Outside USA, inside, outside USA, all over Manhattan, inside, outside USA, and down the Heaney Way, inside, outside, everybody's gone, surfing, surfing USA. We'll all be planning out a room We're gonna take real soon We're waxing down our surfboard We can't wait for June We'll all be gone for the summer We're on safari to stay Tell the teacher we're surfing Surfing USA Can't hang your knees and walk Inside, outside, USA Pacific Palisades Inside, outside, USA With San Antonio Green Sun Inside, outside, USA And on the beach and the lake Inside, outside, USA All over the hall, yeah Inside, outside, USA At Wyoming, I think Inside, outside, everybody's conserving Serving you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . Everyone, it's three o'clock and I'd like to go ahead and call to order the Lexington Fayette Urban County Council work session of October 11th, 2022. And Vice Mayor Kaye has a motion. Thank you, Mayor. I move that we go into closed session pursuant to KRS 61.8101C for the purpose of discussing proposed litigation, so move. Is there a second? Second. All right, council member Bledsoe seconds. Any questions, council? All right, all those in favor of going into closed session, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, we'll go to closed session. We're back in session after our, I guess we need a motion to come back into open session. Second. Council Member Bledsoe moves. Council Member Ellinger seconds. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, we're back in open session then. And first on the agenda is public comment for issues on the agenda. I think Council Member Ellinger has a motion. Thank you, Mayor. I know we have some people from the community like to speak about an issue that with the winter coming and the homelessness issue that they would like to also speak. So that's not issues that would be under issues not on agenda, but I know they have a time frame that they have to be done. So I'd make a motion that we put all public comment issues on agenda and issues not on agenda at the beginning, so moved. Thank you. Who seconded please? Council Member McCurran seconded. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Yes, Vice Mayor. I'm sorry if I may. I understand what the issue is and I had hoped that we would be able to hear a word or two from our commissioner before we had any discussion of this topic. And so unless there's objection from council, I'd like to, again, I'd like to make a motion that we hear from our commissioner first and then hear from people on public comment. So move. And will you state the issue for the record? I believe the issue is the housing of homelessness over the winter time. Everybody heard that. All right, is there a second? Council Member Lamb seconds. Is there any discussion? All right, seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. And so with that, Commissioner Lanter is here. He is the Commissioner of Housing Advocacy and Community Development. Welcome. And if you could, to the motion, give us some information about the winter plans. If I may, since I made the motion just to frame this, The reason I've asked this is I've been concerned that some of the information that council has been getting from the community may not be based in fact and kind of puts us in a bad situation. But in any event, I wanted the commissioner to talk about essentially what our current plans are for the winter time and housing. And whether any of the people who have been bringing forward a proposal have talked to him or anybody in his administration. So with that, Commissioner. Thank you, welcome. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I appreciate the opportunity to tell you a little bit about what our plan is working with the Office of Homelessness for our winter weather that's approaching. We started things out doing what we do every year. Every year we get to bring together the shelters, the providers in the community that work with our homeless population, including our overnight shelters, our day shelters, and other service providers. And we have a collaborative meeting, and we talk to them about our data, what does our data show that our need is, our capacity, what is our current capacity, as well as our ability to surge and use existing resources to meet the need. And then basically, sort of what's the delta? You know, what plan do we need to develop to address what will still be needed minus our capacity? And so we have actually had that meeting. We began in September. We've had that conversation with our providers. And, you know, what we've looked at is first our data. Our data shows that on any given night using our point in time count data, the average number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness on the streets of Lexington is 35. Now we know that number is low because we know numbers are up right now. However, even if our number were off by as much as 50%, which is a high error rate, we'd be looking at 50 to 60. We also know that our street outreach teams work with those individuals and the reason often that they can't go into shelter is maybe they've been turned away for a previous violation of rules or they're not allowed to come in for some other particular reason. So our street outreach team has been working with individuals who were in last year's winter shelter to determine which ones of those are still restricted and can't go to shelter. And they found that of the ones in last year's shelter, only 22 are still restricted and can't go back into the shelters that we have. The next thing we looked at is capacity. So capacity is, it is true that we will not have the winter season-long full hotel program that we've had the previous two seasons under the pandemic but it's important to remember that the reason we had that program was that the emergency shelters had to social distance they had to reduce capacity significantly and that reduced our capacity as a system so those hotel programs allowed us to fill that gap and serve people when our shelters had to reduce their capacity due to the pandemic going into this winter all but one of our emergency shelters is returning to pre-pandemic capacity so while we may be losing the covid response beds we're gaining back the beds that were lost due to the covid response so for example hope center last year had 188 beds this year they'll have the capacity to expand to 228 beds as needed so that's a gain of 40 beds over over last year what they had available so while hope center last year had a temporary tent facility that was outside they're going to gain 40 beds that offsets that loss if that makes sense salvation army same thing they have 160 beds but during a winter weather alarm they have the ability to surge to 30 by 30 to 40 additional beds now we know there's obviously still people who can't won't aren't able to go to shelter we understand that so we are working with one of our street outreach providers to do what we have always done prior to the pandemic which is whenever our winter weather alert is activated when we're in extreme cold temperatures we are able to provide hotel vouchers and so we work with our partners to get folks into hotels for the night or two nights or three nights however long it's going to be cold sometimes it's one night sometimes we know we have a week where we may have to put folks up and that we house them in local hotels in a more scattered site format in some cases we're able to provide some services and that helps fill the gap for those who can't go to shelter some of them for various reasons can't go to shelter one other thing to remember that we will have this year that we did not have last year is council funded five million dollars worth of arpa projects for homeless transitional housing so there was the four million dollar transitional housing pilot project that serves 70 up to 75 households at community action council taking them from the streets then there is the one million dollar transition in place program at mountain comprehensive care that is specifically intended for people who can't go to shelter so people who have pets families some of the folks that are unable to get into our traditional shelter models both of those programs are in one case up and running and another case very close to being fully up and running so that's five million dollars worth of programming in about a hundred beds that we didn't have available last year so our plan is to utilize the existing capacity surge on cold nights with our previous surge capacity at Hope and Subway Charming and our existing providers and to utilize the hotel program for those who were unable to house under other circumstances we are currently we currently have a budget of about 149 000 for from the op budget to provide those hotels i will tell you i don't think that's adequate to get us through the winter i think we're going to need some more but the model itself we believe will work that's the overview there was probably a lot of questions i also have jeff here and the director of Opie here so we're happy to answer any questions. Thank you Commissioner Lanter. Council members if you have a question for the Commissioner will you log in please? Council member Maloney. Thank you I appreciate that I know you say you have 200 beds for the Hope Center and that's mostly for me and I've seen a lot of numbers increased in single mothers and kids and I don't think they can go into to the Hope Center, where are we helping those people, those numbers? So the single mothers and single mothers with children are served by the Salvation Army. The what now? The Salvation Army serves single mothers and single mothers with children. Our Community Action Council Family Shelter Program takes them in as well. And for any that, if those were full in a crisis situation, that's where the hotels would come into play. And disabled people and senior citizens. Those numbers have been really terrifying because I've talked to four people who are 60 years old or 65. They've been displaced because of the rent increase. And I don't, is the Hope Center allowed to let disability and senior people in there? It depends on, there are certain mobility issues. There are some scenarios where they can, some where they cannot. It's an individual case-by-case situation. we do have programs that can assist those individuals again that's the hotels would be available for those individuals also the community action family program is available but another thing to keep in mind our primary goal with someone like that would be to keep them housed or to rehouse them into permanent housing not to shelter them someone who's in a shelter is still homeless so our goal would be to keep them housed and we still have an unprecedented multi-million dollar housing stabilization program in place that can help those people either not be evicted in the first place or once they fall through immediately rehouse them and pay up to three months of rent forward in their new place in the hotel how many people you think will be able to help 35 40 people yeah i mean we're building it projecting on as many as 40 to 50 a night based on the numbers that we saw in our data. And that is the numbers that we had consistently in prior years. And I know we did the hotel last year, and I've talked to a couple people that managers are in the hotel. And I know that community action was supposed to send help out there. So many people they felt like didn't get the care they needed. And I just want to make sure when we put these folks in the hotel that we'll have non-profit there to sit there and talk to either if they have mental issues or they need a job or if they need a place to live, which some people may be able to afford but don't have the tools that we may have. I want to be sure that nonprofits are helping those 35 people regularly. That's an excellent point. And one of the reasons that I believe we're going to need additional funds is the partner that we're working with to do this has actually expressed that and a desire to have some additional funds for staffing. it's one of those sort of lessons learned from the prior years that you as you as you mentioned you can't just stick someone in a hotel there has to be some additional assistance or services wrapped wrapped around that and we've also had preliminary conversations with other partners who can come in and provide those thank you thank you councilmember Sheehan thank you mayor Commissioner you've mentioned that you might need additional funding to implement the plan do you have a proposal prepared for us or when do you think you'll have that estimated cost it's it's difficult to project because our winters are so difficult to project you know it you know there's times where you could go all the way through January with a few days of activation and I've seen some where I think was last year year before we had all of January was activated I think a safe number would be 300,000 total we have 149 so we're probably short 151 but that is a just understand that's a projection dependent upon super warm winter versus super cold winter could throw that one way or the others somewhat significantly thank you councilmember lamb based on what you just said I would like to make a recommendation then when we start having fun balance conversations that we bring this into that discussion because that would be the opportunity to make sure that we have this for one-time funding. So I'm just pitching it to everybody right now. So thanks. And to your point, Council Member Lamb, we've got, because we have the 149, we can make it till then. I do know it looks like probably as soon as next week, we're probably going to have our first outing with this, as many as three days maybe, that will be active next week. But that we should have enough to carry as well into that conversation. Council members, do you have any more questions? All right, I see none. Thank you, Commissioner Lanter. Now, based on Council Member Ellinger's motion, we'll now have public comment for anything. Issues on the agenda, issues not on the agenda. And as I call your name, the council rules are that you'll come to the podium over here. And for the record, you need to state your name and your council district, and then you'll have three minutes to speak. So first is Jared Pahill. Paul? Paul. Welcome. Hi. I'm Jared Paul. district three I would like to assign my time to Laura Babbage please all right thank you next is Larry Franks Franks I'm sorry FRA Fars I'm sorry I'm massacring your name My name is Larry Franks, but I'd like to wait and go last after they get done with their speaking. You want to go last? Yeah, after they go over the plan. After everyone is finished? Okay. Stephen Hester? Welcome. Hello, I'm Deacon Steve Hester. I live in District 3. I serve the Diocese of Lexington at St. Paul Catholic Church. I'm here to speak to you today about homelessness. Homelessness is a problem as old as time, almost 30 years ago. Bruce Springsteen wrote, the shelter lines stretching around the corner. Welcome to the new world order. Families sleeping in their cars in the southwest. No home, no job, no peace, no rest. Unfortunately, his words still ring true for many, many people. Now, I would argue with Springsteen that 30 years ago, it was not a new world order in regards to homelessness or poverty. For as long as there has been stuff, there are people who have stuff, money, things, food, shelter, and there have been those who do not have stuff. This should not surprise us. We were told by our Lord and our scriptures that we would always have the poor. We will always have the homeless. We will always have the destitute. We will always have those in need. those that we should help. Now of course we will not be able to solve the haves and the haves not problem today but what we can do is use the resources that we have at our disposal right now to help the ones that we can help for as long as we can help them. The emergency winter housing program is a proposal that is short term and is only over the winter. It is to provide housing for up to 200 people for five months. People who will be sleeping potentially in cars, sleeping many thunder passes, sleeping in nooks and crannies and cardboard boxes. My friends, let's help these people that we can help for as long as we can help them. When that time is up, don't worry, there will still be people in need. As we've been told, the poor we will always have with us. We will continue, though, as Lexington so often does. We will continue to use our resources that we have to help as many people as we can help for as long as we can help them. Because the world's order may be that there are the haves and the have nots that does not mean that we cannot reach out and help someone who needs it someone with no home no job no peace no rest we can help them and we should help them thank you for considering the proposal thank you very much next is tim Adam's all who is that okay thank you and your so you you want to go you want to go last you don't want to give up your three minutes I you're giving them okay Okay, so you would like Larry to have your three minutes. Yes, please. All right, just clearing this out. We say the same thing. Okay. All right, thank you. Next is Jenny Ramsey. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Welcome. All right, well, welcome. If you'll state your name in your council district, and you'll have three minutes. I better know it, right, Liz? Jenny Ramsey, Council District 5. Okay, first of all, I'm here to thank you all for all the work you've done, and to thank Commissioner Lanter and Director Jeff Herron for all they are doing to care for our citizens experiencing homelessness. We're not here to say they're not. I'm here to say that for the 23 winters we at the Catholic Action Center have worked to fill in the gaps and serve those who do not fit in the funded programs, this is the worst we've seen. I'm here to say that in these 23 winters, the number of people, and especially the elderly and disabled, is at its highest. Now I want to speak for our Catholic Action Center community, because we want you to know that we know this is not the fault of LFUCG, Commissioner Lanter, or Director Heron, for lack of effort. These are unprecedented times with the highest cost of rental units and the impact of COVID. No one controls that except for the good Lord, and nobody has created that situation. All of the communities across our country are experiencing this. We're concerned that the National Weather Service is predicting 93 nights of below freezing temperature from mid-November to the end of March. If you listen, yeah, can we believe them, but definitely we can believe the trend. We're concerned for the lives and health of those folks in our streets. We're concerned that offering basically not denigrating it, but a patchwork sheltering with a limited number of motel rooms will leave many, many without housing to suffer through the cold. You know, we just ask you to think about when we hear there's a frost warning coming. bet many of you took your plants in didn't you we've been getting those frost warnings already we ask you to support a plan that will bring in all our brothers and sisters combining with what commissioner lancer spoke about it's not a one size or one plan fits all Remember that our people on the streets are a lot more valuable than the plants. Thank you so much and we do appreciate all of you and I want you to know and particularly Council Member Kaye that we talked to Charlie. We knew we've been at the staff, we were with the shelter meeting. That was when we realized we had to start taking some alternative to give you all So that it can be combined, it can be separate. We don't care who does it. All we want, the Ezekiel Foundation is gonna stand up and tell you they'll do it. All we at the Catholic Action Center want is to be sure that our most vulnerable are cared for this winter, as I'm sure each and every one of you do. Numbers are numbers. Numbers from before are numbers from before. We have many people here to tell you all, yeah, those are the data. Thank you so much, Jenny. Okay. Really appreciate you and all your work. Thank you, Linda. Next is Debbie Long. Welcome. My name's Debbie Long and I live in District 5. My business is downtown. And I don't know what district this is, I should, but I don't. I'm at the location of 259 West Short Street. And the question that Jenny asked me, do I see more homeless? And I don't think the question is do I see more or less. It's that we do see them and we do see the population of homeless growing. Just, I take many walks around downtown into Gretz Park area. And just two or three days ago, I noticed there was a woman there that had basically made her home on Market Street right across from Christ Church. And it just breaks your heart. And we also have an issue with the sanitation because these folks do not have access to showers, bathroom facilities, and then most of all a bed. And I think if we and our community can help and provide that with these individuals, that we should be able to do that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Blake Hall. Welcome. I'm here to speak to a different issue other than the homeless system. No worries. You got the podium. Blake Hall, District 3. I'm also a member of the environmental commission which supported the parking ZODA which the rethinking parking I believe it's called the environmental Commission supported it due to the reduced requirements of impervious surface and heat island effect better quality landscaping and trees requirements to increase our urban canopy but also personally it's better in when it comes to housing in that you are requiring less space that people may or may not want to house cars and instead can use that to house people. I think I spoke to this last time a year or two ago you all approved a change in the requirements for affordable housing lowering the parking requirement to one per unit immediately a development changed their amended their plan to remove some parking and add more housing these are the ways in which non-scientific parking requirements can harm our city so i ask that you please support this motion for a bet and move it to its first reading and rather than to committee thank you thank you very much next is sarah cummings cummins welcome thank you yes i'm sarah cummins district three i am also speaking today on behalf of the zoda the zoning ordinance text amendment and i'm speaking in support of that everything i had in my speech he mentioned but i was going to talk about you know the increased parking requirements and the reduction of green spaces that that requires and that's the last thing we need in lexington or the reduction of trees and more green spaces also the parking requirements as they stand are not always appropriate or necessary for particular projects so i'm here representing redwood cooperative school and we have a building expansion project that we're working on right now and we need that in order to provide the students we currently have with the spaces they need to learn and grow and with the parking requirements the way they are now they're not based necessarily on the additional number of cars parked they're based on the number of classrooms in the square footage and the teaching capacity so our capacity is not growing we're not having more parkers but the way that the current requirements stand we would need to provide 22 additional parking spaces for people who are not parking there we're not increasing our teachers we currently have you know five cubicles we're using as classrooms in our gym building and we have teachers pushing around carts so we'd love to get them some spaces and in order to do that we don't want to have to tear out an entire playground to build parking spaces that are not necessary to our project so we're just one good example of many why this ZODA should pass our kids you know we have a big environmental focus at our school our kids have 90 minutes of unstructured playtime outside a day as well as some of our kids have met many of you all they have unstructured outside outside time a day they have classroom time outside each day so they spend about half of their day or more outside and it would be really really detrimental for for us to have to take out an entire play structure, green space, and chicken coop. To accommodate those additional parking spaces that we don't need because we don't have 22 additional drivers coming to our campus. We just need the space to get them out of cubicles and to get our science teacher, art teacher, music teacher, the classrooms that they need and deserve. So thank you for listening. Thank you very much. Next is Sarah Dawson. Welcome. Hi, my name is Sarah Dawson. I am in Council District 3 and I am also here to speak in support of the ZODA for the parking. I am both a homeowner in the Glendover Southern Heights neighborhood and a parent of two students that are at Redwood. I'm going to reiterate all of the things that both Sarah and the man before her said about the environmental impact and defer to them because they are much, they have, they know more about that. I know more about the students. We don't need more parking, especially in our neighborhood. Our neighborhood is a Southern Heights and Glendover Neighborhood Association. We're very, very environmentally conscious, and we would like to keep it that way. We would be very detrimentally impacted if we would lose one of the best things about our neighborhood, which is Redwood. And to have impervious surfaces where our students could be learning and playing outside would just be completely against what our school stands for. I'm asking you to just support this because it would greatly help not only our school as an example, but I'm sure the entire community of Lexington. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Ashley Dunsmore. Welcome. Good afternoon, Council Members. I'm Ashley Dunsmore. I'm here representing the Coalition for Livable Lexington today. We recommend adopting the Parking Zoning Ordinance Tax Amendment. The reasons for this recommendation include the following. The proposed ZODA increases the possibility of building more housing. Increased accessibility and potentially affordability, as we have seen from the reduction in parking requirements for affordable housing and from similar sized cities across the country. The proposed ZODA increases the walkability of places over time, as well as safety for pedestrians and better tree canopy requirements, which creates a more livable Lexington. It ensures flexibility of parking requirements based on a development's needs, allowing for businesses and home builders to save costs. Therefore, saving money for consumers and residents and increasing affordability. In addition, requiring bike parking ensures those who cannot drive or choose not to are accounted for within the ordinance. Increasing transportation equity and encouraging multimodal opportunities. The proposed ZODA would make better use of our vacant and underutilized land inside the urban service boundary, promoting more efficient, fiscally responsible, and sustainable development of the land and infrastructure we already have. And four, the proposed ZODA would encourage less vehicle use over time, fewer urban heat islands, and reduced storm water runoff, which all have negative impacts on our environment and health. The Coalition for a Livable Lexington strongly supports this effort to rethink parking as it would help us work towards a more affordable, livable, walkable, and healthy Lexington. We recommend that the Urban County Council approve this ordinance change that moves Lexington towards a more livable future. And that is the Coalition for a Livable Lexington, which is Lexingtonians United for Livability, the Lexington Community Land Trust, Age-Friendly Lexington, Bay Alliance, the Sierra Club Bluegrass Group, Reach, Seedleaf, and Community Action Council. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Rock Daniels. Welcome. Rock Daniels, 11th District. Let me open that. First, I'm here to talk about the homeless, but first I want to say my kids went to Redwood School for three years. That's an outstanding school. If you don't know anything about it, you should check it out. Great school. Loved it. They don't need more parking over there. Absolutely not. So let's talk about one of my kids. And so Grayson, my oldest, everybody might know him. He's 5'3", in the third grade, huge kid. He came home the other day, and he was talking about how a kid was being picked on at school. And my voice to him, my speech to him was, Grayson, it's our job to take care of those who can't take care of themselves. And that is what the homeless are. All right? They're people in our community that can't take care of themselves. They need our help. Many of you guys have done the homeless experience. I know that I did the homeless experience with one of you on council. I won't mention you by name, but we were lucky. We could break into one of my houses and sleep there in the cold, and that was fine. But these homeless, they can't do that. It's illegal to do that. But they are breaking into houses. In the first district, I have many houses, as everybody knows. And a couple weeks ago, we had a break-in. The guy that owns the business across the street called me, said, you need to call the cops. I called the cops. and apparently with the numbers that were just given, I had 25% of all the homeless people in Lexington in my house at 503 Chestnut Street because we had nine people. So I think there's a lot more homeless than that. I mean, I drive down Main Street. I go and I see a catty corner to the Lyric Theater behind the bus stop, which is close to some of your homes. There's homeless everywhere. There's homeless underneath the bridge at Lees Town Road. I mean, they are all over lexington and they need help you know i just put three houses on the market uh for rent and an amazing thing happened now we all know we have a housing shortage we know that you know affordable housing is not in lexington right now it's very unaffordable but i had 240 people apply for those three houses 240 i mean i used to average three years ago 15 people we had 240 people calling me single moms saying, I am living in a hotel right now, and I've got to have a place. I'm being evicted from my place. People are honest. I'm being evicted. I've got to have a place. This is going to be a huge issue, and I think it's going to be even larger than we've had in the past. We've had people die in the past. People freeze to death in the past. People being dumpsters and dumped in our recycling center. You know, we don't want that. We all have hearts. We all love this community, you know, and it's our job here again to fight for and stand up for those who don't have a voice for themselves. Thank you. Thank you very much. Amy Clark is next. Welcome. You'll have three minutes. Amy Clark, 628 Castle Road. I want to thank everyone both on the council and in the administration and the public here who are taking care for our those who haven't homes and shelter when they need them i am here to talk about the parking ordinance that is before you for potential docketing or referral to committee i would strongly urge that you refer it to committee you've already noticed that it's about 200 pages long even if 130 of those pages are just striking every minimum parking requirement currently in the ordinance. 30 or 40 pages are really new, interesting stuff. It would largely deregulate, not entirely, but largely deregulate parking throughout the county. It would remove all standards for minimum parking requirement countywide. That's all zones, all uses. For example, if you want to open a restaurant or change a store to a restaurant, currently you can't have people occupy it until you show that you've met the parking requirement. This would change that. There is provision for keeping in force the parking provision when it's currently regulated by development plans that have been approved by Planning Commission or BOA site plans. but many lots and buildings are not under an approved plan, especially older and smaller ones. There are also new ones to consider. Paradoxically, at the same time this parking ordinance removes all minimum requirements of the parking you have to furnish on your site, It also removes the caps on parking that have been in place in the infill and redevelopment area since 2002, the big bundle Zoda that opened up two small lots to be able to be built on, to be able to provide housing. And this was the protection that went with this. It was a balancing act. And there was a real fear, which we have seen realized in part, that the pavement for parking would proliferate as the building and the opportunity for use was loosened up. So we need this protection in the infill area. We freed up land for housing, not really for parking lots, but for housing and other uses. It threatens to have a big impact on our older downtown, our UK areas, really anywhere too that smaller commercial areas land is cheap by Joel with residential, established residential. I want to add one last thing. There are great new design standards for parking lots in it that add green space. And I just want to say this about it. They are a whisker's breadth from being super green infrastructure for stormwater management. It would be wonderful to just make it a little bit better. Please put it in committee. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Laura Babbage. Mayor, if you please the council, I was at an emergency mental health. A young lady named America was having a mental health breakdown. I didn't get her any time to sign up. I know she had a presentation. No worries. Council, give me three minutes or I'll beg somebody for three minutes. But if I can just speak before she speaks. I think some people may be here three minutes. One person did. I'll tell you who it is if you're interested. It would, yes. I've got, hang on just a moment please. I've got Laura Babbage, I've got Larry, how do you say your last name? Frakes. Frakes, and I've got Tonya Fogle who's asked to speak but wasn't able to sign up. So if there's no objection, we'll ask Ms. Fogle to come forward. And you'll have, if you'll state your name and your council district and you'll have three minutes, welcome. Tana Fogel District 1, 236 East 4th Street. James Brown is my district councilman. I would just like to address this council, and plus one to everything that they said. But there is people who have fallen through the gaps that you all don't know. I would challenge each and every one of you to come with me and go to these homeless places and do an overnight. Not together, but I want you to spread out and do an overnight. And James and Mr. Clover and Josh, y'all have been in our community at neighborhood associations. Y'all know that the main thing that each neighborhood association, you know, north of Main Street, east of Broadway, has told you that homeless is the number one issue. Our children are going to school and the homeless people are laying on benches and they can't get to Booger T Elementary. This is what y'all don't see. We may, and then the system is so complicated. We work day and night, the churches work day and night to call these systems to get this three months in advance rental assistance. It is so hard to navigate and then they say we're out of resources. So then we go to the next person and then we call the Lexington Rescue Mission and we're calling them. So people who are not educated cannot even navigate this system. I'm telling you right now, attach your heart. I was here last Christmas and I brought a family that was living in a car and let you see them. I need you to see them. Mr. K, you live around the corner from me. You can look out your window and I know you see them down on M and Third Street. I don't know where you guys are getting that we have enough resources. We do not have enough resources. People are dying already. Why do we have to wait till it gets below freezing before we put them in a hotel? What is the dignity? Where has it gone? I need you guys to please open your eyes and look at people. He gave a great report, but it's not enough. We cannot navigate through the system. Hear me. It's black, brown kids and white kids, marginalized people who are poor. And if you all sit up on that council, don't come back to our neighborhood association meeting. If you don't stand up for what you told the neighbors when they came to you and they said that there was a problem, you guys said that you would put an attention to it. So if you do anything different from that, shame on you. Shame on you. And I'm not trying to shame you. I love you guys. Y'all are doing great work down here. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like in 2023. But what I'm telling you right now is people are more valuable than plants. People are more valuable than parking lots. People are valued. Matthew 25, that's my three minutes. Thank you very much. Now we have Laura Babbage who has three minutes from Jared. And we have Larry Frakes who has three minutes from Tim. So you'll have six minutes. Welcome. Well, I'm grateful to be here, and I just want to thank you for all you do. I've been here. I've prayed with you all, and I've worked with you all. And first of all, I should say I'm Laura Babbage, Council District 5. Sorry about that. And I want to share with you just an experience I had recently. A 70-year-old homeless man who Adult Protective Services knew about, and he lived in his car in a lot that someone let him stay in a car in a lot. and he had a room all lined up in Clark County and when he got there from the Lyft driver they wouldn't take him because he wasn't able to care for himself and so the Lyft driver took him to Clark County Hospital and finally at midnight he got a bed at the Catholic Action Center and his family was called and I quote this is what was said we're able to identify his body please don't call us back until we need to do that. Needless to say, he didn't have a relationship with his family. And it's a reminder of what we're encountering and the need that we have to have wraparound services. So I want to share with you just this brief presentation. And we know what the circumstances are. And we might disagree on some of these numbers. And I get that. We heard from the the incredible Charlie Lanter and Jeff Heron. And we know that we are down in terms of housing. And Tanya told you that very emotionally just now. So we are down in our beds that we have for emergency shelter. And we know that the true measure of a society can be determined by how it cares from its most vulnerable. So we know that according to LFUCG police and service providers that we're just experiencing more homelessness and we're gonna have a colder 2023, 22, 23. You know, we can't have any deaths this year. We're too good of a city. We're just too good people and we just can't do that. We know that the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable. So we know we have higher rents, scarce affordable housing. Dear Lord, you can't even find a place to live. And we have fewer resources due to a reduction COVID funding funding. So the Winter Emergency Opportunity Village, which I'm going to share with you, is a step in that direction of finding housing and wraparound services, which is really the key, because how are we going to keep people off the street until we know what they really need and why they're on the street to begin with? And as a community, we're going to care for them, and especially our elderly and disabled. And this project is going to provide warmth in the cold and basic needs. So here's the solution. The Ezekiel Foundation would be a fiscal manager. We would have on-site security and supervision. Security is essential. We all know that. We have higher crime, higher bad stuff happening, right? We would have on-site food, on-site surround services, medical providers, mentoring, transportation, all the things that we hope people get. And here's a cost comparison. Last year we had 170 beds at 1.4 million. This would be 160 beds at 775,000. And we have a budget for that. This is what a blueprint of what this is a prominent FEMA provider of emergency shelter, EDS. They're in Florida now. They've been all over the country. But this is one example of what a housing structure might look like. another view of it and then finally you can see that there would be showers Debbie Long talked about this how unfortunate that we have people who can't even get a warm bed or a shower or a bathroom and so this just gives you an idea of what one could look like and so here's our ask is that the LFUCG administration assists the Ezekiel Foundation to identify an acceptable location for this winter emergency opportunity village by November 15th but it could also be a hybrid model. We heard, you know, Charlie's incredible. I mean, he does all kinds of fabulous work. And we know that it could, in fact, be partly what he provides and suggests and partly what this program might suggest with motel rooms during the most severe time of our winter. And so we're all in this together, right? And we want your help and we want to help you. I I mean, I don't know how often you get a community who really does want to help and work with you in all ways possible, but we're kind of putting ourselves right out there. And we have so many communities, so many groups who want to do their part. And I know that we're a community that wants that to happen. So please let us know what we can do, how we can help, and how we can avoid the problem from happening in the future by preparing. And that's what we want to do. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next is Larry Frakes. And you have three minutes from Tim. So you'll have six minutes. And you're our last speaker. Thank you. That's fine. Thank you for allowing me to share my time and get up here last and follow up. I am with the Ezekiel Foundation and we do want to take the lead on this project for this winter time facility not only this year but hopefully in the future. Ezekiel Foundation was founded in 2003 and our mission as a 501c3 is to provide housing for those people that are in need. We do more than just this but the winter time opportunity for us in this particular project in this time that we live in for the citizens and our brothers and sisters that are homeless is is important to us. So we feel very passionate about our commitment to making sure this thing works, not only this year, but in the future and with whatever levels and capacity that we can do this again and again and again to help those people in need. That's exactly what we want to do. So we want to get this project through, and I think it's going to serve a great purpose for the community, and it's going to help a lot of folks, and there's a lot of people that need it. So the Ezekiel Foundation is very interested in this, and we're very passionate about seeing it So we would like to be the financial lead and help this thing be successful and it be something that we can move forward in year in and year out. So thank you all for everything that you're doing. Thank you. And I want to add one other thing. I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry. If you speak in public, you have to be at the podium. And you have some. You gave your time to Larry, right? So you have some time left. You'll need to state your name and your council district, and you'll have three minutes. Well, my name's Tim Adams, and I'm also with Ezekiel Foundation. And this is part of our mission statement. And what stood out to me when I first realized the problem of homelessness was the 1,500 school-aged children here in Fayette County that don't have homes to call home. And we know that's the biggest issue that I see. But what a facility like this could bring to the table as a community. and we understand that a lot of these folks just need access to resources for whatever that might be and that's the continuum of care sponsors that we would have on site to work with people instead of putting them in a motel or hotel room possibly to give them community to give them access to the resources that are available to them that they might not be aware of and as a stop gap to put some of these homeless people into homes eventually It's just part of the multi-step program for us to take homelessness and turn them into homeowners. How we get there, this could be one solution to provide community for these folks and give them access to the resources that they can make, help themselves through the resources that could be available. Thank you very much. We appreciate all of our public speakers very much. Thank you for being here. At this point, council, it's time to approve a docket. If I could have a motion, please. So moved. Second. Thank you. Councilmember Bledsoe moved. Vice Mayor Kay seconded. If you have questions or additions or changes to the docket, please log in. Councilmember James Brown. Mayor, I have a walk-on. Is this the appropriate time? Yes, sir. All right. I moved to place on a docket for the October 13, 2022 council meeting a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute an agreement with community action council for Lexington Fayette, Bourbon, Harrison, and Nicholas counties, Inc. to serve as the fiscal agent for the one Lexington gun violence prevention grant programming for FY 2023. At a total cost not to exceed $137,000, inclusive of a fiscal agent administration fee of $16,000 to select recipients and distribute grant funding within the Lexington Fayette County community related to the following programs. Violence prevention, intervention, community partner grants, $50,000. Two youth mediation and street outreach worker stipend. $37,000 and community sponsorship awards of $34,000. So moved. Thank you, Councilmember Reynolds. Seconds, are there questions, comments? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Vice Mayor Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. I move to place on the docket for the October 13 Council meeting a resolution authorizing the Department of Law to institute condemnation proceedings in Fayette Circuit Court to obtain permanent and temporary easements upon portions of the property located at 1927 Harrodsburg Road for the Wolf Run Main Trunk F Project. So move. Thank you. Second by Councilmember McCurn. Are there any questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Is there anything else for the docket? Seeing nothing, all those in favor of the motion to approve the docket as amended, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Council, I'll need a motion to approve the table of motions for September 20, 2022 meeting. Move approval. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Aye. Council Member Baxter. Council Member Sheehan. Seconds? Any question? All those in favor please say aye. Is anyone opposed? All right that motion passes. We have budget amendments starting on page three. Could I have a motion please? Thank you. Council Member Bledsoe moves approval. Council Member LeGree seconds. Please log in with your questions. Seeing none, all those in favor of approval say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. New business, could I have a motion please? Move approval. Second. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Ellinger seconds. If you'll log in with your questions or comments. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. Question on item DD, either for Director Walters or CAO Hamilton. Director Walters, welcome. Thank you very much. That is in regard to, I think supervisors pay for E911. Could you explain how that will work, what this means? Sure, so from time to time we perform studies with regard to the Fair Labor Standards Act. typically upon request of a division when they believe that the duties have changed enough that a position should no longer be exempt from overtime. So we performed that study. We determined that those telecommunicator supervisor positions could be non-exempt, and therefore that's the recommendation at hand. So instead of getting paid comp time for hours worked over 40, they will now be paid overtime as soon as this passes Council. I appreciate that. I think this is something that's been needed to be done for a while, and I know that a lot of them have been putting in quite a few overtime hours. So I think that they will appreciate this, and I just wanted the public to know that we're making this change. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. And my question is for Director Burton. He probably would be expecting me to. This is on item Y. It actually is a unique design on Wilson Downing that I'm excited to read about here. So my question is, and then I'll let you speak. I'd like to know more about this. This is the first time I've heard about it, which is a wonderful idea. I know this is a design phase. how much right-of-way is going to be required and what's the expected total project cost thank you so the challenge of knowing some of those are that we haven't even started design yet so with the the mini roundabout I assume that's what we're referring to because this project also involves a turn lane it takes creek which is is probably maybe the larger cost component in terms of impact. The mini roundabout is to try to alleviate traffic at Bella Wood intersection because that's a big bottleneck there. So, but the key is that those two projects are married together into one because if you put the mini roundabout there, you still don't have the relief valve that is the right turn lane onto Tate's Creek. So the key will be doing those together. Again, knowing the right-of-way and all the final costs right now are a bit up in the air because mini roundabouts are fairly unique to the U.S. There's a couple them in the state of kentucky so this will be our first sample at doing one that really does what many roundabouts are supposed to do so which is is good and just keep traffic flowing so we're hoping that we can make it work here and it'll be our potentially an example of what we can do in other parts of the city so when you say many roundabout the first place i go was rentals road when the first roundabout was created right that was not not the same thing okay that's That's what I want clarification about. Thank you so much for that. How will this impact also, I mean, I know we have our sidewalks on position to hopefully start soon over on Wilson Downing. This project will, in fact, impact those that the sidewalks that would be put down in connectivity there? Right. There's a chance, especially if we do the mini roundabout. And good news, we have a new engineer, so we're moving that project forward. Thank you. So if the mini roundabout goes in there, we'll definitely impact some of the sidewalks at that intersection, but it'll be very minimal because we're talking about 20, 30 feet of sidewalk on either side that we'll have to redo. We'll still be making that pedestrian connection. It's just that this would impact those sidewalks that we'll be installing next spring. And then one last question is the timing expected, thought out, hopeful time frame. I use my words because there's no expectations anymore because of all the factors. But any kind of expectation or timeline? So this, like all of our federally funded projects, comes with all the red tape and strings and complications that it is a federal project. So I say five to eight years for every one of those. Some move faster. Right. Some move slower. Again, the design phase and the construction phase we have control over, and those usually take six months to a year and a half. It's those right-of-way utility phases that can take six years. Right. So that's why it's hard to control. So that five to six years for this one I think would be in the right ballpark. Perfect. Thank you for that information. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Number L, please. Mr. Adkins. Oh, maybe not. Okay. Craig Benz. That's welcome. Could you, we're having some changes on the jobs fund, could you explain to us what we're doing and how is it? Sure, would you just like a synopsis of the changes that we're proposing? I'm sorry? Are you just asking for a synopsis? Yeah, if you would, yeah, what, because this is a change and how we're going from the grant to the loans and how, just give you an update, just for me but also for the public, because there is some changes going on here. That's correct, so the Economic Development Investment Board takes a look at at the ordinance and the policies related to the jobs fund every two years on average. And this time, some of the recommendations that they have is that they're going to actually require that look at the policies every two years. They're also, as you stated, they're proposing the removal of grants from this process. Right now there is a limit for grants of $50,000, of forgivable loans of $100,000, and then regular loans under the jobs fund for $250,000. So we've seen over the past several years that there's been less demand for grants. Part of that is because of the lower value of those at $50,000, the limit for that. And grants also do not replenish the jobs fund. Of course, there's no payback into the jobs fund for the grant. So for those reasons, the board is proposing that grants be removed in favor of keeping the forgivable loans and the standard loan types. Some of the other requirements in there, there's interest rate requirements for the loans are proposed at the greater of 2.5% or whatever the treasury note rate is. Typically the 10-year Treasury note rate. That has just been up to the board for discussion in the past. So they just wanted to put that into writing so they would have a standard to follow from that point forward. And also we've noticed since COVID really that there's been an issue where companies are just having problems trying to get employment. They're trying to find employees within Fayette County. So there's a new requirement within that ordinance that jobs must be subject to Fayette County occupational license fees so that we don't have a situation where hiring is being done for remote jobs outside of Fayette County that do not end up paying occupational license fees and taxes. So that's just kind of a broad overview. There's a bunch of other small things there. No, that's a good synopsis of that. I guess while you're there, could you talk about J then too, because how that works when reducing from seven to four on that one? Sure, so item J is the Water Warriors amendment to their jobs fund agreement. They were approved previously for seven jobs and an hourly wage of $22. In response to the actual need that they've identified as well as the market, They are proposing to reduce that number of jobs from seven to four. But what they're proposing to do is only one of those jobs would remain at the same hourly wage. Actually, it would go up $2 from 22 to 24. The remaining three jobs that they're proposing would be going up from the $22 that was previously approved up to 44. So all of that to say there's a net zero impact on the actual dollars that they're paying for these wages. Thank you. That's a good synopsis. And I have one more, Mayor V, about the sidewalk outdoor cafes. All right. Brandy? Brandy Peacher? And could you tell us what changes are happening here? Yeah, my pleasure. So we are looking at Section 1729 of the Code of Ordinances. And if you'll remember, we amended this about this time last year, end of the year, to make some improvements. What we're changing this time is to remove the restriction to only B2 zones. We had some requests from adaptive reuse sites, particularly National Avenue, who were trying to have sidewalk cafe setups, but were not permitted due to the restriction to only downtown business zones. So that has changed to allow for that application. Also, we've clarified some language. Lex Park has always been a partner with us on this ordinance. So if anyone wishes to use a metered space to set up a cafe per the requirements, they can. And that's just specification in regards to what they're doing. And then the language for denial has been clarified as well by law in order to ensure that the reasonings for denial are clear related to public safety. And just to be clear, all these requirements ensure the ADA compliance is a review piece of the permit. Thank you, and thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Anything else for new business, council? All right, all those in favor of approval, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? Thank you, that passes. Now we're going on to our continuing business and presentations. And first up is Councilmember Fred Brown with Environmental Quality and Public Works. Thank you, Mayor. I want to report out a summary of September 13th, 2022 meeting of the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee. Our first item was the approval of the July 5th, 2022 committee summary. There were no additions or corrections and the summary was approved without dissent. Next, Greg Luebeck with the Division of Water Quality presented us with the annual stormwater drainage program update. He spoke about new projects which must be waitlisted for two years before any action is taken. He discussed some supply chain issues that create delays in obtaining construction material, and he noted that bid prices are higher than the 2021. There was some discussion regarding the combined projects in the Southland area, which had received positive feedback, which speaks volumes to how well our city handled the project. When asked if any of these ties into the consent decree, Lubick said it is separate other than that some minor realignments of the sanitary sewer system. No action was taken on this item, although there was a lot of discussion with council members. Our third item was the annual vacuum leaf collection program update, which I reported out on September 13th with a request for an alternative leaf collection program. And there was a motion made by Council Member Bledsoe to request the administration to continue to develop a leaf collection program without using the vacuums. In consideration of what that means to the rest of our department and with respect to Republic Services. This is second Bacay and the motion passed 7-3 and that motion came forward to the administration and we've got on the program here to hear shortly about that. Meeting was adjourned at 2-28 and that concludes my report out. Thank you. Thank you very much. Does anyone have a question for Council Member Brown? All right, thank you very much. Next we'll have a recognition. All right, if I could have Director Charlie Martin, are you still in the house? Yes, and Council Member Bledsoe, join me. And any staff from the Division of Water Quality, come on up. No one person does this alone, right, Charlie? No, absolutely not. And parks. And parks. And I don't believe we thought we would have someone from Friends of Wolfram, but he couldn't be here. So I think he had to leave. All right. Well, here in Lexington, we know how important stormwater drainage is. And that's why we're so proud of the creativity and teamwork that was on display as part of the Southland Park Stormwater Improvement Project. So the Kentucky chapter of the American Public Works Association awarded our Division of Water Quality their 2022 Stormwater Project of the Year. So let's hear it first of all for that. Our division of water quality worked very hard to plan and execute this project, which will dramatically limit the street and property flooding around the area. The Friends of Wolf Run were major partners in this project, providing input from start to finish that aided in the project's success. And of course, Parks was right in the middle of that, right? This was a great collaboration. And so first, I want to thank everyone involved in the project. It was truly a team effort. And so I want to go ahead and read the proclamation and then ask Director Martin to say a few words. So, come on up. Okay. Crowd the winner circle. Yeah. Whereas the city's division of water quality was awarded the 2022 storm water project of the year by the Kentucky chapter of the American Public Works Association. And whereas the Southland Area Storm Drainage Study identified Southland Park stormwater improvements project to mitigate street and property flooding in the upper Wolf Run watershed. And whereas the Southland Park project is the first of two phases to improve stormwater management in the neighborhood near the park by providing stormwater detention and improving the water quality of stormwater discharged into the park. And whereas this project involved many improvements to the area, including the construction of four separate detention basins to store runoff and improve interior park drainage, and whereas native plantings and natural stream designs provide stable channels, reduce park maintenance, and provide features of interest to park visitors, and whereas the improvements made possible by this project provide functional, attractive components without increasing downstream flooding and inspired the creation of new amenities such as a new playground in Southam Park. Now, therefore, I, Linda Gorton, Mayor of Lexington, do hereby declare October 11, 2022, Division of Water Quality Day in Lexington. Congratulations to all of you. Thank you. I'm going to hand this off to these guys. Yes. They're the ones who really did. Would you like to say a few words? I will say a few words. All right, come on. I will say it's one of these ironic moments. I get to talk about it. I'm probably the one who did the least because they're the ones who did all the work. Make sure that we focus on it. It's always great to get recognition, though. It's even better when it includes valued partners, you know, government partners. government partners. It starts with Council Member Bledsoe's office. Getting support from the council office is always a first critical point. You all know that. But then our partners with Parks, she mentioned earlier, the Mayor did, the Friends of Wolf Run. It's great when a collaborative effort comes together and works the way that it should. And I'm really proud of the team's ability to be able to pull that collaboration together. It's great when government works. And getting an award like this is kind of the icing on the cake. So thank you. Thank you very much, Charlie. Did Ken Cook join us? Come on up here. Friends of Wolf Run, I think all of you know him by now. Yeah, thank you so much for being part of this, the partnership. Now I'd like to ask Council Member Bledsoe to speak. Thank you. I'll be brief. The very first meeting we had on this project involved consultants, Division of Water Quality, Parks and Recs. There was like 30 of us in a room. And it's no surprise, I saw the first plan, and I wasn't a huge fan. And so I said, well, let's just keep working. And we did. And I'll tell you what, it took a lot of work. This is a really complicated project. It took a lot of people trying to have a lot of good faith and kind of sharing some turf, if you will, to try to make something work. and this is a result of that which I think speaks testament to the fact that we could work together and try to do what was best for the taxpayer, best for the community, best for infrastructure and we won an award for it which I just think speaks volumes to how this city operates and how well we work together and it was really awesome that the Friends of the Fund I think they did have very much concern about how we were going to do this and I don't blame them this is a very sensitive area where lots of neighbors have committed a lot of time and effort and when they write and say thank you not just for the good work but it is better than what we started with that's amazing so I'm super proud of this team and I hope that it's a good model for moving moving forward of how we can do really good work that combines recreational use green space and infrastructure to the benefit of the community and I'm thrilled so thank you Thank you. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. At this point, I would like to introduce our Director of Human Resources, Tammy Walters, and she will introduce our Management Advisory Group. And welcome. Thank you so much. We really appreciate the opportunity to present the results and recommendations for this study today. As you may remember, this project began back in March when we started asking employees to complete job profile questionnaires. It has since progressed. There's been an extensive amount of work put into the project, both performed by our consultant, Management Advisory Group, as well as in coordination with us here at LFUCG. And now we have the final product available for presentation today. I have Dr. Russell Campbell here from Management Advisory Group for this presentation. He has more than 20 years of public sector management experience in areas such as budgeting and finance, human resources, and organizational development. Previously has served as a human resources director, an assistant city manager in municipal government, and an administrator of a state-run healthcare system. As a consultant, he has planned, organized, and directed studies in areas of management, operational reviews and analysis, service cost evaluations, quality of work life analysis, privatization and cost allocation. His consulting experience encompasses state and local government program evaluation, program management, efficiency analysis, and revenue enhancement. He has his undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina, master's degree in public administration from Troy State University, and a doctorate of education from Liberty University. Thank you. Thank you, welcome. Thank you. Dr. Campbell. Good afternoon, Mayor Gorton and members of council. I appreciate the opportunity to come in and share with you the results of the recently completed compensation and classification study. For those of you that were here in 2014, Management Advisor Group did that study as well. So we'd like to think as a result of the quality of the work we did the first time around, we were invited back a second time. And before I go any further, I just want to say I hope everyone enjoyed that football game on Saturday. I beg to come here just for that. What I want to do is talk a little bit about the methodology that we employed to conduct a study. Talk about the peer groups, organizations that we compared you to. Talk about some of the findings and recommendations. And then with an assist from the director, Walters, talk about the next step forward. When we talk about labor market as it stands today, we still are coming out of the pandemic with respect to the impact that it's had on the labor market. Teleworking, for example, working from home has been around for 20 plus years. But now you'll be hard pressed to interview an applicant that will not ask if that's an opportunity or an option. And so that's just one example of some of the things that have impacted the labor market that will be with us for many years to come. We are still in a labor market that is considered robust. Unemployment is low. Jobs are still fairly plentiful. Now going forward, now that the Federal Reserve has decided to tighten credit policy, that will definitely impact the labor market to what degree is still yet to be determined. But based on the September jobs report released by the Federal Department of Labor, there were 263,000 jobs added nationally. The national unemployment rate in September was about 3.5%, which is a 50-year low. One study I recently read said that for every job seeker in today's labor market, there's approximately 3.5 jobs. Here in the state of Kentucky, based on the latest date I've seen, which is August, the state added about 26,700 jobs and the unemployment rate here in the state is about 3.8 percent, just slightly behind the national average. So the overriding goal of conducting the study and trying to do this every five to seven years is to make sure the organization maintains its position in the labor market so that it can recruit and retain competent, qualified employees. government is a service-driven industry and without competent qualified people you can't deliver the services that the taxpayers and the citizens demand and from what i have seen of the community this is a very livable community exceptional things are happening here and and all that happens because of people good people with talent and skills to do that so when you do a compensation classification study the objective is to look and see where the organization is relative to the labor market as it currently stands typically as a general rule if the organization's current pay structure is around the 75th percentile of the labor market peers that it compares itself to generally speaking you should be able to compete across the board for any position that may come about within the organization. One telltale sign that your organization may not be as competitive as it should be is to review time to field data. How long does it take to fill a vacant position? Generally speaking, you should be able to fill any position within 45 days. For the most part, the organization is meeting that benchmark. There are a few departments where there are some recruitment challenges as well as some retention challenges. But overall, the organization is meeting that 45-day benchmark. And so what I have for you is, first of all, we talk about the goals and objectives of the study. As I said momentarily a few moments ago, the overriding goal is to make sure that you're competitive and you can recruit and retain. we performed this study for all the positions that were included in the study. We compared compensation to other labor markets or competitors that were mutually agreed to by the company and the county. And I'm going to share with you what those organizations were. Now, when we talk about compensation, compensation actually takes two forms. There's direct compensation, which is your annual salary or your bonuses or any other monetary incentives. The other side of compensation is known as indirect compensation, which is where we have traditional benefits, quality of work life issues, professional development programs. When you put those two together, your direct compensation elements and your indirect elements, it becomes what we call total rewards. This study focused exclusively on the direct compensation aspect of total rewards, But we did review the benefits package as a courtesy to the county, and I can say that the benefits package is very competitive with those jurisdictions that I'll be sharing with you momentarily. And when we are looking to analyze and evaluate positions, we want to make sure that there's equal pay for equal work. In other words, we want to make sure that those jobs that have similar responsibilities, duties, responsibilities, and require similar levels of education experience, that they're paid on the same spectrum in terms of grade and salary range. And of course, we want this structure to not only address the current composition of jobs within the organization, but as new positions are created and jobs are submitted for reclassification, they can easily fit within the structure that we've developed. The scope of this project included 1,687 positions or people, and it covered 410 different job titles within the organization. The project was not designed to consider employee performance or capabilities as it relates to the study. This study focused exclusively on the value of the position, not the person. Any attributes relative to performance or capabilities should be addressed through one's annual performance review. From our standpoint, we're looking at labor as a commodity driven by the same principles of supply and demand as gasoline or orange juice. We did not make any recommendations to restructure or reorganize any departments. We did not make any commentary on whether any department was overstaffed or understaffed. And did not make any commitments with respect to any salary increase guarantees to employees or anyone within the organization. And lastly, we did not make any recommendations to reduce the pay level of any position or any employee. Even if we found someone's current salary exceeded the maximum or top end of the structure that we recommended, we would not recommend reducing that person's salary. In terms of methodology, how we went about developing the study and coming back with the recommendations, there are two basic tenets that you must adhere to when you develop or design a compensation system. And these are not unique to management advisory group or myself as a consultant. The first tenet is to establish what we call internal equity within the organization. And basically what we're saying is we need to rank the jobs within the organization under study to develop a hierarchical relationship based on the overall complexity of the job and the job requirements. so that the organization will be able to justify different levels of pay based on the level of complexity, difficulty, and qualifications for a given position. In order to do that, we employ a 14-point criteria or 14 job factors to evaluate or rank the jobs within the organization. I'll also share that with you as well. But in order to facilitate that evaluation and apply that 14-point criteria, we have to collect job information from the employees within the organization. We used a comprehensive online questionnaire to gather job information from the employees. We also looked at current compensation policies, organizational charts, as well as existing job descriptions and data from the Human Resources Department relative to positions in departments where there were turnover or recruiting difficulties. We identified jobs that based on data from the Human Resources Office where recruitment and retention issues were raised and we made sure that those positions were included in part of the mix when we do the market survey to collect market data with respect to the market survey. The other half or other part of the process to develop a compensation system or design not a compensation study, is to satisfy what we call external equity, which is looking out in the marketplace, looking at an agreed upon number of organizations that you can call competitors or targets, and collecting wage and salary information from those organizations. Now when we contact those other organizations, we do not collect information on what the actual incumbents in those organizations are actually being paid. We're collecting information on job value via their current pay ranges. You cannot build a statistically valid compensation study based on individual pay from other jurisdictions and the incumbents in those jurisdictions because it would vary tremendously based on time with the organization, time and position, what mechanisms that organization used to advance employee pay within their designated pay range and pay grade. And so in order to attach a significant level of confidence to the recommendations we come back with, we have to use the pay range and pay structure information from the other jurisdictions as part of the analysis. And so to produce the new pay schedule, we take the job evaluation score for the different positions. We take the market average based on the pay structure, and we use a statistical modeling technique, as a linear regression, to create the new salary table. And based on the overall point score assigned to each position, they're assigned to a pay grade and a salary range on that pay table. And then, of course, we can go through and determine adjustments that are needed. We also shared the initial results with top management to gain their feedback. They submitted their concerns and questions through HR. HR forwarded those to the firm. We went back, responded in writing to every question or concern raised by department heads, whether it warranted a change or not. Where we found that the issues raised warranted a change, we made the change. If we found that the initial data was supported by FACT, we stood with the original recommendation. And so those are the two aspects of developing the study. You've got to address the internal relationship of existing jobs. You've got to collect market data externally, and then use some type of statistical modeling technique to mesh together the two sets of data. and so in terms of markets or other organizations we considered as part of this study you'll see those before you now city of Chattanooga Tennessee city of Cincinnati Ohio Columbus Ohio Greensboro North North Carolina Knoxville Tennessee Louisville Jefferson Jefferson County Kentucky Nashville Davidson County Tennessee where you see O-Net there that is where we get our private sector data data. For the public sector organizations on that list, in most states there are certain freedom of information statutes or regulations that govern what information is considered privy to public review. Pay structure and compensation plans are considered public information. So we can retrieve that information from the governmental entities with little to no problem. Those four-year guidelines do not apply to private companies. So if you issue or submit a salary survey request document to Google, Amazon, or any private company, they're not going to comply with that or respond to the request. But there's an alternative route that allows us to get private sector data without having to try to contact private companies directly. And so that's where the O-Net service comes in, where the O-Net service collects the information from the Federal Department of Labor, which provides that information because of the different programs that are funded with federal dollars. And that allows us to see what's being paid in the marketplace for private sector jobs that exist within county government. And the rounding out that list were Raleigh, North Carolina, St. Louis, Missouri, and of course the Commonwealth of Kentucky state government. And those are the organizations that we considered externally with respect for comparison purposes. Now in terms of the job review or job evaluation process, the 14 factors or criteria we use to assess all the jobs that were subject to the study are before you now. First one being data responsibility. Data responsibility looks at the different types of records, reports, and documents employees prepare and review in their current capacity. We're able to, once they've identified their task or duties, we're able to ascertain how judgment is utilized within that position in a routine manner, as well as a non-routine or emergency situation. We look at people's responsibility, whether or not the individual employee is a supervisor, coordinator, team leader, or simply an employee who has no responsibility for anyone other than his or herself. we look at the complexity of the work whether or not the job has certain technical requirements associated with it that require certain levels of education experience licensure certification asset responsibility looks at budget responsibility and or responsibility for safekeeping equipment or materials on behalf of the organization we're also able to look at impact of decision making whether or not uh what are the the impact if an employee makes a bad decision or exercises poor judgment what's the blowback to the employee as well as the organization could there be uh loss loss of life injury or litigation assessed against the organization education experience not what the individual employee holds but what is considered the minimum level of education experience needed for the position and so we looked at the responses that the employees provided and then we benchmark those against industry best standards to make sure that job descriptions will be updated to reflect what are the prevailing standards with respect to qualifications for the different jobs within the county from an education experience standpoint we asked about equipment that the individuals use any physical requirements such as lifting or toting communication who they're interacting with internally and externally. Any math or statistical computation based on the data or reports they're working with or the complexity of the job. Unavoidable hazards. Some jobs by the very nature of the work have some level of inherent risk associated with them. For example, in public works, if you're going down in the manhole covers, repairing sewer lines, there's gases, there are toxins out at the water treatment plant, There are chemicals like chlorine that the employees are exposed to. Parks and wrecks during the summertime, you're maintaining ball fields, maintaining the grounds. There are snakes and bees and things like that that could cause harm. So we want to identify any hazards associated with the given positions because the more the hazards, the greater the value the position is to the organization. And then finally, we want to look and see what level of safety each employee has with respect to their current position, whether it's safety for colleagues or coworkers, general public. And so based on where each position falls within the pecking order of the organization, we're able to ascertain what level of safety that individual employee has the burden for with his or her position. As a consultant, I will go through each questionnaire that was completed, each job description that exists within the organization. I will sign a degree of difficulty rating that ranges from 1 to 10 in each one of those categories based upon my consulting grading matrix, which identifies for me what's indicative of giving a position a 1 in data versus a 10 so that we consistently grade all the jobs within the organization. And so once the grading has been completed and the market data has been reviewed and analyzed, here's what the market data showed us about the county. At the minimum level, which are considered the entry level or starting salaries for the different positions within an organization, the current salary plan or compensation system is about 8% behind the market. At the midpoint or market average, the organization is about 9.7% behind the market. And at the top end of the current pay range structures, the organization is about 10.9% behind the market. Now, in consulting, we use 5% to benchmark a lot of things. Anytime you see negatives greater than 5%, that's usually a pretty indicative sign that in some departments and among some occupational groups, there's probably some difficulty with recruiting and or retaining employees. So you can see here at all three levels of the pay range structure, we exceed the 5% benchmark. Sir, excuse me. Normally the council follows a 15-minute presentation guideline. Do you, how many minutes? I'll just go to the findings. Okay, very good. Thank you so much. You're doing a great job, I have to say. No problem. In terms of the implementation cost and results of the study, we've broken the cost down into three different components. To get those employees who are below the minimums or entry levels of the new pay range structures that we've developed, as well as to provide what we call equity adjustments, which impact 290 employees. The cost is $1.3 million. And just briefly, what are the equity adjustments? Once we go through and identify anyone below the minimum of the new structure we've come up with, we then do a separate analysis to determine if each individual employee had received modest market-based adjustments during the time they entered their current job, what should their target salary be? In other words, what should they currently be earning if they've received average market increases? And if those employees are below that target salary, as we've determined, then they'll get an adjustment to get them up to that target salary. Many employees were at or above that target salary, but we did have some that were below it. So to get those 290 people to minimum, as well as the equity adjustment, to get them to their target salary was $1.3 million. Those folks that were already above the minimum but still required an equity adjustment, there were 408 of those, and that was $1.2 million. And there were vacant positions that we included in the study, and we included the cost to fill those at the minimum level, which there were 143 vacant positions. The cost to fill those at the minimum, our entry low salary, is $213,480. So if we add those three numbers together, the total impact of the study is 2.7 million. And we see 841 out of the 1,600 employees recommended to receive an adjustment as well as the vacant positions. 846 employees received no adjustment as it relates to the study. The change to payroll is a little over 3%, which is a strong indicator that overall the organization has done a pretty good job since 2014 in managing compensation. Because, again, here we employ the 5% benchmark, and certainly the organization is below that when it comes to the overall change in payroll to implement the new study. I'd like to ask Tammy Walters, HR Director, to come back up and just briefly talk about next steps. Thank you. Thank you so much. we just want to let you know that in order to move forward we would ask the council to adopt the proposed pay plan structure in those ranges and the implementation of those that were just released by mag and that is really at your pleasure so if it moves forward for example for the Thursday night meeting then it would follow along to be effective the first payroll Monday after passage of council and that would become the implementation date once that passes council and human resources we would upload that information from the implementation report and all the recommended changes either to job titles pay grades positions themselves and ultimately as that relates to our employees we will also provide written notification to each employee regarding their individual recommendation and that will be a letter mailed to their home address and then we would implement all of that in people soft also following that we would add any new positions using the same methodology emergency Thank you very much to both of you and I think it's probably time for council questions. So first up is councilmember Baxter. Thank you mayor and I just want to make sure since we skipped a couple of slides that we're getting all of the information. So can you please explain to me what the difference is between a a minimum adjustment and an equity adjustment. The structure that we put in place is similar to what you have in place now, whereas each job is assigned to a pay grade, and each pay grade has a salary range that is broken down in three components. A minimum, which is typically an entry level starting salary for someone who just meets the baseline qualifications. Then there's a midpoint, which is indicative of the market average for that given position. And then there's the maximum, which is the top-end value for that job at this given point in time. So those that were below the minimum, we've got to bring them up to the minimum. Otherwise, why have a structure, right? Then we do a calculation, and we run a hypothetical that basically says, if Russell, who's been an accounting technician for the county for the past 10 years, if Russell had gotten average market increases over that 10-year period, what should his salary be today and that becomes my target salary so after we brought those below minimum to minimum and then we look at everyone else as well we look to see your what your current salary is compared to what your target salary should be if you're below that target salary we calculate the amount to get you up to that target salary that's the equity adjustment Okay, so some individuals could qualify for both. Yes. Okay, and so our total, the total investment that we are looking at right now is the 2.7? Is that, or am I missing the number? Yes, 2.7. Okay. So the 2.7 is the base pay without fringe. Without fringe. Yes. Okay, do we know what we are with fringe? So if we're looking at general fund only with fringe, we're just under 2.5 million. additional Tammy can you move close to the mic please sorry yes so the total for all funds base only is 2.7 million we break that out by fund base only for general fund is about 1.6 million But with fringe, it's just under $2.5 million for general fund only. Okay. Hang on, I'm making notes. Sorry. Okay, I think that's all I have for right now. I'm sure everybody else will have more questions. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you all for this presentation. Ms. Walters, don't go anywhere. I actually called Ms. Walters this morning because I wanted to know as of today the number of active employees in two different classes so that we have this number in our head when we're looking at this. I think it's important. I know I had a lot of, I heard a lot of questions about the 2014 results, even though I wasn't here. So what I wanted to say is the LFUCG employees today, active full-time classified and non-classified civil service employees, the number is 1,433. And the active sworn collective bargaining unit employees, which is in police, fire, and corrections is 1,332. and thirty two so reason i'm saying this is the fourteen hundred and thirty three falls within the sixteen eighty seven so that means that they're active and vacant positions i know that that when when the 2014 study was given i heard a lot of people saying that it wasn't all employees and i just wanted to make that clarification because that was important to me because that was something that was brought to my attention but miss walters um also something that was asked of me a lot is they were concerned with the results of the 2014. Can you offer a comparison between the results of this study compared to the 2014 please? Sure. So in 2014 we had about, it was just under 1,600 positions studied. At that time there were just over 500 positions that had adjustments or about 32 33 percent so with this study and 1687 positions about half of those are recommended for adjustments and then our position for change in payroll overall is 3.02 percent compared to 2.54 percent back then I appreciate that clarification and then I just wanted to I'm making an assumption when I say this, but on slide 11, I believe, it talks about adjustment to minimum only for 143 vacant positions. That is something that I'm hoping that could help in recruitment. Is that fair to say? Absolutely. It's very fair to say that an adjustment to the minimum only and bringing pay grades up would only increase our opportunity for recruitment. and having a higher starting point in those jobs. And I don't know if at what point you want to talk about what you all wanted to do about letting the employees know and all that. I mean, I just wanted to, you can do it on my time or you can do it at the end, whatever. I appreciate that. I'm happy to share that. We have a webpage already built that has a lot of different information on it and is ready to be released. One of the pieces is the full implementation report, so employees would have that. It's an open record, and that just makes it available. We also created a voiceover so people can see step-by-step how the target salary is calculated, as well as a calculator so you can put in your pay grade and how long you've been in the job and that sort of thing to calculate your target salary, because that tends to be kind of the thing that's a little more confusing for folks. We tried to make that as easy as possible. and then the potential for timelines. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir, too, for your time. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and all the information. So the last time we did something similar to this was in 2014. Now it's eight years later. Is that the norm? Is that normally when you take a look at compensation and see if there's a disparity in what folks are saying? From a best practices standpoint, sir, normally you'd want to do it every five or six years. So you're off a couple years, but not by much. Okay. In our current pay system, you didn't recommend any changes to it, but when you looked at the, I'll call it longevity pay, from when you were hired in to the current date and what you are making and what you should be making, I mean, did you have to make adjustments for the system that we're in and how that's calculated? Or is that just a standard formula that you use to justify that? Does that question make sense? That's a standard algorithm that's built into the software that we utilize. Okay, okay. And then my other question is, so the adjustment, and I think Council Member Lamb touched on this. So the adjustment that is being recommended to the vacant positions, that's taken in consideration how long they've been vacant and whether or not the pay was keeping us from getting applicants to apply for those positions. Is that correct? It's actually taking into account the analysis of the position based on all of those 14 factors. So whether a position has a person in it or not, if a whole classification was recommended to go up two pay grades, for example, the vacants come up with it. So it's just that those positions happen to be vacant right now. not that we focus on the vacant positions specifically. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does, but is the recommendation that's going to come out of this report, do you feel that it's going to help us fill those vacant positions by adjusting the pay? Absolutely. And then the other question I was going to ask. So this website that you have built and instructed, does it also have an opportunity for folks that want to communicate and share that they're not satisfied or their position wasn't adjusted and give some justification? Is that a component of this website? So we have both an email address available for comp study at lexingtonky.gov, and we're available to go over that with employees and talk to them about any changes that are recommended as a result of the study to be able to answer any clarifying questions for them. Okay. And the last thing I'll ask, and maybe you went over it and I missed it, but what we kept hearing from employees was the fact that they were hired in, they've been on the job for years, and now people are getting hired in, coming in, making more than they're making. Did that get addressed at all, or was there an opportunity to address this in the study? So the way it's addressed in the study is based on the calculation in that you're giving an employee credit for their time that they've been in the job now. So if an employee's been in the job 365 days, then they're going to have that calculation move them that far into the range, whether it's the current range or the new proposed range, whether they've changed or not. So that's really how the employee gets credit for their time in the job. And also in the first study, when we implemented it, you had to be in the job for a year before that calculation affected you. And so we asked that that be set to zero. So if someone had been in the job two days and they were going to be moved to grade minimum, the calculation still moved them two days into the range up to that whole year that didn't happen last time. So we wanted to try to alleviate the issue that we saw out of the first study where folks who had been in the job under a year, if they just moved to the new grade minimum, that's what happened. We asked that they actually moved into the range this time. Okay. So, we still have the opportunity for that to happen. And, I mean, for somebody to get hired in making more money than somebody who's been in the job. But a lot of that's based on experience and education and that sort of thing. Exactly. Okay. All right, that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Kloiber. Thank you. I love all of the data and the information. I'm really keen to parse through it. I had a couple questions about how we established our market standard and the review of the markets. Mostly since we decided to go not with the total rewards but with just the direct compensation, How did we adjust for the varying indirect compensations in these markets that we evaluated with? Based on our knowledge of the labor markets and the jurisdictions that I showed you, we did not find any compelling items on the indirect side that would warrant significant change at this point in time. The benefits package and the indirect compensation overall is very competitive. Okay, so when we were trying to get, obviously the benefits package affects what the direct salary is going to be in these situations. So regardless of how well our benefits package is, even if our benefits package was ten times better than everyone else, we would see that directly affected in us being perhaps below market with our direct. I'm not saying that was exactly what it was. I'm just asking how we accounted for it. Well, yeah, certainly it can happen. And when you talk about direct and indirect, it's basically a situation from the organizational perspective where you're trying to balance the two. There will be some folks, particularly millennials, for example, they're more focused on the actual salary, pay for the position. Where someone's a little bit older, like myself, probably cares about the benefits. There are others who may have an affinity for the amount of time off that they receive. So you look at them independently, but you also look at them on a whole as well. Okay. And one other question. these markets that we compared to implementing a step system for their employees? Some were. Typically, when it comes to general government positions, non-public safety, usually it's an open range format like what we have presented. Steps typically originated and continue to dominate school systems, but they're not the dominant structure in municipal and county government. Okay thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Maloney. Thank you. I appreciate your study and I think overall I can see where you compare with other cities and all that but one of the jobs that I'm concerned about and I just ran the numbers and we did start them off at $19 an hour you move them up to $22 an hour and the problem we still have is the surrounding counties are still making more, a little bit more than we are. And Louisville, for example, has gone up to $28. And when I look at that, I appreciate you trying to go up, but it's not going to bring these people here because where they're going to go is going to be less stressful or they're going to make a lot more money. And what I'm trying to do is trying to separate from everybody and bring people back. And I think overall, I think you're fair to everybody, but this is one particular job that I'm really concerned about because it has an impact to this whole community. And I don't know how we fix that. And to me, that's the problem we've got to figure out. And I know I've worked with C.L. Hamilton about it, but I just don't see a big step on it yet. And to me, that concerns me that I don't, I think we're going to do overall, we'll probably do well. but certain jobs that are really major crisis right now, I don't see a great step in bringing people back. So hopefully we'll put our heads together. I'm concerned about we're not going to fix that one problem that's a big crisis. So thank you for the information. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. What do we set now as our minimum floor now for LFUCG employees? Did I see it was $15.37? The hourly rate, minimum hourly rate is $15.375. What was that before then? In January, the council voted to set our minimum rate of pay at $15 per hour. We had a 2.5% salary scale movement in late June, and that increased it to $15.375. So it didn't get raised any more than what we'd already done then? No, not since we just adjusted the schedules in June, yes. Okay. And what was the biggest change that you saw percentage-wise of any one? Any particular division? Correct. So as far as percentage of change goes, overall 7.64%. So if you remember, it's 3.02, the total payroll change. So the highest division was 7.64, and the lowest was zero. And about 50% is what we didn't have a change in? Is that what you said? In terms of people and positions, yes. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Seeing that no one else is wanting to speak, which is normally what the chair says, but I actually have a motion if my colleagues would be willing to entertain this, which I'm hoping that they would, given the fact that what I understand that our conversation about fund balance is anticipated to be. I would like to make a motion to move and place this on the docket for the October 13th council meeting, an ordinance adopting the pay grades, job codes, job classifications, job titles, and salary ranges recommended by management advisory group incorporated and directing the administration to implement the recommended salary adjustments effective the first payroll monday following passage of council for classified and unclassified civil service employees if any so move is there a second council member bledsoe seconds now let's have discussion of the motion council member ellinger i'm not sure if it's on the motion i hope it is It needs to be. I know, exactly. How much do we put in to council? We put in $5 million? Is that from the general fund? $5 million from the general fund, yes. Okay, but not all of this is coming from the general fund, right? Correct. So what's the difference between the funds? I think you said... I lost my page. $2.7 from all funds, and then for the general fund it's going to be $2.5, including benefits? So the flat amount cost without fringe overall was $2.7 million. With fringe is about $3.7. For general fund only is about $2.5 of that. So $1.2 is coming from the other fund's end. Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Clover. Thank you. While I appreciate wanting to move quickly on this because it is something that matters a lot to people working here, We have only just received these numbers right before this meeting, and I know that myself, I have not had a chance to review them. I know that Council Member Maloney brought up there are some departments we want to check to make sure that we're on pace with regional numbers, that kind of thing. So I feel uncomfortable pushing this forward this quickly, and I would like to postpone this by one week just so that we have a chance to review these numbers and make sure that we can check to see the things we know. So I'd like to make that motion to postpone this just for one week to come back at the next work session so we have a chance to review this. So moved. Is there a second to the amendment? Second. Council Member Reynolds seconds. Any discussion of the amendment? Council Member Maloney? And I appreciate your motion. I think it's very important, but to me, the major crisis that we have right now, we have not fixed that problem. I'm afraid if we vote on this one, everybody's going to say we'd fix this problem that I'm concerned about and a lot of people in Luttonton are concerned about. Overall, I think it's a good plan. I just worry about, to me, we have not fixed the one area that I'm really concerned about. we have done things differently before on these kind of issues and I think when the CAO gets up and speaks I guess I have to be quiet so I'll let you speak. CAO Hamilton. I'd like to explain, Council Member we have discussed this numerous times and we're basically talking about 9-1-1. I don't think it's any secret and 9-1-1 did very well in this study. The issue here is that we can't take, and Council Member Maloney knows that, we can't take an individual non-union, non-sworn group out of this compensation study and raise its salary. We can't do it unless you suspend the ordinance to do that. And once you start that, we're on a real slippery slope. So what Council Member Maloney and I talked about, and we've talked so much that it's made me hoarse, what council member maloney and i talked about is the only way to address something like that is to do it like we did it several years ago and in that particular situation you look at an organization let's just say we're looking at uh 9-1-1 and we say we think that you say we think it needs to have an increase in salary then what we do is tammy and i by ordinance have to present to you a document that says we feel this way and we are presenting to the council an increase in 9-1-1 that can be temporary we would add it to the base salary but it doesn't have to stay forever now if you look at our past experience it stays forever but that is the way you do this you can't just take these organizations out of the regular pay plan. And we've discussed this, and I certainly understand the issue. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. My question is, do I have to make a motion to ask that we look into what we did, like with the IT, and come back? I'm sorry, the motion on the floor is to delay this by a week. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mayor. So that's where our discussion is right now. I'm sorry, Mayor. Yeah, to the motion, Council Member Reynolds. Yes, thank you, Mayor. My reason for seconding this is just that we just received these materials. All I would like to do is just read over them thoroughly before I have to vote on them. Any other discussion? Council Member James Brown. Yes, ma'am, thank you, Mayor. I do understand the concern about the information, but I think we've received enough information and have waited long enough to move these salaries forward. If there's still some conversation that we need to have about it, I think we can have it. And if I'm right, since this is a budgetary item, we can't suspend the rules and give it a second reading. We'd have to let it run its course. So I think it's enough time to have that conversation outside of the meeting. So I won't support that motion. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lamb. And I appreciate, and I appreciate, I understand the concern with the week-long, but I tell you, from my experience being here since January of 86 and watching this in many different levels, this presentation that was had today, I guarantee there's a lot of employees that have been watching this. And you know this too, Council Member Maloney. You know that they're sitting here watching this. And here's the message. that we're sending them if we say we want to delay it or we deny it. It's not a message I want to send. It's a message that I want to lift our employees up for every opportunity we have to lift them up. We have the opportunity here, and I think that we should do it. I appreciate the fact that you want to look over things, but we've had a good organization that has done this study and I think they've done a good job. Is it going to help every single person? No, we know that because of today's presentation. But I think it's going to lift people up where they need it and it's also going to help us with recruitment. That is a very important factor. we have more jobs on available today than I have ever in my life seen in this government and we need to do something about it and our opportunity is before us today right now and it's my hope that my colleagues will support the motion to move forward today in all due respect thank you thank you to the motion council member Kloiber i agree this is definitely something everyone is paying attention to and it does send a strong message it's also my understanding that if we are to move this forward today all this information now would become public for everybody to review at which point if we were to review it and see that there was something we wanted to make an adjustment to or change or advise on it would already be out there as public knowledge. So it becomes a situation of we have not, nobody here on council has been able to do a detailed review of this as we just received it an hour ago. So we're basically putting our trust in other people's hands to say this will now be public. We're going to put that out there. That is the only reason why I'm suggesting we wait just one week. We've waited many months for this study. I just feel that we should do our diligence in reviewing this before we put it out there. Director Walters. So it's my understanding that because MAG has released this report in its finality, it's now a public record, whether it moves forward or not. It's their report. Okay. And I feel I have an obligation to the employees who have waited so long for this to put it out after this meeting. They've patiently waited, and we would put it out as a public document. And as far as changing this is concerned, and I say this with great respect, but this just can't be changed for change's sake. It throws the whole system off. You move a section, and you've just thrown another section out of kilter. That's the only thing I say here. Thank you. And again, just to be clear about potential changes, there's a whole report out settings of specific options that could be propagated throughout the entire model if we were to go that direction. So as you can, like on the first page here, you can see the settings that were used. We could decide that we wanted to alter those if we looked at this data and thought there was something more we could do. I'm just saying right now what we are doing is forgoing that ability by pushing it forward today. And I do wish that we had been able to review this ahead of time because, yes, I want to push this as quickly as possible. It's just hard for me in good conscience to do that when I haven't been able to look at it. With all due respect, we haven't kept it in the drawer. It has been, this is a very difficult process. and our consultants and everybody moved very cautiously to make sure that we were doing this correctly so it hasn't been something that we've kept but I certainly understand anybody's reluctance and we're ready to do whatever the council wants to do now I think I need to add one thing mayor that I don't think all the council is familiar with is that we have another part of this study that we intend to do and we contracted with mag for another fee and they are going to also talk to another consultant who's an expert in this field because what we're going to do is after this has been done we're going to come back and look at our minority and we're going to look at race and gender through our whole system and make sure that we are in compliance now that has to be Not in compliance, but they were in good shape. And they're not going to talk about increasing or decreasing salaries in that. They're just going to go through now that we have evened everything out and do an analysis that I think you will appreciate. Thank you very much, CAO. I have one final question for CAO Hamilton, just real quick. In 2014 when this was done, was this information given to the council in advance of the meeting that they discussed it? I believe that I heard that it was delivered to their homes through binders ahead of time. It very well may have been. To tell you the truth, I can hardly remember yesterday. So I don't remember 14, but it certainly probably was. All right. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak to the motion to delay by one week? All right. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? No. All right, shall we have a – please log your vote. We'll do a tally here. All right, that vote fails, and I think that it was 3 to 10 with one absence. Now, the motion on the floor is to approve Council Member Lamb's motion to walk this onto the docket for Thursday night. Is there any further discussion? Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Sally, could you, and I hope this is part of the motion because you brought it up, but what was that second part you added and is there a cost associated with that? Yes, and we had that built into the contract that was already done. So that's part of the $5 million? That's part of the MAG contract that we've already taken out. And I think it's very important when you were talking about the $5 million. We've got, we are not talking about fund balance on any of this. We have the money to cover it. And can you just go over again? I didn't quite understand exactly what your second part, what we were going to be doing. that what you're going to come well i think the best thing for do if you got it right in front um we can we can either say it somebody can say it better than i or read it it's it's something you really i think gonna really appreciate the second phase of the project which couldn't start until this phase was completed is we want to go back now and look based on gender race and ethnicity to see if there are any outliers that would cause concern whether or not there's been some inequality with pay adjustments in the past or any existing today. So we will go back and look at that in Phase 2. Would that affect what you've done in this Phase 1 then? No, we're going to present the findings of what we found, if any issues, and then the council can decide how they want to move forward with those. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. One last thing. You remember when John Maxwell was here and we did this big thing. John felt, when Tamien did, that the problem was in where the minorities and women worked, the job itself, not the salary. This is going to show us, you know, what we're really talking about. It'll give you some, just like they gave wonderful data today, They're going to give you really good data. Thank you. Look forward to seeing it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you. I had a question about that. Within that part of the study, are you going to look at higher pay for people that speak more than one language? I had asked for that and pushed for that and paid a pay increase. That actually is not part of the contracted analysis. but with regard to other pay situations would be a matter policy versus an analysis. Okay. All right. Then, okay. We'll address that later. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments or questions related to the motion? All right. All those in favor of the motion to walk this on the docket, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Thank you very much, Dr. Campbell, Director Walters, we really appreciate it, and CAO Hamilton. Thank you. Next, we have our leaf disposal plan. Commissioner Albright will offer that. Welcome. Thank you. I'm glad it's been such an easy afternoon for you all so far. We can close out here. As was referenced earlier, back last month I was tasked with developing a leaf disposal plan that did not include leaf collection with vacuums. And the impact that had on some of our other duties and our contractor. So just as a reminder, posted the resolution that was passed on September 13th. And here is what we've been discussing for the last four weeks. We are looking at it as presenting our customers, our residents, with the other options that will be available. in this order, there will be options and we will encourage in as many ways as we know how to continue to allow people the opportunity to keep their leaves and to use them in their own yard in some fashion. And we do have long-term plans where we have discussed how to expand the programs where we teach people the best ways of using those leaves and how to combine them with other materials to make it more effective for their yard. And then we'll also offer various pickup options. As you can see in there, our streets and roads will have some staff that will continue to work on leaf disposal. They'll collect the bags and our waste management staff will collect the carts. Because it will be kind of varied through there, so it will stay on your regular collection day so that we don't confuse people by coming through. We talked about trying to offer it differently. but that tends to just lead to more confusion sometimes. So keep everything on the same day still. We are getting a few seasonal applications, so we'll continue to employ those folks to assist our streets and roads crews so that once again, the whole concept of the seasonal employees is to reduce the amount of burden that that puts on our full-time streets and roads staff. So the more seasonals we hire, the less we have to pull full-time people out, especially during those heaviest weeks and then we will move additional staff in to assist as we need to again during those heaviest kind of three to four weeks that we tend to experience in the fall. And then again the final thing that we'll say is we've suspended all the fees at Haley Pike Landfill so that if we have people want to bring several bags at once that they could do that without worrying about having a burden fee wise. to dropping those off. When we did that, you remember we suspended the fees back at the early days of COVID for several months, and that was, from a composting perspective, that was the best material we ever got. So we are fine with however we can encourage folks to continue to do that. We would be okay with that. Some additional ideas that we have either put in motion or plan to if we proceed in this direction. Again, we have increased the number of coupons. You remember traditionally in the at your service you got three coupons for one set of bags each. This year we already increased that so that each coupon is expanded. It's good for up to three packages each. And our postcard that we're going to send out that we feel we need to increase our communication this year. Either way, we were already working on how we were going to do this. And that the bags were going to become a more important part of leaf disposal this year. So we're going to give people an additional set of bags with a postcard that should come out at the beginning of this month. I may have done the math wrong. I'll have to go back and look. It'll be on the slide later. And then, of course, as we tend to tell people, if you call 311 and ask for additional coupons, we do tend to distribute still another set. So if we know we have people who can easily fill 50 to 100 bags, and we're going to continue to do what we can to help people within certain reasonable expectations. Another idea that we have put together some initial cost estimates for were these leaf shoots, because we do know that filling those paper bags can be a little trickier, and we are asking people to do more with the bags this year than we have in the past, so that we're looking at the opportunity to provide these shoots that kind of fit down in the bag and make it easier, whether it's laying down or standing up, to fill those bags, even if you're by yourself. And one final thing that will be a little different this year would be that we would collect the bags, only the bags, on Thanksgiving week. If you remember previously, the last few years we have actually suspended yard waste collection Thanksgiving week, and that's led to some confusion and some concerns because we needed to make sure that we had enough staff available to collect trash and recycling. and this will allow us to at least go through and collect the bags during that week. Some of the questions that came up in September were what is the impact to the water quality because it's been kind of a conflated, is it a litter issue, is it a water quality issue, is it a landfill diversion issue, and it's a little bit of all of it, I guess. So we did go back and look at the number of times over the years that we have had complaints specifically about leaves blocking a storm drain to see if we could find a pattern. To see if there was an area of the city or something where we are a time of year where we got more complaints about leaves specifically clogging storm drains. And the answer was that we could not. It would probably take a lot more in-depth study than we had available to us with the means we were using. But the reference I used, it was sort of like peas on a plate. They were just everywhere every year. There was no real pattern that we could tell. Similarly, the work borders for potholes completed over the last several years. The question was, by pulling our full-time staff away from potholes going into winter, are we setting ourselves up for more issues as winter progressed? And the answer is really just there's so many things that affect a pothole and the formation of a pothole that deciding how many of them are because we didn't have a second pothole crew available was too hard to ferret out, at least so far. We probably have to hire someone who's a lot better at statistics than I am, for sure. Again, we already have been talking about a communication plan because as we presented in September, leaf disposal is going to be harder this year for our staff. So, again, focusing on keeping them and mulching them back into your yard or putting them in your compost pile, letting us take them in bags and carts as we come through every week, and then opening up Haley Pike a little more broadly so that folks know that if they do have one of those weeks that everything fell at once, as I know happens with some species of trees, then we will have the opportunity to haul them all off one week. We will, again, a lot of this will happen whichever plan moves forward. We are preparing TV commercials for how to dispose of your leaves this year, the best ways. The postcard that's going out with additional bag coupons. We'll have information starting as early as next week about how all this will play out in the digital ads. with the herald leader and facebook and some other opportunities and then we'll also have radio ads starting in two weeks this is a example of the postcard again that goes to print i think tomorrow again because we know that that leaf we already knew leaf disposal was going to be a little trickier so the the better we could get the information out and get some additional coupons into people's hands We'll monitor the budget for that to see how it works out this year, but I think we'll be fine. This was the budget that we have set up for leaf collection, and there are a lot of opportunities to use those funds, I think, sufficiently this fall, however we move forward. We will repurpose some of the contractor and some of the employee payroll issues as we need to for the year. And with that, I know I flew through everything. All right, council members, what questions do you have? Council member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. Things have kind of blown up with a lot of questions over the past few weeks. One thing, you mentioned taking the carts in November and December, and somebody had asked me how usually yard waste is suspended during the winter at some point. So in terms of leaf collection, will leaves be collected all winter if needed? Yes, ma'am. We actually continue to run those. We just run a skeleton crew, but we will run yard waste all winter. Okay, great. And then for Haley Pike Landfill, people can take leaves there themselves? Yes, ma'am. And do they need to be bagged or are they loose? They can be tarped, and then just loose under the tarp, yeah. could be in a trailer or a truck okay wonderful thank you those are all my questions thank you councilmember sheehan thank you mayor um thank you commissioner for this presentation um and your attention to this i know i have been one of the vocal people about leaf vacuuming and if you look at our um tree canopy presentation that we had earlier that our um my district was the one with the highest percentage of tree canopy so this is something that comes up a lot for my district and and how we're going to handle the leaves. So I appreciate the communication plan and telling people what they should be doing. But could you talk a little bit about the choice, like on the postcard, to not say that we aren't doing vacuum? Because I think it's a big assumption for our residents to understand just from that, that we are eliminating that part of the program. We did not want to push forward a final version of what our message would be before we talked to you all today. And the postcards had to lead in front of that a little bit just because of the time that it takes to go to print and mailing. So definitely the postcard we had to be a little bit hedge our words as far as making sure that this was the plan moving forward. But I do think that one of the things that has come from the mayor's office down to everybody in leaf collection or leaf disposal is that we have to acknowledge that this year is going to be very different, especially if we do not use the vacuums this year. So there will be a very concerted effort to make sure that we know, because we have talked about that we can put it on every social media app we can think of, and we can make a TikTok video, I guess. and we will still have leaves in the utility strip. And I still haven't quite figured out how to do that, but we will do our very best effort of making sure everybody knows this year that is not how they will be picked up. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member McCurn. Thank you, Mayor. Commissioner, I'd happily help you with that TikTok video. Oh, I love that. Thank you. I'd be interested in seeing that. Thank you for the presentation, Director Allen. I appreciate the change of tie as well. Thank you for fitting the attire. My question for you is, what about a second Lenny instead of just bags? And I know this is more of a permanent option, but this would also look at cutting costs for us in the future as well. The carts are relatively a little more expensive, and the main thing we have is just sort of keeping track of all of them, how they go out and when they become, as we've talked about before, frequently those become kind of a free second garbage can. And they actually really expand the amount of contamination that we get. So our hope was that we kind of step back from handing out additional carts for that reason. They really add to the contamination. Do you have a concern that people are going to start putting these in their Herbys or their Rosys as well? Probably, yes. I have to admit that there would be a concern that people will put them in their Herbies and their Rosies because that does tend to get confused a lot. I would hope not the Rosies so much, but is that a huge concern or is that something that environmentally that would be okay? I think if we do not have as much of that, and I think we will be okay. It was at the end. And then appreciate the conversation about the shoots. I didn't even know there was such a thing until this conversation. I didn't either. I thank our deputy CAO for that. Thank you. There he goes. Call you out. It was a great idea that I didn't know existed. For those shoots, and I know that this is something that's still being looked into, but would this be a free option or is there going to be a cost? It would be something we would provide. The big thing we haven't really figured out, we can get several thousand of them, we think, in a matter of a couple of weeks, we haven't figured out how we would distribute them kind of appropriately. Okay. I know there are several neighborhoods I'm sure that are going to be very interested in that option, and I appreciate the increase in the bags as well. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. Council Member LaGree. Thank you, Mayor. Commissioner, I just have a question about kind of the original intent of this program, so help me, if you can, with that. Originally with the leaf vacuuming program was the intention to help with stormwater management, to vacuum up the leaves so that they wouldn't get into our waterways. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Probably Rob can speak a little more. I do know back in 2000, the ordinance that was passed was connected to garbage. so I do know there was a connection to the landfill as far as 2000, but now prior to that, I don't know if you have additional information you want to share, Rob. No. Examining the data, we found that it's really not an impact other than people intentionally putting leaves in the storm sewer system. We have had that happen, and anecdotally, talking about calls about leaves and debris what we found is the majority of those calls have been associated with folks wanting a second pass and trying to justify it so they call Lex call and they say oh there's all these leaves that have fallen since you've come back and it's gonna you know we did such a good job selling the the stormwater angle that folks were trying to use that kind of to justify that and what we found is it's really not an impact and as we've learned more it's not not as big an issue as we feared okay and well and the reason I was asking is because if this were originally a stormwater project and then people were raking their leaves onto the easement and then the leaves were blowing into the storm sewer then I don't see how it would help but I know that you said earlier it's difficult to quantify some of that so I was just curious about the original intent of the program versus or in relation to what it's become for in practice and in terms of our various funding sources now it was also kind of low-hanging fruit associated with the consent decree as we were looking how we improved our overall sanitation and storm system and and those were concerns too especially with the sanitary sewer overflows and the combined flows as I said as we've gone on we've realized that's not necessarily the case. Okay so we may be in a different spot now than when the program original originated. All right thank you thank you for that. Thank you Mayor. Thank you Councilmember Bledsoe. Thank you Mayor and thank you Commissioner for your presentation. I think in an ideal world it was an amazing program meaning we move the leaves out the vacuum comes up the storm waters stay clean it's a great it's a great way of doing this and everyone's happy. That's just not the way it works right now and I think the biggest challenge to that is the personnel piece of it which is we don't control the weather and we don't have enough personnel to meet the needs and so what happens is we move the leaves out and then we don't get it picked up on time they end up still in the sewers and everyone's frustrated they call three times they call our office come back and we don't have the personnel to do it I mean at the end of the day even if we financed it and said we're going to pay for it we still don't have the people to do this well and I want that to be very clear it's not a matter we can make a fiscal case for sure we could make a stormwater case for sure but we also need to make the reality which we don't have enough personnel to do this well and so i do think you're making a very good attempt to provide constituents with enough resources to make this work i wish it were more convenient to just pull them out i did that with my mom's i pulled them out and then we would wait so it is it is more work to put them in the bags no question but it would actually i think provide better stormwater quality if we do because we can actually move them more quickly and be more responsible for that and so given that even though it might be a popular I would make a motion that we move forward the plan as presented by the Commissioner is there a second vice mayor Kaye seconds any questions about the motion comments councilmember Maloney thank you I I would support this I just think the time is bad I've been working with this for many years and I was I was We were the one push because originally the leaf pickup was using general funds. We then went to the garbage pickup because we weren't going to use Charlie's money because we wanted to do the whole city. Well, the city side we only wanted to do garbage pickup. And that's why we didn't go through the sewer pickup fees for the water problems. I don't think we did enough planning for this. I think to me, I said it before, we should come out in January, educate the public, give them plenty of notice. And because this is going to be a blow to them and they're going to give them a couple of weeks to do this. Right now, we're out waking leaves at our place. So, and we do back them. But the problem is that you're going to see a lot of people in the fifth district and A lot of people in the 11th district, they're older people that are not planned for this. Because they do not know that they're going to be picking, they have to rake it, rake and use the bag. They've been used to putting it out and letting the folks come and rake it out to the street. So I am concerned and I cannot support this right now, but if it was in January or February after we've had the discussion, had the public input, I would be in favor of this. But to me right now, this isn't the time to do it, so I will vote against it. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to echo what Council Member Bledsoe said a little bit. To me, this isn't about are we going to have a leaf vacuuming program this year or are we not? To me, if we vote to have a leaf vacuuming program this year, it will be subpar and we will have tons of constituents upset at us. We have people upset at us right now because they're going to miss this program. I understand that. I took advantage of this program every year. However, I don't want to pass something and move it forward that's going to cause more disruption. That the leaves won't be picked up in the timely manner where there's going to be snow on top of the leaves where we're not going to do a good job. So I agree, it is not ideal to do this right now. It is not ideal to be just putting the message out now. I wholeheartedly agree and I know that it's going to affect a lot of people. But deciding that we're going to have it doesn't mean that we're making a program feasible for all of Lexington. It is still going to be a problem and it's going to be a much larger one. And it will not be serving our constituents well. So, thank you. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak to the motion? All right, all those in favor of moving this forward, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? No. Okay, there's one no vote, thank you. Now it's time, thank you Commissioner. Thank you Director Allen. It's time for council reports if you'll log in please. Vice Mayor Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. I've been trying to figure out whether I wanted to ask Charlie Rana to come back to the podium, but I do. So Charlie, if you wouldn't mind. We had a fair amount of comment about a proposed new program. And I started being concerned about this when I saw the emails and I thought that there was information in there about the need. that didn't strike me as based in fact at the moment. There was information about site, and it seemed to me that the first proposed site in the landfill was totally inappropriate. So I wanted to know if the people who were proposing this had had a conversation with you or anybody in your office, and then I checked back with you again and asked again that same question. And the reason I asked the question, And the reason I have the concern is that we have a number of organizations, including the city government, that work on this issue of homelessness. And I think we're all on the same page in one regard. We do not want anybody to be homeless. We want every person who ends up being homeless for whatever reason to get the services they need. And we try our best between what the city provides and what the nonprofits provide to meet that need. And so we have to be careful about the resources we use. So can you, again, I mean, I kind of put you on the spot, but again, can you comment on the way in which typically we work on these issues and how this effort, well-intentioned as it is may not have fit into that pattern yeah so you've heard me say earlier that we have a process we follow every year we bring together the overnight shelters the day shelters all of our key players all of our stakeholders that provide these services all winter and all year really and work with them on what's the need you're seeing what are you what can you we literally go around the table what can you do what can you do what can you do to assess everyone's capacity we did that we had that conversation and we are producing the plan that I discussed in my comments earlier from that process that's our process that's the office of homelessness process that since 2014 since since I was in that role in 2014 we've done that every year. The plan that you heard today was not developed in conjunction with the Office of Homelessness Prevention Intervention. It is an independent proposal from from our office. Is that what you're asking? I am and and I guess again my concern was that in part of the proposal it did not seem based on what I I understood the data that we had as a city and as a collaborative effort on numbers of homelessness, the need, the way in which we were prepared to address it. There are some differences both in anticipated need and in anticipated capacity. you know i try to stress that when we as we return to the pre-pandemic system it's important that when you say we've lost x number of beds that we had last year those beds did not exist to serve a higher need they existed to serve a social distance shelter so those beds aren't going away they're just moving back into the building it's not a net loss and then the only real net loss is in the full-time year-round put everyone in a hotel every single night shelter we ran for two years during the pandemic which was also to deal with socially distant shelters and a surge in homelessness created in part by the pandemic we recognize that those numbers are not completely backed down we understand that that's why we still have a plan in surge capacity but I don't think some of the numbers you saw match our numbers in terms of bed counts and what will be available okay I appreciate that and again just to be clear my concern is that if we're going to be allocating resources and we're being asked to allocate resources that it be based on accurate information and it'd be based on work that's been done collaboratively with all of the people who are working on homelessness in the community. So thank you, Charlie. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to invite everyone to join Council Member Bledsoe and myself next Monday, October the 17th at 6 o'clock for our Neighborhood Safety Forum at Southern Heights Baptist Church located at 3408 Clays Mill Road. We're going to have individuals from our police department our citizens advocate will be present one lexington will be there and our office of homelessness will be there as well and at the end everybody will have the opportunity to meet and greet our council at-large candidates and then after that actually before that on Sunday from 2 to 4 Waverly Park will be having their tree day walk that includes a self-guided tree walk activities for children educational colorful display of all types of leaves found in the park and an easy self-guided tour pointing out trees and shrubs around the point six mile loop it's held in conjunction with the Clemens Heights Clemens Grove Fall Festival and they are seeking volunteers so if you would like to volunteer you can email me at wbaxter at Lexington ky.gov the Waverly Park tree day walk is an event held in conjunction with tree week which is a fun free week-long celebration of trees and this event is an opportunity to get outside enjoy outdoors learn about trees and join in fall fun thank you mayor thank you councilmember bludsoe thank you mayor to piggyback off that council member baxter um i will be planting a tree on saturday at moon dance foundation a coffee tree in particular um it will be i will learn a lot i am sure about trees on either they were going I'm planning in honor of the Moondance Foundation that was started a couple years ago. And we will follow that by Freaky Flicks at Moondance. I'll be very careful. Freaky Flicks. We're going to have a pre-show activities at 630. There's going to be a costume contest, a monster mash party. It's going to be fantastic. I hope you will join us in addition to the next Monday night. And I just wanted to mention one thing quickly. Jamie Rogers was my first legislative aide. She worked for me for four years. And she was an amazing woman. I watched her and Fred get married while she worked for the city, have her first child. And she lost her husband on Sunday unexpectedly. And Fred is an amazing guy. If you've met him, he was funny. He laughed all the time. I never saw him without a smile. He was remarkable in many ways. And they have two children, Charlie and Nellie. uh... amazing father dad husband and uh... my heart grieves hurts their families and if you want to take it that service and it's on ker brothers took into this case on friday service on saturday and i will be there for a guy with that said it's one on her her she's a continuous panic the great advocate in lexington for community things and um... just for that but her family knowledge we're thinking of her uh... and sorry council member maloney thank you not too and so sorry i met him if you realize that i want to put jamie the mason and they worked in medical open they were wonderful people i'm sorry uh... marco uh... charlie i think he gets a couple questions uh... I was impressed with their presentation that, and you said you were concerned we still have a lot more work to do with the homeless. And I'm just wondering if we could do a hybrid work with these folks. I mean, we got talent out there that's willing to do this with us. And you work with you to help you because I take all the talent we can. And I would love to see a hybrid that work with you all to see if it, which I hope is not true. But if it does happen, if the crisis does escalate, which the weather gets as bad as it is, we only have 35 beds, the hotels are full because everybody's going to watch UK basketball. We're going to be national champs this year. Yeah, okay. But I just worry that we should have, and to have this much talent to come here and willing to take this on is the opportunity. So I ask that I'd like to make a motion that you and the administration work with this group to put a hybrid together for backup. If this would, I hope would never happen. But if it does happen, we have this kind of a talent out here that we have not had here before willing to step up to help people's lives. So move. Is there a second? Second. Council Member Ellinger seconds. I think the CAO has jumped up. Sorry. Okay. Go ahead, and every time you get up, you mess me up. I'm sorry. We're friends. Okay. I need to make one thing clear, and I had a conversation in my long with Laura Babbage and Jenny yesterday. And if we looked for a site and a project like this, you would either be using ARPA or general fund money. All of that has to be out on an RFP. I can't just say, here's a site, you know, I have to go out on an RFP. For Ezequiel, I have to go out on an RFP. All of this is under, you know, our, it's under the federal, our people, our guidelines are that way too. We have to do that. If we decide, if the council decides that that's what you want to do, there is no possibility of us getting that done by the 15th of November. As you all have been on these RFP processes, they take a while. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew what we would have to do if we did that. Thank you for that. All right. People are already signed up for council comments, so raise your hand if you want to speak to this motion. We'll start right over here. Councilmember James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Maloney and the folks from Ezekiel Foundation. I think the effort and the intent is there. I don't necessarily know if we need this in the form of a motion. I think if our commissioner is willing to work in collaboration to see if there's an opportunity to partner just in case our plan doesn't work and we need to do something expediently to make sure that folks are housed. I think we can do that. But to do this in the form, I'm not going to support the motion, but I support the effort and the intent. And I think we can try to do something in collaboration without putting it in the form of a motion. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Anyone else on this side? All right. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. I too want to applaud everybody's efforts because I think we've all acknowledged that we have a problem and that we want to help solve it. And I'm really appreciative of everybody that has spoken about this and worked towards a solution. I have a concern, Commissioner Lanter, We have, I guess, a concentration of folks that are maybe sleeping outside downtown. Just having more beds available, whether it be in this type of a situation or a different one, does not equal those people using those beds. Is that correct? That's very correct, yes. There's beds tonight. beds available tonight in shelters because they're not all full and the individuals you see sometimes and that are rough sleeping we call it or in various scenarios in the downtown area a lot of times they're there for for a reason either there's mental illness or substance use there's maybe they've been restricted from entry to a shelter often because of those other issues and so So you're going to run into the exact same challenge regardless of whether that's the Hope Center or Salvation Army or the Winter Opportunity Village or whatever program you do. It's not likely to make any difference in your sort of what you would call your downtown sort of core presence because that just requires a different intervention. It doesn't mean it can't be addressed. It's just a different intervention. And just to provide an example, Louisville opened a very similar operation in April of 2022 this year and it's made little to no difference in the downtown homeless presence in louisville so my concern is we have an issue with people that for whatever reason maybe mental health are not going to shelters and are not taking advantage of resources so even offering more of them does not necessarily mean that we're going to fix that problem that's chronic so um i just wanted uh yeah i just wanted to bring that up thank you thank you does anyone else wish to speak to the motion council member ellinger thank you mayor uh sally you said november 15th was too tight of a time frame what what kind of time frame would be reasonable we usually can't but the time you would get one out and evaluate it it usually takes 45 days 45 days that would be the that would be the one and what we would do here is um we would advertise what i would do is i would take uh jenny's example uh her village and we would advertise for that that's the congregate living and and basically i don't know how many responses you would get from that um i think it will be it will be very very difficult um the same difficulty as we had on our site the same difficulty is on uh new circle road it's going to be difficult to find a site because we would advertise it as they presented and that would be in a tent situation it did i think in that case i would amend the motion to to change the date from november 15th to november 29th to give you some more time so moved is there a second second does that give you time i would i would suggest this is just a suggestion okay i don't think you're going to get anything from this rfp to be very to be very blunt with you i think our better our time is better spent talking with jenny and talking with laura and trying to come up with something that meets their needs and also meets what charlie feels is and and that in the board feels is the best determination i think that is a much better time for for everybody i think we can accomplish a lot more than issuing these rfps that we're not going to get a response from i don't think i think ezekiel certainly would do it but finding the spot is the problem and then I'd have to come back with spots and you'd be in all this confrontation again I think we would be better let let us try to work this out thank you there is a motion on the floor what was your date November 29th to ask for an RFP to go out and for November 29th to be the date I'm presuming for the RFP to come back not for something to be set up. Is that correct Councilmember Ellinger? It would be in a line with what Councilmember Maloney said just extend the date two weeks. Anyone else to the motion? Vice Mayor Kaye? Yeah I'm opposed to the underlying motion. I understand but I would like to speak to the amendment. I'm getting three people over there giving signals. I'm speaking to the amendment, I believe, to extend the period and I start by saying I oppose the underlying motion but I'd like to dispose of this and I will call the question on the amendment right now. I call a question on the amendment. All right. The question is called. Do we need a second? We don't need a second, do we? No, you need a second. Our parliamentarian is missing, so we have several seconds. All right. The question on the floor is to extend the deadline to November 29th on the main motion. All those in favor say aye. Anyone opposed? No. All right, let's take a... Is this for the call to question? This is for your... Yes, this is to call the question. Excuse me. This is to call the question. So either yay or nay. This is... See, they're voting. No, this is to call the question. Yeah. So if you want to, there you go. All right. 11 yay. There we go. Three absent. One nay. Three absent. All right. The question is called. All those in favor of extending the deadline to November 29th, just please go ahead and register. your digital vote. All right. The vote is eight nay, three yay. That motion fails. All right. The main motion Now on the floor is Council Member Maloney's motion with a November 15th deadline to put out an RFP. Anyone wish to speak? Vice Mayor, we had several people over there who were trying to get in on this motion. Council Member Baxter, Council Member Legree. Thank you, Mayor. I guess back to the main motion. For one, I appreciate everybody who came here to speak, especially my constituents and people who care very much about downtown and want to keep people housed and keep people safe. I think we can all agree that we want resources available for people who are housing insecure or who are unhomed, and we want to meet the needs within our community. What I'm hearing here today is that professionals within government, professionals within our community have been speaking with each other and are trying to find the right set of resources that will work for the needs of our community. It sounds like that conversation has been progressing from what CAO Hamilton has shared and our commissioner, Commissioner Lanter has shared. And I do appreciate the motion that's on the floor, but I don't necessarily, as council member James Brown stated, I don't know if it needs to be in motion form if our conversations have been progressing and if the main goal is to make sure that we have the right solution for our community. And it sounds like we have some creative people, people with a lot of experience who want to work on this and it sounds like we have some clarity about the numbers in terms of funding for what we might need now and my hope is that if other solutions are brought forward that makes sense that we could entertain those. So I appreciate, Council Member Maloney, you bringing this up. I think it's a very important issue. But at this point I don't know if I can support the motion just because I want our solution to be viable and timely. So thank you. Thank you very much. Does anyone else want to speak to the motion? All right, no one else? Vice Mayor Kaye. One last time, yeah. I just don't, I mean again, what people have said, we want to work on this issue. We want to do it in the most effective way possible. I don't think it makes sense to tie the hands of our administration in terms of how they proceed. I think they've been open to collaboration and to working with others as much as possible. They'll continue to be so. So I think the motion is basically inappropriate at this time. I'll vote no. Thank you. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak? All right. Let's go ahead and use our digital voting. If you'll vote on this motion, please. All right, the motion failed. Nine nay, two yay, and four absent. Thank you very much. Did that finish your council report? I guess so. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. And based on what Council Member Bledsoe reported, I didn't know about Ms. Rogers' husband's passing, so my deepest condolences go out to Jamie and her family, her beautiful family. it's hard to say something joyous after that sad news but we had a beautiful tree planting on friday night at kirk levington and several of my colleagues were there which i really appreciated the mayor was there and the biggest part of it was that my grandbabies were there my grandchildren helped us plant persimmon trees and i just want to thank trees lexington and urban forest initiative and and i want to thank environmental services specifically heather wilson i tell you we just have some amazing employees and wonderful organizations in our community that do such good work and um i think that the fun funnest part about it is i didn't know what kind a tree they were going to plant until i got there and they said they had three persimmon trees and turns out when i was growing up back home on farm in baghdad we had a persimmon tree on our farm and my grandmother had the joy of explaining to me the right time and the wrong times that you don't eat a persimmon and i always got a kick out of going back and picking out a persimmon off the tree and taking it up to my grandmother and having her show me if it was ripe or not so in approximately 10 years it seems like that's the time that it takes for trees to to bear fruit i'm hoping that i will be able to do the same thing for my grandchildren at kirk levington park and i hope that each and every one of the people in community i hope it bears so many persimmons that it feeds the whole community. The other thing is, as I know that each of my colleagues are going to be having a tree planting and I just want you all to enjoy the tree planting as much as I did. It was heartfelt and it was a great crowd of people. It was a beautiful night and it was just an absolute joy. The last thing I would say is I attended, along with Councilmember Maloney, on October forth the annual candle vigil light for national association of mental illness and it was held at central christian church and you know there are no two more fierce people than phil and kelly gunning in this world in my opinion i mean they are just they are amazing and when they step into a room well they just light it up so i dream about being that someday but they had the most moving moving program and uh pastor charlotte thompson with open doors ministry she spoke and i'm telling you now it was just a moving evening and i so appreciate them everybody that was involved with that and um i just um you know i go back to i end with my deepest condolences to jamie rogers and her and her family thank you thank you council member reynolds thank you mayor um i do want to I send my condolences to the Roger family. I'm also very saddened by this news. Jamie and Fred did a lot in Meadowthorpe before they moved. And I knew Jamie from when she worked for Councilmember Bledsoe and her other work in the community. And I just can't think of any more amazing people. I too had a tree planting this past weekend in Valley Park. And I want to thank Councilmember Maloney for coming and Trees Lexington for this opportunity. This is a London Plain tree that we planted in honor of former Councilmember Henson. And some of her grandkids were there and her daughters. And we also planted a redbud because she loves redbuds. And then I'm really grateful to Environmental Services for providing free trees to those that were there that they could take home. And I'm really grateful for Fire Station 14 for being there as well. And it was a really nice day and the trees, I think, are going to be really beautiful in the park and that's kind of smack dab in the middle of the 11th district right now. So that was pretty exciting. And then there's going to be a tree event at Pine Meadows Park this Saturday at 10 a.m. And there were several in the district this past weekend. And so it's really fun to be able to celebrate Tree Week throughout the city. I think that's all I had for the moment. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Mayor. I have two quick things. One is that while golf carts are not allowed on our streets or sidewalks, we do see them in our neighborhoods and there has seemed to be an increase recently. I've talked to some of my colleagues about prevalence in their districts and I've done some research on the issue so far and it appears this item has gotten reviewed every few years. So I would like to make the motion to put a review of our golf cart policies into the planning and Public Safety Committee so we can have a discussion on where we currently are as a community. So moved. Thank you, Council Member Baxter. Seconds, any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? That passes. Okay, and then I have one quick thing that I wanted to say. I was reading our CAO weekly report that we get in our email a couple weeks ago, just right before break really, and there was an item in the environmental quality public works section for a new website and it's a website that has construction project information for sanitary sewer water quality and engineering projects i did click on that link and the link is lexingtonky.gov slash construction dash project dash information but i just want to say this is not a small undertaking to make this information publicly available on a website like this you can see a whole map of the city and there's little dots where all the projects are you can click on a dot it goes to a page that gives you a timeline of the project and information about it and so i just this is not a small thing this is a huge thing for our community um and i appreciate all the effort that went into getting that information up now but also the effort that's going to take to keep it updated so i just thank you to everybody involved thank you vice mayor kay Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to send a more formal email about this information, but I wanted to announce that at the request of Council Member Reynolds, I'm establishing a gun violence task force to address gun violence in Lexington. And Council Member Reynolds has agreed to serve as chair of this task force. The task force will be made up of a wide variety of people from the community, city employees and council. It will look at what the city might be able to do that is currently not doing in terms of preventing and dealing with gun violence. It will make recommendations to the full council about what other measures could be taken and will consider gun violence prevention programs. It will work with judges and other leaders to discuss statewide policies that could be affecting local gun violence. This task force is in addition to the administration's initiatives and seeks to work together to be another tool in our toolbox of addressing this pressing issue. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member McCurn. Thank you, Mayor. I want to start off and also offer my condolences to the Rogers family. I worked very closely with Jamie over the years when she lived in Meadowthorpe and her husband Fred. It's really sad to receive that news and my thoughts and prayers go out to the family. This past weekend, we had our second block party in the Georgetown Street area. And I'd like to first start off and thank the Georgetown Street Area Neighborhood Association, our Police Activities League, all of our resources that were able to come out, our community partners and DJ Classic for his entertainment music. And I'd also like to thank my second district legislative aide, Alicia Larmore, for all of her hard work put into planning for the events and seeing it come to light. It was a great time. We had a lot of neighbors come out, and there was a lot of dancing, kids. It was fun. It was just great to see so many people laughing and having a good time on that block party. And then I'd also like to mention that tonight, starting 23 minutes ago, there's a vigil that was going to be in Meadowthorpe Park this evening, or the loo. And there'll also be an activity happening there, a resource fair this Saturday as well. That is going to be with the Kentucky Associations for Professional African American Women, and their first time hosting their wellness week, and it's all week. For more activities, you can go on to kapaaaw.org. They'll be doing yoga, self-defense workshops, and domestic violence events as well. That's quite a bit. I'd also like to mention that, and thank Ezekiel, the foundation, for you guys coming forward with an awareness for something, and the administration for acknowledging that you guys will partner together and continue this conversation. I don't think anybody in this room, anybody at all is against the idea of trying to see something better for our homeless population and community and making sure that we have options available. And just as everybody else up here, I want to see that options and the help needed for them. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. I'd just like to announce that the town branch commons ribbon cutting is going to take place this coming Thursday, October the 13th at the Met Plaza at 573 East Third Street. That project has been a long time in the coming, and it looks great. So I'd encourage everyone to come out and join us this coming Thursday. And then I'd also like to extend my condolences to the Rogers family. Jamie's a great person, great friend, big supporter of everything that's good. And it's just a ball of energy. Fred was a great person and I know he's going to be missed. So our condolences go out to them and our thoughts and prayers are with their family. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. I too want to extend my condolences to the Rogers family. And I want to follow up about the Town Branch Commons because that's going to be something that I've been looking forward to and can't wait until we have a ribbon cutting on Thursday. One thing that we did talk about today, actually I'm not sure we even talked about it, was briefly when we were doing our docket review on there under ordinances for first reading was the ZODA for the parking and we didn't really discuss it but it's some big changes that are going to happen for how we go forward in our minimum parking. Is there any way that the administration could do a possibly executive summary something that kind of shows what the different changes are in that? I think surely planning could do that. Is Jim still here or Jim Duncan? We didn't have any discussion on it when we were doing the docket but there are some big changes that are going to be occurring and I think we'll make sure the public is aware of what the changes are or at least that we can have a summary of kind of the different changes if you don't mind. I would ask Good idea. Yeah, we'll ask Director Duncan to get you all a summary before Thursday. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else for council report? All right. We do have a mayor's report that needs approved. Approved approval. Thank you. Second by Baxter. Any questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. We also have our first price contract bid recommendations, if I could have a motion to approve. So approval. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And was there a second? Council Member Curran, did you have a question? Since this is the first, and you know me, I have to go back through here. So are these items that are on this page 89, are they actually an item in Legistar? and I'm kind of looking at our council clerk's office because. Miss Abigail. I just want to make sure that this is an item that's in Legistar that can be tracked just like all the other items. Yeah, it's an item in Legistar. So it acts kind of like the communications from the mayor and the communications for the mayor, FYI, where it gets its own separate thing. But purchasing is kind of in charge of that. So we just put it on the docket. so okay but and then further asking is the information that's normally on a routine bid in in a legistar id file is that also available or is it just what we see in this memo um i think you'd have to check with purchasing what we get is or what we are getting is what is in that uh file so okay all right council member lamb as i break the microphone um all of the information that's normally included will be in the legislature file all of the information that would normally be on the docket will be in the file todd slayton is working on that and we're all kind of working together and i'll make sure that that's the case too excellent excellent excellent yes we are still going to get regular bids that will be on the docket but these price contracts they're just going to go onto the smears report for a simple for simplification okay i just i just have to keep a check on this but there will be only one file for those bids in legistar we have it all worked out that's cool all right you know me i have to i have to pay attention to this stuff i'm the only one that pays attention to it so thank you any other questions about this item all right all those in favor of approving say aye anyone anyone opposed all right that passed we have already had public comments so we are ready for a motion to adjourn. Thank you. All those in favor say aye. Thank you. We are adjourned.