# Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee - September 22, 2020 > Auto-transcribed civic record · September 22, 2020 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5215 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5215?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2020-09-22 - **Last revised**: July 15, 2026 - **Length**: 19,755 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government held a meeting on September 22, 2020, at 1:00 p.m. in the Council Chamber located at 200 E. Main Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40507. The meeting was presided over by the Chair. During the session, the body addressed five agenda items, took three votes, and heard five public comments. The meeting included one approval, two informational presentations, and one deferred item. The Committee Summary from August 25, 2020, was approved. The body received informational updates on the August 2020 financials and reviewed two separate informational items: Revenue Sources and Coronavirus Relief Funds Proposals. An assessment of Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government-owned property for potential revenue and cost savings opportunities was deferred to a later date. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on September 22, 2020: **Council Members:** - Vice Mayor Kay - Councilmember Bledsoe - Councilmember Lamb - Councilmember Massadi - Councilmember Plowman - Councilmember Fred Brown - Councilmember Maloney - Councilmember Worley - Councilmember Marsati - Councilmember McCurron - Councilmember Farmer - Councilmember James Brown - Councilmember Swanson - Councilmember Ellinger - Councilmember Higginshorn - Councilmember Bowman - Councilmember Borley **Commissioners and Directors:** - Commissioner Amara - Commissioner Ford - Director Lucas - Director Holbrook - Director Lidger **Other Attendees:** - Jamshid Sheed - Brandy Peeja - Jennifer Sutton - Sally Hamilton - Ms. Reddick No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included three votes on matters brought before the council. **Approval of August 25, 2020 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 00:00:30] Ms. Lam moved to approve the August 25, 2020, committee summary, with Vice Mayor Kay seconding the motion. The motion passed by voice vote. **Property Assessment Report Referral** [timestamp: 00:32:42] Councilmember Sheed moved to refer the property assessment report to a subcommittee of the Budget and Finance and Economic Development Committee, with Councilmember Plowman seconding. The motion passed by voice vote. **Palmer Pharmacy Building Renovation and RFP** [timestamp: 02:05:14] Councilmember James Brown moved to allocate $300,000 toward the renovation and remediation of the Palmer Pharmacy Building and to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for community partners. Councilmember Maloney seconded the motion. The motion passed by roll call vote with 10 ayes and 5 nays. *Voting in favor (10):* - Councilmember James Brown - Councilmember Swanson - Councilmember Belfarmer - Councilmember Higginshorn - Councilmember Ellinger - Councilmember Massadi - Councilmember Borley - Councilmember Bowman - Councilmember Farmer - Councilmember Maloney *Voting against (5):* - Councilmember Lamb - Councilmember Worley - Councilmember Marsati - Councilmember McCurron - Councilmember Fred Brown The motion included a condition that the RFP must clearly state that the city does not intend to retain ownership or maintenance responsibilities, with the goal being to transfer ownership to the winning partner. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting on September 22, 2020 included two significant financial actions: **Palmer Pharmacy Building Renovation** The body appropriated $300,000 for the remediation and renovation of the Palmer Pharmacy Building. This funding will be distributed to a future partner agency selected through a Request for Proposal (RFP) process. **Coronavirus Relief Funds Distribution** The body disbursed $726,000 from Coronavirus Relief Funds to eight partner agencies to support household assistance programs. These grants were distributed across the partner agencies to provide direct assistance to households during the pandemic response. ## Public Comment The council heard comments from five councilmembers regarding the Palmer Pharmacy Building and related budget matters. **Support for Palmer Pharmacy Remediation** Councilmember James Brown advocated for immediate allocation of $300,000 to remediate the Palmer Pharmacy Building and issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) to attract community partners. He emphasized the building's historical significance and its potential to uplift the neighborhood. [timestamp: 01:42:04] Councilmember Swanson supported the motion as an exception to her usual opposition to ad hoc spending. She cited the building's long-standing blight and the urgent need to serve a historically underserved neighborhood. [timestamp: 01:45:04] Councilmember Higginshorn supported the motion to preserve the building's legacy as the first African-American-owned pharmacy franchise in the U.S. and to create economic development opportunities in District 1. [timestamp: 01:53:26] Councilmember Borley emphasized that the RFP should allow the market to determine the best use of the building, with the city acting as a partner to unlock potential that may not be immediately apparent. [timestamp: 02:02:35] **Opposition and Fiscal Concerns** Councilmember Maloney opposed the Palmer Pharmacy funding, arguing that the city should wait until the October budget discussion to avoid spending during a fiscal crisis and prioritize basic services. [timestamp: 01:43:19] ## Contested Items **Allocation of $300,000 for Palmer Pharmacy Building** A motion to allocate $300,000 for the Palmer Pharmacy Building's remediation and to issue a request for proposals (RFP) resulted in a split vote among meeting participants. The disagreement centered on whether the timing and fiscal circumstances were appropriate for this expenditure. Some members opposed the motion, arguing that the allocation was premature given existing fiscal constraints. Their concern focused on the financial feasibility of committing resources to this project at the present time. Other members supported the motion, emphasizing the Palmer Pharmacy Building's historical significance and its potential positive impact on the community. They advocated for moving forward with the remediation and RFP process despite budgetary concerns. The split vote reflects a fundamental disagreement about budgetary priorities and the relative importance of preserving the building's historical value against immediate fiscal limitations. ## Approval of August 25, 2020, Committee Summary [timestamp: 00:00:00] The committee considered approval of the minutes from the August 25, 2020, meeting. Ms. Lam and Vice Mayor Kay participated in this agenda item. A motion to approve the August 25, 2020, Committee Summary was made and seconded. The committee then conducted a voice vote on the motion, which passed unanimously. **Outcome:** The August 25, 2020, Committee Summary was approved. ## Financials Update - August 2020 [timestamp: 00:01:03] Director Lucas and Director Holbrook presented a financial update for August 2020 to the committee. **Key Highlights** The presentation highlighted strong revenue performance, particularly in occupational license fees. The organization achieved positive net profits during the period, with results driven in part by timing effects and the impact of PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loans. Expenses were significantly below budget during August. This favorable variance was attributed to reduced operations and lower personnel costs compared to budgeted amounts. **Fund Balance** The committee was encouraged by the organization's positive fund balance, which stood at $10.7 million as of the end of August 2020. **Outcome** This agenda item was presented for informational purposes. No formal action or decision was required from the committee. ## Assessment of LFUCG Owned Property for Potential Revenue and Cost Savings Opportunities Jamshid Sheed presented a comprehensive assessment of Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) property holdings during this agenda item [timestamp: 00:18:46]. The presentation examined assets across five divisions: facilities, parks, fire, water quality, and miscellaneous assets. The assessment focused on identifying opportunities to generate revenue and achieve cost savings through strategic evaluation of the government's real estate portfolio. Sheed outlined criteria for determining which properties might be candidates for disposal or alternative use, including: - Financial impact of retaining or disposing of properties - Community benefit considerations - Cultural value of assets The committee engaged in discussion regarding how to systematically evaluate the extensive property holdings and determine which assets could be leveraged for fiscal benefit without compromising essential services or community resources. Rather than approving immediate action on specific properties, the committee recommended establishing a subcommittee to further refine the assessment. This subcommittee would be tasked with developing and applying evaluation criteria to the full list of LFUCG-owned properties to create a prioritized list of potential candidates for disposition or revenue generation. The outcome of this agenda item was deferred, allowing for additional analysis and stakeholder input through the subcommittee process before any final recommendations or decisions would be brought back to the full committee. ## Revenue Sources Vice Mayor Kay presented the rationale for considering revenue enhancement options during this agenda item [timestamp: 01:03:07]. She emphasized the importance of long-term fiscal sustainability and the need to maintain quality of life for the community. Vice Mayor Kay proposed a 0.25% increase in payroll and net profit taxes as a potential revenue option. She characterized this proposal as a transparent and equitable approach to addressing fiscal needs, and stressed the importance of keeping all options on the table for public discussion and consideration. Jennifer Sutton also participated in this discussion. The outcome of this agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal decision or action taken at this time. ## Coronavirus Relief Funds Proposals Brandy Peeja presented an update on the status of Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds [timestamp: 01:37:46]. According to the presentation, the committee has received a total of $24,647,733 in CARES Act funding. To date, $726,000 has been disbursed to eight partner agencies to support household assistance efforts. These funds have been distributed as part of the committee's response to provide relief during the coronavirus pandemic. The committee discussed a potential allocation of $300,000 toward the Palmer Pharmacy building. This proposal was considered as a possible use of the available CARES Act funds, though the specific details and rationale for this allocation were not detailed in the available information. The agenda item was classified as informational in nature, with the primary outcome being the presentation and discussion of the fund status rather than a final decision or formal action at this time. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to approve the August 25, 2020, committee summary - **Motion** — passed: Motion to refer the property assessment report to a subcommittee of the Budget and Finance and Economic Development Committee - **Motion** — passed (10-5): Motion to allocate $300,000 toward the renovation and remediation of the Palmer Pharmacy Building and issue an RFP for community partners --- ## Full transcript 8 to 6 feasible to offer primary physical location for the meeting as a reminder a motion was made on August 25th to include all council members to participate in this budget meeting as members and voting members of the committee and I'll recognize you as such the first item up on our agenda is the approval of the August 25th 2020 committee summary do I have a motion to approve So moved. Thank you, Ms. Lam. Is there a second? Second. Second, Vice Mayor Kay. Any discussion? All those in favor, raise your hands. Thank you so much. Any opposed? Motion passes. All right. The next item on our agenda is the financial update. Commissioner Amara, I don't see you on my screen yet, but I'm sure you are there. Oh, maybe not. Mr. Holbrook, are you doing the presentation today? Melissa and I will be presenting most of the presentation, and we're trying to see if it goes. I just got a text. He's here, but not on. Stacy, can you check? He is not in the list. I just looked. Okay, let me find out what's going on. We can wait for a second or proceed, whatever. Sure. We can wait for a minute. While we get them on, I can go ahead and present the first part of the presentation, and then we'll get Melissa to talk about other revenue and expenses. That would be great. Thank you, sir. As far as the presentation of financials, we usually start by talking about the unemployment rates that we're seeing and what the trend in that is over the last year or so. And as we talked about last month, one of the things that we've seen with unemployment rates and starting in May and continuing through these next few months is that our unemployment rate, our metropolitan area, and then the state seem to really be disconnected with the national rate. If you look historically, our local Fayette County rate is pretty well in line with what the national trend is. And so this, looking at this trend and then also some of our conversations with economists tell us that what we're seeing on this for Kentucky and Lexington, the surrounding area, doesn't necessarily tie a lineup with what's happening nationally, what we're reading about in the news. So we need to dig a little bit deeper on these numbers to really get a sense of what's happening. Next slide, please. And this chart is the three-month moving average. This basically takes the three months of any point and then averages it with the prior two months. And that just helps smooth out some of the noise. And you see a lot of the same trend. It's just a little bit smoother. But again, here we're seeing that what's happening in Kentucky, Bay County surrounding area, and then Lexington is really disconnected with the national numbers, whereas before it had been really well aligned. Next slide, please. So as we talked about last month, we want to focus on everyone's attention on the employment trend that we're seeing. and what we saw with the employment numbers as we got the new data is that you see a drop-off from what was previously reported in June and a couple things to keep in mind through that. These numbers are preliminary that's why we put it in a dotted line as we get final numbers for employment over the course of the next month that'll be finalized. Another thing to keep in mind is that the PPP loans and that support ended for the earliest businesses that got it that would have ended sometime in July and finally ended at the beginning of August. So some of that decrease could be from the removal of that PPP support. In looking at federal data which is available for the state we also see a couple weeks in July where there's a spike in initial unemployment claims And so that indicates that maybe as PPP ended, there were some more people going back on unemployment and decreasing the employment that we see in Lexington. Next slide. So in how that translates to the top four, with August 2020 year to date, our occupational license fee came in fairly strong ahead of budget for the first two months of the year. One of the things that we, in digging in and in talking to Louisville and analyzing some of the same trends that we're seeing, once a quarter, we have a month with five Fridays. And what that means is if you have a business or a company that pays biweekly, then those companies are giving out three pay periods in that month, which means that your payroll withholdings is going to spike. So ours and UK's are in October, but for anybody that pays on opposite weeks that LFUCG or UK does, we're going to see that spike come in these numbers because they had that five Fridays in July. So some of this variance is due to that increase that we saw from the third pay period that companies paying biweekly had. As we get some of the budget that we originally budgeted most of that in October. So as we get some of the budget catching up to this, we'll probably see some of that variance dissipate back down closer to what our budget actually is. Next is net profits. In looking at the numbers there, this is probably some of the residual effect for the July 15th filing deadline. We moved a lot of money that we're supposed to be collected in April 15th. and then also with some of our estimated payments. We moved that to July, and so we're seeing just a larger collection in those first couple months. Something to be very cautious about with these numbers. This is our most volatile revenue source. It can go 10% up or 10% down in a good year. And so we just need to be really cautious about what any variance there might be showing us as the year goes on. With insurance, we're pretty well in line with, oh, this is your date. I apologize. Can you go back once? Yeah, thank you. With insurance, we're tracking pretty well the budget. We reduced the insurance budget this year, I think about a million dollars. And so that seems to be falling pretty well in line with what we're seeing. And then same with franchise fees. We had a reduced budget compared to prior year. but this seems to be what the trend we're seeing as the funds come in. Next slide, please. This just shows our year-over-year variance. As you can see in employee withholdings, we're up year-over-year. The fifth Friday last year was in August, so that means when you look at the comparison for the year-over-year, you'll really have a good comparison next month, and you'll be able to see how that third pay period in a quarter impacts this year versus what happened prior year. On net profits again that's some of the larger collections coming in compared with prior year with insurance we're down we decreased that budget to to recognize that we might have some decreased collections across our insurance fees and then also with franchise piece running pretty flat to the prior year. Next slide, please. With that, I'll, and unless there are any questions, I'll hand it over to Melissa for other revenues and expenses. I don't see any questions right now. Commissioner, Mayor, I believe you're still on. If you'd like to say anything before Director Lueb comes on. No, thank you, Chair. I was just going to introduce them and say that they were going to take the presentation and walk us through it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, sir. Director Lidger, if you want to come to the podium and continue. Good afternoon. West has already gone through the top four, so we'll hit on just a couple things in the other revenues. You'll notice in the property tax accounts, we're slightly behind there. We've had a delay in our property taxes. You all know that given that we just adopted the property tax rates. So not too worried about that delay because it's just a timing difference of the year, I guess, given the situation. And then our services category, we've got a negative $580,000 there. That one is primarily due to parks. We have parks programming, parks events, and golf fee revenue. And so these are down because we've had programs canceled we didn't have the camps we didn't have the events at the downtown Arts Center so various things that events and things we've had canceled that you know we had budgeted revenue for that we did not receive on the flip side when we get to the expenses you'll see that we we've also saved in expenses because not having the expense of some of these events the rest of them are kind of volatile the investment income we know that you know changes month to month. And then if you take all of our revenues into account, we're sitting at a positive 3.4 with our revenue, which is about a 7% variance for the first two months of the fiscal year. Next slide, please. So on the expense side, we are doing very well managing our expenses. The personnel, we're at a $3.5 million positive variance for the first two months. We've got savings in every category of our personnel from full-time to overtime. We also have a variance in our other salaries and that is what's considered our part-time seasonal temporary and because of events not happening and things not taking place due to closures, we have savings in that category as well. There is one slight timing difference in the personnel variance, and that's our health insurance subsidy. That is one of the last things that is booked for the close of the fiscal year, and so the current fiscal year hasn't had any charges to that for the subsidy yet because they have to do it with the close of the fiscal year and then getting it ready, but we're estimating it's probably overstated by about $800,000 or $900,000, that positive variance. And we're watching that, and as soon as we get those entries made, we will update the numbers, and we'll have hopefully better numbers next month. On operating, we are also about $3.5 million ahead. This has contributed to a lot of factors. We had our divisional budget meetings last week. Some divisions aren't able to have some of their professional services on site because of the current closures and things. And so we've got some savings in professional services. We have savings in operating supplies and expenses, repairs and maintenance, utilities. And I think some of this can be attributed to the fact that right now divisions only have access to one quarter, the first quarter of their budget. And so with a limited amount of money available, they're a little bit more cautious and cognizant of what they're spending at this point. So we've got really great savings in our operating. The debt service is right on track because we know what our payment schedule is there. Partner agencies, I know there are some PSAs that are still being worked through that are coming to council. and so that $149,000 will get paid out. It looks like for the first time in I don't know how many years, people have actually started spending their capital early as opposed to waiting later in the year for their operating capital. So that's a good thing. Usually we're saying it's harder to predict people hadn't spent it. So right now, our change in fund balance is showing at $10.7 million. Can we go to the next slide, please? so this slide is showing our FY21 compared to our FY20 revenue through August if you see we have collected $134,000 more than we did through the same time period last year so very little more overall and you see that big negative in the charges for services which you know are directly related to closures and things like that if it's not being able to happen. Can you go to the next slide please? On this one I want to point out a couple things because there are a couple things that need to be pointed out here. First of all you can see we're doing a very good job managing our expenses on the personnel side and on the operating side. Both categories we've spent less than we did same time period last year. Before anybody gets too excited about the debt service line this is a timing of the September 1st payments. Last year, August, September 1st was on a weekend, and so our debt service payment was booked on a Friday at the end of August, whereas this year, our debt service payment that was due September 1st was paid September 1st. So we're not saving $10 million in debt service. It's just a timing of when the payment was due, how the days fell last fiscal year. So you can see overall we are spending less than we did last fiscal year, same time period, given the caveat there of the debt service. Are there any questions? Thank you, Director. Actually, no one has raised their blue hand with any questions. Council members, if you do have questions, that's the easiest way for me to figure out or to recognize you. Councilmember Lamb. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director Lucas and Director Holbrook. I guess I would ask just for clarification on the personnel, and this might be a question for Ms. Hamilton, but how are we proceeding with personnel right now? Are we still on a freeze? I know we just had a new recruit class in for police. But if I could just get some clarification exactly, how are we handling personnel right now? The way we're handling personnel, as you remember, we had those 47, I think it was, positions that were not funded in the budget. So they are not going anywhere. But everything else is moving. So there is nothing else that's being frozen except those 48, 47 positions that were not funded. the the problem that we see more in personnel rather than just not being is is we're not getting a tremendous number of applicants for our jobs and it's hard to get some of these uh monica who's in chambers with me right now has been trying to get some public service uh uh people and has not been able to get them the public service workers so that has been more of problem. It's not, we're not letting them be filled. It's hard to fill them. Have you had any conversations with any other municipalities, specifically, I guess, in Kentucky that have, are having the same challenges? And I'm just curious if there's something that we could learn from other municipalities about this. I haven't had any conversations personally with any other municipalities, I have, you know, read, and I think that a lot of people are having, are having problems, and, and one of the things that Monica had seen that is, and I think Bill had commented on too, is, and when you look at, I think, Target and Walmart, and, and, and, and how many, what were they pay an $18, they've moved to $15 an hour. So that starts to make a lot of difference, especially for the people that she's trying to recruit for that public service. And I, and I, there was another big company I saw the other day that moved up, you know, you're in what they were paying per hour. And I think that's, I think that's made a lot of difference in some of those companies like Amazon are just hiring a lot of people. Okay. Well, thank you for this information. I appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any other Council Members who wish to speak on the financial update? Okay, seeing none, thank you, Directors, for your presentations. And I at least am encouraged a little bit by the payroll so far. So it's good. We're going to move on to the next item on our agenda, which is the update on the properties. If you'll recall, colleagues, we discussed back in the spring, this has actually been a reoccurring conversation about the number of properties and land that we as a city own and how we could best think about their best use moving forward. So, Jamshi, thank you for joining us. And I think you're going to start the presentation. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. As CM Bledsoe noted, we were given the task of providing the council with an just overall view of the property holdings the city has as part of what has been discussed in the prior discussions on potential surplus and sale. So in order to give you guys a good idea, the first slide reflects pretty much all the properties that city owns, operates, can be divided into five primary groups. These are depending on what group is responsible for operating and leases and repairs and anything related to running an operation. Division of Facilities and Fleet, which is under me, has 51 buildings at this point. That was the easiest report to put together simply because of the nature of what we do. I mean, here's a building, here's what we provide services to. Next was Division of Parks and Recreation. And as you can see, there's about 190. And they're sort of a hybrid. They've got obviously the primary holdings are athletic fields, open spaces for parks and recreation, but as part of providing those services, they also own and operate buildings, structures, facilities, what have you, some of them on these parks areas. Division of Fire was probably the easiest, most straightforward. Again, there with the exception of a couple of locations, majority of their holdings are fire stations and they've got 24 of them currently. There's a couple there that kind of exception, for example, Fire Station number one, it is actually a campus that houses not only a fire station, but also the headquarter that houses all the administrative services. services, also the same location houses their fleet operation as well as their facilities and maintenance group. The next point that was probably the most challenging and still is, is the Division of Water Quality simply because of the nature of their operation and their holdings. The detailed list that we provided to the Council has that divided into two primary groups. One is what we call parcels. These are properties that were purchased for a variety of reasons, most of which are dealing with flooding issues. You can look at one street, for example, you're going to see about five or six houses in a row that we own. Those were areas that were prone to flooding annually. So part of the current project that Charlie and his group do, those properties were purchased and raised. So a lot of those on that list are just simply small size lots that used to house maybe a $1,200, $1,300 square foot property. Some other ones were purchased because city had to install manholes for maintaining and cleaning lines, but also pump stations. Some other properties are primarily processing operation. And, you know, it's a huge network of different processing operation doing one thing. It's collecting and conveying, processing and discharge of sanitary sewer as well as storm sewer. That, because of what they are and the nature of them, makes it extremely hard trying to put your finger on exactly total number of properties. Just give you one example. the town branch waste parts treatment plant. If you just look at the property itself, you got hundreds of acres. That could be under one. But when you look further in regard to the processing plants, the administration building and all that, you got anywhere from 40 to 45 properties there. So in order to get those, we had to actually get data from water quality. We had some data on ours. We actually went and looked at PVA records. We also reached out to Environmental Quality to use their utility data to make sure that we're deciphering this information correctly, as well as looking at any other thing that was available to us. Again, the number you see there, it's a dynamic number. It changes slightly here and there. But we try to give you as complete as report as we could in regard to their holdings. And we work with them in that area. One area that we work with water quality very closely is trying to identify some of these parcels that were purchased. Maybe, again, using as an example for flood management. Sometimes they're in the middle of a neighborhood and the neighbor's interested into utilizing it as a garden or what have you. We get those requests all the time. Or somebody wants to purchase that lot and therefore understand there are restrictions involved with the deed. So we make sure everybody's on the same page. And if water quality deem they sell on that property or conveying the title, you know, would be a prudent decision to make with their participation and approval, we do those. This is something that's ongoing. We look at it almost on an annual basis, two or three times. And so, but again, the biggest issue is a lot of these lots. These are small. There are no really commercial value to them. And even if you try to sell them, they're not going to bring but a few hundred dollars. The last group is what we consider to be a miscellaneous group. For example, corrections. Well, they only have one building, but probably got the largest building that city owns, and that's the jail. And then waste management got a few. So we try to provide those. So what you see in here, those five books pretty much give you an overview of how the city properties are divided, who's responsible for them. And we try to provide as much information as to the nature of what they do. So, again, we will update this as an ongoing basis. The one that I mentioned before, again, divisional water quality, that's just, I would say the best we can do would be high 90s in terms of accuracy. And we're still trying to figure out the best way that we can develop that database that would be updated in real time. So, but that's pretty much it. Next slide, please. One discussion we had internally was understanding that one of the reasons for asking for this information is trying to identify potentially if there are any properties that might be the right fit for disposal. and what you see here are about five areas. All they are are merely recommendations. I'm sure council has a few other items that they want to put in here for internal evaluation and review. But we felt like this might be a good starting point. Ownership was one, as most of you understand. We have still few properties that we operate that we don't own. So we thought that what that needs to be probably part of the discussion. Use of the property. I mean, what is the property being used for? Is it directly providing services to the taxpayers and providing core services or support services to those core services? LFECG occupancy. You'll have in the list, you'll have specific buildings that we operate and we try to provide to you, you know, if they're 100% occupied by LFECG or we provide some office spaces or operational spaces to other groups so that's all noted in that list once you get a chance to read it. The other one was if an item has been or a property has been identified potentially for declaration of surplus and disposal, by disposing it are we compromising any core services, reducing or what have you and is that another opportunity in other locations to provide those. And then the last one was the short and long-term financial impact. Obviously, selling the property, assuming it has some financial value for potential development, will bring a one-time upfront revenue coming in. But also, there might be some other ones that, as a long-term, you can look at as, you know, if you've got a building that is costing a lot of money to maintain and operate and so forth, what would be some of the potential gains with those? Again, this is just, we just throw those together just for your information, and I'm sure you all have some other criteria that probably will have to be developed and looked at. With that, again, this is just a two. I tried to keep it as short as I could. You've got a very detailed list of all of those five groups and their holdings. And again, we tried to provide you as much information that was available. By all means, I understand that with all this data, you're going to have to sit down, take a look, and maybe might have some questions and need additional clarification. We'll be more than glad to provide those as needed. With that, I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have. Thank you, sir, for your presentation and the very detailed attachments that came with it are very, very helpful, especially how you've broken them down by category. So I appreciate that. And I also think the recommendations on how to evaluate and some of the criteria that we used is something that council needs to come to a conclusion about. So I guess I would propose to my colleagues a couple of different things. One, we need a consensus around how to evaluate and use the criteria moving forward. So if you have suggestions in addition to what has been already the five items that have already been laid out here if you have additions please raise those now maybe we can form a subcommittee of council members to actually then apply that criteria to this list and come back to this committee for further conversation and then I'll take I'll start with questions to John Sheed and others about specific things moving forward so I'll start with Councilmember Massadi thank you john sheath i know this was a difficult task i appreciate it i was just curious because you've been here and you've gone through these uh different divisions and in these properties that are owned did any of those come up to you as far as consolidation i mean just right what i'm trying to say is is that you know some of these are mothballed some of these are we don't own, as you said. Is there any of that you can think of today that maybe you can make a recommendation on what we do with them? At this point, be honest with you, we try to concentrate the best we can on LFECG operational centers, and if there are any efficiencies to be gained, and trying to combine spaces, office spaces, and so forth, that is what we're really pushing for at this point. Some of these other ones probably will have to be something that the council will take a look at and identify it. And as I said, there might be some additional information that you all need. But at this point, again, we are trying to concentrate on specific buildings. For example, the building I'm in, the government center, the annex, police stations, any of these buildings that directly are responsible for providing services, the core services we talked about. trying to find if there are any efficiencies. We've had discussions, for example, with Commissioner Ford. He's got a pretty good group with the social services at Black and Williams. When we did a physical audit a while back, we felt like there could be some savings, operational savings to be had if we tried to shift most employees into one specific section of the building, thus reducing our operating costs. And that's what they've had. They've had some internal discussions. And as a matter of fact, they've already started on trying to consolidate some of those in terms of office space. So those are the discussions that we have been primarily engaged in and constantly looking what we can do to reduce those. And obviously, as Mayor told me the other day, you know, with the COVID going on right now, she said, is this an indication of that we probably not going to need as many buildings long term and so forth? I said, I don't know. You know, a lot of thought that we'll have to go into that process. But again, that's going to be part of our world for foreseeable future and deserving of further discussion. Thank you. Chair, I would suggest that we put this in committee, put it in the planning and public safety committee so we can look at this in more depth and detail. So I would make that motion so moved. Second. Second by Kathleen Plowman. Any discussion on the motion? Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. I guess the real question is whether the intent of the exercise is related to the true the budgetary implication or towards the broader implication. I don't have a, I don't know. I'm not arguing either side of that, but I guess I think that's the consideration I would have as to which committee it really needs to be in. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair. I guess my question would be as to what was the original intention when this, Council Member Bledsoe, this was your item, when you originally put this into committee, please, can you expand on that, please? I'm happy to. And the original intent was to look at budget, the sheer amount of our resources and how our resources might be used more effectively. And as you know, when we look at the city's budget, our assets are our people and our land, and land being buildings. Those are the two assets that we have to balance a budget. So when this was put in, it was under the conversation of should we think about using our land differently or our buildings differently as it would change the budget. And I was proposing kind of earlier, maybe a subcommittee of this, of the council, simply looking at applying the criteria to all of these and coming back for a second conversation. That can happen in this committee. That could happen in planning. That was kind of my thought process. But I'm open to the will of the council. All right. Thanks for that clarification. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. I think it's already in committee. It's in this budget committee. And I think it ought to stay where it's at and probably do a subcommittee or a task force. And, you know, I'm concerned with several areas that we might want to look at. as you recall, and it's on hold now, we were going to do a city hall, which would take care of some of the properties that we would possibly want to sell if we, you know, brought those renters or those people that are under lease or whatever into the new city hall. I think a big factor, of course, is green space. And I say that from the looking at it from the PDR standpoint, you know, we're talking about PDR as being our farms and our outside the nucleus part of Lexington. And then, but a lot of this space that we have and green space that we have is inside New Circle Road or inside Manowar Beltline. And we, you know, for environmental purposes and clean air. And, you know, we've got a lot of things involved in this and, you know, we've all, I think everybody appreciates the green space and we sure, you know, would like to keep that and even add to it as best we can. So I would say in this committee, I don't know why I couldn't stay in this committee instead of going into another committee. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Constable Meloney. Thank you. I agree with Vice Mayor. I don't know what committee, a lot of this stuff we're talking about can be in Susan Lamb's committee, general service, because they affect a lot of the buildings that general service looks overseas. planning. The only thing I see that you all oversee is police and fire. Those are solid. I don't know how you're going to change any of that unless you have a future that you want to build a new fire station somewhere and maybe plan to come involved with that. But I agree. Some of these things don't need to be on the same committee. I just, unless we just keep it in this committee here, but I'm going to bring a proposal up that I think that I want to, that I recommend maybe should not be in planning. It should be in general service, but that, when my time comes up for that comment about this presentation, but I just don't know, I don't see where we're going, why we have put everything in planning. There's a lot of things that we're dealing with is general service. They're the ones that deal with the government building. They're the ones that deal with parks and recs. They're the ones to do with the majority of these properties that we're looking at. I just don't see what planning and but I do have some concerns where y'all are putting those committees. Thank you. Is there anybody else would wish to speak to the motion on the table? Council Member Worley? Thank you chair. So I guess it goes back to your explanation of your initial intent of putting this item in committee and looking at this from a budgetary standpoint, if there's more work that needs to be distilled with this item based on that as a lens, it seems to me that a subcommittee of this committee would be most appropriate to do that and then come back to this committee. But then if there are aspects of this that other committees want to take on, then perhaps those need to be their own referrals to that committee. But if it's your intent that this be distilled in a budgetary standpoint, then it seems most appropriate to stay in this committee, but a subcommittee to do that work. Just listening to the conversation. I serve on the Planning and Public Safety Committee, happy to take it up, but it may be more appropriate for us to take up a certain piece of that and then for general government and general services to take up a different piece. But I think if you're sticking with that budgetary lens, this committee or subcommittee of this committee should be where the item stays. Thank you. Is there anybody else would like to speak to the motion on the table? Council Member Marsati. Yeah, I'll go ahead and withdraw. My thought process was more planning because we were trying to figure out just exactly what we were going to do with these buildings, the square footage, who was going to occupy them in more of a general sense, but if you're looking just at a budgetary impact, we can keep it in committee and make a subcommittee. So I'll withdraw my motion. Thank you, council member. Ms. Plumman, are you willing to withdraw your second as well? I think you're on mute. I am. Thank you, chair. And yes, I can withdraw that. And my comment after hearing some of the other council members' comment is this is a big job. And it could be that we do want to kind of dissect it and say, perhaps this committee might want to take this on a subcommittee of this particular committee. It'll be a lot of work. And so we may want to spread that out according to the question or what the evaluation criteria was. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Blumman. And to Councilor Masati's point, I think the thought was maybe as a council, let's make sure or let's try to get some consensus around the criteria and then come back. Because I think you're exactly right. Once we have a top 10, if you will, that fit the criteria with the highest levels, that conversation will need additional conversation. So the thought was maybe a subcommittee to start that process and then come back. And I will. Anything else, Councilor Masati? No. Okay, thank you. Council Member McCurron. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, General Sheet, for the presentation. I'd be interested in seeing if we had any property that anybody would want to either land swap with or targeting certain areas that people are more focused on taking from us rather than just saying what – I guess a priority scale of what we think that other people would be interested in. I'd be really interested to see that. And then some of these properties you mentioned earlier on, I guess more of the miscellaneous groups that we may be able to get rid of for just a couple hundred dollars. How much does that impact us, though, on our liability insurance? Not much. We've looked at it. There will be some impact. The biggest impact really financially in some of those cases been cities currently maintaining those lots primarily in terms of, you know, weed eating and cutting and so forth. And that's usually done probably from three to four times a year. And then as a cost associated with each of those, we consider those as part of the long term benefit as we look at some of these parcels. again going back to my initial point that I brought up is a lot of these properties and they all noted in that list in detail a lot of these properties we have some sort of either FEMA funding CDBG funding or other funding that were used and one of the restrictions with the use of those funds is that what the potential use might be if any and there are quite a bit of restriction as how we may forward any kind of request in terms of land swapping or selling or just transferring the deed. And then from there, I mean, we just had about five months ago a request that is one neighborhood that there are three lots right next to each other. And we've had quite a bit of requests from people who want to purchase those. We consider that to be infill developments so forth. This is single housing. The problem is, is once we reached out, which is not a problem, but once we reached out to Charlie's group, we found out that there are plans as part of the consent decree in terms of installation of piping and so forth that is going to impact those three laws. And at that point, they were not ready to make that commitment. So again, a lot of these laws probably do not qualify in terms of what the regulations is called for for CDBG and FEMA funding some other ones simply because of you cannot put a building on top of the lot because of flooding or environmental issues or what have you or it might be blocking water quality from having access to those pump stations or the manholes but everything we're constantly evaluating any everything that we bring up we forward to them and have them take a look and give us some ideas. And a lot of those actually are initiated by people in the community that they come across a lot, maybe next door or just come across a lot that's empty and take a look and see that we are the owners and they reach out to general services, say, hey, I'm interested into purchasing this lot or what have you. So yeah, that's ongoing with us. We keep track of all of those lots and who might be interested in that. I appreciate that. But I'd be interested in seeing which ones had, you know, a FEMA restriction or CBDG restriction on them. Would we have to pay any of that money back if we did sell the property? Or is that just for the future or that fiscal year we're in? I'm not qualified, but I would think that that is there would be some sort of a, you know, paying that money back. But that's something that probably grants for Charlie and then. Oh, Sally, I'm not happy to answer too. For instance, Council Member McCurron, when we sold, when we had the senior center, the old senior center on Nicholasville Road, that had been partially funded by CDBG. When we sold that to the university, they were not going to use it for any activity that was consistent with CDBG. Therefore, we had to take a calculation of the fair market value plus other things and return that money. We received over a million dollars for that facility. But what we had to do with it, it went back into the CDBG account as program income. Okay. Now, that's very helpful. I guess that would be my priority moving us forward would be seeing also a list of which ones have a restriction on there. Thank you both for that clarification, Jamshid, for your presentation. Thank you, Chair. The list that they have provided will have all of that classification in it on all five reports. So we've already took the liberty of putting those in. So you'll see which one of those parcels or properties have had those restrictions in terms of FEMA funding and CDBG. That's great. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Maloney. Thank you, Chair. John Sheed, it brings back memories when you and I worked together when I was C.A.O. came in the first time we had a $20 million shortfall. And the first thing you came down was tell me about the garages we own and how much trouble we were going to be in. And I see repeat here that we've got all these buildings. We were able to work with Gary Means and with the help of Kevin Atkins. And you and I, we were able to merge the two. Now they're doing so well and they've improved everything. So sometimes that'd be good to bring somebody in to take these buildings from us. And I've been preaching this for four or five years here. And one of them is all these art buildings we have downtown. And I think art is very important to this community. And the problem is with us owning these buildings, we tie them down to the potential that they have. If they got to do something, they come to us and we don't have the money to do it. But if we do what we did with Gary Means and have a private organization come in, and just between me and you, I really think we have it there. And Council Member Farmer and Vice Mayor Kay can speak on it. But the Lexington Civic Center has a lot of talent to bring this, to put all those buildings under them because they have arts and entertainment. So maybe we ought to look in a subcommittee. But I'm just throwing this committee, and I appreciate Amanda when she does it, that we have looked at those ideas. We need to get out of these kind of business that we're holding people back. And we did that with the parking authority, and I commend Gary Ming for everything he's done. I think it's impressive what he's done. And I think the opportunity is there for us to look at those openings. We don't need to be sitting here owning buildings and holding people back. and I hope you I mean you and I talked about this and I don't know if you feel still the same way about it but maybe this is an eye opener that we go and start looking to make art go to the level it never has ever been before and I think we can do that by keeping this city holding them back so I don't know what do you think about that you and I talked about that before John Chief I think definitely a good idea. I've heard it being mentioned for my past 10 years with the city. So, and going back to the example that you have with the garages, city was responsible for operation and maintenance of five garages when I joined the city. The problem was we were sitting on top of multi-million dollar deferred maintenance and these were not your painting and this and that this was structural, potential structural issues and so forth. And at that point, we had to make a painful decision. If we were not allowed to recognize income coming in and roll that back into proper maintenance of those structures, they were only to be looked at as liabilities. And at that point, we were lucky enough to have another entity whose primary core mission was to provide parking. And they had the flexibility and the authorization to do what needed to be done. So that was one of the impetus in regard to the transferring of those parking garages. So this might be from another angle, might be another option to take a look at. I think we've got enough properties that are related to arts that would bring a lot to the table. and by putting it under the right group who has the authority to do what needs to be done. I would say if it's done correctly, I would say it's probably going to be a big advantage and a win-win situation. And the good news is the buildings that we would give them, if we can do this, would be in a lot better shape than those garages were, because I remember we were going to have to pay $40 million to fix a lot of those garages. By giving it to Gary Meade, they were able to do this. But these buildings, there are a lot of new buildings in these things. I mean, we just got through doing the Kentucky Theater. We put a lot of money in that. We just built the lyrics. We built across the street with the art. I mean, they don't need a lot of work. They just need good ideas, management. And by having somebody come in professionally doing that, I think it takes art to the level that Sid Luthington has never gone before. And we got a great group of art people here, but I think we're holding a lot of them back. So I would hope that you all put that proposal and look at that. And I think other cities are doing the same thing. They have an organization like the Parks Authority. They have the Entertainment Authority that controls all those buildings that they have down in their town. So this is a good opportunity to fix some of these problems. It's just a little piece, but look at how many buildings we own. It's ridiculous. Thank you, Councilmember. Thank you. Councilmember James Brown. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for the presentation and John Sheet, all the useful information. And I was supportive of leaving this item in the budget committee. I think looking at it from the lens as an asset and what we can do or the way we can make decisions on the properties that we own going forward, I think is important and important to be in this committee. In regards to the criteria that we're looking at, I think community benefit and cultural impact ought to be part of the criteria when we're making that assessment of whether it's a building or land. We can, you know, I think that's relevant when we're talking about community centers. I think it could also be relevant when we're talking about park land. And I think we only have a few park assets where I'm just using this as an example where folks can ride horses. And that's a part of the cultural experience of our city and of our state. And I think that ought to be taken into consideration when we're talking about how we move forward with these properties. So I'd like to add that to the list. Thank you. Got it. Thank you. Councilmember Jennifer Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. And thank you, Jamshid, for all your hard work on this presentation. And I might have missed it. So if I did, please correct me, maybe in an attachment somewhere. But are there any numbers attached to any of these buildings of how much we're paying on them or how much we're getting in rent for some of them or how much we might be able to sell them for? It was not provided in this report. This is a very preliminary one. We'll be more than glad to provide you those numbers. Yes, the short answer is we keep track of annually because of the budget. We can tell you that what are some of the operating costs attached to the year. So if that's the wish of the council, we're more than glad to provide some more specifics as needed. Thank you. Yes, I think it's really important for us to know our assets and what's available, but also the price tags, either how much we're getting from different organizations that are paying rent or how much, you know, if we do have something that we don't need, we could sell it for. you know, when we talk about our revenue and our assets, even though it's really hard to get these numbers and know, I think it's super important that we have an accurate count of what's available to us and then also know, you know, what we're spending on these buildings or what we're getting in rent on these buildings. I know we do have some people that are paying rent. I know we do have some of these arts buildings downtown I think that they add a lot to the city but then I know some you know we're not getting any rent for any at all and so I think it's important that we just have an accurate picture of what's happening so we can move forward and make the best decisions possible so thanks so much again for your work on this. We're glad to provide you that information. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Frey Brown. i had to unmute uh thank you john she this is uh this is a good start on the properties report and i think it's something that uh we've talked we've discussed this in the past uh some of the council members have been on the council for a number of years we've had these discussions in different areas here but you know one of the ideas i think and i favor keeping it in this committee for right now. One of the things that I think is going to be important and we need to pursue is that we've got 12 council districts and each council member can search their own district and go down this list of what you've got here and really bring some ideals back to this committee in that form. I know I've got ideas about my district and others have ideas about their districts, what's in there. You know, we've got one on the table for Council Member James Brown in his district. You know, we're looking at a piece of property. And I think, you know, if we can spread this out a little bit, at least, and kind of narrow it down to where each district has some participation and a listing of maybe going into these properties that you've listed under the five divisions, really, and go in there and kind of digest and bring that information back to the subcommittee or, you know, and whatever gets formed there. So Chairperson Bledsoe, that would be something. That would be an ideal that I think certainly would get us started. this is a big task. This is a big task. And, you know, and we're still looking at the overall thing when we're looking at a city hall and what we can do throughout the county, the PDR program. Everything's involved in this. So that's kind of my input. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. And also my thanks to John Sheed for a comprehensive report, to say the least. I would support the chair creating a subcommittee really with two tasks. The first would be a sort. So there's a lot of these buildings that we own, we occupy, we need them. We don't need to be considered, we do not need to be applying other criteria to them. then I think there's a shorter list of buildings that fall into a different category and we might want to look at those and I would also add following up with council member Fred Brown's comments certainly any building or any property or any anything that council members think ought to be on a list to be reviewed we would want to do that but the aim in my mind of this subcommittee would be to create a much shorter list of buildings that we ought to look at or property that we ought to look at at all and to refine the criteria for review by this committee. So up to the chair, but I think that's, that would be a way to move and I'd be happy to serve on that. Thank you. Thank you, sir. But Councilman Merlam. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate this information too it is pretty robust and uh i think that for the uh continuity of reading it i i'm i yesterday i didn't catch my eye i saw all the fire stations but i missed the police but but that's because that it was integrated under the the division of facilities and fleet management and i'm just curious um mr bararden is there a reason that you um incorporated them in that instead of separating them out? Because I honestly, I really, I missed them the first time when I was reading it online and I went and printed it out and then I caught it. So that, yes, all the properties and facilities that are owned and operated or assigned to fire, they have their own internal facilities group that takes care of all of those buildings. in regard to the police operations we provide all different types of services to anything that is occupied by police and also to remind you there are two police stations central as well as eastern that are leased from private owners so but but that's primarily that's where they're separated because of who's providing day-to-day operation of the building, maintenance, PMs, systems, repairs, whatever. So we had discussions with FIRE a long time ago, a couple of times. They've got a very good group internally who are very well aware of some of these things that go on. And then the nature of the FIRE building is primarily, if not every one of them, majority of them are 24-7 operations. And sometimes things will come up in the middle of the night that's gonna require immediate action and so forth. At that point, the facilities management group with fire felt like that they'd be able to, if they have that autonomy, they'd be able to maintain those services a whole lot quicker than going through a couple other layers. So that was the primary reason for fire departments facilities being grouped separately. Thank you. I think Council Member Lamb was actually knocked off. I don't see her on my screen anymore. So I'll move on to Council Member Masati and if she comes back on, I'll recognize her again. thank you john she can you attach the leases to some of these buildings that we own is that would that be a possibility so we know um you know what kind of rent we're receiving it may be in our best interest for us to hold on to the building because maybe you know the rent's pretty decent or it may you know divest ourselves of the building so would that be a possibility absolutely we have a very good database we keep track of every piece of property that it leads to others as well as who we're leasing from. Okay. We're more than glad to provide all the details. All right. Thank you. That's all, Chair. Thank you. I think Councilman Lamb is trying to log back in, but if I can make the following recommendations moving forward, I'm going to take the five recommended uses that were provided in the packet in addition to cultural impact and experiences, the price tag and land value, community value, and the desire of other groups like a land swap, desire of property. And we'll use that as our starting point in the subcommittee. And if you are interested in serving on the subcommittee, if you will let me know by Friday, we'll put together a small group of us to kind of start this tackle and bring it back. If that is not acceptable to anybody, speak now or forever hold your peace to the next meeting. If seeing none, I'm going to proceed with that. Let me know by Friday if you'd like to serve on this committee. Okay, next we're going to move on to item number four, which is Vice Mayor Kay's consideration of sources of revenue. Sir? Vice Mayor, I think you're muted. Oh. Council member Bledsoe, I just added Jennifer. She's going to, Vice Mayor Kate. I just got kicked off temporarily and everything else is going on. So hold on just a second, if you wouldn't mind. It just cleared my second screen. Okay. Thank you, Chair. I think. Can you still hear me? Okay. All right. So thanks. And I want to thank my legislative aide, Jennifer Sutton, who has helped me with this presentation, and she'll be manning the slide presentation. So we'll bring that right up and start at the beginning. So First, and perhaps most important, let me be clear that I am not at this time proposing an increase in our sources of revenue. Rather I'm suggesting that we need to consider increasing sources of revenue as part of our ongoing budget discussions as we deal with the impact of COVID-19. And I'm bringing this forward now so we can share this information with our constituents and get their input as we make the hard choices about our budget. Next slide, please. So the three parts. The first part kind of goes through quickly a set of slides that you've all seen before, but that I thought it would be useful to bring forward, kind of have in one place, and review so that we have that kind of see that information again. The second part I'll spend a little bit more time on, and that is really the rationale from my perspective for increasing revenue. And then the third section, I present one possible approach to revenue enhancement and I chose it in part because it demonstrates in a relatively easy way, a way to understand the impact at various income levels of considering a revenue increase. Next slide, please. So the first slide is a golden oldie. We're all familiar with this one. It was first presented by the mayor in February of this year. And it shows rising costs and projected deficits absent any additional sources of revenue. And this is before COVID entered the picture. Next slide, please. This slide shows the projected deficit with the impact of COVID factored in, absent any revenue enhancement. Next slide, please. This shows the one-time funds we use to balance the FY21 budget. Next slide, please. This chart shows the decline in revenue in the FY20 and FY21 budgets. And we won't have real numbers for FY21 until the books are closed. And we won't know about the real numbers for FY21 really for more than a year from now. But I don't believe there's anyone who expects the real numbers to be better than these budgeted numbers. Next slide please. So if we shift to the expense side, this chart shows the cuts that have already been made in personnel, operating, bonding overall, and the cuts in bonding for the road fund. Next slide please. This slide shows some of the cuts already made in operations from between fiscal year 19 and fiscal year 21. Next slide please. So that's more than enough numbers to digest. As I say, I think we're familiar with those. But now when you look at them all together, I think it makes a compelling case. The question is what we will do in response to the challenge that those numbers present to us. So I'm suggesting that consideration of the revenue side should be included in our deliberations. And here's why. First of all, government services are vital for the people to thrive. So in the September Lane report, just came to my house the other day, they have one item that caught my eye and it's from smart assets management and it ranked lexington as the 10th best place for young professionals out of 150 metro areas and we're all familiar with the signs that hang on the commerce lexington building that indicate we are sixth and this and 12th and that and fourth and this it's about best places to live best places for business at a set of best places to retire. So a robust and comprehensive government set of services are not the only reason for those rankings, but they're a key component. And we want to continue to have a community that continues to be as attractive to ourselves and to the people outside our community. So second, LFUCG needs sufficient resources to provide these services. that the community wants and the community expects. So I think the short story is that LFUCG is not exempt from the most basic law of economics. There is no free lunch. Delivering services cost money. And as it happens, also very recently, I got a flyer. Let me see if I can put my hand on it. This is from our environmental quality and public works department. department. There's a flyer you probably have all seen. In that flyer, the first heading is tight budget changes some services. And within the report that they're making to our community, it says among other things, residents will notice likely some differences this year. For landscape beds, the shift to most work done by staff rather than contractor means that there will be a few more weeds due to longer rotation times between maintenance. Another place that says mowing along city maintained roadways has been reduced from 22 times a year to 12 times a year. And this year, the rural roadways will only be cut once in the spring and once in the fall down from the usual three times per year. And I share that with you not because I think they doing a bad job. I think they're doing a great job with the resources they've got. But it is just the most visible example as are the cuts to the road fund. They're indicative of the effective cuts throughout government. They're just not as obvious to us. So I believe that people in our community expect to continue to receive excellent services and they understand that these services cost money to deliver. In addition, we are not a poor community. We rank in the top 10 counties in Kentucky and area median income. Then in an economic downturn, the need for services increases, and we've already stepped up some, as has the entire community, to help prevent increases in hunger and homelessness and with allocated funds to help struggling businesses. That need and that set of needs is only likely to increase before it goes away. And then finally, short-term savings from cuts entail increased costs in the long term. The most obvious example for us is the current repairs to City Hall, but we know that deferred maintenance and other cuts end up costing us money more in the long run. Next slide, please. So it is important to be clear about the real dollar amounts associated with any increase in revenue under consideration. So what I'm presenting is certainly not the only option. It may not be the best option, but I present it because it is the easiest example to understand and the easiest to calculate. Next slide please. So then. I'm sorry back back one slide. Thank you. Next slide. Thank you. So the numbers in this chart apply to net profits as well as payroll. The chart shows what a 0.25% increase means in real dollars on an annual basis at various income and net profit levels. The chart starts with $15,000, roughly minimum wage at 40 hours a week, and includes $60,000 specifically because that is a little bit more, but it's roughly the area median income for Fayette County. The impact of other possible revenue sources is much harder to calculate for a variety of reasons. It's just more complex. However, one way to think about it is if we aim to generate $27 million in additional revenue, no matter what the source, the average annual increase per household would be roughly the $150 a year impact on those earning $60,000. Next slide, please. Back one, please. Thank you. So what are the advantages of this particular approach? First, it applies only to people earning income and to businesses with net profits. Doesn't apply to people on Social Security, other income, a variety of other sources. Does not apply to government benefits. and we know that if you just think of the economic perspective some people have been more adversely affected by COVID than others. This increase would apply only to people who in general have been least affected. They're still working. They still have net profits. It also applies to everyone earning income in Fayette County so it applies to everybody who receives the benefits being in Fayette County. So again, this is not the only option and it may not be the best option, but it is the easiest to understand and the easiest to calculate. Next slide, please. One more. There we go. So to sum it all up, we have cut budgets deeply already and we've been fiscally conservative, but we must acknowledge that these cuts already affect the extent and quality of services that we provide. One-time funds are already depleted. Further cuts will increasingly affect the services we provide and a modest increase in our revenue prevents further damage to our economy and protects our quality of life. So last word, Let me emphasize again that the only proposal I am making is that council give consideration of raising revenue a full hearing. I'm making this presentation now so that there's ample time for us to talk with our constituents about our present fiscal status, the challenges it presents to us, the hard choices before us, and I want to do that with all options on the table. So thank you and I'd be happy to take questions. I think we can probably take the slide down. Thank you, Jennifer. I think we've lost our chair. She had the same fun experience as I did, getting kicked off this internet. The timing is exquisite. I mean, I sat through everything else, and then the moment I was called on, the screen goes blank. Well, I missed all the response from Jomsheed that I asked. So, I mean, you know, I guess it's just loads of fun. So. Who's the vice chair? I think Council Member James Brown, is that you? No, it's Council Member Ellinger, but he looks tough. I can take over the chair. Do we want to wait on her? At least you could go on and start calling on people to respond. Okay, well. That's just my two cents worth. I can do that. Let me see. I've got Council Member Swanson. Thank you, Vice Chair. and thank you, Vice Mayor. I had a quick question for you, Vice Mayor, based on I believe this is a chart that I got from the financial status information that was presented before I was on council. You know approximately how many cities in Kentucky have a higher payroll tax than we do, considering the stacked rates that a number of places have? I can provide you with that information. I don't have it right in front of me, But I can tell you that because we are a combined or a merged government, if you compare our rate to the city and county rates for other places, we are relatively low in terms of what we assess. I see someone who really knows the answer to that question stepping forward, if you're willing to entertain his answer. I don't have the full list of all the counties and cities in front of me. I do have the surrounding counties. You can speak to some of the larger instances. For our surrounding counties, Versailles and Winchester have higher effective rates for their payroll withholding within the city. They have a stacked rate. Paris has an equivalent payroll withholding rate. and then for the other surrounding counties uh nicholas bills is lower richmond's is lower and georgetown's is lower so the table i have in front of me it says the sources of the kentucky league of cities and unfortunately i don't see a date on it but by my count there are six cities in the state of kentucky with a higher stacked payroll tax than us does that seem about does that seem like a reasonable number? Given that there are two in the surrounding, just in the surrounding counties, and if you look at it, it's just like Florence and Louisville, that number sounds right, yes. Okay, so I guess one of the things that suggests to me is that the idea of keeping taxes low for kind of business promotion and making sure people don't flee the area is probably not a real risk in our situation because our tax rates are relatively low. I have one other question related to that. I noticed that this same list that I have says that Covington taxes differently for the first portion of both income and profits, and then at a different rate above a certain income level. Is that something that we could do? So if we increase the taxes, for example, on folks like me who are doing pretty well but we exempt folks who make I think the cutoff we usually use for affordable housing is 80 percent of median income is that is that feasible to do given the way we collect these revenues since a city like Covington does that again Wes may have a better answer than I do I'm not sure because we're a merchant government if we have the ability to do that or not we don't know at this time we'd have to look at what what the authorizing ordinance legislation would be for Covington to see if that was something feasible for LFUCG. I think that would be a very useful piece of information for us. Thank you very much. Thank you. It appears that the chair is back, so I'll let her take back the meeting. Thank you, Councilman Ellinger. I apologize. I am downtown, so I could be on good internet, and I'll share my thoughts about that later. Okay, Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Vice Mayor, for sharing this information and talking about a very difficult subject. I know it's not easy to talk about increasing or enhancing revenue, but I think it's a conversation that we need to have. And I think you've set the groundwork for us to have further conversations with our constituents and kind of get some feedback. How do you see it going from here? What do you think are the next steps for this being an item in committee? And when would this committee maybe address it again or have further conversation? I would say absent some kind of worse catastrophe than what we're already going through, that in my mind, this is a conversation that should happen as we begin to think about next year's budget. So this is fiscal year 22. Yeah, fiscal year 22. And, you know, as I said, I think the most important thing is to put this on the table, to explain a little bit about why, from some perspectives anyway, it makes sense, and to ask everybody on council to talk to their constituents. It may be that this is a non-starter. My sense is that there are a lot of people in the community who understand that at this point, there is a real need for more revenue for the city government to operate efficiently and effectively. Now, maybe I only talk to people who think differently about revenue enhancement, But I put that chart up about how much it actually costs, because I think it's important as a part of the conversation to talk about real numbers. When most people hear tax increase, in their mind, big bucks get flashed. But if you're making $30,000 a year and it would cost you, I have to look back at the chart again, but $60 a year, that's relatively modest. And so I'm interested in having the conversation with people that I know, the people that groups that I'd like to reach out to, to share the information with. and I'm content at this point to have it remain on the list for this budget and finance committee and to bring forward specific recommendations if and as that makes sense and to talk with you and other people basically talk with my colleagues on council about this issue and the way it plays in the community so I hope that answers your question. Yes sir it does and I You know, and I think you set the stage for us to start having conversations in the community and getting some real feedback about how folks feel about this moving forward. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilman Maloney. Thank you. I appreciate your presentation, Vice Mayor. I have some issues. When you say it the easy way, when I talk to people out there, I do talk to a lot of people about not. Everybody knows I talk to my colleagues about how bad, how broke we are and what options we have. And there are three options and you pick one of them. And that's the easiest way. And when I talk to my constituents, they want to hear the other two options. And the other two options are one, you start making drastic cuts. I don't think we have felt the real pain yet, because if you talk to other businesses that are getting ready to go out of business, they've gone through a lot more serious problems than we have. And that's the other option we have. And the third option is, which I'm big on, which I think Lexington can do better at, is being creative and bringing jobs here. And with this coronavirus, I told everybody and the people I talked to that Lexington is probably one of the best places to live. So when you look at New York, you look at all these major cities where people have to be on the subway for two hours to get to work, two hours to get back with thousands of people. And we have a city here that's got 11 hours to the majority of the population in the United States. I think we've got a lot of talent that we have yet to tap into. But we're going to have to put our ideas together. And yours is one idea. I agree with you. But I'm not a big fan of it right now. I think the other two we're going to have to really look at. But if we're going to put this in a committee, we're going to have to look at other options. And I am going to be pushing for the third one, which is jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs. And tell the Chamber of Commerce to go up there to New York and see those companies that people who have gone through this pandemic, that don't want their kids, their families to live in this situation, and give them a selling point. Well, Lestington is a great place to live. We don't have, you don't have to drive two hours to get to work. We'll put you in there in 20 minutes. And if we can build on the interstate, and I know my colleagues know I am on the interstate, but we build on the interstate. You can get to one, get 10 minutes and get a lot of people here. So I think, I appreciate your idea, but I think we need to look at all the options. And if we can't choose my option and you're looking at yours, we're going to have to go through the second one and feel the real pain before we start. raising taxes. So I think we're going to have to really, really feel the real. I know we've felt the pain over the years, but I think when it comes to, we've cut into the, cut into the muscle. But when you start cutting the arms off and the legs, that's when you start really feeling the pain. So we have yet to get to that. And I, I don't want to get to that, but before I raise tactics we got to look at all the options thank you thank you um councilman maloney kathomony council member plumbin thank you chair um i know this is food for thought and i thank you vice mayor mayor vice mayor uh okay for bringing it forward because i i do think it's worthwhile giving it our thought one of the things that resonated with me when you were making that presentation is how we are positioned in the country as being one of the best places for young people, as being one of the best places to relocate, and the list goes on and on. And in terms of the economic moving forward, it's going to take us to be able to retain that. It's going to take us more revenue to sustain the reason people come here to work. So that was just that resonated with me and I'm going to take that forward and give it more thought but again I appreciate what you've given this thought to and sharing it with us today and look forward to discussing it more. Thank you Vice Mayor and thank you Chairman, Chairwoman. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kaye do you have any closing thoughts? Well just to kind of reiterate yes all options need to be on the table. We need to have a robust conversation about how we address the particular situation we're in. And, you know, there's kind of two lenses, really, to look at the economic well-being of a community. You can believe that at this point, quality of life, which we seem to have in abundance, we seem to believe we have it here, we think this is an attractive place to be, or you think that we can sacrifice some of that and still be a place that people want to live. I fall in the form of category. I think a part of what makes this attractive for businesses and for people to come work, play, and retire is that we've done a good job. We are one of the most attractive places in the country to live in. I came here almost 50 years ago and I thought at the time it was a wonderful place and I believe it's gotten better and better as the years have progressed I don't want to see that sacrificed I don't want to see the early or the late teens 20 teens be a time that people look back at and say that was the high point. That's when Lexington really was a wonderful place to live. I don't want to, I don't want to, I hope I'll be here to look back, but I want to look back at and say they had a crisis like everybody else. They basically faced it realistically. They look at all their options. They chose some good ones and they've prospered. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilman Massadi. Thank you, Chair. Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. How are you, Bill? Good. I know that we rely so heavily on the payroll tax, and over the years we've discussed other options as far as maybe, you know, I think 59% we rely on the payroll tax. Are there other options available to us as far as revenue besides the hike of a payroll tax increase? Well, traditionally, we talk about the four revenue sources, which are our four largest. It's payroll, net profit, insurance premium, and franchise tax. Those are your four options. And then you get into individual fees, totally dedicated, like sewer or fees for baseball or tennis or that type of thing. So you have your four major taxes, and then you have fees for services that have to be specific in nature. I think we need to take a look at all of those. I know, what year was it, Bill, that we rolled this back? I mean, we did this once before. We increased the payroll tax and then we sunsetted it. I think we went up to 2.5 and we brought it back, didn't we? Wasn't that the Miller administration? I believe it was 94, 95. And we had a sunset. What was it for a year? Was that the time? That's when we changed having the sewer as part of the property tax and began the sewer user fee. And there was considered to be a year of cash flow problems. So the tax was raised to 2.5% with one year sunset at 2.25. Incorrect, Council Member Farmer? I may have said that wrong. I don't know if we're waiting. Is he responding? I thought that was correct that we did that in that respect. I mean, that's why I was wondering if there's other options, because it seems like, you know, in my opinion, And we've always relied too heavily on the payroll tax. And, of course, jobs now, being at the issues that we're having with such high unemployment, this may be difficult to raise the kind of money we think we may be able to. So I was just looking at other options that may be brought forward to us. We could take a look at everything, just not this one particular increase in the payroll and that profit fee tax. That's all. Thank you, Chair. May I? Madam Chair. Of course. Commissioner, you may be absolutely right. However, I remember that we added that. I thought we raised it from two to two and a half. That's great. We were under, I thought we were under a federal court order to build a new jail. And I think it was on for two or three years. And then at the time we had completed finishing the new jail, we put it back to two and a quarter. Now, that's my recollection could be totally wrong, but I thought it was on for a little bit longer. than one year, and it was in essence because we were in federal court. Because that was the one time when they used to serve papers to us there, that's the one time Robert Jefferson got kind of jittery because it was a federal summons, not a local summons. And we moved kind of quickly on it. That was the first design bill project we did in the city, but that's all just history. Either way, we're at two and a quarter now. And that came in 95 when it was in the rollback. So you probably have a better memory as to the original purpose. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilor Monsardi, do you have anything else to add before I move on? Okay, then Councilmember Farmer. Thank you, ma'am. Vice Mayor, thank you for the presentation. And staying with it, sir, you've not given up. I'm interested in in terms of robust discussion our conversation and potential action do you have a time frame or a feel for other than just today's presentation I'm interested in moving it moving the the the content of the conversation some issues have been raised some questions have been raised I think it would be appropriate in the next month or two as we finish off we get the fund balance and we talk about allocation of other resources to look at those specific questions and I or other people can get back on the agenda with the budget and finance committee but if you look longer term the administration will start to put together its budget if they haven't already soon yes sir and as we know there's two parts there's revenue and there's expenditures and they have to balance. I'm interested in having this council finish its deliberations about the potential for revenue enhancement as the administration starts to its consideration of how to construct the budget. Because if we, let's just take a hypothetical, let's say that we decide we can find some revenue sources. We think it's a good idea. It's going to raise 25 million bucks. I want to see that included in the revenue projection that the mayor gives us for her budget. So we're talking about February, March, but drop dead. We're talking about April, May, June. I see legal has a different I just want to remind you all that the one thing that you may talk about that has a firm deadline on it is the insurance premium tax I believe off the top of my head you have to act to raise that probably the beginning of March so that's on the table to discuss as an option you probably want to make a decision on that one in that time frame if you wait beyond that you lose the ability to raise it for that next year. Thank you, General. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Then we will leave this in committee for now and circle back around to it again very shortly. Okay, lastly on our agenda is item number five, which is the CARES funding proposals. As it is 238, just a reminder, it was my anticipation that we would begin this conversation today and continue the conversation at the Budget and Finance and Climate Development Committee meeting on October 27th. As such, at that meeting, we will also hear the administration's fund balance from the last fiscal year and any end-of-year budget issues. If you've got proposals for funding and you would like them to be considered in what we would typically call a fund balance conversation, that needs to be submitted to myself and Vice Mayor Kay and Stacey by October 20th in preparation for that meeting so we can circle it out to everyone for last conversations. As always, this is a suggestion to you and certainly up to the will of the council as to how to move forward. the cares money and fund balance all this at the end of the day is is money it's money that we as a group decide how to allocate and how best to serve our community regardless of quote the title of it that being said i would like to invite ms preacher to come to give a just a brief update on the second department of local cares application for the 15 million if there's anything Ms. Peeja would like to add before we begin our discussion, I would welcome that opportunity. Assuming, of course, she is in the chambers. I just added her as a panelist. Okay, I'm sorry. Thank you. Go ahead, Brandy. Hi. Hello, Councilmembers. Thanks for letting me join you today. I'm not in the chamber, as you can see, but I'm able to zoom in with you, so thanks for letting me join. As Councilmember Bledsoe said, we do have an update related to the coronavirus relief funds. We have submitted and have approved applications for the entire $25 million that is available to us through this program. To date, we have received $24,647,733 in change. So that leaves us with $352,600 or $266 that we still need to obtain from DLG upon submission of additional receipts and other documentation that we need to provide to them. But all funds have been approved and we will receive those once we submit those required documents. So of the $24 million and change that we already have received, all funds have been put either into economic contingency or budget stabilization accounts as previously approved by councils. So if you'll remember, that was $6.4 million that was allocated to economic contingency fund, and the remainder was to go to budget stabilization. Since then, however, there was an approval of funds to be allocated toward household assistance programs. And since then, and since that was approved, the program was initiated. A funding distribution program and plan has been initiated and various folks are working on that. Council approved $1,452,000 of the requested $3 million that was put toward establishment and the launch of this program. The first phase of these funds was released for the amount of $726,000. They have been dispersed to eight partner agencies as of September 11th, and agencies are receiving applications, and some payments have already been made to landlords. Additional details are being collected by Ms. Reddick and Commissioner Ford, and we'll be able to provide detailed updates at a later time in regards to those programs. But that's essentially where we are with coronavirus relief funds. Almost everything is back to us and allocated as already determined. So anything else, Councilmember? No, thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you so much for your hard work on getting those grants submitted and reimbursed quickly and efficiently. It's a lot. So thank you for that. Yeah. Thanks for our grants department. As a reminder, the proposals that have already been submitted by the administration and by individual council members can be found in your packet. I'm Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Brandy, for the update. And thank you, Chair, for all your hard work and effort with providing us with all the needed information for us to make the best decision moving forward. I do agree that I think looking at our budget holistically in October and making decisions at that point is a good idea and a best practice moving forward. But I think right now we have the opportunity with some of the Corona relief funds to maybe fund a couple of initiatives or a few initiatives that I think would benefit the community and address some of the concerns that we've heard publicly. I sent out an email to council members of outline and some of the things I think are important that we take up as soon as possible. One of them that I'm very interested in, and I've shared it with you all before, is the Fifth Street and Chestnut Street building, the Palmer Pharmacy. I think I support the mayor's initiative with allocating funding for that building to remediate and renovate it, hopefully to put out an RFP and look for potential partners to partner with us on that building. There's been some new information. The last proposal was $450,000. I think, Sally, if you can maybe walk through some of this with me or if somebody else is in the chamber that can help answer maybe some questions. But if we were to allocate $300,000 towards the city remediating that building and then issue out an RFP and see what partner agencies can partner with us to provide a community resource for that building, then I think that would not only protect the cultural landmark in the Palmer Pharmacy, but it also address some of the needs of that community in that corner in regards to public safety and community development. So with that, I'd make a motion that we allocate $300,000 towards the renovation and remediation of the Palmer Pharmacy Building and issue an RFP for interested partners with providing services at that facility. So move. Second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. If those who wish to have discussion on this motion, please raise your actual physical hand. I'm Councilman Maloney. Councilman Brown, I appreciate what you've done. But to me, this is something the Vice Mayor just gave his budget presentation that we're going to be $29 million. This is not a coronavirus issue to me. We have had this building for years vacant. I think the mayor can put it in her budget next year if we work it right and do it right, if that's what your goal is. But this isn't the time to do anything with that money. I think we need to wait until October, and you always see why the numbers are not good, and I believe the Vice Mayor brings that to your attention, that we're going to have a terrible budget next year. And to me, the most important thing that we fund right now is basic service. I got elected to do basic service. Anything outside that scope, if we get revenue with the jobs coming in, we get a surplus, these are the kind of programs I want to help. These are the nonprofits I want to help. But until that day, if we don't have any new money, I am going to be elected to serve the basic service to make sure our police, our fire, all our civil service employees are protecting this city. And to me, we have got to send a message across to everybody. We have to wait and let this dust, this storm settle before I spend another dime on anything right now. So I can't support this motion. Thank you. Council member Swanson, did you have your hand? No? Okay. Anybody else wish to advise Mayor Kay? Well, I appreciate Council Member Brown bringing this forward. And I have been a strong advocate pretty much since I've been on council, especially in these kinds of situations to not do ad hoc budgeting. But I am going to speak to this as an exception. This is not obviously a directly COVID related, but it speaks to who is most differentially impacted by COVID. That corner has been a blight on that neighborhood, that immediate neighborhood, and the larger neighborhood, since I have lived here, I think most people know it's about five blocks from my house. I've been keenly aware of the use of that building for a long time, and it's been problematic all of that time. There is no single allocation of money that would make more difference to a specific neighborhood and community than this particular allocation. It makes it possible for the city to solicit partners, some agencies that would take over the building with the remediation handled by the city. It would make it hopefully financially feasible for one of the non-profits to buy the building and use it effectively for the community. If the RFP doesn't turn up anything, we won't have any money to spend. And if that building, if we have no use for that building, it'll cost us a couple hundred thousand bucks to take it down because it has environmental issues. So in this particular instance, I'm going to make an exception to a principle that I've tried to adhere to and say I would support this motion I think it's really important for that community. It's important at this moment for that community. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Belfarmer. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Council Member Maloney, thank you. Well, Council Member Brown, thank you for the motion and the thought process behind it and including the RFP in it. Council Member Maloney, you're right in your commentary in terms of where we are and where we're going to need to be. And I agree with those comments. However, in this instance, I also agree with the Vice Mayor, which is unusual to agree with both of you at the same time. But there's the dynamics of the situation, the dynamics of opportunity that come to play on this particular piece of property and at this time. And I think this is, it's not about balancing this budget or the next budget, but about helping that neighborhood and those people up through there. And this is a commitment towards that. It doesn't stake it out because, as the vice mayor has pointed out, the RNP has to come back and work. But if there's an opportunity to turn what is already a truly historic building into something that is better for the city, but especially better for the neighborhood, and the opportunity to serve folks there that need that service. I think this is the time and the place to stand up and give them that opportunity. So I agree with the motion and the commentary. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Swanson. Thank you chair. Um, so council member Brown, I wonder, or James Brown, I wonder if you could answer the question, why do you feel this needs to be done this month instead of a month later from now when we're looking at other budgetary issues? For one reason, this corner has been in need of attention for a long time. And I think as this pandemic goes on and as people affected by it, the number of people affected by it grows, this neighborhood has the potential to feel it and has felt it, I think, just as hard as any other community. I think if we can move forward, and it's going to take some time to issue an RFP and to get some partners. And if we can go ahead and get that ball rolling, as opposed to us continuing to put it off, I think we'll benefit not just only this neighborhood, but our whole city and maybe provide opportunities and resources to the folks in that neighborhood and community that can use them right now. So I think it's urgent. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Mossade. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Brown, what's your thoughts on the programming? What would be happening at this building? From the organizations that we've heard from, I think there is more interest in providing economic development opportunity, whether it's job training, whether it's workforce development, whether it's a small business incubator. I think there are enough, not enough, that you can never have enough, but I think there are several social service components in that neighborhood. I think one of the things, social service components and entertainment components. But I think what could help uplift this neighborhood and could be something that we haven't tried yet as an economic development engine or economic development type of partnership in this community. And I think that building and where it sits in the history of it, I think it lends itself well to that. So I foresee it being an economic development type of partnership. Have you had any specific inquiries from any organizations with interest in this building and providing those services? Yes, ma'am. We hate the name drop organizations, but I will. United Way has they have shown interest. Urban League has shown interest. The housing authority has shown interest. Community of interest has shown interest. But what always comes back to the surface is the cost of renovating and redeveloping it. So if we can do something to help aid with that expense and just be a good property owner, which we need to be anyway and be an example, I think it would help garner more opportunities and partnership. So it has been plenty of interest. So you would anticipate a match from a particular agency and then we would own the building and operate it or would they? What's your thoughts on that or haven't you gotten that far yet? Well, I think the goal is that we remediate the building. Hopefully, whatever partner agency would take ownership and possession of the building. You know, it's the city has never owned it in the past. It's always been a private property, private commercial real estate. So I don't think we have any plans of retaining ownership, but I think we have an opportunity here in regards to gentrification and redevelopment to invest in this building and being responsive to what the community has asked for. And that's making a community asset. Right. Because we just had a long conversation with John Sheet about owning more real estate, which we probably don't need to do. So I didn't know what your thoughts were as far as ultimately who would own and maintain the property. Yeah, I think it's whoever our future partner is, we want them to own and maintain the building. Could that be put in the RFP so you can be specific on that? I think it can be. We've discussed that, you know, how we would have to frame it to make sure that it's understood that it's not our intent as the government to maintain and own that building. So I think that can be. be. I think that's important criteria because we don't want to get into the same business that we are now. You know, we own these buildings and then we attempt to, and we maintain them and then we attempt to lease them out. Sometimes the leases work, sometimes they don't. So for me to support this, I'd have to make sure in that RFP that partner agency would not only own the building, but they'd have to maintain it. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, I think that could be the intent. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Higginshorn. Thank you, Chair. I understand the comments of the budget concerns that Councilman Maloney has brought up, but I also agree and support this motion in moving forward. The building has such a rich history of African Americans in the community, and remediating this building I think would benefit the community of District 1 just greatly because for preserving not only the history of Dr. Palmer with all that he's accomplished as a civic-minded businessman actually in the 1960s, but and also providing opportunities for others. He was just a pioneer and I do believe that this he was also the first African-American to own a pharmacy franchise in the United States. I think that we can preserve the history of this building and I think we can build on it and I think I think we should move forward with it so I'm in full support of this. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you chair. My question goes to or follows the same line that Council Member Masati said and and can you go through because initially what was it 450 and now it's 300 and and how the RFP works and how that is on the ownership of the building Because that's where I was kind of having some issues too. And if you can kind of go through that process, just to clarify it for me, it'd be great. Yeah, I'll try to go through it best I can. I may need somebody to chime in and help. But the way that we're looking at it, even if the city was going to demolish the building, we would have to do environmental remediation. So that would be the remediation that we would do to the building. It's kind of the same. So I think it's roughly $100,000 investment. And we can do some structural integrity and make sure that the roof is secure. So that's somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000. So that's where we get to the $300,000. So what we would do is we would, as a council, allocate that funding for that, put out an RFP asking for community partners that would provide a resource to that community via the use of the building. And then once that RFP comes in and we agree or accept the winner of that process, then I think the city will then invest that money into the building. And then whatever legal mechanism that we have in place, we would either sell that building for whatever we come to an agreement to with the partnership, or we would develop a short-term lease with the opportunity for ownership in that building. But I think it all depends on who we partner with and what the legal criteria is that we can do in regards to transferring ownership of that building. But I think the intent and the way we would phrase it in the RFP would be to transfer ownership to the new partner. Does that answer your question? So I guess to follow up with Councilmember Sade, because we're looking at divesting property. So are we going to initially be the owner and then it will transfer over to the person with the RFP then? Yeah, we are currently the owner now. So whoever. Our goal is to eventually with the RFP is to transfer the property to that organization. Yes, thank you. And that's all. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilman Maloney? Thank you. this is new to me because when originally when we did this i was told we were going to need a million dollars to rehab this so we could give it away to somebody we were trying to give it to somebody and they said we can't buy it because it's going to cost us a million dollars to build this thing and they said well if you build it fix it for us we'll take it over now i'm sitting here here and we're going down to $300,000. We're not going to do that much building improvement to it. I don't understand why we just don't go on and do a free RFP right now for the next three months, and then the mayor can get those proposals in. And if we have to, she can put it in her budget next year. But then it's going to take two or three months to look at these proposals. Then the mayor says, I think we have somebody, we can put the 150 or 200, or if the RFP comes back And they're going to say, well, if we take this, it's going to cost us a million dollars to fix. You're all going to have to fix it before we take it. Is that in the RFP that we're going to have to repair everything? That's the whole reason that this thing was brought to my attention earlier. Now it's changed. Now, what is the proposal? Why can't we do an RFP, which is free, send it out for two or three months, and then come back and next year when the mayor puts their budget together, say we'll have an idea of what it's going to cost. if we, I don't know, why do we have to pay money if we're going to give it away? Well, we had did a RFI previously in the current condition with no response. So being, you know, providing a safe, clean slate for somebody to build off of is, you know, while we're looking at doing environmental remediation that needs to be done anyway. So. I just, to me, I think we do an RFP, somebody comes back and says this is a proposal, then the council looked at it and then we decided to spend the money. This is not a coronavirus reason. I support what you're doing, James. We should have been doing this three years ago. We should have been doing something like this. But this is not the time you do it when you have a coronavirus. The money is supposed to pay for basic service. So I can't support it, but I would wait to next year's budget and let go on and do the RFP now and it'll cost you a dime. So I'm still voting against the budget. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. I just need some clarification, Council Member Brown. Again, I support above this. I understand the heritage that goes along with the building. I just want to make sure we don't, we're not owning it and we're not maintaining it. And I don't want to give it away. You know, I can, I don't think that we're in the giveaway business. So I just need some clarification on this RFP, how it's going to be put out. Maybe someone, maybe I'm not asking you to do it, but is there someone from administration that can tell us how this can be done so we don't end up having more real estate than we necessarily need? I think the goal is going to be to make it broad enough so that we have some flexibility depending on some of the responses that we have. But, yeah, I mean, it's going to be clear in what we put out that it's not our intent to be the long-term owner of this building and that our intent is that we're not going to pay for any maintenance for it going forward. So that will be understood up front. I don't know that it's going to be specifically tight on exactly what the arrangement is going to look like, whether it would be a lease with the option for them to buy it in a couple of years, or whether it would be a straight transfer of the property. Because I think we want to make sure we get all of the different responses and ideas that we can possibly get, because there may be a proposal that we're not really thinking of that would make sense once we hear what it is. But yeah, it'll be clear that we don't. And if this doesn't work out, I think we'll be having a conversation about what the next what the next step is. I think the intent is not to spend any of this money until we have a partner that we can count on to follow through on it. So if we don't get the right responses, or this looks differently, we're probably going to have to move in a different direction. Yeah, I get it. I just want to be fair to those particular partner agencies that they understand what they're getting into that they think that, you know, we're not only going to remediate, we're going to build and then, you know, we're going to be the landlord that's forgiving. And I understand that we can be somewhat forgiving, but on the other hand, we're not in the position to be real forgiving. So I just want to make it clear so that's fair to them. That's all. So they understand what they're getting into, basically. Thank you. Council Member Borley. Thank you, Chair. There. The specifics of the RFP, I think Mr. Barber's answer to the last question kind of go a lot to the point I wanted to make. As you all heard me say many times when we talk about RFPs is let's let the market tell us what our options are out there. Let's be clear about our expectations. But the actual deal and how this comes to be will be largely determined on what those potential partner agencies can bring forward. And so I think by making this step and saying that we're willing to partner and make this investment, we invite a lot more from the market that will be beneficial to us. And to Vice Mayor Kay's comments and then to Council Member Brown, the discussions that you and I have had together, I think this seems like a reasonable investment in our city and in that neighborhood regardless. And I believe the market will play out for a beneficial RFP. But we have a culturally significant building. We have a public safety issue. And this is a good investment for that neighborhood. And so I would support it and then let the market show us what the potential options are for that building when we issue the RFP. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Bowman. Thank you, Chair. I'm going to support this, Council Member Brown. I believe this is a statement to a part of our community that has had disparity in being victims of the COVID-19. This will serve as a resource for economic development to enhance that area. And so, again, I think it makes this a timely statement and a lot of potential going forward. I do have a question. I don't know if law, if you can answer this or not. But whoever the recipient is of this RFP, I believe this property is eligible for up to 30% via historical tax credits. Is that not true? Law? They may not be there. Ms. Hamilton, maybe? Yeah. Sally, is that eligible? Like one of these... It is not on the register yet, but it would be eligible. But remember, you have to have a private entity in order to be able to get the tax credit. You probably in this RFP will be dealing with some nonprofit different, but I don't know that, but you're correct. Yeah, and I remember seeing a couple of examples where the private entity came in on a temporary basis and was able to abridge that. So that 30% is 30%, which would be meaningful. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Seeing no one else signed up to vote, it is time to do so. If you would please, if you're in favor, Council Member Brown, raise your hand and hold it so I can make sure I can get out of account. Thank you. Chair, are we allowed to vote? Yes, this is an all council vote. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Anyone opposed? Thank you. Okay, that passes. It is 3.07, and I have already gone into work session. So at this point, I will ask that we, before we adjourn, we will continue this conversation at the next Budget and Finance Committee, which is October 27th. As I mentioned earlier, if you have issues that you would like to present that have not been submitted for consideration by the 20th, That would be, I would ask you do so. Councilman Lamb, do you have a comment? Yes, please. And thank you for allowing me to speak right before. I just want to make sure that on the October agenda, I know you have full authority on how that is laid out. But it is my hopes that this coronavirus relief funds proposal will follow the financial updates and that any other presentations will be put below that. I would ask that you give strong consideration to that. I would really appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think we have talked about, Vice Mayor Kay and I have talked about doing a 10 to 12 and then a 1 to 3 so that we have adequate time to hear all the issues. And we will finalize that very shortly and send that out to you for your consideration. Before I adjourn, I would like to just take a moment and recognize our Commissioner of Finance, Mr. Amara. I know that you are going to receive a number of accolades from the administration and from the city, and we appreciate that. This is from us to you. You have served the council well and advised us well as it comes to financial issues. Everyone trusts your wisdom, and everyone trusts that you have the best interest of Lexington at the heart, which no one can ask for more than that of a commissioner in this role. So from us to you, we're going to miss you very much. We thank you for your years of service. and our personal level. We really care about you and want you nothing but the best in retirement. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. With that, I will make a motion to adjourn and we will reconvene on work session at 320. I'll move. Second. Thank you.