# Council Work Session - November 15, 2022 > Auto-transcribed civic record · November 15, 2022 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5690 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5690?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2022-11-15 - **Last revised**: November 15, 2022 - **Length**: 17,713 words - **Speakers**: Mayor > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council convened on November 15, 2022, at 3:00 PM in the Council Chamber of the Urban County Government Center, with Mayor Gorton presiding. The meeting focused primarily on informational items, featuring a presentation on a disparity study and providing opportunities for public input on agenda matters. The council heard 2 public comments during the designated public comment period and conducted 2 votes during the proceedings. Both agenda items were informational in nature, with the disparity study presentation serving as the main substantive item for council consideration and public discussion. ## Attendance All council members were present for the November 15, 2022 meeting. **Present:** • Mayor Gorton • Vice Mayor Kay • Council Member Bledsoe • Council Member Lamb • Council Member Plomin • Council Member Baxter • Council Member Sheehan • Council Member McCurn • Council Member Ellinger • Council Member Brown • Council Member Reynolds • Council Member Moloney • Council Member LeGris • Council Member Kloiber • Council Member Worley **Absent:** None **Late:** None The meeting achieved full attendance with all 15 council members participating from the start of the session. ## Votes and Decisions The council took action on two resolutions during the November 15, 2022 meeting. **Police Lodge Agreement Resolution** [timestamp: 10:00] Council Member Bledsoe moved to approve a resolution accepting two separate memorandums of agreement with the Bluegrass Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 4. The motion passed by voice vote with 14 members voting in favor and 1 opposed. Those voting in favor were: Mayor Gorton, Vice Mayor Kay, Council Member Bledsoe, Council Member Lamb, Council Member Plomin, Council Member Baxter, Council Member Sheehan, Council Member McCurn, Council Member Ellinger, Council Member Brown, Council Member Reynolds, Council Member Moloney, Council Member LeGris, and Council Member Kloiber. Council Member Worley cast the sole dissenting vote. **Goal 4 Work Group Report Resolution** [timestamp: 1:30:00] Vice Mayor Kay moved to approve a resolution endorsing the report of the Goal 4 Work Group, with Council Member Bledsoe providing the second. This resolution was decided by roll call vote and passed with 10 members in favor and 1 opposed. The members voting to approve the resolution were: Mayor Gorton, Vice Mayor Kay, Council Member Bledsoe, Council Member Lamb, Council Member Plomin, Council Member Baxter, Council Member Sheehan, Council Member McCurn, Council Member Ellinger, and Council Member Brown. Council Member Worley again voted against the measure. Several council members who voted for the police agreement resolution were not recorded as voting on this second resolution. Both resolutions passed despite opposition from Council Member Worley, who was the only member to vote against either measure. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed one significant financial amendment related to infrastructure planning. The council considered an amendment totaling $400,000 for an updated sewerability study targeting certain rural areas. • **Sewerability Study Amendment - $400,000**: The amendment allocates funding for an updated study examining sewer infrastructure feasibility in specific rural areas within the jurisdiction. The study represents a substantial investment in evaluating potential expansion of municipal sewer services to underserved rural communities. The financial action reflects the municipality's commitment to assessing infrastructure needs in outlying areas, though specific details regarding the study's scope, timeline, or the consulting firm that would conduct the work were not specified in the available materials. The $400,000 allocation suggests a comprehensive analysis that would likely include engineering assessments, environmental impact evaluations, and cost-benefit analyses for potential sewer system extensions. No additional budget amendments, appropriations, or financial resolutions were identified in the meeting materials. The sewerability study amendment represents the sole financial action item requiring council consideration during this session. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps and resolution numbers were not available in the provided meeting materials.* ## Public Comment Two speakers addressed the meeting during the public comment period, both focusing on concerns regarding the Goal 4 Work Group Report. **Margaret Graves** spoke first, expressing concerns about the Goal 4 Work Group Report [timestamp: 1:00:00]. Graves raised issues about the lack of public participation in the work group's process and specifically highlighted the absence of representation from the rural land management board. She emphasized that this lack of inclusive participation was problematic for the report's development and outcomes. **Will Adams**, representing the Bluegrass Land Conservancy, followed with additional concerns about the same report [timestamp: 1:05:00]. Adams opposed the report's methodology for defining developable areas, arguing that the proposed approach could potentially harm important conservation values in the region. As a representative of a land conservation organization, Adams brought a specific perspective focused on protecting natural resources and conservation priorities. Both speakers' comments centered on the Goal 4 Work Group Report, indicating significant community interest and concern about this particular agenda item. The comments highlighted two key areas of opposition: procedural concerns about public engagement and representation, and substantive concerns about the report's potential impact on conservation efforts. ## Contested Items The November 15, 2022 meeting featured one primary contested item that drew community opposition. **Goal 4 Work Group Report** Several community members voiced opposition to the Goal 4 Work Group Report during the meeting. The disagreement centered on two main concerns: inadequate public participation in the work group process and potential negative impacts on rural land use. Community members who spoke against the report argued that the public had not been sufficiently involved in developing the recommendations. They also raised concerns about how the proposed changes might affect rural land designation and use within the jurisdiction. The nature of the opposition was characterized as community-based, with multiple residents participating in the discussion to express their objections to the work group's findings and recommendations. *Note: Specific timestamp information was not available in the provided meeting data for this contested item.* ## Public Comment - Issues on Agenda [timestamp: 1:00:00] During the public comment period for agenda items, several community members addressed the commission regarding the Goal 4 Work Group Report. The comments focused on concerns about the process and potential impacts on rural areas. **Key Speakers:** • Margaret Graves • Will Adams The speakers expressed concerns about the Goal 4 Work Group Report process and raised questions about how the proposed changes might affect rural communities. The specific nature of their concerns centered on the work group's approach and the potential consequences for rural areas under consideration. This was an informational session where public input was received but no formal action was taken by the commission. The comments provided community perspective on the Goal 4 Work Group Report that was being considered as part of the meeting's agenda. ## Disparity Study Presentation [timestamp: 2:00:00] BBC Research & Consulting presented the findings of the 2022 Disparity Study during this agenda item, with Iris McClish serving as the key speaker for the presentation. The study examined disparities in city contracting practices, specifically focusing on opportunities for minority and women-owned businesses (MWBEs) in municipal contracts. The presentation highlighted findings that revealed gaps between the availability of minority and women-owned businesses and their actual participation in city contracting opportunities. McClish presented the research methodology and key findings from the comprehensive analysis, which assessed the city's contracting practices across various business categories and demographic groups. The study's results provided data-driven insights into potential barriers that minority and women-owned businesses face when seeking to participate in city contracts. The presentation was informational in nature, providing city officials and the public with detailed findings about contracting disparities. The study's results are typically used to inform policy decisions regarding procurement practices and potential programs to address identified disparities in business participation. This agenda item served as a formal presentation of the research findings without requiring immediate action from the governing body. The disparity study represents part of the city's ongoing efforts to evaluate and potentially improve equity in its contracting processes. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Thursday, November 17, 2022 Council meeting docket - **Motion** — passed (10-1): place on the docket for the Thursday, November 17, 2022 Council meeting, a resolution accepting memorandums of agreement (MOUs) with the 2 respective bargaining units for the Division of Police (Officer and Sergeants/Lieutenants). These agreements increase the base pay by $8,000 per year for Officers and Sergeants and $5,000 per year for Lieutenants. They also include support for a legislative change to allow for the rehiring of retirees along with the related contract language, and extend each contract out for an additional year (through June 30, 2026 with a 2% pay increase in FY2026) - **Motion** — passed (0-0): add an annualized pay supplement increase for the same employees in the Division of E911 who are receiving the recruitment/retention supplements (Telecommunicators, Telecommunicator Seniors, Telecommunicator Supervisors, E-911 Manager and Radio/Electronics Specialists) - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve a resolution endorsing the report of the Goal4 Workgroup, and recommending that the Planning Commission consider the report in development of the 2023 Comprehensive Plan - **Motion** — passed (0-0): amend the council rules to allow public comment on the Goal4 item now rather than wait until the end of the meeting - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the November 1, 2022 work session summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve budget amendments - **Motion** — passed (0-0): amend budget amendments to remove journal 137585 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): amend the list of budget amendments on pages 3-6 of the work session packet to remove budget journal 137604-05 for Jobs Fund reimbursement. This item was not a reimbursement and should not be processed at this time - **Motion** — passed (0-0): amend the budget amendment list on pages 3-6 of the work session packet to add a budget amendment for Water Quality to provide $400,000 for an updated sewerability study targeting specific rural areas, as recommended by the Goal4 Workgroup and discussed at the Committee of the Whole meeting on November 10, 2022 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve new business - **Motion** — passed (0-0): refer the LFUCG Disparity Study to the General Government and Planning Committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Mayor's Report - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Mayor's Report-Price Contract Bid Recommendations - **Motion** — passed (0-0): adjourn at 5:03pm --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. I'd like to go ahead and welcome everyone. I'd like to go ahead and call to order the Urban County Council Work Session, November 15, 2022. And the first item on the agenda is public comment for issues on the agenda. and we have a few folks signed up, although it's not indicated whether there are items on the agenda or not. Ms. Bean, are you for an item on the agenda? All right. And then we have, let's see, Margaret, are you on the agenda or not? Not. Knox, not, or Will? No. Stephen? Okay, you're all for later. Okay. Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor? Thank you, Mayor. I think some people may be here with the understanding that I'm going to make a motion that has to do with the Gold 4 work group report. And so when I make that motion, I'll also ask the council's indulgence to have public comment on that at that time, even though it's not now on the agenda. Okay. Okay. I think that probably is maybe three or four folks on this list. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. And at this point, we are ready then for our docket approval and rezonings. If I could have a motion. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger moves. Council Member Plowman seconds. Now, Council Members, if you have motions, please log in. Vice Mayor Kay. I'm sorry, Mayor. If other people have motions, why don't we take those, and then I'll ask to be recognized. Thank you. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Mayor. I have two. The first is I move to place on the docket for the November 17, 2022 Council meeting a resolution accepting the two separate memorandums of agreement with the Bluegrass Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 4, on behalf of both the officers and sergeants and the lieutenants in the Division of Police to increase base salaries and address retention issues. So moved. Second. Council Member Ellinger seconds. Are there any questions? Council members, I believe you received an email about this telling the detail. Any questions? Council member Kloiber? Yes, thank you. In review of these, I was curious, did we pursue any of the cost-saving measures that we discussed about laterals or the 36-month buybacks? Because I didn't see them included in this memorandum. Dave, are you Mr. Barbary, would you like to talk to Tyler Scott, Chief of Staff, Dave Barbary. So we looked at a number of things across the board. We looked at the 36-month buyback to start with that. What we found was in where we see officers transition, we don't lose any of that first three years. We lose on average 4.6 a year. And in those, when you do the exit interviews, it's I'm young, I have a family and a sick mother in Ashland, and I'm transferring there to be a part of that force. Or some similar situation like that. Or honestly, folks that the supervisors would not like to retain. So we're talking about a situation where we're looking at, do we put in a three-year mandatory contract with folks that aren't necessarily those we want to keep on the force? And we're only losing four a year in that window. It didn't seem like something that was beneficial up or down the ranks. Where you're really seeing most of your less-than-retirees leaves, that three- to ten-year window, and that's really outside the window of what KRS would allow us to put a contract on. So same kind of thing. It's I've got a young family. Police work is hard. It takes a long time to be away from my family. I'd like to move and be closer to the family I have that can provide some help. But it was outside that window that we could really make a real dent in retention. So that was a more difficult one. The retiree package, like I said, is in there. It'll require us to go to Frankfort, get the KRS change. We've got the agreement with the FOP to accept and implement once all that's done. They've agreed to assist in helping get that passed in Frankfort. Anything else in a drop package or anything else is a bigger conversation because we have a police and fire pension. So we can't just do it for one without talking about the entirety of the impact on the pension plan. Anything else on there? Yeah. So one other follow-up there is we saw the last time that we raised our salaries that the surrounding counties, other municipalities, they raised theirs. So we didn't actually see a net increase in that retention. What is different about this? Because it seems to be doing the same thing we did last time and expecting a different result. Well, one thing we'll have to see is does it make a difference or not? I think we did see a smaller attrition number this year compared to the previous. Has the atmosphere and environment that police work involves different now than it was in the last few years? I would say yes. I think many across the board would say that things have shifted. It's a more favorable work environment. on the other hand we watched the contract that we got done a year ago sit and get leafrogged by a lot of others and we have very few options at our disposal to try to make a difference so our other option was do we sit there and wait for the entire labor market to shift in order for us to play catch-up and i think when you look at the issues left and faces that was not something you all made that very clear in the votes you took as well leading up to this you all were willing to make that time, let us sit there and wait for that time to come either. We need to take some action and see if this is something that can make a difference. So this is what we were able to come up with. So effectively, we are hoping that this will be different than last time and that we will not get leapfrogged. I don't think that's what we're doing, no. Okay. One last question while I have a minute left. Did we look at laterals at all? because that is a cost-effective way for us to increase our recruitment pools that doesn't actually cost us money. Well, I'd let anyone else from Commander of the Great House want to speak to that. We do. Actually, I think there is a misperception. We do take laterals in Lexington. That is, we don't take laterals from five years in to five years here. But there are pretty strict rules on why we don't just take a tenure officer somewhere else. And I'll just keep on rambling until the man knows. Chief is here. Chief Weathers. Good afternoon. We've always taken laterals, and we'll continue to. The thing that keeps us from being true laterals is that our pension system is different. Everybody else comes from a state pension system. We have our own. so when they come from the state and they go to another state entity that has the same pension, they can take that with them. They don't carry that with them. What we do is we bring in laterals or people from other agencies, and they go through our training. And at the end, we cut about five weeks off of that. I don't like bringing people in from other agencies and not training them. I think I've seen other agencies have problems with that so we want to make sure that people we bring here police up to the standards that we want them to Alright, again I've heard from some officers that there is a barrier having to go through that training again and when we're in a situation where we're trying to do everything we can to get as many officers here I would just like us to perhaps in the future look into that maybe being more robust about our recruitment from laterals? I've been here for 35 years, and we've always taken laterals. And the people that we talk to that come here appreciate the additional training. They talk about the training they get at the state level, the training they get from other areas, and they say that our training is far and above that. So in order to maintain quality, I think we need to stay with that. I'm glad to hear all the reasons why we have a staffing shortage now. I would just like us to look into solutions going forward. And I don't necessarily believe that us doing the same thing that we've already done, which is increasing these salaries, is going to help us. So thank you. I appreciate that. And I believe lowering the standards does not make us better and does not help us. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Councilmember Bledsoe, we were actually on your time. Yes, we were. I didn't have anything else you needed to say. I did. Considering we're still on the motion, Mr. Ellinger, did you want to comment on the police one in particular? I just had a question on this motion. Okay. If that's okay. Yep. And Mr. Barbary? I did have the benefit of reading the email, but I think it's a pretty impactful issue. So if you would, could you just give us a little brief synopsis of what actually is in this? Sure. Sure. So there's two different contracts. One of them is for the officers and sergeants and the other one's for lieutenants. The officers and sergeants, they'd all get an $8,000 increase on their base starting in January. And in return for that, we added another year onto the contract at a 2% pay increase in that out year. So the contract will now expire in July of 2026, I think, instead of 2025. We've asked for their support in the legislative change that would assist us in doing rehires. And we've agreed to the language in what the rehiring process would look like when we bring those rehires on. And we have numbers. I mean, I think this makes us the highest paid police department in the state again. And to your point or whoever's making these points, I think you're going to know whether this is about the money or not after this time. because it's a nice deal, and it may not be about the money. And you'll know after this time whether it's about the money or not. And you all have come to an agreement with this with the FOP? We have, but the FOP signed both contracts. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mary. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak to the motion? Did you have anything else? I have a separate motion on a separate issue. All right. I see no other comments. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. We have one no vote. Thank you. That passes. I have one more. Okay. I moved to place in the docket for the November 17th, 2022 council meeting an ordinance authorizing a salary supplement in the amount of $4,000 per year for the following classifications in the division of E911. telecommunicator, telecommunicator senior, telecommunicator supervisor, E911 manager, and radio electronic specialist pursuant to section 21-27D of the code of ordinances and in recognition of employment market conditions that make it exceptionally difficult to recruit and retain qualified employees in these classifications. So moved. Council Member Sheehan seconds. Are there any questions? If you have questions, please log in. Council Member, do you have a question, Vice Mayor? No. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. I'm not sure who I should ask this one. Maybe Ms. Barbary or it's a money issue question. Because we put in, I think, $17 million and then also $9 million on the fund balance. Commissioner Hensley is probably the appropriate person. And I think the $17 was going to be more for police and the $9 was going to be towards the E911. Is that correct or not? Because I know we wanted to do for the second half of the fiscal year. So I guess could you just go through the money part of it? Right. So each of those items we're anticipating being able to cover the remainder of fiscal year 23 as well as into fiscal year 24. That does include in the original allocation, the $17 million, that includes police, fire, and corrections. Since E911 is non-sworn, they were being considered in that additional supplemental reserve, if you will, of I think it was $9 million. And so they're included in that piece. And so that will live in ordinance and be retained until such time that council elects to remove it. So with what we've done so far, we're within those boundaries? Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Ms. Hensley. Commissioner? I guess the only thing is, is that the start date or the timing of when we're going to do that, it's not in the, what the effective date is on this. I believe it's within passage. The proposals that we have, or that we're bringing forward right now, have the first full pay period after January 1st. So we'll be into the first full pay period, or we'll be into January, but we'll make sure that we don't divide a pay period with our previous rates and then our new rates. Okay, thank you. Just one understanding. Any other questions about the motion? All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes, and we are still working with corrections and fire, and we'll bring you those when they're ready. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Mayor. I move to place in the docket for the November 17, 2022 council meeting, A resolution endorsing the report of the Goal 4 workgroup and recommending that the Planning Commission consider the report in development of the 2023 comprehensive plan. So move. Is there a second? Second. Council Member Bledsoe seconds. Are there questions or comments about the motion? Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Vice Mayor, for this. I know that oftentimes we appear are privy to the body of the language of the resolution when the public is not or those that are in our audience. So at the risk of not going and reading the entire amount of it, I would like to point out that inside the actual resolution there are two whereas clauses. And one is actually, it replicates what's in the heading. And it talks about further recommended that the report be considered in the development. But the second whereas, I think it merits for the public to hear what this says. The report identifies land for preservation and land for potential future urban development. And identifies a process for considering if, when, and how land may be added to the urban service area. The only reason I say this is that I want that to be on the record so the public knows that this is all in the process of what we're going through, and this doesn't mean that the recommendations of the report are going to come to fruition. I don't want the public to get that misperception. I think there's going to be an opportunity for the public comment, as I understand it, with the Planning Commission, And I think it's going to be very important that we all pay attention and participate in that process when it comes forward so that we can all work together to make sure that the comprehensive plan of 2023 is what it needs to be for the best of our community. So thank you for allowing me to say that. Thank you. Did you have comments, Vice Mayor, on the motion? Again, I want to make a motion to suspend the rules, but if other council members have comments first, I'll be happy to hear them. Councilman Worley. Thank you, Mayor. And first, let me preface this by thanking the Goal for Work group for their work. I think that this is a great first step in the right direction. And I'm going to support moving this forward now because it does at least delineate a process and takes us out of the every comprehensive plan, same fight. This actually creates a process where we can strategically think about this. In my opinion, waiting for 2026 for a work group to get together who may or may not come up with a statement of intent is too far away. I think there should be a statement of intent for need to expand in some capacity now. We know we have a housing shortage, and we know we need more and better paying jobs in this community. So I think waiting until 26 makes any efforts to actually resolve those issues probably not happen until 2030. So I think this is a fantastic framework. And I know we've still got a lot of public comment and work from the Planning Commission, so I support moving it forward. But those are my concerns right now. In the interim, either through this council or through the planning commission's work, as either could institute a zoning ordinance text amendment, I think that there are things that this report envisions coming to fruition by way of zoning ordinance text amendments that we should go ahead and start. I don't think that we should wait. I think those need to be ready by the time this work group starts its process. So great framework, and thank you. But we have a need now and we need to move faster than this. Thank you. Thank you. Are there other comments, questions about the motion? All right. All those in favor of. I'm sorry. Vice Mayor, I want to make a motion to suspend the rules. I was waiting for other. Comment. Yes. Can we do that after this is voted on? I believe it would be more appropriate to hear it before council votes. I mean, you could have it right after this goes on the docket, or you want to hear it before it's voted on. Yes, I would like to give people the opportunity to comment before council takes a vote on this. So I do have a motion. Okay, that's fine. I thought you were doing after the vote to put it on the docket. Go ahead. Thank you. So I move to amend the council rules to allow for public comment on this particular item that's before us. rather than waiting until the end of the meeting. So move. Is there any discussion? Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. So the motion on the floor is to hear public comment now and then vote on the main motion. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We have four people who are signed up for public comment that I believe may be about this issue. The rules of the council are that you'll come to the podium and state your name and your council district for the record, and then you'll have three minutes. So first is Margaret Graves. Welcome. Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to comment. My name is Margaret Graves, and I live in the 6th Council District. I'm sure you've seen my email and probably my op-ed. I think this report started with the best of intentions, but I believe it's fundamentally flawed. The public participation in this process was next to nil. There was no representative from the Rural Land Management Board, which is actively working to conserve farmland in Fayette County. There was no representative from the equine community. And this decision and the map puts the factory floor of the horse industry at risk. Also, I believe that a decision of this import should have full public input. And this has not happened in this case. And I think that's a grievous mistake on an issue that is so, so important to the future of Fayette County. I also speak from experience in working in rural land issues from 1997. When we set up the PDR program, we had a very diverse coalition of people who worked on that plan. We had home builders. We had developers. We had farmers. We had every different constituent group present in developing the plan and coming up with recommendations for how that ordinance should work. And the PDR program has stood the test of time. This plan has a map that is based on a 1999 sewerability study. A lot has happened since 1999. 30,000 acres of farmland have been conserved with conservation easements using public dollars. Local dollars, state dollars, and federal dollars. This map attached to the report is a land grab. It includes over 20,000 acres of land to be developed in the future. That is a mistake, and the public has not had a chance to weigh into it. We have a number of PDR participants that are at the meeting today, and I'd like to ask them to stand, just so that you can see the faces of the farms that are at risk by this plan. So we would ask that this be postponed and that further analysis be done of sewer ability and further public input be gathered. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Knox Vinagal. Welcome. Thank you, Mayor Gorton. Vice Mayor Kay and Council Members, my name is Knox Van Ogle-Fister of the 1st District and the 12th District. I am here today to respectfully request that you not endorse the Goal 4 Workgroup Report until further review, discussion, and deliberation can occur. A general endorsement of the report is premature at best, as too many significant questions are on the table. the short and long-term economic consequences of earmarking a 20,000-acre urban reserve for future development in the rural area, the absence of key equine and general ag real estate and neighborhood stakeholders from the Goal 4 Committee discussions, the limited consideration, comprehensive consideration, of land inventories, the important partnership between urban and rural vitality, and the interplay of regionalism in our sustainable growth strategies, the real fiscal, environmental, and cultural impacts of an expansionary outward growth approach on our coveted brand, signature industries, and world monument fund endangered bluegrass landscape, in which this government has invested millions of dollars to conserve, in which this plan jeopardizes. While I truly appreciate the committee members' intentions, let us honor these efforts not with a general endorsement of the Goal 4 report today, but rather with a real commitment to engage everyone, your constituents, in a transparent and rigorous planning process to consider the report's findings starting January 1st. At the end of the day, it is the taxpayers who will pick up the bill for our land use plan, and it is they who should decide. As you know, I have dedicated my personal and professional life to advancing good growth here in Lexington, Fayette County. Together, we've all come so far. From weathering the consent decree and great recessions to attracting the World Equestrian Games and Breeders' Cup, these accomplishments are no accident. It is from the land we garner our strength, our resilience, and our identity. Whether we expand the urban services area in every direction to the county line, or we hold fast, Fayette County alone can never accommodate all things for all people for all time. What we lose, we lose forever. Therefore, we owe it to ourselves and this precious bluegrass that we all steward to do more. It is in this vein that I ask you to do more and not pass the resolution today. The world is watching. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Will Adams. Welcome. Thank you, Council. My name is Will Adams. I'm a resident of the 5th District, but I'm here today in my capacity as Director of Strategic Initiatives and Assistant Counsel for the Bluegrass Land Conservancy. Bluegrass Land Conservancy is the 501c3 Land Trust. We hold permanent conservation easements on properties located along and within the reports defined developable areas. We have real property interests in these properties. We are not in support of the approach to define developable areas, as it will significantly impair the conservation values of our protected properties, as well as the agricultural and scenic nature of these areas, which were protected for the benefit of the general public. The federal government supported the protection of these properties by allowing the landowners to take a tax deduction, so long as the conservation values on these properties are protected for the benefit of the public in perpetuity. Fractured farmland is not viable farmland. Incompatible neighboring uses can present noise pollution, degrade air quality, reduce pollinator viability, affect microclimates, and impair transportation linkages. By creating defined development areas that substantially, and in some cases completely, surround conserved farmland, the future development strategy embedded in the report undercuts the continued agricultural viability of these properties. In the face of continued population growth, a warming climate, and geopolitical instability, greater consideration for the protection of local agricultural viability is needed. Uncertainty discourages investment. The report's strategy of identifying overly broad swaths of land as subject to future development will have the immediate impact of disincentivizing producers from making the necessary capital investments in their property necessary to sustain long-term agricultural operations. Concern that future incompatible development will impair the ability to achieve a return on investment will discourage investment. In time, these farms will suffer neglect, making future expansion a self-fulfilling prophecy. As previously noted, the conservation values of the Bluegrass Land Conservancy protected properties must be protected in perpetuity. The scenic, environmental, and agricultural resources benefit the public immensely. Ensuring the protection of these resources is critical to preserving the cultural heritage of Fayette County and the Bluegrass region. Therefore, we request the council receive the report in its current form without approval or endorsement. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Stephen Davis. Welcome. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council, for the opportunity. As a resident of the Old Richmond Road Corridor, I urge you not to recommend the Gold 4 report for the Planning Commission until more time can be dedicated to a more inclusive and methodical process. In the short couple of hours that I've had to review the working group's meeting packets, I find it incredibly disconcerting that a recommendation to the planning commission by council today would be made on matters of the urban services boundary with so little time and with many relevant perspectives and pieces of information missing. First, to be clear, the work group is made of very intelligent, experienced, and thoughtful people. So my dissatisfaction is not with them personally, but rather with the amount of time they've been given in order to perform such a crucial task. This workforce has been meeting since June of this year. And even though the recommendation of this group's formation was born out of the 2018 Comprehensive Plan, in all of that time leading up to now, nothing has happened until June. Secondly, when I look at the makeup of the Goal 4 members, not one of them is in the County's roll-in management board, which I find to be a glaring and disappointing omission considering the subject matter at stake. The timeline of all of this gives me a little bit of pause in my faith in this particular governmental process. And I think for residents like myself to understand and trust this process, there needs to be transparency. There needs to be a more methodical and inclusive way. So what does that look like? I think for one, some other people have mentioned performing a new sewer study. It's crazy to me that a valid report that you might vote on today is based on a 20-year-old study, whereas I think the group's report should be based on costs and timelines of today. Two, start the work group a lot more than seven months ahead of lead time before you're making decisions like you are meant to make today. Number three, include members or a member even of the Rural Land Management Board to be a part of this working group. Four, create some public input, not just attendance at these particular work group meetings. And five, just do a general better job of letting people know that this work group exists, as I did not know until about a week ago. It could be true that the conclusions drawn by the Goal 4 group may be identical to today and the things that you're voting on, but at least you would be able to say that you did the right thing the right way by the people who have elected you. So I ask that you vote not to recommend the Goal 4 report to the Planning Commission at this time. Thank you. Thank you very much. I believe that finishes the folks who wanted to speak on this issue. That's what I wanted to speak on. Okay, you did not want to wait for the last. Okay. I didn't know that he was going to. Okay. Dottie Bean. Okay, no worries. If you'll state your name and council district, please. Okay, I pretty much agree with everything that Mr. Davis said. And I want to add one other thing. I said in that goal four presentation of how the comp plan decisions are being and will be decided in the future, I question the legality of what that goal floor panel has done and proposed, and especially whether it was legal for only four council members to be invited to give input in that process and meet for two hours for 12 days. I believe that's what I was told, two hours for 12 days, to overturn a process that has been established and been in established use here in this city for about 70 years. I also feel like there was not any public notice much given at all of this entire process. Thank you. Thank you very much. I do not have anyone else signed up. Oh, we have a couple people who want to speak. If you'll go to the podium and state your name and council district, and then I'll ask you later to sign up as everybody else did with your address. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. My name is Phillip Meyer. I'm in the third council district, and I am on the Rural Land Management Board. and I think it's very important we have at least one and multiple members giving input for this report. These proposed areas of expansion include 70 existing PDR farms. And the last thing we want them to do is be surrounded by development. It just clobbers, as has been said before, it clobbers their conservation values and it greatly affects their farm operations. And another issue that's in the report is it appears that it might allow leapfrogging developments into the county. So there's some major issues in this report that I think need to be addressed before it gets its blessing from the council. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Will you state your name and council district, please? Yes, ma'am. My name is Donna Dixon. I am the office manager at Middlebrook Farm, and Ms. Baxter is my council representative. Personally, council representative. Outside of that, I'm in the 12th. I'm here to speak against the approval of this manager. The owner of Middlebrook Farm is Helen C. Alexander, and Ms. Alexander has spent more than 30 years working toward land preservation efforts in our community. The lack of equine representation on this council is very disheartening. As a native Lexingtonian who shares a birth date with the urban service boundary, The public perception that I have toward the lack of representation of public input is very disheartening. Our farm is on the town branch. And just to digress for just a moment, the countless man hours that we spend cleaning debris from the town branch as it flows through Middlebrook Farm is unbelievable. We should be a line item budget for the Urban County Council because of the man hours that we put into debris and storm water runoff is atrocious. We lose nearly 40 acres in flash flooding where it is underwater. And with the Town Branch Commons and things that are recurring upstream of us, we are even more impacted on a daily, weekly, monthly basis with cleanup efforts. I want to say that with the inclusion of 20,000 additional acres of potentially developed land is just not going to be a productive thing for us in our current environment. You're just going to make it harder on us farmers out there doing a job. Thank you. Thank you very much. Was there anyone else who did not get an opportunity to sign up who wishes to speak to this issue? All right. Very good. Thank you very much. Now, Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you. I'd like to comment. I find myself in an unusual position. People who have tracked my career, if you have, know that I've been an ardent advocate for preservation of the rural land. Also, if you've been tracking this process, you know that for four years, the goal for the attempt to create a new process essentially was not implemented. And for better or worse, my judgment and the judgment of my co-chair, Council Member Brown, was that something would be better than nothing at this point. And again, if you're tracking this issue, you know that the Planning Commission has been presented with the goals and objectives for every single part of the proposed comprehensive plan update except for goal four. and that they are waiting for this work group to make its recommendation. I understand the concern about process. The short answer as far as I'm concerned to that concern is that this report and the motion before the council today has, as has been pointed out, no legal standing. It's an ad hoc group, which as the vice mayor, I have the authority to create. It is a recommendation only. It's one step. And the opportunity for input will be, I believe, robust. the Planning Commission will consider in its own way what it wants to do with Goal 4. It can take this report and approve it as is. It can take this report and amend it. It can take this report and disregard it. It can create its own Goal 4 or new Goal 3. Similarly, when the Planning Commission makes its recommendation to Council for the goals and objectives. The council can then take whatever the planning commission brings forward and it can accept, it can amend, it can reject, it can create its own goals. At each one of those steps, there's going to be ample opportunity for input from everybody. When we established the Goal 4 workgroup, we made a decision that there would be no representation from any existing organization. There was not a single person who served in an 11-minute body, except for the four council members, who were there representing a particular agency, organization, or group. Now, amongst them, I think they represented the range of opinion and perspective about growth in this community. At least that was the intention. What the council now has before them is a recommendation to go to the Planning Commission. The Goal 4 Workgroup actually report has already been forwarded informally to the Planning Commission so that they can begin their work on Goal 4. A lot has been said about the land that's now potentially designated as potentially developable. I want to say a word about the 97,000 acres that have been indicated on that map for preservation. There's a lot of rural land that right now, if tomorrow the Planning Commission and the Council agreed and we adopted this plan as is, there's a significant amount of Fayette County. It'll end up being about half the land that would be, for the foreseeable future, fully protected. So there's a balance. I, on behalf of the work group, have brought this forward because our opinion was that it would be useful to have this council weigh in because they've been sitting here for a number of years watching this process. So we wanted to do it before the end of the year. We had a very short time frame. We had hoped actually to get the entire process done, but the best that we could do is come up with a report that makes a set of recommendations, and I hope my colleagues will approve it. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Is there any other discussion about the motion? Council Member Lamb? This is part of the process. This is good because this is what we do. We listen and we hear people and we know that work is being done. And I really do appreciate our process because what I have to say has nothing to do with the work of the goal for work group. I believe they put a lot of time and effort into the product, the report that they have submitted. And I appreciate all their time and energy. I probably do wish that there had been some more diverse members of the work group after looking at the members here. But it's passed. It's gone. It's done. We can't change that now. But what I would like to say, and just while I'm sitting here today, is I'm listening to my colleagues. I'm listening to the public comment. But I looked up the word endorsement, and endorsement basically saying that I approve of this report. And so because this resolution actually says that if I agree with it, I'm endorsing the report, so I'm unfortunately not going to be able to support this resolution today because of the word endorsing. I know from what the Vice Mayor just said that the report has already been submitted to the Planning Commission. They will begin their work, and I urge everybody in this room and everybody outside the room that everybody participates in the process that they need to go through to be able to finalize what is next. But at this point in time, I personally cannot support this resolution because of the word endorsing in the resolution heading in the body of it. That is not a dig to any of the goal for work group members. I appreciate all the time and effort that you all spent. But I just cannot support this resolution simply because I do not endorse the product of this report because I don't think it's in its final form. And I would like to have the opportunity to endorse something that I know and I believe that our community can stand behind. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Mayor. And this is a really tough spot for me. I represent the 12th District. I sat on the group four at work group. I listened to folks today that I respect and I interact with the past six years that I've been on council. Being part of that group four, we were very, very careful, very, very protective of what was out there. And one of the things that kept coming back to me, if we don't do something, that urban service boundary is going to be expanded, bottom line. This was a buffer. In other words, it's a series of considerations as we move forward. I even said this in the group, that I'm afraid when people see those maps, they're going to think, hey, we're going after that. But there's so many checks and balances along the way. I wish we had more time. I wish that we could bring more folks in, and in retrospect, that probably would have been a better thought. But being a part of the group and knowing what the intent was long term, those maps might not be touched for 100 years. And there is opportunity, as we know, as Vice Mayor said, that this is going to go forward with a lot of opportunity for input. A lot of opportunity to change it. But we really need to have done something. Because we just don't want the doors wide open for development, the flood doors open for development out there. So this is in place. We've got opportunity for input. I felt, I wouldn't agree the whole time. I mean, in other words, there are things that I would say wait a minute. But it was well thought out. I think things at the end could have changed some, and I look forward to moving forward with input from everyone in the community to see what we can come up with so that our rural land stays protected and respected as we move forward. And that was the intent. So let's see where it goes and how we can make it be the best that we can. Again, it wasn't rushed. It was well thought out. It respected the land. So I just wanted to share my feelings about that. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Are there other comments to the motion? All right. All those in favor of, and we'll do the electronic. A vote of moving this on to the docket to go to the Planning Commission. Please say aye and log your vote and nay if you are opposed. We have ten yea, one nay, and four absences, so that motion passes. Thank you very much. Is there anything else for the docket? We're still on the docket. All right, seeing nothing, I'll ask those who approve the docket as amended to please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Now, a summary of October 1st. Could I have a motion to approve? I approve. Thank you. Council Member Baxter, seconded by Council Member Bledsoe. Any questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? That motion passes. We have budget amendments. I'll entertain a motion to approve. Second. It's about the budget amendments. Okay. All right. Vice Mayor Kay moves. Did I hear a second? Council Member Plowman has a second. If you have questions or amendments, Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Mayor. I have three actual budget amendments. If you'll just hang with me. The first is to remove journal item 137585 as it will be funded from a different source. So moved. Could I have a second, please? Vice Mayor Kay seconds. Are there questions about that? The reason was it will be funded from a different source. All those in favor, say aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Thank you. I move to amend the list of budget amendments on pages 3 to 6 of the work session packet to remove Budget Journal 137-604-05 for the jobs fund reimbursement. This item was not a reimbursement and should not be processed at this time. Is there a second? Second. Council Member Sheehan. Any questions? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. And then finally, I move that the budget amendment request list on pages 3 to 6 of the work session packet be amended to add a budget amendment for water quality to provide $400,000 for an updated sewer ability study targeting specific rural areas under the leadership of Charlie Martin with input from a variety of external and internal community experts and departments as recommended by the Gulf War Work Group and discussed with the community of the whole meeting November 10, 2022. Second. Council Member Lamb seconds. Any questions? Council Member Fred Brown. What fund does that come out of? Water quality restricted funds. Water quality fund? Okay, it's not a general fund item. No, sir. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? All right, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Anything else for budget amendments? All right, all those in favor of approving the amendments as amended, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Budget adjustments are for information only on page 7. And I'll now entertain a motion to approve new business. So moved. Vice Mayor Kay moves. Council Member Plowman second. If you have questions, will you please log in? Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Mayor. I have a question about item K as it pertains to the litter pickup service program. Hi. Jennifer Carey, welcome. Thank you. I just was wondering if you could tell me how often this program performs its duties, I guess, would be the appropriate. They, at a minimum, run two times a week, but they try to get in three runs each week, weather dependent. Okay, that's great. Thank you. Thank you. And then I have one more. On item W, I don't know if it's about the transient tax. just for public transparency i wanted to verify what that tax rate was um i think it i think it's in total may defer to west but i think if there's a four percent one and then there's a a couple other ones that add up in total i think to either eight and a half or nine eight and a half and that those dollars go towards visit lex and the convention center Yes. Right. Do you know the exact breakdown, Bryce? I believe it's 4% that goes to Visit Lex, 4% that goes to the Convention Center, and then there's a half a percent that I believe is to the bond for the Convention Center expansion. Okay. Okay. All right. Great. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. I actually had the same numbers, but on the number K, I guess, Director. Could you go over that program again, just kind of how it works? Sure. New Life Day Center has had the previous contract and has provided this service, and they operate the stop panhandler van. And they encourage folks that are panhandling at intersections to get on the van each day, and they go out and pick up litter. There's several predefined routes that that group hits with some frequency or a certain frequency. And then as we receive calls through LexCall about special areas of concern, we can ask that group to go to those areas, too. And what was your answer? How often? So the contract requires them to run a minimum of two times per week, but they try to run three days per week. Okay. Thank you. And then number H, please. Jennifer, I think we received an email because initially when this was brought forward, we were going to start it in fiscal year 24 in July. But I think you have wanted us to start it early, I think, and that's what this is because it's going to happen while we're on break. Is that my understanding? It is, yes. So when I originally presented to the budget and finance committee, we had asked you all to consider starting the program July 1st, and we consulted internally. We actually have a few staff here at LFUCG that are currently on maternity or paternity leave. So we discussed it as well with Mayor Gorton and decided we'd like to have you all consider starting it effective upon passage so those that are currently out could take advantage of the program and then into the late winter and spring as well. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to have that update. And then the last one I had was on W, and that was on the transient tax too. And I will... Director Holbrook. I will clarify that I do have an Airbnb, and I have been contacted by people who have Airbnbs. Are we being charged presently a transient tax? Yes, we currently have agreements with Airbnb, and another hosting platform, we're there to collect transient room tax remitted to us on behalf of the units on the platform. So will this increase that tax then? It shouldn't. If you're operating an Airbnb, you should be paying the tax that's going to be in order. And that was the question. I thought it already is being collected, but they wouldn't know if there's going to be an additional tax. As long as they've been paying it, there shouldn't be. I see Mr. Barbary walking up. That always scares me when the lawyer walks up. In the state law, which we've adopted in the ordinance, it does expand the application of the tax. So it's possible there are services that are being provided in conjunction with the actual rental that the tax would apply to now. Cleaning, stuff like that. I don't know if that's how the current contract is set up or not. But this ordinance allows those things to be taxed as well because that's what the state law allows. So it could look at additional things that are being raised. I can send you the specific things, but it's basically along the lines of the peripheral services you would get in running out a platform like that. It's typically going to be your cleaning type stuff. And this only applies for less than 30 days, is that my understanding? Yes, that's correct. Okay, because there are other sites out there like Furniture Finder that deals with nurses that are traveling nurses that are 30 to 90 days, and that won't apply to that? All of our transit room stuff follows the state law, and the state law is set up at the 30-day threshold. Okay, thank you. Councilmember Bledsoe. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to highlight item number H as well. We had discussed that a number of times in our pre-meetings about whether to enact it immediately and weren't sure that we could pull that off financially. And I just appreciate the continued conversation because, as she mentioned, there are several who called and said, I am pregnant right now. You know, will I matter? Does this matter to me? And it does affect people's decisions about them making plans, if they're going to stay with LFCC or not. And so I appreciate the mayor's endorsement of helping us and the commitment to get it done immediately, because I do think it matters, and I'm just grateful. So on behalf of those women and men who said please, yes. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. My question is on item I, and I don't know if that would be CAO Hamilton or if it would be Director Walters. It has to do with creating the positions that were approved by FY23 budget. Amy. Amy. Okay. Director Walters. Thank you, Ms. Walters. I looked at the memo to see, and it's talking about the language access specialist to classified civil service positions, And I realize that these are being created in the mayor's office, but technically, as I understand, they are going to be positions under Global X. Yes. My question, two part, maybe three, are there other classified civil service positions that work at Global X? Yes. How many? At least two. I'll have to check to make sure, but yes, there are other classified civil services. is another language access specialist, and I believe Isabel's position is also classified civil service, but I'll verify that. Oh, okay. Okay. All right. Well, and I will say I know that when a position is created, then it goes through a process of the hiring process. I would ask probably how, I mean, This is a tough one. I'm just curious as to once this is created, then the position is on the books, and then you can go through the process of hiring them. I assume that it would be the same that CAO Hamilton would be involved in the hiring process of this, and Ms. Taylor as a supervisor in that area? Tyler Scott and I have discussed this because these positions are in the mayor's office, and there will be a panel set up, and that panel will be diverse to select these, and he will supervise that. Okay. I think that's your, good. This is not a selection that's made by one person. Okay. I appreciate it. And this is a difficult question, but I have to ask the hard questions sometimes. So I appreciate that very much. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member McCurron. Thank you, Mayor. My item is Q, and I just wanted to highlight it and say thank you for the work. Over the past several months, we've been working on the distillery district, as many of you all know. and we're finally starting to see some changes come to Phase 6. This is very exciting. We're going to see some trees, plants, planters, shrubs, et cetera, through this area in the distillery district. I do have a – sorry, Commissioner Albright, Director Burton, Director Carey, thank you guys for your efforts on this. Director, do you have a time frame of when installation for any of these trees to go in or the planters to arrive? Obviously, it has to pass through council before we can place the order. So ideally we'd plant the trees now, but that's unlikely. So most of this will probably happen next spring. Okay. No, that's it. I'm excited for this. This is going to enhance and beautify the area greatly. So thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Mayor. I just need to note my abstention on item W since I also am an Airbnb operator. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions about new business? All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? I think we have two recusals. Is that correct? Council Member Ellinger and Vice Mayor Kay recuse. All right. Thank you. That passes. Next is continuing business. And first I'll call on Council Member Lamb for her committee report. Thank you, Mayor. This is the General Government Social Services Committee, October 27, 2022. Report out. The committee was called to order at 1 o'clock. The first item was approval of the September 6, 2022 committee summary. The motion was made by Council Member Sheehan to approve the September 6 committee summary, seconded by Council Member Plowman. The motion passed without dissent. The second item was the ADA improvement plan. This item was actually reported out at the November 1, 2022 work session. Item three, the Housing Rehabilitation Program update. The next item was an update on the Housing Rehabilitation Program. Ms. Teresa Reynolds, the Director of Grants and Special Programs, presented on behalf of the item. Grants and Special Programs administers the Housing Rehabilitation Program, which provides loans and deferred loans of up to $35,000 to assist eligible homeowners to rehabilitate their homes. The program has recently experienced some challenges which include poor workmanship and poor performance by a single contractor, a shortage of qualified contractors willing to participate, and short staff to grant compliance officers and a grants manager. Improvements have been made to address these challenges. They have improved communication between the office and homeowners, increased staff presence on site, empowered staff, offered additional assistance in partnership with the Division of Community and Resident Services, and increased the number and quality of contractors used in the program. Other improvements including shifting policies around crawl space qualifications, increasing emergency repair budgets, and they are currently in the process of revising the budget of the housing rehabilitation from $35,000 to $45,000. For FY 2023, there are five completed rehabs, three rehabs in construction, and seven rehabs in the pipeline. There were also six emergency repairs made in FY 2023 with four in the pipeline. Currently, there are 29 applications on emergency repair wait list and 76 on the housing rehabilitation list. This item was made an annual report out. Number four, the redistricting work group report out. The next item was redistricting work group report out. Ms. Kelly Farley and Ms. Jennifer Sutton, research analysts for the council core staff, presented on behalf of this item. Ms. Farley reviewed the work group detail, which was a result of the May 10, 2022 General Government Social Services redistricting review presentation. She reviewed the work group goals, objectives, and provided a comparison of other cities' redistricting processes. Ms. Farley and Ms. Sutton shared the recommended ordinance updates, which included general language cleanup, redistricting administration, redistricting committee selection, guideline updates, and timeline updates. The council administrator will be the official custodian for the records of the committee and responsible for maintaining the records for 20 years. Ms. Sutton reviewed a timeline based upon workgroup discussions. She highlighted that council members and candidates will run in a newly revised district. While sitting, council members will continue to serve the same district for their existing term. Vice Mayor Kay asked to add the language at least in Section E2 and E3. He also asked about the restriction that committee members would not run for office for five years and suggested two or three instead. Vice Mayor Kay made a motion, seconded by Council Member Baxter, to approve the redistricting workgroup report out ordinance. Vice Mayor Kay made a motion, seconded by Council Member Plowman, to amend the ordinance subsection E4 from 5 to 3 years. The motion passed 8 to 1. Vice Mayor Kay made a motion, seconded by Council Member Plowman, to amend the ordinance to state at least in subsection E3. The motion passed unanimously. Council Member Legree asked that this item return to the November 15th General Government Social Services meeting for a follow-up, and it did today. And we will be reporting out on November 29th. And then under items referred, the ADA improvement plan was removed from the committee. And upon meeting, it adjourned at 235. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions for Council Member Lamb? All right. Thank you very much. We have a special proclamation, and I'd like to invite Michelle Kseniak and Director Conrad to join me at the podium. Thank you. I suspect every council member in here has worked with, right, over the years because she is so involved with our parks projects. So you know everybody in here. I think so. You think so, yes. And so we want to honor Michelle, who is being inducted into the Kentucky Recreation and Park Society Hall of Fame. And we're so happy she's here. We are. We always like to have the best here in Lexington, right? So I'll read this proclamation and then ask both Michelle and Director Conrad if you'd like to say a few words. How long have you been here? 25 years, two weeks ago. 25 years. So, whereas Michelle Kaciniak, Superintendent of Planning and Design for the Lexington Division of Parks and Recreation, has been inducted into the Kentucky Recreation and Park Society Hall of Fame, and whereas Michelle began her career as an intern in the Parks and Rec Planning Department in 1997, and whereas Michelle's work to involve the community, stakeholders, and elected officials in all aspects of the park planning and design process have resulted in projects that capture user needs and desires while delivering long-standing parks and recreation benefits. And whereas Michelle possesses an extraordinary understanding of the varied recreational needs of our community and strives to provide something for everyone. And whereas Michelle works tirelessly to provide locations for environmental education, conservation efforts, and nature study, And whereas she is mindful of the unique needs and requirements of all community members and strives to incorporate inclusive use in all her park projects. And whereas Michelle has provided quality recreation services and improved the social, emotional, physical, and mental health of park patrons, regardless of age, race, income, gender, or ability. Now, therefore, I, Linda Gorton, Mayor of Lexington, do hereby declare November 15, 2022, Michelle Kseniak Day. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for calling me a good word. I heard you call my dearest mother. Thank you. Do you want to say a few words? Then we'll have Monica. Sure. Thank you, Mayor. I am honored to receive this, and I'm actually pretty touched by a lot of these words. There are so many that were said that have been so important to me, but mostly it's service to all, regardless of ability, regardless of what community you live in, regardless of your income, trying to give that experience in parks and recreation to every one of our citizens. That's what's important to me. Thank you. Thank you. Let's have Monica, Director Conrad. Sure. Do you have a few comments? Yeah, I would just, well, just to reiterate, and all of you who work with Michelle so closely every day, it's her, not only her creativity, but her really commitment to inclusivity and accessibility that are so important to our parks and so important to our city. So thank you so much. Thank you. Shall we get a picture? Okay. Okay. Thank you. Now, at this time, our last presentation is regarding our 2022 disparity study. And I believe we have our consultants here. And we'll invite you to the podium. Sherita, are you introducing folks and starting us out? All right. Our own Sherita Miller. Good afternoon, everyone. Mayor Gorton, Vice Mayor Kaye, and Council. I just want to take a couple minutes just to give a brief overview about the disparity study before I introduce our consultant. The disparity study is the result of recommendation number two from the Economic Opportunity Subcommittee from the Mayor's Commission on Racial Justice and Equality report in 2020. Recommendation number two states issue a disparity study to determine if there is disparity between the availability and utilization of minority business enterprise MBE firms. Urban County Council approved funds for the study in October 2020. Through the competitive RFP process, LFUCG retained BBC Research and Consulting, LLC, to conduct the study. There were two local minority-owned businesses, EHI Consultants and Abundant Living, served on the project team. The purpose of the study was to assess whether there were any differences or disparities between the availability and utilization of minority and women-owned businesses in the areas of construction, professional services, and goods and services on contracts and procurements that the city awarded. The disparity study examined contracts and procurements that were awarded between July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2020. So here with me today, I have Iris McClish, Managing Director of BBC Research and Consulting, LLC. Welcome. Thank you so much. And I do have a presentation so well that's loaded. I'll go ahead and introduce myself. Thank you. Nice to see you again, Mayor, and great to see you all this afternoon. I'm Iris McClish. I'm a managing partner with BBC Research and Consulting. BBC served as the prime consultant for this very, very important study for you all. We are a 52-year-old market and diversity research firm based in Denver, Colorado. And over the last 30-plus years have conducted more than 135 disparity studies for counties, municipalities, states, and other agencies all across the country. I want to say a special thank you to Mr. Todd Slayton and Ms. Sherita Miller. They were phenomenal partners in providing all of the information, which was quite immense, all of the information and data that we needed to conduct the disparity study. And they were just a wonderful partner in reviewing and working with us to make sure we executed the study on time and with great success. We also had four supremely qualified partners on the team with us. As Ms. Miller mentioned, we had two local minority business enterprises who partnered with us, EHI Consultants and Abundant Living. They had the very, very important task of going out and talking to business owners throughout the market area. They sat down with 37 different businesses to spend 90 minutes with them to talk through all sorts of topic areas, including any challenges or barriers that businesses face in terms of working with public agencies, including the city. We're also joined by Holland and Knight, which is a national law firm. The lawyer or the partner that we work with, Keith Weiner, is based in Atlanta, Georgia. He has specialized experience in terms of assessing and understanding programs that are designed to encourage the participation of minority women and other disadvantaged business enterprises. He was responsible for developing a legal framework and analysis to help guide not only what we did as a project team to ensure that the city has a comprehensive, accurate, and legally defensible disparity study, but also to help the city understand any legal implications in terms of what it may do with the information that is included as part of the study. And then finally, we also partnered with Davis Research, which is a small business that specializes in survey field work based in California. We have worked with Davis Research for more than 15 years, including on a number of recent disparity studies. They were responsible for conducting telephone surveys with businesses throughout the local community to help us understand the different characteristics about businesses that exist in your local marketplace. Before I give you, share some of the key results with you, I want to talk a little bit about what our objectives were. The overarching goal of the study was to understand whether minority or women-owned businesses face any barriers in terms of working with or attempting to work with the city. We assess that question in a number of different ways. At the core of a disparity study, we measure what's called participation or utilization. That is the actual percentage of contracting dollars that the city awarded with minority and women-owned businesses. We also examine what we call market availability. That is what percentage of contracting dollars that the city awarded are minority and women-owned businesses available for. And then finally we looked at whether there were any differences or disparities between those two measures. And I'm going to show results and talk more fully through those three measures in just a moment. We also conducted what we call an analysis of marketplace conditions, which takes a broader look at what's happening in the marketplace. Whereas the first three analyses are really focused on what the city is doing and the spend that the city has actually had with the business community. These marketplace condition analyses are really to help us understand whether there are barriers that exist in the greater market area that are not directly controlled by the city, but that could impact the ability of small businesses, minority and woman-owned businesses to grow and compete for city work. We also collected an immense amount of qualitative and anecdotal information. As I mentioned, EHI and Abundant Living conducted 37 in-depth interviews with business owners throughout the market area. We also conducted two public meetings at the start of the disparity study to provide information to the community, as well as to collect written or oral testimony about businesses' experiences working in the marketplace. and we conducted two focus groups as well along with hundreds of telephone surveys so that we could make sure that we heard directly from the business community and understand with a high degree of detail what kind of challenges or barriers they were facing. We also provide policy and program recommendations and I want to say that these recommendations are just a starting point. They identify areas based on the information and evidence that we collect that are areas that the city may consider for further encouraging the participation of minority and women-owned businesses in its contracting. But like I said, it's just a starting point. There are many considerations that the city will want to examine as it moves forward with its program and policies. And finally, everything that we did was with an eye towards legal compliance. The ultimate goal was to ensure that the city has the evidence and the information that it needs to refine and revise its MBE program so that it can further encourage the participation of minority and women-owned businesses and do so in a manner that is in compliance with legal regulations. There is a full disparity study report that I believe will be published very shortly on the city's website. It's about 800 pages and goes through in detail each of these items. I want to focus on the core quantitative analyses today, which are the utilization, availability, and disparity analysis. our first step was to conduct what we call a utilization analysis which actually measures the true participation of minority and woman owned businesses in city spend or in the contracts and procurements that it has awarded in the past our starting point was to work with Mr. Slayton and Ms. Miller to collect information about the contracts and procurements that LFUCG or the city actually awarded during our study period. As Sharita mentioned, we covered a five-year study period, so we examined any contracts or procurements that were awarded between July 1st, 2016 through June 30th, 2021, and we examined contracts and procurements in what we call all relevant industries, that is, regardless of whether they were construction contracts, professional services or goods and other services. And then very importantly, we were interested in not only what's happening with prime contract opportunities or those contracts that the city has directly with vendors, but also what's happening at the subcontract level. We then went out into the field and worked with Davis Research to conduct telephone surveys with the businesses that participated in city contracts that were awarded during our study period. As part of those surveys, we asked businesses to tell us the types of work that they perform and to confirm or provide information about their race, ethnicity, and gender of ownership. Once we conducted those surveys and verified the information we collected with a number of different business directories and other data sources, we then measured the participation of minority and women-owned businesses in city work. Here is what we found in terms of utilization. Ultimately we looked at $460 million worth of city spend. Of that $460 million, we found that 12% or $55 million was awarded to minority and woman owned businesses during our study period. On the right there is how those dollars fell out across the various racial, ethnic, and gender groups. Most of those dollars, 8.3% of them, were awarded to white woman-owned businesses. The next largest share, 1.5%, was awarded to black American-owned businesses. Hispanic American-owned businesses received 1.2% of those dollars, and Asian and Native American-owned businesses received less than 1% of those dollars. Our next step was to establish a benchmark, or what we call availability, so that we could compare what happened in terms of utilization or participation to what we would expect to go to minority and women owned businesses. The availability analysis estimates the percentage of contracting or procurement dollars that we would have expected the city to spend in that same five year period, based on the businesses that exist in the marketplace. We use what's called a custom census approach to measuring market availability, which means that we match the actual contracts and procurements that the city awarded with the businesses that exist in the marketplace based on various different characteristics about those businesses. So we developed what's essentially a telephone book of businesses throughout the market area that perform work that's related to what the city procures, again, in terms of construction, professional services, and goods and supportive services. We then again worked with Davis Research to call all of those businesses to collect information about their characteristics. For example, we collected information about the types of work that they perform, their capacity to do work in terms of the largest contract or procurement that they could perform on, their role in which they perform work as a prime, a subcontractor, or both, their interest in working with government agencies throughout the area, and their race, ethnicity, and gender of ownership. We then matched those businesses to the contracts and procurements that the city awarded so that with a high degree of accuracy, we could measure the availability of minority and woman-owned businesses for city work. So again, looking at that $460 million worth of contracts that the city awarded during the study period, Our availability assessment indicates that one would have expected 16.5% or $76 million of those dollars to go to minority and woman-owned businesses. You see there on the right that, again, the largest share we would have expected to go to white woman-owned businesses, followed by black American-owned businesses and Hispanic American-owned businesses. Here is what this looks like in terms of dollars, which I think gives you a more concrete sense of what participation looked like and what it may have looked like based on business characteristics. Ultimately, we saw that the city awarded about $17 million to minority-owned businesses during the study period, compared to about $21 million that they were available for during that same time period. The city awarded $38 million to white woman-owned businesses, whereas white woman-owned businesses were available for $54.7 million worth of work. Our final step was to compare what happened in terms of participation or utilization to market availability and we call this a disparity analysis. A disparity analysis examines whether there are any differences between participation and availability of a particular business group. We took the dollars that minority and women owned businesses received, we divided that by the dollars they were available for, and we multiplied that by 100, which indicates or calculates what's called a disparity index or a disparity ratio. An index of one or 100 indicates parity, meaning that a particular business group largely received the percentage of dollars they were available for during the study period. Anything less than one indicates a disparity. A 0.8 or less is what we call a substantial disparity, or is substantial under utilization. This is an important threshold from a legal perspective because it's typically what agencies will rely upon to enact or adopt more aggressive program measures such as establishing contract specific goals for minority and woman owned business participation. There are a number of different looks of, or cuts of information in the disparity study report that are detailed throughout the report and that are really helpful in terms of helping the city identify how and where to focus resource and programs going forward. I wanna share a few key results with you that are really important for a number of different reasons in terms of considering the different programs or policies that the city may adopt in the future. So I wanna start by sharing overall results which are a great way to kind of ground yourself in what's happening, but as I mentioned, there are many other cuts in the data and ways to look at the information that are also equally as informative. But overall, what you see there at the very top is a disparity index of 73 for minority and woman-owned businesses considered together. What that means is that minority and woman-owned businesses received 73 cents on every dollar we would have expected them to based on their availability for city work. Non-Hispanic white woman-owned businesses also exhibited a substantial disparity of 69. And minority-owned businesses as a group were right on the threshold there. So they had a disparity index of 80, which again is that threshold for substantial disparity. Black American-owned businesses as well as Native American-owned businesses also exhibited substantial disparities of 66 and 20 respectively. The two groups that did not exhibit substantial disparities for all contracts and procurements when you look at them together are Asian American owned businesses and Hispanic American owned businesses. we also took a look at what's happening when you look at small contracts versus large contracts and those are defined as construction large contracts are defined as construction contracts worth a million dollars or more and professional services and goods and services contracts worth $500,000 or more. Looking at small and large contracts is informative because those smaller contracts, in theory, should be more accessible to small businesses which are disproportionately minority and woman-owned businesses. You do see that overall minority and woman-owned businesses still showed substantial disparities for small contracts at 55, as did white woman-owned businesses at 62. and as a whole, minority-owned businesses also showed substantial disparities for small contracts, relatively small contracts, at 22. Another important look is what's happening in prime contract opportunities versus subcontracts. Again, subcontracts are smaller in size, so you would expect them to be more accessible to small businesses, including many minority and women-owned businesses. But it's also informative because Ms. Sherita and Mr. Slayton already do a number of things or implement a number of programs to help encourage the participation of minority and woman-owned businesses. And those measures are largely focused on subcontracting opportunities. So while the MBE program isn't designed as a mandatory requirement of any sorts for bidders or proposers for city work, bidders and proposers are strongly encouraged to include as much participation as possible in terms of subcontracting opportunities for minority and women-owned businesses. And what you see here are those, on the bottom, those light gray bars show what's happening in subcontracting opportunities. And it's very clear to me that what the city is already doing is likely having some effect in supporting the minority and woman-owned participation in subcontracts. As a whole, minority and woman-owned businesses had a disparity of 151, which actually is not a disparity. It shows an over-utilization in subcontracting opportunities. And when you look at all of the individual groups, white woman-owned businesses, Asian, Black, Hispanic, American-owned businesses, those groups are also faring pretty well in subcontracting. Native American owned businesses still have a substantial disparity of 53 in terms of subcontracts. And finally, I think it's also worth taking a look at what's happening in different types of work areas. So construction, professional services, and goods and other services. Because the city can really start to focus its efforts in terms of where it might have the biggest impact. or where it can really change or implement new policies or program measures. So I will not go over all of these results to you, but this is what it looks like on an industry-by-industry basis. I will note that when you look at professional services, minority and woman-owned businesses are faring a little bit better in that area. So all minority and woman-owned businesses have a disparity index of 128 in professional services. meaning they're actually above parity for that work group, or that work type, where they still have substantial disparities for both construction and goods and other services contracts. We lay out a number of different recommendations for the city to consider, based on all of the information that we collected, both the quantitative and statistical information, as well as the qualitative information. As I mentioned, this is just a starting point. There are many considerations in terms of looking at legal compliance, looking at administrative resources, taking a look at what the city has already tried in terms of prioritizing and assessing what to do next in terms of policies and programs. There are kind of two categories that we recommend the city look at. One is what we call race and gender neutral measures. These are different programs and policies that are designed to encourage all small businesses, regardless of whether they are minority and woman-owned businesses. The hope is that with the use of small business program measures or race and gender neutral measures, it will impact or have a great benefit for many minority and woman-owned businesses in the marketplace that, again, tend to be smaller. These are things that are as simple as revising or implementing prompt payment mechanisms to ensure that suppliers and subcontractors are being paid promptly, increasing or revising outreach and advertising activities. And then there are also some more kind of long-term recommendations in terms of looking at what's happening with subcontracting. For example, as we saw, participation looks a little bit better or disparities look a little bit better for subcontracting opportunities. One way to encourage more subcontracting and further minority and women-owned business participation could be to set subcontracting minimums for various contracts and procurements where those opportunities might exist. Small business set-asides are another area that the city could consider. As we saw, when you look at prime contracts, minority and women-owned businesses had larger disparities there. so focusing on smaller prime contracting opportunities could be a way to improve the participation of minority and woman-owned businesses. And then the city could, with more consideration, take a look at what we call race and gender conscious measures. Those are measures that are designed specifically to encourage the participation of minority and woman-owned businesses. Those include things such as setting subcontract goals or price or evaluation preferences for minority and women owned business participation on individual contracts. As I mentioned though, there are a lot of legal and administrative considerations that the city will want to deeply understand and think through as it determines which next steps may be most appropriate for the organization. That is all that I have in terms of presentation, but I'd love to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you so much. We do have questions. I'll first call on Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you so much for your presentation. There was a lot to absorb there. And it's really interesting. The subcontracts were really doing a good job there, it looks like. And I really appreciate your recommendations on how to think about that differently. prompt payment, I'm assuming meaning they don't want to take the government contract because they don't know how long it's going to take us to get that payment and they don't have to float maybe to handle that for a long period of time. Council of Employment has done a good work on trying to do some of those things internally and speed up our process. Some of that's just administration and how we think about it. Forgive me if you made this very obvious in the beginning and I just missed it. Someone who's available and someone who actually chooses to do this are two different things. In the very beginning when you showed all the data on who applied, just because they're available doesn't mean they chose to do it. So would it be unfair to interpret it as saying, well, we didn't meet the benchmark. It wasn't because of lack of effort. People just didn't apply to do it as opposed to them being available to do it. Yeah, I think it's a little more nuanced than that. I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that they just chose not to apply because I think both the statistical and the quantitative evidence really point out that there are substantial barriers that small businesses and minority and woman-owned businesses in particular face in the market area. So things like, I'm too small, I can't float payroll, or I'm not getting paid promptly. Sure, those are all reasons why a business may decide not to pursue work with public agencies. But we also think that those are areas for improvement where the city could take a look at policy and say, can we take some of these barriers away? Can we help these small businesses and these diverse businesses overcome that so that they do want to choose working with the city or so that they can be competitive? So there's definitely the two business pools are different. There are those businesses that apply or submit bids and eventually become successful vendors. And there are businesses that are available. I think the question is, how do you move some of those businesses that are available and encourage them or help support them in pursuing work? Is it helping them grow into bigger businesses so they can compete for larger contracts? Is it taking some of those smaller opportunities and making them more accessible? Is it fixing things like payment mechanisms? So there's a lot of different considerations around how to do this. No, I get it. Those are really specific things we can do. And I hope the next council will look at those and try to figure out how we can remove as many barriers as possible. I think during the small economic grants that we did, the workforce grants, It seemed that a lot of businesses who didn't meet their goals needed more hand-holding to help them apply for the paperwork and know how to get the grant and walk through the process. So I know that's something you'll probably work on, and I just want to apply the effort to put together a program that is helpful. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for your work on this. I think it's very important so that we can kind of take a step back and see a bird's eye view of what we are doing as a city government. And also allow us to see all of this from a different lens. It uncovers a lot of misinformation about what this could potentially mean. And I think it's really important to really dig down and see that. I'm looking at the industry breakdowns and things like that, all of the bar graphs that you had. And I'm just curious if what we're seeing is representative of what you're seeing in other markets, just on breakdown as well as that's concerned. I'm looking at specifically Native American-owned businesses. I'm just not aware if we have a large Native American-owned business population in general. So I was just curious if that was kind of representative of what you see across the country. Yeah, and I always like to be really cautious about comparing results from jurisdiction to jurisdiction because contracting looks so different and businesses look so different. But I will say that what we see, for example, with Native American-owned businesses, you know, is fairly typical of results. there is not a huge availability. Native American-owned businesses do not have a huge availability in the Lexington area. But this also says to me that they were also not utilized to the extent that they were. So even if they have low market availability, if they had been utilized, we would have seen higher disparity indices. But that being said, this could be a business group that with some concerted effort, you could see really vast improvement with a limited number of resources because it's not a huge business population. Okay. Thank you. And then I have one more question. And your recommendations where you talk about advertising and outreach. I'm just curious, what are some of those best practices that you've seen so that future councils can, like that's something that we can keep in mind? I think there are kind of ongoing outreach efforts that are, you know, I think Ms. Miller already does a phenomenal job of just keeping in close contact with the business community. offering opportunities or direct lines of communication so that the business community knows who to reach out to within the city to ask questions. Hosting workshops about upcoming contracting opportunities, information about the city's programs and policies, whether it's information about becoming certified as a minority or woman-owned business, or some agencies have had workshops about how to do business, how to submit a successful bid or proposal, some of that technical assistance. And then I think there are project or contract specific opportunities. So one thing that is typically pretty effective is that for larger competitively bid contracts, that the agency will host a pre-bid or pre-proposal meeting and make sure that the entire small and minority and woman-owned business community is invited to that. personally speaking our company finds a lot of partners to work with we we are not a national company but we do work nationally which means that we're always looking for local businesses and we find a lot of those by attending pre-bid or pre-proposal meetings also ensuring that if there are particular contracts or procurements that are upcoming that those are targeted or directly advertised to the small business community. So again, there are kind of those ongoing outreach mechanisms, but also those project or contract specific efforts that the city already does some of those, but it's worth taking a look at whether it could make those efforts more robust. Great. I appreciate the answers. Thank you, Mayor. Of course. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan? Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for this presentation and for everybody who has worked on this effort. I thank you to everyone who's worked on this. I have just a couple clarifying questions, and I apologize if I'm asking you to repeat something that you said, but could you talk a little bit about the intersectionality? So if someone was a woman but then also would be in a minority group, is that data captured in some way? Yeah, and that's, don't apologize. It's a lot of dense information, But no, I actually did not explicitly address that. So minority woman-owned businesses are counted with their racial ethnic group as a minority business. That is to avoid double counting of businesses. We want to make sure that their dollars are not captured twice. Also, that business group is relatively small. So when you start looking or breaking out business groups into really, really small sizes, you start getting statistically invalid information, and you can't really make any sense of it. It's really not helpful. So for those two reasons, because of sample sizes and double counting, minority woman-owned businesses are counted with their corresponding racial ethnic group. Okay, and I was wondering if there was a sample size issue there. But is there the ability for us to go back and look at that? There is, absolutely, if that's something that the city wants to take a look at. But again, I will caution that that information gets wild and wildly inaccurate. And it's, you know, we probably wouldn't recommend publishing it as part of the study just because it's not robust enough information. But it's certainly something that we could pull together. Okay. And then could you talk a little bit more about how we meet that 80% metric? So is it that the companies are not applying or they're not receiving the contract? Could you talk a little bit more about any information that you have about the difference there? Yeah, and it's probably likely twofold. And I don't have direct information to speak to both of those, at least not on hand. But there are two different potential bottlenecks. There is potentially, there's certainly probably a bottleneck that some businesses are not applying or submitting bids for various reasons. They're either frustrated, they don't have the qualifications, or they can't pursue a contract that's competitively bid because it's too large. So there's most certainly probably a bottleneck there. And then another potential bottleneck could potentially be in business selection. And I don't have information to disentangle this specifically for you today, but those are two different areas to look at and to consider. There are businesses that are available for work that are choosing not to pursue work with the city for whatever reason it might be, past experience, current size, qualifications, things of that nature. And then there are probably some minority and women-owned businesses that are pursuing work and not being selected. And in the data that we're looking at today, are both of those groups? No, they're the... Or is it just the ones that haven't applied? Well, it's both. So they're co-mingled, the group. The whole business group of potentially available, what we call potentially available, will include businesses that have applied for city work in the past. Some have been successful. Some have not. And then some of them are available but have not pursued city work. So it's looking at the entire, well, I hate to use the word entire because it's a sample of businesses, but it's businesses that are available regardless of whether they've worked or pursued work with the city before. Okay. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the report. I'd like to ask either Todd or the CAO, what's our next steps here going forward with this? And I'm guessing we'll put this probably in committee, and I'll probably make that motion after this. Yeah, really what we're going to do is go through the recommendations, and best practices that you go through the race-gender neutral measures first, and some of those we're already doing, and then see how that impacts your percentages and your disparity before you would jump into the gender-conscious measures. And those are things we're already working on, you know, prompt payment. A lot of that has to do with I want to clarify that that's not necessarily that the city is slow in paying their contractors, but our contractors may be slow in paying their subcontractors, and we're working on those types of issues now. So we're working on these things already. Thank you. I think that this is a lot of stuff that we probably need to address in the committee. So I'll make a motion that we put this in the, I think our new committee will be general government and planning is I think the new one. So moved. All right. Council Member Sheehan seconds. Any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you so much. It's great to see you again. Appreciate the report. Council, it's time for council reports. If you'll log in, please. Council Member Lamb. I don't have any pictures, but as you all know, the last time I reported that we were getting ready to light the pickleball courts. Well, it was fun, wasn't it? We did it. It was. I should have brought a picture, but I didn't. I really want to thank the Parks and Recreation for putting this together so quickly. And I actually got out and played pickleball. I didn't break anything, which was a good thing. And I actually, you know, hit the ball several times. I was real proud of myself. So there's hope that there might be something beyond counsel for Susan. But I just wanted you to know that there were over 100 people that were there that night, and there were people that had played pickleball that morning that intentionally came back that night just for this event. And, I mean, you had all walks of life. You had Dr. Nadia Rashid. You had Judge Bunnell, Kim Bunnell. You had all kinds of people, all different diversities. And I will say that they said that the most unique thing about pickleball is that they know they can come to that court or those courts and at any time have a pickup game with anybody that's there. It doesn't have to be scheduled. You don't have to call somebody because you know they're going to be there. And so now they're open until 11 at night. And it was funny because one of the park's guys was telling me said, just wait. they'll ask you to start opening it up and turning the lights on at 4 a.m. Well, before I got away that night, one said, well, what happens if they want to play past 11 o'clock? I said, it's not available. So I appreciate Parks and Recreations tremendously and the patience from the pickleball players. And they will have many, many fun nights at Kirk Levington Park. So go by there, hit a few pickleball. If you don't have a paddle, go, and they'll pull one out of their bag, and they'll get you right out there on the court. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Mayor. Just a few things. One, last week, Leadership Lexington hosted their government day here, and Chief Wells led that on behalf of the committee. And did an excellent job, I have to say. We invited CAO Hamilton, the mayor spoke, and myself and Council Member Lamb led a number of few hours there discussing the civic engagement and the importance of civil work. And I just want to specifically say, Chris Edwards and Haley, how much I appreciate your very quick response to get this room ready. It means a lot to us and showed the best part of that symbolization is having people come back and realize how hard governing actually is. And moving money from one place to the other isn't exactly as easy as everyone thinks it is. And I think that was well shown and well executed, and I appreciate that. So I appreciate letting us do that. Second, on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Commerce Lexington hosted a group from Norman, Oklahoma, believe it or not, who are joining the SEC in the next two years, and they were doing some site visits to SEC schools, including Lexington. So Charlie Lanter, myself, Chief Maynard, spent some time with them talking about some of the unique challenges of being a university, city, and the SEC, which was fascinating. and reminded me how much I appreciate the relationship from UK and the town and gown relationship, but also UK and UKPD and Lexington's police department working really well together and how critical that is for success for the community's safety. So I appreciate them being a part of those conversations. And they've said if we ever want to come to Norman, Oklahoma, we're all welcome. So there you go. Lastly, last night, Parks held their open house for the Cardinal Run Park over at Beaumont Middle School, and it was exceptionally well attended, as I'm not surprised that it was. I think there's about 100 people who came through that conversation piece. They are very interested in that piece of property, as they ought to be. And I'm very excited that they took the time to give us their input, and that park's going to be fantastic. I think it was a really good step. So thank you to Monica, Michelle, Paul, and others who participated in that. It was really well done. And then lastly, the library gave us a pledge today for our kickstart by ARPA funds to the Marksberry Family Branch. which I think is a really neat thing and a nice way of honoring a joint partnership that hopefully will be a good community asset moving forward, and I appreciate their recognition. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan? Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say that last week was our Week of Valor, and we had a few different opportunities to support our veterans and to honor them throughout the week, and I just want to say thank you to everyone who was organizing those activities and then attended to support. That's it. Thank you. Councilmember McCurran. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to keep on that same trend here. I'm going to talk about the Veterans Festival. Unfortunately, we had to cancel it this past weekend. There was a lot of efforts that went into planning that the Veterans Festival this past year was about 12 months, bi-weekly meetings for a subcommittee of five or six different people. So I did want to give an individual shout out to each one of them. We have our chair of the commission, Brian Engel, Phyllis Abbott, who is also a, she's a trail hawk by all means. Susan Murray, Ann Vandervoort, Sergeant Alex Ambrosio of the Air Force, and my legislative aide, Alicia Larmore, for all of their efforts put forth into planning that. Unfortunately, it was a last-minute call because of the weather, but I think it was the right move to make. In discussions, we are looking at a future date to reschedule it for, hopefully a warmer, more sunny day. I brought up something in that meeting for canceling. I said, you know, when I was in college, we typically had Halloween events that were always canceled because of rain or snow or whatnot. I said, so in the springtime, we would always do a halfway to Halloween event. So I think that this year or next year, we'll be looking at doing something similar of a halfway to Veterans Day or maybe around Memorial Day as well. Thank you to all of our veterans for your support and your service to our community. we wouldn't be here without you. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else have a council report? All right. There are a couple things on the mayor's report. First is the official mayor's report, which you received, if I could have a motion to approve it. Thank you. Council Member Plowman, Council Member Sheehan seconds. Were there any questions? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. And then I wanted to ask two gentlemen to please come to the podium so you can see them and welcome them. Our new director of the detention center, Scott Colvin, is with us. And I want you just to come walk up here so council members can see you. And our deputy director is also here, Hector Joyner. If you'll just come for just 30 seconds so we can introduce you and show council and the public who you are. We believe we have a very strong leadership team in place. Director Colvin, council members, is on your left. And Deputy Director Joyner is on your right. And we welcome them. They both came from other places. If you want to say a word or two about where you've been, welcome. Director Colvin. Thank you, Mayor. Honorable counsel, we apologize for the uniforms that we're in. We got them out of the uniform room at the jail because we wanted to report the first day with the division in their uniform. And so we're a little ill-fitting. I really appreciate the opportunity that the mayor has provided, both the deputy chief and I, and we promise not to let you down and to work hard and get things back on track at the detention center and move it to the next level and move it forward. And do you mind to tell the council where you were prior to this? That was the question, wasn't it? Sorry. I was the warden of the Lincoln County, New Mexico jail. Prior to that, I was a chief with the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office in New Orleans. Prior to that, I was the deputy chief here at the Division of Community Corrections and the interim chief. And that's about as far back as we need to go in, Mayor. Thank you. And Deputy Director Joyner, welcome. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. I'm coming from the federal rear prison, 27 years, retired as the warden at the United States Penitentiary in Big Sandy in Martin County, United. I won't bore you with the travels, but prior to that, 27 years, I was four years in the Kentucky Department of Corrections at LaGrange. And prior to that, I served our country, United States Army, for six years. So I'm honored to be here. Thank you. Welcome to both of you. And we're very pleased, and I know that you all, council members, will get to know these gentlemen in the leadership out at the detention center. So thank you very much. And then along with this, I don't think Rodney Ballard is with us, but I do want to give him a big shout out and thank you because he has been our interim director and has done a really great job while we were in our search for the director and the deputy. And so I appreciate him very much. And then we have our price contract bid recommendations on page 73. And so we'll need to, let's see, we need a motion for those, I think, to move them forward. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger was in my ear. Council Member Bledsoe was in my face. I mean, I saw you. I don't mean that. I saw you and heard him. So, all good. Any questions? All those in favor, say aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. We have had our public comment earlier with everyone, and so it's time for a motion to adjourn. Thank you. All those in favor, say aye. All right, thank you. We are adjourned. that came out