# (Part 2) Special Budget and Finance and Economic Development Committee - October 25, 2022 > Auto-transcribed civic record · October 25, 2022 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5667 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5667?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2022-10-25 - **Last revised**: October 25, 2022 - **Length**: 19,697 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Special Budget, Finance & Economic Development Committee convened on October 25, 2022, at 10:00 A.M. with Amanda Bledsoe presiding as the meeting officer. The committee addressed seven agenda items during the session, with one item requiring formal approval and six items presented for informational purposes. The meeting included three recorded votes and featured no public comments from attendees. The committee's work focused primarily on economic development initiatives and financial updates, including presentations on business recovery programs, regional competitiveness planning, and the city's first quarter financial performance for fiscal year 2023. ## Attendance The following members were present at the meeting on October 25, 2022: **Present:** • Amanda Bledsoe • Steve Kay • Richard Moloney • Chuck Ellinger • Josh McCurn • James Brown • Fred Brown • Preston Worley • Susan Lamb • Kathy Plomin All ten members were in attendance with no absences or late arrivals recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took three unanimous votes during the October 25, 2022 meeting, with all 10 members present participating in each decision. **Approval of August 30, 2022 Committee Summary** Chuck Ellinger motioned to approve the August 30, 2022 Committee Summary, with Kathy Plomin providing the second. The motion passed unanimously with 10 ayes and 0 nays. All committee members voted in favor: Amanda Bledsoe, Steve Kay, Richard Moloney, Chuck Ellinger, Josh McCurn, James Brown, Fred Brown, Preston Worley, Susan Lamb, and Kathy Plomin. **Budget Amendment Revisions Ordinance** Susan Lamb motioned to approve the draft budget amendment revisions ordinance and refer it to the full Council, seconded by James Brown. This motion also passed unanimously with 10 ayes and 0 nays. The same 10 committee members all voted in favor of advancing the budget ordinance to the full Council for consideration. **Adjournment** Kathy Plomin motioned to adjourn the meeting, with James Brown providing the second. The adjournment motion passed unanimously with all 10 members voting in favor. All three votes demonstrated complete consensus among the committee members, with no opposition or abstentions recorded on any matter. The committee successfully completed its business regarding both the administrative approval of previous meeting minutes and the substantive matter of budget amendments before adjourning. ## Approval of September 20, 2022, Committee Summary The committee reviewed and approved the summary of their September 20, 2022 meeting during this agenda item. Amanda Bledsoe served as the key speaker for this discussion. The committee considered the written summary of their previous meeting proceedings and voted to approve the document as presented. The approval was granted without recorded objections or amendments to the summary content. **Outcome:** The September 20, 2022 committee summary was approved. ## Accelerate Lexington The meeting included a presentation on the Accelerate Lexington initiative, an economic development program for the city. Amanda Bledsoe served as the key speaker for this agenda item, which was listed as item II on the meeting agenda. The presentation focused on discussing the Accelerate Lexington initiative, with both Bledsoe and Dexter identified as leaders of the program. The initiative appears to be centered on economic development efforts within Lexington. This was an informational presentation, meaning no formal action was taken by the governing body during this portion of the meeting. The agenda item served to update attendees and officials on the status and details of the Accelerate Lexington program. No specific transcript timestamps were available for this portion of the meeting, and additional details about the content of the presentation, specific economic development strategies discussed, or questions raised by officials were not provided in the available meeting materials. The Accelerate Lexington discussion represented one component of the meeting's broader agenda focused on city initiatives and programs. ## Small Business Economic Recovery Program Amanda Bledsoe presented an informational overview of the Small Business Economic Recovery Program during agenda item III. The presentation focused on support mechanisms and resources available for small businesses in the community. The program appears to be designed to provide assistance to local small businesses, though specific details about funding amounts, eligibility criteria, or application processes were not detailed in the available meeting materials. Bledsoe's presentation was part of a broader effort to inform the governing body about economic recovery initiatives. This was an informational presentation with no formal action taken by the council or board. The item was listed as a presentation type agenda item, indicating it was intended to provide updates and information rather than seek approval for specific measures or expenditures. The presentation represents ongoing efforts to support the local business community through structured recovery programs, though the specific scope and impact of these initiatives would require additional documentation from the full meeting proceedings to fully characterize. ## Regional Competitiveness Plan The Regional Competitiveness Plan was presented as agenda item IV during the October 25, 2022 meeting. Amanda Bledsoe served as the primary speaker for this informational presentation, with additional participation from Johnson and Quick in leading the discussion on regional economic strategies. The presentation focused on developing and implementing strategies to enhance the region's economic competitiveness. The discussion covered various aspects of regional economic development and positioning the area for future growth and sustainability. This agenda item was structured as an informational presentation, providing attendees with updates and insights into the regional competitiveness planning process. The collaborative approach involved multiple speakers contributing their expertise to the economic strategy discussion. The outcome of this agenda item was informational in nature, serving to update meeting participants on the current status and direction of the Regional Competitiveness Plan rather than requiring any specific action or decision from the governing body. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item.* ## Paid Parental Leave Agenda Item V presented a proposal for implementing paid parental leave, delivered as an informational presentation by Jenifer Wuorenmaa along with Bledsoe. The presentation outlined the proposed benefits structure and examined the potential financial impacts of establishing a paid parental leave program. The speakers discussed the details of how the paid parental leave system would operate, including the scope of benefits that would be available to eligible employees. The presentation covered both the advantages of implementing such a program and the associated costs that would need to be considered in the budgeting process. Wuorenmaa and Bledsoe provided analysis of the financial implications, helping attendees understand the fiscal impact that adopting paid parental leave would have on the organization. The presentation served as an educational overview of the proposal rather than a decision-making session. This agenda item was designated as informational, meaning no formal action was taken during the meeting. The presentation provided foundational information for future consideration and potential decision-making regarding the implementation of paid parental leave benefits. The discussion represents part of ongoing deliberations about employee benefits and workplace policies, with the paid parental leave proposal being one component of broader benefit considerations under review. ## FY23 Quarter 1 Financial Update The board received an informational presentation on the first quarter financial performance for fiscal year 2023. Amanda Bledsoe served as the primary presenter for this agenda item, with additional participation from Hensley, Lueker, and Holbrook. This quarterly financial update provided the board with an overview of the organization's financial position and performance during the initial three months of the current fiscal year. The presentation format allowed board members to review key financial metrics and trends from the first quarter. The agenda item was structured as an informational presentation, indicating that no formal action or voting was required from the board. Instead, the session served to keep board members informed about the organization's financial status and provide an opportunity for questions or discussion regarding the quarterly results. The collaborative nature of the presentation, involving multiple staff members alongside Bledsoe, suggests a comprehensive review covering various aspects of the organization's financial operations during the first quarter of FY23. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item, as the approximate time was not provided in the meeting documentation.* ## Fund Balance Agenda Item VII addressed the fund balance during the October 25, 2022 meeting. Amanda Bledsoe led the presentation and discussion on financial strategies and allocations related to the fund balance. The agenda item was structured as an informational presentation, with Bledsoe providing details on the current state of the fund balance and related financial considerations. The discussion also involved input from Hensley, though specific details of their contributions were not captured in the available meeting documentation. The presentation focused on financial strategies and how funds should be allocated, representing a key component of the organization's fiscal planning and oversight responsibilities. As an informational item, no formal action was required or taken during this portion of the meeting. The fund balance discussion serves as part of the regular financial reporting and strategic planning process, allowing leadership to review current financial positions and consider future allocation strategies. This type of presentation typically provides stakeholders with transparency into the organization's fiscal health and decision-making processes regarding resource management. No specific transcript timestamps were available for this agenda item, and the outcome was categorized as informational, indicating the discussion served to update attendees on financial matters rather than requiring any immediate decisions or votes. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (10-0): Approval of August 30, 2022 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (10-0): Approval of draft budget amendment revisions ordinance and refer to full Council - **Motion** — passed (10-0): Adjournment --- ## Full transcript If I can have your attention, I'm going to reconvene the Budget, Finance, and Economic Development Committee back to session. And as such, we're going to begin with item number six, which is our fiscal year quarter one financial update. I'm going to welcome Erin Hensley, our Finance Commissioner, Melissa Luker, and Wes Holbrook to bring us the update. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope we all had a pleasant lunch. This is our first financial report for the FY23 fiscal year. This is for the first quarter ended, so that would be July, August, and September. So our financials will be presenting those months. We wanted to start with a reminder that our budget, neither revenues nor expenses, are divided evenly across the year. We have some seasonality with our revenues and also with our expenses. And in the first quarter, traditionally, we see higher expenses than we do revenue. If you move forward in this graph, you can see in November is kind of our first large revenue peak. That's when our property taxes come in. And, of course, as we all know, a large portion of that goes right back out, but that is a large collection month for us. So we are right about where the line is. So that being said, we have a long ways to go in this year, but as we go through this information, it's important to remember that this is kind of what our expectation is for our revenues and our expenses. Since that is our expectation, we are right about where we thought we would be. We're actually going to talk through our revenues and expenses. For the three months ended, our expenses and transfers exceeded our revenues by about $9 million. I would like to note that included in that, so bringing this down to $9 million from almost $11 million, is our variance in our capital accounts. We'll talk about this a lot today. We've invested a lot of money in our capital, and that is taking a little bit longer to get through the system. So we're showing about $2 million in variance in our capital accounts that's not real savings. It's not something that we can move into another place if we don't use it. So that is one thing that we did want to note. And while our operating expenses are 11.2% over last year, we're still within budget. So we did anticipate having higher costs this year. We wanted to try and adjust for some inflation, and we are still within our budget, even though we are spending more than we did last year. We're going to go into the details of some of these items, and first I would like to bring forward our Director of Revenue, Mr. Wes Holbrook. Thank you, Council. So, excuse me, just to highlight the point that Commissioner Hensley was making, even within our revenue sources, we can see a lot of that seasonality that you can see throughout the total picture through the whole year. And this is a look at our payroll withholding revenues. So you can see, even in that quarter, we see a low month and then a high month and then a low month. but even compared with other later quarters the first quarter typically is a lower budget than what we'll see later on in the year especially in that third quarter which tends to be our highest month so we've performed overall well through the first quarter but it's something we need to watch because we've we've seen that growth rate month over month start to decrease a little bit we're still growing but it's not as strong as it was in July or August and now in September so we're just we're just going to watch that and see how it plays out. And again to get to talk about the seasonality you can see in net profits most of the net profits revenue that we typically receive comes in March, April, and May and that's when the businesses file their net profit returns. We see a lot of estimated payments through the course of the year. We've seen very large estimated payments come in in September and we've seen a large number of businesses a larger number of businesses just file. We've had more filings in those first three months as well, but we're really with this revenue source particularly we we have to wait until we open the mail in March, April, May to see if we're going to end up meeting budget. Right now it looks good, but that could be because businesses are having a good handle on what their tax liability is going to be and they're planning for that liability going forward. Looking at the top four just a couple of things to point out. We are performing very well to budget. We're 7.8% above budget and in our employee withholdings. If you multiply what we've collected for the first quarter by four, you get roughly to what our budget is for the whole year for payroll withholding. So if we just did this, we'd probably be right on track, but we'll have to watch and see how the rest of the how the economy impacts our payroll withholdings as we get further into the year. Net profits again we've seen a larger number of filings than we will typically see in through the first three months of the year. The total number of filings is up about 50 percent and we have just seen growth across all of our categories in the actual net profit filings that businesses make and their estimated payments and their extension payments so that has continued to grow. 67 percent is really high but we also don't typically see a lot of that money come in until March, April, and May. And so that could be driving a lot of that up. We just need to wait and see if businesses have estimated their tax liability well or if they may have overestimated it or if they've gotten it right. With insurance, we're performing well to budget. This is one of the first quarters that we've, because we can see the breakdown amongst the different categories of insurance. Through the last year, one of our strongest growers in insurance was marine insurance. This is the first time we've actually seen that decrease in the last year. It's down compared with prior year through this same time period, but we have seen auto, fire, and health insurance premiums rise as they come in. And franchise fees, we talk a lot about how this is this is just indicative of the weather. If you think about the year that we've had so far through these three months, we had a hot summer, cold fall, and it's been dry. So everything that's going to make franchise fees rise and perform strongly, That's what we're seeing as people are they spent more on AC. They had to turn on their furnaces a little early and they had to water their lawns. And if you look at the top four compared with prior year, you see a lot of the same thing. We're up in all those same categories compared with prior year and also compared to budget. Unless there are any questions about top four, I can just go ahead and go on to the full universe of our general fund revenues. To budget, we do have two items there just to note. One is property tax accounts and one services. And you'll see whenever we look at the year-over-year actuals to prior year, we're actually on track with where we were prior year. So we have a property tax budget in September that we haven't seen a lot of those collections come in, but we didn't see them come in last year either. And then excess fees and collections is really what's driving a lot of that decrease in services compared to budget. But overall, everything together, we're performing very well to budget, $10.7 million above where we were projected to be. When you look at where we are compared with prior year, you can see those two pressure points are not there. So our property taxes, our property tax accounts are up compared with prior year, even though they're down to budget, and also services is up. compared with prior year even though we're down to budget so overall we've we've performed strong through the first quarter and are hoping to see some of that continue especially as we get into some higher budget months in our largest revenue sources unless there any questions I can turn it over to director lucre for the expenses. Good afternoon. So we wanted to show you all graphically what our personnel budget to actuals look like and on this one we've actually added in a comparison to FY22 as well. So on this chart you'll see that the gray bar is what FY22 actual was. Orange bar is FY23 and then the blue line is the budget for FY23. So if you look, you'll see that we have really tightened up our budget compared to our actuals and gotten that more in line with how we're actually spending in personnel for this fiscal year. I will point out, you'll see a big difference there. In the month of September from FY22 to FY23, this fiscal year, September is our three-pay period month, and then last fiscal year, that was October. So next quarter when we give this presentation, you'll see that kind of offset flip-flop there in October. So I do want to point that out. We didn't have anything huge happen this year out of the norm, but I wanted to point that out. You'll see we also have spikes in January. That is a high payroll month with our sick checks, as you all know, come out in January. That is also a big time that we have our retirements. So we have the retirement, the lump sum payments that go out that are typically higher in January. And then our next three payroll month for the fiscal year is in March. So you'll see that spike in March. Then June has the payroll accruals and all of the various accounting items that we have to take into account. So that's why we're not evenly spread 12 months through the year there with our personnel. So then we come to our operating budget. So you can see here operating, we're using the same chart format here. So we've got gray for prior year, orange for current, and then the blue bars are budget here for operating. So you can see we are well below budget in our operating expenses year to date. You can also see that our operating budget isn't even 1 12th. It's sporadic throughout the year based on when things occur in government. So you'll see two of the three months we are spending more than what we did in prior year. So I would like to point that out there. So in looking at our budget, we have savings in personnel. You can see we're within 6.4% in personnel. Some of that is due to year-end bookings and things that are still taking place with the close of the prior fiscal year, beginning of the new fiscal year. we are slightly over budget in our overtime accounts. And so we're watching those closely, talking with those divisions. And then I will point out we are within $100,000 variance to our full-time salary category. So we are very close to budget there on full-time employees. So that's a big win for us. In operating, you'll see we've got a variance there. We've got savings in professional services and repairs and maintenance. We had our monthly budget meetings with the divisions last week, and in talking with the divisions, several of the divisions have variances, but they've placed orders for things, some in the capital category and some in the operating category that they are still waiting to receive. So we've got some orders out, but the supply chain issues are slowing down. Some of the actual spend, but the money has been encumbered for purchases. They hope to get the items. I know there's one particular item that we're not going to get until FY24. for. So we're reminded of that monthly whenever we meet with the division and I write it down every month just to make sure we don't forget. So we're watching all of those things with operating. Insurance, we're slightly, it came in a little bit higher than what we had initially budgeted. So we'll work through that as we go through the fiscal year. Our debt service, we know what those payments are going to be so we can accurately budget those. So there's no variance there. And then our partner agencies, we've got a payment to the library that was a budget timing issue with actual payment. And then capital, as the commissioner stated when she was opening up this presentation, we've got a $1.8 million variance showing in our capital, but in talking with divisions and getting reports back on their capital spend, we asked them about all of their capital. We have numerous RFPs out. We have numerous orders placed. And for policing, for example, they've got 50 Tahos ordered. We have already received 19. They've worked with other agencies and other places in order to provide more providers to do the upfit of the vehicles to get them out on the street quicker. So divisions are taking measures to make sure that we can get things done and spent. We've got HVACs ordered. We've got boilers ordered. So our capital is making movements, but it's not quite to budget yet, but it is being spent. over here. So I will point out here that we have in every category for FY23, even though we're below budget, we are spending more than we did in every category than we did last fiscal year at the same time frame. So I want to point out here, the big one on here is the capital. So this just goes to show the increase in the cash capital that we have in our general fund budget for FY23. We have an enormous amount of cash capital that we haven't had in prior fiscal years so you can see the 2.1 million compared to the 58,000 that we had same time last year which I think it's great that we were able to do that cash capital are there any questions I just want customer Maloney Thank you, Melissa. I appreciate that information. My concern is when Wes talked about the utilities and everybody's paying more from air conditions and all that, that impacts us too, and the gas is continuing to go up. Are you all comfortable with the number that you all put in your utilities and your gas budget? Because I was just curious, when we budgeted the gas, it was something like $2 and something more, $2 something. But now we're seeing it going back up close to $3.50, in some cases maybe higher. and utilities, as you look at everybody else, it's been good for us on money coming in, but it also has an impact on this place. So are you all comfortable with those? Yes. So James Bush and his team in Environmental Services, they do a fantastic job of looking at our utilities and analyzing them every month. And he provides us with a report where he's doing projections forward for the fiscal year so we can see where we might be trending high are turning lower in our utilities, and you all approve the minutes from the prior budget and finance committee meeting, that will allow us the flexibility to move money around within the utility accounts within each fund to where they need to go as we move throughout the fiscal year. Are you done? Okay, thank you. I don't see any more questions. Thank you very much. Motion to adjourn? No? No, the other items in your packet are for information only. But I tried. But you did try. Just wanted to get everybody, you know, woken up after lunch. Okay, would you like to do the next presentation on fun violence, please? Yes, ma'am, I would love to do that. I have a clipper. Oh, there it is. Thank you. There we go. Just seeing if you all are paying attention. Hello again. This is actually my third Fun Balance conversation, second with many of you. But before we dive into this conversation today, I wanted to take the opportunity to express a huge amount of thanks to our internal team that works on our audit. They're led by our Director of Accounting, Phyllis Cooper. She is amazing. Our team is amazing. And they have worked absolutely day and night, weekends. I mean, I get emails at all times, just where they're really, really been working to get us to this point. So I wanted to send a thank you to them before we start this and let them know how much we appreciate them. So this is our fiscal year 22 fund balance conversation. What is important to note is that we have a number of funds across government. And a fund balance is the remainder in a fund at the end of the year when you look at your expenses and your revenue. So for today's purposes, we are only going to be discussing the 1,000 funds, which is our general fund family of funds. Typically, when we talk about these items, we make decisions from the 1101 fund, which is our general fund. But because this information is presented and it aligns to our audit, the other general fund family of funds are also included in this information, and you'll see those taken out at a later point in time. So what we started with was a $105 million fund balance. That is from the end of fiscal year 21. we added a $44.7 million positive change in fund balance this year that left us with a total ending fund balance for fiscal year 22 of $150 million. I wanted to provide real quick a history of what this has looked like over the last 10 years. So as you can see, this year's change in fund balance is significantly higher than we've experienced any time in the last decade. Prior to the pandemic, you can see we had several years. We had a couple of good years in there. The 2017 year is the year that we settled a labor lawsuit, and so that was a significant planned deficit that year, but nonetheless that was a negative change in fund balance. For 2020, if you all will recall, we actually ended the year what would have been a deficit of $20 million, but we had the CARES money that came in after the end of the year that moved us up to a positive $20 million for that year. 2021, we saw the beginning of ARPA come forward, and we're still seeing that as well as a large infusion of other federal money that is contributing towards 2022. While we have seen tremendous growth in our revenue coming out of the pandemic, we have really been proactive, and we've reinvested those funds, primarily in our personnel and our operations. You can tell from our first quarter report that we're much closer to budget on our attrition. We took a good look at that. We tried to anticipate some inflation costs. We did that in our operating. And so we have been able to integrate what we've been seeing in our increased revenue in our 22 and 23 budgets. As we continue to make adjustments to our operations post-pandemic, we have to remember that the last few years have had higher than typical unrestricted year-end fund balances, and we've had some staffing shortages that have contributed to those balances. in addition to the heavy influx of federal funding that we discussed. And again, our revenue has been doing much better. I think it is vitally important to not conflate a one-time fund balance with the government's ability to absorb these costs in perpetuity. So we're going to talk about our end-of-year change. We're going to move through the pieces of what that means, and we will get to the end where we talk about our unrestricted balance, and that will be the portion where we turn it all over to you all, and you will make your assignments that will be put in our ACFER as our final audit document. So what we start with first are our non-spendable items. Those are our prepaids, inventory, energy improvement fund, balances, and our qualified energy bond reserve. They actually tie to the non-spendable category in our audit, and that represents about $4 million altogether. So we've gone from the $150 million to $146 million. The second piece has a couple of large components. Earlier we talked really quickly about this being the general fund family of funds. This is the point in time where we take out all those non-1101 funds. So as you can see, the family care center, donation fund, tenant relocation, all of those will come out at this point, and their fund balance will be retained within their fund. That represents almost $9 million from that beginning balance that will move forward. And then the other piece in here is our economic contingency fund. At the end of our fiscal year 22, our economic contingency fund sat at just over $36.5 million. That is short of our 10% goal. we were at 9.5% at the end of 2022. But taking into account our 2023 revenues, because we had a large increase in our revenue, if we don't do anything other than our $50,000 contribution, we will be at 8.6% by the end of FY23. So that is an important piece to remember, and we will talk about that a little bit more in a moment. Those items, as you can see, are rather large. They represent $46 million of assignments, and so we go from $146 million to $100 million. The next piece is our historical assignments and obligations. You all may remember the health insurance reserve as $4.25 million. We have that reserve in case there is a catastrophic health event. We are self-insured, so that gives us a lot of exposure. And so many years ago, we have put in this health insurance reserve to keep us from having any kind of detrimental, huge impact on the city should something happen. This year, we were notified that our premiums for our employees needed to go up by about $1.2 million. We understand that our employees are bearing the cost of inflation, as everybody is. And so at that time, we elected to not pass on those premium increases to our employees. We are going through open enrollment right now. This is how we were able to keep those costs flat for our employees. So our health insurance reserve went from $4.25 million up to $6.5 million. Again, we come to the conversation of our capital projects. We have a lot of items that are still in the works as far as our capital. We want to make sure there's money for those next year. So that $4.6 million is being reserved. And then, again, as we talk about our supply chain issues, we had a significant amount of items that were initiated back in 22, but we won't get completed until 23. So you can see down at the bottom in the obligated box, we have $12.3 million worth of POs that have rolled forward. That's a lot. That's a lot higher than it's been in the past. We're continuing to see those come through. Part of that had to do with some of our pre-funding, but it just kind of goes to show how things can back up. We did have higher-than-normal grants as well, so we have our grant match at $3 million. And then we were challenged to begin the budget for the FY23 year with a half-a-million-dollar fund balance, so those items come out as well. This component includes $27 million, taking us from $100 to $73 million. The next category is our pre-commitments. The major talking point in this conversation is going to be our use of budget stabilization. Over the last several years, we've made use of budget stabilization funds, which are, in essence, unassigned funds, and we've left them unassigned in that budget stabilization account until a point where the council opted to assign a purpose to those. We did a lot of that going into the FY23 budget, and just because it's fun, we're going to take a quick walk down memory lane as we talk through that $32 million. The first thing that we did was funded the comp study. We also allowed for increases in pension costs as related to those additional salaries. We implemented some IT enhancements in our PeopleSoft system. We did language access for some of our software, and we actually increased our cybersecurity presence. We added programming to One Lexington, and we committed to further planning with our space study for the Government Center and the Sustainable Growth Plan. We invested heavily in our capital. It was delayed from the pandemic, and our overall quality of life was improved with the new infrastructure and neighborhood investment funds. We invested in our partners with allocations for LexArts and the History Museum and we prioritized public safety with funding toward recruitment and retention and road improvements and safety measures on Versailles Road, High Street and in the Distillery District just to name a few. Obviously the list is much more extensive than what we've gone over but we've made a lot of progress in the last year. Those items were all budgeted in the 23 budget, and as such, we're rolling those funds forward to be able to meet those needs. So that brings us to the end of the road, where we were hoping to get with this entire conversation, which is the unassigned fund balance. As you can see at the very top, that is $40.7 million at the end of fiscal year 22. The mayor has given a framework of her thoughts where she thinks that might be best spent, and so I'd like to take a moment to go through those. Because public safety continues to be critical, she is recommending the use of up to $17 million be put toward public safety salary adjustments. This will help with recruitment and retention of those sworn members of our community who protect us every day. At the beginning of this presentation, I cautioned that we should not conflate a one-time year-end balance with our ability to absorb these costs ongoing. Keeping that in mind and trying to project out a year and a half, this is the absolute maximum amount that we felt that we could possibly absorb. That is assuming our organic growth. That takes into account a lot of things that are known, but some things that are unknown. We keep hearing the word recession. We don't know what that's going to look like for our city. We need to make sure that we're putting in measures to help us meet our commitments after we make them. So to that end, we have also included, per the mayor's recommendation, an extended public safety measures amount of $9 million. You'll see there's a note in there that that includes an E911 salary supplement. Because E911 is not a bargaining unit and it is separate, it is important to have distinction, I guess, between their amounts. So the top amount, the $17 million, would be for sworn members, and the extended public safety measure would include E911 in that $9 million. dollars. Ideally, eight and a half million dollars would be spent in FY23 should the council adopt something similar to this. That will allow us to get through the end of FY23. We would also allow for eight and a half million dollars in FY24. That's a half year cost. That hopefully will give us enough time to grow organically into those increases. However, if we do experience a recession or flattening of revenue, that additional $9 million will enable us to honor our commitments. As we continue to address concerns over staffing, the mayor is recommending $1.2 million be allocated to provide one-time salary supplements to non-sworn members. This supplement would utilize the remaining $2.5 million of the compensation study that was unallocated. It would also add the $1.2 million to that $2.5 million and would provide a one-time salary supplement to the non-sworn members. A schedule has been provided for your reference. It's at the very back after questions, should you elect to accept the suggestion. And I think it's also important to let you all know that should you decide to do that, the CAO, the Deputy CAO, the Chief of Staff, and all of the commissioners have already declined any allocation. that would be approved for anyone in our salary range. In recognition that housing insecurity, gun violence, and domestic violence are issues facing too many Lexingtonians, the mayor is recommending another $4 million be allocated to the Affordable Housing Fund and $1 million for violence prevention and intervention programming. We talked a little bit earlier about our economic contingency fund. If we continue with our standard $600,000 commitment annually, we will fall quite below where we're hoping to be and where the council committed to an ordinance. The mayor has proposed $3.5 million to be added to that economic contingency fund. It won't quite get us to 10%, but it will get us closer to 9.4% of the prior year revenues. As we were having this conversation, there were a number of internal items that came forward. As we've discussed with you all, we're trying to adjust for inflationary costs, and we've done a pretty good job, but we do have some larger capital projects that have either already come in over budget, or we expect will come in over after their bids are complete. We will need contingency funds for those. So you can see $2.3 million has been added to those five projects to go ahead and move forward with the work that we've already done in the 23 budget. In addition to that, we have been brought the question of our unhoused wintering solutions and what we might do about that. Director, or Commissioner Lanter, excuse me, came up to the podium the other day and told us that what they had might not be sufficient. So $300,000 has been added for that effort. Also, we would like to continue with our cybersecurity work and add $100,000 for that into IT. Lastly, we know that there are a variety of needs that are brought to you all during the year that we don't always have funding for. We don't have something that is readily available. There is a recommendation that $150,000 per council member be put aside for addressing the needs in your council districts. Sometimes those fit nicely into pots that we already have, but oftentimes they do not. And so this is something that we have done in the past, and the mayor would like to continue to do so that you all can address the needs that present to you every day. So should the council, at the end of the day, have a list of items that they would like to approve? All of those items will be ascribed to a particular department or division within the government, and we will include those in our final audit as assignments of fund balance. And with that, that concludes the presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, Commissioner, very much for that thorough review. And, Council members, if you have questions on the current fund balance presentation, I will retain them. Please log in. Anybody can go first. You all touching it. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, as always, for the presentation. It's very helpful. My first question has to do with the on page 81, the one-time spending in the fiscal year 23 budget. How does that affect the percentage of the economic contingency in the next calendar in the next fiscal year? So we had one. This fiscal year budget was built with a lot of one-time requests. I assume that will lower the projected budget going forward. So how does that affect that percentage of economic contingency? So it's actually based on the prior year's revenues, and what we've interpreted it as is recurring revenues. So we wouldn't include ARPA. We wouldn't include any of the one-time funds. The calculation is based on our recurring revenues. So the projection is that next year's budget will be a specific percentage higher than this year's budget, and so compared to the Economic Intigency Fund, that would lower that percentage. Is that correct? So our FY23 budget is projected to include a 4% revenue growth on top of last year. When we get to 24, our balance would be evaluated based on 23 revenues. In 23, our balance will be based on 22 revenues and so on. So we always lag a year behind, and we've had tremendous revenue growth over the last year. So that's really what caused that giant step where we were mostly funded and then we got behind all of a sudden is because our revenues increased 40-some-odd million dollars. I see. Okay. and then on page 83 about budget stabilization mm-hmm can you kind of go back over I'm not sure I tracked everything when you were talking about the So, yeah, if you could just kind of recap again. So we've done a lot of pre-funding, we've used budget stabilization, and we committed to all of that in fiscal year 22 for fiscal year 23. That has not happened yet. money was still sitting there at the end of 22 so we could use it this year. So we have to move the funds forward to be able to afford to do that. So when we did the 23 budget, we committed to these these pots of money, if you will. And so all we are doing is rolling forward out of the 150 million dollars. We're making sure that all of the commitments that we've made from 22, which which includes budget stabilization, are there to be able to fund the actual expense in 23. Okay. And so if revenues continue to increase, does that mean we will not have to pull some of that budget stabilization money? Right. So if we have revenues exceeding expenses and we get towards the end of the year, say some of these expenses haven't happened yet, and we get to March, April, May, whenever we start to see that that's the case, we would hold the budget stabilization and we would go ahead and use our recurring revenues. We can do that in a couple of different ways. One, we could do that through a revenue adjustment that comes back to council. We haven't traditionally done that here, but that is becoming more and more prevalent as it's harder to anticipate what revenues and expenses are going to look like. So other municipalities are bringing that forward. we could recognize it at that time. The other thing that we would do is if it wasn't used out of budget stabilization proper, if it wasn't used out of the items that we had assigned it to, it would then just fall to fund balance again for the next year. So one way or another it comes back. Yeah, the money doesn't disappear. I understand that. So as a part of your presentation, you presented the mayor's proposed use of our budget of the fund balance. Will you enter, Chair, is this appropriate to ask a question about that? Are we going to wait until we get into the actual fund balance discussion? I think you can ask me. Okay. So I've got one major question. In the 12 years I've been on council, one of the bedrock principles of budgeting was that we not use one-time funds for ongoing expenses. The way that I read the mayor's proposal is a fair number of items that are included in that that are ongoing expenses. Can you help me understand why that principle doesn't apply at this particular moment? I will do my best. As we have had all of the conversations that we've had involving our staffing and our retention and our recruitment, there has come a point in time where we have to recognize if we are not going to be able to provide the services that we are expected to provide with the funds that we have. and if we are wanting to make adjustments, it seems that the temperature of the room would say that that has to be in salary in order to be able to retain, recruit, etc. What we have done as the finance office is to try and take a look at how we're doing this year, where we ended last year, and make our absolute best guess projection of where we think that we could possibly absorb, what we think we could possibly do without just tremendous cuts or increased revenue enhancement. That is that $17 million that is presented. That is the level at which we thought was probably the maximum that we could reasonably expect to go with our organic revenue growth. And that's how we got to that number. That's the 17. My time is up. I'll come back if I need to. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That is the 17. Yeah, that's referencing 17 million. Is the number you're comfortable with? That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. A couple of things on the Mayor's recommendation. The affordable housing contribution of $4 million, we haven't been able to spend that in the budget that we had for 23, and this is on On top of that, when would we be able to spend this additional $4 million? Is that projected out over a time period? So the great thing about the Affordable Housing Fund is that it's an open fund, and its balance can roll from year to year to year. So even if you fund it in this year, it doesn't mean it has to be spent by the end of this year. That balance can be retained and moved forward. Unlike ARPA, we did do an additional significant contribution ARPA. It has a timeline. So we have elected to spend that money first to try and get that out the door. But, again, the great thing about this fund is that it can retain its balances and move forward. So this will just enhance our allocations to that in future years. It sounds like to me we're just building up a restricted fund or a reserve fund for affordable housing when we could just budget that each year as needed. And I'm not against putting money into affordable housing by no means, but I think we're setting aside some more money. And I think the money, we need to set the money aside or have it there for our priorities. And I think that's public safety. When I look at this public safety, I'm really looking at $17 million plus $9 million. And we just happened to put 911 in there as part of our public safety. So I'm looking at $26 million that we're setting aside here. That's the way I look at it. But I also think the contribution to economic contingency, I think we're on sound basis there to get up to that 10 percent. You know, I don't know that we need to do it. We didn't even use it during the pandemic. and if you're going to use money in that type of fund, we certainly would have used it in that catastrophe period. We haven't had to use it, so I don't know why we want to build that back up. So that number, those two numbers, or that number right there added to the $26 million gets you up to about $30 million for public safety, which is where I'm at budget-wise, but the administration's not there, but that's where I'm at. Now, is that $17 million and $9 million? Is that just for a 12-month period? That gets us through the end of fiscal year 24, should our revenues not be able to cover the commitments that we make. Well, that's 18 months then. Yes. Okay, so that's quite a bit of dollars in there to cover us 18 months. So I think that's pretty good coverage there. So that's my two cents on that. Thank you. Councilman McClover. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for all of this. The Vice Mayor actually started, I guess, talking about the topic I was interested in. Could we drill down a little bit into some of those assumptions we made at arriving to that 17 million number? I guess with all the talk about inflation and possible recessions, what kind of a, what do we do about our purchasing power in as far as assuming what the inflationary rate will do to our revenues in that assumption? So the largest portion of that assumption has to do with our attrition. Because our highest cost is our personnel, really taking a look at what our attrition is today, where we want to get to, that was a big piece of that. Currently, we went through each and every division this year and pulled their attrition down to where we thought was likely that it would be. As you heard Director Luker say, we are $100,000. We're within $100,000 of actual full-time salaries, which is incredible. I mean, that's just fantastic. I cannot believe it. Overtime is a piece that's in that. And so in our assumptions were a slight increase to some of our divisions that have a higher attrition rate right now, noting that we want to build back to that. So we don't want to keep them at the attrition rate they are right now. We want to be able to grow those individual positions as being filled. So that was a piece that was in there. Our operations increased over $10 million from last year, which is helping with the inflationary costs for our operating costs. And so at this moment, we think that is sufficient. What that does when we have, you know, if our revenues flatten out or if we have to go with higher price costs items, we're not really sure what that's going to look like, but we have built in some inflation into our operating expenses. So just to make sure I'm understanding, in our projection of being able to, as you said, absorb this cost, was that we would be losing more personnel in other areas in order to cover this? No. The goal was actually to build back in personnel. So we actually have increased our personnel costs. We wanted to make sure that we could cover growing our personnel back to where we need it to be as we did this analysis. That's part of the reason it's a large number. Okay. So let me just make one final question about this just so I make sure I understand. The budget we're currently in is the largest budget we've ever had, and there's a lot of programs and a lot of things in that budget. Will we be able to absorb this cost and continue to do every program and every service that we have in our current budget? I think that depends on at what point we're talking about adding recurring salaries. I do think there is a tipping point at which the cuts would be so significant that it's not a cut that we would want to do and we would need to look at other revenue options. At the $17 million cap, and with the caveat that there is additional funding should our revenues not grow sufficiently, That is where we think is the top level that we could be at to absorb those recurring costs. Outside of that, I think it would be incredibly uncomfortable in budget process. I don't pretend to know what it's going to look like as far as the recession goes for Lexington. But that is the edge of where we felt comfortable. Well, I think that you've definitely made it clear that there are a lot of unknowns. and even doing this, it looks like there's some assumptions about what happens in two years that could lead to what you let out there is some uncomfortable cuts or talks about raising revenue. I think this gets to the core of what the Vice Mayor said as a principle of budgeting about not using one-time funds for recurring costs, but I'm sure we'll have more discussion about that coming forward, so thank you just for clarifying that for me. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much, Commissioner. My main question is on the violence prevention and intervention programming. What is that $1 million going to be designated for exactly? I don't think it's been quite flushed out yet. I do know that the mayor has gun violence and domestic violence very highly in her mind as far as addressing, continuing to address, I guess. There's some money budgeted already, but continuing to address those trends that we're seeing. But I don't know if Chief is. No. I think we're still working on that one. I think we just wanted to have funds available to be able to address those needs. Okay, thank you. I think it's important. I just want to make sure that we're not just focusing on youth, but we're focusing on other areas as well. Thanks. Thank you. Council Member Maloney. Thank you. I appreciate your presentation. I do have a couple questions on the mayor's proposal. and the first one is the one-time supplement of $1.2 million. Is that for us? Like we've heard some employees come up here saying that they've got a three, I mean they jumped up three steps, and our ordinance requires that you get a 7% jump in the first one, and if you go to the second one you get a 3%, If you go to the third one, you get a 2%. Are these the kind of things you're all going to fix with that $1.2 million? Or what is the $1.2 million you're going to fix? These are two totally different things. So the intent of the compensation study was to look at the market and evaluate each individual's job, determine if it was at market or needed to be brought up to market, and then address that. So we've done that for all the different positions across the non-sworn staff. This is completely separate. This uses the remaining funds because when we did that analysis, $2.5 million would be ongoing salary adjustments to get people to market. This would address every single person, whether or not they had anything to do with the compensation study. This takes a look at the fact that we have a number of folks. If you'll look at the schedule, we have a schedule in the very back. We have a number of folks that are, for example, making under $75,000 a year. We know that inflation is really impacting the way they can provide for their families. So this would give them a one-time supplement of $3,000 in order to be able to combat some of that inflation. We know that's not something we can do ongoing every year, but that's just something to help. So it has absolutely nothing to do with the compensation study other than the fact that it uses the unassigned funds from that as a springboard for this additional 1.2. Back up to the $9 million, what is that for again? I know the $17 million for public safety, the $9 million, and you put 9-1-1 in the $9 million. That's not going to be the bulk of the cost, the 9-1-1 in most of the cost, is it? I'm sorry? Is 9-1-1 going to be the $9 million? No, no, no. No, no, no. 9-1-1, we're looking maybe around $400,000 to $500,000 would be an estimation. What the $9 million is there for is the $17 million is what we think can get us through the end of FY23 and the beginning, the first half of FY24. Ideally, our revenue will increase and we'll be able to pay for the remainder of 24 with revenue increases. But if that doesn't happen, if our revenues flatten, if we are not able to have that organic growth that will compensate for that, that is a safety net of about $8.5 million. You'll see that a half a year is about $8.5 million. And that would get us through the remainder of fiscal year 24 for those commitments. Okay. And I'm just going back to the 1.2. It's just you're basically saying this is you're all going to look at the compensation pay. You're going to say this job, if we hire somebody new, we're going to recruit somebody in that's going to have to be paid this much money if we want these kind of jobs to be filled. Is that what I understand? In the compensation study? No, I'm talking about the 1.2 million. The 1.2 just adds to the... Is that going to be, from what you're telling me, the compensation study's been done, forget it, but there's a recommendation that this much money needs to be added if we're going to hire certain people in these positions. This is what's going to cost for us to fill these positions. No. The $1.2 million adds to the $2.5 million that was not used from the comp study. We allocated $5 million. So you have not used the 2.5. Right. We have not used 2.5. So the $2.5 that remains from that assignment that Council put forward plus this $1.2 million would allow for a one-time supplement for the non-sworn members to have just a one-time supplement to their pay at the end of the year in recognition of the higher cost of living right now. Okay, so you're not going to fix the problems that I've been hearing for the last week. That's what I needed to hear. Because I thought this might have helped, but it's not going to. I appreciate it. I mean, $3,000 would make me feel a little bit better, but it is not the same thing. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner, for your thorough report. I think the mayor's recommendations are a good start or framework to get us to think about how to use this fund balance going forward. A lot of the questions that I had in regards to some of the items have been clarified, especially the extended public safety measures. It sounds like part of those funds are going to be for consideration and adjustment to E911 salaries. But then also there will be funds that are in place to help be a safety net if for some reason we don't meet revenue expectations in the coming year. And then, you know, I shared the same concerns or had the same questions about the $1.2 million in regards to the non-sworn one-time supplement. We have been hearing a lot from folks about their dissatisfaction with the comp study. I think part of that stems from I don't think a lot of folks knew that or understood that it was to address inequities of pay across the board and that not everyone was going to get an increase. Correct. But I'm seeing this 1.2 as an incentive or additional retention efforts to kind of address the situations that exist out in the workforce in regards to the pay and inequity. The affordable housing fund, and I'll just say this for the record, we can allocate any amount of money that's in that fund at any one meeting based off the applications that we have. I know that once the federal policy changed in regards to the American Rescue Plan funds, it gave us full flexibility, and we started getting those funds out the door a lot faster. So I see this $4 million being used and the additional funds that's in the account pretty quickly. I don't think they'll last a year. Was there any consideration or do we have any monies earmarked if we use the remaining funds from the comp study? I know we've asked the vendor to look at African Americans and women across the board. What are we thinking may be the outcome of that, and how are we going to address some of those potential inequities in pay based off of the results of that additional data that we may receive? I'm not really sure I'm the best person to speak to that. Just a minute. CAO, I'm up. Thank you. I think I said the other day, and somebody had asked me the same question, that for the time that study is done, that we will put whatever is needed there in the 24 budget request. Okay. Yeah, I just know that I think some of the concerns that we've heard from other employees, I think it may get flushed out in that additional work that we're taking a look at across the board. Okay. That takes care of all my questions. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Plowman. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner. On page 82, maybe if you could just help me understand this a little better. I think I get it. But we're talking about the PO role to fiscal year 2023. That just seems like such a big number, and I know you said the word backup. You're backed up. And that's just expenditures that need to be PO'd during the rest of the year to the end of the fiscal year, and it's just backed up at that very good. It just seems like a large figure. It did. I believe a good portion of that is ESR. That was one of those pre-funded items, so we went ahead and initiated that early. I believe Director Slayton actually may be here to discuss some specifics of that if you all have any specific questions. Is it here? Or not. Or not. And it's probably very, very simple. I was just thinking, wow, what a big number. And will that all be? It is. It was just over $10 million last year. We also had similar pre-funding commitments and things that we did last year. So this happens every year, but this year it's a little bit higher than normal? Yeah, this is the same process we use every fiscal year to roll POs from old fiscal year to new fiscal year. And they'll all be expensed. I mean, they'll all go through this year. Yeah. They won't be any carrier. Okay, that's my question. Just understanding it a little bit better. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. I think I'd have a better understanding of the extent of public safety measures because when it had $9 million, you're saying $500,000 up to is going to be for E911 and the other is going to be in case it goes up so we make sure we have enough as a safety net. So $8.5 would be for that. on the $17 million for $8.5 million for the end of fiscal year 23 and the first half of fiscal year 24, how is that broken down on salary adjustments? Do we have that by what it's going to be? Each division is going to be raised? So we don't. We've actually started having those conversations per council's request. We've started meeting with the different unions. We've met with police and fire, and we've received a request letter from corrections to say they are all over the board is an understatement. What this assumes is an average of about $7,500 per sworn member. How that looks when it actually comes down to what each individual union thinks is best for their employees and how that is kind of allocated is a work in progress. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Seeing no one else signed up for questions, thank you very much for the presentation and the fund balance discussion. I'll move on to item number seven, which is an update on the public safety MOUs with Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. Colleagues have a memorandum of understanding that has been handed out there. Chair, do we need to put that up on the screen, or do I need – if not, I need to read this memo of understanding. And I'll be glad to do that, but it needs to be in the record. Let me give it to Steve, and you can – Because that hasn't been given out to the public at this point until now. I'm on the agenda. I'll be glad to read it. It's very short. Let me go ahead and read it, Chair, and we can move through it faster. Okay. Go ahead and read it. I'm asking. I'm sorry, you want me to read it? No. Oh, go ahead. I'll read it. Okay. This is a memorandum of understanding entered into this whatever day we, if it gets passed, and between the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government and the Bluegrass Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 4, officers and sergeants. There's actually two letters. These parties will collectively be referred as the parties. Whereas the LFUCG and the union have executed a collective bargaining agreement, the CBA, effective from July 1-21 through June 30, 2025, and whereas due to labor shortages, the Lexington Police Department has operated below full staffing levels and has experienced retention and recruiting challenges. and whereas the LFUCG desires to address the retention and recruiting challenges faced by the Lexington Police Department and whereas the parties seek to amend current Kentucky state law regarding the hiring requirements of retired police officers. Now, therefore, be it resolved that in exchange for the mutual promises contained below, the LFUCG agrees to increase the base rate of each of the salaries listed in the CBA by an amount of $10,000. This is reflected in the revised Appendix 3 salary schedules, which is attached here to and incorporated herein by reference and replaces the current salary schedules appendix in its entirety. The union agrees to support an amendment to the current version of KRS 95.022, which would allow a city to employ individuals who have retired from the police and fire retirement plan fund of the Lexington Fayette Urban County government as police officers. With the exception of the agreements set forth in this memorandum, all other provisions of the CBA currently in effect between the parties shall remain in full force in effect for the terms of the CBA and no other agreements shall serve to alter the provisions of the CBA unless agreed to and right in between the parties hereto. Therefore, the Council is permitted to accept and approve a memorandum of understanding with bargaining units. Council may not direct base pay salary increases or make changes to base salary without an agreed memorandum of understanding with both parties of the bargaining unit. We have an unprecedented situation with low staffing in police. It cannot wait another day to address. The lack of a full staff increases the public safety risk in this community. Given that the memorandum with fire and corrections are not ready, I therefore move that we accept and approve the memorandum of understanding with the police today with the commitment to pass the memorandum with fire and corrections when they're presented. So moved, and I would want to put this on the docket for Thursday. Second. There's been a motion and a second. Any discussion? I'll start with Susan. Second. Thank you. I'll start with Council Member Lamb. Chair, I would like to move to lay this question on the table, and it's a non-debatable motion. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. I believe that motion has passed. I would be happy to. Can we do an electronic vote on that, please? Okay, that motion passes. We'll move on to the next item, which is item number eight. Item number eight is the fund balance as discussed by council. In an email I sent to council members on Sunday, I suggested the following, which is that we will go by order on page 93, go by item from the project at the top, go down through the items one time and allow the council members to make recommendations and present their request, and then go back to the beginning and take motions in a second round. If you decide to present your item, please make sure that you identify if you would like it considered for funding and where you would like your funding source to be. Or you may defer it to committee or for fund discussion in the budget for fiscal year 24. And I will start with Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. The first one on there is the high street entrance to Town Branch. We had discussed this in the spring, and we put $1.2 million in, and we were hoping to get the raise grant. We did not, for the second time, I think, get that. So one of the, I think, jewels of this community is going to be our Town Branch Park that's coming, and we've had a great private partnership. but there are some things that we could help with when we start looking at the infrastructure. And I have passed out a sheet, and there is a representative here from the Town Branch Park that's here to answer questions if you have any. But I would request, I had $2 million. I would request the 1.940400, and I'd make a motion to that. So moved. Excuse me, sir. We're not taking motions. If you would like to make a recommendation for funding, please identify the funding source. Can I change the number from two to that number there? You may recommend changing in the funding source. Yes. Okay. I would make a recommendation for 1-9-4-0-4-100, and I would take it out of the fund balance. Is that a funding source? Yes, it is. Okay. With the understanding that when we come back for a second round, if we adopt the mayor's proposed fund balance as a framework, you will have to identify from the framework in the next round. Okay. Okay. As long as everyone's clear. Great. Thank you. Let's move on to the sports complex, and that's Councilman Ellinger as well. Okay. I got to the top here. Could I go ahead and spend that money, and then we can get that off the table here? Seeing that not passing, I'll move on. Yes, we had talked about having a sports complex, and we've been discussing this for a long time. I know there's been some issues in the community here, and I'm not at this point willing to do anything. I would probably defer it to a committee, but I know there's council members that would like to continue to discuss this, so I'll open it up for discussion for them and let them give their opinion, because I haven't had a lot of input from the community on the sports complex since we discussed this back in the spring. So I'm happy to open it up and see what others want to do with it, but I can refer it to committee too if that's what the will of the council is. Thank you. Does anybody wish to speak to the item? Councilman Worley? Since we're just talking for informational purposes this round through, I think if you'll remember this is an evolution of several discussions that we've had over a long time with this item that started as $10 million to fully fund a sports complex as the city and then we decided through different parks developments that we would rather put that money towards some of our parks improvements but that we saw this as a significant economic development tool and so we decided to set this four million aside for continued discussions since then I think you've seen that we've seen other communities continue to develop sports complexes. I know that the City of Richmond is getting ready to build one. We've seen Danville, Elizabethtown, and they all are incredibly successful economic development tools. I think while this does not delineate any particular group, we all know of groups that have very publicly, through our Board of Adjustment Processes and others, said that they are ready, willing, and able to make a significant investment in our community, and they're asking for our help. And sometimes, every time they've asked the Board of Adjustment, they've gotten that approval, this one group that I'm thinking of. So I would like us to keep that up here, discussion the next time around, even though this is Council Member Ellinger's particular point, just because it's something that we all identified through budgeting and ARPA processes as something we wanted to keep our eye towards because we have an opportunity to leverage private investment in our community. Thank you. Council Member Maloney. I, too, want to echo what Council Member Worley said. This is a very important economic development driving. And we all have soccer moms and dads in our districts. And during the pandemic, we noticed that nobody went anywhere. And everybody stayed home and kept their houses. And a lot of money was put back into their houses. So this is an opportunity to look at all the options. And to me, I think building something like this and keeping people home and bringing people here would be a good economic development. So I'm interested in leaving that on the discussion. Thank you. Let's move on to the next item, which is the Arboretum Potential Funding. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair. And I appreciate that we can bring this forward from the budget discussions. And, you know, the Dorothe Oates, the visitor center expansion is something that is important to our community as a whole and to our visitors. And I believe that my colleagues, by supporting the $200,000 in our budget, recognize that. And we also know that it is important, is going to be bringing forward a space for holding additional meetings and events. And I just think that knowing that we as a government are a collaborator with the Arboretum, and I would like for us to keep this in here, and I would like to take this in consideration at the proper time when we discuss the recommendations. And I would hope that you all would support this going forward. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds, do you have a question? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lamb. I love the Arboretum, and I appreciate what they do, and I'm glad that we've been able to contribute. In terms of raising money, is there a reason why they can't continue raising money and why we need to contribute this much more? Like, what is the reasoning behind that in a fundraising sort of scope? Thank you, Council Member Reynolds, for the question. We have an interlocal agreement that we have entered into, and I don't have the date right in front of me right now, but it is a cooperative agreement that is between Lexington Fayette, Urban County Government, and the University of Kentucky. And we agreed upon at the beginning of that journey that we would help in funding mechanisms. And, of course, you know, I feel like personally LFUCG is not funded near as much as we probably could have in the past. And this is one opportunity to give back to our community as a whole because of this expansion. And so it is, I believe it is our obligation as LFUCG to be a part of this and to contribute in this. And, yes, we agreed as a council that we would be supportive of this collaborative effort. And can you remind me of the total of the project? I don't have it in front of me at the moment. Oh, dear. Can I ask Ms. Davis? Ms. Davis, do you mind to come to the podium? I'm sorry I don't have that number on. That's not a problem at all. So back in 2020, during the pandemic, we arrived at schematic construction, schematic design level plans, which were for $3 million to expand and renovate. We are now hoping to get to the $2 million mark so that we can show other people in the community the virtues and benefits of doing this. So far, of the $1.7 million raised, LFUCG has given $200,000, plus a gift from the mayor back in 2014 when it was Jim Gray who gave $40,000. And then council also, with neighborhood development funds, approved another $22,000. And I can't do all the math really quickly, but that means that about $1.4 million has been raised by private entities alone. Thank you. Thank you. That's very helpful. Answering my questions. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lam, as you know, I'm very supportive of this project. I think one question about the timeline. If we were to support this initiative, can you tell me a little bit more about when the Visitor Center would move forward in terms of their project. I just want to learn a little bit more about that for the audience's sake. Chair, may I ask Ms. Davis to, is it okay? I'm glad you're here. So, Council Member Legree, can I ask you to restate your question? Of course, Ms. Davis. I was asking about the timeline of the project and how contingent it is upon funds raised. Yes. So UK was in the policy of providing bridge loans to projects that had at least 50 percent of the total fund, the projected fund balance raised in gifts and pledges. UK dropped that process or that policy during the pandemic and now requires that all $3 million, or whatever the amount of your project is, be available in gifts and pledges before it will let us go on to the next phases. So it's very important at this point to do as much fundraising as we can, and that is still ongoing within the university and is also part of my job. to make sure that that happens because as we have already talked about, costs are going up, and they probably have gone up since 2020 when this plan was kind of stopped development. So it is very timely, and I believe there will be at least another year of fundraising that is needed before we can break ground. Are you good? Okay. Thank you very much, Councilmember Lamb. We'll move on to the next item, which are the welcome signs that were recommended by the Corridors Commission, chaired by Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. I brought this motion forward during the budget process in regards to looking at two additional welcome signs per the Corridors Commission's request. Nothing additional to add, but just leave it on the list for consideration. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Next, we'll move on to the Phoenix Park redesign. Councilmember Lagree. Thank you, Chair. I actually have some more information to present about this. Am I able to do that? Thank you. While we're waiting for that presentation, I would like to to keep this in consideration for funding, knowing that it's a very large project and with the consideration that it may may not be funded fully. So I'd like to continue the conversation if we could later on. May I have a clicker? Sorry you all. Thank you, colleagues. I wanted to show this to you for a number of reasons, and one of those is because you all helped to fund this redesign. It's really outstanding and beautiful, and I want to thank you for the $150,000 it took to get us to this spot. And I also want to say that what I'm showing you today is completely obtainable, and it's a beautiful vision for Phoenix Park. Right here you're going to see an image of Phoenix Park today, this morning, and right here is the same image transformed. And the first thing you'll notice is that the water feature has been removed. Unfortunately, the Phoenix Park fountains are broken, as you all may have noticed, and the repairs for those fountains are almost impossible at this point. You'll see right here this represents two different elements of redesign. It dramatically improves visibility into the park and the sunken nature of today's Phoenix Park really makes that visibility challenging. So the new transition between the street and the park will provide a more visual connection to the street which will benefit public safety and enforcement and improve user safety and comfort by removing barriers to entry. You can also see that there's some landscape strategy here that will maximize visibility and control unwanted use of landscaped areas, really low perennials and shrubs. This is the Main Street entrance to Phoenix Park today. And this is the transformed entrance. I just want you to know that one of the biggest changes that you can see, and it's a little bit hard in this schematic, is that the redesign increases the lighting, and that lighting can be responsive for safety emergencies. And we know that right now a key concern in the park is safety and visibility. And this proposed lighting will illuminate the space during hours of operation, and it will also create a totally transformed and pleasant user experience. Okay, so stay with me here. These are all lights, okay? Right here, dark pink lines, these are LED string lights. The black lines with dots are another set of lights. The pink dashed line is rope lading at the stage and the bridges. Okay, and the red dots are recessed step lights. I know this is like really, really difficult to see, but I am asking you to use your imagination as well. And the blue triangles are short, with short red lines, are tree up lighting. So you can see many, many, many different types of lights all throughout the park. Okay, this is Athenian Grill today, the seating area. This is the transformed area of Athenian Grill. You know, I think that we really want to make sure that we can keep tenants in this area and that we can have viable restaurants. So this activates an integral public space that I really think is underutilized. You can see different types of benches, high benches, low benches, none of which can be slept upon. and I think that park features and lighting and safety and site furnishings will create an inviting environment and a really beautiful environment and it also brings more people into the space and allows more eyes to be put upon it alright, this is our last transformation, to me that's pretty incredible and this also creates space for families and for active programming. We have many different stakeholders, some of whom are here today. Our Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, our library, our Park Plaza residents, they really care about this space and I know that we do too. And this includes features for people of all ages. And this is the aerial view, it's just beautiful and I just want you to know what six million dollars or perhaps even less could do in Phoenix Park and I know that director Conrad is here today but I also wanted you to see that the eternal flame is still there and it's actually landscaped in a way that is even more appealing and allows people to move within that monument so thank you so much for your time and for your attention I appreciate it thank you does anybody have any questions for Council member agree? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to the next item, which is the quiet zone implementation as proposed by Council Member McCurran and Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. This is an item that we've had in committee since 2018. We've had multiple presentations on this, and it does affect several council districts. I've spoken to many individuals about this. It's a safety implementation along the railroad crossings that doesn't just quiet the horns, but also alerts drivers ahead of time and provides an additional safety measure. I'd like to keep this in consideration for moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on is the police officer raises as put forward by Council Member Maloney. Thank you. As most of you all know, the biggest problem we have now is a shortage of our police officers. And I've looked at all kinds of numbers. If we raise it up to $10, and I support Council Member Brown's recommendation because he's taking lateral movement. And what I like about it, the reason I want up to $15 is because we'll be more expensive than anybody around us. We won't be the fourth highest paying police department in Lexington. We will eventually catch up with everybody and be ahead of them. And my goal is to recruit people back. but I like Councilmember Brown's idea too, lateral movement. I'm looking, we can do the same thing as bringing people from Cincinnati, Chicago, every place like that where they feel real stressful that they may want to come to a city like Lessonson. So I really like both of those, but the reason I went with mine, it was not legal to do laterals and that's why I did the $15 to make sure we were ahead of everybody so we can go out and recruit people to come back. And that was my reason why I made it $15 an hour. $10 will still be the fourth highest paying in Lutzen for our police department. The UK would be hiring us. The school would be hiring us. The airport is hiring us and what for. And I want to catch up with number one. I mean, to me, it's the most important job. And I went the other night to a couple restaurants downtown. their number one priority is to bring the police back downtown. Whatever it takes, we've got to have it. And businesses are hurting downtown, and to me, and even the neighborhoods I go to, people don't have the courage to speed, and we don't have the vampires. So if we can find a way to be creative to bring it back, that's the reason why I went up to $15. Thank you. Thank you. The next item is the E-911 employee raises. Councilman Maloney. $15,000. The next one. This is another crisis. Some of you all have gone to the 911. And I have been preaching this for a long time that we've got to increase their pay. And when I found out what their pay was and I looked at other cities around us, they're a lot more than it. So I requested that we give them $6 increase. And doing that, we did the compensation pay. And I'll give you an example. We went from $19 if you start somebody up to $22. There's a lady that's been there, a couple people have been there over 20 years, that were making $22.50, got $1.50 raised with the compensation pay. And I saw they were only making $23 or $24 an hour. Being there 23 years, I felt like we need to put this, separate these numbers and make it more competitive. and to me everybody in Luskinson calls that number and lately it's been over the weekend I had people call me and say I couldn't get through $3,600 and I don't want to use 911 but by getting these numbers back up I think we'll be able to recruit people back into Luskinson because a lot of people are going to other towns so that was my other reason why I did this. Thank you very much. We'll move on to the next item which are public safety salaries as put forward by Council Member Fred Brown and Council Member Ellinger Councillor Brown? I guess I'll take it. The $30 million that was set aside there is really what I had calculated that would take care of our public safety completely on giving them raises. And to me, it's the number one priority of the $40 million. We've got a lot of other things on there, but you know, unless we set some priorities, and I think public safety is one. So I'm supporting the $30 million. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I concur. And when we were discussing this one, as much as I want to make sure we take care of police, but I want to make sure we take care of fire and corrections too, so that's why I put that in for the public safety salaries. Police obviously is an issue, and we're looking at that, but we have to make sure we look at fire and community corrections. Thank you. All right. And actually 8-9-1-1, even though they're non-sworn. Thank you. Councilmember Melanie. And I appreciate what you all are doing. Now, how much is the third? Like, for instance, I had go up to $15,000 for each officer. It was going to cost $15 million, over $15 million. You all are looking at $30 million. So what are you looking at? How much is it going to cost for fire? And how much is it going to cost for correction? and how much it's going to cost for and how much raises, again, because I've got detailed on mine, so I want to be sure how much the raises are going to be for each one of those departments. I appreciate what you all are doing. I know what you're doing. But I just want to know how you all. I came up with $15 million on $15 an hour, adding $15,000 to their salaries. So where do you all come up with all three of them and make it across the board? We've asked the administration to do our MOU MOA and to come back with. We looked at police is going to be a $10,000 raise, and we were looking at trying to do something to see what they're going to come back with, both the other agencies. So I think we're still trying that. We put that as kind of a ballpark. We thought that looking at what it was going to be for police and then trying to work with the other two, that it would be up to that because that has to be our priority. So the MOU is going to add $30,000, so the other two will bargain with the last $20,000 or whatever remaining. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Let's move on to the next item, which is paving. That's before, but Council Member Fred Brown. You know, I like to help all of my colleagues, and putting more money into paving does that. So I'm not too happy with some of my colleagues, as they probably know. I'm going to withdraw that. I'll take care of paving in my own district and let everybody fight for their own district. All right. Thank you very much. Move on to the next item, which is the City Hall Reserve Fund. And Council Member Fred Brown, that is you as well. I want to keep that on there. I think that that's something that we need going forward. And I'm not sure the $5 million is a good number. But unless we put some seed money into that, right now what we're doing here at the present City Hall is we're probably spending that $5 million a year on maintenance. and we could save that if we get a new City Hall. So I'm going to keep that on there. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll move on to the next item, which is the Veterans Park Memorial Park for World War I Monument, and that's Council Member Land. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. And I do appreciate my colleagues' consideration of this. However, if we move forward with the Mayor's recommendations where we have the individual allotment for each council district, I would remove this and have that fallen, and I'll take care of that under that tranche if that should approve, because I do want to make sure that we have a design and a proper way for future monuments and memorials to be able to be taken care of in a good place out at the Veterans. And I don't know if you want me to. That goes for the Purple Heart Monument as well. Perfect. Both of those, I understand, pending approval of the framework. Okay, the next item is yours as well, the Veterans Park Southeastern Bay Booth Concession Stand. Yes, and that, in lieu of everything that has been asked for, I am going to go back to the drawing table and see if we can't co-work together with Southeastern. And again, I would be willing, if the $150,000 per district comes through, I'm willing to give some of that and work with Southeastern Bay Bridge League in order to bring that design phase forward. Excellent. And the next item as well, the Bellawood Park Tennis Court conversion. I will hold off on that and ask for parks to consider that in future budgets. I just wanted to bring it to the light for my colleagues to know that that Bellawood is wanting to move forward with the conversion of that but given the fact of the larger discussion that we're having today I will hold off on that for future discussion thank you thank you very much move on to the next item which is the affordable housing fund and vice mayor Kaye thank you chair so a couple comments I want to follow up on what councilmember Brown said first First of all, the Affordable Housing Fund, I checked with the Director, they could use that $6 million immediately. They could put a bunch of things that are in the pipeline more into process. But given that there's $4 million proposed in the Mayor's proposed budget, I would reduce my request to a matching $4 million. And maybe just another comment about that. We hear a lot about the need for housing. We hear a lot about the need for affordable housing. It's important to remember that that $4 million is going to be leveraged to probably produce about $30 million worth of housing for the people who are most in need. And if we're concerned about that, I think we need to include that in the budget. So I would leave my $4 million in until we review how people want to deal with the Mayor's budget. Thank you very much. Move on to the next item, which is also yours, the Solarize Lexington Project. So there's a new emphasis within environmental protection, basically being led by our new sustainability coordinator. That is a project that's been done in Louisville. They called it Solarize Louisville. This would be called Solarize Lexington, and it's about aggregating the demand for solarization and getting a discount for homeowners who participate. So it allows them basically to make an investment in solar arrays from a single vendor who we've vetted, and this million dollars would be as a supplement in addition to that for households at 80% of AMI and lower. homeowners. So this is another effort to stabilize homeownership in the low-income neighborhoods in our community combined with an energy-saving effort and without putting too fine a point on it our community is way behind on energy efficiency not internally but in terms of a community and this would make a a difference. So I would like to leave that on. I'm going to go on to the horse mania statue. Oh I'm sorry. Yes. Thank you. Vice Mayor, the the million is that only for individuals that are 80% AMI? So is there going to be a discount though that will try to work a contract if anybody wants to do it? Yeah so there would be be something like a 15% discount for any households, any households that participated in the program. That's a discount we would get from the provider and so they would benefit from that. And then this additional money would be to make it possible for low-income households to participate in the program because the upfront investment, not impossible for a household at 80% of AMI but most unlikely. So this would allow them to participate. Okay seeing others you may onto the horse mania statue. So I have this and the next item which I thought that don't fall into housing they don't fall into any simple category and they're very small. Rather than try to make the case for each of them I'm going withdraw the request for the horse mania statue and for the scholarship fund okay and the next item is also yours the city hall reserve so i'm on a roll here first i took out a couple ten thousand dollar allocations now i'm going to take out a 20 million um i don't think there's any appetite for that at the moment from the council and as much as i'd like to see us do that and invest, this probably is not the moment. So I'll withdraw that as well. Thank you. Thank you. Next is the Cane Run Greenspec Trust Project. Councilman Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. The Greenspec Trust has worked on two projects and have been successful on that, and this would be our third project, and it would be $25,000 to do the project in Cane Run. I've passed out some schematics of what we would do, And we have Ms. Kimball here from Environmental Services if she would like to explain to you what would happen. But it would certainly help this area. And the Green Space Trust is working hard to try to go in each district. And this would be a nice improvement for the first district here. And we would like to keep this in for the $25,000. If you have any questions, Ms. Kimball, why don't you come here. If you would, do you have a picture you could show on the screen, please? Good afternoon. The Green Space Commission and Trust has actually done two projects, as Councilman Ellinger said, in the past and has been a great success. This time we looked at what we consider the Cane Run Greenway, which is at Bryan Ave and Meadow Park in the District 1. And we've actually done two public meetings for this location and really listened to what the citizens and residents wanted for this area. And one thing they had looked at was to add some additional trees to do a two-fold beautification project and also additional water quality benefits for this area. They had some concerns regarding transients and drug activity, which we understood. So we were keeping this a fairly open kind of project, so that way you can see through it. The residents can walk and feel comfortable that they can actually be seen and see what's going on. So this area, we've actually broken it up into three phases plus a median project and have a bid tab for this, and that way we could take it in bite-sized chunks. We understood that phasing was a big thing. By this additional funding, we'd actually be able to implement all of the phases, so that would be really appreciated. As you can see, we're looking at some trees. We're looking at removing some invasive species, limbing up these trees, and really doing some nice mulch rings around this and doing a really nice just general area that they can enjoy. Thank you. And like I said, this would be our third. We did D'Angelo Court and Eureka Springs, and they've had two very successful for the community, and this, I think, would be a nice third edition, so thank you. Thank you. Any questions for Council Member Ellinger? I will just add that that allocation of $150 was for each council member. This might be an option just for consideration moving forward. Okay, thank you very much. Now let's go back. If you would please show me on the screen page number 87 in the packet. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm desperately sorry. Ms. Sheehan, ADA compliance. I apologize. Thank you, Chair. So the last project on your list is the ADA improvement plan. This includes an analysis of our ADA accessibility and an action plan for improvements that we could make. This is a recommendation that has come from our Commission for People with Disabilities through our ARPA projects process. We do have a presentation on this item in the General Government and Social Services Committee on Thursday, so I will remove this item from our consideration for today, but I would appreciate your consideration at the committee meeting of other potential funding sources when we talk about it on Thursday. Thank you. So the potential funding would not come from fund balance. Correct. I'm just making sure it's clear. Thank you very much. Okay. Now we will go to page 87 in the packet. If you will put the mayor's proposed framework back on the screen. Thank you very much. and I would entertain a motion at this time to approve the mayor's priorities for remaining unallocated fund balance as a framework for discussion. So moved. So second. So second. Thank you. Any discussion on the motion to accept it as a framework? Council Member Kloiber. I'd just like to state that I'm glad we're going to have a discussion using it as a framework if this goes through. I do still have a lot of concerns about that one-time money going to recurring costs. But I will be voting in order to make this the framework for this discussion. Thank you. Seeing none of those, all in favor of the proposed motion, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That motion passes. Therefore, if you can go back to that screen one more time, if you don't mind, on page 87. Thank you. Just so everyone can see how we're moving from this page and operating from this page moving forward. I might make one other recommendation before we get started. After talks with the administration on some of our ARPA funds, it might be useful to consider funding one of the proposed $4 million of the additional affordable housing contribution fund from ARPA that would move our ARPA funds down a little bit closer to net neutral in anticipation of the rest of this year. That was a proposal they made, which I think might make a lot of sense. So if someone would be willing to make that motion, that would not change the total number towards affordable housing, just changed some of the uses. Thank you. Is there any discussion moving forward? Vice Mayor Kay. I'm sorry, I was I'm not clear about what the, is that money absolutely available or is it only projected to be available? It is available. There's 1.3 currently in the ARPA fund and if Ms. Warnemann would like just to come up and maybe just explain a little bit of what the thinking is behind allocating those resources today. Yes, when we spoke with Councilmember Bledsoe this morning, we have about $1.376 million that's currently unallocated for the ARPA funding. Since affordable housing is in enumerated use, and we've already allocated a significant amount, we thought it was fine to go ahead and support Ural's allocating an additional million dollars for that purpose. allocating a million from that and then three million from the fund balance. Fine. Thank you. Council Member Kerr. Thank you, Chair. No, I was just asking you if we could restate the motion, but I think I've got the gist of it. Thank you. Okay. All those up and up. Yes, ma'am. Council Member Lamb. Yes, the motion would be to allocate one million from ARPA and three million from fund balance for affordable housing. All in favor of the proposed motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Thank you. No vote. Okay. Now we will start back using this framework. We will go back to the beginning of the council member request that starts on page 93 as an order. As we go through this list, please make a recommendation or a motion on how to fund your project and do so with an intent to show where on this page you intend to move the money or take it from. And we will start with Council Member Ellinger. Could you repeat what our process is here? Yes. Since I'm first, I want to make sure I do it the right way, but I have to take something away to bring mine in? Correct. We have adopted this page as our operating framework. Therefore, since there's a zero fund balance at the bottom, you'll need to identify which line item on this item, which is similar to the budget process, that you move funds from as to where you'd like them to go. Well, I have an extra million now that we took away from affordable housing, right? So I can take that first million, right? Okay. And mind you, if it passes, someone else can reallocate that same money later, just so we're clear. First on the list here. And I'm doing the high street entrance to the town branch. I'm not sure how populous this is going to be since I'm going to take a million from the affordable housing, and I'm going to take a million from the council district neighborhood capital funds. So moved. Is there a second? Motion dies for lack of a second. Thank you very much for playing. we'll move on to you know I I want to be able to find a way to finance a bit of okay let's do it this way I'll do one million from the for the high street entrance to town branch I think it's important We work on this project, and I'll take that from the affordable housing. So moved. And what you mean is the newly freed up million dollars, not from affordable housing. Thank you. Okay. You said second by Councilman Reynolds. Okay. Any discussion on the motion, please sign in. The motion is to use the newly freed up million dollars from the ARPA funds towards the 1.9 requested to provide 1 million for the high street entrance to town branch. and i'm entertaining comments or questions councilman wortley thank you chair i'm looking at this breakdown uh thank you for providing it uh council member ellinger so at this point between the mayor's uh proposed budget and what was added by council through i guess the arpa discussion or through the budget we've currently allocated 6.2 million towards the infrastructure improvements around the park is that correct okay uh and we have we have um miss uh lankford here if you have some questions and she'll probably be more knowledgeable on this if you want to ask her no doubt that she would be yes i've been and i see i see she's she's provided a lot a lot of good information here and i think these are all these are all valid improvements and things that i think we ought to take a look at at at this point i think we've made a significant investment and I don't know that I'm ready to go the rest of the way right now on this particular funding. I'd probably like to see where the rest of the funding goes and then how we can accommodate some of these down the road because some of these aren't all necessarily need to be grouped together. Just my thought on that right now. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. This is a question about procedure. We're going down the list. Are we going to, if we're overcommitted at the end, how are we going to resolve the question of whether people are taking money from the same pot? I think at this point we make motions, and if at the end there's no money left, we continue to fight for what's still there. I'm not sure we can go back second or third round. So not that I have a special interest in this. I'm at the bottom of the list. I understand. So council members need to be aware if they have something that they want to be sure to have funding for and you have figured out where you're going to get it, you might think about any proposal to use that same money because it'll be gone. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. And I'll just, I hope this makes sense. at the end of the day, I think we should suspend the rules and allow second and third motions to be reconsidered so that if something fails and at the end you want to reconsider it, I think we should have that option to allow that conversation. Thank you. Council Member Brown? I have a running total nonsense that there was a lot of withdrawals. I think the 95A listed in the law for both. There was a lot of withdrawals on that. Do you have a new number on that? We're using the framework, so it really doesn't matter. But I'm running a total. Okay, seeing no other... Councilman Ellinger. To Mr. Brown's, that's the 40.7, but when you start adding the others, they're different pots, so they wouldn't be just 95 because it would be 95 plus 40 because they're not all the same. And some have been deducted, some have been added, but it's not. It's apples and oranges here. Correct. Okay. Seeing no other conversation on the motion, those to approve the motion with the $1 million towards the town bridge comment, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Let's do a roll call vote so we're clear, please. Aren't you all funny? All right, I'm going to vote aye to consider it moving forward, and we can take reconsiderations at the end. Okay, moving on to the next item. Oh, glory. Okay. What am I on next? The Arboretum is next. Yes, thank you, Chair. We had a sports complex. I'm so sorry. Did you want to consider that for funding? It seemed like there was an appetite here for it, so I was going to move it towards in committee because I think it is important. But since we have so many projects on here, I will move that into committee, and hopefully we can discuss that down the road because I think it is important as an economic development. But looking at all these other priorities, I think that I will do that. Councilman Worley? So, hearing no second to put it into the committee right now, I mean, it's technically already in the committee, though, and can always stay where it sits. You know, I think at this point we all have to look and see, yeah, there's a lot of projects that some of us agree with, some of us don't, and there's not going to be enough money there. But I would encourage us to think about projects that have gone through our process and been vetted over and over and over and have still survived. Because through that process, there are several that did not survive or had already been compromised and funded at lower levels. And that's part of our process. But this particular item has been something that has stayed at the forefront of we want to fund that if we can, we want to fund that if we can. So seeing that we've got a lot in here and knowing that this started at 10, now it's down to 4, and maybe there's not an appetite for 4, and we're looking at a lot of different things that we need to cut or not cut in the mayor's recommendations. So to me, personally, I don't see the necessity for the entire $3.5 million in the economic contingency funding. I think that we have a very, very good rainy day fund. And I also believe that if you'll remember when the mayor was willing to jump into some of our savings in our last budget, it's because our own analysts and consultants said, you're holding a bit too much cash. And we always should have a rainy day fund, but we have to understand that when you have enough, you have enough and it's time to spend to provide for economic development and for your people. So I would make this compromise offer to fund the infrastructure for a potential sports complex at $1 million and to take that from the $3.5 million in the economic contingency fund proposal. So moved. Okay, there's been a motion and a second. Any discussion? Start with Council Member Lamb. Thank you. And I appreciate the motion. And I guess I'm still trying to wrap my head around what exactly. I mean, I know it says infrastructure. We don't have a site yet, and so I'm trying to wrap my head around what would the million dollars be used for. I feel like that is, you know, when we were talking about it possibly being downtown, and then it was possibly being out on Newtown, and I've heard some rumors about some other place, but I don't think any place factually has come to fruition. And so what exactly would the million be used for, please? I'll do the best I can here because I've never been the lead on this and just kind of adopted it here now. But also I think we need to keep in mind when we talk about potential sports improvements in our community, there are different conversations being had. When we talk about something downtown, that was a proposal for a stadium that was rejected by the Lexington Center Corporation. Then there were discussions about soccer fields out in Newtown Pike that were approved by our Board of Adjustment, but then a potential stadium, different issue, that was proposed to be a zoning ordinance text amendment that has been postponed indefinitely, my understanding. So we know that there's a significant investment in soccer in our community, but a sports complex could also include baseball, lacrosse, football. But we know that there is right now out there a potential for youth fields to be constructed in partnership with a private entity. So all this was ever intended would be was to park this money and then to request proposals from those that would be interested in partnering to do that. And if this particular entity makes a great proposal and we like the site, that's great. If not, we can always take this money back and put it somewhere else if we ultimately are not satisfied with any proposal. But I believe that youth sports are an important economic development tool. And there is a demand out there. You ask our own parks and rec. We cannot fill – we cannot give our constituents all the time on the fields that they need. We've got a recreational component. We have a competitive component. and so we need more field space. Okay, all right, so you're answering my question and you're taking all my time down. I know that was pretty good on your part, wasn't it? That was really good. So I've got 24 seconds. I'll log in and you can take my time. How's that? That's all right. So basically what I would say is that this would be a placemaker and I would not be able to support this today because there is not more factual information, which I think that all of these other pieces on here, There's a lot more factual information that we have before us, and that would be the only reason that I would not support this today. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Maloney. Thank you. Commissioner Hensley, could you come up for a second? You know, on the bond rating, and some people say that doesn't have an effect, but to me, this economic development money that we have set aside, and we're not even getting there at 10%, that's going to have a huge impact on our bond rating. The only reason we did well is because we had semester funding on top of we had the rainy day fund, but we still didn't reach our goals, but we had other budget stabilization money. Now we're spending a lot of it, which basically means when the time comes next year, we're not going to have a lot of budget stabilization that we used to have. we're going to have this rainy day fund that we hope to keep that bond rating down. Am I correct on that? So if memory serves, we had about $400,000 left in what we called budget stabilization. Just a point of clarification, one of the things that came up in the bond rating was not that we were holding too much cash, but that they understood, since we had not addressed some of the capital needs that we've had over the last couple of years, that we used cash to fund those instead of bonding. The $36 million was supplemented by our budget stabilization previously. So looking at our liquidity, both of those pieces were included. Now we don't have that budget stabilization because we've already allocated for all of that. So all they will be looking at as far as those reserves go is going to be our economic contingency fund, is our savings account, if you will. And that, Councilman, I support your motion, but I mean, I don't support the money coming from it. I'd support it if you'd have done the $4 million straight. I would have supported it because this is an economic money. We have not, if we have spent a lot of time in a certain area of town putting a lot of money into things and we're not getting our money back, we know that this works. We've seen it work in other cities. We've seen it work all over. And when I hear my constituents out there, we need, I want to stay home. And to me, this is a revenue-driven thing. And I personally feel the $4 million could have come from what originally was Council Member Ellinger was proposing. But I cannot support right now taking money out that's going to affect our bond rate. And I've been in this thing a long time. And that bond rate, and I've seen it go below and move you with it. I just don't want to see that happen. and to me I appreciate where you're going with this but I really think this money I feel we're not spending it out in the community I think we say in certain areas and to me this is a golden opportunity especially for the soccer moms and dads and I support it but I can't support this motion where your money is coming from. Thank you Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you Chair and I appreciate the intent of the motion. I just cannot get straight in my head why would we want to park a million dollars on speculation at this point that there might be something coming forward at some point when we have immediate needs. I would also say that maybe two other things. One, the record on these kinds of sports complexes is mixed. My understanding is that Elizabethtown basically supports that on an annual basis from their general fund. And the second point is that we've had so far two potential proposals for something similar that were completely funded by the private sector. And it's not clear to me why we would put up money for something that the private sector seems to believe they can make a profit on. It's a good business venture. So I cannot support the motion. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Plowman. Thank you, Chair, and I also would not support this. I think that both Vice Mayor Kay and Council Member Lamb put out some pretty good points, and I would also echo those. And also, Council Member Worley, I do agree about the soccer fields. However, we just hit a decision through the Board of Adjustments to locate 10 soccer fields out in the Athens-Boonesboro section, out 75. a nice regional location, as well as Cardinal Run North, 160 acres, is going out to Versailles Road. And there is a public outreach right now to find out what the folks want out there. I guarantee you soccer fields are going to be it. So that will meet the needs, current needs and pressing needs for soccer fields in our community. And I think the rest right now is very ambiguous as to where even a stadium would go. And so I think until the dust settles and we know what that is, it would not be a good idea to park $1 million when we're looking at really serious other community needs. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember McCartney. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Worley, thank you for bringing us forward. I think several good points have been made in the recent comments. And I understand some of the concerns about not necessarily having a location for where this is going to go. But we've had somebody from the private sector that's put their foot forward multiple times to try and find a location. And for years, we have been discussing this, trying to find a home, trying to find this as a project. We've noted a need for a sports complex in Lexington or soccer fields. And we have somebody who's willing to put their money forward. I think this is a good chance for us to put our money where our mouth is and not just say, hey, we want to do something, but actually showing we want to put that investment forward and help out the private sector and have a good public-private partnership. So I'll support the motion. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Chair. Just a few closing remarks to address some of the comments made, talking about we don't want to just park money when we don't know that there's something there. Well, the Economic Contingency Fund is exactly a parking space. If we put it where the mayor has proposed, we are just parking the money versus taking an opportunity to set the money aside in a parking space that also has a sign on it that says we're open for business and we're happy to help development in our community. We say, well, we don't know where this is going to go, and maybe we've already seen private investment identify two different areas. Well, maybe that's also identified a potential partner for us, and we can help them alleviate their cost and do better and do more. And then finally, as always, any economic development project, sometimes may seem speculative, sometimes may see right there. If you are not willing to invest in yourself as a city, you are saying to all the private sector, there's no reason to invest in us either. So you have to take opportunities to invest in yourself when you have the opportunity, and this is a perfect one right here. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you. Just one quick point. I agree with Council Member Worley about the Economic Contingency Fund, but there may be some other uses for that that keeps it from being parked. So just keep that in mind. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no other signing, let's do a roll call vote on this one, please. Thank you. That was smart this time, yeah. Okay, that motion passes. Given the time, I would like to take a recess so we may do work session and reconvene this meeting when work session is over. Agreed? Thank you very much. I'm sorry. Motion to recess? Thank you. Second. All is approved. Thank you. We're in recess. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.