advisory board which is specific to the naming of the park the fifth third pavilion is an agreement between the city and the fifth third bank and i think we'll you know certainly be having more conversations about that as well as there's a street um that as of you know today remains cheap side street um so i think that there are there are definitely more steps but the parks advisory board just considered the naming of the park? I hope that answers some questions. Thank you, Mayor. Okay, you're welcome. Council Member Maloney. Mayor, I was on the park advisory board and there were a lot of good questions asked and I want to thank Mr. Thomas for the history and showing how Chief Sight got his name and how we need to change it. I think it really was an eye-opener to a lot of those board members and they and it was really one of the easiest votes they've ever made. And I want to commend you, Mr. Thomas, for your education, us on it, and the history because the last few years we made some bad mistakes putting up some things and we beat taxpayers' dollars. By doing what you're doing and doing your homework and showing the history, you had everybody involved. And I'm glad to see that, and I think that's an example we need to send from now on out. We need to keep looking at our history and look at what effects things we do It does affect some of our minority and we, they need to have a word to say about things. So this is one of the steps we're taking. We're a long way from where we need to be. And I'm glad we're taking this one step at a time. And eventually I want to make sure we get there quicker than we, and learn from my mistakes, what we've done over the last few years. So thank you again, Mr. Thank you, council member. Council member Massadi. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Thomas, if you have a moment, I have a question. I know you've done a lot of the history and research on this new name in the park. Were there any Black women involved in the history? As for that specific space, there were not any names that we discovered. Part of the reason of Mr. Tandy specifically was the connection to the courthouse and his overall legacy in kind of supporting a lot of work that has happened in Lexington by all many kinds of people of color. And so that was part of the conversation and the history that we had. There are many people in the history of Lexington who just definitely deserve to be honored. But we felt specific to this situation, specific to this space, Mr. Tandy was the greatest choice and most appropriate choice. Okay, thank you. And give me an idea of what you're thinking as far as the public apology. I guess I just would like some more clarification on that. Can you just give me some more clarification, please? Yes. Oh, go ahead, Russell. Oh, I was just going to say, basically, when we're talking about the public apology, if you're kind of wanting to look at like a baseline for what these kind of look like, California has made some apologies. And I believe specifically some cities in California has also made public apologies for the effects of chattel slavery on black residents within in those areas. So basically just kind of talking about the holistic kind of situation that black folks were placed in. Like more of a community type based apology? Is that what you're thinking about? No, it's yeah. Just we're specifically wanting it to come from the city. I'm getting some feedback. It's kind of tough. I'm sorry. Somebody's got a mic on or something. It's really. Could you repeat that? Can you hear me now? Yes, sir. Can you hear me now? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, basically, we just want that apology to come from the city or the council or the mayor's office due to the fact of the city's hand in the slavery and the selling that happened at Cheapside Park. So it's specific to the role government had in that particular time frame. Councilmember Massadi we are looking we are looking at a number of these that have occurred across the nation at language which we will bring to council for approval and a resolution and so there's a wide variety of uh types of language used and um so we you know we We are gathering that now, and DeBron and Russell have been instrumental in helping us understand that it's done a variety of ways. I didn't know if it was like through a resolution or how you were attempting to go forward with this. It'll be through a council resolution, but first we need to locate some language. We're going to be looking at lots of cities that have done this and see what language seems most appropriate here in Lexington. All right. I appreciate the explanation. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say thank you for all those that have been involved in this process. I mean, I'm very supportive of the name change, and I'm anxious to understand more about the language, about the public apology. I think that there's an opportunity there. And I just wanted to also say that the reason that I had asked Foster Ackerman to come today is, is that I had constituents reach out to me and give me their version of what they thought about the history of the courthouse square. And so, of course, you know, as I always do, I always reach out to Foster because he's the orator at the Lexington History Museum, but he's also a constituent and a good friend. And I basically asked him for a history lesson. And so I just wanted to let my colleagues know that today I thought it would be a proper opportunity to allow him to do that at the time you all are OK with it. And I can ask for a motion however you want to do it. But that's the reason that I asked Mr. Ackerman to come today. I think that's great. Council members, do you want to set some time for Mr. Ackerman? Council rules would say three minutes, but Council Member Lamb, I think, would like a little bit more. Council Member Lamb, what sort of motion did you want to make to suspend those? Mayor, thank you. And originally I had contacted three different council members and asked about using 15. I realized that is not a good thing. So I've talked to Foster via text and he said he could tone it down into nine minutes. I do think it's important for us to understand and for the record to reflect the history. And I think that it's an opportunity for us to all to hear it. And if my colleagues would allow him to have nine minutes, I would very much appreciate it. And if it needs to be through a motion, I also move. I would appreciate that. Is there a second? Councilmember Plowman seconds. Any discussion? All those in favor of giving Mr. Aukerman nine minutes, please raise your hand. Okay. Thank you. Passes. Thank you very much. um welcome to foster ackerman we'll get him on the video here in a second there he is hi welcome now we gotta unmute you there you go i think i'm here and we have a timer so we're gonna hold you to it let me ask the timer not starting until we know that my slideshow can begin okay and and i think if i can just say next slide and we'll move through that quickly. Sure. Are you operating your slideshow or is someone else? Lex GTV3 has them. Okay let's hang on just a second. I know nothing about how the slideshow works on Zoom, so we're relying on our great GTV folks. And I really did try to make sure that this, there were no hiccups or anything, because I realize that all your time is very valuable. So I do appreciate the indulgence. Okay. Hillary and Chris Edwards or whoever is, Tim, whoever's running, you have the slides. Please say you have the slides. Yeah. Yeah. Chris has confirmed that he has them. So I would say GTV3 is going to be the one to pull it up or LexTV is going to pull it up. I'm working on it. Give me just a second. Well, let me let me preview just a little bit while we're dealing with the technical side. The first slide you're going to see is the original plaque of Lexington. And you will see a public square outlined in the lower left corner that actually ran from Mill Street all the way over to Upper Street. and along the way part of that was obviously sold off for another block and there are a number of little bitty lots that were called in lots and larger lots called out lots every resident got one of each to start lexington and the idea was you would build a dwelling on the in lot near and around the public square and then devote your outlot to farming or to animals. This one is the edge of the third slide. Okay. Okay, let's go back to that one you just had and I'll start there. All right, that is cheap side. London, England's cheap side. This was and has been for almost 500 years the primary market area for London, England. Next slide. That first one was circa 1823. The next slide just had it. I have no control here. So the point I am making, I hope to have made visually, and maybe we will. But the original part, original purpose for what we now consider to be the courthouse square was as a public gathering place across the street from the first courthouse and first market house, which were at the corner of Mill and Main. In fact, the first building on the public square was Kentucky's first schoolhouse in 1783. In 1787, the second courthouse was built on the square. In 1795, the second market house was built on the square. It was enlarged in 1803 and took up roughly the same space the pavilion does today. The reason Market Street is named Market Street is because it led literally to the market. So the beginning use was commercial. And let's try slide five. Can we pull slide five up? Okay, let's just ditch the slides. I was going to show you Cheapside at its finest as a marketplace crowded with people conducting commerce. I don't know what DeBron's source is for saying that a broker would enter the courthouse after a sale. That's not usual auction conduct. And it leads me to think that there has been confusion between judicial sales, which would have a requirement that a court order be entered confirming the sale, and voluntary market-driven sales. This is not Lexington, but this is an auction house right there. That is a slave broker's office. There's market. That's Cheapside London. That's Cheapside Lexington looking south towards Fifth Third Bank building today. You see all this activity. The next slide, that's the auction broker's house. And there were at least four of these around the courthouse square where they literally conducted their business. And the final slide. This has been labeled as the last slave auction in Lexington. It's not dated. Obviously, it's not after 1865. So there you see that there was a lot of activity going on in this space beyond just auctions of enslaved persons. as the brawn has noted uh slaves were considered chattel which is to say personal property for purposes of probate the statute said slaves were real estate and to be treated as such if a person died with insufficient assets to for the estate to pay all the debts property will be sold even today, to raise money to pay the debts. And that is a court-ordered sale which would occur at the courthouse under the supervision of the court. And that would include not just the farm or the residence, but any enslaved persons. Likewise, if somebody bought a slave on credit and failed to pay the promissory note, the creditor could sue and get an order of sale. That sale would be conducted by the master commissioner today, a court officer who would then enter the fact and the price and the purchaser in the court records. So my supposition is, and DeBron, I'd love for you to email me your source material so I can see this. My supposition is that it was the master commissioner or the equivalent court official conducting a judicial sale who then entered into the courthouse. And incidentally, this is more a court function than it was a city function or a county function. It just happened on county property. So that's the full history, good and bad, of Cheapside Park. And I find it a beautiful historical irony that the farmer's market has returned to the site of the second market house. I mean, you all used to employ an official to inspect the goods and throw out rotten fruit and make sure he had an official set of weights to check against the scales the merchants were using. This was a city employee. So, you know, that quickly is 250 years of cheap side area. And I'll take any questions now. Thank you very much, Foster. You do have so much expertise and we appreciate that brief history. Are there any questions for Foster Ackerman? All right. Thank you so much. Council Member Lamb, are you? Again, I just appreciate the History Museum's perspective on this as we look at them as our Lexington History Museum. And again, I always want the, and I don't mean to be controversial or to, I did not mean to bring that, you know, anything controversial towards this. But I do want to know that I am very supportive of renaming this. And I think it's very important for us to be able to have real good conversations about this opportunity and moving forward. So thank you very much. And thank you, Foster, for your time today. Thank you. Council Member Maloney, did you have a question? I just have a comment. I appreciate your history, Foster, but when I talk to the African-American community, they won't go near Cheapside because for hundreds of years they've been told what their relatives were sold there. and to me this needs to be changed and back to the point about naming things and I asked a question in the archipelago there was a woman named Charlotte Dupree who sued Henry Clatt for slavery and to me that woman to me is considered a great person for what she did and if we're going to look at naming people I'd like to throw her name out there because it's not just I mean, it's all across the African American history. There are great people who have fought this. And it goes back to what this woman went through and what we did a couple of years ago and spent some money on something we shouldn't have, which now we're going the right track. So I want to just tell everybody I'm not doing this. I want to continue to do this to show the history, how important it is. And if the African-American, so when they go down to the new park, that they will not have to be worried about the history and be named what it was. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Mr. Ackerman and Thomas for sharing and Ms. Stanley and everyone. I think this is really important and I kind of think it's irrelevant if there was just a regular market as well as slaves being sold. The point is slaves are being sold in that space and it's not welcoming to African-Americans. And so I was wondering, can I ask Mr. Thomas if he can respond to where he got his sources for the city being part of the slave trade? Yeah, sure. Actually, I learned that in a conversation that I had with Mr. Ackerman. So that was where I had gotten that information. and if i didn't so originally you you you interpreted or you you understood that that um that from mr ackerman correct yes well then let allow me now to correct that misimpression this i'm not aware that the city old city pre-merger back to the beginning had anything to do with slave sales. The circuit court conducted court-ordered sales. And to Richard's point, I want to make it clear, I am not defending the name Cheapside or taking any position on any proposed name change. I was simply asked, what was the origin of the name? And it is old English for marketplace. I mean, that's literally is where the name came from. Yeah. Uh, the sales that I'm aware of were either court ordered or they were private sales. Uh, and let me, let me just take a sidestep and disabuse the urban myth that somehow the cheaper slaves were sold on cheap side and the more expensive slaves were sold on upper street because that's what I was told as a child, but there's no evidence of any sale ever occurring on the upper street side of the courthouse. And cheap as in inexpensive is a 20th century use of that definition of the word, not a contemporaneous use of the word with the early 1800s. In fact, your forefathers, your predecessors were singularly uncreative. I noticed you have several name changes happening on the docket upper street referred to being upper on town branch and there was a lower street which is now in the underneath the rufferina parking lot because it was lower down on town branch market went to the market spring street went to a spring mill street went to a mill you know that that's what you have there okay well um thank you for responding i think uh we could do some more investigation to find out the process, but either way, slaves were sold in Lexington and they were sold in that space. So I think considering renaming it is definitely valid. Thank you. All right. Any other questions from council members? I don't see any at all. We may have some folks in the waiting room who wish to speak to this issue. Counsel, would you like to hear them now? I see some yeses. Let me ask Vance Walker, is this the issue you'd like to speak to? Okay. Okay. Hello. Vance Walker, is this the issue you'd like to speak to? Yes. Okay. You'll have three minutes. And if you'll state your name and address for the record, please. Okay. My name is Vance Walker. I live on 101 Yamamoto Avenue in Lexington, Kentucky. Oh, I'm second. Sorry about that. And I would like to start off by saying, the things surrounding the slavery thing in Lexington, Kentucky, I think we should make a monument to let people know about slavery, that slavery is not dead. In the sense, I have to go, right? I have to go. We should make a monument of Derek Chauvin against George Floyd's neck. I yield my time. Daddy. Thank you. Hang on, council members. All right. Robbie King, did you want to speak to the renaming of Cheapside Park to Henry A. Tandy, Centennial Park? If so, yes? I think that we should keep the previous name because it's historical and changing history just isn't good. Thank you. No one could. Oh, yeah. Yes. Can you please state your name and address for the record? My address, I am Robbie King. My address is 419 Skyland Lane Avenue. And I want to ask, why is there a nigger in the city council? Excuse me, Mayor. Nigger! Nigger! Excuse me. Excuse me, Mayor. Yes. Do you want to hear any more public comment or not? If we don't have a way of screening folks and making sure that they're legitimate comments and concerns, I don't think we should hear any more comments. Will you make a motion? I tend to agree with you. Will you make a motion, please? I make a motion to suspend public comment just for the reasons that we don't have to, that we don't have the capability of making sure that they're valid public comments. I second that. Second. I seconded. I seconded. Council Member Lamb seconded. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, please put your hand up. And that is a unanimous vote. Thank you very much. Yes, we do not want to do that again. All right. um thank you so much uh debron thomas and um christine stanley and russell allen and foster ackerman this has been a great uh discussion and uh we appreciate all of you and monica thank you so our i think we're good to move on mayor before i move on if i may say one thing we show Robbie King still in the lobby. I know I have disabled and removed, but it didn't seem to work. Thank you. Hmm. Maybe, uh, GTV can help me with that. there we go all right okay um now we're still on new business thank you all for being here good to see you thank you mayor yes thank you let's see here sorry there's just a little bit of technical stuff as the vice mayor and the committee chairs know okay now uh we are still on new business so if you comments on new business please raise your blue hand council member farmer thank you mayor first just housekeeping do we have a motion to approve new business thus far we do thank you thank you yes ma'am mine is on item b uh about the uh reimbursement for the folks during the primary. And really, it's not even a question about the new business item. I'm just interested. We spent a fair amount of money to buy new voting machines. I was wondering, were they used in the primary or will they be used upcoming? And no one on this call may know that, but it's something I think we should know on behalf of our community. We spent a lot of money to go from what was a good previous voting machine to one that is a paper ballot to be tabulated. And I just want to see for the money we spent, are we going to use those machines? So I'll just throw that out there for later commentary. Okay. I'm not sure there's anyone in the council who knows about that right now, but here comes CAO Hamilton. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I'll find that answer out, but we do not know. Okay. It's just of interest. we we've worked hard on we've always done a great job about having really good voting apparatus i would like for us to be able to use these if possible thank you ma'am thank you mayor good thank you council member lamb thank you mayor um i have a question on item o I remember seeing this item in the past on the dockets about the federal equitable sharing agreement and certification as it relates to the Department of Justice and Treasury. and I was just wanting to know, I read through all of the information and I was wondering what are the expected equitably shared cash property or proceeds that are going to be received and what will they be used for, please? Commissioner Armstrong, welcome. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Lamb, for the question. The specific amounts, is that what you're referring to, ma'am? Yes, that can't be forecast accurately and the fact that since this is kind of referred to as asset forfeiture the amounts that are actually seized either by the police department or federal government where we would receive a share of is not predictable. With that being said I could work to get the last three averages and provide that information to you if you'd like. I would be curious in what it's spent for. I think it's a very one unique piece of information so thank you. Yes ma'am. there are specific guidelines on what that can be spent on. Many times it's equipment, training, things like that. So and I'll get that information to you tomorrow if that's okay. Thank you. Yes and then just one other question just so I can learn more about this and perhaps maybe educate others to under item U as it relates to the airport and trust bank. Could we get some more explanation on that please? I'm on the board. Commissioner O'Mara is on. I defer to Councilmember Maloney on the board. Okay. You had the same thing they had to the Civic Center last month. They're trying to get the money a little bond cheaper so they can go farther if they go through tough times like the Civic Center to refinance and like this there's no bounding impact on it but But it's just to give them extra time if the economy keeps not kicking like we want it to. It's the same thing that we did for the Civic Center. Well, the Civic Center, we restructured the bonds. But I think what Council Member Maloney is saying is that it gives them one more option in case they need a line of credit. Right. Correct. Correct. Yes. Okay. Let's see. Council Member Lamb, anything else? Where'd you go? No, no, that's all. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to do my best to keep my comments specifically to this issue. So I'm going to go to item number X, which is a donation from Star Bio Solutions to the Parks and Rec to the Moon Dance facility. And I just wanted to highlight two things in this. One, the accounts manager, Alex Don, who lives in Beaumont, and he and his family are active participants at Moondance and offered to do this as a donation. And this is a specific disinfectant that provides sealant from viruses, including things we're doing right now. And I just wanted to say thank you to him publicly and for their company for doing it. And I appreciate Parks' appreciation of that to happen so quickly before Friday night's Moondance event. And I just wanted to highlight that Parks' team worked really, really hard to make that a successful event. 400 people came Friday night and sincerely enjoyed it. I know Council Member Maloney was there as well. We're all appropriately distanced, handled the protocol exceptionally well. And that's a huge kudos to Parks who made that happen to fit all the criteria, enough so that we're going to be able to continue to do this Friday night as well. So I just wanted to say my huge appreciation, first to Biostar Solutions and then also to the Parks team for making that happen for us. Thank you, Mayor. Very good. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. Thank you, Mayor. And Council Member Bledsoe, you answered all of my questions. I just wanted to know how the event went, a new public event with Clarkson. So good to go. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Conrad. Very good. Does anyone else have questions on new business? I mean, yes, new business. We're still on new business. Any other questions? All right. All those in favor of approving new business, please raise your hand. Okay, that is well. Council Member Ellinger, are you voting? Okay, we don't have a vote from Council Member Ellinger, but everyone else voted yes. Thank you. All right, that's all approved. Now, continuing business and presentations. Could I have a motion, please, for the Council Capital Project? Move approval. Second. Vice Mayor Kay moved approval. I believe I heard Council Member Masati. Was that your second? Or who seconded, please? Okay. I'll second it. If nobody else did. I seconded it. Oh, well, we need to put that in as the second thing. Okay. Any discussion? All those in favor, please raise your hand. Okay. We have a unanimous vote. Yes. Thank you. And now, Council Member Lamb, you're up for the General Government Social Services Summary from June 9th. That seems ages ago. Yes, it did seem ages ago. So thank you. Like the mayor said, this is a General Government Social Services Committee, June 9, 2020. Summary and motions report out. The motion to approve the February 11th of 2020 committee summary was approved by Councilmember Plowman and seconded by Councilmember Evans and passed without dissent. The second item was the homeless camps, and we had Ms. Polly Ruddock provide an update on the use of the standard operating procedures for homeless encampments, highlighting active and removed camps. She also reviewed the work of her office and the community in response to COVID-19. The committee discussion included shelters, turning people away, loss of community resources for individuals, the impact on neighborhoods and the street outreach team, and the item was removed from committee. The next item was the Bluegrass Area Development District. Mr. Keith Horn reviewed the settlement between the Bluegrass Ad and the Kentucky Economic Workforce Development Cabinet that was executed in May 2019, and Kevin Adkins, per the administration, recommended to not move forward with payments of the FY18, 19, and 20 reimbursed member dues. I reported part of this discussion to the pool council at the work session on June 9th. You will recall the council unanimously approved a motion to not move forward with the payment of FY18, 19, and 20 member dues to the Bluegrass ad. The council also unanimously approved a motion to reallocate the FY20 member dues of $58,600 for computer equipment. This was approved by Ordinance 52-2020 on June 18. I have one remaining action item to report from this discussion. A motion was made by Councilmember Maloney, seconded by Councilmember Farmer, to let the administration come back with the PSA after Bluegrass Act presents to committee to move forward with the payment of $58,600 for member dues in FY21 following the presentation and the motion passed without dissent. And having said that, that presentation is going to be hopefully scheduled for September. The next item is examination and creation of an employee organ and bone marrow donor leave program. The committee reviewed a draft ordinance to implement a donor leave program for employees that would provide employees 240 hours or six weeks of leave time to donate an organ and 40 hours to donate bone marrow. This mimics the state program that was approved in the 2020 General Assembly. the leave time would be available to all full-time employees. Director John Maxwell doesn't anticipate a lot of employees using it. He was fully supportive of the leave time and recommended approval. So on behalf of the committee I moved to approve an ordinance creating section 21-34.2 of the code of ordinances to create a leave category related to organ or bone marrow donation and define benefits provided under such leave category. FYI the original motion was made by Councilmember Maloney seconded by Councilmember Evans to create a leave category related to organ or bone marrow donation and define benefits provided under such leave category seconded by Evans and the motion passed without dissent. I believe what we are reporting out today is the actual ordinance and I so move to report that out to the full committee. Do I hear a second? Second. Councilmember Plowman seconds. Are there any questions? All those in. Okay. Council Member Bledsoe has a question. Sorry, just briefly. No, I just wanted to speak in support. I want to thank Council Member Lamb and the committee for putting this forward. My dad had multiple myeloma, had two bone marrow transplants, neither of which were successful. But the biggest barrier to making these things happen is the time off to donate. So I just want to say thank you for doing that. And while many may not take the option, those that need to, this will be a big help. So thank you to making this happen. I encourage everyone to vote for it. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Council Member Maloney, did you have a question? No, I just have a comment. I want to thank the city employees for bringing this idea to me when I did my walkthrough. As most of you all know, I do my Friday walkthrough. There was a gentleman who told me about his bone marrow was approved, but he didn't have the time. So I went to Council Member, I mean, CL Hamilton. We thought about this. and she pushed for it, but then we found out that the state was going to do the same thing, so we waited through, but I do, so with the help, we'll be able to pass it, but I do want to commend the employees. They're the ones who brought this idea to me, and I'm excited to tell them that we're going to be able to do that. Thank you. Very good. Does anyone else have a comment to the motion? all right all those in favor of the motion please raise your hand all right that motion passes unanimously okay okay thank you and i have just a short bit more this was a long one um so and then that item was removed from the committee uh thank you all for your support on that and thank you council member Maloney for bringing it forward to us. The next item was the review of the council rules and procedures as it relates to Robert's rules. Council member Lamb confirmed that council member Plowman, Ellinger, and Farmer will serve on the council rules and Robert's rules review subcommittee. We have two meetings scheduled for the first Thursday, August 13th at 3 30 p.m. and the second on August 20th at 11 a.m. Both will be held virtually. And then lastly, the items referred to committee they were the committee removed the following items from the committee and one is dlp family friendly events city golf courses analysis sale and transfer of lfucg properties and buildings and historic preservation and we adjourned at 235 thank you very much Thank you very much. Next on our agenda is a presentation update on the Mayor's Commission on Racial Justice and Equality. And we have with us today, Ms. Rosalind Akins, welcome. Thank you. And Dr. Gerald Smith, welcome. And they co-chair the commission. And they wanted to give you a brief update of the council had asked for that. So, Roz and Gerald, I'll turn it over to you. Okay. Well, thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon to you and each of the council members. Ms. Akins and I are very pleased with the ongoing work and progress of the commission. As part of this update, I do want to begin by informing the council that the mayor did support our request to actually name the commission, define the purpose, as well as shape the guiding principles. The purpose of the commission is simply to assemble diverse community members to listen, discuss, and create empowering solutions that will dismantle systemic racism and free accounting. Guiding principles are simply to acknowledge, ask, address, and take action. Now there are five subcommittees and Ms. Akins will offer information about their work in just a moment. But I simply want to add here that we thought it best for each subcommittee to ultimately set their own goals and objectives while in the process of preparing the reports. We did recommend that each subcommittee be gathered by overarching goals in their work, which would include identifying both systemic and systematic practices of racism, which is false to structural inequalities, challenges, and deficiencies in Lexington. county and also assess the historic marginalization of African Americans in this community. So with that being said, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Akins now, and she can provide you more information about the work of each subcommittee. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Smith, to the mayor and to all of the council persons. Let me kind of give you a little background on some of the things that Dr. Smith and I have been doing. And as the co-chairs, we did meet with the downtown protesters on June the 29th. We've met with Black faith leaders. We've met with the mayor's chief of staff and Commissioner Ford. And we also have weekly meetings with the co-chairs of the five subcommittees, which are racial equity, education and economics, health disparities, housing and gentrification. Oops. We've lost Roz. There she is. Roz, do you and Gerald want to turn on your video? Or it's up to you. There's Roz. There I am. Okay. And are you there? Someone else is in control of my video. Uh-oh, it's not me. I'm not sure who has your video. Well, Roz, we'll see here. Okay. There you go. Let me say that the subcommittees and those folks who are on these committees have done an awesome job. They are all made up of a diverse group of community folks here in Lexington. They have been meeting weekly and some of them even twice a week. And let me tell you the extent of the seriousness of their assignment. They've done research. They've even secured expertise to speak in the different areas so that they can make intelligent recommendations. I tuned in to education and economics one day and there was Lieutenant Governor Jacqueline Coleman speaking to that committee. And so they have done an awesome job. We also do a weekly meeting with the mayor, and we wanted the community to be a part of this. We didn't just want everything to come out of the subcommittee. So we've had three town hall community meetings where we wanted transparency and we wanted input from the community, and those went extremely well. folks got to ask questions we are so grateful to Renee Shaw who was the moderator for that and and so overall we're coming along and I'll turn it back over to Gerald and he'll tell you how we're going to kind of finish this up all right we we were given an extended deadline for the report thank you mayor Our plan is to issue the report to the mayor by the end of September. In the meantime, we have prepared a template for each of the subcommittees to work from as they prepare their independent reports. And Ms. Akins and I will collect that information and synthesize it and draft a narrative. and we'll look at it a few times and then we'll present that final report to the council. So that's where we are now. I do want to add that we greatly appreciate the mayor's staff in assisting each subcommittee with securing reports and data and information on policies and procedures. And we want to make sure that we are as informed as much as possible when we make those recommendations that we've had a chance to think about it and of course provide the needed input and recommendations that of course going to in the mayor's words make meaningful change. So thank you so much, Mayor Gordon. You know, that concludes our update. Thank you so much. And I do want to say in front of the council members a huge thank you to both Rosalyn Akins and Gerald Smith. They have been wonderful. And you all know, as well as I do, that the leadership of a group like this makes all the difference. And they are the right people in the right seats. And they have taken this so seriously. And I greatly appreciate both of you. Their work is terrific. And we'll look forward to September when we have the results, right? The recommendations. And I don't know if council members have any questions for you. Is there any council member who has a question? the um council member james brown do you have a question i see your hand up yes ma'am i just wanted to um piggyback on your comments thanking uh the doctor and the doctor uh for their commitment to this work um you know the the fact that you asked them to step up and they accepted um the assignment and stepped up and and did it not because they're getting paid but i think the payment is going to come by the changes that we hopefully see in our community to help strengthen us and bring us together around these issues that are being discussed. I guess I will ask the question about the meeting with the co-chairs. All the recommendations or suggestions, are they all going to be directed at City Hall and what the government can do to build a more inclusive community and address systematic racism? Or do you think that some of these recommendations are going to address other aspects of our community and our city. Go ahead, Rose. I think you're going to see the template was set up where it's going to look at, could it be something, a change that the mayor could do? Is it going to take council change? What about partnerships we need to do with different people in our city? So we've looked at all areas of how we can get the changes done here in our city. It's not going to be just, you know, the council and the mayor, but looking at partnerships, looking at all the ways that changes can be made here in our city. Yes, we realize that some of it's going to require perhaps state or federal action. Yeah, and I think that's important. I think a lot of folks, you know, since it's a city commission or mission or commission established from the mayor that, you know, they'll just look at it in that silo and that funnel and think that, you know, the city is responsible for addressing all of these issues where I think it's, you know, more encompassing than that. So thank you. Thank you again for your service. And let me ask this, Mayor or Dr. Smith, I think you heard the conversation earlier about the history and cheap side. Did you as a historian, did you have anything that you want to add to that conversation? There's plenty I could add, but for the sake of time, I will end my remarks now. Please keep in mind that I am not only a professor of history, but I'm also a pastor. So this could go on a few hours. yes sir all right thank you thank you mayor thank you are there other questions council members council member ellinger thank you mayor the only question i had that you um you extended it and it was going to be on 30th august so when it was extended to when it when's the report supposed to be due back now on september 30th yes okay good thank you i just want to make sure everybody knew when to expect it to come in thank you so much for all your work i appreciate you thank you thank you for the opportunity to serve our city. Are there other questions, council members? All right. I see none. Rosalyn and Gerald, thank you so much. We really appreciate you and your work and stay tuned as they say. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. You're welcome. All right, council members. And our final presentation today is the Coronavirus Relief Fund Next Steps. And I'll kick this right over to Brandy Peacher. Good afternoon, Council. Thank you. And I believe we have the presentation up. Okay. I will get started. First slide, please. Thank you. So as you all are aware, LFUCG is eligible for up to $25 million in funding related to the Coronavirus Relief Fund, and this is via the CARES Act. We may receive these funds by submitting documented pandemic expenses and seeking reimbursement for these expenses. We've seen that many cities are primarily submitting for personnel costs, PPE, and telework needs. You may ask, how often can we submit for applications? And this varies depending upon our need, and we'll submit as needed and as costs are accrued. If you'll remember, we have already applied for one round of reimbursement. And that application was previously approved. Next slide. So application number one, which has been approved, as we've said, was for $9,371,076 and was approved by the Department of Local Government. In order for us to submit that application, we documented expenses related to eligible payroll, out-of-pocket expenses related to PPE, and out-of-pocket expenses related to telework needs. And those splits are seen on the screen in front of you. Next slide. The allocation of this initial application, allocation of those funds are as follows. Per Resolution 269-2020, you all provided guidance in regards to where those funds should go. So $6.4 million of that total application is to be allocated to the Economic Contingency Fund. and the remainder of that application, once funds are received, would go to Budget Stabilization Fund. As a reminder, any spend to come from these funds would require a budget amendment. What we've received to date is approximately $8.3 million, which has been deposited. The additional amount, which we have been approved for, is being submitted for, and we will receive those funds over the next few months. I will remind you, though, that $865,000 is needed to cover out-of-pocket expenses. that were a part of that original application, as you saw on the previous slide. Next slide. Thank you. So future applications could equal up to $15,628,924. So the documented expenses that we propose using for those applications would be eligible payroll only. So with public safety payroll costs alone, we will reach this threshold this fall. We will submit applications as we bring them to you for approval, and we recommend using only public safety payroll because it makes things easier from a tracking standpoint and a grant recording standpoint as required by DLG to receive these funds. Once the reimbursement of these funds are received, we may then allocate those to desired uses as deemed appropriate by council. So next slide. I'm going to pass it over to the mayor now who's going to talk about a proposal for utilizing those funds. Thank you very much, Brandy. And I did want to say we have had a team of people throughout government, throughout the administration, who've worked a good bit of the summer on this proposal. And so we want you to add it to your thinking. And as I say, it is a proposal. As previously mentioned, once the funds have been received, we may allocate them as desired. The administration would like to recommend the following items to be funded with the reimbursed monies. First, direct reimbursement to cover out-of-pocket expenses. This includes PPE, facility alterations needed for reopening equipment in response to addressing the pandemic, telework equipment, subscriptions to support LFUCG's expanded workforce working from home. And this estimate is $2.25 million, but could vary depending on needs to address the pandemic throughout the end of the year. So these are expenses we will have made out of pocket. Second is a proposal for a $3 million fund dedicated to household assistance programs. For example, programs are being explored to address the needs related to rent, utilities, food assistance programs, and things like that, particularly for people who have been unemployed. Our staff continues to coordinate with other community partners to determine what the community's needs are and how best to distribute these funds. And additional time will be needed to explore this further. Final programming and budget would come before council prior to implementation if that program is approved. Next is $500,000 for homeless emergency shelters, affordable housing projects. And I want you to note, since your packet was distributed, this number has been revised based on information that we received. So funds allocated for this use might be, for example, used to fund grants to community agencies such as Catholic Action Center to renovate facilities to accommodate additional beds during the cold weather. Long term, these upgraded facilities may provide possible conversions to permanent housing or community space as needed. And these funds are proposed to provide temporary emergency shelter under the CDC requirements and during the winter months. Other funds proposed are opioid programming, $100,000. You know that we have been working on opioid programming but have no funding. We have a teeny tiny bit of funding left over from something else, but funding of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Goal and Availability Study, which you all have discussed in some other places at $125,000. thousand, funding for a police after action citizen review board fifty thousand, and funds in support of the building known as the Palmer Pharmacy, and a cost share RFP to address the needs of this building at Fifth and Chestnut, and that is proposed for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And then all these proposals subtotal is six million four hundred seventy five thousand dollars. And I think we're ready for the next slide, which is a proposed plan for allocating additional funds. So those remaining funds that weren't in the above proposals, we would recommend allocating $7 million to the Economic Contingency Fund and $2,153,924 to the Budget Stabilization Fund. And then I'm going to kick this back over to Brandy, and then we'll have questions and comments. So, Brandy? Thank you, Mayor. And if you would proceed to the next slide. So this last slide is just a visualization of the full $25 million that we are eligible to receive. This is based upon the approved application number one and the allocations as council has already approved to contingency fund and budget stabilization. And then also reflects the proposal that the mayor just spoke about. So if we combine all of that together, this would be the distribution based upon those proposals. So you would have 12% of the $25 million going toward direct reimbursements related to those PPE costs, telework needs, facility upgrades in order to reopen in light of the pandemic. 17% would go to community projects and those were reflected in the list that the mayor just went over. 17% is proposed to go toward budget stabilization fund and then the contingency fund at 54%. And I will leave it at that and open the floor for questions. All right, council members, we have one logged in. Council member McCurn. Thank you, Mayor. Brandy, can you go back a slide, please? To the full reimbursement. Yes, ma'am. I think they're pulling that up for us. Okay. So of all of this, how much should we take out of the budget stabilization? How much out of the contingency fund? Do you know off the top of your head? I do not know that. That might be a commissioner, O'Mara, or if Wes is on, one of them could probably answer. we uh i can answer that am i unmuted you are good to go commissioner okay um we took 20 million dollars out of the economic contingency fund uh for the 21 budget and we took 9.4 million from the budget stabilization fund okay so we saw about 10 million off from that okay that's fine That was my question right there. Thank you, Commissioner. Thanks for coming on. Councilmember Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Ms. Peacher, for this. I have a couple of questions, actually. So, and I guess the first thing, just to clarify on what Councilmember Kern just asked, the $20 million, that was what the mayor's proposed budget was. But in the end, did we end up adding another 6.4 or is that 20 million including the 6.4? I can address that if that's appropriate. Yes sir please. Yes the mayor proposed about 13 and a half million from economic contingency. The council added about 6.4. Anyway at Roundup it came to 20 million dollars of the total from the final budget. That's perfect. I don't mean to cut you off, but I do have a few more questions, but that's exactly what I needed to know. Thank you so much, Mr. Amara. Ms. Peacher, can you tell me what the telework expenses of $250,000, the out-of-pocket expenses for telework, can you explain what those are? Was that from the original application, which slide you're looking at? Yes, the documented expenses submitted with the application, the $250,000, it's part of the $865,000 that you all need or are asking for it to be immediately reimbursed. Yes, it's my understanding that those expenses included any upgrades to subscriptions for Zoom meetings like we're on today. It included any laptops that may have been needed or iPads or any hardware that our staff may have needed in order to work. And I'm sure Commissioner Balasanti could expand upon that more than I could if you would like to learn any more details. Okay. Because I know that we also, that the Bluegrass Add funds, the $58,600, I think that was used also for laptops as I understood it for Ms. Balasanti to use too. So that's really great that we have that. And Council Member, if you would, Director Lanter has a little more detail if you'd like for him to expand. I mean, I think that that's specific enough. I appreciate it. Maybe I can have that conversation after I do this. Um, so on your page, uh, page eight or 64 of our packet, you have 4.260 in the budget stabilization fund. And I'm trying to understand where that number comes from. That number is, uh, from what was approved back in June. Um, let me get my numbers here. so allocation of the funds per resolution 269 2020 in june if we could go to slide four i think that was just pulled down i'm sorry that's okay the 2.971076 yes ma'am so that you take that and you add it to what was proposed uh by the mayor in the the last slide slide seven when you add those together it's a total of the 4.26 being allocated to the budget stabilization from this full 25 million dollar reimbursement okay i i think i i guess i need to recheck my math on that because when i did the math it didn't come up to the 4.2 and maybe i typed in the digit wrong or something i think uh council member lamb commissioner omera may know don't we have uh didn't we have one million left in it actually uh the budget stabilization was budgeted to be zero using two million in the fourth quarter of 20 and 9.4 million and 21 okay council member i think i may know where that discrepancy is if you'll see on the slide before you it notes the 865 000 that needs to cover those out-of-pocket expenses, reduced the budget stabilization amount by that $865,000. So you'll see that $865,000 added to the direct out-of-pocket expenses, and it reduces the budget stabilization by that amount. Okay. All righty. That helps me a lot. I appreciate that. And then I don't know, I'm trying to hurry because I know I've got five minutes. And the so the the item that. on the actual agenda that was the new business item that is the all of the sheltered items that was the 3.2 to 6 million 490 that that amount and then you take into consideration you all change the number for two from 1.5 to 500,000 for the homeless emergency shelters that's on page six, I believe, of the presentation, 62 in the packet. So our mayor, and I apologize for not hearing this, but what did you say? Why did you all reduce the 1.5 to 5 million? Is it just going to the affordable housing? 1.5 to 500,000. Is that the one you're talking about? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. We had a potential project with Community Action Council, which would have required, it was sort of a creative, unique project, and it was the $1 million, and would have provided shelter, which would have been repurposed to affordable housing, and that fell through. Okay, okay. All right. Thank you for that. And then the one last thing, I know I'm out of time, but the $50,000 for the Police After Action Citizen Review Board, can you better explain what the intention of that amount of money is for police? Is Commissioner Speckert in the room or Tyler, either one? There she comes. Thank you. Mayor, Councilmembers, Councilmember Lamb, what we're looking for with this is actually hiring someone who has the expertise to help us stand this committee up in a way that is going to work for Lexington. we discovered we've done a lot of research on these commissions and they sort of generally broadly operate in the same way but they're very specific for the communities where they are and we want to make sure that we are creating a commission that is effective and meaningful so that is what that funding is for and i assume that would be a contract position because 50 000 is not going to fund a position. That is correct. Yes. So it's contract. Okay. I've said as much as I can in five minutes and I'll come back after my colleagues have more. Thank you. You packed a lot in. Thank you. And one thing that we, Brandy and I neglected to say is these are all one-time monies. Of course, CARES money is one time. So nothing in this proposal is ongoing and has to be funded again another year. So next up is Council Member Ellinger. Thank you Mayor. So we're expecting another $15.6 million and our expectation is we're going to be able to receive that to $25. We just have to send in the expenses. That's almost a guarantee. Yes sir. We feel very confident in the amount that we can submit for that. And then the time frame that we're going to be getting the money in, do we have an order that we're going to be distributing to this list? Because I think there was 6.475 was a list of different things. And within that, if you could explain how the household assistance program works, is that going to be individuals going to be trying to apply for that similar to what we did with the stimulus money or how does that work? Brandy, we can either one take it. Yes, we would have to have some kind of established program. probably one of the ways we might do it is to look in the community for those nonprofits that already do this. They already have assistance and they're set up for it so we could contract with them. There are different ways, but it wouldn't just be handing out money. It would be applications and there would be some criteria. And quite honestly, to your question, I think this is a number one need. Yeah, I was trying to figure out when the money, our next block of money comes in, it will go towards this order and do we have a hierarchy? And you're saying that's probably going to be the first one that we would look at until we get through the 6.475. And then the rest of the money we would put towards the contingency and stabilization. Would that be the last part we go in to take care of those programs first and then go what we have to the others? Well, my thinking is people are suffering right now. Right. Those who are still laid off and those who can't, you know, they can't make it month to month. So that was the thinking in putting some priority on that. And when is our expectation that this next 6.4 million will be coming in? Well, we are ready to probably apply for the next round as soon as we get our documentation together. So if I entered, I'm looking over at Director Lanter to say, as soon as we get that application pulled together, it will be before you for approval to submit. And we're probably ready fairly soon, right, Charlie? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. And if I may elaborate, in addition to what the mayor has said, we are continuing conversations with these organizations within our community who are addressing these household assistance needs already. And just as she said, we would want to partner with them in some way to distribute funds appropriately. What we have there now is a placeholder. We are still trying to determine what our community's need is. And as you can imagine, it changes constantly in light of the pandemic. So I might recommend that this continue to develop and we come back to you with more of a refined approach to utilize those funds. And this would be for individuals. It wouldn't be for businesses. Would that be correct? That is correct. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. Thank you. Hi, Brandy. The Fifth and Chestnut Building, which is, I guess, was that the old Catholic Action Center? Yes. Yes. Okay. Is that, who owns it now? The city does own it. We do. The city owns it. Okay. And you're anticipating it's, what, are you going to take $450,000 for renovation of this building? and i'm hearing in the background that we anticipate 850 would be needed in order to renovate the facility so this would be a cost sharing uh rfp that we would put on the streets can you can you give me the square footage of the building i'm going to ask cao hamilton to step up and and address this hello miss sally hello the building is very small it's 3 848 square feet um i happen to know that because i deal with this building all the time uh this building has got a historic nature it's the old palmer pharmacy yeah council member brown uh and i have dealt with this quite a bit there was a hue and cry in the community when we proposed, not Council Member Brown, but when I suggested that we bulldoze it because it was so expensive. But the community sorely objected to that. The problem with this building is, of course, it's a notorious corner at Fifth and Chestnut. This building has got all kinds of environmental issues. We are now in there. We have got a consultant going in to find out exactly how bad those environmental issues are. We think they're severe. We are fencing it. We're fencing that building this week to try to, excuse me, the 20th, to try to prevent more crime in the area. What we would really like to do is find we have talked to numerous people, but none of our agencies that would provide the programming that we need up there can afford that ticket of $800,000 or so to fix that building. so what our idea now is is that maybe if we could put half or more than half of that money into fixing that building we could do an rfp and want to try to find we don't want we want something that will help the community up there we just don't want to give it to somebody for an office or something we want something that will help the community and run a run programs out of it So that was the idea here. If we could put some money behind it and issue an RFP, we've done this before, that we may get some takers. And Council Member Brown probably may want to add to what I've said. Yes, Council Member Brown. Well, let me. Council Member Massadi, go ahead. Before Council Member Brown responds, and I get it, I understand the need there. I just think to spend that kind of money on that building, I've been in there and the shape it's in, you're better off demoing it and starting from scratch than you are trying to spend $850,000 on something that clearly you probably have not only asbestos issues, but you probably got lead, you've got plumbing, you've got electrical. I mean, it's just throwing money, you know, bad money after good. Can you just not demo it and start from the beginning and then make yourself, because you're going to have to retrofit that too, I would assume. Well, as I said, what the suggestion was at the very beginning was to demo it, because it's very limited parking up there also. We believe that it's asbestos, lead, or something. But that's where we ran into problems with the community, because we were demoing what the community felt. And then the heritage, the local history, it's not commissioned anyway, the history group came in and said, historic history group came in and said, oh, hold this. That's the old Palmer Pharmacy. And you should not be tearing that down. Because that was a first African-American, that was the only African-American pharmacy in the area. And that's where they came as well as community to us to say, please do not tear this down. Council Member Brown, would you like to help me? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, CAO. I think you summed it up pretty good. We've been working with this neighborhood and other community partners about this space for a long time. The criticism, when we talked about demoing this building, somebody from the neighborhood at one of the community meetings that we had brought up the fact that we as a city was willing to invest over $300,000 in the People's Bank building, which is of the same era as this building. So they were making the case that if we as a council were willing to invest that kind of money into that project, why wouldn't we do the same for a similar project that would have more community benefit in a neighborhood that needs that type of investment? And with that point being made, there was, you know, the demolition conversation was over. Another estimate that we've had, we've had the urban look at this building. We've had the housing authority look at this building. The Housing Authority actually spent some money and had two assessments done. They did an assessment on remediating the building and redeveloping it, and they also had an assessment done on demolishing the building and building back new. You couldn't create any additional parking spaces. Either way, the parking situation is what it is, and actually the costs for doing both were pretty similar. you're going to spend about the same money remediating and redeveloping as you would demoing and building back new. So I think, you know, one of our best paths forward, because we have a ton of properties that the city is responsible for, our best path forward, I believe, is that we put some money towards remediating this building and getting a community to take control of the site and provide services that will best benefit that neighborhood. And that's what we heard from the neighbors when we had the community meetings, and that's what we continue to hear on a daily basis about this building and that corner in this neighborhood. So thank you. Thank you. I appreciate what you're trying to do, Council Member Brown, but boy, do I see this. I guess maybe my real estate hat's coming on as not a great business decision. Again, you don't have any parking. this this building's going to cost you a lot more than 450 when you start it i mean anytime you have to deal with an old building that's got asbestos and lead and you know you're going to find issues with the sewer um you know electrical it's it's all going to be there and i think you all know that and is there no other and i understand the historical component yeah but is there no other option as far as a location of another building that may be a better usage because this is also small too it's what almost only 4 000 square feet is have they looked at that anything else in that area that could provide the same kind of services well we have other facilities in that neighborhood but i will say i mean this building is location location location it's right in the middle of this neighborhood and you know the other part of this conversation is gentrification i mean it it you know, it's the city has a, I believe the city has a responsibility not to be complicit to gentrification. And if we have an opportunity to invest in this building and in this neighborhood, I think we take the, take that opportunity to do it. Or, you know, I think we set ourselves, set ourselves up to be complicit to displacement. If we don't do something to help this building be an asset in that neighborhood, in that community. Well, I guess we just can agree to disagree at this point. I didn't support the People's Bank either because I thought that also was a bad business decision. We own so many properties as the government. We end up, you know, the maintenance issues and it just goes on and on. We always try to diversify a little bit and we don't end up doing that. We end up buying and then we, how do we take care of them? And we've got so many buildings in that situation right now. But I appreciate what you're trying to do. I understand the need for the services. No question that area needs that kind of help. But I just don't like the building. I just think it's not a good business move. That's all. I don't think our intent is to keep the building. I said I don't think our intent is to keep the building. Our intent is this would be a one-time cost to help get that building in the hands of somebody that provides the services and that they can continue with the ongoing upkeep cost of that facility. Okay. Thank you, Council Member. That's all, Mayor. Good discussion. In the end, we own it. Next is Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Mayor. I have some questions, and I don't know if it needs to be Commissioner O'Mara or Ms. Feacher, but they're really about, I'm trying to get my head around the movement of this money. And my underlying question is really, is any of the money that is going to be reimbursable, is that already included in what we have approved as fiscal year 20 money or fiscal year 21 budgeted money? That is, if we've already spent the money, and this is reimbursement for it, are we building a fund balance for fiscal year 20 with some of this money? Or help me understand, kind of... Can I add a little bit of detail before I pass it over to Commissioner Romero? which is the $865,000 from application number one that was already approved are costs that we've already incurred. And so we submitted receipts for those items as we submitted the application. I'm sorry, Brandy. My question was, was that expenditure already included either in fiscal year 20 budget or fiscal year 21 budget? Vice Mayor, it's a good question. The $860,000 was captured. There was money that was actually spent and captured as grant reimbursable. reimbursable. If we do not use part of this allocation back to us to pay for that, then it has to be recorded as an FY20 expense and will be an additional expense that we record when we close the books. The $2.2 million, which is on the last slide, is our projection of how much direct costs will incur in FY21, which we have no budget to cover at this point. Okay, and then the proposal to use some of this $15 million for these specific projects. Again, is any of that already covered or is it all projected costs? These are all one-time projected programs that would be in addition to the FY21 budget. Okay. so I think I understand but it's the way that the money is moving around I find complicated and difficult to understand but so the six million plus that we took out of the economic contingency fund that's all going back into the economic contingency fund Is that correct? So that will essentially drop down what we have taken out from the 20 million back down to the 13 million something. That's correct. That's correct. Okay. I guess just one other comment and that is we're having proposals for expenditures that are coming in a way that I find difficult to basically, well, not difficult to support, But it seems to me when we passed that resolution to put the money back in to the budget stabilization fund, that what we were intending to do was get that money back in and then compare the interest in various and sundry ways to spend that money as if we were dealing with a fund balance. instead what i'm experiencing is that we're getting specific proposals and i've tried my best to kind of explain my concern when we're doing ad hoc budgeting that is trying to say this is useful as a standalone project this is useful as a standalone project as opposed to we have a part of money, what are the possible uses and how do they compare to each other so that we can make a judgment about the best use of that money? So I don't object to anything that's been proposed. They look to me like they're all good uses. My concern is we don't know what else we or anybody else might propose for the use of some of that money. It's the way it's proposed. I'm sorry, I just blanked myself out of my computer. I guess you could still see me. In any event, that's my underlying concern, is that we're not able to actually compare apples and apples and apples. We're looking at specific proposals for the use of the money, all of which is good. So for the moment, I'll leave it at that. I may want to get back in. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Brandi. You're welcome. Thank you. Councilmember Fred Brown. Okay. I'm on. Thank you, Mayor. Go back to the slide on the proposed plan for allocating additional funds. I think it was the original packet had $7,475,000, but you took a million out of that. Yes. I think I'm in agreement a little bit with the vice mayor here. This $6,475,000 that we've got here, proposed plan, I think it might be premature in the fact that we're into the budget year of 21, and we're saying that this money here is additional expenditures that would raise the 21 budget. Is that Bill O'Mara may be able to answer that. Is this 6.6 million plus? Does this raise the 21 budget by that amount? Yes, sir. It would. It does. Okay. All right. Now, regardless of where it comes from, it's increasing that budget by 6.475. We need to go in there and address the budget again, because there's also several areas in the budget, I think, that we're saving some money. And I'd like to find out where our true fund balance is before we start spending money. I have no problem that we need to put it back in the contingency fund and the stabilization. But I say this because not that these aren't worthy for additional funds, but we still are, when we look at the 21 budget, there was a lot of other things that we cut drastically. and public safety was cut from capital items drastically and so was paving allocation was cut drastically and those things are going to come back to haunt us if we don't try to put a little bit more money in there if we do have the money so you know I think there's a balancing factor here of the fund balance and what our budget is for 21. So I'm a little bit confused and I know budgeting pretty well, but I'm confused to the fact of what we are doing to the fiscal year 21 budget. And I really think that we need to address that. I think it's this proposal that you have here, maybe it should go to the budget committee and then we get some updated numbers through September before we start spending any of this money because we really don't know what our effect is down the road. We're still subject to what our revenues coming in are going to be like. We all know that they're not going to come in like they should, but the fact of it is, I think it's just premature and I would like for it to go further. I mean, we can address this and get a little bit more idea on how we want to spend this extra money because these are extra programs. That's the way I view them. That's all I had. Thank you. Thank you. And I'd like to just say one thing which I should have said in the beginning. The committee that was made up of people throughout the administration felt very strongly that we needed to help our community now. And there are many people suffering. And that is why the household assistance and the homeless emergency shelters are in there. Just to explain that a little bit, because we feel we'll be going way through the winter. I was just trying to explain the thinking about giving to the community. Since you explained that, let me explain my position. The community, we really can't put a number on what you're talking about because a lot of people are getting unemployment insurance. They're getting so much in unemployment insurance with the federal adjustment that people don't want to go back to work. Some of them don't. But where are you getting the statistics that we have a lot of people in our community that are on, that can't, can't make the rent or can't buy their food. We need, we need to have some stats on that. Some, some, before we start putting all this money in, because the state and federal government has already allocated a lot of money and they're talking about giving the cities and local governments more money even in the future. So I have to rebut you a little bit on that mayor because I don't think you had the statistics. Yes, you're absolutely right. As I said previously, our staff continues to coordinate with other community partners to determine the exact need. You are right. We do not know the exact need, but we are working with many partners to find it out. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Okay, Councilmember Worley. Thank you, Mayor. I had some similar concerns and questions as the Vice Mayor and Councilman Fred Brown just raised. But I guess I first want to, in the initial reimbursement CARES Act money that we received was $9 million, give or take, a little short of $9 million. So $6.4 million we put directly back to the economic contingency. So that other $1.6 plus or minus million, is that part of what the numbers in this proposal, or is that still sitting out there in some other fashion? You voted to put the rest in the budget stabilization fund from that first application. Okay, so that's where that, okay, I'm with you on that. Okay, so that was my only point of clarification. I tend to agree with the Vice Mayor and Council Member Fred Brown. I think that these are all worthy ideas and great proposals, but I think that we just need to, we need to talk that through a little bit more. We may have issues, expenditures that were left out of the 21 budget that we would like to revisit. And some of these items we may really be excited about. I think that the tenant, Mayor, I appreciate your call over the weekend, the tenant help and utilities and rent. I think I agree with you. I think it's needed. It's out there. But that program is still so much in its infancy of what you're developing. I think it might be better to know exactly what kind of numbers we're looking at and and and the exact kind of programs that we're looking at. And I think that could all be hashed out very quickly in the budget, finance and economic development committee. So I think that's. I think when we don't even have money in the bank yet, we're anticipating it coming. But I think we should maybe take a little bit slower look at this. And I would support these ideas going to the budget and finance economic development committee, though I appreciate all of these proposals. I think they're great proposals and we do need to act quickly. But but sometimes the we need to take just a bit more just a bit more time. So thank you. Thank you. And that was our hope that you would look at them in committee. Council member James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. And I agree with the past few council members comments. I think what's kind of somewhat confusing about the whole presentation is it's we're talking about prioritizing funding that we haven't received yet. And I think that's kind of where it kind of gets gets off, gets off kilter. But I do think that you've laid out a good plan and have prioritized some quality initiatives that we need to consider funding, especially the tenant services piece. I would contend that I think either the lion's share, if not all of that funding needs to be allocated towards rent, just because I think that's going to be one of the biggest things that we're going to have to address as far as displacement when we talk about some of these tenants and their concerns and what keeps them up at night right now during this pandemic. I don't know if it needs to be a motion made, but if we're going to discuss this in the budget and finance committee, it would be good if either the grant department and social services, maybe as well as finance, get together and help develop a plan on how that money can be dispersed, whether we keep it internally and disperse it or whether we partner with other agencies that have those mechanisms already in place. But I think that's the one that, in my opinion, is the first is the it's on the top of your list and it's on the top of my list as well. So I think we need to try to get that program up and running and get those service, get those funds, the people that need it, need it the most. And then I think everything else on this list is something well considering. And I know council members may have other items to add to this list, but I think that's something that we can flush out once we start having these conversations about making the best use of this funding while it's available. So thank you, Mayor. And does that need to be a motion to ask those three departments to get together and have a plan presented to us? Well, it could be, although, you know, I think they've already been talking about this and we don't really believe we have the in-house capability. This is similar to the council's $2.5 million small business assistance. We didn't have the capability in-house to do that program. so they've already been discussing it. I think that before they spend a lot of time on it, they would like to know that the council is dedicated to it, so if you know what I mean. If they're going to spend a lot of time on a program fleshing it out, but then the council votes not to do it, we might need to do it in reverse. Yeah, and from what I heard, I think most council members are in support of it. And I know, I guess I just heard today that HUD has signed off on that first $500,000 residential assistance money that we have. And I think we're going to disperse that in-house. So maybe if we discuss it, maybe it's chunks. Maybe we put $500,000 at a time or a million at a time. And I guess it could be something that we consider doing in-house. And, you know, and I've talked to Tyler about another component to this whole thing to make sure that the money gets to where it needs to get. It may be a registry program that we might want to look at. And that's why I mentioned finance. So I guess I could put that item in committee and ask them to report to the committee about what that program could look like. So if it's appropriate, I'll make a motion that we hear from Grant Social Services and Finance about what a residential assistance program could look like administered from LFUCG. So move. Second. Mr. Member Farmer seconds. Are there any questions? All right. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Okay. That motion passes. unanimously and that's budget and finance committee uh thank you mayor thank you um council member kathy pluman thank you mayor i just wanted to to make a comment and reference back to the fifth chestnut building if you remember we did put into budget meeting council member blood say um the assessment of lfucg owned property for potential revenue and cost saving opportunities and that did go into the budget committee and so we are going to be looking at that because I know a couple people mentioned we own quite a few things and we really need to do an assessment on that and then just so this might be a little redundant on the household assistance program I'm glad it's there you know I think things change every day we everything is evolving every day so are we going to have the answers on that or the process on that right now no but I think as we move forward as a community we're going to be able to see that that happen and we can put some definition on it and some process, but I do believe it'll keep changing. A lot of our community partners will be in that loop because they need to be. And you might want to look at other cities and see what they're doing to kind of get a hold on that. But I'm glad it's there. It needs to be there. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say two things. One, while I appreciate the reference to People's Bank, not all of us supported that initiative. In fact, I voted no on that and did not think it was the best use of public dollars, and I wasn't the only one. So I think we have to be wise, and I think your point about that the particular nature of that building is important, and it is a public safety issue as well as cleaning it up. So I'm supportive of the issue, and I guess what I would just say is I can make a commitment at the August 25th budget meeting to have a full discussion, not only of all of these items, but also the ones that Council Member Lamb's committee put in there this morning, which I think would be appropriate for us to look at all of them, including those issues that Council Members would like to put in and address as well. So I was going to wait until everyone had a chance to comment, but maybe I'll just make the motion. You can comment on my motion if you don't mind. That might be easier to put all of these recommendations into the budget and finance and Development Committee for discussion. Do I hear a second? Second. I think I heard Councilmember Farmer? McCurn? Councilmember McCurn? Is there discussion on the motion? Councilmember Fred Brown, then Councilmember Maloney, then Councilmember Lamb. We'll get to everybody. Well, I hate to throw water on this, but that's a tremendous budget committee meeting you're going to have. That looks like it might be an all-day budget committee meeting. I think you need to narrow that down a little bit. There's an awful lot of information there that has to come forward, and August 25th is not that far away, and does the administration have time to do part of that that Council Member Brown just put in the committee? so I you know you need to address some detail on this thing or we're going to have a six or eight hour meeting that's my thought we can cancel work session that day but uh council member I've been in the budget meetings before and it's two hours on one subject and so you all taking a grain of salt there. Okay. That's a good point. Council Member Bledsoe, is that also the day that the administration is giving you the revenue update, which will be a long conversation? Yes, ma'am. And so I only say that to August 25th to say that I think it's important we have it sooner than later. And so if it pleases the administration, we could have a special budget meeting if you would like. If we need more time or have an extended budget meeting, I will leave that to maybe discussion between the administration and vice mayor k i'll do whatever we need to do to make sure those things happen because i think that the update is very important and critical to understanding why we might make those decisions moving forward so um i appreciate that very much um i do think councilmember brown is correct that's a few hours of of discussions plus the revenue update, which is going to be really important. So, Vice Mayor, would you be willing to talk with the administration and Council Member Bledsoe about how to, I mean, you could have, like you said, Council Member Bledsoe, a special meeting also. Yeah, I think we can work that out. Okay. I also wanted to talk to the amendment after you get everybody else. I mean, to the motion. The motion. Okay. So we got Fred Brown. We have Richard, Councilmember Richard Maloney was next. Thank you, Mayor. I'm waiting for the report on how much money we have. I think this discussion we have here should be later. And to me, before we had the pandemic, we had a $22 million shortfall. We were all worried about next year, how we were going to fix it. Where we had the pandemic, We couldn't talk about how we were going to fix the $22 million. And then on top of that, we ended up getting in the $30s and $40s, $50 million or whatever. And now we're getting this money coming in. The way I see it is, Washington has sent a message saying, we know that you all have been doing extra work for the coronavirus. We think it's going to hurt you down the road. So we want to recruit those costs for your police and fire and those folks. So when the time comes down the next three, four months, five months or whatever, you will have some of your money to recoup those costs that you had to use during the month of March all the way up to now. So I'm not and then to talk about putting everything in that committee, I am not in favor of some of the conversations that we have and I like the program. but this is one-time money folks we can't be given programs they're going to have to come back and ask for more money this is one-time money and this is not what that i believe that washington sent this money just to do is make up new programs and do this i think they basically wanted to help us and send a sign and i don't think we're on the right track of what we're supposed to do and i want to wait till these real numbers come in and see where we are and then look at these kind of saying because to me, I think we're going to need all the money back into the rainy day farm because, like I said, the worst is yet to come. And I just saw a report today that the numbers are spiking again everywhere and the numbers are not good here in Kentucky. So they're not very happy with it. So with school being back in, with all this going on, I don't think we should be spending money around. And Mayor, I kind of comment about you saying you want to help the folks that are having a tough time paying the rent. And I did hear the president, Trump, say that he's going to help those who are being evicted and those to help them through these times. So I just want to hear what everything is put together before we start spending any money, because I don't want to see us spend money that the state and federal government may already be spending on. And we're just sitting here until we get a hold of this. What I find that situation is, I think we should wait. So I do not support anything until we hear real numbers. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see. Council Member Bledsoe. Are you still on? Okay. Council Member Farmer. Oh, I'm sorry. Wait a minute. I'm on to the blue hands. Hang on. We're still talking about the motion. Council Member Lamb was up and Vice Mayor Kay, I believe. Okay. Council Member Lamb. Thank you. I have a clarification for all of this discussion that does the administration, is the administration in the belief that Resolution 269-2020 states out that only the 9.371-076 is what was discussed or for putting back into the budget stabilization? Well, the CAO ran to the podium, so I'll let her take that one. Because the reason I'm saying this is because, and I could be wrong, but I'm reading this resolution heading, and it specifically says in the heading, and after it talks about the $6.4 million, in authorizing and directing the allocation of an amount equal to any additional funds received into the general fund, referring to any of the reimbursements into the budget stabilization, with the council to discuss potential uses of the reserve funds, these reserve funds on at least a quarterly basis. CAO Hamilton, you're muted. We read that very carefully and we agree with what you just said. I sent you all an email and told you that we had gotten the first amount of money in. And I told you that we put the 6.4 back into economic contingency and the rest of it went to budget stabilization. Every reimbursement that we get back from the state, according to that thing, goes into budget stabilization. so remember the money that we talked about here before that we spent eight hundred thirty five thousand dollars or whatever it was that is not that's not been taken out we can't do that we would have to present to you all a budget a budget amendment to take that out of budget stabilization and and i checked 12 times to say this money better have gone in to economic contingency fund and to budget stabilization and not anywhere else and that's where it went and that's okay supposed to go so any and and is it your interpretation that any money above and beyond the 9.3 also would go into the budget stabilization we get back to the state goes into budget stabilization. We don't have the authority to put any more in economic contingency. That says just 6.4. Everything goes to budget stabilization. Okay. Thank you so much for this clarification. Any of that without your approval. Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much. That was my clarification. Thank you very much, ma'am. That's where it would be held. and so you're absolutely right. Now Vice Mayor Kay is next. Thank you Mayor. At the risk of further complicating what is already complicated I guess my comment let me start by saying my understanding is that there are about 1700 of our citizens, residents of this community, who face eviction right now, now that the moratorium has been lifted. And the impact of that, it's hard to imagine. We are going to have a serious problem. One of the things I learned, kind of the hard way from working on homelessness and affordable housing is that there are moments when if you intervene effectively, you prevent a lot of economic and human misery. And that's what we're facing. I don't have the data. I don't know how bad it's going to be in total. But I believe that what we all should, if we don't know, we should know that there's going to be a lot of people and a lot of hurt immediately. And so I'm going to make a motion to amend this, the motion that's on the floor. And this reflects in part, Mayor, your comment about your administration really needing some assurance that there's going to be some money if they want to start working on this. I would take the $3 million and move that directly onto our docket. for approval and get the work started on figuring out how that money can best be used. There are people presently in need. There are going to be many more. So that's my motion. I would amend the motion and take all the rest of that and put it in the Budget and Finance Committee, but take the $3 million and earmark that maybe up to $3 million to begin the work on the household assistance program. So moved. Second. Council member Swanson seconds that. So now let's have a conversation about the amendment only. And this is getting a little tricky. This is going to have to be by real hands because the blue hands are still on for questions. So if you'll put your hand up if you have a question and I'll get to you on the amendment. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. And I, you know, I plan to support the motion. I guess my question is there's not $3 million available. Is that correct? That's correct. So should it be amended to reflect how much fund is available. And I guess we can continue to have the conversation about adding more funds to it later. CAO wants to answer this one. Oops, you're muted. Oh, don't answer. This would have to come out of the budget stabilization. Yes, it would. I mean, we have money there right now. Okay. Okay, well, that makes it clear. to me. Thank you. Now, who else would like to speak to the amendment? Commissioner O'Mara, did you want to answer something or are you just on for all the questions? Well, actually, a clarification if I could, Mayor. Currently, we have budgeted $2 million of the budget stabilization to be used in 20 and 9.4 of it to be used in 21. So theoretically, the only balance available is the 1.906 that we deposited from this first reimbursement. Now, when we get the rest of it, which we should in two or three weeks, there will be additional funds. But as of today, budget wise the balance is 1.9 million. Okay that's a good point so perhaps yes may I modify my my amendment and have it reflect take that 1.9 not 3 million to get started. Okay there's no objection. Okay next up was I think I saw Councilmember Lamb and then Councilmember Maloney. Now, Commissioner Amara took care of it for me because I agreed with what he just said. I'm good. Councilmember Maloney. Thank you, Mayor. Bill brought a good point up. It's going to take a while for us to figure out how we're going to do this. I have to commend Tyrone and the chamber for the, and Preston Worley, I mean, well, what y'all have done, and Amanda, this thing's working well, but we have to go outside and find somebody. Housing's a whole different animal when you've got all these non-profits, so it's going to take three, two to three, four weeks before we can find somebody to do this, so I would recommend just wait till we finally find somebody, and then bring back the whole three million dollars if the thing comes in and do it at one time and make it clean slate instead of just going and taking 1.9 here and come back and do it again because it's going to take three weeks guys this is going to take a while to find the right group to put this together because tyrone and i mean i mean council member blusso and i said in the committee the other day and it it's going good but it's it it's a lot of people coming in and it's got it's going to be hard to do so we'll find somebody with house and 300,000. I mean, three minutes is going to be interesting. And I would soon just wait a couple of weeks until we find the money coming in and then come back and do this. I'm just making it, but still go ahead and find somebody who's willing to do it. Thank you. As I said before, our staff is already looking for partners in the community. Councilmember Massadi and then Councilmember Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. I'm a little confused. Councilmember Maloney was talking about the specific program with Councilmember Bledsoe and Worley. This is not the same program. This is something completely different, isn't it? This is housing, correct? Okay, that's what I wanted the clarification. And if your staff has been talking about this and feel this is necessary, and the Vice Mayor stated we've got 1,700 families that are facing an eviction. We need to do this now. You know, we wait for three weeks. It's going to be three weeks too late. That's just my feeling. Thank you. Thank you. Next was Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. So this is on the Vice Mayor's motion to amend, right? Yes, sir. Thank you. In the same way that when you gave us the budget, your proposed budget we took it we looked at it we made some positive changes to it we passed it it worked fine i think this is another example of that you've given us given us some fine suggestions today and i think we need to take the time to to look them over and to to bet them and then make the best decision so for for the reasons of doing this in an orderly fashion i will vote against the vice mayor's motion because i think the motion which we're still trying to debate underneath all of this to plant all this in committee on the 25th or around the 25th is what what we should still do we can't forget the fact that we are a deliberative body and we have been robbed of the ability to have deliberation or conversation so yes this could be a long meeting i don't consider it would be contentious at all but i think it's important for us to get the whole group of things together rather than try to we're trying to punch too many buttons at lunch in so many areas. This requires a little more time, a little more attention, but I don't see the haste with which the vice mayor is wanting to move forward on this part of this issue right now, so I won't vote against that. Thank you. Thank you. Now, is there any other council member, okay, to the amendment? Council Member Worley. Thank you, Mayor. So, I appreciate what the vice mayor is trying to do here. And I can't with a straight face say, if I support this program, that we should wait until we figure it all out until we fund it, because I did make a similar argument with the economic contingency, with the local stimulus package that we put together, that give us the money and let us figure it out because time is of the essence. And so I have to stick to the same argument. That being said, and I hate to do this to the administration, what the administration and you, my colleagues, did to Council Member Bledsoe and I, but I think it's okay. We'll approve it, but contingent upon being satisfied with the details of the program when it comes back. And then Council Member Bledsoe and I spent the next month working almost tirelessly all day long to bring you those. And so if, Mayor, if your administration requires some assurances before they're willing to put the work in, then I'm willing to support saying that we would support this program contingent on being satisfied. And so I would move to amend the amendment with that money to say that we will address that $1.9 million and it can be allocated to this program contingent on council being satisfied with the program once presented at the budget finance and economic development committee. So moved. I second that. Vice mayor seconded. Okay. So let me be sure I understand the amendment to the amendment that $1.9 million would be put to the household assistance programs along with and contingent upon a plan. Is that basically what you said? Yes, ma'am. That plan to be good. And I know there was a lot of work went in onto the local stimulus plan. And I know that Kevin in my office and Tyrone and you too, Council Member Bledsoe, Worley, it was a lot of work, but it's working. So now, okay, folks, if you'd like to speak to the new amendment, that's what we'll be talking about right now. Please raise your hand if you want to speak to this most recent amendment, which is to put $1.9 million into household assistance contingent upon having a plan. and my administration's committed to being sure that there is a good plan in place. Okay. Council members, no comments? All right. Well, let's vote on something. All those in favor of this amendment, please raise your hand. And I'm going to need to count. One. 13, all those opposed. And two, no votes. So the amendment to the amendment passes. And I believe, Vice Mayor, your amendment was to put $3 million in for the household assistance. So I think, in essence, your amendment is changed. yes i i thought i could just modify that yes to 1.9 yes so that would be now the the the motion to amend would be to want to allocate 1.9 yes subject to everything having a good having a plan okay now does anyone wish to speak to the amendment all right all those in favor Fred Councilmember Brown did you want to speak to this amendment you're muted I'm sorry okay just a thought there I'm opposed to it because of everything I've said before that we're moving too fast on these things but the number you threw out as 1700 people going to be evicted. Where do you draw that at? I mean, what's the substance there? I haven't heard that number. And I know you're a consultant and you deal with that stuff. But how can I trust that number? Where's all the stats at? So it's obviously not a hard and firm number. It is a, but I think it's a very reliable estimate that was put out by the eviction, the special ad hoc committee that Art Cosby put together to work on the question of evictions. and they've been getting requests. And the last time I looked at their information, they were up around 1,700 people who were facing eviction once the moratorium was over, and it's over. The moratorium on evictions is over. Not according to an order by the president. I'm sorry, but two things about that. The most important one is that applies only to people who are in government subsidized housing. Oh, okay. I'm not aware of that. Somebody else, they're on their own. I wasn't aware of that. I thought it was going all the way through the end of the year. Yeah, I won't add any more. Obviously, you've got more information than I have. I haven't seen anything in writing, and I'd like to get a little bit of background. But anyway, I just wanted to question that. Thank you. Thank you. Who else would like to speak to the amendment? Will you raise your hand, please? No. OK, let's vote then. The motion is to put one point nine million. And I think we're still this is still an amendment, correct? It changed your amendment. Okay. 1.9 million to household assistance programs contingent upon a plan in place. All those in favor, please raise your hand. 13 all those opposed and there are two no votes thank you very much that passes now we have a real motion on the floor that's been amended and um are there any comments or questions about the motion on the floor council member warley thank you mayor since we've been going around I just want to make sure that we are clear on the motion on the floor. Councilman James Brown's original motion was to place all these items in the Budget, Finance, and Economic Development Committee. That was then amended to pull out 1.9, contingent, amended again, contingent upon approval of a program by Council's Budget, Finance, and Economic Development Committee. So that's how I understand the motion. I want to make sure that that's clear and that my colleagues agree. Yes, thank you for clarifying that. uh council member james brown yes ma'am that was actually council member bledsoe's motion oh yes it was but but the essence is the true truth of it i think yes i gave to you and give it to council member bledsoe okay uh council member farmer to the motion hopefully so everything besides the 1.9 will still be under some sort of consideration or budget finance. Is that correct? That is the essence of the motion. Everything else will go into budget and finance. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Who else would like to speak to the motion? Council member Maloney. I'll probably vote against this, but I do support the 1.9 million. I do not support bringing all these non-profits in there. And if they're going to use their money for salaries, if it's a one, this is one-time money. And I just don't want to continue to give money to first-time programs and ongoing programs. So I probably want to support this motion. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Anyone else wish to speak to the motion? Council Member Reynolds? Just to clarify, based on what Council Member Maloney said, this is one-time money going to one-time expenses because of COVID, upped homelessness and need for assistance. That's correct. That's correct. Other questions or comments on the motion? All right, let's vote on the final motion which is to put all of these items except 1.9 million dollars for household assistance programs into the budget and finance committee and economic development committee. All those in favor please raise your hand. 13, 14. Anyone opposed? We have one no vote. All right. Thank you very much. Now, we are still on questions. If you remember what your questions were, Council Member Bledsoe, you're up next on the presentation. No? I'm sorry, the presentation for what? The one that we just gave you. I don't have any questions. No, ma'am. Okay, we got off on the proposals, but we were also having questions. I'm sorry. That's all right. So I have a number of people who have blue hands up for other questions on the presentation. Councilmember Reynolds, did you have a different question on the presentation? Yes, we're going to put it into committee, but if there is a quick answer to this, then I'll go ahead and ask. On the opioid, $100,000 for the opioid program, can you be a little more specific as to exactly how that money is being used? I mean, I can just say that I'm having a lot of issues in an area of my district with substance abuse. And I'm just curious as to how this money is being used. We all know that the heroin overdoses and the opioid overdoses have risen dramatically during COVID. And one of the things that we've been working on before COVID was getting a group up and running to tackle the opioid epidemic, really. And so that would be money that would go toward working with partners in the community to support their work with substance use disorders. And it would dovetail with what UK is doing with their HEALS grant. Okay, I guess that helps you. Yeah, I guess if we put that in committee, I'd like to know a little bit more about that. because I think as a whole, you know, substance abuse is huge in the city and drives a lot of our crime. And I'm just curious as to how that $100,000 would be used to attack that ginormous issue. Yes, great. Thank you. And the last on my list is Council Member Maloney. I just want to go back to Ohio Street. that project. I followed for many years. I've watched what's happened over there. And to me, we're asking for the $1.9 million to proposal bring back to the council on what we're going to do with that $1.9 million. I have a hard time spending money on that project. I just don't like the city being landlords. We're probably the worst landlords in Luttonston because look at our buildings now, they're falling apart. But I think we should have a plan in there. And I've always been, as everybody knows, I'm a big community police. I think this would be a great location if we, and I know you don't want to tear it down, but if we did tear it down, you put a police sector, a community police sector there. As I read the reports and hear the complaints, and one of the things that y'all want to do is bring police back and know the neighborhoods, this would be a great area. This is just an idea. There's probably millions of ideas, but I just want to hear an idea before I spend any dollars on any buildings right now. That's just my opinion. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Lamb. Thank you. And I know I had two big presentations during the committee today, and I know I had sent out an email talking about the money for the mental health court for both the juvenile, and we had great conversation and I appreciated that and the questions and the the points uh that were made during committee but I just I wanted to make one more statement you know through all of this um this summer break so to speak um you know I'm sure like my most of my like all of my colleagues and the mayor both all that uh I have been trying to think about how that that um with with all of the police issues that have been going on in the community with all the discussions. And I know that a lot of our police and our fire through the paramedicine program, you know, they've been dealing with a lot of mental health issues and addiction issues. And I guess I want to just channel and tell where my focus is going that it does relate to police, because if we can help with the programming that's going to help with the mental health, both with adults and youth in the community, that in, in essence, it's going to help the police and with their patrol and the issues they have in the community and their focus won't have to be as much on that problem. And they will be able to focus more on community is my thought behind this. And I know Mayor Gorton, you have championship, the idea of problem solving and root causes and, you know, of opioid addiction, addiction, which is what led me to look at this with the mental health issues, because it's in the same manner as for what the same reasons that I want us to think about what kind of systemic changes can we make in the community that are going to be long changing. And I know there's a lot of conversation about one time money. And I know I want my colleagues to remember that when we do discuss this in committee, which I'm looking forward to it, that I'm not saying this is recurring. This is to get the juvenile treatment court to going, to move them forward so that they can, because they're raising funds. And as far as the adult mental health court after care, I want to say that we're going to look, hopefully they'll find money through the state. you know that we talked about Judge Mary Noble is being over in the in Frankfurt now so I think there's some opportunity there for some discussions anyway I just wanted to end with I appreciated everybody paying attention listening and hearing the wonderful discussions as the presentations were in committee I think they're exactly a big part of where we need to focus for mental health issues in our community, which I think will definitely directly affect, lead to positive outcomes for the police and what they deal with on a daily basis. And so I look forward to the conversations in the Budget, Finance, and Economic Development Committee and appreciate all the dialogue today, at least most of it. So thank you. Thank you very much. I do not have anyone else who wishes to ask questions about the presentation. So we will move right on to council reports. And Council Member Higgins-Hord, this is the time when council members announce things, make comments, whatever you want to say that's pertinent. So first up is Council Member Bill Farmer. I'm first. I can't believe it. This seems more like Groundhog Day than a meeting. I don't know. I've sent an email out earlier trying to encourage the discussion about the style of our meeting and how we might meet differently. We had had one practice hybrid meeting before we had gone on our recess. I would just merely like to have another practice meeting to see if we can get into a mode where some of us could be there and some of us could remain at home. So I don't know. That's just a request I would like to make because I think there's a great deal of good that can come from us being there and having the citizenry see us do our work. I'm not trying to avoid or evade anybody's recommendations or anybody's protocol here. But if we can have a Kentucky Derby, I think a group of us can meet and do local governance. So I would like to have another hybrid meeting, see if we can iron it out, and then try to implement that on somewhat of a continuing basis. because I'm just tired of this meeting style, you all. I know it's what we have to do, but we have a beautiful council chamber. We do great work together. We have been totally deprived of that. I mean, coming down today for the announcement and the swearing in had some qualities of a family reunion because we hadn't seen each other for so long. And it was nice to be there. It was nice to take a little bit of a group picture and socially distance on that. So mine would be a request, not a demand, not a motion, just a request that we have another practice kind of a combo Zoom meeting and see if we can iron it out and make it work. Maybe we can't. I know that we can't plexiglass ourselves into this, and we can social distance ourselves and mask our way into it if we decide to. Beyond that, it is nice to have a new council member. It's nice to be back from recess. And it's nice to spend the afternoon with you all, yet not be with you yet again. But if we could just try to approach the opportunity of our leadership in a little bit more personal style, I think it would be beneficial to us and to the community. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Farmer, we'll ask Stacey Maynard to work with Chris Edwards and whoever needs to be in there to work on doing another practice meeting. that's wonderful thank you and i'm sorry now look at my notes i'm sorry uh-oh you had something else go ahead we need to say really nice things to uh monica conrad and all of her people and there was really kind of an unkind letter to the editor on the weekend about the condition of our our golf courses and i would just want to say as we're celebrating our first responders responders we're celebrating a lot of people in government who are doing the best job they can with a lot less. Going back to the whole discussion we had earlier about money and time and place, the golf courses look as good as they can look under the conditions that we have. The parks look as good as they can good be under the conditions we have. In the same way, we've asked each other to be patient in public and patient with ourselves and around it. Be patient with us as a government. We want everything to be more than just clean and green. We have committed to clean and green but we just have to have a little more elasticity about ourselves and so many things right now and the criticism I found to be a little little shallow because I know everybody at every golf course and every installation that parks has does their best work and the same is through the truth throughout government but I just want to make a comment so that they would know because I felt like it was unkind for the specificity of the negativity in that article. Thank you, Mayor. That's absolutely right, and they are doing a great job with what they have. Thank you. Council Member Swanson. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to start with the motion that we disable all comments and all Council Zoom sessions until IT proposes a secure way of certifying the identities of callers? Do I hear a second? Councilmember Farmer, did you second that? Okay. Is there any discussion? All right. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Okay. That is unanimous approval. I would add I would be happy to talk with the staff about some ideas I have about certifying identities of callers, but I think that's it. I'd also like to stress that we want citizens to contact us. We're unable to use this mechanism. We are all on email. We all have newsletters. We really want to hear from the citizens, but this mechanism, at least as it is such, as it is ordered now, doesn't work. I just want to stress that. I also want to give a big thank you to the Take Back Cheapside group for the work that they did and leading up to the action we took this evening. This is a symbolic action. And I think as I've been looking at the issues surrounding race and policing and civil rights, I've come to realize we need to do both symbolic and substantive actions. And we've done both. And I think the community should recognize that the action that we took to move quickly on helping stop evictions is a Black Lives Matter issue, is an issue of equity. And so I think it's important to recognize that throughout what we're doing as council, we're going to be doing both symbolic and substantive policy things at the same time, and they're intertwined. And so I'm proud to be a part of that process. And thank you to Take Back Cheap's Life for their work on it. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member McCurn. Thank you, Mayor. First, I just want to say it is good to be back. Five weeks is a long time. I'm going to see some friendly faces earlier on today down here. And I'll start off by saying Council Member Swanson, thank you for making that motion. You beat me to the punch. So I appreciate that very much. So I did want to send a thank you out to Take Back Sheepside as well. I appreciate them coming on, their work that they've done and their commentary for today. And last but not least, I wanted to welcome our newest council member, Council Member Higgins Ford. We are all here for you, a huge support. I know Councilmember Swanson joined the team just recently as well, and we're happy to have you. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Is Commissioner Armstrong still in the downstairs? I believe he is. Yeah. Commissioner, I just wanted to see if there was an update in regards to the police-involved shooting, officer involved shooting a couple weeks ago. I know I made a statement about requesting to make that body cam footage available as soon as possible. Do you have an update on that? Yes, sir, and I appreciate the question. As you know, the police department is also in full support of the release of the body cam footage from that evening. Police department has voiced its desire that the footage be released as soon as possible to find an accurate account of that night. However, like other departments, The Kentucky State Police, who is leading the investigation, has certain policies and procedures. They follow in conducting an investigation like this to ensure witness statements and or other evidence is not tainted. They also have specific guidelines. They provide law enforcement officers that they're providing the service to. However, I would say this. I have been advised that the investigation is progressing pretty quickly. And if all goes well, it should be concluded in the very near future. Okay. Yeah, I think to have that concluded would be appreciated. But, you know, I guess I'll continue to voice that, you know, we need to try to make that video available to the public as soon as possible. And it sounds like the police have the same request. As you know, Chief Weathers came out early and indicated that. We do need to be careful, though, that the police department and city government don't get viewed as possibly tainting the investigation in some way by putting pressure on the entity that's conducting that. So they continue to provide us that service in the future if it's needed. But I do agree with you. Okay. Thanks for the update. Thank you. Monica, is she still down there? I want to ask a question about, I know there was a meeting held with the coaches last week about youth football and parks canceling the season. I just want to make sure that we make it clear to those coaches and to those families that play park and rec football that we're still committed to that program and that we're just made the decision to cancel the season based off of the pandemic. You're on mute. Yes, Councilmember Brown, thank you for the question. We support, you know, football and the football program with Washington Parks and Recreation 110%. It's the health and safety of our kids, our coaches, and following those healthy at work guidelines that we continue to follow for all of our parks and recreation programs. At this time, football is just not in there. We can do some camps and clinics, but we look forward to having football back, just like many of our other programs with parks. Yeah, and I appreciate that. I think the health and safety of our families is our top priority. But I just thought it'd be good to get the message out to let folks know that we're committed to the sport. And this isn't just the first step in eliminating football, which impacts a lot of the families in the district that I represent. So I appreciate you making that statement. Absolutely. Thank you. And then also let me a real close. I hate to keep doing this every time I feel like we get together, but recognizing somebody that has passed. There's a friend of mine, Bruce Mundy, that always says that when an elder person passes in the community, another library closes its doors. and Miss Cora Briscoe, who is one of the folks that I, one of the very first people outside my immediate family I remember meeting, a very good close friend of my mother's. She was eulogized today. She's also the grandmother of former fire chief, Chief Jackson, passed and was laid the rest today, but she wasn't just a matriarch for her family. She was a matriarch for Lexington's Black community. That is a big family that has a lot of tentacles in reaching and positive impact in our community. And our prayers are with Chief Jackson and his family in this time. And then also, let me join in the parade with congratulating the new Council Member Lisa Higgins-Hord. We have worked together in your role at the UK on several initiatives. And I think you are more than prepared to fill those shoes in the 6th district and we'll do a great job being a council member and representing your constituents so congratulations on the appointment and anything I can do to help you in this role let me know. Thank you. Thank you Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Worley. Thank you Mayor. I want to follow up on a comment that Council Member Farmer made about the golf courses. And admittedly, I did not see the letter to the editor. I don't know exactly what those criticisms are that were made. I will say that I play our public golf courses at least once a week. You all know I'm a strong supporter of public golf, and particularly the 7th District's own Lakeside. And I think that our Parks and Rec folks, particularly our golf folks, are doing an outstanding job given the difficulties that they have with finances. But the courses, in my opinion, look good. They're playing good. And I commend their work. So I can't speak directly to those criticisms. But I have to say, as someone who plays those courses regularly, I'm impressed with the work that's being done. Then I also, another point that Councilman Farmer made earlier that I'd like to get some more information on in the future are the voting machines. You know, we spend a lot of money on new voting machines and we're in unprecedented times. And so this is certainly not a criticism of the county clerk. They worked, his office worked very diligently to create what they could out at Commonwealth Stadium. But I went to Commonwealth Stadium and very, very long lines, only two gates open, at times feeling more crowded and less socially distanced than I otherwise would have been comfortable. And so, and again, I don't mean that to be an outright criticism because I know he and his team spent a lot of time coming up with that plan. And in the circumstances may have been the best plan that we had. But given that it was on an item today that we discussed, I think that we would like to hear a little bit more about moving forward, how we tend to utilize these millions of dollars worth of voting machines that we put together. I think that would be beneficial. Then I would also like to welcome Council Member Higgins-Hord. Glad that you're here. Look forward to working with you on our end of town. The 6th and the 7th share a lot of neighbors. And I want to say, first, you did an outstanding job. Hard to have a zone change to put on the docket. It was a very close meeting. So you did a great job with that. And then I would say to you that I'm very, I'm sad that your very first meeting also involved the type of disgusting comments that came today. And, you know, there are some people that there is bigotry in the world, unfortunately. And there are some people that just simply like to watch things burn. And whatever the intent of those individuals, it was disgusting. but I would, to our credit, we continue to do our city's business undeterred. And so we win the day and they do not. So I was sad that we had to deal with that again. I'm glad that we have stopped public comment for the time being until we can figure out how not to have to endure that. But welcome, Council Member Higgins-Hord. And I'm sorry you had to deal with that today on your very first meeting. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Massadi. Thank you, Mayor, and also my welcome to Councilmember Higgins-Horde. Glad to have you with us and also fortunate to have her on my Breaking the Bronze Ceiling Committee, which I'm going to segue into. The ladies are here. If you've been on the corner of Mill and Vine, they are up and they are in the process now of getting the site prep all finished for the ceremony next Tuesday. It will be a virtual ceremony with some, as you all know, some invitees there at the ceremony itself. And unfortunately, the pandemic has caused us to have a limited number of attendees, but it still will be streamed. We'll have it on Lexington Government TV. We'll have it on Spectrum. We'll have it on Metronet Channel 3, and we'll have it on Windstream Channel 3. so everybody can join in with us on the ceremony. But they're really neat. If you haven't had a chance to take a look at them, they definitely make a statement. And by next Tuesday, the whole area will be finished. We'll have everything done, even the landscaping, we hope, if it doesn't rain, and they'll be ready to go. And then at 8 o'clock will be the ceremony at night because they will be lit. And I think that will give you a real feel of what this whole sculpture is about. But I'm excited. This has been a long process. It's been about two years. And I thank all of you for supporting this, because without you, we wouldn't have been able to get this off the ground. But hopefully you'll all be able to attend next Tuesday evening at eight. And I look forward to enjoying the evening with you. That's all, Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. I do want to welcome Councilmember Higgins-Hord. and it was so nice to connect with you today. Welcome, welcome. And I have a few things that I'm going to go through as quickly as I can. I wanted to echo Councilmember Farmer's comments. You all know I had sent out an email about us meeting in person. I have thought that that is important this whole time and that we do better work when we're together, even if we're distanced. So I look forward to that hybrid meeting. Hopefully it'll go better than last time and we can figure out a way to meet. Then I need to go back to my vote on new business. I meant to recuse myself from item S. I have a family member that works at access wellness. So I wanted to recuse myself for voting for that. So I apologize for that oversight. I wanted to also invite everyone this Friday and Saturday. I think you got an email invite, but to the public as well. Allegro Dance Project is going to have their 2020 Vision performance, and that performance goes to benefit their outreach to children and children with disabilities in the community. And so it's going to be a socially distanced performance, and they're going to limit, you know, how many people go in and make sure that it's safe. But we were talking earlier about Moondance, and I'm just thankful for that space. And it will be at eight o'clock on Saturday and Sunday. So if you all are interested, please go check that out and support a good cause. And then lastly, Gardenside has had the Lexington Farmers Market there at Gardenside Plaza every Wednesday. So that will go through August it might extend beyond that but every Wednesday from four to seven so tomorrow check it out I got the most delicious watermelon that I've had in a long time last week so please please head over there and get some goodies thank you thank you councilmember Floman thank you mayor just to follow up on councilmember Massadi we've been talking to each other about how We feel like we're joined at the hip, but this project's taken a life of its own. But it really has been an exciting journey. We have 15 members on our steering committee. It was mentioned that Council Member Higgins Ward is on there. But we've been working on this now for two years plus, and the culmination, again, will be Tuesday night. We do need to know from each of you if you are or not attending. And the reason being with the 50 cap on that, and that includes our media, as you say, no, we have a waiting list of bringing folks in. So we do need to know as soon as possible. And the program's going to be pretty cool. Of course, the governor and the lieutenant governor, the mayor, Jim Gray will be coming back. We've got the national president of the League of Women Voters who will be on tape or artists. but it'll be a great festive night and we might even have a bottle of champagne afterwards for our steering committee but I wanted to let you know about that. Also good news, drum roll, good news and we've been working on this and that news is that we are going to have a dog park in Veterans Park. It's actually Susan, Council Member Lambeau kind of shared that but this dog park will be in in the 12th district of the park we will have brought in a private donor and as a result of finding different pockets of money I had some from my capital council member Ellinger was nice enough the league of not the league the friends of the dog park stepped up so we needed parking spaces and we now have enough money to buy or purchase 12 paved parking spaces for the dog park. So that's exciting because that park, that part of town didn't have one. And I remember going to a neighborhood meeting and mentioning that and there was applause. I mean, it was like a big deal. So I wanted to share that with you. And Lisa and I, Lisa Higgins-Hord, Council Member Lisa Higgins-Hord, and I've worked together on many, many projects over the past 20 years. And I've seen her in action. She will be an excellent council member. She's a smart woman. She's got a lot of resources out there, and she's also my next-door neighbor on our office floor, and our districts are next-door neighbors, too. So welcome aboard, Lisa, and we'll get some more work together we can do. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Bledsoe? Thank you, Mayor. I'll be very fast. I just wanted to quickly give an update on the Economic Development Small Business Grant Program. The Commerce Lexington's Access Loan Program and Traditional Bank have been working exceptionally fast and very, very hard to get that money out quickly. And I just wanted to update my colleagues and say they're doing a phenomenal job, express how grateful we are for their partnership. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to get this program out and running so quickly. And I look forward. We're going to have them do a presentation in the Budget and Finance and Development Committee somehow so we can have that update there. So I just want to tell my colleagues that it's coming and it's going very well. And I just want to say thank you again to Commerce Lexington and Traditional Bank for making it happen so quickly. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. I thought I was down the list a little bit. Thank you. I also want to thank Take Back Cheapside for their hard work and for everything that they have done to bring what they did to our community. And I just really appreciate all their efforts and all their work. And also, I wanted to welcome Councilmember Higgins Ford. And I know we worked on a few projects over at UK together. And so I know I'm excited for the 6th District, and I'm sure you clearly entered the more so than even Councilmember Swanson. You hit the ground running today, or sitting, I should say, maybe champion sitting at these meetings. But welcome you, and if there's anything that I or the 4th District can help you with, I'll be glad to do that. And thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Vice Mayor Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. I'll just add quickly my welcome to Council Member Higgins-Hord. We are longtime colleagues. We've worked on any number of things together. It's really exciting to see you as a part of Council. As everybody else has said, whatever I can do, whatever we can do to help you get situated, just let us know. And I wanted to assure you that typically our work sessions don't run this long. Hopefully this won't be every time we meet. So welcome. And also acknowledgement to the take back cheap side, people who work so hard and continue to work so hard to raise this community's awareness of what our history has been. why we ought to pay attention to it and what we need to do now to make things better for everybody. So thanks to them. And then finally, I want to thank Council Member Farmer for providing us with a virtual tour of whatever building he's in. It made me a little dizzy, but it was really fun. I'm not going out, so I won't be going out to the... I didn't go out this morning to welcome Lisa at that press conference. I will not be joining except virtually the celebration of the stash has been by and they're wonderful. But so it was nice to see another building. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. You're welcome. We saw every ceiling tile as we went through the building. I had to lock the safes and put things away. It's just a little bit of a call. Yes, of course. I'm doing it with you all as opposed to separate. Councilmember Maloney. Thank you. I also want to thank, welcome Lisa. You and I will go back a long way, the town and gown, all the good old days. I'm surprised you're still here. I wouldn't mind by now if I were you, but we're glad to have you here. and like the Vice Mayor said, this is one of the longest ones we've had since we've been back, but it's the first time back we all have to come back. But I have to echo with Council Member Farmer and Worley about the golf courses. These guys do a tremendous job and going through this pandemic, these guys were still working with a lot of people staying home and they helped people get out there and they're doing it and I got to commend all of them for what they've done, park to rec not just them but all across the board and what brings me to the moon dance i asked my colleagues to go out there and i commend council member blusso for getting hey tim hamaker to donate that to the city that is the best kept secret in lustington and i y'all need to get out there if you haven't been out there it's really exciting time and i'll say it no please remember this account this person worked in the council for many years with trucia of Gert and she died a couple weeks ago and she did she was one of the most respected ladies in the council and my heart goes out to her and her family. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Higgins Hoard. Wow well thank you for the appointment mayor and vice mayor and council members for all of your warm wishes today. I had about 10 minutes before my first meeting and I jumped right in. So really appreciate the calls and for everyone wanting to help me get acclimated. And I have worked with a good majority of you before. I look forward to working with you in the future here. And I am not deterred by the comments that we had earlier today. I am hopeful that we'll have a better opportunity and way to have community members present their opinions in the future. So again, I want to thank all of you for your warm wishes and I am ready to serve my sixth district. So thank you. Thank you. Any other council members have a council report? We do have a mayor's report, which you received. And so I will entertain a motion to approve. I move. Second. Council Member Plowman moved. Vice Mayor Kay seconded. Are there any questions? All right. All those in favor, please raise your hand. All right. That motion passes. And then I have a couple of other things. Councilmember Higgins-Horde. Thank you for saying yes. You and I have had our moments, haven't we? Lisa and I co-chaired the Town and Gown Commission for a few years, and it was quite an adventure, I will say, and have served on some other boards together. So welcome aboard. I think you've been properly baptized. Just having gotten sworn in how many hours ago? Just a few. So welcome aboard. And Council Member Bledsoe, I wanted to respectfully ask that on the budget and finance committee day, if we can keep the work session at three o'clock, it would really be helpful to all of our staff that we keep hanging around. I don't know if that would mean a special meeting to do other things or what you want to do about that. Thank you for asking about that. And I understand that happened last time. We're all trying to be wise about time. So I think what Vice Mayor Kaye suggested is that we maybe stop at three o'clock and we could turn that next committee um the next quarterly cow meeting into the a special committee to carry over that conversation did i say that correctly vice mayor that that's what i was gonna yes and i was gonna check with uh mayor to see if that would make sense but i think that's the best way to do it you can that's a great idea when is it the 27th. Oh, not too far after the Thursday following, two days later. So I think that'll work well. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. Thank you. All right. I have nothing else and we have the motion not to have public comments. So if there's nothing else, Council Member Swanson. Thank you, Mayor. A quick question about the budget committee if we're moving if we're doing part of this in the budget committee and part in the committee of the whole are those of us who are not on the budget committee going to be given voting rights in that budget committee meeting or it's not part of the issues or how does that work yeah so let me let me clarify I think what I was thinking is that we would have a continuation of the budget finance and economic development committee on that Thursday and all council members of course are welcome to attend if people are if it would suit people we can certainly make a motion to empower all voters at that with the agreement of the chair to have everybody vote the budget the committee will not be making final decisions but if that if it makes people more comfortable, if you're not a member, we can entertain a motion to suspend the rules and let everybody vote. Okay, thanks for that explanation. Okay, all right, very good. All right, is there anything else before we, Council Member Farmer already made a motion to adjourn, but we need a second. Second. Second. All those in favor, give me your hand, and we are adjourned. Thank you very much. See you. Thank you.