Thank you. On Tuesday, June 17th, so we'll go ahead and start the planning committee meeting. And the first issue on our docket is the update of the Liberty Road project. So I think we have Mr. Bob Baird here. Bob, take it away. Welcome. Thank you. The phase 1A, I don't know if you've driven through there, it's looking real good. The Starshoot connection is made. The school site is tied into Starshoot. They'll be getting the signal up shortly, all in preparation for having the project substantially complete, phase 1A, and Starshoot substantially complete and ready for the school opening in August. Phase 1B, we're continuing to work on right-of-way acquisition. There are four properties that it looks like we will be forwarding on to the state for eminent domain proceedings. Other than that, we have gotten signed MOUs. We continue to work with the state to get those parcels closed. And utilities on section 1B, we have received two agreements. Those will be coming through council shortly, we believe. There are still three more utilities we need agreements from, and we need an agreement from the state regarding funding for all of the utility relocations. That's about all I have, if you have any questions. Okay. I think we have Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Ms. Gordon. I had a constituent. Are there going to be bike lanes on Libby Road? Yes. What's our policy now on bike lanes when we do the new roads? We try to do them on all of them now? However possible we are, I think the policy is that an overwhelming or overriding reason needs to be found not to supply them as we are doing these projects. But, yes, we are definitely trying everything we can. What would be that overriding reason? I couldn't really think of one right now. It's usually not cost. You could have right-of-way constraints. Because they were out there, and they questioned if there were or were not going to be, and I thought there were, and I just wanted to follow up and make sure that there would be. There are. Okay. Thank you. Do other Councilmembers have questions? Bob, thank you very much. Thank you. We really appreciate it. The next issue on our agenda is the streetscape plan, and Mike Webb will be presenting. This is an update, and I did want to ask of Councilmembers before you get going. Did Councilmembers receive the full streetscape plan in your box? Last week. Okay, good. Yes. Mike had asked me. What you should have gotten was a short presentation in your packet, but a full streetscape draft plan in your mailbox. Everybody got that? Yes. Apparently, Councilmembers did receive that. So you're here to update us. This is an ongoing update. Right. I'll just turn it right over to Cleet Behnken with KKG. He will do the presentation for you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Tell me. I'm so sorry. Tell me. Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Cleet Behnken. I'm a landscape architect and principal with Kinzel, McLean, Gossman. With me today on the consulting side is Mike Willem, Vice President with Strand Associates. Thank you for giving us some time today to update you. We've been very busy since the last time we spoke to you and interacted. I think it's important to note that we're not done yet, and we have some weeks yet to complete all of the various pieces of this plan and strategy. We're continuing to work with urban county government staff and with stakeholder groups to build support for both the design recommendations and the funding strategies that are going to make this reality. Very quickly, since we last met, we've been working hard on bicycle mobility. One of the council persons just mentioned that that's an ongoing desire to maintain as much bike access as possible, and we are working on that very issue. We've refined some of the early standards that we developed for the various project opportunities for development of new sidewalks on main and vine and limestone. We've been working with staff on the recommendation of new streetscape materials and site furnishings and amenities. As part of that, we've been working to make sure that every recommendation considers the sustainability, the earth-friendliness, and the environmental impact of every recommendation, every design standard, every material. We have been working on a phasing and implementation strategy, and we've been working on a funding plan. Harold Tate and Vitaly Buford will talk about that at the end of this brief presentation. In your packet, you have some excerpts from the larger plan. We did not renumber the pages, and so you will have to follow along. I apologize for them being out of sequence, but it seemed to be the easiest way to help you get a reader's digest version of what we've been doing. The last time we met, we had a discussion about the news rack issue that's been an ongoing concern of Council and of an ad hoc committee that has been working on this. We have been working with Renee Jackson, who has been our liaison on refining the standards for news corrals. This is a map that shows the proposed locations of them moving forward. And then this is a little different than what's in your packet, because this is more or less hot off the presses. These are some design standards for news corrals. And what I'd like to call your attention to is our neighbors down in Louisville are using this same kind of application. It's very handsome. And it also allows us an opportunity to begin to develop a sense of place. Each of these has an opportunity to have a panel that talks about the district that the particular news rack is located in. So if we wanted to talk about Cheapside or Collegetown or something like that, we can have a little bit of a spirit of the place represented in some naming that would occur on these. And that's what that slide represents. We've also been working on design guidelines, standards for the integration of transit shelters through the downtown. We still have to meet with the transit authority to make sure that we're all in agreement with where these locations will be and with what the standards will be. And, again, that is still a work in progress. I think one of the most important things that we have been working on and will be a legacy of this plan are the standards that you will be left with in terms of how things are going to be different in the future. Four-dollar gasoline, carbon footprints, long commutes all have people thinking about treating our environment in a more responsible way. And Lexington, I think, will be at the forefront of the nation in developing standards for green infrastructure. New York City has done this. The city of Cincinnati is starting to do this. And it's a buzz word. People talk about green infrastructure and sustainability all over the country. But it's still an evolving discipline. And I think Lexington is in a position to be on par with cities like Chicago and New York in terms of what you do to make a commitment to having a higher quality, higher standard of living through the environmental design of the downtown. And so these pages in your documents speak to what that opportunity is and describe what we've been doing to make sure that we don't miss that opportunity. We've been working diligently with staff, with the sewer authority here, and with other stakeholders to apply cutting-edge design standards for sustainability in things as simple as sewer and drain inlets, in retention areas, in the design of pavements. And I think that our grandchildren, your grandchildren, will be left with something that they can be pretty proud of and feel pretty good about moving forward, that Lexington is taking a leading position in a commitment to the environment. This is an example on this page of what we hope to be able to do along Vine Street. This archway that is represented, and I apologize for the size of the graphic, but basically that is the underground culvert that runs under Vine Street today. There is an opportunity, we believe, to develop a new approach to stormwater management where rather than just dumping water into a pipe and then sending it downstream into the town branch, we can detain that water, hold it in rain gardens, divert it into storage cells below the pavement, and work with water and sewer authorities to find funding where they participate in the installation of these new standards. We're looking at different types of pavements that allow water to percolate versus runoff. And we're looking at things that frankly just make it a nicer environment, reduce the heat island effect, the way we place trees in the streetscape, the way we embed water features to create a cooling effect, are all pieces of the puzzle. But I think this graphic represents the unique opportunity that we have along Vine Street to develop what in the downtown master plan was called a linear park. And it's a little different than the downtown master plan, and there's a little different place to do the larger plaza and park space that was described. But again, just an example of how we can apply standards of sustainability and green design to a specific place in Lexington. Probably spent enough time talking about that, and I'll be happy to take any questions about that. These other pages that I'm quickly flipping through are an example of what's been done to help you all and the general public understand how we arrived at some of the recommendations. This standard on streetscape elements describes all the various features of a downtown streetscape, talks about them in categorical fashion. We talk about sidewalks and sidewalk cafes and parking and lighting. Lighting is another example of a way that we can be much more earth-friendly. Lighting in the future may not be handled exactly the same way it is today. We might be looking at different types of fixtures that have lower energy consumption, more directed light, less light spillage, et cetera, et cetera. So again, I just encourage you to look through those and to come back to us if you have any thoughts or comments on how we can do a better job of responding to the opportunities and needs. With that, I'd really just like to get to our short, medium, and long-range implementation priorities. These are priorities that have been called from the opinions and knowledge of the folks that have been involved in this project from its inception. And you saw on the front page of the document that we've talked to dozens and dozens of stakeholder groups, perhaps hundreds of individuals, about what you as a city feel needs to happen in downtown Lexington with this streetscape master plan. As a result of that, we've begun to hone in on some short-term recommendations for implementation priorities. And it's a good thing you have it in front of you because you certainly couldn't see it from where you're sitting. But we've really honed in on Maine and Vine and Limestone as the most important priorities for improvement of the downtown streetscape environment. You've heard a lot about the equestrian games coming in 2010. I know there's a lot of press about that, and I know you've heard a lot about it. But the reality is when visitors come to Lexington, they're going to stay downtown. They're going to stay in the downtown hotels, and they're going to spend a lot of time walking to and fro from the Triangle Park area where the bulk of the hotel rooms are to the Courthouse Square where you're going to have the remedialing ceremonies. And today, that's not a very pedestrian-friendly environment. It's not horrible. I've seen worse. But we can do, you can do much better in terms of the quality of sidewalks, the accessibility of the sidewalks, and the usability of those from the standpoint of somebody that might want to spend time at a sidewalk café or listen to a performance at one of the parks, maybe at Cheapside. So, again, happy to take any questions about it. But to make a long story short, Maine, Vine, and Limestone are at the head of the class in terms of making improvements to the downtown streetscape. We believe that there are some things that can be done on a temporary and a, I guess, a low-disturbance scale with Triangle Park and that area and with Newtown Pike, and those recommendations are also in there. And with that, I guess the last thing I'd like to say is we're looking at about $30 million to $35 million worth of improvements over the life cycle of this project in terms of replacing curb and sidewalk throughout the downtown. And that's a heady number, but we don't have to bite it off all at once. It can be taken on a piece at a time. And there's a strategy so that the cost for that isn't borne solely by the urban county government. We recognize that state and federal budgets aren't where they were once upon a time, and we've got to be more creative about how we fund the improvements that will need to be made. And with that, and unless there are any questions, I'd like to turn that discussion over to Harold and Vitale. Actually, there may be some questions. Councilmembers, if you have questions, will you use your electronic screen? I have Councilmember Beard, and then Councilmember McCord had asked to be recognized, and then Councilmember Blues. So, Councilmember Beard. Thank you, Madam Chair. You may have already answered my question. It concerned the utilization of rain gardens and capturing water before it gets into the town branch culvert. And I see a little later here that that's from limestone to Broadway activity. Yeah, we've simply looked at the storm drainage system that exists in downtown. Look at the topography of downtown. Right. And, obviously, Vine is, because it's the site of the old town branch, is the low point. And that's where we have the greatest opportunity to do the most good in terms of improving the current situation. Is the route, I know the route of the town branch itself, it actually is the town branch. It's not just the storm water. It's the town branch that's been converted to the storm water. But it runs underneath the Phoenix building. It runs under the KU building. Does it run under the street or does it run under the right-of-way that runs alongside the street? There are actually two culverts that run from Midland Avenue to limestone. They run almost parallel. And then they converge to one more or less underneath the Phoenix building, and then they continue. For the most part, they're in the street. They're in the right-of-way. And so we feel like there's an opportunity to more or less miss that infrastructure. And the reason for that is that culvert is about 15 feet below grade today. Right. Unfortunately, that puts it at such a depth that with the realization that Maine and Vine, for at least the short-term foreseeable future, are going to remain in their current configuration, we're really not going to have an opportunity to do something along the lines of a piece of green space that was envisioned in the downtown plan. I mentioned that we think we have a solution that's as appealing, in that we're proposing a very broad pedestrian mall way along the north side of limestone, all the way from Lexington Center to the Phoenix building. And then we believe there can be an extension of that along Water Street, all the way to the yoke at Maine and Vine and Midland. And so it's still a great opportunity to bring green infrastructure and a sense of green into the downtown. It's a great opportunity to improve right and environmental wrong from back in the day, one that none of us had responsibility for but we have the legacy of. So I think it's a great opportunity. The Water Street piece I guess I really don't understand because it is utilized for traffic right now. It's utilized by police vehicles. It's utilized by us, any of us, to get into the parking garage. What do you propose to take that out of operation totally? Well, that's why you'll see that recommendation in the medium to long-range plan. And this plan is about near-term improvements, but it's also about a strategy. From a policy standpoint, you have the ability to forecast what you want downtown to look like in the future and to design policies and budgeting along those lines. What we're saying is if the annex building were to be redeveloped, and that garage, you know, it's service life. Who knows what that is? But if that were to change over time and if the transit center that's there today were to change over time and you could put ground floor shop space and restaurants and cafes along the street in that area, there's a very different opportunity for what you can do with Water Street in the future. And we're saying that there's an opportunity to develop a great park space where the KU parking lot and the parking garage behind the Phoenix building sit today. And there's an opportunity to plan to recapture the parking that's lost there in structures in other places, in other parts of downtown. We can even pick up some of that parking along the street by putting Maine and Vine on a diet using non-peak parking. We can accomplish more on-street parking and pick up the parking that's lost in those structures and end up with a much, much more appealing streetscape environment. That probably won't happen in the very near term, but who knows? I can't predict how those properties will redevelop over time, but there's an opportunity to guide it so that they do happen that way. Excellent question. The consulting firm that has given us some proposals on what we're going to do about a new city hall, is that woven into your thinking at all? Selfishly, when we look at the downtown master plan and we look at the opportunity to develop a great linear park and raise property values and raise the perception of downtown, the option that suggests that maybe you have ground floor tenant space in a new municipal building at the annex garage site, to me, makes a whole bunch of sense. In a way, we are suggesting that that be a direction that you strongly consider. Of course, we don't know the financial implications of all of that and we don't know what your consultant knows and what you all know about the other study. I think it would probably be a good idea to confer with you all about, okay, how do we best make that recommendation? As a planning instrument, you have something that's useful to you as you look to make decisions in the future. If all these various and sundry plans mesh well so that the economics of it doesn't get out of hand, where we're doing something on year three and then turning around and doing something quite the opposite on year six, that would be great. Hopefully, we can do that. We have a lot of plans out there right now, though. So, well said and I wholeheartedly agree with you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, one of the things you mentioned was on the north side of Limestone and I think for the wide pedestrian way, where is the north side of Limestone? I think, is it a different street or would it be the east or west side? I'm sorry, I meant to say the north side of Vine Street. Vine Street? Yes, I apologize for that. Okay, thank you so much. There were just some questions up here about that. Okay, Council Member Blues and then Council Member McCord. Just a quick question about the north-south, east-west circulator. I know that folks at UK are really interested in the north-south circulator, the possibility of coming downtown for lunch and for, you know, lunch hour events, that sort of thing. What is the recommended schedule for that route? Councilman, I'm not sure maybe Harold or Mike could answer that question. I do know this, I can say this, with Limestone being one of the short-term recommendations for improvement, I think there's an opportunity to design a street and design sidewalk improvements that set the stage for that circulator to be more functional when the funding is there to put it in place. And I think my understanding, and again, I think I should defer to Harold, is that that's a funding issue at this juncture? Well, the reason I ask that question is that it can really work to bring UK people downtown if the circulator is going to have, you know, stops within 10 minutes so that they can get downtown, have lunch, maybe attend an event, and then still return in a timely manner to campus. LexTran has applied for CMAQ funds for the circulator. We should know late summer, early fall if we receive those funds or not. But is that, you know, the frequent stops, that would be part of the idea? That is correct. And once we know about that, I'm sure LexTran will be coming to you all to explain how the system will work, where the stops are. We're still working with LexTran in terms of looking at new stops and new shelters in the downtown area that would be incorporated into this plan. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you. I appreciate all your work. As this thing keeps evolving, I'm really grateful for all of the coordination that you're putting into it. And I would encourage you to some of the plans that we have seen and some of these other studies and so forth fit into this. So anything that you can do to kind of help coordinate that, that would be very helpful. A couple things. What is the distance between buildings on Vine Street? How much room do we have building to building? Is it about 160 feet? Well, I would say at least that. I don't know from memory. Okay. I don't know, Harold, if you knew what that was exactly. It varies along Vine Street itself. As you get closer to Broadway, they're brought in a little bit more. It's probably around 100 feet. But as you get toward Limestone, it spreads out. In some places, it's almost 160 feet. Okay. Well, I think that a couple things just to bring to your attention and I guess to all of our attention is about two and a half years ago, there was a task force put together for the Vine Street Linear Park concept. And as we worked through that, Congressman Chandler had started to get involved with is there some funding that he could potentially earmark for a study to take a look at some things. And that funding has been freed up from the federal level finally. Just a couple weeks ago, we found that out. And so one of the things that we wanted to do was to do a world-class study of what does that look like. And it's really interesting what happens sometimes, and it has happened to me. I have to confess that over that two and a half year period, my idea of what Vine Street could become has dwindled and has gone to this, well, maybe we can't really do a river walk. Gosh, maybe we'll have this little rivulet of water or pool or pond here. And when we were in Austin, Texas, a couple of us took a side trip over to San Antonio, and we measured building to building. And in their widest spot, it's 120 feet from building to building, and we just mentioned we have 160 feet at our widest spot. San Antonio doesn't have a whole lot going for it other than that river walk, but if you talk to anybody that's been there, they always tell you how great it is. And that started about 30, 40, or 40, 50 years ago, and it was 100 feet. It connected two hotels. And then over time, they just developed it and developed it. And what's really interesting is that I honestly believe that we shoot so low in this town that we live far below our privilege. And I would just challenge you, Clete, to challenge us to think a whole lot bigger. We spent a lot of time taking pictures down there of the river walk that night so that we could work with whomever the consultants were. And instead of just maybe a couple of little rain gardens here and there, to actually picture Vine Street with water taxis and so forth. And what's really interesting, I mean, I've lived here my whole life, and I haven't thought about this, but Vine Street is a fault street. It is only a street because Main Street is not two ways. It doesn't really lead anywhere. It just takes traffic from here to there. So if you close it, potentially, if you ever closed it to vehicular traffic from Triangle Park down to the Herald Leader, you're not, it's not like you've closed a through road. I know we think that way just because of the patterns that we've been living under. But I would challenge you to start thinking and challenge us to think a whole lot bigger. We have the resources to think bigger and to plan it bigger, but there is absolutely no reason in the world that Lexington, Kentucky, cannot have a signature park to rival that of San Antonio in its downtown. And it won't happen potentially, you know, in my lifetime as far as being grown out like that. But they started somewhere, and they basically started with an open canal and connected two hotels. So I just would appreciate that. And the other suggestion I would have for you as you're going, we have two buildings along Vine Street that are odd shaped. Everything else is very block shaped. You have the Phoenix building and you have the CMW building. And we've had a number of discussions with various folks about the opportunity to wrap those buildings in some sort of decorative screening. I know we can't really do a whole lot before the World Equestrian Games. You can't dig up Vine Street and make a linear park by 2010. But one of the things I'd like for you to take a look at is, much like what we've done at the airport with the mural, is can we wrap those two buildings with a mural of sky and pasture land and so forth like that to give an illusion in our downtown of something a lot more pretty and what the cost might be and so forth. People have, I mean, obviously we own the Phoenix building. The CMW folks have been very open to that opportunity as well. And I think that in the interim between now and when we actually do these significant changes to our downtown, that looking to wrap things and drape in banners and with decorative lights, we can probably accomplish a whole lot in making our downtown a little bit more appealing and really kind of a signature. So I just take that as a suggestion. I would love to see what we can do in that regard. Agreed. And to your point, what you can do today is different than what you can do in the future if you have a unanimity of purpose for where you want to go. One of the recommendations in this plan is to work the conversion strategy for streets that will allow you someday to have a much different Vine Street than you have today. And that's an important piece of the plan because if we have to carry the volume of vehicular traffic on Vine that we do today in the future, frankly, that linear park concept and having a body of water on Vine probably isn't going to happen. To your point, we think there's an opportunity to create a great new downtown park and event space behind the Phoenix building, between the KU building and the Phoenix building, and bring some of the spirit of what you've just talked about in San Antonio to that street. Invite people down. Let them dip their feet in the water. There may not be a boat in the near term, but not too many years down the road, you could have just a really great park that is there for people that work here but also people that will choose to live here in upper story downtown residential units in the future. I think the last point I'd make is that I said this the last time you came in, absolutely critical that Vitale and Preston Osborne and those tasked with the PR side of this really ramp up. And I think there's a lot of folks who live out in the suburbs who don't really understand downtown or don't really come down here, why would I do that, that would be very excited by what's going on because it is our only common space as a city. I don't go out to Hamburg that often, and Council Member Stennett may not come over to Fayette Mall very often, but downtown is our common space. And I think that there's a real opportunity for you to educate a lot of the folks who don't quite see all that we get to see. And so I would just continue to encourage you to push harder on the PR side, the educational side, and really ramp that up. So thank you again for all that you're doing. Thank you. Council Member Blues. Your name is on the list. No? My name was on the list. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Chair. Just had two questions actually, one for the administration. But before I ask that, when we did the public meetings, did you speak to every business owner downtown or how did you reach out to the property owners and the tenants, for that matter, in terms of what they want to see in front of their stores? Because obviously everyone would want something different, depending on what type of business they have, what type of establishment they are. So how are you trying to incorporate all of that into a master plan? I'm sure there is some heartache right now. That may or may not agree with everything. But how did you do that? Well, we did it because we spent the first four months of the study, before we really put much pen to paper talking about design, and designers love to design, but we designed the project methodology so that we spent the first four months talking to folks. We had two public meetings, and we showed examples of what other great American and world cities do to invite people into downtown, to incentivize them to live, work, and play in downtown. We had a survey that was passed out at both public meetings. We had excellent attendance. Despite some pretty nasty weather and a conflict with St. Patrick's Day and the parade, on one day we still had just really excellent attendance at both public meetings. And those were advertised, those meetings. And we've had meetings with the neighborhood groups. Mike spent some time on a Sunday afternoon with, I believe, Tom's Neighborhood Association, talking about the opportunities before us. So I think we've done at least a reasonably good job, if not a better than average job, of getting public feedback. And shop owners and people that live in the neighborhoods and people that own property have come up to us, have told us what they think we need to do. Some people have had very strong opinions. Others have said, gee, all in all, and I think this has been the overwhelming tone of the message back to us, is they think we're thinking pretty clearly, and they are in general agreement with the recommendations of this plan. Now, when you get down to picking paver materials and where exactly the trees go, no doubt we're not going to please everybody. No doubt about that. But we're not done with public engagement, and there's still an opportunity for people to step up and say, I want to be heard. So we hope that they'll do that. There will be another meeting before council where folks will have an opportunity. Before, Harold, before you answer, let me ask you this. I know eight of us have districts outside of New Sarker Road, and those are some of the folks we want to get back to downtown. Did we go to any of those neighborhood groups? Have we included them in what they want to see downtown? Because we're going to spend millions of dollars working on downtown with all of our taxpayer dollars, not just downtown people's taxpayer dollars. So have we went to those other neighborhoods? Because I know none of mine have been approached. I'm just curious, have you went outside New Sarker to talk to those folks? To give you an idea of who was invited to the public meetings and to the neighborhood meetings. Mike, if you could get closer to the microphone so people at home can hear. Just to share with you what neighborhood associations, I won't try to name them. What we did is we went to the council members whose district was within the target area and asked them for a list of the neighborhood associations that this project would touch. And those are the ones that we went to. Some of them were just outside the projects. And then for all of our public meetings, and there were three. One of them was a workshop meeting. We sent a letter out to property owners within that target area. If you remember that map of the original target area, the listing came from the PVA office for the owners. And then we also attempted to send to residents too, but had a lot of trouble with that mailing. Got a lot of those returned. But we did not go to neighborhood associations that were significantly outside of that target area. Again, that demonstrates, you know, downtown is supposed to be for all of Lexington. And if it's going to be our true heart of our future in terms of economic development, we've got to be inclusive of everyone in our city because it's everyone's dollars that are going to help change it, not just the people that live here. I understand. I just wanted to be clear who we went to. But I hope you would try to incorporate, as we said earlier, we may have some other public input meetings to get out to these other groups because we've got to get them back downtown. If anything, it's a marketing way to get them back downtown, and let them know changes are coming, come look at it. We also advertised in several different areas. The meetings were in the paper. There were meeting notices on the radio too. Right. And I appreciate that work. And, of course, you know the hardness of all the neighborhoods around here have a big impact on them and their daily lives. But also, again, I want to try to be as inclusive as possible so we can gain as much support for downtown as possible. Because when I go to my neighborhood groups outside of New Circle Road, why do I care about downtown? That's their question. Why should they? And we need to show them why. And let me also indicate that we've had other meetings as well. We have a merchant's meeting through DLC where we've had participants come, shop owners, property owners. I can say at the public meeting a lot of people that did come to the meeting did not live downtown. You know, they were from wherever. But they did have property downtown. You bring up a very good point that we're trying to create a downtown for everybody, but we're not finished. And so the input will still be taken. I guess my next question is funding. I know, Joe, you and I have talked about this a little bit, about how we're going to pay for this and how we're going to break up into segments. Do you want to comment a little bit about the price tags and what are some of the ways we're going to find some funding? Obviously, we're just. I think this is the next part of the presentation actually. Vitale, is that part of what you're going to get into? Yes. Do you mind to wait for that? Okay. And, Joe, thank you. Did that finish your questions? Council members, if I could ask your help. There's no one running the electronic system, so after you've spoken, will you withdraw your request to speak on the screen? Vice Mayor Gray. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I really want to just tag along on some comments and reinforce some of the things that Council Member McCord had to say in terms of the imagination level and the opportunity that this represents. It's probably, at least not in my lifetime, 25 years in Lexington, have I seen such interest and passion and attention to the downtown and how much it really represents in terms of being a touchstone for so many of our citizens, not just literally, not just in Lexington, but if we go outside the region and increasingly talk to county judges and mayors or elected officials or people in counties that are around Lexington, they all seem to have a big interest in Lexington's downtown and what it represents in terms of a beacon light for central Kentucky. And I love the way that Jay actually characterized it in terms of asking the question, are we being timid here? Have we shortened our sights? Have we actually elevated our imagination and our sights to the level that we could? What makes me think of this is I was reading a story this weekend in Fast Company magazine, which is anybody who's sort of a business junkie like I am, it's all about business and all about new economy. And there's a story about great cities in the world, and it highlighted two, Chicago and London. And the theme, it opened with comments from Mayor Daley. And Mayor Daley said, hey, you know, I didn't know anything about city planning, really. I didn't know anything about architecture. I didn't know anything about art. But I was convinced that by people that do, when we started talking about Millennium Park in 1994 and imagining what could happen by 2000, he said, I was convinced that this was a big deal, and that converting that railroad yard into something that would inspire our own citizens and bring our own people to our downtown could be a very big deal. And he said the real key to it was great architect and great artist, great imagination. And they went from imagining a $35 million project to it ended up a $250 million project. But most people who have, and I haven't even been there, but I hear people talk about it all the time, who have been there, and I think what Councilmember McCord was saying was, you know, we have a small, modest downtown here, and within that jewel-like modesty, the size that we still have these really grand opportunities to create something inspiring and compelling for our people. But then beyond Lexington, something that will make Lexington's downtown equivalent to our rural landscape, which then really puts us on the map, and I think, Cleet, you've said that a bunch of times. So the story about, I think it just made me think, and the fact that, I'll finish up by saying that the fact that it was in Fast Company Magazine, it was all about how that project in Chicago and how what's occurring in Chicago is all about the economy. And what they've done in their downtown is all about the economy. What they did with that inspiring project was all about the economy and creating the kind of place that people want to be, that people want to work for the rest of their lives, starting when they're young and then continuing. So I don't know if I really have any questions. I do want to commend you. I know that you guys had a really thorough process that was working to be, in our age of inclusiveness, tough and challenging. But you did that in a really, I think, at least my observation is where you did it in a very effective way. And I want to also endorse what Councilmember Stennett was saying. We sometimes forget, just like we forget our neighboring counties, how much they have an investment in Lexington and the downtown. And what Councilmember Stennett was saying was that these folks, it's as much as anything a marketing effort, right, sort of what you were saying, to bring them in. So somehow, you know, recognize it takes a lot of calories. And that means sometimes for us a little more investment with guys like you who are the consultants. But what he was saying has a lot of merit to it. Thank you, Chair. We have two more Councilmembers, and then we'll have you proceed. Councilmember Stevens. Thank you. My question is rather mundane and short. But as a landscape architect dealing with the downtown landscape, what do you think about street trees? What role do they play in it? I know they have some up in Cincinnati, but I don't know about here. The way we've handled them in the past and the way they're constrained right now is they get to be about the size they are, and they start to dwindle. They don't have a chance to flourish. So we need and will design a better mechanism for trees to flourish in the future. We're going to cluster them together where they have a chance to make an impact. We're going to design new soil types so that they don't have to be pulled out after 10 or 15 years because they don't have enough soil or nutrients to grow in. So in your booklet in the back, it's a little dry. It's not the most glamorous thing to write about in a report. But we've looked at everything, including the soil science of how to keep a tree healthier in downtown. Our last trees lasted about 30 years, and we had to cut them down because they were too big. They flourished. We're also going to give them more room. But you think that trees are part of the design. Trees are. They need to be more a part of this town than other towns because we've got those wide right-of-ways that Jay spoke of, and we can do much more. And this can be on par with Portland. We can be on par with some of the finest cities in the world because you've got a unique environment here. It's not like Cincinnati, and it's not like Louisville where we've got buildings that are close to the right-of-way and we don't have much right-of-way to work with. We do have high expectations. We ought to be thinking outside the box. I flip to this slide because I think it speaks to the opportunity to develop your Millennium Park at the gateway to downtown. Rather than passing, not that I have anything against monument companies, but that's about as suburban a look as you'll have entering a world-class downtown. And if you're going to have a world-class downtown, you've got to have a world-class environment that welcomes you into it. So I encourage you to read the sheets that talk about the opportunities to develop your Indianapolis Canalway, your Millennium Park out along Jefferson and Cox and Main and Manchester and Jefferson because I think you can change people's perception of Lexington there. I think what you do on Newtown Pike has an opportunity to give people a completely different impression about Lexington as a fine, world-class city. Thank you. Council Member James. Thank you, Chair. I did want to say in reference to the street trees that Cleet did meet with me and some other members of the tree board, and we had some great conversation about trees, and I do appreciate you taking the time out to do that. And we also learned a little bit about how, and we believe this on the tree board, that trees really do impact, can help with our storm water runoff as well. So especially in our downtown area, that might be really helpful. So I just wanted to add that in. I did have two questions. My first is there are two small area plans that are currently underway. One is the Central Sector and one is the East End. I believe they're both included within the areas, some of the areas that are referenced on the handout that we have. Have you met with the consultants, with both Ratio and EHI consultants, to talk with them about how this plan falls into the plans that they're creating for those two sections of town? We have not met with the consultants. We have, however, met with planning staff, and we've been working to mesh with the recommendations. And as I mentioned at the outset, we think there's some work to do to make sure that the recommendations that have to do with those two small area plans with the government facility study are integrated into this plan, and the recommendations in this plan are integrated into those plans. So I know Vitaly, the vice mayor, and others and I were at a meeting maybe about a month ago to talk about how we could make sure that there is coordination. There's still quite a bit of work to do on that, and we hope to have that in the final version of the document that you see later this summer. Okay. I do suggest, I mean, I know that you've met with the planning staff, but the consultants are the ones that are – planning staff is usually there as well. But I do suggest that you meet at least with the key personnel, the staff, with doing those small area plans because they're the ones that the residents and business owners within those areas are calling about their input. And we've got some Web pages going and things like that, and they would be able to give you that critique as you move along. I'd hate to see a plan developed and then the neighborhood say, you know, we didn't ask for this. But then we say, well, it's in the streetscape plan, and they say, what's that? Because they're not the ones coming necessarily to these public meetings that you've had. We'll make a point to do that. Thank you. And my second question is, what do you consider downtown? It's been interesting to me that when I ask different people that, you get different responses. So as you're creating this downtown streetscape plan, or some are calling it that, what do you consider downtown? What are the boundaries for you? You know, as somebody that's not originally from here, I thought the boundaries of downtown were from Triangle Park to Belt Limestone, to be frank. The boundaries that were given are much broader than that. And I think it speaks to the need to develop a stronger identity for the downtown and develop and cultivate the identification of districts, because it's not just one downtown. There's these great little sub-areas and districts within downtown that others may recognize as being a very important part of downtown, but people that aren't from that area or don't have the history here have no idea that it's even part of the downtown. So one of the recommendations in the plan is, hey, let's look at these great public open spaces that you already have, these great event and gathering spaces, and celebrate those. Let's talk about those, and they're all a piece of the downtown. We encourage you to put some wayfinding and placemaking elements in place that speak to the identity. Let's announce that it's Triangle Park. Let's announce that it's Cheapside, because today you visit those places, and unless you walk up and look at the street sign, you don't know where you are. So there's an opportunity there to inexpensively, quickly, very effectively create a more cohesive identity for the downtown. So for the sake of discussion for today, the downtown that was clarified to you, was that consistent with the downtown development downtown defined? Or you said they were broader than you thought. What were the boundaries that were given to you? Andrea, I'm not quite sure how they were arrived at, but we literally were given a listing of streets and a study area boundary. And I think it was derived from, and maybe Harold or Mike could speak to this, but I think it was derived from where the parking that serves downtown is located, how people move from the parking area to their place of business or to their downtown residence. I think it had a lot to do with the College Town Corridor and how that interfaced with downtown. So don't know all the answers to that, but I think those were strong rationales behind how it was defined. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I have a quick question. On page four of the packet, which is page 81 of the plan, the news racks, you have an asterisk that the locations are as recommended by the News Rack Ordinance Task Force. And if I recall, the News Rack Ordinance has not yet been passed. Is that? Yeah. Better state it would say Draft Ordinance. Okay. And so does the draft actually recommend one at every intersection? That seems like a lot to me. Boy, I am not by any means an authority on every location that's here today. I do know that news stands have multiplied like bunnies in some areas. And they are kind of a multicolor scourge on certain intersections. And I know that there has been a concerted effort to consolidate, to reduce the number of stands that are there. And there's legal issues with that, that staff, the law department has looked at. And I think those are the fine-grained details that that committee has been working through that, quite frankly, I'm not qualified to talk about. I can say that I think it's a reasonable, the map shows a reasonable number of locations. Not that all of those need to be utilized today. Some of those might be future locations. But again, I will defer to Councilman DeCamp and Renee and others that have been more actively involved in the discussions about where those belong. I'm happy to revisit, by the way, any of the exhibits in here. This is still a work in progress. There's nothing set in concrete. I was just curious. It seems like one at every intersection is a lot. I know we have a lot of them spread out. And there is no coordination. But this still seems like a lot of news racks for a smallish downtown. I don't think it's any more than are there today. I'm almost certain it's less. And I can also tell you that we're talking about a maximum of five individual stands per location. For us today at Limestone and Main, for example, I think I counted nine the last time I was out there. Okay. Thank you very much. Do you want to go ahead and proceed? Turn it back over to Harold and Vitale. I am just going to touch briefly on this handout with the flowcharts for the funding sources. I also wanted to comment on Councilmember Stinnett commenting on the neighborhood associations and communicating to entities outside of New Circle. And I also think it's important to consider that it needs to be a very coordinated and unified effort when communicating to these publics. So we need to finalize projects and some of the funding before you communicate to these publics so that we aren't, I guess, increasing this study and planning fatigue that I think is sort of widespread. And definitely be part of the consideration for the marketing and communications plan. But as you look at this flowchart on the handout, we are trying to align our fundraising strategy with the implementation priorities and the areas of concentration on Main, Vine, and Limestone. And there are these local opportunities, which Harold will touch on briefly, and then state and federal with a listing of grants and private funding and trying to finalize these naming rights, tiered giving plateaus, extended giving periods, private foundations, opportunities for projects, those open space project opportunities and gateway opportunities. And upon finalizing this plan, collateral materials will be produced to approach the public and these targeted donors as well as leave-behinds. Also, if you look further below, there's this more detailed flowchart with the private funding sources. And we think that it would be important to identify and approach people to sort of be streetscape ambassadors for each industry so that they can gain buy-in for each industry. So you would have people with the equine industry, financial, legal, and would further assist us in identifying donor prospects and gain buy-in. And then it's also divided into downtown core business and downtown property owners. And Harold will talk further about the local. I think it's important that first we realize, as Cleet said, we're talking 30 to 35 million. But it's not something that's going to be done in one to three years either. So this is a long-term prospect that we're looking at as we go through and implement this plan. And we're trying to think long-term as we look at this funding. One of the things that you see on the sheet there are business improvement districts. We need to start looking at, even after we get the facility implemented, the plan, we need to start thinking about how we take care of it so that that's not part of the streetscape plan. That we'd be able to come up with a means to maintain it and improve it even more. So we'll be looking long-term at other means to implement this plan. We've been fortunate, as we've had these public hearings, we've had groups and companies that have already approached us saying that they'd be interested in seeing what they can do to help on the implementation. So as Vitality continues on working on who some of these ambassadors are, we'll be able to start going and talking to some of these groups about what we can do to implement this plan in a faster way, and I think it allows us and you all to be thinking creatively what means that we can use to help implement this plan as we move forward. So I think the intent is that the next couple of months we'll be finalizing information that we can use to help in terms of the funding mechanism to implement this and be bringing it back to you all in the future. I have several questioners. All right. Council Member Stevens. Thank you. I know you've looked at this plan over very carefully, Harold, and you would probably have an estimate for what we need to do between now and 2010. Do you have a number for that? Those are being worked on as we speak, and I think we'll be having those numbers fairly soon. But what we're going to concentrate on, as Cleet said at the beginning, would be the main, vine, and limestone. So that's what we'll be concentrating on. Yeah, that's what I was asking about. Yeah. And we believe it's probably going to be somewhere in 12 to 15 million, but as we finalize that, we'll know a little bit more. And your idea for vine would be to adopt pretty much the scheme that Cleet presented there? Yeah. What I've asked Cleet to do is to go back, like on Vine Street, and do a comprehensive drawing so you can see completely what that would look like. Okay. And you think it would be 12 million? 12 to 15 is what we're estimating right now. And that's over the next two years? Whatever how long that construction would be. We're trying to look at what could be done before 2010. Okay. That answers my question. Council Member Beard. Thank you again, Chair. Harold, and this is something that probably was where Council Member Stinnett was headed. I started thinking about, and it relates, again, to the funding situation because obviously if a larger percentage of the population of Lexington is not engaged, you might as well write off that private funding piece as an option, I would think. I kind of did a very quick inventory in my head. My guess would be that of the people that have been engaged, it's probably only 20 to 15 or 20 percent of the total population of Fayette County. And none of this is going to work unless we get those people. And they aren't just outside of New Circle Road either. Half of my district is inside New Circle Road, and probably nobody there was contacted. I'm sure all of Chevy Chase is inside New Circle Road. They weren't contacted. All of Kenwick and in that area is well inside New Circle Road, and they weren't contacted. And there's big portions of the north end of the city, I'm sure, Andrea and Don, that were not contacted. And until we get these people, you know, it isn't one of these deals where we can build it and they will come. They have to find out exactly what they want built and what appeals to them. ties back into the funding situation. If you only have 20 percent of the population, some of the state money and federal money will dry up because they're going to want to see more voters engaged again. So how we go about doing that is a challenge, I know, because a lot of people are very placid about the idea of downtown. There are people I've talked to who live in Andover who've lived there six or seven years and have never been downtown. That blows my mind, having worked here my whole life in the downtown area. But it's a fact of life, and we need to somehow get them here, not just as residents, but they need to come here as a destination. Thank you. We have Councilmember Gray, then Councilmember Gorton, then we have a member of the public. Thank you, Madam Chair. One thing I forgot to mention when I was talking about the fast company story and Mayor Daley's comments that I think is also insightful and worthwhile because it relates to what you all are talking about in terms of timing and pacing of a project like this. The Millennium Park, the project was conceived in 1994. That's when they started imagining it. And they thought that they would hit it by the Millennium, you know, sort of the context that we have with the 2010 games. Once they got into the project and they realized the potential of it, which is what Councilmember McCord was describing, once the city fully realized its full potential, they said, no, wait a minute, you know, let's get this thing going, but let's do it well and let's do it right. And they said, so let's don't create an artificial deadline for something wonderful and transformative for our city. So they actually dedicated Millennium Park in 2004, which is a good insight for us, I think, because as we're using the World Games, the equestrian games, we're really using those games as an opportunity to inspire our imagination of what the city can become over time. And the other thing that recently there was a comment made about Olympic Games, Barcelona began first really imagining as of 15 years ago, whenever the games were in Barcelona, recognizing that the opportunity of the games were not in the games themselves, but in the way in which they used those games to transform the city. And they began really focusing then on their city. Barcelona, that model for Olympic Games has then been translated to Atlanta, and Atlanta used their games in the same way. And they really fully reimagined their downtown through that, built the dormitories that became then or built housing for athletes and visitors that then became almost a new city and took a blighted area of the town and transformed that through it. But it went on beyond the games, and the same model is now being applied in Vancouver. So, and I also think that the comments that Council Member Beard was just making are relevant as well. I do think that it's worthwhile remembering that when Congressman Chandler made his commitment to the half million dollars for the funding for the linear park, which I think is now available. Isn't that right, Harold? The funding has been made available, so we have some funding for detailed design. When he made that commitment, and I think this is pretty outstanding for a Congressman who's not from Fayette County, but from Woodford County, and he said publicly that he considers downtown Lexington the most important undertaking that he can make as a Congressman, because he recognizes how much of a beacon light it represents for the entire district and how much of an economic stimulant it represents for the entire district. Thank you. Okay. Harold, is this the, is this plan, the plan, well, I should probably ask our consultant, the plan that includes the sidewalk study, or is that a different plan? No, that was what we used at the beginning. That's what you used? Yeah, that was the survey that was done by GRW. Okay, so that's been incorporated into this. That was phase one, and this was phase two. Okay. I just had a comment about the funding. Now, we're getting ready today to ratify the fiscal year 09 budget, which will take us to summer, July 1st of 09, so from then, I mean, I'm presuming the things that we want to have done along Main, Vine, and Limestone are going to need done, you know, we can't start them in the summer of 2010. So we have one budget left, if there's to be any public money in a budget, so are you, what's your timeline, and I guess I should address you and Vitaly, on moving forward the recommendations for funding and getting some things into place? We will be looking at various means of this being funded, and probably over the next couple of months, be able to start finalizing. We're talking to utility companies now to see what would be involved on their part, because they would play a key role in this as well. So we're trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together right now, and hopefully in the next couple of months, then we'll be able to answer that a little bit. Utility companies are looking at how long it would take them to do what they need to do, so they're in the process of doing that. Gotten with KKG in terms of what they look at in terms of length of the schedule to construct the plan itself, and we're not saying, back to the Vice Mayor's comment about the plan and the games, the intent is not to have everything done by the games, that was not the intent of the plan. But there's 12 to 15 million who want to have finished. But what that does, it allows us to look to see what we can have done by that, and then knowing that after the games are over, we go back and we continue on. We felt it was very important, because it sounds like the last time I talked to the World Equestrian people, they did want to use the courthouse and Phoenix Park as their ceremonial area, so we want to make sure we're not doing anything in that area that's going to disrupt that as well. So the strategic planning right now is what we're up to in terms of looking at what is done and when. Okay. And then, Mike, will you be having, when do you anticipate the final draft of this plan coming forward to us? We were discussing that prior to this meeting, what the appropriate time to come back was, and what we were discussing was having this, the plan complete when council comes back from the break. Okay. So. But we didn't look at an actual calendar. So maybe at our August meeting. Right. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. Yeah. And we didn't know if you wanted us to come back to you or if you wanted us to do a full presentation to the whole council at that time. Probably it needs to come back to the committee, would be my sense. And you would like, would you not like to have some vote of confidence from the planning committee to take it forward to the full council? That would be what I would anticipate. So our August meeting is August the 19th, and we'll also have the downtown master plan on that agenda. So I think that agenda's set. I got a busy day that day, don't I? Yes. August the 19th. So we have, I believe, a brief comment from Van Meter-Pettit. Did you want to make a brief comment before we go on to our next issue? And I don't know if there's anyone else from the public. Chair. Oh, I'm so sorry. Council Member James. Yeah. I just had one quick comment to make. One of the, one of the first things, and Clete will probably remember this, Vitaly may remember and Mike as well, is one of the things when the surveys were done and the public meetings were going on, this is in reference to your comment about visitors and things like that, there truly is a difference of opinion regarding what should happen in a place if you live there and then if you're visiting there. And one of the things that I had asked for, we were talking specifically about one ways versus two ways, and I said, well, I have a feeling that if people, if you're asking someone who lives on a, who lives on a one-way street, whether they want two ways or not, depending on parking and all kinds of other types of things that could go on, you may get a different answer, a different response if someone is living there versus someone visiting. So I think as we, as we create plans, it's important that we target and get responses and have that response to where we as a council or whatever deciding entity knows if it's a business who may be thinking, if we talk about streetscape, it may end up being that the owners of the property would have to plant trees. They're going to have a different opinion than someone walking through an area who says, wow, trees, we need lots of trees, trees are great to look at, where a person owning that who has to take care of it, maintain it, may feel differently. So in this plan, if there's a way to implement that over your summertime and have some different responses from business owners, residents, and visitors, and target it that way, we need to make it a good place to visit, but we need to make it a pleasant place to live, too, and be sure that we're addressing those concerns at the same time. So that doesn't really need a comment back. I just wanted to express that. Okay. And now we have Council Member Stennett. I had a question for Joe. Back to Joe. I'll get you back. You're on deck still. I know we've talked about the price tag, $12 to $15 million. Do we have any money, have we looked at any money within LFUCG that we could possibly put towards this immediately? Yes. There is a, there is some money that is left over from the UDAG grant, the last payment of that court case, I think, that can only be used for something such as this. That's in December. I think we get that. When do we get that money? In December? I think that's right, sometime just before the first of the year, if I'm not mistaken. So that is a potential source that we would offer to you as a suggestion. And I assume we're going to probably include this in our bond meeting when we have it here in a month or so, after we get past the budget that we talked about yesterday? This would not be bond related. This would be cash. The whole project? That's what I was getting to. No, I'm sorry. You're asking. Other sources of funding from within us. Other sources of money. At this point, we want to go through the process that's been described here to see what the potential is for funding beyond bonding. If it comes to the point where that we are close or getting there, then whatever we need to do to make up the shortfall, bonding is probably an option that we would have to discuss with you. Well, I just want to keep that in the back of our mind as we go through this process, you know, because we're quickly adding to our bonding capacity here in this budget. And so we can make sure that we have all options available. But the December money could be helpful to get us started. Yes. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. And we have Council Member McCord. Yes. To that point, one of the things I would suggest that we had mentioned the other day is if you've got that money that we know is coming later this year and that's certainly something we can use and that we're starting to top out our bonding capacity and so forth and we're squeezed, I think you look at that headline of carbon footprint as an opportunity to leverage the money that we have against any kind of funding out there from the EPA, from other private funding sources. Generally speaking, with those federal funds, you always have to come up with 20 percent match or whatever. And if we've got a couple million dollars that we can use to maybe leverage to get 10 to 15, we might be able to take some monies that we've got and actually multiply that using that headline to do exactly what we need to do. So I would submit my service and anybody else's that has an interest in looking more creatively at how to finance that because I just don't believe, and I've said it over and over, we cannot do it the old way. There's no way that we can continue to run the city in the old fashion. There's just not enough money. But if we can take some one-time money, leverage that against some monies that might be available to help us reduce the carbon footprint and take a bad headline and use that to our advantage, I think that's an opportunity and I certainly want to put that in front of you today. Absolutely, Council Member and Commissioner Taylor is already hot on that initiative right along the lines that I think you all have talked about previously. So yes, we completely agree with you. We want to try to leverage every dollar we possibly can from all sources that we can possibly get them from. Fake sales. Fake sales, exactly. Thank you, Joe. Put meters on the park benches and stuff. Thank you. Just kidding. We do have a member of the public, so Van Meter, if you'll come say your name and address and we'll use our three-minute clock if it works. If the screen can change, welcome. You had a comment. Thank you very much. Van Meter Pettit, 155 Constitution Street, president of Town Branch Trail Incorporated and a downtown resident licensed architect. I wanted to commend very, very strongly what was presented today as a vital process for our city to go through. This building upon the Ayer St. Grosse downtown master plan and then this now kind of focusing in more precisely on doable action which can really have an impact on our city. I was just visiting Greenville, South Carolina. I don't know if anybody's been there, but it's got nothing on Lexington. It's not any bigger. It's not any richer. It's not on the coast. We are absolute peers with Greenville, South Carolina. They hired the best landscape architecture firm in the country at the time, Lawrence Halpern and same guy that did Portland. They spent in today's dollars tens of millions of dollars ripping out of a road through their city and making a river park. It is now the very glue that binds the city and it has been the catalyst for an enormous amount of investment. When you look at the Riverwalk and when you look at so many other great urban spaces, you've got to spend money to spur investment. For every dollar that we invest through bonding and leveraging, as people have said, we're going to encourage another three or four dollars of private investment. I think that when we look at this, it's a question of lost opportunity. If we don't take the broadest vision we can and make the most of this very finite space, this precious small downtown, make it a showpiece for the world, then there's an enormous lost opportunity for potential investment. So I strongly encourage the process and I do hold out the hope that we can do something rather bold along Vine Street. What the particulars are is for another day. But thank you all for having the time and the consideration for this process. It's so heartening to me and to our organization to have the city investing the time, the energy and the resources to make downtown really great. Thank you. Thanks, Van Meter. Thank you all so much for this presentation and we'll look forward to seeing you on August 19th. Okay, we'll move right on to our last issue, which is the management audit implementation. Dr. Stephens put this into committee. And who will be... Is that Joe? Is Joe Kelly or Kimmerick Cole? You're doing a tag team on this? Okay, welcome. We have in our packets, pages 30 to 61, the recommendations of the management partners audit. And Dr. Stephens, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea was to get on paper here the responsible party, whether this requires an ordinance or not. And actually, I think some folks had asked also to see whether these things have been accomplished or not. I know one of them said done. So maybe you can help us with that, too. So do you have any opening comment or do you want to just take questions or... I'm sorry. I wasn't prepared to make a presentation. I thought I was just here to respond to questions. Do you have anything, Joe, that you want to say before we have questions? I would simply say that we've tried to provide you with what you had asked for, trying to identify who the responsible party is and some time frame, ballpark time frame for implementation. Given the fact that we were involved in the budget process and a challenging budget process and given the fact that there's been so much activity in so many different areas, we have not begun wholesale implementation, even those things that are relatively modest recommendations. We will try to begin that process sometime after we get through the budget process and are able to put a little more attention on that process. But in essence, what we've tried to give you was just our interpretation of what the circumstances are relative to timing and whether or not it's something that council approval is required. That doesn't mean that we not work together on it, but simply what is council action required. We have a few council members with questions, comments. First will be Dr. Stevens. Thank you. I've had an opportunity to go through your first document that you sent out, 126 pages, which is dated in March, and I presume some of those statements that are in that document probably do not apply today because a lot of water has gone under the bridge since March, April, May, and now the end of June. Yes, sir. And my concern was about the things that appeared to be controversial in the management audit. And it looks like that some of the things you've taken off the table, at least you don't plan to do anything about, such as rental licensing, and I presume the administration's position is still the same on that, that there's a question mark here and another place that says no. Also the recommendation that we consider reducing the fireman compliment on the ambulance from three to two has been not considered. So that doesn't leave a whole lot of things that are controversial. During the budget process, it turned out to be that some of the recommendations related to the family care service center were controversial. And the council, as you know, voted to maintain the day treatment center at its present location under its present management. The other one that was controversial and wasn't really considered during the budget process was the health clinic that's been operated at the family care center. And I would think, though I don't know, I haven't told the council, but I think most of the council, if not the majority, are supportive of continuing a health clinic at the family care center, serving the Medicaid population there with a multidisciplinary program, which includes, besides the long-term care for the, and continuing care for the patients who they have, also their get well clinic, which takes care of acute pediatric emergencies and needs, as well as social services which are offered in that clinic. It's unfortunate the dental service appears to be uncertain right now. I think having a multidisciplinary service in one geographic location is a great service to the clientele for that clinic, and I, of course, would like to see that maintained. There appear to be some management problems, at least there seems to be a dispute about how it should be run right now, from what I hear, but I would think that that needs to be worked out in the future, and my suggestion would be that no fundamental changes be made in the place until we've had a chance to work on those problems. I did talk to the internal auditor here in our shop who did a review of the operation there several months ago, and there's been some question about the finances of the family care health clinic, and my suggestion, I plan to make a motion to that effect, that we have a CPA, a trained auditor, someone who could go in and look at those books and figure out exactly what's going on, and so any third party who might be interested in someday working with the family care center would have the facts present, and so that's what I would move today, that we. My motion is, and thankfully, seconded by Ms. James, that we hire a CPA. Ms. Crosby, Council Member Crosby, seconded. Sorry, I had my ear tuned the wrong way, I guess, but that we hire a CPA auditor to do an audit, financial audit of the health clinic at this time. And we're supportive of that motion. Good. We have a motion and a second on the floor. Is there any discussion? Council Member Crosby, you're on the list. Was your discussion for the other things in the audit? I have a question. Okay. Is there any discussion related to the motion? All right. We'll call the question then. All those in favor of the motion to hire a CPA to do a financial audit, say aye, and you can punch your little button. Anyone opposed? Same sign. So that is a unanimous vote on that motion. Now, as far as paying for that, did you have some ideas for that, Doc? Well, I thought as long as the administration concurred with this, maybe they can find some money to do it. And I don't believe it's going to cost a whole lot of money. Can you? $5,000 to $10,000. Look. I think, you know, given the work that's already been done, that it won't be extremely expensive. And if we run into challenges, we will certainly come back and ask your advice. We'll have that bake sale. Yes, exactly. A lot of cookies are going to have to be sold. Okay. Dr. Stephens, did you have other comments? I just hope that the dental service can be restored sometime. I know that the College of Dentistry has discontinued providing the dentists there. But with the dental operatory there, and I believe that with a dental hygienist or two and some local dentists, we should be able to continue to provide that service. And I just found in this month's Governing Magazine, which I like to read, a story about in Prince George County, Maryland, in which a child who couldn't, who was a Medicaid recipient, could not get dental care and died from a brain abscess because of an abscessed tooth, which can happen. So we don't want anything like that happening in Lexington. I agree. Absolutely. And there have been, I think, some perhaps misconceptions about how that has evolved. And it was not a decision that was made by the administration or the council. The two dentists who were providing that service decided to go into private practice and the university did not have any other dentists with those skills to replace them. And that's why Commissioner Helm worked with U.K. to make arrangements to get the patients, the children particularly, transported to U.K. where they could get service. But that was not initiated by LFUCG. It was a personal decision on the part of the two dentists who wanted to go into private practice. Well, my interest in the Family Care Health Clinic is not to find out who to blame for anything that may have happened in the past, but to look to the future and see if we can retain a vital service for our citizens. Absolutely. We agree. Yes. Counsel Member Crosby. Yes. I have a few questions regarding, first and foremost, regarding the list of what's required in the responsible parties. I know we were presented with a list also. You all had sent us something back, maybe it was March, where there was some discrepancies. I know we had received something where we had gotten a different list. I can't remember who sent it to us. Do you all remember where you all may have said that maybe someone was responsible and we had gotten a list saying that somebody else was responsible? Is there any way that we can kind of go over those together to see who's correct? Because I think we're kind of getting conflicting messages on who the responsible parties are for some of these things where you all may be suggesting that maybe administration might be responsible, but yet we're seeing maybe that we may have to take action. So we might need to get some clarification. I'll have to try and find that. I don't have it with me today. Counsel, Member Crosby, I believe that the counsel had asked Mr. Schonegger to take a look at those recommendations, and he did. And he had the – there was a list that did differ as to who the responsibility would be with. And it's updated. It's reflected. Can we double-check that according to this list? And then my next question would be, I've gotten several comments regarding – and I brought this up during our meeting with management partners – regarding the accuracy of some of the information that was reflected in the audit. And obviously, I'm just going to bring up FHIR because that's one that I can think up off the top of my head, where, for example, as council members, if we read something, not knowing that each and every department within government inside out, if we read something, we believe it to be fact if it's stated within an audit that's done on our government. For example, where it said maybe they are leaving a scene to go get cell phone reception if their radios aren't working. Well, you read that, and of course, then you ask the question, well, no, that is indeed not true. They do not leave the scene to try and get cell phone reception. They would never leave the scene. That was a factual inaccuracy in that report. However, reading that, I would not know that unless I asked the question. Now, I can't go to every division director, obviously, and ask them that. Is there any way that we could somehow have the division directors, if they have anything that they believe to be not factually accurate, can they somehow – can we have a point person, whether it be maybe Paul, that they can funnel in what they believe maybe to be not accurate about management partner's audit so we can compile a list, because I know the mayor was very interested in getting that information. I have some information myself, but I think it would be much easier getting it directly from the division directors rather than council members who may have half the story as to what's going on or maybe not understand clearly what they're reading about each division. So can we request that of our division directors if they believe that there's something in there that's factually inaccurate? I don't have any problem with that at all. If it's a difference of opinion philosophically, that's one thing. If it's a factual, as you say, factual inaccuracy. I would say that that is factually inaccurate if they're saying that they're leaving a scene and they're saying – leaving a scene of a fire and them saying they never leave a scene of a fire. That's – Sure. That's more than a difference of opinion there. I mean, that is – I understand. And if that – And it looks like a very poor reflection in an audit when that's written about our department, which is one of the leading departments in the nation. So I think if there's other things that are written about different divisions, that our division – that our directors should have the opportunity to be able to address that. And we should be able then to go through and say if that's a difference of opinion or not. Sure. Well, that'll become very clear, I think, through the process. Those differences of opinion are facts that are believed to be inaccurate, are vetted between the directors and the commissioners. And so this communication relative to implementation takes into consideration what you're suggesting. We don't want to implement or suggest to you to endorse implementing something that doesn't make sense. Well, I think we would like to probably see that. So maybe if we could get a list from the directors, because I don't think we've seen – I think we would not have been aware of that unless the question was asked. So I guess I am asking if we can get the division directors maybe to directly – is that okay, Paul? Sure. If I'm perfect, I sound okay. Does that sound agreeable to everyone, to have division directors, if they can somehow – if there's any – if they believe there's any inaccuracies? Do I have to make a formal motion to do that, or it's – It might be nice to have a motion, if you want to go ahead and do that. We're – I think there's another motion coming for – in relation to a way to vet some more of this. But if you want to go ahead and make that motion now, we can incorporate it. Who's going to be making the motion to vet – vex me would be more appropriate. I think there's something going on over here to have these. Did you hear what motion I'm going to be making? Would you like for me to make my motion, or – Oh. Okay. If you want to hold it, that's fine. Hold it? If you want to make it, that's fine. I'll hold off until after – Okay. Discussion. All right. Council Member James. Thank you, Council Member Gorton. My – you may be referring – I want to be a part of this conversation. I've spoken with Council Member Myers, and I think we've spoken before. Other council members have had conversations about how do we go through all of these recommendations and really give them as much thought and the attention that we feel like that they need. Maybe some are indicated that they don't need our attention, that we're not the responsible party as a council, but some do require ordinances or resolutions, which would be our business legislatively to do so. So if we're – even if we're not marked as the responsible party, I do believe that – especially if it's an ordinance or resolution required, or if it's a current ordinance or resolution required, I mean, I'm looking – or in existence, I'm looking at some of these. And, for example, for F-8, where it says eliminate the citizen's advocate position, and it just said – and it says budget, we really need to be looking at each one of these because after – when you're thinking about it, their way to eliminate the citizen's advocate position was to do it through the budget. And we've all discussed that, well, the citizen's advocate position, we've requested for that to remain in the budget and to be funded for F-109, but we've also talked about that there's some things that need to be done. So a budget doesn't eliminate a position, it just doesn't fund it. So we need to look at each one of these line items, look at each one of these, and I would make the suggestion – I won't make the motion at this time because I think we need to talk a little bit more about it, but I'd be happy to do that later, but I would recommend that each one of these recommendations be put into the appropriate committee, standing committee that is, planning, intergovernmental, what are the other – services and budget and finance, if appropriate, and that we're able to go through these and give them the attention that we need, and if necessary, delay anything that could – maybe we need to see a timeline and be able to address those in a timely manner that would be necessary for whatever. If there's some kind of deadline that needs to be met, those are just things that we need to know as a council or as a committee. So I would support if someone else would like to make that recommendation, but I would be happy to do that myself at the end of our conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Jo, I have a couple of very specific questions. One is on page 41 of the packet, the very last recommendation, J8. I thought we already had emergency snow route restrictions and enforced towing, and I'm – Kimra, do you know – does either of you think that's an oversight or is that – Excuse me. I'm sorry. I know. It would be nice to have someone else. We do have snow route plans that are in place. I would need to look at the full recommendation to see – With background. I would expect that they're talking about perhaps the timing of or expanding the route. Changing. I apologize. That's okay. And then on page 52, L20, I was told that this may be an error or an oversight. It's a recommendation to – to transfer to environmental staff from DEEM to environmental quality because there aren't even two there to transfer. So, Tim Bennett, do you know – I was told this might be an error. Yeah. That one under the agree column should still have a question mark. We're still looking. Under the agree column where it says yes. Should instead be a question mark. Should be a question mark. Because we're still reviewing that as we're looking at the consolidation of emergency management and 9-1-1 and the separation of the environmental responsibilities that DEEM currently has and transferring those over to the environmental quality department. Okay. So, we'll be sorting through that as we go. So, that's a question mark. Yes. Okay. That answered my questions. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. I'm going to go a step further than Council Member James did as relates to how we address this. You know, this is so voluminous. Even in its abbreviated form, it's so voluminous. Putting them in committee, one of the standing committees is going to probably dump a lot more on any one committee because it isn't probably going to go into everyone and spread equally. So, I would suggest maybe utilizing the links and have the links take the task up of looking at these recommendations and split them up. And then the links could even further assign members of the link to meet with or to take part in some evaluation, which we report back through the link to the committee as a whole. Can you expand upon – well, would you like to make your motion first and then? Yes. I would like to move that we address the management audit, and I'm not sure exactly what we call this, a situation, an approach to implementation by the council by assigning those various and sundry 426 or 7-whatever-it-is items to the respective links that most closely deal with those subjects. Do I hear a second? Second. Council Member Crosby seconded. So the motion is to put the management audit recommendations into the links committee and committees. And do you want to expand upon what you would like those links to do with them? Well, they first need to vet just exactly. You know, there's four and five lines, three-line explanations, and obviously, we're going to have to go back to our original book that was handed out by the consultants and make sure we're matching up the right things with the right things. And I think probably with these recommendations and numbers, it will do that. And then take whatever action is necessary, whether it be interview, whether it be any other type of interaction with the appropriate parties that are involved. And would you – you would also, I presume, want to see which ones are already complete? Most definitely. And have some – You can take those off pretty quickly, then. And have some reconciliation between Mr. Schonegger's list of responsibility and the partners' list as to whose responsibility it is. You know, and even if there is responsibility, sometimes there is still an element of interest as far as the counsel is concerned in that activity, whether it's not an authority issue, necessarily, but if it touches our constituents, it becomes – it becomes a pertinent item as far as the counsel is concerned. Okay. So there's a motion. That's a long motion. Well, the motion on the floor, and there are some folks who want to comment on it, is to put – to divide out the management partner audit recommendations and for each link to spend some time vetting them in terms of what's been accomplished, what hasn't, whose responsibility it is, et cetera. So I have Councilmember Blues. Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of questions for Councilmember Beard. Who would do the sorting out and the assigning of particular recommendations to particular links committees? Well, I think we would probably go through these and adopt them and put our initials on what are pretty clear, and then we may come down to 10 percent, 15 percent of them that we aren't real clear on and go through a committee as a whole process to assign those out. And a second question is would there – do you have in mind a deadline for, you know, for reporting back? I think it would be a continual reporting process that would probably take place over the next four or five months. I mean, we'd be able to level some of these fairly easily and quickly and get them off our plate, and some of them are going to be more complex, and we'll have to dig into them further and, in some cases, not be able to do anything. Hopefully we'd have it all out of the way, 100 percent of it out of the way, in mid-fall anyway. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gray. Yeah. I want to say I appreciate the motivation and the sentiment because people are all – you know, obviously we're all interested in these issues. But my concern would be that – big concern, frankly, is that we've got to – we asked for the matrix, I believe, to be developed, and, yeah, it is voluminous because there's a lot to be done. And when I look at some – I think, you know, I look at, for example, L-54, which says track the number of traffic enforcement complaints received – track L-54, L-55, which are basically basic operational functions of management. And it says a police chief would be responsible, and is an ordinance required or not. And it's – these are management changes that are designed to allow our government to work more efficiently. And I think this really is where we start migrating into the real challenging area of micromanaging. There are a lot of recommendations here, and this document, as I understood it, was designed to guide us on the issues that are relevant for us to be involved with, and guide us to illustrate where the administration, operationally, day to day, is expected to make decisions and don't require our intervention. So it's a pretty significant decision that we're talking about here, in terms of how deeply we're going to embed ourselves in day to day operations. Because it has the – it has the threat of burying us in very arcane issues and putting handcuffs on people who need to take action. And then the entire government just being gummed up and the wheel stopping on issues that need to be addressed. And so that's why this is a – our action on this is pretty significant. It seems to me that we have illustrated through this or – I mean, I think – I mean, it could be a pretty good exercise to go through this and spend a day confirming whether or not this is accurate or not. And when we agree with the matrix, that might be very meaningful and not slow up the wheels of government. Vice Mayor, if I might add, I believe the Council agreed not to stop action on anything that was clearly an administrative or management issue. I mean, these things will continue to be implemented. That's what I'm saying. I don't think this motion says to stop action on everything, because there's some things clearly on here that the division should be working on. I don't think that's the point. Kennedy, I'm misinterpreting. Kennedy, let me clarify if I might what my intention is. There's going to be items – there's going to be 45 percent of the items that are administrative, administration. There's going to be 45 percent, let's say, that are clear-cut Council, and there's going to be 10 percent gray area in between. And it's the gray area ones that are going to cause the most work. I agree that micromanaging is not at all what we want to do. Council Member – Have agreed for – having been in my career at one time or another micromanaged, it's not a lot of fun. Council Member Beard, were you wanting to clarify your motion? Or Council Member James was getting ready to speak. Did you have any further clarification on your motion? No, I don't think we need to clarify the motion. I think common sense clarifies the motion. Okay. Council Member James. Thank you. Council Member Gordon, I wanted to – I had a comment, but I wanted to respond to Vice Mayor. The numbers you gave for reference, L-54 and L-55, I think the connection to that is if you see within parentheses, it says coordinate with recommendations L-51 and L-53. L-51 and L-53 both, if you look at – in the last column, it says ordinance or resolution required, and it says budget and contract approval. Now, I think what the benefit of this is, is you gain the support of that link as this recommendation comes forward, and we see this on our work session agenda, you'll have at least those three link members that have been part of the discussion. And when someone goes, what the heck is this? What does this mean? This is one of those management audit recommendations, and you have those three folks that can speak on all the research and all the communications that they've had regarding recommendations 51, 53, 54, and 55. So that's four that you'll be able to take care of based on that one conversation. So I think even with just the management recommendations that are here, there is some connection to budget impact, because that's what they were charged with, is finding ways to help our budget situation. So I hope that clarifies something. And we – and Councilmember Blues asked, who's going to follow this, or who's going to – how are we going to do this tracking? And I think that we need to, as a committee, someone needs to come up with something that says what are we looking for, what questions need to be answered, and they almost need to be a standard list of questions that we're all asking and able to report out, similar to the links report out that Councilmember Stenick came up with last year, which is kind of a list of questions that get answered that way across the board. We know what each other – the questions that we need to pull out to make our decisions. Thank you. Thank you. I want to welcome our senior interns and apologize for cutting into your meet and greet time, but we'll continue on with the planning committee, and welcome. Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. When we met in our link and I chaired the general services, we met with Commissioner Cole. We actually asked the commissioner to come through and do what I think we were asking here and went through each one, and then they set a matrix on where everything was. And I'm just trying to figure out what our action plan is now that we have this with what this motion is for the links to do, because I'm not quite sure what we're supposed to do at this point now that this has been presented. Well, if you've already done your work, then you're well ahead of everybody else. And you can sit back and coast while everybody else goes to work, I guess. I will sit back. Councilmember Crosby. My comment is not on the motion on the table. I have another motion when we finish this. Vice Mayor Gray. I'd just like – it sounds like from what Councilmember James had to say that we are perhaps on the same theme. I'm not so sure that we're on, you know, exactly the same page. My concern would be that we – that we would compromise needed activities that need to be engaged, you know, and so some method of – or an understanding of how we would proceed so that we don't compromise needed action is what I'm searching for. And I think that's what Councilmember Blooms was asking as well. So I'm not – if I vote against the motion as it currently is offered, I don't want it to be interpreted that I'm against a level of oversight. I would like to see a motion that would give us a procedure so that I could be confident that we're not going to get in the way of – Do you have an amendment to offer to the motion? Well, if I understood – maybe the motion can be introduced again so I can – Would you like to repeat your motion, Councilmember Beard? Oh, 26 paragraphs of it, yes. I think we're making a difficult thing out of something that maybe is – the whole purpose around it is to make it simple. And again, if they're ready to pull the trigger, they've waited this long. And if they're ready to pull the trigger on something, it should take not more than 15 minutes for the administration to come to the appropriate link and tell them so. And we can do a checkmark beside that, and that's one we don't have to worry about. Or if we have some further questions, we might ask those questions. So I move again that we put this whole issue into the appropriate link and let the links vet those issues, five different entities, five different links, each three councilpersons to a link, and vet those issues. The ones that we can release right away are going to be fairly obvious. Some again, as Councilmember James has pointed out, they in and of themselves may not be – look like they need council approval, but they chain or link back to something that does need council approval, and we need to know that, too. So I still stand by the motion that it needs to happen at the links level rather than at a committee level, or rather than let's just forget about it and let's go on our merry way. And does your motion presume that the next – if the links don't finish their work before our council recess, the administration will continue to implement those things which don't require council approval? Sure. Yeah. Okay. Councilmember – oh, you're on another issue. Councilmember Blues, and then Councilmember Crosby. And we have about 60 seconds. If there's an issue, Madam Chair, that needs to come before council, let's say a budget – you know, a budget item, then why can't council take it up when it does come to council? Why does this need to be vetted by a link in advance? It seems to me what we're talking about here is adding steps and getting into the business of, at the very least, of delay of process, whether – you know, whether it be something that administration go forward with automatically or something that council can take up when the administration brings it to council. Thank you. Are there other comments on the motion? Yes. Mr. McCord. Yeah. Is your machine not working? It wasn't working. Mr. McCord. Okay. There we go. So what is the expectation of the link? I think that's the part that I'm confused on, that we run this through, we look at our particular area. What's the expectation of the link? Just to be aware, and so when it comes before council, there are three folks that are able to speak to that. I'm not sure we actually have a – what the expectation is of the work that we're going to do. Well, first of all, they would report back to this committee, I would presume. Councilmember Beard, what are you expecting? Or to the committee as a whole. Well, this is – since the committee of the whole didn't ask for this, we might come back to planning committee. What do you expect them to bring back? Well, you know, again, I have not gone through this specific list, or for that matter, in detail all of the consultants' report in total, and remember every word of it, to say the least. And now, you know, now it's time to get the job done, and somebody's going to have to go back. Either we're going to do it at a committee level, we're going to do it individually. I'm trying to save people work rather than have 15 individual efforts going out and dealing with 426 issues, to split them up some way so that we can manage, and at the same time have the wisdom of three thoughts rather than one individual thought, and people have pet projects and that can be diluted somewhat by the fact that we've got three council people looking at the problem rather than just one. I don't have any problem with the spirit of what you're trying to do at all. I think that's fine. I'm just – it's not very clearly defined that who we report back to, in what time frame are we supposed to work through this, and those types of things. So I just think that those loose end things are what's kind of confusing to at least myself. But I agree completely that we should understand every aspect that we can so that if it does come before, at least a couple of people can speak to that. I think we need – obviously, how can we gauge what the time frame is until we have a chance to dig into the problem? It could be a one-week process or it could be a five-month process. We don't know at this point. If I could make a suggestion, if the motion passes, we could ask councilmembers for an end result that they would like to see. We can compile those, Paul. We could work together on that. So we would have a common template just as we did in the links committee. Now we have three more councilmembers to speak. Vice Mayor Gray, are you – do I understand that you're chairing work session? Will you allow us five more minutes to finish our committee meeting? I appreciate it very much. Councilmember Crosby, you're still on for a different – why don't you – okay, Councilmember James and then Councilmember Blues to speak to the motion. Yes, I want to speak a little bit of my expectation and I would hope that other councilmembers share this as well. When we – I spoke a little bit with Commissioner Coe during this budget session about how wonderful it would be for us to be informed throughout the year and not only during the links process about the things that impact our budget so that it's not this month of time that we're, you know, pulling our hair out trying to figure out what does this mean, what's been going on all year long. And so a continuation of a links process throughout the year was something that I was already in favor of. And this gives us – utilizing this information gives us kind of some meat and a basis for which we can use for that to generate those conversations with the directors or whomever commissioners regarding our budget for FY10. I think if we can start looking ahead of some things that we already know that we're going to have to include in the budget or even if there somehow is a surplus in January or something, increased revenues or something, and we have a list of things based on measurement audit, things that we could implement. So I'm strongly in favor of, you know, whether it's committee, link, whatever it is, link might be good, a smaller group, and already an established group, but having a continued conversation with expectations. I do agree with that, Councilmember Gorton, that we need to have what are our individual expectations and as a council, what do we need to know? And one thing we need to know is how will the management audit recommendations impact our budget for not only FY09, but FY10? Thank you. Councilmember Blues. Thank you. As I've expressed, I am concerned that this is going to add unnecessary work. And also, from what I hear around the table, there's some lack of clarity on what the procedure is going to be, what the expectations are going to be. So I move to table this motion. Do I hear a second? Second. Okay. That's a non-debatable motion. The motion is to table the motion to put this partners audit into links committee. All those in favor, please use your electronic voting and say aye. Aye. Those opposed to tabling, say nay. Nay. Okay. Let's have you done your electronic. It's not working. Okay. We're slowly coming in. Whose is not working? The vote is 7-4, not to table. So the motion is still on the table. And Councilmember Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just say that I think Councilwoman James outlined the procedure, and that is to follow the same procedure we did in the links committee, come up with a list of questions that we would ask to vet each one of these issues, and then bring that back to this committee or the committee as a whole, whichever one the chair prefers. And so I think that in that process, if the administration has something there that, as you said, they're ready to pull the trigger on, they would just make sure to contact the link to say, these are the issues that we want to handle first because we're ready to move on these. Or these are the ones that, if we don't move on them quickly, they're going to tie our hands in this other area. And then there'll be other ones, as the Vice Mayor talked about, that we don't really have a hand in anyway. We cross those off the list and move forward. So I think that there's a way, if we handle this in the same way that we do our links, that we can be effective and efficient in getting this done and work together with the administration to make it happen. Thank you. Councilmember Crosby, did you have – I'm so sorry. We have a motion on the floor to put this issue into the links. If there's no more discussion, all those in favor of placing these into the links, please vote aye on your electronic voting and say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. Opposed? Nay. Nay. And so the vote is eight to two. The issue will go into the links. And I would ask committee members to please send to Paul Schoeniger specific items that you wish the links to look at, whether it's – whether the issue is complete or whether it's council or administrative, et cetera. So if you could send those to Mr. Schoeniger by email within, what, the next week, Paul? Let's give ourselves a week to think about that and email them to Paul. And then Councilmember Crosby had another motion. I'll go ahead and make my motion. Since we've already discussed this, I'll just make the motion that we ask Paul to send notice to the division directors and ask them that if they see any discrepancies in the management audit, that they please provide Paul with those discrepancies by Friday, August 15th, in written form via email, and that Paul provide a copy of those to all councilmembers as well as council administrator and the administration once he has a chance to get those compiled by September 5th, Friday, September 5th. So we have a motion and a second to ask division – Paul will email division directors asking for any discrepancies in audit recommendations. They will have those in by August 15th, and Paul, we're asking you to have them compiled by September the 5th. Is there any discussion on the motion? All those in favor, please say aye and chart in, sign in on your electronic voting. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. The motion carries. And the final item, are there any motions on the last page of our packet, which is issues in committee? If not, do I hear a motion to adjourn? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned.